Africa: Love at First Sight

 Note: This is the first of a series of relatively short reports that I wrote for Al Hutchison, a longtime friend and colleague, and his online publication, The Gospel Island Gazette.. I've often been asked "Why Africa?" -- and my love of everything Africa. I wrote these to relate my first journey to Africa and fell in love with Africa. Actually, perhaps, when I found out that I had been in love with Africa all my life because, growing up, I was always fascinated by all things African.

Those are my feet atop the truck on which we'd hitched a ride heading into Addis Ababa. Truly, it was at  this point that my love of Africa filled my heart and all my senses.

Africa and Love at First Sight

The call that ultimately fulfilled a dream came at 8 a.m. on a Monday. I’d just arrived at my office the University of Kansas J-School had assigned to me on my retirement a few months earlier in May 2013, a nice perk as I taught my favorite class and worked to set up a study-abroad program in Africa.

I’d been chatting by phone and email with a long-time friend, Kenyan journalist and Nation Media Group executive Tom Mshindi, about study abroad. During one chat, he outlined issues that NMG was having at its operations in Uganda and asked my opinion. I freely shared my thoughts. That was a Thursday. The next Monday morning, the fateful call came. He wanted me to share my thoughts via Skype with the NMG board, which was meeting at that moment, 5 p.m. in Nairobi. They, as Tom, liked what they heard. A few days later, Joyce and I were on a plane to Nairobi. That meeting (and others) ultimately led to an offer: Would you come to Uganda to head up news operations?

I was ecstatic!

Joyce, truth be told, was not, but supportive.

Our children were not happy.

“It’s too far away.” “It’s dangerous, especially for journalists.”

Both true, but . . .

“Well, it’s not like Dad woke up one morning and said, ‘I think I’ll move to Africa!’,” Joyce told them. “He’s always wanted to do that!”

I have – since first setting foot in sub-Saharan Africa almost 45 years earlier.

It was early 1969 when I stepped off the airplane in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with good friend and fellow journalist, Andy Moor. We’d decided to travel the world, so we quit our jobs (he at the Pompano Beach Sun-Sentinel; I at The Miami Herald) and bought PanAm tickets to Africa. We’d planned just a few days in Addis. However, once on the ground, captivated by the culture and history, we decided to see as much of the country that our 30-day visa would allow. In that month, we circumnavigated the country, hitchhiking most of the way, looking for stories to tell.

In Addis, we found Onni Niskanen, a middle-aged Swede who oversaw a leper hospital. He also trained Ethiopia’s long-distance runners, including Abebe Bikila, who won the 1960 and 1964 Olympic marathons in record times – barefoot!

 “Barefoot?” we asked.

“He and the other Ethiopian runners had never really worn shoes – gave them blisters. We also found they took fewer steps” – duh! – “running barefoot,” which he and other teammates had always done at home. After the Olympics races, he said, they found soda pop-top tabs imbedded in the soles of their feet! (No worry. The calluses on their soles were as thick as today’s Nikes!)

After a few days in Addis, we headed north, to Asmara (now the capital of Eritrea).

Hitchhiking was easy in Africa. Not much traffic outside the cities. If any vehicle came by, it would stop for two obvious outsiders. At one remote spot, we sat by the gravel highway, next to a school. That was reason enough for the administrators to dismiss classes so the hundred or so children could sit nearby to ogle the two Westerners. After an hour or more, a car came over the rise, driven by a young man, a salesman, coincidentally heading to Asmara. It took two days – and 13 flat tires, most of which I repaired (old rubber inner tubes). Until the last, #13: That occurred just a mile or so outside Asmara. Our host hired someone to fix that flat; we walked the rest of the way into town.

Before Asmara, our hitchhiking host stopped in Axum, a town in northern Ethiopia famed for, among many things, its many stele and a small stone throne resting, unguarded, in the town square. I sat in it. So had the Queen of Sheba centuries earlier.

Once in Asmara, we then tried to take the train to Massawa, about 70 miles away and about 8,000 feet below on the Red Sea. It had mechanical issues, so we hitchhiked. Easy enough, though we were stopped by government troops and, later, insurgents (fighting for Eritrean independence), looking for weapons. We had none and, thanks to our convincing host, were allowed to proceed. Heading back to Asmara, we took the snail-like third-class train which, going uphill, allowed us, at times, to get out and walk alongside. At one stop, we were sitting in our seats when goats came flying through a nearby window, tossed in by their owner. (Count as carry-on, we guessed.) Snaking its 8,000-feet up from sea level up through mountainous terrain, the coal-powered steam engine chugged its way through a score or more of tunnels. With each, smoke billowed into the cars, enveloping us. By the end of the trip, we looked more Ethiopian than the Ethiopians!

The third-class train; a first-class experience.

Hitchhiking back to Addis, we stopped at Lake Tana and the spot where the Blue Nile begins (before merging with the White Nile in Khartoum, Sudan). Among our transport was a couple-of-days trip riding and sleeping atop a truck. Something that says a lot of the Ethiopian people at that time, we were treated as guests. When we stopped to eat, we offered to pay. The truck driver said no. The food was cheap (to us) but wonderfully delicious. Ethiopian food – injera and wat – is my (Joyce’s, too) favorite cuisine.

That first African experience was life-changing, the beginning of a fascination, a love affair, actually, that continues today, punctuated by all the experiences that followed, including two academic degrees, sharing beers in a Johannesburg back yard with Nelson Mandela and living in Kampala. Those stories, and more, to come.

Africa is never far from my mind.

NEXT: “Farewell, Abyssinia (Mussolini’s Revenge)”