After chatting for a while, I discovered that Mattheus and his wife had hired a 4x4 and, like me, were going to Bahir Dar the following day. When Mattheus suggested that we share the vehicle I could not believe my luck. I was going to be in a 4x4 instead of a bus! The day was really getting better by the minute.
After half an hour or so, Mattheus was ready to head for bed. We agreed on the next day’s departure time and, since I was not going to be travelling by bus the following day and considering it was Friday, I decided to return to the club and paint Addis red.
People in Ethiopia are very trusting. For instance, they allow patrons to run up a tab in a packed nightclub. What makes it more amazing is that the toilets are usually outside the club, making slipping away easy. Sitting there in the club, I decided that I would visit Addis one day with my South African friends and run up a tab, run up a tab, run up a tab and run (typical darkie, to take the money and run – just like not being able to swim). It was not a resolution or a business idea, just a mad fantasy that I blame partly on apartheid: I grew up struggling financially, hence I am forever thinking about freebies.
That night at the club it was mostly Chinese men (or Japanese or Koreans – I find it hard to tell the difference) who were hanging around Addis’s beautiful girls. I spent more time at the bar than on the dance floor and went back to the hotel earlier than on the two previous occasions. I would have only four hours of sleep, but I was not worried since I was not going to be using public transport and would be swept along in comfort the next day.
On leaving my room the following morning, I noticed that the driver had already arrived with his big 4x4 and was chatting to Mattheus and his wife. When I got closer to the car Mattheus’s wife gave me that can-I-help-you look. Sensing that something was wrong, Mattheus spoke to her in German. I could see that he had forgotten to tell her that I would be driving with them to Bahir Dar.
For a couple of seconds there was dead silence. By then the bus to Bahir Dar would almost surely have left, and I was determined not to spend another day loitering in Addis. It was really an uncomfortable situation. What I could not work out was whether Mattheus’s wife was angry because she had not been consulted about an additional passenger or whether she just did not want to travel with me. To say she looked furious is putting it mildly. Eventually she said something like she hoped I was going to pay.
Have you been married to this woman for 25 years? I felt like asking Mattheus.
Although we had not discussed costs the previous night at the bar, I knew that I was expected to meet them halfway. I sat in front with the driver and Mattheus and his peeved wife occupied the rear seat of a very comfortable and powerful four-wheel-drive. I was happy that I was about to leave Addis at last, although sad to be leaving such friendly and high-spirited people.
What made it even more sad was that the Ethiopians were about to celebrate New Year. Although it was September 2005 according to the Gregorian calendar, on the Orthodox Ethiopian calendar it was still 1997, and there were only seven days left before the start of 1998. Even shops sported New Year stickers and banners. To celebrate the event one of the top hotels in Addis was staging a huge show featuring mega international artist Wycleaf Jean.
When I first heard about the Ethiopian New Year the question I wanted to ask was: Where did they get left behind? Even the explanation that the Ethiopian calendar has 13 months – the first 12 each have 30 days and the last only 5 – was not an adequate explanation, because one still ended up with the same number of days in the year as in our calendar.
Anyway, I missed a big party. It would have been great to go through New Year’s Eve three times in 366 days: I celebrated my 2005 New Year’s Eve at the Flux Festival in Hidden Valley, just outside Mooi River in the Natal Midlands, which was renowned for its multiracial crowd and great line-up of artists before the sponsors stopped funding it. At the time I didn’t know it, but my 2006 New Year’s Eve would be spent seriously partying at Tofo Beach in Inhambane, Mozambique. Had I managed to spend a few more days in Addis, I would have added a third New Year’s Eve – sandwiched between the other two.
I slept during most of the 565-kilometre journey from Addis to Bahir Dar. I would wake up now and then when we stopped at roadblocks, but since we were in a marked tourist-company vehicle there were no hassles whatsoever. Even though I spent most of the time dozing off, I noticed that we were driving past lots of animals – goats, donkeys and mules – on the winding road. Most of the time the driver was travelling very slowly. We were tourists – we had to enjoy the scenery and have time to take it all in.
