Outside Were the Birds

Sometimes they make it hard. The guy we dealt with upon check-in had us sitting in four completely different seats.  "Yeah, but I pre-booked so that they were all together. " "Yeah, well that’s not what I’m seeing. " At 11:50PM this has me ready to throttle the guy.  But with no time remaining before we should get on our flight and with no assigned seat numbers at-the-ready to insist upon, we reluctantly surrendered our bags to the check in and made our way to immigration.

On the way I called Ethiopian airlines.  “Yes.  You should have seat 12 A, B, C, & D.”  “Well.  Is that right?  Thank you.  How do I make sure that these are seats I actually sit in then?”  “Just tell them that those are your seats.” I practically knocked the security apparatus over en route through, threading my belt back on, twisting the buckle once and then twice, I packed up my things and newly empowered with this updated info, I rushed off to the gate, leaving my family trailing behind and stormed up to the counter insisting that 12 A, B, C, & D were mine!  The lady took this in and went to discuss.  Everyone else had been boarded but finally, in the end someone must have been moved, as we were then shown to our proper seats.  

  

On board my wife and daughters had the three seats together and me sitting beside in the adjoining aisle.  The gent next to me was from Djibouti.  He helped to clarify that ethnically there was a great deal of similarity between the people of that French colony and the people of Ethiopia and Eritrea.  I did what I could at 1:00AM to dust off my French and soon I was manifique’-ing and fatigue-ing with the best of them.  I can’t say why, but the rather implausibly funny meme of K.C. and the Sunshine Band’s “Shake Your Booty” and its undeniably rhyme to the word: “Djibouti,” played in a loop during my late night flight.  The Djiboutian gent and I agreed that the music available on Ethiopian airlines was wonderful.  I looked for the oldest CD’s they had.  And we crossed the Himalayas, traversed the Arabian Desert and the Gulf of Aden and somewhere down there now must be Somalia.

The first thing I noticed when we walked outside were the birds. I couldn’t name them and I couldn’t see them but their songs were tropical.  So too the songs that evening of Mulatu Astatke!  After a dinner with good traditional music upon a stage where we dined, we headed to the venue he was supposed to perform at.  We had a lovely evening of thumping traditional music on what I assume was begena, but folks were getting tired.  I commented on the way out that we’d thought Mulatu was supposed to be here tonight.  “He’s downstairs.”  “OH?”  My daughters were strictly continuing on fumes only as they labored to stay awake but I think they picked up on some of my excitement and their mom’s encouragement:  And I listened to the father of Ethio-jazz and thought of all the times I’d heard this song before coming out of speaker I shook my head to the beautiful melody, feeling as though I’d fought hard to secure this precious moment with my family. 

Thursday, 06/22/17