Three different people in three different places in Merkato said I looked like an Ethiopian. That was really good news for me because it meant I had lost weight and that my bulging tummy was getting smaller. I could not have asked for more. I probably lost a bit more weight that day because I kept getting lost in the maze of stalls and small streets. In fact, I could not find my way back to the taxi rank and eventually had to humble myself and ask for directions.
That evening I went to the bar in the Debra Damo Hotel where I was staying. I spent some time studying the magazines that, for some reason, had been left there by NGOs working in Somalia and Eritrea. Unexpectedly, the barman said to me, ‘My friend, it is impossible to travel from Cape Town to Addis by public transport.’ After I had described my route to him, he replied, ‘OK, but if it was really possible it would take more than six months to reach Addis,’ and shook his head incredulously.
To a certain extent I could understand why the barman regarded Cape Town as such a far, unreachable place – he was using Ethiopia’s slow public transport system as a point of departure. When I told him the trip had taken me slightly more than a month he found it hilarious, very funny. I, in turn, found it hilarious that he was finding this so funny and so we both had a good laugh.
I spent the next day lazing around. I was really becoming a local. Some of the Addis Ababans were even calling me by name – ‘Sikle’. In the afternoon, I went for another session at the hairdressers. At a good walking distance from the Debra Damo I found the corrugated-iron shack to which the barman had directed me. To my surprise, it had good plumbing and was staffed by two very beautiful girls. I was happy to let the more stunning of the two start immediately on redoing my plaits. As the girls could not speak much English, we had to depend on hand gestures to communicate. I was getting used to girls playing with my hair and savoured every minute of relatively gentle treatment while the girls continued to speak Amharic almost non-stop to each other. The barman nodded his approval later that evening.
The next day I woke up to the news on television that local runner Kenenisa Bekele, the son of a farmer, had broken his own 10-kilometre world record in Finland. The 22-year-old Bekele’s accomplishment made me think that there must definitely be something called talent that causes people with few resources and no infrastructure to achieve greatness.
As far as talent is concerned, it is clear we are not all born equal. But I’m sure that everyone must have some talent; it is just a pity that most people live their lives without ever discovering what their particular talent is. I fear I’m part of that majority, except that I seem to have the talent to find (crazy) ways to celebrate my birthday each year, and the talent to continuously and consistently – without asking for directions – get lost in big markets and small and ancient towns.
Since Addis is renowned for its club scene, I decided to check it out that evening. I went to what was literally an underground club. I entered via a flight of stairs with mirrors on both sides and another big mirror at the bottom of the stairway. In the club with an unpronounceable name a live band was playing Amharic music.
The Ethiopians at the club showed themselves to be truly cosmopolitan. Their dancing was a mixture of very different movements:
Indian: moving of the head from side to side
Masai: jumping high up and down
Xhosa: ukuxhensa – moving and shaking the upper body
Latino: abdomen wiggling
Western: moon walking à la Michael Jackson
The DJ took over as soon as the local band had finished playing, but before I could show my skills on the dance floor I had some serious business to attend to: I had to introduce myself to the sexy leading vocalist whom I had been eyeing throughout the band’s performance and whose Latino moves had impressed me. Starting a conversation with her was very easy. As a well-known DJ and top producer in South Africa, there was naturally a lot about me that she wanted to know. In fact, I quickly explained that an association with me would open doors wide for her.
Unfortunately, most of this was lost on her as she did not speak much English. She was, nevertheless, getting really excited about the gist of all the prospects in view and called another member of the band to interpret for her. By now even a recording deal was in the pipeline. The interpreter, however, saw right through me and, my cover blown, I had to return to the bar.
I soon noticed that the ratio of women to men in that club was somewhat skew. There were many more women than men. Initially, with so many ladies showing an interest in me, my bruised ego was enjoying being well stroked, but after a while, especially when it became clear that these were bar women looking for a bit of extra income, I lost interest.
For the first time since I arrived in Addis, I became aware of a large number of older white men in one spot. They were having a good time, thoroughly enjoying the attention the ladies were lavishing on them. I had witnessed something very similar in Bangkok when I went there to celebrate my 23rd birthday.
Looking at the way these old men were behaving, I was sure they were widivodorced (a phenomenon that occurs when your ex-spouse, whom you still adore, dies, making you a widivodorcee). I could have been wrong, of course – maybe they were still married. After all, history has proved over and over again that married men are worse in their behaviour than their single brothers: for married men every opportunity counts because they are forever living on borrowed time.
Later on, tipsy from drinking too much beer, I took to the dance floor. As I have already mentioned, Ethiopians have the rhythm – which is to be expected; after all, they are Africans. They were so good that it would have been very difficult to beat them at contemporary dance moves, so, being drunk and flexible in my thinking, I decided to perform a dance I was sure they had never seen before: isipantsula. It stopped the show. Shuffling my feet back and forth while shaking my hands as if I suffered from Parkinson’s, all the while slightly bent yet keeping my head straight in military fashion and wearing not the standard frozen look but a broad smile on my face, I moved to the rhythm of whatever music came from the loudspeakers. When I noticed just how impressed the ladies were, I bent my body further and further towards the floor. Just before I broke my back I retired to my stool next to the bar.
