When I got back to Nairobi last Monday, I was thoroughly depressed. I had just witnessed the burial of one of my best friends, the incredible sorrow of his family, and I realized the last 2 weeks of my summer travels were upon me. Where did the last 100 days go?
I spent the week finishing up some interviews and organizing my notes for the CDC. A bright moment was when I heard one of the stories I wrote was selected for the new CDC-Kenya website. It really validated all the time and effort I have put into this project, and reminded me how much I love this kind of work. My official last day was Friday, but I'll still be writing up some of the stories til I leave Kenya in a week.
Travel-wise, this past weekend I was supposed to visit Aubrey and Jowi, two of the original Kenya crew, at their respective Peace Corps sites in Uganda; but those plans fell through. Alternatively, a friend of mine from CDC was planning a week-long sojourn to Rwanda, and possibly Burundi or the DR Congo for some volcano hiking, which really caught my attention. But when I went to book the flight to Rwanda, I had missed the price special by a day and the cost had doubled. So no Rwanda/DRC/Burundi for me. I rallied and thought, okay, Plan C is Mombasa/the Coast or Arusha/Moshi/Mt. Kilimanjaro. But it's currently the high tourist season, so all the affordable places to stay on the Coast were booked, and I would rather do Arusha and Kili when I have more time to enjoy the sights.
So on Thursday night, I was dejectedly browsing the internet for inspiration, when suddenly it hit me. ETHIOPIA.
I have been dying to go ever since my first bite of Awash, the mind-blowingly delicious Ethiopian restaurant just around the corner. And a recent conversation had re-ignited my desire to travel there. So I quickly checked the Ethiopian Airlines website and, lo and behold, the flights were as affordable as I remembered (I used EA to fly to Cairo back in 2009). Without hesitation--besides a quick Google search concerning visas--I snatched up one of the last remaining seats on the 3:30am flight to Addis Ababa, and my blue mood suddenly lifted.
Initially, I was planning to solo travel with the help of my new-found love, couchsurfing.com, but then the funniest coincidence occurred. I had been messaging for weeks with a girl from my high school who just finished Peace Corps in Tanzania. We had tried to meet up in Zanzibar, which failed, but for the last 2 weeks she has been traveling through Kenya with her sister and a PCV friend of hers. We made tentative plans to meet up when they arrived in Nairobi, then on Friday she contacted me to nail something down, and in that message I learned she and her fellow PCV also have early Monday flights to...you guessed it, Addis Ababa.
Oh, the irony!
So now I have travel buddies for the week, and they have kindly offered up space in their Addis hotel room, so I also officially have somewhere to sleep. After several weeks of tragedy and disappointment, it's about time for one last grand adventure.
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