We were allowed to continue the journey, but one of the soldiers got on the bus and stayed with us until we reached Moyale. Why, I never knew and, without a common language, there was no one I could ask. The old lady and child had left the bus at Marsabit, and the Masai man got off even earlier.
Twenty-one hours after leaving Nairobi we reached Moyale, where the unbelievable happened. Instead of going to the bus rank, the bus with all its passengers was directed to the police station. From what I could gather from my extremely limited understanding of what was being said, it had to do with the assistant driver having been allowed to ride on top of the bus.
While the driver and his two remaining assistants went to negotiate with the police, the passengers were instructed to stay put. Two policemen ensured that no one moved. We baked in that bus for about an hour before the driver and his assistant returned and the bus was at last allowed to move to the bus rank, which was within walking distance of the Ethiopian border.
I waited for my backpack to be offloaded, amid youngsters with wheelbarrows who were eagerly offering their services, no doubt to carry my luggage. While these young boys were trying to get my attention, a young man, more or less my age, came to introduce himself, to my great relief in English. ‘My name is Fucking but my friends call me FK,’ he told me with a straight face.
‘OK, I will call you FK,’ I said, blushing.
‘I’ll help you through customs.’
I thanked him, pleased that there was someone who could speak English and because, being older, he looked more trustworthy. I carried my backpack as we walked to the Ethiopian border, while FK carried my jacket. As at the Tanzanian border, there were about six youngsters walking next to me, none of them saying a word, just staring at me.
Before the immigration official stamped me out of Kenya, he looked at me and asked,‘How is Thabo Mbeki?’
That was another first for me. ‘I am sure he is fine,’ I replied.
After I was stamped out, I had to go to a customs official who searched my bag thoroughly.
On the Ethiopian side things were somewhat more complex, but at least FK was around and he was clearly clued up on process and procedure.
To the two waiters in Nairobi who saved me from the Mike Tyson look-alike: Asante sana, thank you very much.
Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia
Father of the Nation
Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is one of the oldest nations in the world. It claims to be ‘the only African country that has never been colonised’. (Ethiopians discount the bumbling five-year military occupation of their country by Italy from 1936 to 1941.) The only contestant, Liberia, although always independent, was founded by African-American slaves.
Ethiopia’s last emperor, Lij (literally ‘child’, a term usually bestowed upon nobility) Tafari Makonnen, known to the world as Haile Selassie I, came from a royal line that is traced 3 000 years back to the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. He inherited his imperial blood through his paternal grandmother, Princess Tenagnework Sahle Selassie, who was an aunt of Emperor Menelik II, said to be a direct descendant of the Queen of Sheba. Emperor of Ethiopia for over 40 years (1930–1974), Haile Selassie spent the five years of Italian occupation in exile in England. When ousted by the Derg, a committee of military officers, he was 82 years old.
Under the leadership of Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Derg ruled Ethiopia for 17 years. Mengistu was tried in absentia in 2006 and sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in a campaign in 1977–1978 in which more than a million people were killed. After rebel forces toppled the Derg, Ethiopia’s current president, Meles Zenawi, became interim president and, in 1995, prime minister.
Ethiopia, historically also known as Abyssinia, is the second most populous country in Africa – with only 70 people per square kilometre. It is the second oldest Christian country in the world, having converted officially to Christianity in 4 AD. Although his name is commonly associated with the Rastafarian movement, among whose followers he is known as God Incarnate, Haile Selassie himself was a devout Christian.
After checking my visa, the two gentlemen standing outside the Ethiopian customs office instructed me to leave my backpack behind and go to the immigration office, which was about 100 metres from the customs office. FK assured me that my bag would be safe. On the way to the immigration office, we encountered three incutras, who wanted to change money. I knew I had to buy some Ethiopian birr, but I totally ignored them because at that moment all my energies were focused on dealing with the bureaucracy.
The immigration official was not fluent in English and FK had to act as interpreter. He asked me basic questions like: why was I visiting Ethiopia, for how long was I going to stay, etc. Once I was stamped into the country I had to go back to the customs office, where I was ordered to go to another office across the road. There I had to fill in the entrance register. Once that was done, I was officially in Ethiopia.
The first surprise was that cars in Ethiopia drive on the wrong side of the road. Excuse my ignorance, but I had thought that all of Africa drove on the left, British style. I wondered whether Ethiopians had driven on the left or the right before the Italians arrived in 1936.
The two towns on either side of the border are both called Moyale and the inhabitants of both looked equally rough and ready for war. Freshly arrived in their territory, I received that ‘what-do-you-wanthere’ type of look from some guys on the Ethiopian side. FK excepted, the way the Ethiopians stared at me did not make me feel welcome in their country. For the first time on the trip I felt strongly conscious of being different: although an African in Africa, I was sticking out like a sore thumb.
FK told me he could show me a comfortable place to spend the night. ‘That lodge is mostly used by businesspeople,’ he assured me as we walked towards it, followed by about seven guys, all incutras. Having tried unsuccessfully to obtain Ethiopian birr in Nairobi, I decided to use the most decent-looking of the seven, who were all insisting that I change money with them. As I had an idea of the official exchange rate, the transaction on the side of the road went relatively smoothly.