Overall I had a really good time. It had been years since I danced in a club until I was dripping with sweat. When I took a cab back to my hotel I saw that the driver had not switched on the headlights. Although the sun had not yet risen, there was already enough light to drive without lights.
After only three hours of sleep, I was awoken by my alarm clock. It was time for church.
Waiting for the Sudanese visa was like a ton of bricks on my shoulders and I had decided that I needed to lessen the weight by attending the service in an Ethiopian Orthodox church just a ten-minute walk from my hotel. Apart from two funeral services in Durban, it was the first time I attended what looked very much like a Roman Catholic service to me.
Like members of any religious group, the members of the Ethiopian Orthodox hurch have their own procedures and special ways of doing things. Even in English and Zulu it would have been difficult to follow the ancient rituals; in Amharic I was completely and utterly lost. I spent most of the time trying to keep a straight face. I didn’t know where we were in the prayerbook, when to kneel and when to sit, when to say ‘Amen’ and when not. Twice, I almost choked trying to suppress a nervous laugh. And I might have fallen over and had a good sleep during the sermon were it not for the bearded old man next to me who kept nudging me with his left elbow.
After the service I went straight back to bed, the weight on my shoulders having spread to my legs as well. I needed to be rested for the next day, Monday, the day for telephoning the Sudanese embassy. I knew that if my visa application was turned down my Cape to Cairo dream would be shattered.
Since I was supposed to phone the embassy in the afternoon, I decided to apply for an Egyptian visa on Monday morning. I had to catch a cab to the Egyptian emba
ssy as I had no idea where it was.
Security was very tight. The consulate hours, according to the notice board, were 09:00–12:00 and you could pick up your visa the following afternoon. Well, that was the theory. In practice, the other applicants and I had to wait from 09:00–12:00 for the Head of Consulate to accept the application, which was no guarantee that the visa would be issued. All but two of the applications were accepted.
There was still time to visit the National Museum of Ethiopia before making the dreaded phone call to Sami at the Sudanese embassy. The National Museum, a ten-minute uphill walk from Arat Kilo, one of the two major traffic circles in Addis, is one of the best museums in Africa. (Arat Kilo means ‘four kilometres’ in Amharic, indicating that the circle is four kilometres from the city centre.) The highlight for me was seeing Lucy – or, at least, a very realistic replica of the skull that was discovered in northeastern Ethiopia in 1974.
Lucy, called Dinkquinesh (‘thou art wonderful’) by Ethiopians, is believed to be 3,5 million years old and is regarded as a ‘scientific’ link between humans and chimpanzees: she walked upright, had no tail, a very small brain and was only 1,1 metres tall. The discovery caused archaeologists to completely rethink human evolution because Lucy proved that our ancestors were walking upright 2,5 million years earlier than was thought. Looking at Lucy, who you could easily mistake for a stone if you saw her lying on the side of a mountain somewhere, it was difficult to believe that she had caused such a stir.
When I finally called the Sudanese embassy from the reception at my hotel and introduced myself, I was asked: ‘Do you work for the African Union?’
I was tempted to say yes, but on second thought decided it was not a good idea. When I stated the truth I was told that they had not heard anything from Khartoum yet and that I should phone the following day.
That was a good excuse for me to get drunk, and I kept the barman at the hotel company for an hour or two. Waiting for the Sudanese visa was really testing my patience to its limits.
I woke up the next morning with a terrible headache, and with an even bigger problem: I had misplaced my passport (again). I turned my backpack inside out looking for the small blue book without which I’d be truly stuck. It was only after two hours of thorough searching that it clicked – I had left my passport at the Egyptian embassy. The relief was great but not complete because I still had to make that phone call to the Sudanese embassy.
When I did, the phone rang for a long time before a lady finally answered. ‘Sami, the official you are looking for, is not available,’ she said. ‘Phone this afternoon.’ Phoning later was not a problem, except that I was scheduled to pick up my Egyptian visa that very same afternoon. The bureaucracy was stressing me out big time and I was again beginning to think that, maybe, the whole Cape to Cairo thing was misconceived from the start. I was even missing having my own office and some type of routine. I found myself pondering the thought that dull and deadening comfort was not so bad after all.
At the Egyptian embassy, the security officer asked for any type of identification. When I gave him my driver’s licence, he opened a drawer and, without saying a word, handed me my passport. Very reluctantly I opened it – there, neatly stamped, was an Egyptian visa. Within 30 seconds I was out of there with my visa and, to top it all, I had not paid a cent for it. Like all other visas I had been issued, it was valid for 30 days from the date of issue.
I was in high spirits although I still had to rush back to the hotel to phone the Sudanese embassy. The same thing happened: the phone rang for a long time and, when someone eventually picked up, they could not find Sami. I was told to phone the following day.
