Addis Ababa, Harar, Addis Ababa,
Day 253:
There was no alarm to wake us up and the French household seemed very quiet when we did eventually open our eyes. We had made a booking to stay at a quant guest house in the ancient walled city of Harar for the next night, so we had another idle day in the chilly city of Addis Ababa. The clock showed 8:30am and even the birds were reluctant to leave their sunny spots.
In the very French kitchen we found Marie, our friendly host and ruler of the household. We shared some coffee and cheese on bread around a scarlet red table and chatted about the day’s prospects. Marie, energetic as we had come to know her, had a full schedule for the day and the younger generation, who had only arrived home in the small hours, were mostly still asleep. That gave Catt and I time to organise ourselves a little and chose the huge dining room table as a base for the day.
It mostly consisted of catching up on writing and photo organising. We had discovered that one of our external hard drives with some of our 14 000 + images on was corrupt. So after a little hysteria and a few tears from me we started the painstaking task of trying to recover as much data as we could. Not even the rugged hardware we invested it seemed to have been able to withstand the horrors of travel on terrible roads in Africa. We had one quick break for lunch which consisted of the previous evening’s left over roasted vegetables on fresh bread before dutifully returning to the tasks we had set out to do. By 17:00 we had managed to get up to date with all things IT. I did find it ironic that even though we were on an expedition across the dark continent of Africa, the work on the computer we all allowed to influence our lives so much, still managed to take a day here and a day there out of our adventurous schedule. Still, documenting our travels with words and pictures was an integral part of life and could not simply be left or neglected.
In the evening Marie took us on a different adventure. She, being a very well known, successful and accomplished photographer, knew of a few art and photo exhibitions in the city that evening and invited us to accompany her. The first gallery we walked into belonged to a friend of Marie’s and the exhibition was a series of 22 photographs of cotton spinning. They were all in black and white and all A0 in size and the gallery was set up in the same simplicity and monotone fashion as the images themselves. It was interesting and intriguing to see how this local lady portrait such an ethnic and pure Ethiopian tradition. It was also interesting to see how Marie worked the room and spent the right amount of time with the right kind of people. We were obviously in the company of the art Elite of Addis Ababa and Marie obviously had a special place in the circle.
The second place we went to was totally different! It was a warehouse like atmosphere with a bon fire outside. The art there was fairly contemporary and apart from huge portraits painted in watercolour I did not really understand the rest. One artist painted a wall red and called that a display. Another one hammered together some old pieces of wood and argued that that was worth a fortune. Yet another guy, a photographer that time, featured a series of photographs of walls mounted behind shiny glass and without frames and someone had a couple of paper posters blotted with other pieces of paper. They did not form any shape, nor did they have any symmetry of any kind, but still, they called it art. We considered covering our Golden Retrievers in paint and make them shake it off inside a room and sell that for a fortune…
With enough culture to see us through a couple of weeks we made a group decision to seek sustenance. He recommended place was an Armenian restaurant which, according to the family, was great value for money and had fantastic quality meat. That was good! It had been a while since this South African carnivore had a fair share of flesh to sink his teeth into. Kebabs were the order of the day and I have to say that I was not disappointed! The metal skewer on my plate was stacked with juicy and tender beef fillet and the accompanying salad was fresh and delicious! We asked to see a wine list and were brought a bottle of imported red with a price tag of $20. Cheap in any other country, but expensive in Ethiopia! I asked about local wine and with visible disappointment the waiter returned the imported bottle and produced a local bottle of Gouda Red. That price tag was about $3 and the quality was more than adequate to satisfy my none connoisseur palate. Conversations around the dinner table were lively and interesting and a few debates got so heated that an involuntary switch to French was unavoidable. Me, not being able to understand more that “Ca va” and “merci” had no idea what the fuss was about, but appreciated the obvious passion of the arguments for… and against what ever the topic of choice was.
We reached home a shade before midnight and wasted no time in retiring to the huge and comfortable bed with the suitable amount of warm blankets and duvets on.
Day 254:
It was time to leave the big bad city and the alarm woke us at 5:30. According to our GPS the drive to Harar was expected to take 12 hours, but the road had been tarred by our friends from China since those calculations were made. Not wanting to break rule no 1, we eventually left at 6:30, as the first rays of the sun started warming the hills on the horizon. The city was peacefully beautiful at that time in the morning and the only other vehicles around seemed to be delivery trucks. There were remarkably few people around and it offered me a rare opportunity to take in my surroundings while driving. The last thing I did before leaving the city behind was to stop at a bank. The guidebooks, notoriously outdated, suggested that no ATM in Ethiopia would accept a foreign bank card. However, we knew that the Dashen Bank had VISA ATM’s all over the country. This specific one however would not produce the notes for some reason. I concluded that something somewhere was off line and did not give it another thought.
Once we had left the city we started encountering more and more trucks. With the high altitude Maggie wasn’t the raciest Land Cruiser in the world and with the added challenge of driving a right hand drive car on the right side of the road, the conditions were less than perfect. Catt instantly became expert co-driver as she could actually see the oncoming traffic though. The team work paid off and before we knew it we had passed the towns of Debre Zeit and Mojo and reached Nazaret. It was there that all the trucks and traffic seemed to dissolve into the countryside and what was left was perfectly smooth and wide open tar roads to the east.
