Given that my ticket was written in Amharic and that there was insufficient light, it proved to be far from easy to find the bus to Mettema. Doyt, luckily, was still shadowing me. Even with his Amharic, it was a major problem to locate the right bus. Everything was chaotic – buses and people rushing in different directions, all in a relatively small area. Most of the passengers, to judge by their tattered clothes, lived a nomadic life. They were certainly not city dwellers.
After being pointed left, right and left again, we finally found the white Mettema-bound bus. Whatever the reason, our bus seemed to be the worst in the rank. I chatted for a couple of minutes with Doyt, who had climbed into the bus with me to ensure that I found my seat. Travelling solo and not having a companion to talk to, I thought I had found a pal in Doyt. But after I gave him a tip for helping me, he stood up and left unceremoniously. I soon understood that to him I was just another customer.
In keeping with the law, we left town only at sunrise. Even before the bus left the rank, my seat had begun to feel uncomfortable.
On the outskirts of the town, I noticed people standing in a very long queue. As the bus moved closer I saw that they were queuing at the Missionary Charity building, waiting for food rations. The length and snaking shape of that queue reminded me of South Africa’s first democratic elections, even though the purpose of the two could not have been further apart.
We were one and a half hours into the journey when it was breakfast time. I had learned that in small towns like these along the way there was only one type of food on sale – injera. I did not even attempt to ask if there was anything else. I just stood around watching people enjoy their spongy, sour flatbreads.
Forty minutes later we were back on the road. Although I knew that there had been sporadic fighting on that route between Gondar and Mettema, I did not expect such a strong military presence. There were no roadblocks, just soldiers guarding the road, so to speak. The road was even more winding than the one from Bahir Dar to Gondar. The landscape was pleasing to the eye, but not as green and mountainous as before.
Just outside the small town of Sishedi I saw a Western Cape-registered vehicle with the number CCK 6173 parked outside the customs office. It bore the South African flag and Mbeki’s and Mandela’s faces on the sides of the vehicle. Without seeing the occupants, I knew they were white because we darkies, besides being obsessed with soccer and guzzling large volumes of alcohol, do not travel, and would never paste the faces of politicians – not even Madiba’s – on our cars; if we travelled, we would never travel like this through Africa.
After five and a half hours, we arrived at the rural town of Mettema. Unlike other border towns I had been through, there were no hasslers in Mettema. People just carried on with their normal business. The Ethiopian immigration office was a hut tucked away from the road. After accepting my passport, the official sitting on a low stool just inside the door said in an irritated tone of voice, ‘Go sit outside.’
Well, that was another first for me. Normally, getting out of a country was not a problem; the problem was getting in.
Mettema, which was founded in the 18th century, was once a resting-place for pilgrims on their way to Mecca and back. Conveniently situated on the main trade route between the then capital Gondar and Sudan, it grew into an important trade centre over time and, in the 19th century, became a major marketplace and slave market. I did not see much of Mettema, but the old slave market in Zanzibar flashed through my mind as I sat outside the immigration office.
After ten minutes, I was called back into the office and asked basic questions like where I had come from and where I was heading. After the official stamped my passport, he gave me an evaluation form. The first question on it was: How will you rate the efficiency of my service? My answer was simple: The service was very efficient.
The official was reading over my shoulder as I wrote my response. Talk about objective feedback.
Finally, I had to go through customs. A local guy showed me a khaki-clad customs official seated under a tree with a woman. The man searched my bag and asked if I had a camera. I said no because my camera was not in my bag but in the pocket of my trousers. By then I had figured out that they did not do body searches at borders. Why, I could not work out.
After that, it was only a short walk over the bridge and I was in the shantytown of Gallabat in Sudan.
The most beautiful women on the Cape to Cairo route are undoubtedly the exotic females in Addis Ababa. It must be their cosmopolitan looks.
Fatherless Sudan
A nation at war
The ancient kingdom of Nubia flourished in what is now northern Sudan, coming under Egyptian rule after 2600 BC. In more recent times, Egypt again conquered Sudan in 1874 and, after Britain occupied Egypt in 1898, the country was ruled by both Egypt and Britain. In effect a British colony, it was known until 1955 as Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
Sudan became independent on 1 January 1956. Since then differences in language, religion, ethnicity and political power between the Arab north
– the seat of government – and the black African animists and Christians in the south have erupted in unending civil war. Under John Garang de Mabior, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army waged war for 20 years before a peace agreement was signed with the Khartoum government in 2005. The agreement granted Southern Sudan autonomy for six years, to be followed by a referendum. Sadly, Garang died in a mysterious air crash only 21 days after he was sworn in as Sudan’s deputy president, as part of the power-sharing agreement. (I was in Zambia at the time.)
In the meantime, tribal clashes in the western region of Darfur marked the beginning of the Sudan–Chad conflict, the government of Chad having declared a state of war with Sudan in December 2005, accusing the Sudan government and militia of supporting Chadian rebels. (I was back home by then.)
