The news reminded us that much of what we’re doing is about awareness; it’s about raising the profile of these places so UNICEF can go on with its mine education programme, Riders for Health can make sure AIDS victims survive and CHAS can continue creating memories.
Leaving Addis Alem we headed for the border town of Zelambassa, the last stop on the road from Adigrat. The reception blew me away. It seemed as if the whole town had turned out. Seven years ago Zelambassa had been at the forefront of the fighting and had been evacuated. The Eritrean forces razed it to the ground. It has only been partially rebuilt, bomb-blasted buildings line the streets and the only roofs are made of tin and have been provided by UNICEF.
The noise was incredible; women creating a high pitched, shrill sort of shrieking led by one woman with a microphone plugged into a bullhorn. She took us through the battered streets; a war zone still and the only one I’d witnessed first hand. We were surrounded by crowds of men and women wearing their traditional shawls, the gabbi and the netella. Most people carried umbrellas, all different shapes and sizes, to protect them from the sun, and they congregated in two shattered buildings – the remants of what had once been the commercial centre. They perched everywhere: on piles of rubble, concrete blocks, the upper floors where the roofs had been blown off; they sat on steps, bricks, half ruined walls…everywhere we looked, there were people gathering round us.
The district officer spoke for a few moments then Ewan and I thanked the town for such amazing hospitality, people with so little giving so much. An elder got to his feet, a gentle and intelligent looking man. He explained that Zelambassa had been a bustling place, a centre of commerce and trade and yet after seven years it still looked like this. He said the people had a strong bond with UNICEF, who had provided essential services and were still doing so. He said visitors were always welcome and the people appreciated those groups who were helping them. He was proud of his town; it had been a big town, a well known town before it had been destroyed. He said that people were still suffering. Countless had been injured by mines.
He told us that Eritrea had agreed to pay compensation but no monies had as yet been forthcoming. There was support from the Ethiopian government but so far only those who owned their own homes had received help. Not all the schools had been rebuilt and not all the health facilities; there was a shortage of basic essentials. He thanked us for coming and thanked UNICEF in particular and all the agencies who’d remembered Zelambassa. But he asked us not to forget that the problems still went on.
He sat down and we were about to walk up to the border when another old man spoke up.
‘Don’t rush off,’ he said. ‘We have lots of problems we want to tell you.’
A UNICEF official explained that Ewan and I weren’t from an agency and though we could raise awareness there was little we could do personally about specific situations.
As we walked to the front line a young policeman who’d previously been in the army, told me this was the road at the end of the world. The road no longer went anywhere and so many people still lacked the most fundamental things like shelter, food and clean water. He said the people didn’t understand who we were but knew we were from the west and they hoped we could help. He doubted many westerners had even heard of Zelambassa. Maybe we could tell them.
EWAN: We ate injera, the traditional Ethiopian dish that’s made from a millet pancake, with goat’s meat and lamb curry, or the vegetables people eat on official Fast days. A woman made coffee with a charcoal stove on the floor, grinding the beans in front of us whilst seated on a carpet of grass. This is long-established Ethiopian hospitality and riding through some of the river deltas we’d seen women gathering grass for just such occasions. The fire is laced with frankincense bark and the smell is amazing.
Charley and I sat with Tesfu and Luam, another amputee, a beautiful young girl wearing a red netella and a flip-flop as part of her prosthetic foot. While we do have an opportunity to tell the world about the plight of Zelambassa, we had come specifically to meet young people who had fallen victim to landmines. Mines ensure there’s never any peace. They devastate lives. Both Charley and I are absolutely convinced that there should be a blanket ban on their use. So on behalf of Tesfu, Abrehet and Luam; on behalf of every child who has lost a limb or lost their life to these grisliest of weapons, we’re calling on every country that makes, sells or uses land mines to stop.
Simple humanity isn’t it?
19
Stewed & Brewed
CHARLEY: I had three nails in my back tyre, one so seriously embedded I thought I’d leave it, another had just the top poking out, and a third was bent over. I’d have to do something about those two. Pulling them out I plugged the holes with rubber and cement, the same kind of kit I’d used on Claudio’s bike when we made Long Way Round and he’d got all the way across Russia without incident.
After the day with UNICEF I was looking forward to riding again; we had time on our side for once, tarmac ahead of us and we planned to look at a monolithic church, the oldest in the country.
Ewan was all ready to go. Dragging his helmet over his head he told me it felt like sandpaper: seven thousand miles of sweat, dust and rain.
Today was Saturday and people were on the road in their hundreds, driving animals and carrying goods to market. I saw one woman weighed under by what looked like a stack of straw hats; she had them hanging off her everywhere. After a moment I realised they weren’t hats at all but pots for injera pancakes.
We passed a procession of school children carrying ‘World Vision’ banners – some kind of outing or rally, I wasn’t sure – but they were waving and smiling, calling out to us. Coming down from Adigrat we were into scrub desert, with sand edging the road. I noticed the towns looked more prosperous and urban. They were built of bricks or stones and painted in bright colours and we began noticing that some of them had health centres.
