First landing

I could feel the wet air sticking to my skin as soon as I stepped out of the 777-800. I arrived at about 25 minutes past ten in the evening. The flight tracking system had shown 22°C when we landed. The moisture made it feel hotter. It’s definitely a different kind of hot here than in Dire Dawa, which I’ve started describing as a dust bowl, compared to this.

At close to eleven, the trip through the city to the hotel was a breeze with empty roads; the trip hardly took 15 minutes. When I planned to come to the airport again today, I was warned to budget at least an hour to get to the airport. The traffic here really is horrible, a colleague told me as we were crossing the street to get me another set of (unflattering) passport photos. This is the fourth time this year. These ones will be used for my work id, my residence permit, and my driver’s license among other things and were taken against blue background which made my purple shirt and reddish hair look more garish than a white background might have.

I managed to drop by the office for a few hours this morning—conveniently right next door to the hotel I stayed at last night. I’m now equipped with a desk where I unloaded the stack of papers I acquired during my briefing in Geneva earlier this week. We managed to get the computer up and running with a username and email address for me. I met a few of the colleagues I’ll be working with here and had lunch at the canteen in our building before rushing back to the hotel to catch a taxi to the airport again.

I’m off to pick up Peanut who has been staying in Addis Ababa with friends since I left Ethiopia almost two weeks ago now. I’m anxious to see her again, hope she’s behaved herself and with any luck, matured a little in the last two weeks.

Sunday we turn around and fly back to Dar es Salaam and Monday is my first real day at the office. I’m looking forward to a weekend in familiar surroundings, and hope the wine, cheese and deli meats I picked up in Amsterdam can even start to repay Rafa and Lisa for dog-sitting last week. I also hope the wine makes it there without exploding in my checked baggage.