Around the town of Awash we saw an incredible sight! There was a crystal clear and bright blue lake with the water level teasing the side of the road surface. We saw pitch black formations of ancient and uninviting volcanic rocks and lava flows in the middle of the lake and a backdrop of grass green hills. The colours and contrasts were simply unbelievable and the added weirdness of the absence of the bridge over the water made it all very bizarre indeed. The town itself reminded a little of a border town with trucks lining the dusty streets and little else to its credit. On the far side of town we started going down a steep hill towards the Awash River. We had been warned about taking photographs of bridges, so we had to keep the camera hidden as we approached. There was a slow truck in front of us, so Catt did her co-driving bit and informed me that the road ahead was clear. As I accelerated past the truck, standing still at that stage, I saw an angry policeman waving his arms and pointing at us. I put on my biggest smile and waved back in my friendliest manner, but still he did not seem amused. That was not enough to slow me down, only on the opposite side of the bridge was another uniformed and heavily armed man with the same anger in his face as the first. He stuck his arm high in the air, signalling the “Halt” command and once again I waved and smiled. This time the guy seemed a little confused and started waving back, so I did not slow down and simply drove up the hill on the other side and out of site without any further discussion or arm waving. Confusion was once again my best friend!
Around mid day we arrived in a nameless town which was not indicated on any of our maps and decided to seek some ethnic Ethiopian food for lunch. We selected a small and quiet little place on the main street through, sat down inside and ordered the usual without being able to communicate in a commonly understandable language. It was amazing how you could get your message across with showing of fingers for numbers and three or four words off a menu. The correct order arrived shortly after and it was delicious! We feasted on while watching a local parking attendant place the obligatory parking ticket on Maggie’s window while chasing kids who wanted to wash the car away. Catt got up and explained to him that there will be no money for any washing and thanked the man for chasing the pesky youths down the street. Once we had finished we paid our modest bill without surprise and got the standard 0.5 Birr ready for parking. It had been the same price all over the country without exception and we expected the same there. I took the ticket and had a look to make sure. The chancing entrepreneur dually wrote “Birr 100” on the ticket and smilingly held out his hand. My laughter came from deep inside my belly as I handed over 2 dirty notes. One for the parking and one for the kids I explained. He was satisfied. That obviously did not stop the kids from running to the windows as we got into the car. They demanded money for the “not washing” and when they realized that we were never going to budge they changed tactics to asking for pens. They explained that they needed pens for school but were completely client when I pointed out that school was not out yet, so they were supposed to be there instead of bugging poor Farenji who just wanted to enjoy a quiet lunch in their wonderful town. I drove away quietly satisfied that I had seemed to finally understand a little bit about the culture and the rules of engagement of the country.
With the town behind us we started on what was to become a 200km long mountain pass. It was insane! We drove up and down hugely steep hills and around hair pin bends and on the ridges between peaks offering incredible views to the very distant horizons. The afternoon was wind still and clear and phenomenally beautiful with the never ending entertainment of the incredible landscapes around us. I started thinking of places to compare it with, but could not. I started thinking of objects to use in a desperate attempt to illustrate the mountainess environment we were in and found only one. It was as if we were driving on a never ending and incredibly gigantic egg tray. The smooth black tar surface snaked up and down the indentations and sometimes in between them. The hills were covered with fields belonging to clever agriculturists who had managed to find a way to cultivate the hill sides. However… every single person and animal in the region seemed to use the new Chinese road to move around the region. Then again, who would choose a bumpy and rocky single file foot path up the side of a mountain when there was a 6m wide perfect surface to use instead? We even saw some young boys using their home made flat bed trolleys with tiny wheels as a downhill box cart. It was loaded to absolute breaking point with produce from the hills, but they were obviously enjoying the ride down!
The mountain roller coaster took us through and past village upon village upon village and the people seemed genuinely friendly and often intrigued by the appearance of two Farenji in their midst. We had changed our tactics as far as child rock throwers were concerned as well. Before arriving in the country we were advised by those who had experience to wave frantically at every child you see. Allegedly that made them wave back instead of lobbing projectiles at the fine metallic paintwork and glass of the vehicle. Despite doing exactly that we had still suffered three direct hits in as many weeks. None were rocks and none caused damage, but they were still infuriatingly barbaric and damn right pissed me off! Since leaving Addis Ababa however we started scrutinizing the little road side buggers individually and we started to recognise the “look” of a vandal as we knew the look of a corrupt official. Our deterrent was then to open the window to establish eye contact and point with an angry finger that usually made toddlers cry. That worked so well that we even saw the “would be perpetrators” drop their ammunition as we drove by. We lost concentration only once during our 9 hour journey to Harar and suffered one direct hit by a soft fruit of some description. It was not even worth reacting to it.
As we drove into the city we met our recommended guide, Abdul. He was not only mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide we had, but was also strongly recommended by Marie, the fabulous French lady. He had organized a safe place for Maggie to park as well as a room in a traditional Harar house that then served as a guest house. The ladies who owned and ran the guest house spoke only the local Harar language and a little French, so having Abdul do the negotiations and communicating was fantastically helpful. Abdul himself, a mountain of a man who obviously did not suffer greatly from the droughts of the mid 80’s, then told us about the offerings of his fair city. The one that interested me most, and which I had dreamt about since the inception of the plan of our little adventure, was to witness the famous Hyena Feeding by the special and somewhat crazy selected men of Harar. Abdul confirmed that there was to be a feeding that night and that we could visit the site with him. We also planned to take a half day city tour with him the next day and agreed a modest, but fair fee of $20 for his services.
The guest house was brilliant! It was by far our best quality accommodations in Ethiopia to that point… except for the free room in Marie’s house off course… and the room we were in had not one, but two full sized double beds. The showers were hot and the bathrooms clean and the communal house room we could have coffee and breakfast in was authentically Harar and vibrantly interesting. Abdul promised to explain the layout to us the next morning. We spent the late afternoon in full siesta mode after the long drive before being served very small cups of very strong local coffee while sitting cross legged on Oriental rugs in the colourful communal room.
