I was in the kitchen preparing dinner when Graham called from the office and said he would be coming home early as he had something important to tell us.
Worried that it might be bad news, I asked him to tell it right away but he calmed me down by saying, "Don't worry, it's not bad news," and hung up.
By the time he came back from office, I, along with our 19-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter, were nervously waiting for him in the living room. As soon as he entered the house, gave a big smile, told Sara to get a glass of water, and sat down on the couch. We waited for him to say something but he sat there drinking water. After what seemed like twenty minutes, but were actually two or three, Andrew got irritated and told him to spit out the news.
"My company has won a contract in Ethiopia and have to go there for fifteen days to lay the groundwork for an electricity-generation plant we're planning there," said Graham, raising his brown eyes and saw us staring at him.
"Ethiopia?" I wondered loudly.
"Yes, Ethiopia."
"Ethiopia?" I repeated.
"Yes, Ethiopia. You know the country in Africa," he replied a bit irritated.
We had never been outside our state, let alone the country, so the thought of him going to Africa of all places was too much for me, and sat there taking in the news. Luckily, Sara broke the silence and asked her dad whether we could come too.
"Yes," he replied as a smile spread across his well-chiseled face.
What followed next was a barrage of questions, planning, preparations, and innumerable searches on the internet to find out as much as possible about Ethiopia. Finally, the day arrived and we took a 30-hour flight to the capital Addis Ababa, and then another four-hour flight to where the project would be based.
The guy who came to pick us up took us to a well-maintained colonial-style bungalow and introduced all four members of the house staff to us.
We spent the first two days touring the town, visiting the evening market, drinking loads of tea, and just lazing around in the African sun. On the third day, Graham had to inspect the project, so all of us got into jeeps and accompanied by a driver and two local engineers took off for the site about two hundred miles from town. But since there wasn't much to see apart from the empty land, we got bored and came back early.
All of us were itching to see big cats, wild elephants, and other animals, so decided to go on a short safari, and since by now we were somewhat familiar with the place we decided to go on our own without the driver.
As it was just a day trip, we took only a picnic basket and satellite phone, which Graham always carried with him to keep in touch with the head office back home. We were out in the Ethiopian jungle in our jeep searching for animals when it started to drizzle which didn't worry us initially but within minutes the afternoon sky turned dark and rain started to fall thick and fast.
We knew it was useless to go ahead, so Graham turned his jeep around and started heading back to town but the rain made the barely passable road completely impassable and after struggling for more than ten minutes we decided to stay in the vehicle until the weather had improved.
But there was no let-up in the rain, so had no option but to spend the night in our vehicle, with Andrew sleeping in the back of the jeep, Sara in the back seat, and Graham and I in front. The continuous rain, darkness, and weird voices coming from trees meant that none of us was able to get even a minute of sleep and when the day broke with no let-up in the rain we knew we had to do something.
Graham made a call to local engineers and asked them to send a vehicle to pick us up, but rain and mud had made the road completely useless, so they offered to send a helicopter but since it was in the capital it wouldn't be able to reach us before late afternoon. Not wanting to wait for another five or six hours we decided to walk to the nearest village and get some help there.
After walking for more than an hour in the jungle, we finally saw some huts and although drenched from head to toe we hurried down to the cluster and knocked on the bamboo door of the first.
A man, who must have been in his late thirties but looked forty, opened the door and stood there, looking at us drenched in water. I spoke first but when he didn't react, I realized my mistake and this time instead of speaking in English gestured to him that we wanted to take shelter in his house, which thankfully he understood and invited us in.
I had never seen an actual hut from the inside, so was surprised to discover that there was just one room with an attached kitchen and nothing else. Although the room was decorated in yellow and red it had no furniture or anything else apart from some utensils to cook food and a few clothes hanging on a line. In the corner, a woman was sitting.
Having seen bare-chested men back home and in Africa, I wasn't too surprised when the man opened the door wearing just a loincloth but when I saw the woman sitting there topless with just a loincloth around her waist, have to admit I was surprised.
But the thought of our own state quickly replaced the shock of looking at a bare-chested woman and we started explaining to them that we had lost our way and wanted a place to stay until the rain stopped but more importantly we needed dry clothes and food.
With four of us talking in sign language all at the same time I'm not sure how much they understood but they did put on a fire in a mud stove and began cooking something. While they were busy with that, we looked around for some clothes to change but apart from a few loincloths there was nothing else, so we stood there shivering and dripping water on their floor.