Back home

As the taxi made its way to the Addis Ababa airport late Monday night, I looked out the window and tried to memorize my last moments in Ethiopia - I saw the glitzy shopping malls on Bole Road with people begging outside on litter-strewn, torn up sidewalks.
I said to myself, "I'm still here. I'm still here," knowing that in a matter of hours I wouldn't be.

The airport was busy. Hundreds of Ethiopians who came home for the Orthodox Christmas (Jan. 7) were heading back to America and Europe.
You might think that since everyone has assigned seats on the plane that people would get in line and wait their turn to check in.
Not in Ethiopia.
Everyone was pushing and shoving and trying to get through the automatic doors of the airport at once. Once they made it inside with all their luggage, they pushed each other (and me) trying to get to security first.
As a few women elbowed their away ahead of me in line, I sighed, "I'm still here. I'm still here."

When I boarded the plane and saw the British stewardesses with their hair in a tight bun and their little blue Mary Poppins hats, and I saw the leather seats and the clean, white walls of the plane, I felt a wave of relief.
For days, knowing I was going home, I felt nostalgic for all I'd seen and done.
I've been all over the world, but there's something about Africa - I feel something I can only describe as tenderness for the place and the people.
But when I boarded that plan and took my seat, I was so happy to realize that the dirt and the begging and all those doorless, muddy, hole-in-the-ground toilets were behind me.
And looking around at all the white faces, I realized I would soon slip back into that comfortable anonymity that comes with being part of the majority. There's a lack of privacy that comes with being the minority as everyone notices when you walk into a room or when you pass them on the street.

From Addis to Beirut and again from Beirut to London, they played the romantic comedy "Crazy, Stupid Love." I watched it both times and both times I cried through the whole thing knowing I was going to see Charlie in a few hours.
The two Somali women next to me pretended not to notice.
I knew they were Somali because I recognized their language - a rapid fire, clicking, glottal language - from the time I spent in southeast Ethiopia.
They told me that they lived in London.
Somalia has been at war in some form or another since they were children, they said. If people could leave the country, they did.
The Somali diaspora is all over Europe and Canada and the states. The woman sitting next to me said here sister lives in New Hampshire. She said the biggest Somali populations are in New Hampshire and Minnesota.
I told her that I met Somalis outside Harar and drank camel milk. They were so happy. Camel milk is at the center of the Somali diet.
She said there are camels in Holland, so she can get camel milk and frozen camel meat in London.
She told me that the next time I am with Somalis, I must try camel liver.
"It's delicious. The smell and the taste are different from goat liver," she said.
We walked off the plane together, and said a warm goodbye as they went to baggage claim and I headed for my flight to Chicago.
I didn't realize it until later - when I was sitting in a terminal full of American college students heading home from a Christmas break in London - that was the moment I really left Africa, saying goodbye to the Somali women in the Heathrow Airport.