Donkeys, Dust and Goat Chops with Spiced Tea in Sudan

We were up and loaded into local minivans for the drive up to the mountains from Gondar, for our morning of trekking, after an hours drive on dusty roads we arrived and were quickly surrounded by local villagers. We hiked through some spectacular scenery, clinging to the sides of mountains with little foliage to stop us should we slip. We were lucky to see some Columbus monkeys, which reminded us of the black and white ruffled lemurs in Madagascar. These monkeys were jumping down from trees to the ground, about 20 meters! Then running to the next tree! The 10 of us were soon walking with about 50 local people, many of these young kids with the sole aim of earning a tip from helping the ‘white people’ over the terrain that they were just not designed to! Honestly I was getting a bit huffy at being dragged up slopes that I could easily managed by myself, I was thinking “I am white, but I know how to walk!” We sat and watched baboons running in the distance and strolled through young kid’s herding goats and cows. The scenery was spectacular; I am still amazed at the landscape of Ethiopia, mountainous, green and rocky in some areas with incredibly abrupt cliffs and escarpments. We returned back to the vans and were surrounded by our initial ‘friends’ and then some more! On the drive back our driver seemed intent on sitting right behind the other van making us breath dust for an hour, we had thought that he didn’t speak English, but after a couple of comments between ourselves about the dust he dropped off slightly.

Spencer and I headed back to our favourite cafe for lunch, today it was fruit punch; layers of mango, avocado, papaya and strawberry juice, so thick that the straw was useless and the spoon was the instrument of choice! Followed by a soft drink (it was hot walking) followed by chips and tomato salad, this seemed incredibly light on tomato and incredibly heavy on onion and chilli. After I had put all of this into my stomach I forced a tiramisu in for good measure and waddled out, not before watching a 1990’s episode of friends which has some weird ass stuff happening to the voices!

From there he hired tuk-tuks to the Dashen brewery for our free brewery tour, we were very excited, but this didn’t last long, brewery tours don’t run on Sundays! After talking kindly to the lady we were able to meet the manager, who organised for a staff member to come out from town to conduct the tour. As the staff member had to be summoned there was a delay and time to be filled, in the bar, in the form of two 3lt beer towers between the 8 of us. When the tour started we were told that our cameras would need to be ‘minded’ by the security. As I have a huge mistrust of security guards of any description in any country I offered to stay at the bar with all the cameras, (there was some serious camera gear, too serious to be left with any security guard, especially at a brewery!) I had two beers and had acquired three Ethiopian ‘friends’ by the time everyone else returned from the tour, I was also quite on my way to being drunk.  We were intent on drinking our remaining Ethiopian Birr before crossing the border into Sudan the next day, this occurred easily! We had a great night with good conversation and company in a fantastic beer garden, which you just wouldn’t expect to find anywhere outside of a capital city of a developed country!

The following morning was a world of hurt and pain for me and a few others, bendy and bumpy roads in the heat and about three hours at the border are not fun on a hang-over!

About thirty kilometres short of the Ethiopia – Sudan border we were pushed forward by the truck slowing down, then felt two bumps as the back wheels went over something. A few of the blokes stuck their heads out to see a fully grown goat and a younger goat go under the wheels of the truck, two days later they were still talking about how the mother goat’s stomach split from the impact and a baby goat popped out. I was never so glad that I didn’t look out the side of the truck, I quite like goats, but they are not so smart...as these two proved, they just didn’t move off the road even though that had a 18t truck bearing down on them with the air horn screaming!

We didn’t think that would be the end of the goat issue, we stopped for lunch just before the border as Spencer and I came back to the truck we saw Mark sitting in the cab arguing with some police officers with the crowd of locals swelling by the minute. The farmer had gone straight to the cops and they had followed us down the road. Initially they wanted $300 USD as compensation for the goats; he eventually got this down to $50 USD per goat, we were not sure if the baby goat was counted as a third goat or not. As the police were not going to let us out of Ethiopia, the fine was paid.  The cops get about half of the money for their troubles and the farmer gets the rest. Mark was unable to make the police officers understand that had he smashed on the brakes that we would have been seriously hurt in the back as there are no seatbelts, he asked the police officers if the farmer would have paid him had one of us been hurt in avoiding the goats! The ‘food group’ (people cooking that nights dinner) felt that for $100 USD we should have been able to keep the carcasses, they were well tenderised!

