DISPATCH
DESALGN’S REVENGE When Jill Craig and a friend embark on planning a trip to Ethiopia, they quickly realise that cheap isn’t always best. PHOTOGRAPHS: JILL CRAIG
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It hadn’t started like this. No, no, no. Several years ago when I first became enamoured with the idea of visiting Ethiopia, I pictured myself skipping through the mountains with the long-haired gelada monkeys (the Simiens), staring in awe at the Debre Birhan Selassie Church with those distinctive angel faces on the ceiling (Gondar), darting around the famous rock-hewn churches (Lalibela), and eating my body weight in injera (everywhere), I had no clue I would find myself designing ruses to avoid a tour guide and then vomiting my way through one of the hottest places on earth. Indeed, a brilliant way to begin a travel dispatch. And a warning: if you have a delicate stomach and/or sensibilities, you should probably stop reading now. My friend Kati and I had carefully debated which places to visit on our 10-day trip and quickly realised some spots would need to wait until next time; Axum and the rock churches of Tigray, for example, didn’t make the cut. Because neither of us speaks Amharic, we
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decided to hire a tour operator. But, things fall apart. In this case, our travel plans. Kati and I received several quotes, deliberated for a few days, and chose the cheapest guide. Big mistake. After all, you wouldn’t pick the cheapest eye surgeon or the clearance-price sushi. WRONG CITY, WRONG DAY And thus we met Desalgn, a man more than accommodating when discussing the finer points of a Western Union transfer, but less reliable with details like flight times, and providing a trip itinerary. One week after I sent him $511, the cost of our domestic flights, we still hadn’t heard from him. In the back of my mind, I remembered the Western Union employee asking if I actually knew this guy, and me laughing. Of course he was trustworthy, I said. Finally, Desalgn emerged, emailing us a photo of a crumpled piece of paper with a few numbers scrawled on it. Kati, the wiser of the two of us, immediately asked where our tickets were. Desalgn responded that we should go to
the Ethiopian Airlines office in Nairobi. “They’ll know what to do.” It turned out that Desalgn booked two of our four flights to the wrong cities and at the wrong times. I was informed that only he would be able to change those tickets; otherwise, Kati and I would need to pay another $300. I enlisted the help of Dawit, an Ethiopian colleague, to call Desalgn and explain the situation in Amharic. As he calmly read the printed itinerary from Ethiopian Airlines, I paced behind him like a caged circus animal, jabbing a forefinger into the paper when I heard words in English. “No, Dawit! You tell him we specifically said we wanted to visit Lalibela on Wednesday, not Thursday! Wednesday!” Desalgn eventually fixed the ticket situation, but then refused to answer our emails. He wouldn’t tell us where we were staying, what the programme was. Within the span of our month-long relationship, Desalgn had become a bitter soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend; refusing to communicate, but assuming we’d stick around anyway. So Kati and I had to take drastic
