I live near the Lemi Kura kifle ketema, one of the eleven subcities that make up Addis Ababa. Most mornings you see people walking away from the office, faces tight, like they just lost an argument with someone who wasn’t even listening. Some rush out to the copy bet to get copies of their IDs, contracts, receipts, whatever the office is asking for. Some rush in with a pile of documents in their right hand. The kifle ketema still runs on paper, even as they try to digitize. I walk past it every morning, seven days a week, partly because I like short walks on my breaks and partly because I knew it would help me prepare for this long walk I’d been planning. Walk the same road enough and you start putting people into boxes whether you mean to or not. I usually sort them into four.

There’s the loud guy, always moving a crowd of three or four behind him. Hired or a family member everyone thinks is best fit for the job. He’s socially brave. On every step of the process he announces what he’s about to do next, loud enough for the whole room to hear. He doesn’t have to understand the documents he’s holding. He just has to be loud enough and vulnerable enough for people to correct him. He repeats what he’s about to do to the teller, and this clears out any misunderstanding, because at these offices a single misstep can bite you two or three steps later. Loud guy also knows how to make people laugh, which gets him further than any of the other groups ever will.

Then there’s the elderly. Early seventies, canes, sometimes wheelchairs. Property disputes or yearly rent tax, doesn’t matter the size. Without someone beside them it’s going to take a long time. They get pointed to a window, then told they need a letter from an office three kilometers away. They go, come back, and now there’s a missing document from home. Days pass, sometimes weeks, just for a teller to say come back tomorrow. But the elderly are patient. When told to come back tomorrow, they come back tomorrow. Every single time. I’ve seen the same face at the kifle ketema for weeks. Like Dr. Strange standing in front of Dormammu, “I’ve come to bargain,” over and over until the universe gives in. That’s their edge. Patience.

Then there’s the woman, alone. Widow or single mother, sometimes with a kid, doing everything herself. These women get things done faster than anyone. They show up with every document collected and every form filled. They probably woke up before everyone else, got here early, and still have somewhere to be after. They use their time like it’s the last of it.

And then there’s everyone else, which is the lazy way of categorizing it but it’s where I fit. People who don’t find themselves in these situations often, so when they do it feels like this big overwhelming thing that shouldn’t take this long but somehow does.

The night before, I charged my phone and deliberately kept my AirPods dead. I still wanted to bring them though, just to keep my ears warm from the cold wind. But I know myself. If they had battery I’d open music within five minutes. The plan: phone at 100%, AirPods at zero. Simple enough. I woke up to find there’d been no electricity all night. My phone was at 55%. And I’ve ruined the battery from months of using it as my 5G work hotspot, so 55% gives me maybe two hours. So that was my situation. Two hours of battery, dead headphones, a couple sips of water, an empty stomach, and already stressing about my phone dying. Battery anxiety, I think they call it.

I should’ve eaten. But I knew that if I eat I get tired, and if I get tired I’d talk myself out of going.

The first thing I did was look for coffee. Caffeine to close the appetite, energy to start strong. A few meters in I found Gofere Coffee, just opening. I’d passed this place on my daily walks for months and never gone in. Always wanted to. The door was open so I walked in. First customer of the day. The place was bigger than most coffee shops, maybe eighty square meters, with a tint green theme on the walls that caught the morning sun coming through the front windows. I sat by the window and ordered. The barista told me the machine needed thirty minutes to warm up. Thirty minutes. So I waited, staring at my battery percentage, looking out at the empty street. Every minute I sat there was another percent gone. And I was still close enough to turn back, which is a dangerous thought to have that early. I told the barista I couldn’t wait, got up, and walked out. Relief. Moving felt better than sitting.

A few steps in, I started texting friends, snapping pictures, making calls. I had energy. Everything felt exciting. I was finally doing what I’d planned for months.

Just before Goro I saw a church. Brutalist, heavy concrete, sharp edges. I still don’t know what church it is. Part of the reason I like looking at church designs is because of what we grew up around.

Battery at 30%. The calls and snaps did their work. I stopped everything and just walked.

My only priority now was charging. No cable, no brick. But I remembered the corridor streetlights, the new ones with built-in wireless charging pads. I just needed to find one. Walked to the first streetlight on the new Goro road and checked it closely. The side, the top. Nothing. This version didn’t have charging ports. I kept looking at every one I passed after that, hoping one would be different. None of them were.