We have no problems at all exiting Ethiopia, no forms to fill out, just a ½ hour wait in the emigration office, (which was air conditioned, much to everyone’s delight!) then we walk over the border to the Sudan side. Again a very loose border, I believe that you would have little issue in strolling through without the official documentation, however I am sure I would not want to be caught trying it! First stop over the border is the money changer, not the official one, just one in a mud and dung hut, but he was offering such a rate that there was no bartering required! We were under the impression that we had to pay for our registration in Sudan at the border; however we later found out that we now pay in the capital Khartoum (equivalent of $50 USD, so the officials can look after us whilst in the country).  Next stop was a ‘bunnings’ style garden shed to get out passports bio and visa page photocopied, after waiting for this we take on the immigration office, standing by the desk in some form of line, not knowing where we need to stand, if there is a line, or what the process is! There are about 30 odd locals waiting patiently in chairs, we were served ahead of them, not sure if it was just so the official could clear away the mass of foreigners from his desk! So after making some form of a line, out passports and photocopies are requested and looked at, then a form stapled to it, we fill out the form and line up again to hand it back, then they are shuffled left, shuffled right, then left again before being stamped three times, “bang, bang, bang” (must be the most enjoyable part of the day for a border official!) And we are told to go to customs. Finding customs was not as easy as we assumed it would be, it was a hundred meters up the road, in a wire mesh building with absolutely no signage, there were hotels and shops and I think a jail between the two buildings.  I tried to walk into every building between the two! Once there we wait and answer our names etc etc then we are free to go. Back in the truck we realise that we are going nowhere fast, the truck’s engine number could not be found, despite a large crowd of officials, passengers and onlookers surrounding the upturned cab! Four hours after arriving at the border and after phone calls to Tanzania, we were off, but not before I had wandered into the streets behind the border in search of bananas, a friendly local shopkeeper assigned a guide to show me where to buy them (no payment required, he wouldn’t even accept a banana!) I looked at a table and wondered what all the black lumpy stuff on it was, and then a kid waved his arm over the black mass which was moving to show that the whole table was covered in offal and meat cuts which were swarmed with flies! (I was super glad that I don’t eat land animals at this time, and there was not a fish in sight!)

It was amazing to see that after the border crossing the land changed dramatically again, we bid farewell to the hills and green scenery of Ethiopia and hello to dusty and sandy plains. We bush camped very close to the highway, I was surprised at the amount of traffic all night, many fuel tankers, busses and other trucks rolling along for most of the night and the occasional traditionally dressed man on a motorbike with robes flowing behind!. Just before dinner a local farmer herded his cattle through camp, and again the next morning after breakfast.

We all slept with the rain covers off the tents as it was very warm, I didn’t even take my sleeping bag off the truck (it’s infested with something still anyway, but more about that later) About five in the morning it started getting light, I was dozing and heard someone walk through camp, just assuming that it was one of our fellow travellers, they almost walked into our tent and I heard a ‘ohh’ sort of sound, then I noticed that there was no zipper sound of someone crawling back into a tent and realised that it must have been a local quite surprised to find a bunch of campers in his grazing area. I was telling someone else this on the truck the next day; she confirmed a strange being near out tent as she was camped next to us.

This was also the site of some of the worst ‘tentering’ (a word Spencer made up when tongue tied, whilst trying to make out that he was more experienced at putting up tents and therefore better, than I, and we all know that’s just not true!) So that night I go to crawl into bed and there is something under the tent, it’s sitting up at least 20 cm on my side of the tent (yes we have his and hers sides of the tent (now called ‘territories own”) So I ask what it is, to hear “must be grass”..hmm, there is f&*k sweet all grass around here, just thorns and those ‘bindi’ type prickles that go straight through the soles of most footwear! So I punch the object, it hurts my hand, but feels spiky and I announce that it was a hedgehog...not cool, apparently (yes, I was joking! There are about as many hedgehogs in Sudan as there are tigers in Africa!). So I get my clothes back on and get out to lift the tent to find a rock that was the size of a football under my side of the tent! This gave everyone a bit of a giggle the next morning!

The next day just got hotter and hotter, peaking, officially at 39 degrees, a thermometer on the truck broke after hitting 50 degrees, at 8pm in Khartoum it was still 31 degrees, I log onto facebook to see that Megan is in Darwin wearing a ‘slopy joe’ and is freezing her ass off! The UK people are struggling and I was feeling like I was back in Darwin, the expected low was for 28 degrees!

To take photographs in Sudan you need a photography permit, if you are caught with a camera and don’t have this permit you are arrested. The only issue is that you can only get this permit in Khartoum, two days drive! There is nothing like seeing your first fully grown man in white flowing robes riding at full pace across the desert on a DONKEY! And not being able to snap a picture!