Mattheus woke me up when we crossed the spectacular bridge across the beautiful gorge of the Blue Nile. It made perfect sense that, since we were going north, the Blue Nile (which originates in Ethiopia’s largest lake, Lake Tana, where we were heading) would be flowing south, before turning in a northwesterly direction to Khartoum to meet the White Nile.
Almost seven hours after leaving Addis Ababa, we came in sight of Bahir Dar. I was surprised that Mattheus’s wife (we were never introduced formally and I never caught her name) was turning out to be a nice person. She was the one who insisted that, instead of dropping me off in the middle of town to find my own way, they should take me to the budget hotel where I planned to stay, in a prime location right on the shores of Lake Tana. When I got out I gave Mattheus what I thought was a fair share of the costs and, although he looked a little hesitant, he took the money.
The capital of the Amhara region (one of the eight regions into which Ethiopia is divided), Bahir Dar is an attractive town with wide palm-lined streets. In comparison with Addis it has a very relaxed ambience, the result, perhaps, of the sticky tropical atmosphere. As it was Saturday, market day, and only about two o’clock in the afternoon, I thought I would squeeze in a visit to the local merkato, which I had been told was one of the finest in the country.
As I stepped outside the hotel grounds I found I had company. A young boy, probably in his teens, wanted to be my guide. Regardless of how hard I tried to ignore him, he persisted. Naturally I ended up employing Yishwas, and he proved to be a really good guide despite his limited English vocabulary. He kept saying to me, ‘Have a look. They don’t charge if you just look.’
I was becoming more and more like a woman – a compulsive buyer. Although I had already bought some souvenirs for my family in Addis, I ended up buying more stuff in Bahir Dar: a dress for my fiancée and for Nala a pair of cotton pants and a matching top with Ethiopia embroidered on the chest in Rasta colours. Sellers would try to get my attention while I was walking among the stalls and I thought it would be polite to thank them in their own language. ‘Thank you’ in Amharic is ameseganallo. Somehow, whenever I said ‘thank you’ in Amharic, the sellers looked really puzzled. I, too, felt that whatever I was saying did not sound quite right. It was only when I left the market that I realised that instead of saying amesegenallo I was saying ‘abracadabra’.
At the end of my shopping expedition it was, unfortunately, time to say goodbye to Yishwas. After I had given him a tip, he shook my hand and said, ‘See you next lifetime.’
Much as I liked Bahir Dar, I was worried about the irregular transport between Ethiopia and Sudan that everyone had warned me about, and so decided not to spend another night there. That meant I was not going to see the monasteries.
There are no fewer than 20 monasteries on the islands and peninsulas of Lake Tana. Although most of them were founded before the 15th century, these churches are still used today. In this part of Ethiopia, I was told, Christians outnumber Muslims four to one. From an architectural point of view, the churches of Tigray and Lasta, hewn out of solid rock, are, apparently, the best. Visually, Ura Kidhane Mihret, which I could easily have reached from Bahir Dar, is the most beautiful and is covered from top to bottom with 16th-century paintings.
I consoled myself with the thought that within the next five years I was going to do the Cape to Cairo in a sponsored four-wheel-drive – Res
olution No. 9. On that trip, I would also visit Ethiopia’s holiest town of Axum (Aksum), which is considered to be the cradle of Ethiopian culture and Christianity and the site of Ethiopia’s first church. Also Lalibela, 2 630 metres above sea level, where you find 800-year-old churches carved underground into the mountain – Resolution No. 10. The rocky escarpment in and on which Lalibela is set is said to resemble South Africa’s highest mountain range, the Drakensberg.
The calmness of the lake in front of my hotel, with its pelicans and abundant birdlife (there were hippos and crocodiles too, but I did not see them), made me feel that I was making the wrong decision by not spending at least two nights in Bahir Dar. With its scenic views and its lush surroundings, the place really gave me that I-can-live-here-forever feeling. I would rate it as one of Ethiopia’s major attractions.