Mkele was not far down the road, the capital of Tigray region, and beyond that Maychew and eventually Addis.
In case you’re wondering how my knowledge of these countries has become so good it’s all down to my teeth. I’ve realised I hear voices in my teeth and strangely enough they sound sort of like our fixers: Tunisian, Libyan, Egyptian; the latest voice sounded just like Habtamu.
EWAN: I’m beginning to think Charley and I need to talk. He’s right, though, it was wonderful to be on tarmac and I was feeling good. Yesterday had been great. I’d really enjoyed it and had been touched by all we’d seen on the road to Zelambassa; particularly the procession when the children led us into Addis Alem, waving branches and singing that marvellous song of welcome, it was a special moment and one I won’t forget.
I was looking forward now to seeing this church and, checking the map, we found the dirt road and headed into the hills. The road wasn’t bad, though there was the odd hairpin and loads of children, of course. One boy started after us.
‘Give me pen,’ he was yelling. ‘Escrito, escrito.’ There’s still quite an Italian influence here left over from the days of occupation. The boy just wouldn’t quit and pretty soon he was joined by another child and another until a whole tribe was tearing after the bikes. There were more on the hillside, a couple on the roof of a house. Claudio was filming from the back of Charley’s bike and as we sped off he felt a stone thwack his helmet.
We came to a little village hunkered down on the valley floor, the tin-roofed houses shaded by trees. I could see the church carved into the mountain and a flight of stone steps climbing to the gates.
‘Did I tell you this was one of the oldest churches in Ethiopia?’ Charley said. ‘It’s seventh-century…no, wait…’ The voices were talking to his teeth again. ‘I’m sorry, it’s actually fourth-century. That’s really ancient, older than Lalibela; the rock churches there only go back to the eleventh century.’
We’d decided not to go Lalibela; it was 180 miles of mountain hairpins and we were just too exhausted to make such a detour. The churches ther
e are monolithic, cut from the hill in their entirety. This church was only partially monolithic with a new façade added in the nineteenth century.
‘In the really early days monks used to come here to pray,’ Charley was saying as we headed for the steps. ‘And there are some churches where the only way to get to them is by climbing a rope.’
‘You know,’ I said, indicating the building, ‘I think the front looks more fourteenth-century than nineteenth.’
‘Fourteenth? No, Ewan, it’s nineteenth.’
I looked quizzically at him, my best intellectual expression. ‘Are you sure?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s Roman. I don’t know. Did the Romans come here?’
CHARLEY: A couple of elderly beggars greeted us as we went into the churchyard accompanied by Habtamu.
The church door was massive and looked so old and so worn it was hard to believe it was only nineteenth-century. We were asked to remove our shoes, a tradition in this country.
‘Oh well,’ Ewan sighed, ‘apologies to everyone within a two mile radius.’
Habtamu indicated a series of crosses, explaining that there were three types of cross in Ethiopia: the processional cross, the hand cross, and those like the one on his necklace, with twelve arms coming off it to indicate the twelve disciples.
The interior was only dimly lit, the history seeping from walls painted with stories from the bible that were sixteen hundred years old. Habtamu told us the construction had been completed inside a year.
Ewan couldn’t believe it. ‘A year!’ he said. ‘How did they do that?’
Habtamu smiled. ‘The people had angels to help them.’
The church was quite small but the ceiling was high and dark and supported by massive pillars. Electricity had only been installed recently and before that the church had been lit with long tapers donated by the villagers. The ceilings were painted with gold and silver lines, like elongated interwoven crosses. They once used to reflect the gold and silver icons, but a pagan queen had stolen those in the ninth century. Every church in Ethiopia has three chambers; a curtained area where a replica of the Ark of the Covenant resides (we would have liked to have sneaked a glimpse, but weren’t allowed to), the second chamber for priests and deacons, and the third for the congregation.
The congregation stands throughout, so the elderly are provided with sticks to lean on. The music comes from huge drums and a hand-held percussion instrument, a sort of cross between a cymbal and a rattle.
Habtamu showed us a pillar with a scar in the stone. He explained that the church was completed on 4 October and annually ever since water has seeped from that scar. To this day the villagers anoint themselves with it as holy water. Apparently part of Christ’s actual cross is in Ethiopia. It was found by Queen Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine. According to legend, she lit a bonfire and the whereabouts of the cross was revealed to her in the smoke. The event is commemorated every 27 September when bonfires are lit in every town and village throughout the country. Habtamu told us that Christian faith is inextricably linked with Ethiopian culture: ‘It’s like blood for us,’ he told us.
EWAN: It really was a privilege to be there and the view from the church was absolutely stunning in the heat haze; the valley floor seemed to stretch forever, the sun glinting off tin roofs that peeked between the trees. It was an idyllic yet thirsty-looking landscape; there was a barren beauty to it.
