Where are the starving babies ?

So I am naive as the next person, riding on a bus through the middle of Ethiopia I find myself asking, where are the starving babies ?
The images that I associate most with Ethiopia are those from the famine in the 1980's, starving babies, with bloated stomachs, large bald heads covered in flies, large, blank eyes filled with the look of complete surrender to the inevitability of death staring at the camera, sitting under the burning sun, in the middle of the desert.

I look out the window and I see sheer mountain peaks, thin rocky ridge lines, steep flanks covered in ploughed terraces divided by stone walls, goats, cows and sheep grazing on the green grass and trees everywhere. I am yet to see any starving babies, instead I have been enjoying the tasty fare that traditional Ethiopian food has to offer, including plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables and my new staple - coffee.

I look around the bus trying to validate my preconceptions, I like to think of myself as relatively well informed - after all I did read an article in Kenya that the UN agency the WFP (World Food Program) said that nine million people were at risk of starving this year in Ethiopia, and I see Save the Children signs everywhere. Instead people are busy sending messages on their mobile phones, chewing chat, roasted barley and sugar cane - no starving babies here either.

The gap between the portrayal of Africa, and the reality of Africa seems to grow wider and wider the more time I spend here. The rare times that Africa makes it to the news are usually stories about natural disasters, famines or violence, and whether they occurred twenty years ago or yesterday, the sheer weight of the sum of negativity means the overall impression that we carry around with us is one of hopelessness and suffering. Even when these ideas run in to the wall of reality, I keep looking to try and prove the errant preconceptions I have. Perhaps confronting these myths also means confronting all of the other erroneous news that feeds the warped ideas of reality that we construct in our heads, and try to impose on the often resolutely stubborn reality. We know so little about the world despite being so interconnected and hearing and reading about it every day.

Can I have finally stumbled on a justification for wandering about the planet ?

Nonetheless, I will keep my eye out for some starving babies (Got to get my hug count up)

Good question

On the way back from seeing the carved churches of Lalibela, I arrived
in Woldyia, a junction town which failed in it's sole purpose -
providing transport to get out of it. After a strange scene in which I
had a stand up argument with the six fingered bus boy (it was an extra
little pinky, tacked on the end of the hand, with nail and all. Once I
noticed it, it was almost impossible to stop my eyes from drifting down
to look at in brief, firvative glances, before quickly shifting my gaze
out of a mix of good manners and a sense of repulsion) about having to
pay for him to put my bag in the luggage compartment at the back. In the
end I wrenched the tool key from his hand, after threatening to take the
phone from his ear, opened the boot, got my bag and walked away. I kept
walking out of town, to some very surprised looks by locals. I stood by
the road for a while and very few cars past, but after twenty minutes or
so a ute stopped, and despite going only fifty kilometres, I through my
bag in the back and jumped in.

I was sharing the car with three other guys, two middle aged and one in
his late teens. Most people in Ethiopia can speak a fair amount of
English but they are usually too shy to try. As we drove along the
driver made some jokes in English about how the other two were
graduates, yet he was the only one willing to give talking in English a
shot. After about twenty minutes we reached a small town, stopped at a
bar, and the driver and one of the passengers got out. The other
passenger then started to ask me a few questions about where I was from,
where I had been in Ethiopia (the stone churches in Lalibela) and where
I was going in Ethiopia (the monasteries in Tigray). Inevitably we ended
up with the usual, what is your religion ? question.

"I have no religion" I told him, "I don't believe in God". He thought
about that for a while and then shot this curly one at me,
"You don't believe in Jesus and you don't have a church, so why do you
come to visit churches in Ethiopia ?"

I was floored by that one and have been trying to think of a good
comeback ever since.

The work of angels ?

