Journal Preface

Preface:  In 1975, Bryan and I decided to go to Ethiopia.  We sold or put in storage everything we owned and bought a one-way ticket to Zurich. After one expensive night there in a not so impressive hotel, we took the train to Split, on the Adriatic in the north of then Yugoslovia. There we boarded a mailboat for Dubrovnic, getting off at towns along the coast for a few days at each stop and reboarding.  We continued to Greece and from there, over a period of a month or so, flew through Tel Aviv to Nairobi.  After a few weeks of traveling in Kenya, including our favorite town, Lamu, we went overland to Ethiopia by bus and truck bed.  We eventually arrived in Addis Ababa where we lived in the Itege Menin Hotel for 6 months. Bryan was offered a job with the International Livestock Center for Africa and later I took a job as librarian at Alemaya College in Harar Province.  This kept us busy for two years until his contract ran out and ILCA handed us a return ticket to the US.  We decided to cash in the ticket and return heading east, completing the journey we started in Los Angeles.

And thus begins the story of this journal from Feb to May 1978.  Our daughter Melissa suggested that I revisit the following adventure for my blog so I am transcribing it, complete with sketches and pictures I clipped from brochures and pasted in during the trip. Bryan has managed to scan and mostly rescue  slides from our film camera.  I am surprised at how few photos we took compared to my profligate photo behavior now.

I should note that the trip was through many areas that, in the late '70s, didn't have tourist facilities. My notes about costs and hotel names were meant for sharing with our fellow travelers on the road.  We frequently relied on the kindness of strangers and often missed what we might have known about had there been a Lonely Planet or Rough Guide for the area.  Still, I wouldn't have changed the circumstances of the trip.  I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

The best way to follow our journey is to start with the link on the right in July 2010 titled Feb. 7, 1978 - Djbouti and read from that post on up.