A legless man on a wooden scooter shoved himself into the road and thumped on the sliding door with his tar-stained hand. Gaetoch, gaetoch,” they murmured, using the Amharic term for lord. Older, broken people approached too, holding out open palms. Our driver braked for a truck being unloaded, and children pressed their faces against the glass, shouting, Ferengi, ferengi, hey you, my friend, give me money.” They left mucous streaks on the windows and patches of breath that faded as we drove on. We had stepped onto a Pan Am jet in one world and stepped off in another, as if transported clear across the galaxy.

Gone were the maple trees and the old-fashioned street lamps, lit up like glowing ice cream cones. Gone were the tire-thrumming brick streets of Hiawatha, Kansas, where we were given candies and back-scratches from Grandmother. Gone was the quiet stucco house in Saint Joseph, Missouri, where we had lived while Dad began his medical practice at the state hospital. Donkeys and oxen bumped into the van, whipped along by barefoot men in ballooning shorts.Īfter sixteen hours in an airplane, we found that our whole world had disappeared. A torrent of brown-skinned aliens streamed by on both sides, treating the road like a giant sidewalk, their white shawls and bright head wraps bobbing as they weaved around each other. He was six and I was only three, but we were both old enough to sense that life might never be the same. As we left the Addis Ababa airport and started across the city, my brother Johnathan and I stared out the windows of the Volkswagen van like dazed astronauts.

Chameleon Days by Tim Bascom