The hands on my watch are deceiving me. They still hold as their infallible guide the hours, minutes, and days of the West; and surely there has been some mistake here, according to these little glow in the dark figures.
We were due to arrive at 12pm. It is now 3pm, and we are at least 2 hours from our destination, Addis Ababa.
Glancing to my left, the same stoic figure, dark complexion, red Nike hat, who has been sitting at my side since the dark, drizzly early morning hours bound us to our shared fate. I glance behind, unperturbed, smiling even, the masses crammed in the back of the vanlike refugees in the hull of a boat, still there, swaying with the curves of the freshly paved asphalt.
Adjusting, too slowly it now seems, back into the pseudo-reality of time, deadlines, appointments, and plans in the realm of the developing world. How easy to adjust the other way! Stepping off the plane back in New York City, my gait adjusts in the gate; slowing is a far more daunting task.
I curl my toes, utilizing the full wiggle-room between the floorboards, my bag, and the boy's feet which are wedged in next to mine, in even more precarious a limbo.
The countryside continues to roll past; verdant fields, round, peaked huts clustered, the odd dusty town, clapboard buildings; this is Africa.
"By the end of the 1980's, not a single African head of state in three decades had allowed himself to be voted out of office. Of some 150 heads of state who had trodden the African stage, only six had voluntarily relinquished power."
"In 29 countries, over the course of 150 elections held between 1960 and 1989, opposition parties were not allowed to win a single seat."
-Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa: A History of 50 Years of Independence
