1964

Left our apartment at 12:30 A.M. and drove the few blocks to the Ethiopian Airlines office to unload our luggage, then Burt took the car back to our garage.

As always in Cairo, the streets were crowded and busy even so late at night. Three men passengers came in first. They spoke a language which may have been Danish. They had apparently come, however, from the Free Port of Denmark since their packages were so marked.

A little later two women came in whom I judged to be Americans. In talking to them later, we learned it was a Miss Rose and her mother from Canada. She was a teacher in Arusha (Tanzania), and had asked her mother to join her in Athens when she was on leave.

Our bus took us out to the airport. There seemed to be a good crowd, and when we got on the plane, Burt and I had each to sit between two other people.

I was told by my seat companion that this was a 720 plane, and that although it carried as many passengers as the 707 plane, it was shorter and more compact. He also told me that Ethiopian Air Lines owns just two of these planes, and they are actually the property of Haile Selassie himself. When he wants to make a trip, as he has done twice now to the U.S. recently, he just takes one of these planes, and those flights are cancelled.

My seat companion was an army man who had first come to Asmara, Eritrea, in 1947. He had been there now on a two year duty, and had just been home for a 38 day leave and for extra training. He apparently wasn't married since he said he had a girl friend in Addis Ababa - an Ethiopian, who he said, could write beautiful letters in English.

The hostesses were either Ethiopian or north European. The Ethiopian girls were quite dark, but very fine featured like Haile. Selassie. There were also Ethiopian soldiers on board - had names and rank pinned on, and they, too, were very fine boned and featured, and spoke English well. Then there were two very blond hostesses, and they may have been German since this line originates and ends in Frankfurt...or Burt said, they might be Swedes since Sweden helped set up the line. Asmara is 9000 feet high and looked very barren and desolate. Just as we got over the airport, there was a cloud layer, and the pilot revved up the plane and flew on. My

companion said that the plane doesn't usually make it down more than three times a week, but that if the flight could be delayed an hour, there wouldn't be much trouble. He had been flying for two days and was anxious to get off, but now he had to go on to Addis Ababa, and fly back, which was another hour's flight away. Addis Ababa is at an elevation of 8300, and it also looks very barren. We were here for almost two hours, but time went quickly. Here it was that we started to talk to the Roses'. She has been teaching English in a college in Moshi (Tanzania), but now teaches in a secondary school in Arusha. She has students from 35 different tribes. They all learn their own native language for a few years, then they also have to learn Swahili for a while, and then English. I think she said, that after the third grade they study their subjects in English. She said she was the only Canadian in this area, but there were a goodly number of American teachers. She likes the work and life in Tanzania.

We left Addis Ababa at 9:35 Cairo time, although AA is an hour later. It was shortly after 11:00 when we landed in Nairobi. At first, after leaving Addis, there were huts, not too unlike Navaho homes with some signs of cultivated land. However, within a short time, there was absolutely no sign of any habitation or animals, no smoke, no signs of movement of any kind. Farther south there seemed to be trails or roads, but they might have been animal paths though from that elevation nothing could be seen moving.

We took the bus in to town for 5 shillings -70 cents- and got to the New Stanley Hotel where we took a cab to our hotel at the edge of town.

We were taken down town again by the manager whose family owns the hotel, and let us off at the Cooper Motor Car Company where we had made arrangements to buy a car. We finally settled on one for 455 E.A.L.s (East African Pounds). It is green and has some 24,000 miles. Of course, we were dead tired from having been up all night, but it took us three hours before we could drive out.

Dinner at the hotel was at 8:00 and was a special Friday night event in the ballroom. An African band came in at 9:00 to play for dancing, and we enjoyed the acrobatics of some of the other diners. Much of the music was typically American like St. Louis Blues.

The guests seemed to be all East African residents. Our hotel owner, as well as some of the guests were East Indian. Others looked more Dutch than English, and some of them talked a language I didn't recognize. There was also at least one Japanese, and one native African. An attractive couple was eating with two young men, who Burt said, were "Sikhs". They were dark, had long curly hair which was tied up in a very white turban and

had beards. One sees quite a few of them on the streets. We were so terribly tired, so left for our room about 10:00.