Drinking as also prohibited in Sudan (a few of the blokes on the truck are a bit happy about this after two weeks worth of 25 cent beer indulgence in Ethiopia!), if you are caught with alcohol you are arrested, the truck can be stopped anywhere are searched. We were stopped at a number of checkpoints during the day, the first one the official was standing beside the truck shouting ‘passports’ at us, he didn’t even appear to wear a uniform, after checking these closely we were away, our passports now in the cab to speed the process up for the following checkpoints, I think we passed about 10 for the day, although they are a pain in the ass and slow you down, they are used to make sure that trucks etc get to where they are supposed to, on the west coast the police went looking for the truck after it failed to make it through the next checkpoint as they had made a bush camp for the night!

Before lunch my brand new hat (I’d literally worn it for a few hours ,seems the story of my life of late!) blew off my head and out the side of the truck, before I’d realised that it was out of the truck we were well down the road. The hat cost about 10 birr per hour of use that I had out of the thing! So disappointing though, I have been looking to buy a new hat since Cape Town, and finally found one that I liked, I’d only had it a day!

The people of Sudan are incredibly friendly, and seem truly pleased to see foreigners visiting their country. My arm is close to worn out after returning waves at adults, elderly and kids all eager to see us! Driving into Khartoum was interesting, we were hoping not for an accident to occur by one of the drivers straining to look up into the truck and not watching the road! When we stopped for falafel and spiced tea for lunch the spiced tea lady didn’t have change of a 10 pound note, the tea was one pound. A man nearby offered to pay for me (he was an old man, not a sleazy one!) saying “I pay for your tea as you are my guest in this country” As one pound is quite a bit of coin for the average Sudanese (and about 40 cents to us), I went and got some change and took it back, thanking him and shaking his hand, he laughed saying “you are very intent on paying!’. Spiced tea is delicious, so good that most of us were drinking it hot even in 40 degree heat!, I was planning a business venture for ‘iced spiced tea’ distribution, surely there is a market for it here!

Sudan has more of a Middle East feel to it than African, you see men in white flowing robes wandering through desert like surroundings, or riding on camels or on the back of a donkey that is pulling a crudely made water cart. Ladies covered from head to toe in dark coloured robes. Tuk-tuks are in abundance, and are also very abundantly decorated, I even saw one with the wheel caps like of grease (you know the ones that cut into the bodywork of the other car!) I think Sudan is going to take over from Ethiopia as my second favourite African country (Madagascar still sitting high at number one!)

We arrive in Khartoum to find that the “National Camping Residence” (who would have thought they would have such a thing?) was full and overflowing, so we move closer into the city to the Blue Nile Sailing Club, which feels like we have just pitched our tents in the Darwin Trailer Boat Club! (Instead of the ocean we have the convergence of the Blue and White Nile’s as out waterfront view!) The added bonus was a free, drinkable and COLD water fountain! Heaven! And free wifi internet, soon all laptops were out and discussion lulled as people stuck their heads into news from home, facebook, emails and other random tasks.

Khartoum is a very modern city by African standards, the outskirts of it put me in mind of how I imagine Dubai to be, lush golf courses and some flashy apartment blocks rise from desert like surroundings, having a city on the Nile means lots of irrigation water for crops. As oil was discovered about 10 years ago, there is a lot of ‘new’ money in Sudan; it will be interesting to see if the crime rate increases as the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ increases. We have felt safer in Sudan than any other African country, it’s hard to believe that it is listed by smart traveller as a ‘do not travel’ destination, most of the problem is in the south of Sudan, which we are not going to and centres on the south of Sudan wanting to become independent of the rest of Sudan, but as the oil is in the south, it’s not really in Sudan’s best interest to let the south ‘take the oil and run’. There is a referendum planned for early 2011, and violence is expected in the lead up to that, we will be out of Sudan in nine days time, well before the referendum. You can easily walk in the city without being hassled for money, so far I have only had three people ask for money in three days in Sudan, you would have three a minute in some other countries! Everyone that we meet just seems so genuinely friendly!

We found out that our house is still empty...gurgle, gurgle, gurgle of money down the drain! Although we did hear that two different people have put in application forms, so here’s hoping someone moves in soon, we dropped the rent by $40 a week, just to get anyone in the place!

