Invitation to Ethiopia to speak on The Man Called Brown Condor
By
Thomas E Simmons
I have just returned from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
where I spoke on my book, The Man Called Brown Condor and the Italo-Ethiopian War. The trip (all expenses paid) was at
the request of former Ethiopian president Girma Wolde Giorgis and
Frederick Yaw Davis, Director of the Pan African Technical Association
(PATA). Ato
Tewolde Gebremariam, CEO of Ethiopian Air Lines, graciously extended to me and
Mr. Davis complementary travel on Ethiopian Airlines.
THE TRIP
After having my
passport with visa checked, I boarded an Ethiopian Airlines (EAL) Boeing 787 at
Dulles on Monday morning, the 25th of March, 2014 for the 10:15 am,
non-stop flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in East Africa near the junction of
the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. It was
snowing in Washington and the wings and horizontal tail surfaces had
accumulated three inches of snow. All
aircraft that morning had to be cleared of snow and ice with di-icing fluid
just before takeoff delaying our flight until 11: 30 am. We had a flight 7500
miles and over fourteen flying hours ahead of us.
Aboard the Boeing
787, every seat, whether economy or first class had a computer screen which allowed
passengers to view a choice of movies or games, but the item I chose was the flight-following
selection which tracks the position of the aircraft in real time as it moves
across a full color topographic map. As a pilot, I found this fascinating. You also have a “your flight” button which
gives the altitude, speed, outside air temperature and distance traveled at any
given moment. We climbed through the
weather to break out in sunlight at 38,000 feet. For a while, because of the snowstorm
winds off the East Coast, we picked up a tail wind and were clocking a speed of
just over 700 miles per hour over the ground.
The outside temperature was -78 degrees F. We would gradually lose the tail wind and the
speed would vary between 550 and 450 miles per hour over the ground.
As I watched, our
flight track moved up the East Coast of the U.S. and Canada. Between Nova
Scotia and Newfoundland we turned out over the North Atlantic for the “Great
Circle Route.” I noticed we flew
directly over the site of the sinking of the Titanic which was marked on the tracking
map as were such ocean bottom features as the great Hudson Canyon.
Even having taken a sleeping pill, I
slept very little. In between following our track over the earth on the screen
in front of me, I spent time reading the book, Citizens of London, The Americans
who stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour by Lynne Olson. An excellent read by the way.
Watching our flight track, I wondered
what people of yore would have thought of our marvelous “flying carpet” as we
sat comfortably seven miles above the earth traveling at 550 miles per hour. I
wondered if many of those flying with me, eating hot meals and drinking iced
drinks, coffee or tea served by pretty, almond-skinned young Ethiopian women, have become too
accustomed to 21st Century comforts to even give passing thought to
the fact that they were traveling in a miracle of technological achievement, an
assembly of millions of carefully engineered parts and a hundred miles of
wiring connecting electronic control, communication, navigation, instrument,
lighting, heating, air and life support systems. And I should mention
safety. EAL has an excellent safety
record and their cabin service and food are second to none.
I thought about that as we made landfall
over Lisbon, Portugal and flew beyond Madrid and Valencia, Spain out over the
Mediterranean. Flying over the isle of
Ibiza, with Morocco and Algeria off our right wing, we crossed into Africa,
briefly touching Tunis before crossing more of the Mediterranean just south of
Malta and making landfall again over Benghazi, Libya. Flying above a corner of
Egypt and a piece of the Sahara where camels still provide transportation, we crossed
over Khartoum, Sudan to enter Ethiopian air space. I thought of the rich history
of what to most Westerners are still the ancient, exotic lands of North and
East Africa. At last, we touched down,
light on fuel, at Bole International Airport at Addis Ababa at 7:00 am local
time on the morning of Tuesday, 26th of March. I thought it strange to have taken off from
Dulles on the morning of the 25th to land at my destination on the
morning of the 26th. It is explained by the fact that the Ethiopian
time zone is eight hours ahead of Washington.
After moving through customs like a
zombie, I was met in the receiving area by Fredrick Yaw Davis, Director of the
Pan African Technical Association headquartered in Los Angeles, California and
one of the sponsors of my trip. Although we had communicated a great deal
concerning the trip, this was the first time we had met face to face. Yaw, with a big grin on his bearded face,
welcomed me to Addis Ababa. He would be
my guide and friend throughout the venture.