Later that afternoon, there was a downpour that caused a two-hour power failure in our hotel. The day was really moving from bad to worse. Not even the good lamb stew at a restaurant near the Debra Damo could restore my spirits. And it took a while to get used to waiters who, when serving your food, would add, ‘I wish you a good appetite.’
The waiter who was serving me suggested, just before I settled my bill, that in order to relax I should chew khat (also sometimes spelt ‘chat’). He gave me a sample in a plastic bag. I tried it out in my room by chewing a fairly large portion; it looked and tasted like grass. It dried my mouth out and, quite honestly, did nothing to improve my mood.
That night, while under the mellow influence of khat, I tossed and turned, thinking about the options available to me if I did not get the Sudanese visa. There were seven:
1 Give up on the dream and fly from Addis straight back to South Africa.
2 Fly to Cairo, apply for the Sudanese visa there and then do the Cairo to Khartoum.
3 Travel east, by land, to the port of Djibouti and from there hitch a lift by cargo vessel to one of the Egyptian cities on the Red Sea.
4 Head back by road to Nairobi and from there to Uganda and then fly back to South Africa.
5 Fly to Cairo, apply for a Moroccan visa and return via the Atlantic route.
6 Return to Nairobi by road and fly to Madagascar before heading back to South Africa.
7 Return to South Africa by road.
At this point I laughed at myself to think how sick in my head I was getting.
I woke feeling very thirsty. It must have been the khat.
My mission that day was the same as on previous days: to phone Sami at the Sudanese embassy. I didn’t wait until the afternoon. After countless rings someone picked up and told me that the official I was looking for was unavailable. I begged him to check my application. I had been waiting for the visa for more than a week, I said. He asked me to hold while he checked the application forms.
A few seconds later he returned to the phone and said, ‘OK, come at ten.’ I was so shocked I didn’t know what to say to the man. When I got to the embassy I was, again, shunted to the front of the queue. I spotted my application at once, on top of a huge pile of application forms that made me genuinely and quietly sympathise with those who had to work through them. I began to understand why the process, which was complicated further by the applications having to go via Khartoum, took so long.
The official behind the desk asked me for the fee of US$61 (roughly R400). By then I was so relieved to be getting such a highly elusive visa that I didn’t mind paying. He gave me a receipt and said, ‘Friday.’
‘No, today is Wednesday,’ I replied, thinking he was confusing days.
‘Yes, come back on Friday,’ he said, placing my passport and application form on top of another big pile of forms. I walked out of the office with very mixed feelings: on the one hand bitterly disappointed that I still did not have a visa, on the other hand happy that within 48 hours I would have one. The mad speed with which I had been travelling was broken and I was slowly getting used to the leisurely pace at which things moved in this part of the world.
It was back to chewing khat and drinking cheap local whisky. At the last moment I decided to go to the club I had visited before, although it was a Wednesday. (Ethiopians party on weekends and all week long.) As before, I was harassed by the ladies and the old white men were still taking advantage of the beautiful young Ethiopian girls. And there was, again, a lot of smoking – people in Ethiopia had obviously never heard of a woman by the name of Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma and her passion for banning smoking in the interests of health. They happily continued to smoke in clubs and other public spaces.
I enjoyed dancing to both Amharic and Western music. I returned to the hotel just before sunrise and spent most of the following day sleeping and nursing a hangover. In the afternoon, I went to the station to buy a bus ticket to Bahir Dar for Saturday. After all, the following day was Friday, when I was finally going to get my visa and prepare to set off for Sudan.
It was almost too good to be true.
I decided to go to the embassy early so that I could revisit Merkato directly afterwards. As usual, there was a security guard at the gate. I showed him my receipt with pride. Without looking at it, he said,‘Come back at four
.’
To say I was surprised is an understatement. I really could not understand what was happening, but I had been broken in like a wild bull and the last thing I was going to do was argue with him. Tail between my legs, I slunk into Merkato again. The place is huge and, being a person without any sense of direction in life, I got lost again. My mind was elsewhere in any case. I kept asking myself what would happen if I went back to the embassy at four and found that the offices closed early on Friday. Just to make sure that I did not spend another weekend in Addis, I decided to go back to the embassy immediately.
As on previous occasions, there was a long line of Ethiopians applying for a Sudanese visa, and this time I had to join the queue at the back like everybody else. However, after about ten minutes, a well-dressed man from the office (not Sami) came straight to me and asked to see my receipt. A minute later he returned, handed me my passport and said, ‘Enjoy Sudan.’
I almost knelt before him (to show, in a traditional African way, my respect and appreciation) as I took my passport from him.
I could not believe that, finally, I had in my possession the hard-tocome-by Sudanese visa. The accomplishment called for a celebration. I headed straight for the bar at the Debra Damo Hotel. A little intoxicated and super relaxed, I started chatting to a fifty-something man who had been sitting quietly in the corner with a female companion, who had just gone off somewhere. His name was Mattheus and he was from Germany and on holiday with his wife. They were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary.
Dark Continent my Black Arse Page 16