Lions, Peacocks & Lemon Trees – Prologue

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 2008

It’s late at night and I’m somewhere in Ethiopia—one of the world’s most ancient countries—in the back of a beat up, decades-old taxi, clutching a seat held together more by strips of old electrical tape than upholstery, nervously pondering the situation I’ve gotten myself into. I have no idea what the two men jabbering away in Amharic in the front seats are saying to one another, nor am I sure where they are taking me. They don’t seem to know, either.          

It’s too dark to take photographs and I’m not sure my hands are steady enough to even try. But images have already seared themselves into my mind. Only moments ago, we very nearly ran over a threadbare leper who suddenly materialized from the darkness into the taxi’s dim headlights, his emaciated body parts leaning against a crutch made of branches, a deformed, skeletal hand reaching toward us, hollow eyes pleading silently. The driver swerved just in time to miss him, no pause in his chatter.

As we make our way out into the night in a country roughly the size of France and Spain combined, where I speak not even one of the more than eighty indigenous languages, panic begins to dissipate the wine-induced fog in my head—a hangover from too many glasses of wine on the seventeen-hour flight to get here from my home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. And I’m starting to come to terms with the possibility I may have made some errors in judgment along the way.

I’m angry with myself. I had this adventure so well planned and thought out, yet here I am—lost, scared and alone but for the two strangers up front. This is not at all what I had envisioned. I’m an experienced photojournalist and documentary film consultant. I’ve been to Africa before.

How the hell did I so quickly lose control of my own narrative?

About Kristin Fellows

Kristin Fellows is an award-winning travel writer, a well-seasoned documentary film consultant, owner of Octopus & Garden Press, and author of A Storyboard Life: From $20 to Two Hundred Documentary Film Adventures—The Journey of a Creative Person (February 2026)

More about Kristin @ kristinfellowswriter.com