Breakfast in Tigray

Day four means flight four. We’re up for an early flight form Addis Ababa to Makale in the Tigray region. We’ll be spending the rest of our week in Tigray. Tigray is in the north abutting the disputed border with Eritrea. Scott had promised us an unreliable turbo-prop type plane, but alas we’re on a Boeing 737. While boarding the plane I walk up the steps behind a woman carrying a young boy. She’s wearing calf-high boots that appear to be malfunctioning. With every step the heel collapses inward at about a 45° angle. It looks really painful and I keep worrying that as people jostle their way up the stairs she’s going to fall to her right and drop the boy over the edge. I keep close behind to help, if necessary, but, fortunately, it’s not. I’ve negotiated the window seat, which gives me a great view of the tops of clouds. As such, I don’t get much of a feel for the topography.

We land in Tigray and it’s immediately evident that we’re in mountainous terrain. The runway itself slopes down towards the end. Overshooting the runway would lead to a rather steeper drop. The plane parks at the very corner of the tarmac, so we have a decent hike over to the terminal. Given that there are only about three flights a day, it seems odd that they don’t park closer. A few minutes later we’re picked-up by Tekla (I’ll use phonetic spellings, in part because I don’t know the correct ones) the head of REST. The Restoration Society of Tigray (REST) is the partner that implements our clean water solutions in this part of Africa. charity:water has done a few projects with them earlier this year, but we’re looking at some significant funding in the back half of the year. Scott spent a couple of weeks with REST filming the 33 villages for the Born in September campaign. They’ll also be the partner that we use to do live drilling for a well at a school on 9/7.

They drop us off at our hotel the Kastel – I assume that means castle because that’s about what it looks like. The hotel sits on top of hill overlooking the city and only has a few rooms. Dan again has his own room and Scott and I are sharing a suite. The furniture might be described as “garage sale eclectic” and there’s too much of it making the spacious room feel somewhat cramped. We drop our bags and head out to the nice big veranda for breakfast.

Scott predicts that I will drink 22 cups of coffee during this trip. Since I’m not a fan of coffee (it tastes like burnt milk to me) I am taking the under. I’ve already had one cup at Lensa’s house in Addis, but here I’m also presented with the option of tea – I take it. The next choice is a juice – papaya or avocado. I’ve never had of avocado juice so it’s an easy choice. I take avocado. Dan and Scott have never had avocado juice so it’s an easy choice. They choose papaya.