The next morning some people headed off to the ‘Alien registration office’, no s^&t, that’s it’s official name!, it’s the office where you have to register if you are a foreigner in the country, and pay $50USD! I went along with the food group to find the supermarket, a magical mystery tour in its own right. Khartoum is a city with quite obvious ‘new’ money, lots of electrical shops and mobile phone shops, but nothing that even resembled a supermarket. We asked lots and lots of people for directions, each one a contradiction of the other, until we found an American girl who was happy to walk us to a local market. Whilst the food people bartered for bread and vegetables myself and Jules sat down on mini stools with a man peeling onions, they put the vegetables on the sales stands pre-peeled, he told us that they sell better that way as they look better, it is also common practice to cut the bottoms off carrots, but not the tops. The man tells us that he has been to Australia to play football! Two white women sitting without our heads covered in the market in Khartoum attracted quite a bit of attention from the surrounding people! From there we went to source falafel, 144 pieces for 12 Sudanese pound, or around $5 AUD, after looking at the falafel through the barter process we decided to have lunch there, it was so delicious that we went back and ordered the same again! From there we took our bags of food and tried to find a taxi who knew where the Blue Nile sailing club was, we had read that the taxi drivers here didn’t know where anything was, it was spot on. With us directing him we push our way through intersections with 40 odd eggs loose on a tray balanced on Ish’s lap, with cars coming at us from all directions! Spencer and a couple of the blokes went for a swim in the ‘club’ next door to where we are staying, the man demanded to know how they knew there was a pool at the place, then charged 10 pounds and hour for swimming, so $4 each hour! Females are not allowed to swim, no even fully clothed! (Not happy Jan!) So I am sitting here in my long pants drinking copious amounts of water with all the other females.

And I’ll just finish with a Sudanese toilet story...(just for s&*ts and giggles) So I was squatting happily behind a nice small tree on the side of the road, feeling a million miles away from civilisation and about a hundred meters away from my travelling companions, just taking my time and enjoying the scenery, when I hear singing and hooves and before I can move anywhere a man rides past on his donkey, singing at the top of his lungs with his white robes flowing behind him! (Only in Sudan!)

Oops! Forgot about the bed bug infestation that has taken over the truck...the communal blankets that travel on the beach have been binned, the cushions etc were all taken out and sprayed, we have strict instructions from Mark to wash our sleeping gear and clothes whilst in Khartoum, people with down sleeping bags were just not keen for this and put them in a black plastic bag in the 40 degree sun to kill any unwanted visitors!, one casualty of the de-bugging was a sleeping bag was ‘accidentally’ thrown out by the staff here, quite ironic that is the US citizen who they were originally not going to let into Sudan! Searching high and low did not produce the sleeping bag!

Insight into Ethiopia....

After a day in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia we are convinced that ‘Addis’ is a very different African city in most respects, in terms of internet though...same old, same old! We dedicate our first day in town to our basic errands, this means the following ‘fun’ chores; 1. Get cranky at the bastard who stole our laptop in South Africa with all my photography programs on it whilst I download my photos using a substandard version of a program whilst listening to Spencer side with the computer and tell me ‘it’s not the computer it’s too many photos’ and that ‘I didn’t really like the other computer anyway’....2. Get a sore back whilst leaning over on an impossible angle to scrub ingrained dust from our clothing...3. Find an internet place where I can use my computer 4. Find an internet place where I can use my own computer and it won’t take me until the year 2020 to upload photos...4.  Crack the craps with the slow internet connection whilst trying to upload photos, again blame the bastard who stole the computer with the program for reducing the resolution of photos! 5. Get cranky at the internet bloke as surely it is somehow his fault that African internet is as slow as glacial movement 6. Upload detailed account of our adventures onto my blog, not at all easy in Ethiopia as it appears that blog sites are blocked, yeah you can upload the blog, but you cannot check that it’s actually there, thanks Megs for being a ‘night owl’ and being the only person online to check it from Australia and message me to tell me it’s all OK! 7. Umm and arrr over purchasing a new pair of jeans or a hat...but buy nothing as they are not ‘like my old ones’ get cranky at the low life bastard that has my favourite hat and jeans!