Abdul collected us as the sun’s last rays teased the hills outside the walls of the ancient city. On the walk to the Hyena site we could already hear the beasts laughing and with the intensity of sound came the increased excitement trickling through my veins. I mean, feeding Giraffes in Nairobi was great and getting that long, slimy and antiseptic tongues lick my face was brilliant! But feeding an animal that could easily snap your neck and crush your femur was way more exciting! Years before our trip I spent a dreamy and life changing time on a farm in Namibia with a hand reared Leopard, Kiara and Simba a 12 month old massive male Lion as companions. Their instant acceptance of me then started a true passion for the bond with predators in me and I was very interested to experience how my body would react to these beasts in Harar.
We found the only remaining Hyena man outside the Cattle market and abattoir, which I thought was pretty fitting. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt he held a woven grass basket with scraps of meat between his knees and picked out suitable peaces for the sizes of the Hyenas. The little ones received small titbits while the alpha female obviously got the best cuts. He talked to them as children and respectfully controlled them as a crowd. He was a gifted entertainer who played his role for the crowd of five spectators perfectly. He posed for the camera and asked me when I was ready for the next shot. The Hyenas obviously had mutual respect for the man which was very interesting indeed. The pack circled him sometimes, but never approached the basket from behind. They never snatched the food unless it was presented and it was almost like they were queuing for their turn… very unlike the native Africa we had experienced up to then! With the last basket of scraps handed over by an assistant the Hyena man asked if any Farenji wanted to have a go… Silly question, I thought as I stood up and stepped up to the plate. I could not wait! He placed a long sinewy strand of skin on a stick and told me to hold it in my mouth. The alpha female wasted no time at all and pushing the others out of her way came face to face and eye to eye with me. Her breath was RANK and her eyes piercing and her body odour gaggingly bad. Her touch however was as gentle as our own two well trained Golden Retriever’s. With soft jaws and without loosing a nanosecond’s eye contact she took the treat off the stick and sat down in front of me chewing it. The instant bond between human and predator was so apparent and so strong that even the Hyena man commented and nodded approvingly. He handed me a few more pieces and the process was repeated with a few more animals. The younger ones I fed by hand and the older ones mimicked the Alpha’s methods and I was having a ball of a time making a dream come true.
When the last of the scraps were done the pack melted away into the dark and then suddenly returned to investigate the rubbish tip on the edge of the clearing we inhabited. The ignored the small child who walked past and the old man with the cane needed for stability. They were chased away by a town dog at some stage only to return and continue their investigations. They paraded in front of us a few more times and made their hierarchy and place in the Harar society known well before finally and audibly disappearing into the shadows beyond the last row of houses. The show was incredible, but it was time to feed ourselves as well.
Abdul recommended a local restaurant and deposited us via Tuk-Tuk right in front of the door. It was very upmarket compared to what we had been used to, but the prices did not reflect that at all! The food we chose was local and delicious! We drank some local wine and chatted about the day and the night and with full bellies and happy hearts walked back to our impressive digs in the centre of the ancient walled city, the world’s 4th Holy City of Harar.
Day 255:
The room was dark and quiet when the alarm woke us up at seven. We lazily got out of bed, had a fantastically hot shower and got served breakfast in the big, multilevel room. The coffee was strong and full of flavour and the folded, deep fried crepes we covered in fresh honey was the perfect sustenance for the morning that lay ahead. As promised, and perfectly on time Abdul made his appearance at 8am.
We started our guided tour with an explanation of our immediate surroundings. The room we sat in measured about 80m2 and had platforms on five different levels. The platforms were covered in Persian rugs and the walls were overly congested by hanging ornaments of different colours and shapes. The facing walls of the platforms were all painted a bright scarlet red. Abdul explained that the red was found in every house in Harar and served as a reminded of the blood spilled by the thousands of young men who fought Menelik who occupied the city in 1887. The wall decorations were all practical items including suitcases weaved from grass, bowls and dishes and coffee cups and plates. Apparently, in Harar it was seen as bad manners to borrow anything from neighbours, so every household had to own everything they needed… even for a wedding ceremony. There was a special place for the head of the house to sit and there was a special place to put weapons (spears) by his right hand side. Beyond that were four clay pots with long necks. The first was for medicine, the second for spices, the third for jewellery and the last for money. There was a room under the stairs, reserved for newly weds who had to spend the first week after their arranged marriage in there getting to know each other. Lastly there was a room upstairs which traditionally served as a storeroom and a place to dry coffee beans. This particular house had turned that into a guest bedroom. Outside was a closed courtyard which was where the family spent their days in peace and quiet and a kitchen with a low ceiling and a coal fire in the centre. The doors had a definite Arabic influence with the extravagant carvings and impressive decorations.
With the house tour over, we hit the streets. It was Sunday, so relatively quiet compared to other days, but it was still hectic! The first thing that struck me was the amount of beggars. Perhaps “homeless” or “destitute” would be a better description. They were desperately filthy and had apparently given up on life as we know it. Some of them were sleeping the day away under flea ridden blankets while others simply sat in the shade waiting for the flies to rid them of all moisture. It was heartbreaking to see them, but in similar situations we had learnt to follow the examples of the local people which, in that particular case, ignored them.
We excited the Shoa gate and entered the markets. They had tiny alleys and masses of stalls selling everything and anything you could possibly imagine. Catt and I both commented that that was indeed the first time we had seen that amount of fresh produce for sale anywhere in Ethiopia. We passed by the recycling market where skilled craftsmen hammered and welded all kinds of scrap into useful and sought after items. We recognised one particular item immediately. It was a pyramid shaped cooking implement where you make a tiny coal fire half way up and cook anything you like on a grill covered by a dome. We call it a “pyramid” and ours, made from stainless teal cost around $200 in South Africa. This one was made from old cooking oil cans found in a refugee camps on the Djibouti border. $200 could have bought you 200 of them. Next up was the “Smuggler’s Market” boasting all kinds of things illegally brought into the country from neighbouring Somalia and Djibouti. The rules stated that once it made it to the city it was deemed legal and the origins were not questioned any longer. They had anything from designer label 401’s to electrical appliances, blankets and silk shirts.