This new road is pretty, but it’s punishing on foot. Long, straight, and empty. Greenery on the right, the airport’s fuel station and runway on the left. Nothing else. Just asphalt and sky. Traffic police hiding behind concrete with their speedometers to catch speeding cars, though I never saw them catch anyone. One guy walking ahead of me. That was it.

Something about a long straight road with no end in sight makes the sun feel hotter and your legs heavier. You can see everything ahead of you and none of it is interesting. This was the part where I would’ve played music. I kept reaching for my phone out of habit and then pulling my hand back because I knew it would kill my battery. Fidgety. Restless. My fried TikTok brain could not handle how boring it was. But at some point, I don’t know when exactly, I just accepted it. And then it was fine. Almost like therapy. I think I needed the silence more than I needed entertainment. It hit me that scrolling through Reels is kind of the same thing as walking through a vibrant street. Every step is a new video you can skip by walking past it. Except nobody scrolls back up. You always need a new route, a new feed.

When I reached the VIP entrance of Ethiopian Airlines, the man who’d been walking ahead of me for thirty minutes turned around. Hadn’t thought much about him before that. Just assumed he was another pedestrian, though I did wonder why he was walking this whole route rather than taking a taxi. Well dressed, jacket and khaki pants, mid-thirties. He spoke fast, almost like he wanted to get the words out before he could stop himself. He asked me for ten birr. I could tell he’d never wanted to ask. My immediate response was “Egziabeher yestilegn,” ,” and I didn’t even have cash. I should’ve asked for his Telebirr. But the moment I answered, his face changed. Embarrassed. He apologized, turned around, and walked back the way we’d both come. I turned around a couple of times to see how far he’d go. He kept walking, all the way back down the road we’d shared for the last half hour. I thought about him a few more times during the walk. Mostly because I should’ve sent him some money.

Almost reaching Bole. A friend heading home to Bole Michael spotted me from his car and snapped a picture of me as he passed. Battery at 2%.

At Bole Dildey, finally, a streetlight with a wireless charger. Three hours in and I pressed my phone against the pad. Already felt better. Behind me was a building with a supermarket on the ground floor, closed because it was Sunday. Which is odd when you think about it. I watched people walk up to the door, read the hours, turn back. Same confused look every time. The road wasn’t empty but it wasn’t busy either. A few meters away there was a taxi station packed with people waiting for rides to Gerji, but where I was standing was a sweet spot where you could catch the taxi early before it reached the station. Normally that wouldn’t be allowed, but it was Sunday and the traffic officer nearby didn’t seem to care. Taxis were dropping off and picking up right where I stood. I leaned against the pole, keeping close to my phone, shifting positions every few minutes. Checking the battery like a countdown. I didn’t see many people using these charging stations so I tried not to draw attention to myself. For about an hour I just stood there blending in with the people waiting for taxis, watching my battery climb. At 55% I did the math. Enough to last the rest of the walk if I was careful. Good enough. I peeled my phone off the pad and started walking.

Two routes to my destination: the Skylight-Cargo road or the Bole-Rwanda road. I didn’t think about it. I’d had enough of long straight emptiness. I took Bole-Rwanda, the longer way, to reward myself with something to see.

This road is the downtown of our city. Wide sidewalks, nice cafés, the streets foreigners walk on. At night it fills with people strolling the lit corridors. In the midday sun it was nearly empty. A few tourists and expats walking around and exploring. And four old dogs, basking in the sun on the sidewalk. The dogs were left behind when the slums and warehouses got demolished for the corridor project. When people were moved to the outskirts, they didn’t take the dogs with them. So now they just live here.

Bole streets smell like perfume. Maybe it’s the people. I remember this kind of smell from walking in Dubai three years ago. The government is trying to make Addis look like that. “Come to Addis” instead of “Come to Dubai.” Most of us got to see Dubai because of easier visa access, so that’s our reference for a “good-looking” city. There’s a big influence there. I don’t know if it’s the right model. But walking these streets, passing coffee shops and nice cars and people who looked like they had nowhere urgent to be, the kilometers passed quickly. After hours of dust and empty roads, just having things to look at felt like a reward.

This was the route I walked home from university a few years ago. Addis Ababa University to Bole Michael, two or three friends at a time, almost every day. We were always talking and joking so the walks went by fast. Funny how the same road feels completely different when you’re alone and your feet are falling apart. I checked if the shops I remembered still existed. The eyeglass frame shops, the Yemeni restaurants, the juice bars. All still there. Not much had changed, which I think I was glad about. Someone honked and waved from a car. Still don’t know who that was.

