Jet Lag

On Ethiopia and jet lag

Still trying to get a grasp on the essence of Ethiopia – the sense that things will get better, the optimism. Not everyone wants to move to Canada! Amongst Ethiopians is an almost palpable sense that “things are getting better”.  My young friend, Zacharias, said that he had no desire to move somewhere else because he thought that he would find some of the same problems elsewhere. “I have a good regular job and things in Ethiopia keep improving, why leave?”

Milta, Abebech’s 15 year old daughter, said that she wanted to become an astronomer – her mother didn’t think that she’d get a job, but she said that her mother doesn’t know about the future.  Clearly she thinks that it will be improving. 

This optimism is difficult to capture, amongst the beggars along the streets, the skinny women with their equally skinny babies, the crippled and deformed, the elderly with canes – there are not enough birr to go around.

Then there is Saturday night in the hotel lobby – the sex-trade workers and the drunken white men, the noise at the bar and the quiet disapproval of the local staff.

At 10:30 pm on March 8^th, I leave for the airport in Addis Ababa.

At 6:30 pm on March 9^th, I arrive in the Regina Airport (and drive two more hours).

Jet lag – what is it? My brain was a mass of spaghetti – the connections were there but somewhat faulty. When we visited Elizabeth, Erin and Shayna, I was sometimes not able to connect my thoughts to my tongue – like intoxication but with a spooky clarity in my brain that is not present in drunkenness.

For the next two days, I alternated between wakefulness, exercises, brainless speediness with pingponging thoughts, overall buzziness in the body and sleep. The “buzziness” could not be relieved by bathing but would temporarily disappear after sleep. I could unpack my suitcase but not sort the papers; I could collect the bills but not complete the expense sheet. I couldn’t seem to sort out the day of the week.

The distracting unpleasant physical sensation seemed to have disappeared by Wednesday and that morning, my digestive tract seemed to have adjusted to the time zones – this meant that I was really home!

It actually did take a week before my mornings and sleep times returned to normal. My body arrived home on the evening of March 9^th – my diurnal rhythm got here on March 17^th.