A Tropical Christmas

He awoke suddenly to the sound of his alarm clock; “buzz   buzz”…the vibration rattled the table. It was 5:45 AM. 11:45 Ethiopian time.

Total darkness. He was sleeping on the sofa.” Why am I on the sofa?” he wondered to himself. He was at their friends house and the bed in the other room was too small for both he and his wife to be comfy. The wooden slats on the poorly designed Ethiopian sofa dug into his back but they still felt better than the box springs on the bed in the next room.

He pulled himself awake and whispered to his wife and friend in the next room to wake up. He changed into his cargo shorts and tucked his valuables away in the inside pockets of his grey fleece vest. He made sure the plastic bag of green coffee beans was well secured in his backpack. The coffee beans from this region were highly valued. They supplied the most popular coffee shops in Ethiopia.

 The three of them quietly filled up their water bottles with filtered water. Before they left they hugged their friend goodbye. 

He was ready to go home; to his Ethiopia home to the East of the mountains.  They had been in this town in Southwest Ethiopia for five days. Or was it six days? His wife usually kept track of those details like days and events. He had grown dependent on that.

It was December 28^th. This was his second Ethiopian Christmas. This Christmas was the first one in his life that felt out of place to him. They had done a gift exchange and watched the animated “Grinch Who Stole Christmas” movie on a little laptop screen. He liked the friendliness of the other Peace Corps Volunteers. He liked the three young Japanese people and the beautiful middle aged Australian woman in the tank top they spent Christmas night with, but they just weren’t what he was accustomed to on Christmas.

They walked on the path through the tropical forest in the starry sky crescent moon darkness. He stumbled on a big rock and decided to turn on the light on his cell phone for safety.

This was the coldest time of day, in the winter. But it was dry season here and warm enough he had his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. It really was amazing to him that this was the Holiday season. He stopped to smell the forest plants and tried to imagine being back in Kentucky with turkey and whiskey and fireplaces melting snow off his boots. But it didn’t work. The smell of the plants and the dry dusty air reminded him of something very different… of something he couldn’t place. They walked on in silence.

They reached the main road that led down the five percent grade to the main town and the bus station. There were only a few yellow lights of some corner shops that illuminated the downtown. The Mosque nearby had started it’s morning call to prayer. “Allahhh Ackbarrrrrrrr.” The sound was already so farmililiar he hardly registered it. He felt drowsy from the half of the Benadryl pill he had taken the night before to sleep.

His wife walked very quickly now. He and their friend stepped more quickly to keep the pace. During the daylight hours it was he who walked the fastest. But he relished the dark time and the feeling of having the street to himself.  He thought about asking her to slow down a little but decided not say anything.

 He could see the first outlines of dawn light down past the town over the forested sweeping valley. He wondered why this town was perched so high up on this ridge. But he was glad it was.

At the bottom of the hill there were three boys in shorts laughing and kicking an old soccer ball by a store front. They were having so much fun they didn’t even notice them as they passed.

The bus was just filling as he arrived at the station. It was one of the big new fancy buses with cushy numbered seats and leg room, a nice change from the norm. There was even a T.V. mounted behind the driver seat.  He pulled a black fleece blanket out of his pack. The bus attendant threw the pack on the bus roof. He strapped the blanket to the seat in front of him to use as a pillow on the eleven hour ride to the capitol.

They were the only white people on the bus. His wife checked the tickets…there were already people sitting in the assigned seats so they sat across the way. He sat in the isle seat and his wife in the middle. He liked the isle seat.  He yawned and stretched his sore left knee out in isle as the gravel crunching under tires signaled the start of their journey.

It felt nice to him to be on the bus, to be heading back to familiar territory. Strangely, he was glad Christmas was over. It had felt a little bit fake to him. He didn’t like to force things so much. Christmas had always been about family. Family was far from here. Now it was back to the reality of the culture he lived in, another year of being a temporary Ethiopian and making the most of that.