It's not blackmail! It's Ethiopia!

My phone rang at midnight. The taxi driver said, "If you want me to come at 4 a.m., it will cost you double the fare". "This is blackmail", I said. He replied, "It's not blackmail. It's Ethiopia!". I was travelling through Ethiopia to find the source of the Nile River.

"Why are you travelling to Ethiopia?", asked the woman immigration officer in Chennai airport in southern India. I said, "Tourism. I am just travelling". She refused to believe me. "Nobody goes to Ethiopia", she said. She refused to stamp my passport. She took me to her manager's office. He asked, "Where is your visa?". "It's a visa on arrival", I said. He shook his head in disbelief. I said, "You can check with the airline. They have the information". "That's why they have issued the boarding pass to me", I added. While I waited in the manager's office, they went to meet the airline staff to check. After 15 minutes, the woman came back and said, "Okay" and stamped my passport.

I was in Dubai airport, waiting to catch my connecting flight to Addis Ababa. Rich Arab women were sashaying around wearing glitzy burqas. I wanted to have Arabic tea. But I could not find a single shop selling Arab tea. The airport was full of coffee shops selling European espresso coffee. A Pakistani man walked towards me and asked in Hindi, "Do you know Hindi or Urdu?". I said, "Yes". "Can you help me? I do not know English", he said. He took me to an information desk where there was a Filipino woman and asked me to sort out his transit hotel accommodation. He was travelling to Lahore and had a 13 hour layover. He asked me, "Where are you from in India?". I said, "Bangalore". "Then how do you know Hindi?", he asked. I said, "I grew up in Delhi". He said, "My grandfather is from Najafgarh (a suburb of Delhi). He migrated to Pakistan in 1947". "I would like to go see Delhi, one day", he said. 

There were two young Ethiopian women seated next to me on the flight to Addis Ababa. I had the aisle seat. I had ordered an Ethiopian meal and was having injera (sour fermented, spongy flatbread) with chicken and a glass of Tej (Ethiopian honey wine). The woman sitting next to me asked, "What is that you are drinking?". I said, "It's Ethiopian wine". "I have never had it. Can I taste it?", she said. She took a sip and made a face. "Whisky is better", she declared. The two women were drinking whisky with Coke, like people in Chennai do. "Do you live in Dubai?", I asked her. Her English was not too good and she said, "No. I just go there to play. I live in Addis". "Oh. Just to have a good time?", I asked. "Yes. I go there to shop. I go there to eat", she said. 

The flight was reaching Addis and the two women hurriedly took out perfume bottles, makeup kits and other beauty products from their shopping bags. They ripped the original packing off and threw the packing material on the floor. I noticed that almost all the women in the flight were doing the same thing. The aircraft floor was full of discarded packaging material. I asked her, "Why is everyone doing this?". "We will say that it is a used item. Our personal item. Otherwise, they will charge a very high customs duty", she said. I was reminded of India in the 1990's when people used to go to Singapore, shop in Mustafa and try to smuggle everything back to India. Just as the flight was about to land in Addis Ababa, all the Ethiopian women sprayed deodorant on themselves.

The flight landed in Addis and I walked into a room labelled, 'Visa on arrival'. I gave my passport to the woman officer. She looked at the passport, then looked at me and then looked back at my passport. She then walked to a shelf at the back of the room and brought back a file. She opened the file and went through the list of 'Visa on arrival' countries one by one, until she saw 'India'. She then said, "Twenty dollars". I gave her $20 and she pasted a visa sticker and stamped my passport. There was a long line of Ethiopians for the customs check where their bags were being opened and checked. But they did not check the bags of any of the foreigners. I just walked out. The flight had landed at midnight and it was past 1 a.m. by the time I got a taxi. My taxi driver was a young woman. I asked her, "Aren't you scared of picking up a stranger at this time of the night?". She said, "No. I have never had any problems. Ethiopia is very safe".

The next morning, I wanted to book a few domestic flight tickets. Ethiopia has a dual pricing policy for domestic flights - a highly subsidised price for Ethiopians and a highly inflated fare for foreigners. But there was one exception. If you flew into Ethiopia on an Ethiopian Airlines flight, then you could pay the local subsidised fare. But these subsidised tickets could not be bought online. They had to be bought in an Ethiopian Airlines office in Ethiopia. I had flown into Addis Ababa on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Dubai and so was eligible for the subsidised ticket. The nearest booking office, near my hotel, was inside the Hilton Hotel. I flagged down a taxi and said, "Hilton Hotel". He was impressed. He treated me deferentially. He thought that I was staying in the Hilton.