So we set off on foot, the first walking we have done since Uganda and the first African city walking we have done since Cape Town. I have my money belt hidden inside my undies and pants and am keeping a close eye on Spencers backpack and make him tie up the waist strap, he usually calls me a ‘loser’ or ‘safety sam’ when I make these requests, but hearing more and more stories he is just accepting of my paranoia these days. Safety Sam’s safe tenting in Africa tips; 1. Purchase a sleeping bag with a valuables pocket built in, use this for passport, cash and external hard drive of photos, if all of these things don’t fit, put them in your money belt (no Safety Sam would be caught without one) and tie it to the inside of your sleeping bag near your feet, then sleep IN your sleeping bag! 2. Tie all daypacks together and clip them to a noisy plastic bag, have these located as close to you in the tent as possible, best to have them located in the middle of the tent 3. Ensure limited people see you actually put your pack in your tent before bed 4. Clip your conglomeration of day packs and noisy plastic bags to the zipper of your sleeping bag zipper so that if someone is to slash your tent they have to steal all the bags and sleeping bag with you in it to get at your things....err, I know this goes against my ‘newfound’ principals of spreading your gear out so that if someone is to steal it they just pick and choose the good stuff and leave you with all the worthless gear (to them, but all the mementos that you actually really wanted to keep!)

But anyways, back to the walking, so after the first internet cafe failed to deliver the goods, or actually download a page in 19 minutes we headed off through the wood sales area, along a new freeway and found a modern shopping centre, after spying a bakery we decided that we were in fact hungry, but after walking into the bakery we decided that a crusty bread roll was not for us! We headed upstairs and had a three course lunch of salad, fish and vegies (me), veggie burger (Spencer) and tiramisu (me) and Éclair with hot chocolate (Spencer) all under $8AUD, and good food! There has been a lot of talk on the truck of all the starving Ethiopian jokes of our childhood ‘have you ever tasted Ethiopian food?’, ‘no’, ‘neither have they’ and of course the old Ethiopian in a stack hat joke, well they are really far off the mark, Ethiopian food is really good and in the south it is in abundant supply at ridiculously cheap prices, you can buy four whole chooks for around $7AUD, and they throw in a free chook filleting knife (but wait there’s more!, you get a free plastic bag to keep the chooks in on the truck, until you get to camp, pluck, skin and chop the poor things)

In the shopping centre I had a small ‘language difficulty problem’ associated with the toilet (I know, I know, it’s always SOMETHING to do with a toilet...honestly when someone invents something to stop all bladder and bowel movements for the term of travel in Africa, African travel will become so much easier!) I had been desperate for the toilet as the ones in the campground are pretty close to unusable, and that’s saying a whole lot. There was something wrong with the plumbing so you had to bucket the water from outside, into the smallest cubicles (honestly you hit your knees on the rusted through, holey metal doors) and even with litres and litres of water a decent African style traveller’s liquid poo will not disappear! Hence all of the solid ones are still floating about...worst still, as the plumbing is so bad toilet paper is not to go in the bowl, it goes in a bin beside it, so you are sitting beside an open waste basket with everyone else’s poo streaked poo tickets staring at you, and the smell! Pheww! And that’s not starting on the mess that is the squat toilet! Men’s and women’s toilets are together and the smell can be experienced from quite a distance away...this was how it was that I ended up in the shopping centre in dire need of a loo. So I first go to walk into the men’s, then realise when I hear a lady say something to me in Arhabic... all good, me thinks, so I head to the females a short distance away, the kind lady is still saying something to me in Arhabic...I don’t speak one word of it, (hey I haven’t even been in the city 24 hours) so I assume she is just telling me that I am now in the right place, I start to open the door and realise that she is still talking...hmmm, have the door open by now she is standing up and walking fast towards me, wondering what she wants and figuring I have to pay for the toilet before I use it I stand there stupidly with the door open, then to my absolute astonishment I hear a voice from inside! A lady was in there washing her butt and I had the door opened for everyone passing by in the shopping centre to see in, the kind lady closed the door and I realised that she had actually been saying ‘there’s someone in there’ in English that accented that I hadn’t recognised it! My facial expressions and ‘mybad’ style of head hanging did bring a chuckle out of the lady, I scurried away and luckily found another toilet nearby...and just for your amusement, I started to walk into the men’s before I was quickly corrected!

As I’ve said Ethiopia is different, so is how they tell the time, when the sun rises it is 12 o’clock, one hour after sun rise it is 1 o’clock so on, the sun sets at 12 o’clock, (6 o’clock normal time), after it has been dark for one hour it is 1 o’clock. How do you tell 1 o’clock from 1 o’clock, from the other 1 o’clock (yeah there are three 1 o’clocks everyday in Ethiopia) you use ‘in the morning’, ‘evening’ or ‘night’ to distinguish between them! But if you thought that was confusing...the dates are also different, Ethiopia has 12 months of 30 days and a 13^th month of either five or six days, so the outcome of this is that Ethiopia is 7 ½ years behind normal calendars, making it 21/4/2003, making me 23 ½ years old...hmm shame my appearance didn’t change back 7 ½ years as I crossed the border!