Checking in at the lodge – which looked more like a humble rural school than a place for businessmen – I realised that the businesspeople FK was talking about were hawkers who bought clothes in Nairobi and sold them in Addis Ababa. The lodge, which was crawling with guests, had a number of tiny rooms joined to each other in an L-shape. In the courtyard were three showers for common use. Considering the number of hawkers and the size of the lodge, I was convinced that there must have been five or more hawkers to a room.
After a cold, trickling shower in the courtyard I tried to have my first meal of the day in a shop next to the lodge, which, according to FK, sold ‘very tasty Ethiopian food called injera’. This looked like pizza but with a very soft and flexible pancake as the base. The topping seemed to be a mixture of minced meat and vegetables.
Since my last meal had been in Nairobi, about 26 hours earlier, my first bite of injera was huge. I am not sure what I expected, but I could not force myself to swallow even that first bite. It tasted like raw flour mixed with a concoction of vegetables that had been boiled in overused oil. I am not a fussy person, but injera proved to be too much for me. FK ended up eating first his portion and then polishing off mine, delighted that I had passed it on to him, almost untouched. Then FK and I parted ways.
On my way back to the lodge I met Bajir, the incutra from whom I got my birr earlier. As he could speak a smattering of English we agreed that he would accompany me to the bus station the following day – I had been warned earlier by a gentleman at the lodge’s reception desk against walking in the dark in Moyale. Since buses left very early in the morning, Bajir, unknown to him, was going to be my bodyguard.
Unable to eat injera, I returned to my room with an empty stomach. I sat on the bed, an ancient thing and the only piece of furniture in the room, with a splitting headache. I knew that I was really s
tressing and that the headache had as much to do with my last hour in Kenya baking in the bus as with my having had nothing to eat for more than a day, and the fact that I could not speak a word of Amharic, Ethiopia’s national language. That night, while sitting on the bed in that bleak room, I realised that the trip was beginning to take its toll on me. I was beginning to feel lonely. I missed my fiancée and daughter; it was three days since I last exchanged emails with home. I was hungry, the place was depressing and I did not know when I would be able to converse again with someone beyond the basics. I was also beginning to question seriously whether it had been a good decision in the first place to resign my job in order to undertake what had become a truly challenging journey. For the first time, sitting on that sagging bed, I wondered whether my ex-colleagues and friends had not been right when they accused me of having a screw loose in undertaking this journey with all it implied.
I had a terrible night. People knocked continually on my door. I had been warned, again by the gentleman at the reception desk, that I should not open my door to anyone. Mostly, he explained, the people who knocked on doors were touts who wanted to sell you a bus ticket at an inflated price.
Ethiopia is renowned for the early starting times of its long-distance buses. I had set my alarm for 04:00 so as to be ready in time for the next day’s 500-kilometre journey from Moyale to Shashamane (or Shashemene, as it is also called) in the north. As in Tanzania, there were two times: English and Amharic. Like Swahili time in Tanzania, 01:00 Amharic time was 07:00 English time. The bus was scheduled to leave at 11:00 Amharic time, which meant 05:00 English time.
I was just about to fall into a peaceful sleep when my alarm clock went off. Time to get ready for Bajir. I switched on the light but nothing happened. I tried again. Again, nothing happened. I tried for the third time and still there was no light.
In a state of total confusion in the pitch-dark room, I searched for and, to my great relief, managed to find the door handle. Contrary to my assumption that when I awoke there would be a lot of people preparing to go to the bus station, I was perplexed to find that the lodge was deadly quiet. Seemingly, everybody was still asleep. For a moment I was tempted to go back to bed myself and take a minibus taxi to the north later on in the day.
I tried to pack my bag in the dark but it proved impossible. Even with the door open, which I knew was risky, it was impossible to see my backpack and the pieces of clothing I had left at the bottom of the bed. While contemplating my next move, I heard voices and footsteps coming towards my room. It was Bajir with about six other guys. I asked him about the electricity. The power cut was due to the town’s energy-conservation programme, he told me. They switched the power off at night and it came on again at 6 a.m. English time.
As I continued packing in darkness I could not help but think that whoever said this was a dark continent was right after all. Bajir and his mates waited outside the room. When I stepped through the door everybody wanted to grab my bag, but I insisted that only Bajir could touch it. Halfway to the bus station I discovered that I had misplaced my passport. This was my worst nightmare come true. What could possibly be more terrible than losing your passport while you are travelling, especially where I was?
After checking through my pockets once more, I decided that I might have left the passport in my room and that we should go back to the lodge to check. Fortunately, the man at reception was back at his post and accompanied us to my room. What was more, he had a torch. After a few seconds, while I scrambled around looking for my passport, he started to complain that his batteries were being used up. A couple of seconds later he left and I had no alternative but to check through my luggage in the courtyard by the light of half a moon.
I was about to open my backpack when I remembered that I had put on shorts after taking a shower the previous day. When I checked my shorts, under the watchful eyes of Bajir and his mates, I found the passport in the back pocket. I almost shouted with relief.