Back inside the city we were treated to a quick tour of most of the 368 alley ways boasting no less than 82 Mosques and numerous churches. At some point we were shown a Mosque, an Orthodox Church and a Catholic Mission bordering one another. The people on the streets were friendly and smiling and the children laughing and entertaining. It was a harmonious and very none Ethiopian like society which I could not work out. They did live in an ancient walled city, but there was no obvious wealth or prosperity there. The people seemed as poor as the rest of the country and as little used to seeing tourists as most of the rest of the country. The language barrier was the same as everywhere else and the socio economic challenges were clearly visible and present. Their attitude however was completely different and… dare I say it… They even seemed to have a little self respect and pride. The more we walked around, the more I enjoyed the city and its people.
Abdul took us to the Haile Selassie museum at Ras Tafari House and to a house once occupied by Arthur Rimbaud. Rimbaud, French of origin left his native country because his fellow French publically disliked his poetry. He had a brief homosexual fling and then fled to Africa where he was “appreciated” according to him. He did marry a local lady in the end after risking his life savings to run guns for Menelik. As with so many artists, his poetry was finally appreciated in France just as he was about to die of Cancer at age 37. The top floor of the house had a photographic exhibition about Harar as a city and even boasted a photo taken by our own French lady, Marie.
We passed another of the city’s six gates and finally ended up in the main square, home to the Mehane Alem Cathedral which used to be an Egyptian mosque until our very own Haile Selassie converted it in the 1940’s. That brought us to the end of our guided tour and dangerously close to the lunch hour. Abdul fondly waved us good bye and headed to his own wife and house at the edge of the new city while we strolled back to our traditional house. We detoured past the markets on the way there and bought some scrumptiously fresh breads and deliciously juicy and massive fruit for our own festivities. Back at the house the lady in charge organised us a Victorinox kitchen knife to cut our fruit with and we sat in the protected courtyard feasting away until we both came to absolute bursting point. It had been a long time since we had any kind of really fresh and uncooked produce to eat and it was fantastic!
During the obligatory afternoon siesta my brain started working overtime. In my native South Africa new property developers came up with a great idea to ensure security to the occupants of their new walled villages, or cities. They built high walls around a big section of land and controlled the access by manning, or guarding a few gates. When driving through these new areas of development in Pretoria, the city we had left eight months before, you saw little more than high walls on both sides of the streets and the roofs of the mansions, or houses of varying modesty beyond that. Here I was in an ancient city staring at the same simple design. Sure, the streets are not drivable, but walkable and the walls are closer together and there was no barbed wire or electrified fences on top of them, but they were still impenetrable for those not invited in through a simple door. In the ancient market I saw the contraption which was an ancient version of what we paid mega bucks for. So the question arose… Was there anything that we as modern westerners had that was actually clever and new? I’m not talking about cars and electronics, but things like secure houses, cooking methods and even the machinery this ancient civilization used to do their weaving was all copied by us “clever modern men and woman”.
In the late afternoon we decided to brave the streets by ourselves. The walled city was only 1 square km in size so it wasn’t as if we could really get lost. Without the protection of our trusty guide I was a little apprehensive about the hassle factor we would have to endure, but was pleasantly surprised for the second time that day. Every person we walked past greeted us and we greeted back by saying “Seulam”. Every child said hallo and ever beggar left us alone after only one “Yeulleum” (Not available). We walked back to the afternoon market place to find it fairly quiet on the Sunday and walked back past the butcher shops to see the flock of Yellow Billed Kites. Mmmmm… they were predators…
While I was standing in the open courtyard thinking about how cool it would be to take some photos of the birds in flight we were approached by a young man. He greeted us with a smile and asked if we wanted to take some photos of the birds feeding on scraps of meat. Apparently, at the end of every day the butchers threw out tiny bits of flesh they could do nothing with and that was what the birds were waiting for. I was keen, so we fixed a price for the show and he let rip. The poor soul was pretty scared of the razor sharp talons of the birds and stayed well clear. I on the other hand positioned myself low to the ground and instructed him to lob the scraps to a place right in from of me. Man those birds were fast! The swooped in and took what they wanted and left in half of a blink of an eye. They were incredible to watch and I could not help but stare in awe as they used their wide short tails to manoeuvre them with a precision that a fighter pilot would be incredibly jealous of. They used the tiny air currents around the buildings and made minute adjustments every tenth of a second picked up the smallest of bits of meat and with utter perfection. One kid even threw a small stone in the air to show me hot he kites would catch it in mid air. I was impressed!
On the way back to the house we invented a new game. Every kid that pointed and said “Farenji” we pointed back at and said “Habasha” (Ethiopian) this amused the adults to no end and I even saw a woman grab her belly as she laughed at the surprised expression on one kid’s face. Another young man found it highly entertaining to shout at us. I’m sure it wasn’t abuse per say, but more like a toddler who had not discovered the volume control yet. This young man was very loud and I decided to retaliate. “I DON’T UNDERSTAND A WORD YOU ARE SAYING BECAUSE I ONLY SKEAP ENGLISH….” I shouted at the top of my voice. Catt went blood red and pretended no to know me at all. The kid’s eyes became so big that he could almost represent the counsel of Bush Babies and he ran away and every single adult on the narrow and busy street we were on burst out laughing! One guy even patted me on the shoulder in utter approval. Another came for a chat and refused to believe that South Africa had any white people as citizens. Another asked if I was a comedian and a little old lady asked for spare change…
That evening we went to the second restaurant that was recommended by Abdul. The way he said it we thought it was called “Fresh Tej”, after the honey wine they made in the Omo Valley. After our fifteen minute walk we found the square named for Ras Tafari’s father, Ras Makonnen and a restaurant by the name of “Fresh Touch”. We were pretty confident that that was in fact the one. The prices were slightly Farenjified, but still cheap and the quality was great! The beer was cold and the wine plentiful. We made it back to the house a shade before 21:00 and decided to go to bed straight away. It had been a very busy and very interesting day!