Sudan is the largest country in Africa and the tenth largest country (in area) in the world. Since the military coup of 1989, President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, a former paratrooper and minister of defence, has been in charge of the Khartoum government and the country.
There are three reasons why I hate crossing borders. One: having to exchange currency, especially when it means dealing with incutras who hassle you and, if you are not careful, may give you counterfeit money. Two: having to deal with bureaucracy, which ranges from filling in immigration forms to being asked endless questions by officials and having your bags searched. Three: having to communicate in another, totally different, language.
As soon as I had set foot in Sudanese territory an incutra approached me. I agreed to change 330 birr to Sudanese dinar (SDD). Based on my spending patterns, I had figured out that this would get me to Gedaref, about halfway to Khartoum, with about 400 kilometres still to go. Based on the birr-to-dollar (US$1=9 birr approx.) as well as the dinar-to-dollar exchange rate (US$1=SDD250 approx.), I had calculated the previous night how many dinars, on average, I was going to get for my Ethiopian birr. It turned out I was spot on. I was really mastering the art of dealing with incutras.
At Sudanese immigration I, like everybody else, had to leave my bag unattended outside the entrance. After filling in the form – from right to left again – I had to go to the cashier and pay SDD7 500. When I wanted to pay in US dollars the cashier called a youngster named David to take me across the road to what looked like a warehouse. There I exchanged US$100 with another incutra.
The rate was bad, but they knew that I was desperate. After I had paid the Sudanese dinars to the cashier, and handed in a photo, my passport was stamped. I then collected my bag and took it to the customs office. Although the queue there was very long, it was moving briskly because the official simply entered names on his list. Thank heaven, there was no searching of bags, which would have delayed the process by hours.
I thought I was clear of officialdom now, but David told me that I still had to go and register with security. About 50 metres from the customs office, hidden away from the main road, was a small sec
urity office with a corrugated-iron roof. Another form had to be filled out and handed in with another photo, plus a thumb print. Only then was I officially in Sudan.
At the security office I bumped into the white South African couple I had seen parked outside the Sishedi customs offices. They hailed from the Western Cape, as I had concluded earlier from their registration number, and were also doing the Cape to Cairo. More information than that they did not seem eager to share. Although I did not expect them to hug me or anything like that, it would have been nice to chat to other people from Mzansi so far from home. Meeting compatriots at a border post in Sudan, especially when you have been travelling on your own by public transport, was quite an emotional affair for me. After all, the last time I had met South Africans had been at Lake Malawi, more than a month ago.
Exiting Ethiopia and entering Sudan took me a total of one and a half hours. It was exciting to think that I was going to make the Gondar–Gedaref trip in one day, and even the fact that I was going to do so in the back of an old battered bakkie, to which David led me – called a ‘boksie’ by the locals – could not dampen my spirits.
I waited under a tree for the other boksie passengers. David and some locals were very nice to me but we could not communicate properly with one another because of the language problem. Basically, they spoke only Arabic. One guy succeeded in asking me, through David, how much I had paid for my hiking boots. When I told him they cost slightly more than US$100 he almost fainted. That was the end of the conversation.
The Western Cape couple left me sitting under the tree with about ten Sudanese guys. Seeing white people drive by in a comfortable 4x4, while I was waiting for unreliable public transport, reminded me of back home. Involuntarily I started thinking about how much things could have changed since we started living under a new dispensation, and how superficial the changes have been.
Yet, under that tree I had another of those feel-good moments, as on the previous day. There is something about sitting under a tree that makes me feel one with nature. That moment reminded me of the shower of rain at the spice plantation in Zanzibar.
After an hour and a half of waiting, enough luggage and people had accumulated for the boksie to set off on the gravel road to Gedaref. It did not feel that long because David and his gang kept me entertained by discussing and describing beautiful Ethiopian women.
The passengers on the boksie turned out to be the same people as on the Gondar–Mettema bus. Instead of turning left and heading to Gedaref as I expected, the boksie turned right and headed straight back to the immigration offices. An immigration officer came out of the building and we all had to get off the vehicle and have our passports checked against the boksie driver’s passenger list. Only then were we allowed to proceed.
Just when I thought we were finally on our way, we stopped at the customs offices and the same procedure was repeated. The same at a military checkpoint within a kilometre of Gallabat. Thus, in less than 30 minutes, we had gone through three checks: immigration, customs and military – only the first taste of Sudan’s bureaucracy. I was not too worried despite all these delays because I could see from the map that Gedaref was not very far from Gallabat. According to David, only about 160 kilometres away.
From the back of the boksie the vegetation looked much the same as in northern Ethiopia – bright green grass and healthy shrubs. Judging by the soft look of the soil, it was the rainy season. What amazed me was how flat Sudan was, unlike the undulating hills in northern Ethiopia, especially from Bahir Dar to Gondar. While the boksie was struggling on through dongas and big potholes in the gravel road I sent my eyes across kilometres of vast plains.