Bole Rwanda is different from Bole. Not as clean, not as perfumed. But I still like my old neighborhood. Bole Michael is maybe the one place in Addis where Syrian sweet shops sit next to Chinese restaurants, Somali hotels, Muslim Gurage kitfo bets, and Christian sega bets, all in the same block. I walked past all of them. Everyone mixed together in a small, noisy spot.

My friend who’d spotted me on the airport road was already home. I needed water. I walked to his house but promised myself not to go inside. If I sit down, I’m done. Not because my body couldn’t handle it, I still felt like I had energy at this point. But if I sit and talk for a while, getting back up becomes harder. It’s more psychological than physical. The comfort of sitting is what kills the walk, not the exhaustion.

My friend gave me an extra bottle of water and I was off.

The pain started here. Every step hurt, especially downhill. Friction blisters on both feet. I started pausing mid-stride, letting the blood settle. My feet were swelling inside my shoes.

If you’ve noticed, in rural areas, the way farmers walk looks odd to city people. They bend at the knee, take short strides, legs wider apart, swinging side to side, never fully extending. I used to wonder about it. Maybe even judge it a little, I’m not sure. But I didn’t decide to walk like that. My body just shifted into it on its own. Short, wide, swinging. My hips were screaming and when I walked like that it actually felt better. A few people on the street started noticing. You understand a body differently after you’ve broken it in a little.

A video I found on YouTube on farmer walk. [No audio]

Getting closer to Yosef now, doing my farmer’s walk. Snapped one last picture to my friends. After this I didn’t even have the energy to take my phone out. Probably for the better. No cafés from here on. No charging stations either.

This road is the worst stretch of the walk. Bad to drive, worse to walk. Streetlights that don’t work at night. Potholes deep enough to crack rims. Sino trucks and long-haul trailers using this road to enter and leave Addis. There was a sidewalk so I walked facing the road, watching them pass. The dust they kicked up tinted the whole air a brown haze, and every time a truck went by I felt it in my chest. The sun had no mercy. At some point I felt something wet on my hand. Looked down. Blood. A nosebleed. I had mistaken it for sweat at first which sounds stupid but when everything hurts you stop paying attention to individual things. I didn’t have tissue. Hadn’t thought to buy any. Wiped my hand and kept walking. No one around me noticed. I was lightheaded and I needed sugar.

I stopped at a small kiosk on the side of the road, just another suq, and asked for a Coca-Cola. The young man at the counter gave me the bottle and pulled up a chair for me right there. I think he assumed I was about to buy khat, since they sell it right beside the suq, and Coke with khat is a common combination. Three men were already sitting on chairs like mine, chewing. A fourth joined them after a while. They were gossiping about someone who bought a car. I was too tired for eavesdropping. I’d left my philosophizing back at Bole Michael. I finished the bottle and found a kid nearby collecting plastic empties. He didn’t look up when I handed it to him. He was counting the bottles in his bag, focused on his own work. He took it and kept counting.

Saris is still an old sefer. Tiny coffee houses in korkoro shacks running ceremonies, but you wouldn’t know it from the smell. The trucks, the dust, the black sewage trickling into the street. It drowns out everything. No coffee in the air, no music, no conversation. Barely anyone walking. The kind of neighborhood foreign backpackers would probably film for YouTube if they ever found it. A few more meters in, another nosebleed. Tilted my head and kept walking.

I needed to sit. Found a small café, though calling it a café is generous. It was a shipping container on the side of the road. The kind that falls off the back of the trucks that use this route into Addis. Somebody must have just taken an empty one and turned it into a coffee shop. Makes sense I guess. The woman inside saw me before I said anything. I must have looked like what I was: six hours of walking, no food, dried blood under my nose. She greeted me, told me to sit down, asked if I wanted coffee. I said no, I just needed to sit. I sat on a pile of rocks by the door, facing the road, watching cars and trucks pass. She brought water and kolo without me ordering either.

While I sat there, I saw two elderly beggars on the road. One was counting out coins to the other, loud enough for me to hear. One birr, two birr, three birr, four. He placed the last coin in the other man’s hand with energy, like it was the biggest note he had. They both laughed. The other man thanked him and they went their separate ways. I don’t know why I remember that part so clearly.

I didn’t finish the kolo. I put the rest in my pocket. The woman never asked for money, and I never ordered anything, so I just stood up, left what I had where she was sitting, said thank you, and walked out.