Having traveled halfway around the world,
Yaw and driver delivered me to my hotel (a nice small European type) where I
showered, shaved, took a nice nap, and dressed in time to be picked-up by them again
at 11:00 am. We drove through a very busy Addis Ababa to the American Embassy
where I made the first talk. There we were met by embassy official Robert Post
and Birhanu Yohannes. In addition I met
Dr. Abiy Ford who was taught to fly by Robinson in Ethiopia. An American citizen, he was raised in Addis
Ababa where his mother ran a girls school prior to the Italian invasion in
1936. He lives there part time having retired from teaching at Howard
University. After the talk at the Embassy,
Dr. Ford took me to the old palace where Emperor Haile Selassie lived when
Robinson first arrived to fly for Ethiopia. Selassie gave the old palace to the
University of Ethiopia after he built a new one following WW II. The Palace, part museum and part university
library, shows wear but it was still quite an experience to walk the halls
where John Robinson first met Emperor Selassie and later delivered dispatches
from the front lines during the Italo-Ethiopian war.
Later that evening, Yaw and driver took
me to an Ethiopian Restaurant where we drank Ethiopian beer and ate Ethiopian
food in the traditional manner—a variety of servings on a large two-foot-round
of very thin bread made from a grain that only grows on the high plateau of the
country. There are no utensils. To eat, one breaks off a little bread and uses
it to scoop up a bite of this or that. I don’t know exactly what I ate, but
tasted it all and found it very good, if a little spicy.
The next morning, Yaw joined me for
breakfast on the little second floor terrace of the hotel and planned out the
day. We toured more of the large city which is a mixture of the ancient and the
modern—high rise buildings on six lane avenues lined with modern enterprises
and offices and narrow dirt streets with open kiosks selling everything from
food to crafts, clothing, books and hardware. There is new construction ongoing
all over the city. The country’s economy
was wrecked by the Red Terror committed by Mengistu Haile Mariam’s communist regime established with the help of
Castro, Che Gevera and Cuban troops 1975-89. It is
estimated that over 500,000 Ethiopians, essentially educated merchants, landlords,
the very students who at first supported the coup, many children and almost
anyone who was literate or expressed opposition or criticism were horribly
tortured and killed by the communists. I visited, among other museums, the Museum
of The Red Terror. One needs a strong stomach to see the displays there. Only when the USSR began to collapse, and its
support for the Mengistu regime ceased, was a
new democratic government established. Today, as the country struggles to rebuild its
economy, one can see free enterprise blooming everywhere from small kiosks to
new construction projects and one of the finest air lines anywhere, Ethiopian Air
Lines (EAL).
The people of Ethiopia are friendly,
polite to the point of shyness, and handsome in facial features unique to
Ethiopia. They are proud of their ancient country. Almost all who have had
schooling speak English.
On the second day, we again had
breakfast on the hotel terrace. The morning was spent preparing for my talk at the
“invitation only” luncheon at the former president Girma Wolde Giorgis’s
home. We arrived at the modern, walled
and quite beautiful home at 11:00 am. This gave me an hour to talk with his
Excellency. He was taught to fly by Col. John Robinson and served in the new
Ethiopian Air Force. I was pleased to hear him compliment the book which he had
obviously read. By 12:30 pm the well-dressed
crowd had arrived and the festivities began.
After several distinguished guests who had known Col. John Robinson had
been introduced and made brief talks on this memorial of the 60th anniversary
of Robinson’s death, I was introduced and spoke, which seemed to be well
received. Afterwards, it was a thrill to
me to meet former pilots that had been taught by and served under John
Robinson. Most were in their nineties. The
guests made it clear that Robinson was a loved and admired man in Ethiopia as the
celebration lingered into the late afternoon.
As I was leaving with Yaw Davis and a driver, I was told that his Excellency,
several years before, had purchased a large tract of land in the countryside
and established a lion preserve. Its first guest were two lions that were freed
from their cages at the Palace. Many more have been added, both adults and cubs
found by the army on maneuvers, or captured as threats to villages. The
President offered, if I was interested, to lend me his driver and SUV to take
me to visit the preserve which can be entered by invitation. I jumped at the chance.
At eight o’clock the next morning, Yaw,
myself and the driver set out for a wonderful excursion out of Addis Ababa and
into the country toward the foothills of a distant mountain range. There were
indeed lions, including the rarer black mane lions, as well as cheetahs and at
least one roving leopard. The open
preserve is fenced with cable reinforced wire reaching what looks to be fifteen
to twenty feet in height.
I should remind the reader that Addis
Ababa is 7,500 feet above sea level (ASL) and the preserve is something above
10,000 feet ASL I had not been bothered at all by the elevation in Addis, but
keeping up with the lion ranger on trails often going uphill, I did struggle a
little until I got my second wind. I am proud to say that I kept up, but was
very glad when we stopped a few minutes here and there to observe animals and
birds.
Getting out of the city to pass along
rural roads and villages was a treat I did not expect on such a short
trip. The donkey and horse are still
dependable transport for people or cargo although there were good roads in the
hinterland.