There were 11 of us seated on top of our bags in the back of the boksie: seven Ethiopians, two Sudanese guys and one Sudanese girl. It made me think of ‘Scatterlings of Africa’, that classic song by Sipho Mchunu and Johnny Clegg’s band Juluka, which revels in the fact that everyone – ‘both you and I’, as the lyrics say – originated from Africa and then scattered to all the corners of the globe. There we were, born in different countries and of different backgrounds, brought together by circumstances, sitting in the back of a boksie under a dark African sky, trying to make the best of what life was throwing at us.
None of my fellow passengers could understand why I was doing this trip. One of the Ethiopians even thought I was an ambassador, though I still have to see an ambassador who takes a ride in the back of a boksie.
The Ethiopians were on their way to Khartoum to apply for a UK visa, which they told me was easier to get in Khartoum than in Addis. I wondered what had happened to my Somalian friend who had gone to Addis on a similar mission, believing it was easier there than anywhere else in the region.
Within an hour of leaving Gallabat we were again stopped by the military. This time it was not just for checking passports but also for registration of particulars such as name, profession, where from, where to, for how long, etc. All this information was scribbled on a piece of paper. It was a very time-consuming affair because most of the soldiers spoke Arabic and little Amharic and most of the Ethiopians spoke Amharic and little Arabic, if any. My own situation – speaking neither Arabic nor Amharic – was worse, and even more difficult was an explanation of why was I doing the trip. I mumbled something like ‘Africa very beautiful continent. Me just want to see.’ My mumblings helped.
As the light mellowed we happened upon another registration point. The registration stations were beginning to grind on my nerves. Time and again we had to get off the vehicle and stand in a queue while giving our particulars to an Arabic-speaking soldier. Most frustrating was that I could see that these so-called registrations were not adding any value to anything. It was not as if they were punching our information into a live information technology system and would thus be able to track us if we ever got to Khartoum. No, the soldier was just scribbling our names on a piece of paper.
As if the registration stations were not enough of a pain, there was this Ethiopian guy who kept nudging me and saying, ‘Speak, Mr South Africa, speak’ whenever the boksie was back on the road. Initially it was nice being called Mr South Africa, but after a while it, too, started to irritate me, the nudging in particular. The other Ethiopians spoke little or no English. They spent most of their time pointing at me while chatting in Amharic. Although I could not tell what they were saying, I knew they were talking about me and, given their broad smiles, it was something good.
It was just before sunset and young boys were leading livestock home. Loads and loads of cattle. It amazed me how much livestock the Sudanese owned. Suddenly I remembered that I had left Richard Carlson’s book You Can Be Happy No Matter What under the tree in Gallabat. I took that as a sign, firstly, that from that moment onwards I was not going to need a book telling me to be happy no matter what. Secondly, I felt that somebody who was going through a bad patch would find that book and, hopefully, it would put things in perspective in his/her life too.
A few kilometres after the third registration point, the boksie’s front-right tyre burst. I didn’t consider it such a big problem until I saw the spare tyre had a big slash in it and virtually no thread. Obviously it had a tube, but, considering the size of the slash and the condition of the road, it was a disturbing sight.
The sun was setting, lending urgency to the situation, but in no time we were on our way again. The Ethiopians, a bunch of really nice and friendly people, offered me biscuits and cracked wheat to eat. I had not eaten anything all day, so everything, as long as it was not injera, was welcome.
By the time we had stopped for our third – or was it fourth? – corrugated-iron registration shack, the surface of the road had started to improve. By then it was already dark, so each person who was being registered had to hold a torch for the registering official. Quite a tricky thing to do because, when the official looked at your passport, you had to shine the torch on the passport, and, when he wrote, you had to shine the light on the paper. It was even more tricky when he wan
ted to compare the photo on the passport with the real person. He would hold and turn your hand around to shine that bright, blinding light on your face.
No sooner were we settled back in the boksie than it started to rain. The problem for me was not so much the rain but the lightning and thunder. The sky rumbled and flashed and crackled and lit up. It made me feel unpleasantly exposed and helpless. Soon thereafter, the heavens really opened up. It poured. I was getting soaking wet. The same Ethiopian guy who had been nudging me and saying, ‘Speak, Mr South Africa, speak’, looked at me and said, ‘This is good history,’ – while laughing hysterically. At this all the Ethiopians started laughing. I began to see that, whereas for me it was an exceptional situation, for them it was just another day. For two hours I had to sit shamefaced, the butt of those guys’ good-natured laughter. Meanwhile, it became clear to me why – apart from the bad road, three or four registration points and rainy weather – it had taken us almost six hours to cover less than 200 kilometres: the boksie was one-eyed.
From what I could see of it through the pouring rain, Gedaref was a spread-out town. The boksie dropped us at a guesthouse and we all rushed for cover, only to be confronted by a verandah full of occupied single beds. Most of the people, mainly women, were already in dreamland.
After an exchange in Amharic, the Ethiopian guys followed one of the local women to another guesthouse. I ran after them. By then it was really bucketing down and my backpack was getting heavier and heavier. Trying to run with a heavy backpack on a slippery and muddy surface is not everyone’s cup of coffee. It certainly wasn’t mine.
Dark Continent my Black Arse Page 18