We took a taxi into the city to check out St George cathedral, we walked in and I started taking photos, I got three or four off before a man came over and told me that I wasn’t allowed, glad that he didn’t insist on deleting the photos. We were then channelled into the St Georges museum, defiantly no photos allowed there either. There was some pretty old and amazing gear in there, an array of artefacts of the emperor era and the Christian church, old emperor clothing, paintings which needed a good clean and to be put behind glass, old crowns, umbrellas, the man who took us through the museum kept talking about ‘utopia’ and asking if I had seen ‘Utopia’ food places in Australia...it took me most of the tour until I realised that he was actually saying ‘Ethiopia!’, from there we were urged to climb the narrow and winding stairs to see the bell tower, thinking I would get a good view out, I took on the stairs with no handrails to be greeted at the top by four enclosed sides but the biggest bell I have ever seen, about 1m in diameter, my thoughts at that moment were dedicated to ‘just how well is the bell attached to the tower?’ We were then led into the St Georges cathedral, shoes off and seated amongst a procession of bell ringing and humming and drumming of a procession, not being great on religion facts, I am not sure of the name of this procession, but do know that it was a great experience to see. We headed into the centre of the cathedral to view some of the most amazing wall murals I have ever seen (sorry I do realise that I keep saying “the best I have ever seen!” all the way through Africa!, but so true!) even Spencer was impressed at these murals, I was surprised to be allowed to photograph the murals and the inside of the cathedral, although most photos were off the inconspicuous ‘little camera’ the attention drawing ‘big camera’ only came out for a couple of pics!

From there we started the walk to the Ethnological Museum; I completely blame Lonely Planets dodgy maps for my geographical embarrassment, after walking for about 5 minutes I realised that I was in trouble, after an hour I had to admit defeat! We did see some great sights during our walk and defiantly saw parts of Addis Ababa that very few tourists see, we stumbled across the Merkato market, and had a stroll through it, quite glad that Ethiopian touts are not as advanced as other places and will actually listen to ‘no’. After realising that we had walked in the complete opposite direction than we should have from St Georges I insisted that we jump in a taxi to get to the ethnological museum as an ‘easy way out’ ha ha, nothing is easy in Africa! The first taxi driver that we spoke to had no idea what we were talking about, I showed him lonely planet and said the name and address several times, (the chinese remade all the street signs in Addis and stuffed them all up, so maps don’t match the signs!) he still did not understand and by this time we have about 50 people standing around us watching the ‘foreigners’, we walk a little further up the road, followed by roughly 50% of the audience and find another taxi, this time there is a man nearby who is able to tell our driver the location we want to go....Our intended address was ‘lost in translation’ somewhere between our departure point and the National Museum of Ethiopia, no energy left for taxis or trying to communicate in Arhabic of ‘Arhabenglish’ we settled for the National Museum, which was really enjoyable. We viewed the bones of ‘Lucy’ a 3.2 million year old fossil of a hominoid discovered in 1974, which stood upright so is believed to be the oldest relative of mankind. There was a great array of exhibits, however little to no interpretation of what they were, we were able to take photos of all the exhibits, which again surprised me, Ethiopia appears to have a hot or cold approach to photography! After we finished there we headed across the road for lunch, I cracked the crankies at Spencer and blamed him for me ending up with a non-impressive pasta, it was his advice of ‘just pay the extra 5 birr (33 cents) and get the vegetable pasta’ I just wanted tomato and was just going to order the plain tomato, but assumed that the vegies would be in a tomato sauce...no, just dry looking pasta and vegies, but I didn’t admit to him that it actually tasted better than it looked, he however ate the last half and quite enjoyed it! Next cranky moment came when my long awaited strawberry juice arrived, in a shot glass! With a huge straw! I looked at it with disgust and immediately ordered a coke to go with it, then started about bitching and whinging about someone charging 18 birr (about 1.20 AUD) for a shot of juice when a glass bottle of soft drink was 5 birr (40 odd cents), Spencer tells me ‘well you had to know that it wasn’t going to be very big, have you seen strawberries growing anywhere, they must cost a lot, that’s why the drink is so little’, so I slowly sip my juice and get even crankier as it was absolutely delicious and I would have liked for than 20ml of the gear....then 15 minutes later I am brought a large glass of the said strawberry juice! The ‘shot’ turned out to be a ‘taste test!’ the lady waiter must have though me strange to sip the taste test so slowly!