Day 256:
We woke up with the help of the alarm we had set as well as the Rooster outside our door. Breakfast in the big room was served early as requested and by 8:00 we had settled our bill without argument, walked back to Maggie and started the engine. There was a slight misunderstanding about the amount we were supposed to pay for our parking, but one phone call to Abdul sorted that out instantly. We drove out the Harar gate and back the way we had come from by 8:10, confident that we would make Addis Ababa by mid afternoon despite what the GPS was telling us.
With the sun behind us driving through the mountains was even more impressive than the day we had arrived. There were markets in small villages and we passed hundreds of people transporting their goods from their rural homes to the markets. We passed large herds of cattle and sheep, so goats and chickens and a load of donkeys loaded ten times heavier than what they should have been. We passed some trucks and saw some wrecks of trucks that could not manage the bends in the passes and even spotted our “Ethiopian downhill Luge” team again. We waved at the kids and pointed at the little buggers with projectiles in their hands and also understood one more thing about life on the Ethiopian roads. Some kids places sugar cane on the tarmac so that vehicles could crush them, making it easier for them to get to the good bits. We avoided them as far as possible.
I was a little apprehensive about crossing the bridge over the Awash River again. I kind of hoped that we would not see the same policemen we had ignored on the outbound journey. However, even before we had the bridge in sight we were stopped by a boom gate and directed to a row of tin shacks. I wasn’t too sure what it was about, but decided to abbey, that time. It then became apparent that it was a customs check. The man without uniform (Usually the man in charge) approached us and started asking questions about the packing system on the outside of our car. “What is on the roof?” he asked and I replied “A box”. “What is in the bag on the wheel?” he wanted to know and I replied “Charcoal”. “What is inside the car?” he demanded and I replied “everything, I’ll show you.” So while leaning inside, resting his filthy little paws on my clean jacket and confused at the lack of back seat and not knowing what to make of the big locked Pelican case he said “What is the gift you bring to the customs of Ethiopia?” My reply: “To educate all of Ethiopia that honourable people do not beg and refusing to ad to their addiction of begging by not giving anything away for free…” Not sure where that came from but he congratulated me for my excellent answer and sent us on our way. At the bridge we finally understood what the fuss was about. Although it was a double lane bridge, it was only allowed to have one vehicle at a time on the span. We had to wait for a truck to complete the journey before we were allowed to follow and the traffic from the other side was stopped completely while our side was being cleared. We did not get into any more trouble.
Around mid day we arrived back in Awash, penniless and without enough fuel to make the big city. There was only one bank and no ATM’s, so we were forced to dip into our secret stash of US$ to see us through. While adding to Maggie’s fuel supply we feasted on some more fresh oranges and the bread we had smuggled out of the Fresh Touch restaurant the night before. We were on the road again in no time and the going was very easy! We passed the volcanic rocks and pools and saw some lava fields we had missed on the outbound journey. We stopped for one or two pictures at some point and I was already looking forward to chilling out at Casa Marie when something felt terribly wrong with the car. We were on a slight uphill and I could not accelerate at all. I stopped, climbed out and immediately saw the problem. Puncture no 4 and this time there was no doubt about the fact that we would not be able to mend that one!
Our tyre changing routine was slick as a formula one team’s at that stage with three changes in about a week, so it only took ten minutes to get back on the road again. OK not quite F1 standard, but pretty fast none the less. I was a little angry and a little disappointed that our tyres were so easily punctured, but with the abuse we had shown the poor things it was perhaps time to retire the set. We had used our only functioning spare and that had a tube inside because the hole in the tread was too big to fix.
We still managed to make it to Marie’s house by 16:00 despite the late start and the tyre issue and were received like old friends returning from a long pilgrimage. I phoned Giorgio about fixing our leaking power steering pump, but he was so busy that he could not help us at all it seemed. We decided to make another plan. However, for the rest of that day we had little else but dinner, shower and a big warm bed in mind. Marie had a dinner date with a friend and the young ones had all gone off exploring another part of the country. The house was quiet and even the electricity went off, so after preparing a feast on the gas stove and munching it all we went to bed early… tired…
Day 257:
Within twenty minutes of getting up ABSA bank had managed to ruin my day! I received an email from my dearest mother informing us that our bank accounts had been frozen. The reason for the drop in temperature was that the accounts were in Catt’s name and her South African visa had run out and the ridiculous FIKA (I still have no idea what that stands for) regulation did not allow for a foreigner to have an active bank account. That in itself was all understandable. What was not understandable was the fact that when we opened the accounts we had a two hour session with a specialist personal banker in ABSA and explained exactly what our requirements were. We followed her “expert advice” and made 100% sure and even double checked twice that we would not have exactly that kind of issue while away. We explained that we would not be contactable for at least a year and that we would not be able to deal with problems. We then spent six weeks in South Africa visiting an ABSA branch in every major city to sort our problems this specific personal banker should have foreseen and should have solved for us, but did not and even after that debacle my poor mom spent at least 20 hours in that branch, on various occasions to sort out utter shit that should never been an issue. So on day 257 we were effectively stuck in Ethiopia with very little efficient communication implements to our disposal and with frozen bank accounts. Tanks very much ABSA bank!
