jonnywhite

I feel justified in making this a long one as it may be a couple weeks before I can connect again.

The road goes ever on. I now find myself in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. It’s a busy city with the largest market in Africa, where you can buy absolutely anything. An AK47 costs $50USD or ($430 Birr), a camel costs slightly more. A friend and I discussed buying both and a few kilograms of bananas and taking over Ethiopia, but decided to stick to the bike.

Following 310km in two days on paved road leaving Bahir Dar since the last post, we descended and climbed the Blue Nile Gorge, which is allegedly the grand canyon’s equal (as claimed by a proud rider so don’t quote me on that). The gravel downhill (a little under 1.5km in altitude lost) was intense but gleefully accompanied by shouts of exhilaration while passing cars and transports, and the gravel uphill (a little over 1.5km in altitude gained) was grueling and did a number on the legs, but both were quite beautiful. Two more days of hills brought us to Addis Ababa. A Dutch rider with more electronic gear than most spaceships informed me that we climbed over 7km in those 5 days and although I am wiped, it was a pleasure. I will emphasize again what a green and varied landscape Ethiopia boasts, contrary to my previous conceptions which were based on 1980’s Sally Struthers infomercials with kids in desert mud huts covered in flies. There are, in fact, lush hills covered in crops, plains covered herds of goats and cows, more exotic and predatory birds than you can imagine, and breath-taking scenery at every second turn; to go with the kids and flies.

Speaking of the Ethiopian kids, they have gained the focus of many of the riders, though not in the way Sally Struthers might like. There are so many children that we have to put up a string fence around our campsite and lunch stops to keep them at a reasonable distance. They come from nowhere and line up in rows (behind the string fence when it is there, surrounding you when it is not) to stare at us. Some call the occasional ‘hello’ and sometimes we’ll play with them or take their pictures and show them, to their fascination (they were flabbergasted by the video camera and I had half a village chasing me to get on screen and see the viewfinder), but mostly we have our business to go about and they just stand and stare and stare and stare. Last night the ones in the back were pushing the ones in the front into the ‘fence’ and we had to hire local ‘security’ to keep the kids back, which they did by chasing them with sticks.

On the rides we are chased continuously, mostly by kids but also by adults, and asked ‘Where are you go?!’ about 100 times a day, which if you answer, they ask again. They do not speak a word of English but delight in making you react, like a child poking a trapped animal with a stick to see what it will do. The one thing they do understand concerning white people is how to beg for money aggressively. More common than ‘Where are you go?!’ is “You! Gimme money! One Birr! You! You!” (repeat 1000 times). And those are the good kids. The bad ones throw rocks.

When they do, the best thing we can do, allegedly, is chase them to their parents and explain (charades) what they’ve done so their parents can discourage them from throwing rocks at later riders. I have done this with success previously, chasing kids down on the bicycle and making the parents understand what happened. The parent apologizes and berates the kid and I ride off. After being hit by a decent size rock today I tried to chase down a group of kids on foot. You may know that many of the fastest Olympic runners area and have been Ethiopians… these kids absolutely fly. I’m a full grown lad and a semi-athlete (I actually thought of myself as an athlete before the following incident). Upon being hit I threw the bike down and took off across a field after the group of what looked to be 6th to 9th graders who had thrown the rocks. I was left panting in the dust before I’d finished my string of what would have sounded like very creative, emphatic, and accented gibberish to them. While I am hit very rarely, some of the riders who come through, after most of the group has passed without giving them any money which the locals seem to expect from traveling white people (even those going by at 30kmph on a bike), are hit much more often. We are struggling to ride theses distances as it is day after day while camping, as well as to keep our composure at having the same things yelled at us and requested from us by everyone we pass. The rocks have pushed a few people over the edge and minor flip-outs are not uncommon now. The road goes on.

Something else interesting is happening to add to the challenge of the trip on top of the toughness of the last several rides, the kids and their rocks, and the fact that we are climbing all the time now to reach our highest altitude of the trip tomorrow (3100m and thankfully a rest day). As I write this for future posting, we are camped in Ethiopia one day’s ride from Addis Ababa. Until tonight we had not seen a drop of rain since arriving in Cairo. No one puts their fly over their tent or takes any preparations the occasion of rain, it is fairly unheard of this time of year. We are, by now, very comfortable in out tents and most do not look for a room nearby even if they are cheap and available. Tonight there is a rain and hail storm the likes and fury of which I have not seen before, even in Halifax. There is one rider who set up his tent on top of one of the expedition trucks for lack of space on the ground and we are sincerely concerned that he may be washed off. I happen to be one of 5 lucky riders tonight who snagged a room near the campsite. The room for the night cost 12 Birr, about 1.75 Canadian, and is a concrete cave with a tin door, not much more spacious than my tent, but the reading light and the plug to charge my electronics made it worth the expenditure in my mind. My mind has not changed since. I anticipate an interesting and cranky morning, if not an interesting night sheltering refugees, as the remaining 45 of our crew are camped on a nearby lawn. While I must pack up and wait to see what happens, I will follow up in the next paragraph for you, so read on.

Well they are a hardy bunch. I did not receive any refugees. The tour director said that the first thing he did when it started hailing was make a snowball and the guy who set up his tent on top of the truck climbed down to a local dining hall where he found some beers and some fellow riders and they waited out the storm. It was all jokes this morning and the ones who did get wet, true to our typical form for anyone who is suffering, did not complain so as not to bring down the group or seem like a whiner.

So all’s well and I’m in the groove most of the time now. Audiobooks make the bad days bearable and music pumps me up when those fail. Most of the time, however, I appreciate how lucky I am to be here. Take care my few and dear readers and I’ll post next time in Kenya, probably in a couple weeks.