Oliver Benjamin
2. Chat
Roy was lucky he still had an unused visa from two years before, or
the immigration police would have never let him in. It had expired,
but that was nothing a crisp hundred dollar note couldn’t fix.
Emerging from the Addis airport, the old man asked Roy where he
was staying and Roy admitted that he did not know.
“I haven’t done much planning,” he said.
“No plan? Then you must come and stay with me,” the man
announced. and took Roy’s hand, “I am Doctor Webele Amlak.”
The doctor cheerfully led Roy out of the airport and onto the arid
Ethiopian plateau. Roy was surprised by the degree to which it
resembled Southern California. Boxy, low buildings mingled with
scrub brush and brilliant skies. It looked bare and biblical.
“Welcome to the official number one poorest country in the
world!” Webele announced, as if joyfully picking at a scab, then
added, “But one of the richest in tradition.” He took Roy’s hand. Roy
knew that men often held hands in Ethiopia, but had not been
subject to the custom until now. It made him slightly uncomfortable
until he realized that this man was old enough to be his father, and
for the moment he chose to think of him in that way.
“Welcome home, Roy,” Webele said, plainly delighted to be his
guide. For perhaps the first time in his adult life, Roy allowed himself
to be led.
They rode in a cab to Webele’s house. Roy found the city largely
unremarkable. A rather young town, Addis had been chosen by
Menelik II for his capital in 1887. Previous emperors generally kept
their courts mobile, peripatetically moving with their entourages
throughout the kingdom in order to better administer the far-flung
regions. Menelik changed all that, settling in Shoa state and creating
a permanent capital he named Addis Ababa, or “new flower.”
Though it wasn’t especially lovely, Menelik’s flower had
blossomed rather well, particularly for a modern African metropolis.
There were no impressive buildings or monuments anywhere that
Roy could see but neither was it terribly crowded or polluted and the
elevation ensured that the weather stayed mild. The city didn’t look
terribly poor either. He had witnessed far worse squalor in his
travels. The worst poverty, he presumed, was farther away from the
capital in the desiccated, fartherflung reaches of the former empire.
They soon arrived at Webele’s sprawling adobe compound. It
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