Whilst we were eating local kids tried to sell us chewing gum, taxi and other unwanted items that we didn’t hear what they were, but knew we didn’t need. I was shocked at the amount of kids selling on the streets, and then realised that it was a Saturday, however after consulting the local school statistics I realised that there would probably be as many kids selling gum on a Monday. Only 52% of kids attend primary school and only 12% attend secondary school, hence only 38% of Ethiopians are literate (I do wonder just how many words you must be able to spell and read to be considered ‘literate’) If all kids attended school the workforce would be cut by about half, many families put their kids to work in the fields rather than school. Kids, women and donkeys work hard here, you see women walking miles and miles with huge loads of firewood on their backs, just tied up with rope and sat on their backs, they have to slouch and hunch to keep the wood in place, apparently most loads are around 35kg. It is far too common to see young kids herding cattle, goats, or ugly sheep (I have named ‘Shoats’ as they look like a goat got in with a sheep), sometimes the cows are higher than the kids leading them along the roads, you also see kids carrying impossible loads, if kids in Australia were seen doing such there would be quite a few questions the parents would have to answer! If I ever come back into this world again, I hope that it is not as a donkey in Ethiopia. They are worked and worked and worked and then worked some more, you see them with massive loads of firewood, some loads that would look ridiculously big on the back of a truck, and the donkeys just have to walk along getting belted with a stick because they are not going fast enough! In the rural areas much of the transport is using donkeys, or if you are ‘well off’ you may have a horse, the donkeys are used with wagons to carry families and gear and another stragglers...poor donkeys...and they are such nice looking donkeys too, grey with a white nose and white knees and a black stripe down their shoulder, if I could get an African donkey back into Australia I would save one and start the Bandy Donkey Sanctuary....

We left Addis and dropped into the Great Rift Valley again, at the top of the escarpment it was so cold that I was wearing thermals, polofleece and a maasai blanket (I had thought the Maasai blanket would get a run on the truck as some stage, but didn’t think it would have it’s maiden voyage in Ethiopia!, we were at  about 3000m asl then we dropped about 1000m and the temperature increased by about 10 degrees, t-shirt weather. We then began the climb back up, blanket came back out! Everyone’s cameras were firing as we crossed the blue Nile gorge, it was such a great view down and up that it was worth the cold of having the canvas sides rolled up! But honestly the countryside of Ethiopia is nothing like what you expect, it is green, lush with terraced crops on every available plot...nothing like the image that comes to mind when one says Ethiopia!

We stopped for lunch after climbing back out of the great rift, the menu was all in arhabic and there was little to no English spoken. Nobody seemed to get the right order; I didn’t get mine at all, until I pointed at someone’s egg and bread and made a sign for ‘1’. Spencer ordered the traditional Ethiopian injera, which is a flat bread of a weird texture (like tripe) served with 6-8 dips on it. He asked for it with no meat, I was not confident that this was understood. It came out with one meat pile on it, best avoided. I liked the look of the goats cheese and tomato relish type concoction so I gave my egg coated with curry sauce a rest and dug into the tomato looking gear...and didn’t think at the time that it was all that bad....a couple of minutes later someone pointed out that the tomato concoction was actually raw meat! Urghh! Much to the amusement of everyone else! I completely blame one of our travelling companions who had said previously “maybe today is the day you stop being a vegetarian” ha ha, usually I can taste meat, but I think the whole raw factor disguised the whole situation, plus it was laced with chilli, even the meat eaters took a while to decide what it was, the waiter confirmed it. Now I fear that I will have a massive tapeworm as excess luggage when I arrive back in Australia!

We arrived at our ‘hotel’ at Debre Markos to hear that our tents were not required as we had rooms for the night (and the sign said ‘deluxe rooms’)!...not excited for too long, it’s two people to a bed or sleep on the truck....I was thinking the truck seemed like a better option, expecting single beds (Spencer and I have rouble sharing a queen sometimes!) The rooms are basic, basic, and dirty..I took the risk of infesting my sleeping bag with bed bugs instead of lying on the sheets; the power point was hanging from the wall. The shared toilets are horrendous, I never conclusively found out who the ‘poo smearer’ was but I have tracked them down to residing in Ethiopia! There is like 200 poo smears on the wall of each toilet! The rooms with ensuites had a hole in the floor for the toilet, which doubled as a shower drain....so to flush the toilet you have to turn on the shower....non slip footwear essential in the shower! We didn’t have an ensuite, which I was thankful for as others said that the rooms just smelt of s^&t, however at midnight when I had to get dressed and take on the poo smearers artwork again, I was thinking the smell may have not been that bad. Figuring that anyone smearing poo on the wall had to open the door to exit the toilet I took my chances and left the door of the unisex toilets open, figuring that a little embarrassment was better than touching a poo coated door handle! The following morning I was packing up my sleeping bag and has put my head torch on instead of turning on the light (and no, it wasn’t a fear of touching the power point which was hanging out of the wall) it was just that there were so few signs of ‘luxury’ in our ‘deluxe’ room that I though I was in the tent (and would have preferred to have been in the tent!)

