Meet Abeba: A Dallas Layover Encounter with an Angell

Makayne and I have been in Cape Town a few days now but now, as I sit in this backpackers lounge that is kindly hosting us for free (we have yet to pay for accomadations since we landed), listening to Kesa the receptionist laugh and someone play guitar in the back, while Makayne listens to a woman from Missouri who has been travelling Africa since 2004 by foot tell her story... this is the first chance I have had to sit and write so I need to start from the begining. As I had predicted in my earlier blog, I didn't know what our 3.5 months of travel would entail exactly but I did know it would be filled with encounters with amazing people. Before we even landed in Africa, we already ran into one of the most inspiring and amazing people I can say I have met. Her name is Abeba and she met us walking from our airplane in Dallas to our connecting flight in Dubai.

Set aside any negative opinions you may hold about immigration now because when you are sitting face to face at a Ben and Jerrys eating one chicken salad with three forks because this beautiful woman you have known for five minutes decides to buy you lunch, you are staring at humanity in its kindest form in the face and there is no room for anything but love.

We ask Abeba, are you from Dubai? No, but she lived there. Oh, "we are going to Kenya eventually"...Abeba lived there too, as well as Uganda, and she isn't stopping in Dubai but lived there, she is on her way to her marraige, she is currently a student and worker in St. Paul, MN but on her way to thousands of miles to her wedding, which can't take place in her home country of Eritrea because of war, so she will be wed in Sudan. How did she end up in America, we don't ask, but she tells. In between tears and gasps, Makayne and I can't say anything, we only listen.

Abeba's journey to the USA wasn't an easy or quick one, it took her 6 months, 6 months of walking, going by train, going by boat, being imprisoned, being cold, lost, and starving. Nearly dying. 6 months...nevermind the cost she says, it was for something bigger. Did she tell her mom? No, only when she safely walked across Mexico and swam through a river to Texas, only after she lost her closest friend, who drowned, so close to the border, in the river. Only after she made it through Dubai, Iran, Columbia, Honduras, and Mexico to name only a few. I ask if she is disapointed in the US, is it everything she had imagined? She responds simply, "I am lucky, I have an education, I have a job" I say, well it must be hard still. She responds, "It is not hard because I am alive, I am thankful"

Wow, I want to reach out and give this woman a hug, I want to tell her that I am sorry that my country makes it so hard for her and imprisoned her and sent her back and made her almost die and didn't give her a green card until after one year. But she is happy and she is lucky and if she is, then I must remember to always be.

Instead of doing anything, she makes us finish the salad she buys, that we share in typical African fashion, and she then invites us into her home in St. Paul, gives us her address, tells us she will cook us a traditional dinner and show us her wedding pictures.

We board the plane feeling better after knowing her and regardless of what you think, I know that our country is a better place for having her, and so is her family, because now their daughter has a future.