Just before sunset, I took a walk on the paved walkway along the edge of the lake. A soft drizzle was coming down and, although I was walking alone, it felt very romantic. There were a surprising number of couples, especially from Germany, who had booked into the same hotel as I had. Seeing all these couples, as well as the locals, walking hand in hand along the edge of the lake, I could not but feel that, for all its advantages, travelling alone has severe limitations.
In Bahir Dar, as in most African cities and towns that I visited, the loud call to prayer from the mosque made it unnecessary to set an alarm clock. You really have to get used to the noise, which can be very irritating, especially if it is the first thing you hear in the morning.
It was another early start for me because, as in Zambia, Ethiopian buses were not allowed to travel at night and I had to reach my next destination before sunset. When I packed my bag I was still wondering whether it was a good idea not to spend another day in Bahir Dar. It was not yet light when I left the hotel, but Yishwas had assured me that crime was non-existent in Bahir Dar and so I had decided to walk the kilometre or so to the bus station. Actually I had no choice as there were no cabs outside the hotel and hardly any traffic on the road.
A handful of people were already walking in different directions at that early hour. I spotted two joggers doing what used to come naturally to me, before I decided that the consumption of alcohol was an easier and better way to enjoy life than jogging. On the previous day, while shopping at the merkato, I had noticed that my foot was starting to bug me again. By the time I got to the bus station I was limping. Could it have been the wild dancing in Addis that, after all this time, had affected my Achilles tendon?
I had not expected so many people to be at the bus station so early in the morning. Not hawkers and people trying to sell their produce, as in Lilongwe, but people who were going somewhere else. A young guy who was going to take an Addis bus went out of his way to show me the bus to Gondar. Although it was 3 September 2005 according to the Gregorian calendar, it was the 29th day of the 12th month of the year 1997 according to my bus ticket.
Well, that ticket brought back good (and wild) memories. The year 1997 was a very good one for me. For starters, it was my second year working and I had already bought myself a flat and, at the beginning of the year, a car. When I turned 22, in June, I was convinced that I was going to be a playboy for the rest of my life. It’s amazing how things change. At 30, I am no longer a playboy. I am just a boy who loves to play.
As we left the beautiful town of Bahir Dar, I could see people bathing in the lake just as the sun was rising. They were mostly men, but there were one or two women as well. That made me love Bahir Dar even more. It looked like paradise. I had thought I had seen green places before then, but Bahir Dar was the lushest, most verdant of them all. Whoever said the grass looks greener on the other side had obviously never lived in Bahir Dar. No place could be greener than this. To me, meanwhile, it looked as if the sun was rising in the west. I have always known and have made no secret of my lack of a sense of direction, confirmed once again by this new confusion.
There were quite a few hills on the winding road to Gondar and the seats in the bus were not the most comfortable. People would stand up now and then just to stretch their legs. I did not stand, not because I was comfortable but because I thought such an uncomfortable seat would be effective therapy for the flab on my bum.
On the way to Gondar we stopped at three permanent roadblocks. Unlike those on the Moyale–Shashamane road, these roadblocks were stop-and-go. The customs officials did not even get into the bus. It made me wonder why they bothered to be there at all.
To my surprise, we arrived within three and a half hours in Gondar, known as Africa’s Camelot because of its abundance of monuments. As in Bahir Dar, the atmosphere was very relaxed. At the bus station I asked a youngster, who must have been about ten years old, for directions to the budget hotel I had found in my travel guide. He took me to a cab next to the bus rank because, according to him, the hotel was quite far off. Obviously, I had to tip him.
The taxi took me to the hotel, which was about one and a half kilometres from the bus station. As the cab pulled up at the hotel the youngster, who must have been running behind the cab, appeared from nowhere. When I asked what he wanted his answer, in fluent English, was: ‘No, just nothing.’ This young boy, whose name I learned was Doyt, remained at my elbow while I checked in and then followed me to my room. I am sure he knew that I would need him for one reason or another.
First of all I had to find a restaurant, since the hotel did not have an in-house restaurant. I explained to Doyt, who by then had become my shadow, that I needed a good restaurant. I felt like a real bimbo following a youngster who didn’t bother to tell me when he was going to turn; he just did.