I phoned mommy dearest at about $1.50 per minute and tried desperately to come up with a plan in the 7 minutes of airtime I had available. I asked her to close the accounts, and transfer the money to another. She did after all have full power of attorney on all our accounts. According to shitty ABSA bank, she could not even do that. According to shitty ABSA bank, the only solution was for Catt’s passport to be presented with a current and valid visa in it. So what they were actually asking was fro Catt to fly back to South Africa, get a little stamp at the airport, drive to Menlyn Shopping centre in Pretoria, smile and happily show her little stamp before driving back to the airport and flying back to Ethiopia. All that off course had to be done at our own expense… HALLO FUCKWITS! How do we do that when you have confiscated our money? Not that I was angry or frustrated or anything. To top it all the “specialist” personal banker told my mom that it was not her job to tell us about the problem of FIKA and that it was our responsibility to know about it before the time. Now I ask you with tears in my eyes… Why in God’s name did we bother to seek advice from a specialist banker in the first place? Oh, but that was not all… Here’s the real kicker: We were allowed to receive money into the accounts and we could even move money between an investment account and a savings account. So they were obviously happy to use our hard earned cash to speculate and enrich themselves with, we were just not allowed to buy food with it. I was once told that all banks were crap and the secret was to find a bank with the least amount of the sticky brown stuff. Right then, in my estimation, ABSA rated about the same as the toilet in Key Afar I had the horrible misfortune of experiencing a few weeks before. They had excrement dripping off every curve in every letter of their name. With my last $1.50 running out fast I tried to explain to my mom that there was no way for her so solve the visa issue and that she should really just let it be. We did have one more trick up our sleeve… Our last redundancy plan of another credit card with another bank had to be employed… As with spare tyres, it was not a great feeling to be using your last possible plan, but thanks to the “expert advice” from the “expert personal banker” we had no choice. And another thing!!!!! What possible law does South Africa have that grants a bank the right to confiscate money that does not belong to them?
OK, so it wasn’t the greatest morning in the life of Catt of Dawie on the road, but we got it dealt with as much as we possibly could and headed down the hill and into the city again. The other interesting email I had received that morning was from Anne and Bob Finch. They had made it to the northern town of Axum and explained that they had no less than 5 punctures the week before. After seeking expert advice from around the world they concluded that although they had some tread left on the rubber, the actual structure was brittle and cracked and pretty much useless due to the constant and utter abuse they had subjected their tyres to. They had managed about 50 000km on the set and we had done pretty much the same. The difference was that we had travelled even worse roads for longer distances than they had and that we were definitely heavier that they were. There was nothing for it… The hard and expensive decision had to be made. It was simply time to bite the bullet and replace all 6 Maggie’s tyres. The Bridgestone Mud Terrains had served us well, but their time had come to an end. Two were completely none repairable, one had a tube inside and the rest were cracked, cut and bashed from all sides and all over.
That should have been an easy thing to do… right… Well, let’s start with shitty bloody ABSA bank not allowing us access to our own money… Then, let’s remind ourselves that the useless UK courier company never managed to deliver Catt’s new bank cards to Nairobi and ad the fact that Sudan had no international ATM’s, so our few US$ in reserve had to be kept for that country. That left us with one South African VISA card and an ATM limit of about $240 per transaction. We had decided to stick with the mighty Bridgestone brand, but also decided to change to All Terrain Tyres instead. They were dramatically cheaper than the mud’s, more easily available and we believed more suited for the last part of our journey. But six of them cost $1 216 or putting it another way: 5.06 times the transaction limit on the ATM. We drove straight to the Hilton Hotel who we knew had four machines and with ruthless efficiency managed to actually get enough cash from them for our day’s expenses.
Next was sourcing the tyres. Addis Ababa however had a whole suburb dedicated to car spares and tyres so we drove there. At the first shop we managed to find five of the tyres f choice, agreed on price which included fitting and balancing and gave the go ahead to the shop manager. He instructed me to drive the car to right in front of the shop and when things did not happen after fifteen minutes I started asking better questions… apparently he was nothing more that a tyre merchant. He could sell me the tyres, but I had to transport them to a fitment centre myself. I asked him, with small tears starting to form in the corners of my eyes, how he though I should transport five 16 inch tyres with a vehicle that was packed as ours was. He shrugged… We left.
The second place of choice I had visited before. It was around the corner and was without a doubt a fitment centre and merchant. I drove in and explained what we needed and the manager looked at me and said “no”… That was it. I kind of decided that he meant that he did not have the tyres in stock, so offered some more information: “I need six of them!” I said… “I have already found five at 3 300 Birr each, but have no way of getting them here…” I saw the glint in his eyes and in no time he organised a taxi for the rubber transport. Before I could get in though he came trotting out of his office and confirming the price I had been quoted simply waved the taxi away and said: “I have them, they are on their way…” Somehow, as if by magic, two tyres appeared within seconds. I parked Maggie on their workshop floor and operation fitment began. He had five guys working on Maggie’s wheels. The funniest thing was to see the chaps argue about who would loot the old tyres. They were speaking Amharic, but it blatantly obvious! I calmly walked over and told everyone that those tyres were “BAKA” (Finished) and that if they sold them, the new owner would haunt them because of the amount of punctures he would get. They looked totally shocked and asked me if I spoke the language… The other four tyres arrived by Toyota Corolla (No idea how they managed that) and the whole process took less than an hour. I was impressed! I am pretty sure the man made a tidy profit off me and I am absolutely convinced that they were going to sell our old tyres to some poor unsuspecting “Habasha” (Ethiopian), but I did not care that much. We ended up paying a fare price for a great product and in our way of life confidence in your equipment was worth a fortune!