Then it was the same story all over again: all of Bajir’s mates trying to take my bag. Again, I insisted that only Bajir could touch it. We walked back to the bus station guided by moonlight, like the shepherds looking for the newborn Jesus. All the way to the bus station Bajir and the other guys argued about who should carry the bag. I could smell alcohol on some of the other guys.
When we got to the town’s main road a full-on fight ensued between Bajir and one of his mates. Bajir pulled one of those Mike Tyson shots. Within two seconds the other guy’s nose was bleeding, with blood spilling onto my sleeping mat, which was attached to the top of my backpack. It was all I needed. The combatants were eventually separated by people who were also on their way to the bus station.
At the bus station I gave both Bajir and Rasta a tip. (The other Rasta I met on the trip was at Lake Malawi.) I gave Bajir a tip because, although an incutra, he looked like a guy who was trying to make an honest living. I tipped Rasta, whose nose was still bleeding profusely, because I felt sorry for him. He was in the wrong, but it seemed the right thing to do.
Just when I thought everything was settled, another of Bajir’s mates, one who had been quiet all this time, appeared next to me inside the bus and started begging. I totally ignored him, but I was already seated and he had all the time in the world to get my attention. I pretended not to see him. He did not give up. He did not say much, but he kept both his hands a few inches below my chin. Almost all the passengers were looking at me by now. Eventually, to force me to take notice of him, he knelt in the aisle of the bus, still holding both his hands in front of my chin. I could not take it anymore, so I gave him a tip as well.
By then the engine of the bus had started running. I took a deep breath, knowing that we were about to leave. The sun had not even risen yet and I was already stressed, regretting that I had ever embarked on this damn frustrating journey. As the bus pulled out of the rank I was fighting back tears. Not only had two people who, if not friends were at least acquaintances, fought fiercely for my tip, but another young man had chosen to dehumanise himself in front of about 35 passengers by begging on his knees for something – anything. I could not bear to think about it. I could not bear the thought that poverty was reducing people to such depths of dependency and self-abasement.
The bus had hardly left the station when we had to stop at a roadblock on the main street. According to the guy sitting next to me, who could speak some English, the government was trying to prevent hawkers from bringing clothing illegally into the country, mostly from Kenya, to sell in Addis Ababa.
Unlike the roadblocks we encountered later, this one was very thorough. First, all the passengers were ordered to disembark and had to undergo a thorough body search. After that, the customs officials searched all the bags inside the bus. Just when I thought we were about to leave, the officials got on top of the bus to search the luggage stowed there. To complicate matters, some of the passengers had locked their bags with padlocks. That meant they had to throw their keys to the driver’s assistant, who had accompanied the officials onto the roof of the bus to help with the opening of bags. Naturally, not all people are good throwers, so some keys landed in the wrong spot. If I had thought the Lilongwe taxi rank was chaotic, clearly I was mistaken. The first roadblock outside Moyale was a real eye-opener.
While all this was happening, two guys who had been part of Bajir’s entourage showed up and started speaking to me in Amharic. As translated by one of the passengers, they said I had not paid them for carrying my bag earlier that morning. I told them, through the interpreter, to get lost. With straight faces, they accused me of not having paid for services rendered. Eventually, after almost an hour, the officials finished inspecting the bags on top of the bus and we were all ordered back into the bus.
The two guys followed suit, insisting that I pay them. Of course I stood my ground.
When everyone was at last seated, the two guys were still blocking the aisle. I could see that the majority of passengers were irritated that I could be
so mean. After some time, the bus driver came down the aisle and told me firmly, through the interpreter, that I must give the two their fee because I was delaying everybody. It was daylight robbery, but I had no choice but to pay the alcohol-smelling impostors for nothing.
En route at last to Shashamane, back on a tarred road, thank goodness, we encountered the next roadblock within an hour or so. The same procedure ensued: passengers were searched while disembarking, officials searched the inside of the bus and, last but not least, the top. This was proving to be a nightmare for me, but I could see that other people weren’t troubled at all. Around midday, the bus stopped in a small town; it was lunch time.
By then I was starving and the only food available in that two-camel town was injera. I had no choice but to give it another try. From its appearance this version was even worse than the one in Moyale. As on the previous occasion, I could not swallow even the small piece I bit off. I went and stood next to the bus, which was parked on the side of the road. With my back against its smooth side I waited for the others to finish eating, thoroughly disenchanted. After the lunch hour, we got going again and, just outside the town, ran into the third roadblock. The same procedure applied. It was proving to be a very trying day.
The fourth and last roadblock was a show-stopper. Instead of searching us as we left the bus, the officials allowed us to disembark unchecked and then started searching the inside and the top of the bus. The passengers were searched only when we returned to the bus and, for some reason, all the people wearing leather jackets (fake and real) were asked to remove them.
In total, eight jackets were taken away from their owners and into the customs office. Then, the negotiations began. It took another half an hour for all the jackets to be released. Since the negotiations were conducted in the shack that served as the customs office, I could not see if any money exchanged hands.
Dark Continent my Black Arse Page 14