We headed into town for a look and found a pub with a TV (big thing here) and showing the soccer, so we piled in, realizing quickly that I was the only female in the place...apparently only ‘loose females’ would be seen in a bar in Ethiopia, from the looks on a few of the blokes faces, I figured that this was true! I broke my beer ban, no true Australian can turn down a beer in a pub with hay on the floor when it is 3.50birr (20 cents Aussie!) I figured that on a day when I ate raw cow I deserved a couple of beers! The soft drink was 8 birr, so over twice the price of beer, love this country! (after a day of eating two lunches with beer and soft drink, about 10 beers between us and snacks and 4 rolls of toilet paper, Spencer added up that we had spent $9 AUD!) Really love this country! After a stint on ‘truck security’, sitting on the truck as it could not be driven over the dodgy bridge and into the yard, We headed inside for a meal, then off to bed. Not surprisingly the beds had either bed bugs or fleas, which were driving me mad by 11, it was a long night! The bed had once had a foam mattress, however it was so old that the middle of the bed just rested straight onto the bed base, the accommodation charge was 20 birr, so about $1.20 Aussie dollars, so we just figured that the bed bugs were complementary!

I had another Laruim fuelled dream that night, not any more weird than usual, but the larium makes the dreams feel like reality. Usually, when I dream I am aware that I am dreaming, but with the larium dreams, I am usually surprised to wake up alive! In this dream I was in Ethiopia (true) and I went to a pub (also true) and I drank a beer (true too), but in my dream women are not supposed to drink beer and I was arrested and charged and was going to be beheaded! The Australian embassy laughed at me and said they couldn’t help, I was begging saying “all I did was drink a beer, I don’t think death is a fair punishment!”, then I started banging my head on the wall and screaming it seemed so real that I coule even feel my head banging into the wall. Then they were making me kneel down so that they could behead me with an axe type thing on a 8ft pole and I (thankfully) woke up...to my reality of bedbugs and fleas biting! Love Africa! Every moment is an adventure! But on the serious side of life, I am getting off the Larium (used as a malaria medication) after next week, there is little to no malaria from here on in and I will get my fix of adventure from the movies not my own subconscious.

The following morning there was a crime committed on the truck, a very, very serious crime. My roll of toilet paper was stolen....not sure if the person responsible was the same individual responsible for the poo smears in the toilets...hmmm...possible...but honestly what type of low life steals a brand new roll of toilet paper? You would have to be an assole (pardon the pun!)...... But I am onto the ‘poo cloos’ again, there were only three people in and out of the truck in the time the poo tickets were nicked...one I discounted immediately, the other two will have their bog roll examined without their knowledge...it was a special roll, not found in many places, so very traceable! And after that comes revenge!

I spent that driving day sitting in the sleeper section of the cab, the drive is a lot smoother and quieter (you cannot hear the kids yelling ‘you, you, you, gie me money’) but you can see the traffic and that is a problem, I much prefer not to see trucks coming straight at me on my side of the road, we arrived in Bahir Dar on Lake Tana, we are back to camping, but as camping is no big pastime in Ethiopia there are no real campsites set up, we are camped in the grounds of a hotel, our bathroom is simply a room set aside that we have the key for that we use the bathroom. I have not had a proper shower since Nairobi, so am looking forward to a decent scrub! Tomorrow we head up to Lalibela, a seven or eight hour drive for 300km, the truck and many peole on it stay here, this is an additional trip off the truck, then we return and meet the truck again here.

And finally, sorry about the addition of advertisements to this blog site, hopefully it does not affect your viewing (I cannot actually view the blog from here as blog sites are blocked in Ethiopia) Anyways, the advertising may earn me a small pittance for my effort, so tell your friends and hit on the site often. With robberies, hospital visits and a distinct lack of a regular wage (or tenants in our house) we need all the money we can get, even if that comes from ‘selling out’ for the advertising dollar!