With bank issues, card transactions and finding and fitting tyres the day exhausted itself pretty quickly and we had no energy left for anything. We drove back to the house, avoiding the traffic and managed an afternoon tea with Marie. We did walk down the road in search of milk, found it and also enquired about the price of a single Avocado. Stupid, the owner of the stall wanted 15 Birr ($1) for a single fruit. I laughed out loud and told him that I knew that that was the price for two kilograms. He changed his tune instantly and offered it to us at half his original price. I called him a cheat and we left. At the house I over heard a radio interview about how Ethiopians were killing the tourist trade by charging Farenji double and sometimes even triple of what the local rate was and smiled thinking “Not this bloody Farenji mate…”
Day 258:
We didn’t get up particularly early that day but sprung right into action from the time we broke the strong bonds of the comfortable and warm bed. We had a few plans for the day and had to get moving before falling into the eternal trap of laziness in the place we could have easily called home. We abused Marie’s washing machine one last time while making coffee and having breakfast and started packing up all our stuff we had managed to distribute around the house. Maggie was looking rather fantastic in her new rubber but I did notice something else a little worrying… It was definitely time to change the fuel filter as we had run through a tank of very dirty go go juice from Sashamene, but the oil filter also looked like the one we had replaced in Arusha, rather than what I expected to see after doing an oil change in Nairobi… To play it save I decided to change both filters and the oil before leaving Addis Ababa.
First things first though: We had some culture things to attend to. Addis Ababa was hosting their very first Photographic Exhibitions showing off the talent of local photographers. The exhibitions were in different places around the city and we had identified a few we were particularly interested in. Our first stop was at some institute with a name I can not recall, but the photographs were impressive! They were all printed about A2 in size. Some were framed, some were not, but most of them were awesome! They were all about cityscapes and different areas of the capitol but some of those photographers had a fantastic eye for their environment. The second exhibition was less impressive and involved more models and passing for photographs. There were some interesting concepts, but it lacked the impact of the first lot.
We stopped at the natural History Museum and popped in to see Lucy. This 3.2 million year old skeleton which was discovered in 1974 in a dried up lake near Hadar in northern Ethiopia was claimed to be the oldest and most complete humanoid ever found…. Hang on… what happened to the claims of the Taung Child and Mrs. Pless? Was South Africa not claiming to be the cradle of human kind? Was Little Foot, being excavated in the Sterkfontein Caves when we visited in 2009 not the most complete hominoid skeleton ever discovered? Apparently Kenya also claimed to have found the oldest humanoid scull in 2001 and helped to reconstruct another one from Chad, but then that started theories that neither Lucy nor their scull had a direct line to what humans are today…. Where does the Nile start again? I am so confused!
For something slightly simpler we left the claims of Ethiopia, Chad and Kenya behind in search of fresh vegetables to fill our stores and a proper French Patisserie lunch. They were both easy to find and did not cost a fortune and we even managed to exchange our two empty wine bottles for full ones. See, in the crazy place, claiming to be the cradle of human kind, you can not buy a bottle of beer or wine without presenting an empty one. That obviously begs the question: Which was first, the chicken or the egg? Or more relevant to us: How do you actually obtain your first bottle… Oh, from Kenya off course, after you wash the labels off, but that’s another story.
We decided to visit the Markato market, claimed to be the biggest market in Africa (They do claim a lot don’t they?) in the afternoon. On the way there we spotted a garage with a quick service centre and dropped in to enquire. No, they did not have oil or fuel filters, but they did have oil. And yes, if I bough my own filters they would change the oil and fit the filters for me. So we popped over the road to Toyota, invested in some real deal filters and had them fitted. We paid for the oil and when I asked about a price for the labour the man shook his head and said “baka” (Finished, or done, or something like that) so I thanked him (ameuseuganallo) and drove off, fully expecting him to run after me demanding payment. He did not and I was even more confused than before. Was it even possible that I was starting to understand end even enjoy Ethiopia?
The Markato was… well… INSANE!!!! The streets were horrifically narrow and abused and pot holed and covered with busses and trucks and carts and donkeys and horses and… and even camels! We followed the biggest thing on wheels we could find and ended by a central bus station. Parking was not really possible, but we did see bank and parked right in front of two security guards armed with AK47’s. I made a point of greeting them so that they would associate us with that red land cruiser with the brand new tyres on… We did not need anything from the market, but I wanted to see some of it anyway, so we picked a direction and started to walk. It took no time at all for a kid selling natural and wooded toothbrushes to start following us around. He was desperate to sell us one of his brushes, but I saw it as a simple test of patience and refused to budge. We walked in a concentric square, trying to remember how to get back to the car and were not disappointed in what we found. To be fair, in that market you could find anything. The Lonely Planet states that you could buy anything from a Kalashnikov to a Camel there and I was quite interested to see if I could procure the former… just for laugh. We saw mountains of shoes and barrels of cloth and kitchen ware and cook ware and anything you can possibly imagine in the hour we walked around. We were offered Chat (The green leaves they chew to get high) and all sorts of other contraband I had never heard of. Some guy offered us a car while another wanted to buy my camera, but no matter how far we walked and how close we came to getting lost I could not find a single Kalashnikov dealer… It was time to leave anyway, so I gave up on that idea.