My last talk was at St. Joseph’s Academy
for boys. I was very much impressed by
the high school students, all in uniform and all bright and interested. Upon questioning they expressed interest in careers
as architects, engineers, computer programmers and aviation. In listening to them I could not help but
think that they represented a renewal of the generation that was lost, murdered
actually, by the Communist Red Terror a generation ago just for being educated.
Before I continue I should mention
something about the thrill of being driven about the city of Addis Ababa. You
take hundreds of cars at any given intersection or roundabout on the six lane
avenues, all trying, regardless of any rules of the road, to get across traffic helter skelter, and what
you have is similar to the start of the Indianapolis 500 from up to six
directions at once. The rule is if you
get an inch of your bumper just in front of the fender of the car whose path
you are crossing, you take the right
of way and move across, stopping a whole lane of traffic while someone else
does the same to you. Ethiopians are perhaps the best aggressive drivers in the
world. I saw only two intersections with traffic lights but no one paid any
attention to them. A ride in a taxi is
the equivalent of … well I can’t think of an equivalent experience, and I have
been in Paris, Tokyo, and Boston traffic. Yet with all the chaos, I never saw
but one minor accident, a lot of scrapped fenders, but no serious collision. I did see a black goat knocked down in an
outlying village, but it got up, bleated at the offensive vehicle and rejoined the
heard trotting along the side of the road.
All too soon it was time to go. My flight
departed Bole International Airport at Addis Ababa at 10:45 PM. We would fly west with night as it moved
across the globe. I was booked in one of the twenty-six first class seats
aboard the Ethiopian Air Boeing 787.
What a marvelous treat! This flight was not a non-stop flight to Dulles
as had been the flight over. We would
make a stop in Rome, Italy. Can you guess why? The reason is that from Dulles,
near sea level, a 787 can take off with a full load of fuel. From Addis Ababa at 7,500 feet ASL it cannot.
We had to refuel in Rome.
Just as I had done coming over, I kept
my seat’s computer screen on the map and flight tracking selection. From Addis Ababa we tracked NNE across
Eritrea and over Sudan parallel to the Red Sea across which lay the whole of
the Middle East. We picked up the Nile Valley and crossing over Egypt we sailed
out over the Mediterranean Sea. In a gentle arc, we passed the Island of Crete,
touched the foot of Greece and picked up the boot of Italy. We landed at
Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport in Rome. Everyone stayed on board the hour
it took to fuel the plane, take on supplies, receive the flight plan clearance
and taxi for takeoff. Refreshments were served including drinks of choice from
a fully stocked bar.
We lifted off from Rome to cross
Switzerland, a corner of Belgium and France
before crossing the Channel to England whereupon we continued north up Scotland
to the vicinity of Glasgow where we soared out over the North Atlantic at
40,000 feet. Hours later, somewhere between the coasts of Newfoundland and Nova
Scotia, we flew out of darkness into dawn. From Canada, in rising sunlight, we continued
down the East Coast past New York and Philadelphia to finally land at Dulles
International at eight-something in the morning, local time.
Before departing from this magic carpet
ride, I must say that I have never had better, more courteous service than with
Ethiopian Air Lines, which incidentally was founded in 1945 by African American
Col. John C. Robinson using a converted surplus C-47 (Douglas DC-3). Lastly, a
word about first class in the 787: all passengers, whether first class or
economy, were provided with pillow, blanket and a packet holding sleep socks,
eye mask, tooth brush and paste. However, the first class seats, with the push
of a button, became full length beds. Heaven! Unlike the trip over in economy class, I slept
like a baby for many of the fifteen hours of travel.
Arrival at Dulles did not end my flying that
day. Scheduled to board a flight at four forty-five that afternoon for Gulfport,
Mississippi, I took a hotel room for several hours to shower, shave and sleep a
blessed four hours before dressing in time to clear security at Dulles and board the flight home. Don’t ask … I don’t know the total lapsed time
between Addis Ababa and Gulfport. But when, after a layover at Charlotte, N.C.,
I arrived at 9:30 pm local time, I realized that if I wasn’t dead, it meant
that I was still in pretty good shape. Dorothy was right, there is no place
like home.
I shall never forget the adventure, the
wonderful hosts who sponsored the trip, the exceptional hospitality I received
and the courtesy of the handsome Ethiopian people whether guests of the former
president or drivers, shop clerks or hotel keepers. They are a wonderful people
whose country has suffered much due to war, famine, and a lengthy but failed
reign of communist terror. Yes, there is third world poverty and you see
beggars on the street, but the Ethiopians are a proud, courageous people in a
country that has been Christian since the year 360 AD. They are building their new
economy in an open atmosphere of free enterprise seen everywhere from small
kiosks along the roadsides to new high rise buildings and international
investment. And they have the best
coffee in the world.
Thomas E. Simmons
The Man Called Brown Condor
Published by Sky Horse Publishing
Represented by
Loiacono Literary Agency
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