I then asked the taxi driver, "Is the Ethiopian Airlines office still inside the Hilton?". He exclaimed, "Ah! You are not staying in the Hilton!". He said, "Did you know that inside the bathrooms in Hilton, they have a mineral water tap? So that the guests can brush their teeth with imported mineral water, not Ethiopian water". He then said, "We get water in our houses once every three days. We have to store it in drums. People who stay in Hilton do not know about life in Ethiopia". He said that he lived with his wife and two children in a single room measuring 7 feet x 7 feet. "We don't have a kitchen. One of the corners of the room is used as a kitchen", he said. He dropped me at the Hilton and said, "Yes. Ethiopian Airlines is still here".

I bought my subsidised tickets. They cost me almost nothing. I wanted to buy an Ethiopian SIM card also. I asked the receptionist and she treated me very respectfully. She thought that I was a guest staying in the Hilton. She led me and showed me the shop where I could buy a SIM card. From Hilton, I wanted to go to Meskal Square to buy a bus ticket to Bahir Dar. I wanted to go to Bahir Dar to see Lake Tana, the source of the Nile River. I walked out of the hotel and there were about four taxis parked outside. They quoted outrageous fares. They wanted $30 to travel a couple of kilometres. "It's a good price. Hilton will charge you $50", they said. That was their reference point for comparison. I decided to walk to Meskal Square. Another man also walked out of the hotel and started walking with me. 

He was wearing a Hilton Hotel uniform. He asked me, "Where are you walking to?". I said, "Meskal Square". "For what?", he asked. I said, "I want to buy a bus ticket to Bahir Dar". "Oh. You are not staying in the Hilton", he said. "How do you know?", I asked. "Hilton guests do not travel to Bahir Dar by bus. They take a flight", he said. "The room rent for one day in the Hilton is equal to two months' salary for us", he said. He then said, "There are a lot of Indians in Ethiopia. They are all school teachers. Here, they get three times the salary in India". He said, "But they are racist. They treat Ethiopian teachers very badly". "They should bring in teachers from Kenya or Nigeria. We do not want Indian teachers", he said. He then walked me all the way to the bus ticket office in Meskal Square and left me.

I wanted to buy a ticket on the early morning bus to Bahir Dar. But understanding time in Ethiopia is not an easy task. Ethiopia follows its own time system, different from the rest of the world. It is a 12-hour time system starting at sunrise and ending at sunset. 6 a.m. is 12:00 hours. 6 p.m. is midnight. I finally managed to figure out that there is a bus at 5 a.m. and bought a ticket on that bus. I would reach Bahir Dar at 4 p.m., it was an 11-hour journey. I walked into a restaurant which was essentially a cafe and a bar. I ordered a St. George beer, the oldest beer in Ethiopia. The restaurant was full of very fashionably dressed young women. Ethiopian women are very pretty. My waitress asked me, "Do you want an injera sandwich?". She looked like the Ethiopian waitress in an American diner in Santa Monica, California that I used to frequent. I got a grilled garlic panini with injera in-between. I was having eclectic Ethiopian food.

In the restaurant, people who were drinking coffee were all having a caffè macchiato (espresso with a small amount of foamed milk), the most popular coffee in Ethiopia. Young people in Ethiopia do not have the patience for a traditionally brewed Ethiopian coffee. In the traditional method, coffee beans are slow roasted on a coal fire, powdered using a mortar and pestle, then brewed twice in a clay pot. The coffee is of course excellent, but it takes one hour. In Ethiopia, brewing coffee is a ceremony. Young people prefer caffè macchiato, which can be brewed in a few minutes using European espresso machines.

The evening before I left for Bahir Dar, I arranged a taxi for myself. The bus was scheduled to depart at 5 a.m. I wanted the taxi to reach my hotel at 4 a.m. I negotiated a fare with the taxi driver and we exchanged phone numbers. I was in my hotel in my room and my phone rang at midnight. It was the taxi driver. He said, "I cannot come". "What do you mean?", I said. "I want double the fare. Otherwise, I cannot come", he said. I said, "This is blackmail. I cannot get another taxi". "It's not blackmail. It's Ethiopia!", he said. I did not have a choice but to accept. He did turn up at the hotel at 4 a.m. and I got the 5 a.m. bus to Bahir Dar. 

My travels through Ethiopia will continue in another blog post.

Have you ever been ripped off by a taxi driver? Of course, you have been! Where have you been ripped off the most?!

Comments please! Thou shalt get a reply!

Update

November 2020: A civil war has broken out in northern Ethiopia. The airport in Bahir Dar got bombed.

Have you read my previous blog? Check out, "Lemurs and lychee rum in Madagascar": http://kodavarthi.blogspot.com/2020/12/lemurs-and-lychee-rum-in-madagascar.html?m=1

Copyright © 2020 by Shyam Kodavarthi. All rights reserved.