From Not so Good Start into Aikido Heaven

My flights from Dar Es Salaam via Nairobi to Addis Ababa were comfortable and uneventful. But of course, since I’m having my Big Adventure, the uneventfulness stopped there… After I had cleared all the visa and passport formalities at the airport the luggage from my plane had already arrived to the baggage line. All the other passengers had already collected their items and left, but my suitcase was nowhere to be seen. I started asking and looking for it everywhere and while I was doing it horror gradually grew inside me… There were hundreds if not thousands of deserted looking bundles at the airport, nobody seemed to know anything about them and the airport staff just urged me to look through them. That was really a mission impossible and after a while I gave up and started to line for the baggage claim. After waiting in line for what seemed several hours the officer opened a file for my case and gave me very little hope of getting my luggage back soon or getting any kind of compensation from the air line either. So I left the airport with my preordered taxi driver with very bad premonitions that that was the last that I ever saw of my suitcase… Of course, one can always buy new clothes and new geiko gis, but what made me especially worried was the fact that all my chargers (for my laptop, camera, my Tanzanian and Finnish cell phones etc.) were in the suitcase and if they disappeared so would do my contacts to the outside world since I doubted I would find any matching equipment from here…

The taxi took me to the outskirts of Addis where the country buses leave. This time it was not a real bus but a mini van which is taking passengers in as long as there is space (which means about 50 people in one mini van) and then takes off. This bus ride took about 5 hours but felt even longer than my previous bus ride in Tanzania since I had to sit practically with my knees in my mouth and was fretting over my forever lost suitcase… And since my Tanzanian phone number is prepaid it didn’t work in Ethiopia and I couldn’t call any of my local contacts. But Ethiopians are wonderful people; all along the way my taxidriver in Addis, my local contacts in Awassa and the driver of the bus kept in contact with each other making sure I would be delivered safely at the Awassa bus station and be picked up from there at the right hour.

And so I was. The evening dusk was already settling in when we took a bajaji to the place of my accomodation (a private home), the city looked even more exotic than Mtwara with it’s broad boulevards framed with palm trees, the life buzzing around with cars, bajajis, two wheeled carriages pulled by donkeys, people zigzagging between the vehicles seemingly not paying any attention to them, beggars etc. etc., everybody talking in this strange language called amharic that sounds quite arabic… The air was full of something I thought was smog (the average age of the cars here seems to be about 50 years so they DO pollute!) but later on realized it’s just dust from all the side roads that are not covered with asphalt.

It was already pitch black when we got to the house. We entered through high iron gate and were greeted by a very furious barking and murmuring in the darkness. I was so exhausted and overwhelmed from everything that I really got scared, jumped away from the sound and hit my knee painfully into something hard. So when I entered the house and heard that to top this all the owner of the house was out of town and wouldn’t be coming back for the night I was ready to burst into tears… But my wonderful escort Demelash from the Awassa Youth Campus, where I would spend the next ten days teaching Aikido, told me he would spend the night in the house as well, so exhausted as I was I just fell on the bed in the same (my only ones outside the suitcase) clothes I had been wearing since Dar es Salaam and was out of this world immediately.

The next morning Demelash woke me up to go to the dojo for some practice. So off I went still in the same clothes without a wash or any knowledge of my luggage, borrowed a geiko-gi from Demelash and WHOOOOOOOOOOOY it was time for some good old on tatami! Suddenly all my worries disappeared and I was living only in that moment, sensing very familiar soft but firm grabs on my wrists, feeling the contact between two haras, getting thrown around in a focused, intense way – after two months and 11 days of dry season I had landed in Aikido heaven!

Demelash and his brother Tariku are two totally talented young aikidokas educated by Awassa Youth Campus. The Campus includes schools for cirkus, theater, music, dance, art and aikido. The Aikido Dojo was founded by Aiki Extensions from US about ten years ago and today, it is these two brothers who are running the dojo. What really impressed me right in the beginning were the children. Even though there are so many of them and the space is quite scarce, the children are disciplined and orderly; they line up in the beginning and ending in an organized way, listen to the commands and act accordingly. During the practice they observe the teacher carefully, work in a serious, focused manner and afterwards are full of questions that show their curiosity towards the subject and their willingness to learn. This curiosity applies to the adults too, they ask me everything between the heaven and the tatami (they are also very well informed about different approaches by their teachers and by internet of course) and as a Finnish person this is something that I have to get used to since though it at the same time delights me it also reveals my inner insecurities in the form of sometimes feeling challenged… But all in all this is a perfect example for me on how to build up Aikido in Africa.

So after three days full of wonderful Aikido, recovering my forever lost suitcase on the third day, having my very first hot shower in two and half months spent in Africa and making acquaintance with Waffer, the pitch black dog in the pitch black night who is not only a very good watch dog but also the most playful companion who is craving for caresses all the time, I feel totally at home and have already postponed my return flight until three weeks from now 🙂