This trip to Ethiopia started with an unexpected roadblock. Our group planned to travel from Addis Ababa to Arba Minch with one interpreter and a driver. We found out last minute that the interpreter had a family emergency and would not be able to make the trip with us. A time and budget crunch had us leaving the city with no backup interpreter, and some justified concern that communication would be an issue going forward.
The ten hour drive, from the major city of Addis Ababa to the small village of Areka, became a crash course in communication with body language and cues. I leaned on an Ethiopia travel guide book to point out photos and try to trace our route on the map. Needing to stop for bathroom breaks became a comical journey, and asking how much longer the drive would be was out of the question. I thought this hiccup was going to be detrimental to the work I hopped to do and the stories I wanted to tell. I couldn't have been more wrong.
When basic communication was taken away I had to find ways to adapt. It forced me to look at every situation and analyze it for myself, not just be told by someone what is going on. I felt like a green photographer again, throwing myself into unfamiliar situations, looking at everything around me for details to add understanding. I think it opened up more honest interactions with the people I encountered, if I had to relay on an interpreter to communicate it would have felt like a wall between me the person I met, too professional maybe. Having to figure out a way to communicate put us all at the base level of human interactions, things I would have just had the interpreter explain to me transformed into hands-on lessons.
I learned the steps to make injera, had my hands in the flour and felt the heat of the wood burning fire. Injera is a fundamental part of any Ethiopian meal, as it is made for everyone to share from one plate. On this trip it almost became a tool to measure how comfortable we all became with each other, from simply sharing a plate on the first day together, to feeding each other by hand on the last. I squeezed through tight hallways to catch moments of worship in small stone homes, and shot portraits by candle light in rolling power outages. I stood in the middle of the largest market in Sodo while our group shopped for colorful vegetables. I was waiting for someone in my group to buy what they needed from a produce stand and this group of boys noticed my camera. They all started doing strongman poses to get my attention, the moment turned into an impromptu buddy portrait session.
Would any of this had felt the same if I had someone tied to my hip? Would I have been approached and welcomed and taught lessons? I’ll never know, but I do know that what I thought would be a detriment to the trip ended up being the greatest asset.