The author describes her experiences traveling through various towns in the two African countries. She finds the Eritrean people to be accommodating and generous and the Ethiopians to be maddening and pushy. There are incredible vistas, sheer poverty, high-class homes, and intriguing cafes. She befriends and travels with natives returning to their homelands for a visit. Beggar children and the curious get annoyingly underfoot. Not the best-written or edited travelogue, but a current and descriptive post-civil war glimpse into this area and the changes it is going through socially and politically.