When we got to the restaurant I could not believe that Doyt had taken me on such a long walk to a mere shack. Surely, I thought, as a local he must know of better places. Not wanting to disappoint him, I walked in. I couldn’t have been more surprised. The decor inside was world class: seats covered in cowhide, Ethiopian art on the walls and carvings galore. I was really impressed. In an instant I forgot that I was in what looked like a shack from the outside. I learned, again, that you must not judge a book by its cover.
Doyt was too shy to order initially, but I insisted. Although I had been helped by countless young people and had tipped almost all of them throughout the trip, this was the first time that I was having a meal with my guide (apart from when FK ate both his meal and mine in Moyale on the border). It seemed Doyt had a good appetite and he ordered a super-large lamb dish. I had spicy chicken curry.
As we were eating I was for some reason or other filled with contentment. You know those feel-good moments that it takes months, years, decades even, for some people to feel again.
I couldn’t judge whether Doyt was feeling the same contentment, but his stomach would no doubt have felt super satisfied. After helping me to buy a bus ticket to Mettema (Metema), which is on the Ethiopia/Sudan border, Doyt accompanied me back to my hotel. When we entered the hotel premises, he stopped. I knew he had to go back to the bus station and look for more customers. I took his photo, shook hands and gave him a tip. As soon as he left, I felt a sudden sharp drop in emotional well-being. I thought to myself, Why must some kids have so much responsibility at such a young age? Why couldn’t he be just a playful, irresponsible child? I really went on an emotional rollercoaster. Only one thing was going to make me feel better. No, not alcohol but a cold shower. Truth be told, I had no choice. There was no warm water and no bar at the hotel.
Since it was a Sunday I could have gone to the merkato but I feared that after all these weeks on the road my female side was getting the better of me and would be tempted by buy some more stuff. I decided, instead, to visit the walled royal enclosure in the centre of town, with its connecting tunnels, raised walkways and six castles. The locals call the entire 70 000-square-metre complex after the most impressive of these, the castle of Fasilidas.
I found the richness of Ethiopia’s history and the stories of the powerful kings and queens who reigned in the northern p
art of the country most fascinating. It was intriguing why Emperor Fasilidas had chosen, in 1636, to build his castle in what must have been the middle of nowhere. By the time he died in 1667, however, Gondar had become the capital of his empire, and it remained the capital of Ethiopia for 250 years.
The two-storey castle with its three domed towers and two-metrehigh fortified stone walls looked completely impenetrable. After touring the castle, I repeated Resolution No. 10: to return to do Ethiopia’s historical route – the ancient towns of Lalibela and Axum, and also Gondar. Athough I was right there, I did not have enough time to visit other 17th-century castles and palaces in Gondar (there are some out of town as well) or to view the fabulously decorated Debre Birhan Selassie (‘trinity of the place of light’) church, just a ten-minute walk from the city centre.
My plan for the next day was to travel from Gondar via Mettema to the border town of Galabat, in the hope of catching a bus there that would get me to Gedaref in Sudan before sunset. I went to bed thinking that the worst-case scenario would be to arrive too late in Mettema and thus not be able to catch the connecting bus from Galabat to Gedaref. To prevent this from happening meant my third early start in three consecutive days. On the previous two days I had travelled first from Addis to Bahir Dar, then from Bahir Dar to Gondar. One way or another, I knew that the next day was going to be my last in Ethiopia.
I left my hotel in the morning while it was still very dark and followed two ladies who looked as if they might also be heading for the bus station. Just one street before the station, there was Doyt waiting for me. Happy as I was to see him, I was saddened again by the heavy load of responsibility resting on a young kid like him who should have been at home in bed, asleep.
Ethiopians are real early risers. A crowd of people was already gathered outside the bus station, waiting for it to open. After about ten minutes, the wire with which the gates were secured was loosened and for a moment I thought I would be trampled in the stampede that followed. Everyone wanted to be the first to go through. And that was just a practice run. Once we were through the gates the real struggle began. People on the left wanted to go to the right, those on the right wanted to go to the left. I was caught somewhere in the middle.
Dark Continent my Black Arse Page 17