Back on tarmac we headed south once more. My bike was feeling a little bouncy, the suspension perhaps a bit soft. I noticed how slowly the landscape changed; it was subtle, not like at a border where the change always seemed to be so dramatic. Riding a bike through a country you don’t feel like a tourist, you’re exposed to the elements and because you’re seeing everything up close you really feel as though you belong.
Coming down, we were into the twisty stuff, hairpin city, and my bike didn’t feel good, what with knobbly tyres and yawing suspension. The set-up felt loose and seemed to load up, almost weave, as I took the corners. I was saying as much on the video diary. Avoiding a lorry and sand on the road, I peeled into a left hand hairpin.
Shit, I’m down.
The front died; I was on my side, the bike sliding away and pirouetting on the tarmac. Kind of cool, actually, my helmet cam kept filming and, watching the footage later, it was like something off Moto GP.
Charley was a few bends further on and initially he had no idea I was down. The bike weighed a ton and the horn was blaring. I managed to wheel it to the side of the road and a few minutes later Charley was back. We checked for damage: the pannier was scraped and one of the bags on the crash bars but that was about it.
‘There’s oil on the front tyre.’ He bent to show me. ‘You picked up some oil, Ewan; it’s why the front washed out. Classic low side, loading the front and it just washed out. Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’ve got oil on your arse.’
I looked down at my jacket and he was right, the bottom of my rally suit was stained with oily dust.
‘This tarmac’s like glass,’ Charley went on. ‘I felt the back slide myself, coming out of a couple of corners.’
Moving to the wall we took a look at the view across the valley.
‘What’s that big town down there?’ Charley pointed.
‘Birmingham.’
We laughed.
‘Christ, I feel like Dickie Attenborough. Here we are in the middle of Ethiopia.’
‘Did you see that truck back there?’ I asked him.
‘You mean the one that missed the bend?’
We’d seen it earlier. A lorry had completely missed a bend and dived over the edge. It was in two pieces, one still above and the cab smashed to bits on the section of road below. Debris was littered all across the carriageway. God knows how long it had been there.
A reminder, if we needed it, that tarmac could be even more dangerous than going off-road.
CHARLEY: In Maychew we stopped for petrol and a cup of coffee. Ewan went to buy some food for dinner and I videoed a few kids then showed them the footage on my handlebar screen. I grabbed a coffee in the cafe, sitting on the veranda where the kids who hung around me were ushered away by the older men.
When Ewan got back I gave the waiter ten birr and he gave me seven back. I looked surprised.
‘No, no, it was only three,’ he said.
I hadn’t got a clue how much the coffee was but was really impressed by such honesty, particularly when you consider these people have so little.
Ewan managed to buy some potatoes, a few tomatoes and what he called ‘these oniony things’. It was getting late; the sky threatening and we started thinking about camping.
We found a great spot in the eucalyptus and were putting the tents up when the kids arrived as they always do. One teenager wearing a safari jacket told us this was forestry land and we weren’t allowed to camp. We persuaded him that it was all right, and I’m sure he had no jurisdiction anyway. We made a deal that in the morning we’d go to his village for breakfast. Fair enough, he said, and after asking for our empty water bottles, they left us.
As we were putting the tents up it started raining, but stopped again pretty quickly. There was a good breeze and with both ends open the ground sheet dried completely. I made Bovril and organised some boil-in-the-bag chilli while Ewan set about making his stew.
EWAN: It’s a speciality that requires very old Ethiopian ingredients: eight-year-old tatties for example, tomatoes and ancient Ethiopian onions. This was the vegetarian version, though of course you can use meat, chicken maybe, or lamb. Or bacon even. Slice the vegetables using a Leatherman or Swiss army knife; place them carefully in a billycan and add lots of water. Sprinkle liberally with garlic salt and place on the primus.
Bring it to the boil then let it simmer.
Have a little taste.
Christ, that’s fucking hot.
Continue to simmer until the potatoes are not too soft but not t
oo crunchy either. Serve immediately in a plastic mug with the plastic fork/spoon combination. For non-vegetarians the dish can be supplemented with a bag of chilli con carne.
‘What do you reckon, Charley?’ I asked him.
‘Bloody great. Well done. What’s it called?’
‘McGregor stew, the Ethiopian branch of the family.’
I slept for eleven hours. We’d been so tired we were in bed by 8.30 and the next thing I knew it was light again and I could hear movement outside the tent.
Poking my head out, I saw our friends from last night helping Charley roll up his fly sheet: half a dozen teenagers swarming all over it.
Charley indicated the lad in the safari jacket. ‘He knocked on my tent at 6.30. I’d been up to have a pooh and I think he spotted me.’
He told us his name was Kasai and he was eighteen. He went to school in Maychew and wanted to be a dentist or an eye doctor, maybe. He wanted to go to university and there was a new one opening in Axum; first, though, he wanted us to come to his house for breakfast. Cleaning my teeth, I packed my tent and got the bike back to the road. There were about eight kids now and Kasai jumped on the back of Charley’s bike while I took his brother.
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