Kadisco bus station. Three police officers in uniform, two men and a woman, sitting around trying to catch a ride. Every time a car passed they stood up and waved it down. No one stopped. Some drivers acted like they didn’t see them. Others slowed down just enough to say they weren’t going far and kept driving. The officers sat back down each time and waited for the next car.

At an overpass, a man in his forties, looked like an office worker, asked me if there was a cobblestone road nearby. Someone must have told him over the phone to look for it. I had just passed one and pointed him in the direction. But he didn’t go right away. He was waiting for his coworker to cross the road and join him. So we talked briefly. He told me they were visiting another coworker’s house for Gebriel lunch. I told him I’d walked from Ayat. Before he could react, a woman came rushing up like she was late. She didn’t have time to ask who I was. She greeted him, glanced at me, said hi, and they walked off together.

I sat on the curb of an industrial road. Huge storage buildings behind fences, trucks parked inside, no signs explaining what any of it was. No shade, no plan. Just sat in the sun. I could see the end from here, or at least I thought I could. Kept checking my battery to make sure I had enough to make it. At this point I only walked where there were people. If not people, at least cars. If I fell, someone needed to see. I turned on my Snapchat live location so my friends could track me. Partly for safety, but it also saved me battery from people calling to ask where I was.

Hana Mariam. Almost there. A taxi station. People drinking Gebriel tela at noon. A shoe shiner working his rag. A redat and a controller sitting inside an empty bus, scribbling something onto paper. Life going on like normal. Nobody knew I was about to finish. Nobody cared either, which is fine.

The road was steep and the sun was still on me. I walked close to the apartment buildings on the side of the road, staying in their shade. I texted Ruth that I was close. When I reached the crossroad where the cobblestone meets the asphalt highway, I saw her standing on the side of the road. She wasn’t sitting in the shade. I think she felt bad waiting comfortably while I’d been walking in the sun for six hours, so she stood out in it. I called her name from behind. She turned around, laughing, and handed me a piece of paper. It said “You did it.” I could finally stop talking about this walk to her. I used to mention it all the time.

One of the apartment buildings had a café on the ground floor, the kind with those common plastic chairs local groceries have. We sat down. A woman nearby saw the way I walked in and noticed I looked injured. She gave us her seat. I took my shoes off and my feet could finally breathe. The swelling had room now. I moved them around, flexing my toes, letting the blood flow again. The relief was instant. Ruth brought me water, Gebriel dabo, and chocolates. I couldn’t eat much.

I took a Ride back home. Silent driver. Didn’t say a word the whole way, which was fine because I didn’t have anything to say either. I sat in the back and opened Strava. Six hours. Twenty-eight kilometers. There it was on my screen, this long crooked line cutting across the map of Addis, every turn and detour I took drawn out in front of me. I zoomed in, scrolled through it, traced the route with my finger. Couldn’t believe that was me. Every single meter of that line was a step I took. One after the other. For six hours. And the ride home was long too, which gave me time to just sit there staring at the map, then out the window, then back at the map. Somewhere between the two it hit me.

That’s what it took. Not some deep reason I could explain at a friend’s door, not motivation or discipline or whatever people say on podcasts. Just patience. One step, then another, until I got there.

The elderly at the kifle ketema had it right all along. They just come back tomorrow.

Here’s the thing about obvious advice. You see Reels and YouTube videos every day telling you the same stuff. Be patient. Think clearly. Stay focused. You nod, maybe save the video, and forget it within the hour. I do this all the time (probably did it that same morning). Obvious advice doesn’t stick because it has no weight behind it. Just words on a screen. But when you feel it in your body for six hours, when your feet are bleeding and your nose won’t stop and you’re still walking, suddenly it’s not just advice anymore. It’s something you know.

Everything is instant now. My own work has shifted from writing code to talking to AI all day, getting answers in seconds. And I’ve caught myself doing something embarrassing. Not even being patient enough to write the prompt properly. Or to read the response fully. I want what’s in my brain inside the context window immediately, like right now, can’t even be bothered to type what I’m thinking. That’s what I was becoming. Didn’t notice it until I spent six hours with nothing but my own steps for company.

I didn’t set out to learn patience. Twenty-eight kilometers taught it to me anyway. Kept it to myself for a while. Didn’t tell anyone. But the feeling stayed, and I knew that if I didn’t write it down it would fade like everything else does.