Travel writer, East Africa: ‘The people were kind, humble, proud’
Photo: Tim Hurley Ethiopia and Kenya “Safari” is one of the few African words to make it into the English language - it means “journey”, and “njema” means “‘good”. My contact in the Irish education charity Camara in Ethiopia wished me “safari njema”. Having flown through the night it was amazing to touch down in Africa for the first time, just as the sun was dawning on a new day. Driving from Addis Ababa Airport towards the city to the hotel, the contrasts were striking: old beaten up blue-and-white taxis, repainted by hand with grainy paint-brush strokes, mixed with a small few shiny new cars on a new main road to the city. There’s a lot of building going on, revealing a city working hard to drive itself into the modern world. Of course, it also has the wonderful all-year-round pleasant heat of a sub-tropical, high-altitude climate, which made for a pleasant change from the rain and sleet I left behind in Ireland. My first trip to one of the schools that Camara works with