Back at the house we found Marie in her darkroom catching up on years of undeveloped black and whites. I envied her skill and experience with film and made a mental note of learning the skill before it was too late. In fact, an idea sprang to mind. For our next big expedition I wanted to take only one camera with a 50mm lens and take no more than four photos a day… While my head was still in dreamland about which ancient camera body I wanted for my adventure, Catt suggested that we take Marie to dinner and before I knew it we were in the car again on the way to the same institute we had visited earlier that day. It was International Human Right’s Day and Marie had committed to attending the showing of a film there.
The film was made by the actress Lucy Lieu and the subject was the child sex trade. It was shocking! It was actually beyond shocking to the point of being almost unrealistic or unbelievable.
With duties over she took us to her favourite Italian Restaurant down the road. This place was phenomenal! The menu was massive and the food delicious! We had some wine and even spoilt ourselves to heaps of ice cream for desert. Marie was our guest and there was no way we were going to allow her to contribute to the bill. We spared no expense and never even looked at prices on the menu and when it was all said and done I handed over 334 Birr (About $20). Marie was relaxed and a little tired and asked me to drive us home. Her Land Cruiser, the same as Maggie was however left hand drive and driving at night in a city on the wrong side of the road with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car did not relax me! We survived none the less and arrived home to find another power cut. It did not matter as it was time for bed anyway. We thanked our host and promised to say Good Bye before finally leaving the city the next morning… early.
Day 259:
The alarm woke us before the warmth of the sun woke the early birds. We jumped out of bed, had one last hot and comfortable shower, made some coffee and started getting ready to leave. Marie came to greet us and it felt almost sad to leave her. She had been a fantastic host and an instant friend and I could see that I could spend a long time in her company, learning from her experience and getting to know her better. But, alas, visas were running out and the world was waiting….
From her house on the very edge of the city, past the Bon Voyage sign, we turned north into the hills and forests. There was no traffic leaving the city at that hour, but the steepness of the climb and the coldness of the big Diesel engine did not contribute to plain sailing… or fast driving even. The countryside was predictably pretty with massive trees and long straight tar roads spilling out onto vast open expanses of plateau grasslands. The agriculture was ever present and every once in a while we spotted a rusted up old tank… Yip, a tank, with turrets and everything. They had loads of graffiti on them and they had obviously been abandoned there some decades before, but it was still a little strange to see them dotted over the countryside.
Half way through the morning the earth opened up in front of us and suddenly we could see for a million miles ahead. We were at the start of the Blue Nile Gorge and at an altitude of 2 800 meters above sea level. We could see the tiny thin river running in the valley far below us and the road snaking its way down to it was more than a little intimidating. There was a strangely abandoned viewing platform which I climbed but it offered no better view than the road, so I got back in the car as a bus of fellow tourists arrived. To my utter surprise though we continued climbing in altitude. At the very top of the crest the altimeter read 3 200 meters and it was only then that we were the highest thing around… or so it seemed. We rounded a corner, saw a radio mast and instantly started plummeting.
I was very pleased to have new brakes, but still employed a lower gear to slow us down a bit. What followed was like something out of movie. In about 8 kilometres though hair pin bends and insane inclines we passed one or two trucks, saw the most incredible landscaped known to man and managed to loose 2 000 meters in altitude! That meant an average gradient of 1 to 4, which was not supposed to be realistic for roads in the world we knew. On some of those bends it felt as if we were being overtaken by the rear of our own car and on some of those down hills I could not imagine attempting them in a gear faster than 1st. I was very grateful to our Chinese brothers and sisters who tarred the road for us as I could not imagine what that would have been like as a slippery gravel track some years before. We saw the tiny trickle of a river grow in size until we arrived at the new bridge over the 200m wide expanse of water at a shade over 1 000 meters elevation. It had been an absolutely teach clenching, steering wheel gripping, adventure of a drive into the depths of the valley and all we needed to do then was to drive out the other side… OK…
To be honest, the drive out wasn’t that bad. We did need first gear once or twice but somehow Maggie with her new tyres, new oil and new filters took it all in her stride. We popped over the far hill at 2 900 meters and started our steady cruise to the town of Bahir Dar. We paused briefly in Debre Markos for a local lunch and started heading though massive fields of Teff, the stuff used to produce the Injera we had feasting on for weeks. It was bizarrely interesting to see how the locals used a team of cattle, or horses to walk circles over the harvested crops to separate the seeds from the rest and how they would then manually toss these heaps into the air to separate them even more. We saw whole families at work in the fields and small children playing on abandoned tanks in the fields. We saw donkey carts loaded two to three stories high with hey and straw and finally, as the sun was giving up on yet another day in the mountains, we reached the city of Bahir Dar.
It was not a boring city by any means and the area had a lot to offer, but for us, with our time scale, it was not a destination. It was merely a stop over. We found the one place that offered camping, the Ghion Hotel, paid a reasonable fee and commenced operation “car park camping” We found a suitable place to hide Maggie between some buildings and pitched our very own roof top palace of a tent for the first time in more than a week! We made our own food for the first time in a while and relaxed by the side of the vehicle that had done us so proud in the eight and a half months we had been on the road. We went to bed early, shattered from a nine hour drive but happy to be on the road again!
If I had to do it again:
It was a difficult week with admin issues of corrupt hard drives and pathetic financial institutions. We are yet to find a solution to our little problem of not being able to access our money, and I will be sure to write about when we do. In perfect hindsight it is easy to say that we made a mistake by opening bank accounts in Catt’s name as she was not a South African Resident at the time. However, we were assured by our expert personal banker that it would not be an issue.
The travel and vehicle part of our week was easy and fantastic. I am finally getting a grip on this country and there are days that I am even enjoying it a little bit. I still wake up every morning with a fresh head and a determination to find the good in the place and Catt still defends the people who piss me off every day. What I can say is this: Ethiopia is not a country you can explore in the time that we have available. We need another two months to be able to see and do what we both would like to.
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