The monolithic churches of Lalibela have to be seen to be believed. They are hidden away in the central mountains of Ethiopia, and reputed to have been built, or more accurately carved, in the 12th and 13th centuries by King Lalibela after his return from exile in Jerusalem. The churches were created as a refuge, and a site of pilgrimage - instead of risking the life threatening journey across the Muslim lands on the way to Jerusalem, Ethiopian Christians could instead travel to the new Jerusalem. The backdrop, of an endless series of steep valleys, thin ridge lines and mesas that stretch along the horizon in all directions is almost impressive as the churches. The churches themselves are carved in to the rock - that is, the workers started with a flat stretch of rock and carved down 10 to 15 metres in to it, eking out a large hole in the ground with churches that are carved - rather than built - from the same rock, in the middle of the hole.


As our guide led us around the churches he explained that they were built supposedly in the space of 23 years, following the plans that were divinely revealed to King Lalibela, in a dream in which the designs were shown to him. They were all started and finished at the same time, and in order to complete the work so quickly at night angels would appear and work until morning when the mere mortals returned to work.

The angel story, told in all earnest by the guide, was what got my incredulity meter going - but I must admit it had been emitting some weird noises ever since I arrived in Ethiopia. The foundation of Ethiopia is based on the Queen of Sheba story. Supposedly Queen Sheba (allegedly an Ethiopian, but the Yemenis claim her as well) headed off to Jerusalem, and had a little dalliance with King Solomon to whom she bore a child. Her entourage then headed back to Ethiopia after nicking the Ark of the Covenant (what Moses got when God gave him the Ten Commandments on Mt Sinai and what Indiana Jones found somewhere in the desert near the Pyramids) The original ark is apparently in Axum in the north of Ethiopia, and is the Ethiopian Coptic Churches most holy site. However put your cameras away because it is hidden away and nobody is allowed to see it - apparently you will instantly turn to flames if you do. All churches in Ethiopia have a copy of the covenant, but again they are behind curtains and nobody is allowed to see it. As an English guy I met asked, is there a factory where these replicas are produced, and how can you produce a replica if you can't see the original.

So there is the work of angels, the Ark of the Covenant, and each of the thirteen churches in Lalibela also has its own cross, found in the waters surrounding each church and supposedly made from perfect gold -whatever that is. (Curiously one of them was stolen by a local and sold to a Belgian collector back in the '80s, clearly the divine cross doesn't cause blindness)

Needless to say, as with most religious beliefs, not much really stands up to close scrutiny - if the churches are the work of angels surely they would be perfect, so why the cracks and collapsed buildings - requiring some rather dodgy Italian concreting in the 1930's to hold them up, why do the divinely created crosses show flaws and some rust. I guess this helps explain the rather prodigious use of curtains. And the curtains were the start of the problem.

Being in a group of rather sceptical Westerners only encouraged further scepticism, and it appeared that the guide was growing tired under our barrage of questions. It all came to a head in a rather bizarre conversation with the guardian priest at one of the churches. To a rather innocuous question as to the practicalities of some supposed miracle the priest admonished us for inquiring too far, stating that it was not right to know all of the mysteries, and that even seeking to know was blasphemous and a lack of respect. Suddenly it all felt a little like the Wizard of Oz, all smoke, mirrors and curtains, mysteries and magic spell - but no questions allowed. Yet you just know that at some point somebody will come along and tug at the curtain to reveal the real truth. Rather than a deep, meaningful or spiritual experience, it feels more like a game of hide and seek, explaining the miraculous using God or angels as a kind of patch when things get a little tricky.

In the end all the dodgy stories, curtains, and don't look heres kind of ruined the experience, it was hard not to look at the incredible buildings without thinking about ridiculous stories of angels and crosses appearing from the deep.

The work of angels

The monolithic churches of Lalibela have to be seen to be believed. Hidden away in the central mountains of Ethiopia, and reputed to have been built in the 12th or 13th century by King Lalibela after his return from exile in Jerusalem.The churches were carved as a refuge, and a site of pilgrimage - instead of risking the life threatening journey across the Muslim lands on the way to Jerusalem, Ethiopian Christians could instead travel to the new Jerusalem. The churches are set against an incredibly beautiful back drop of an endless series of steep valleys, thin ridge lines and mesas that stretch along the horizon in all directions. The churches themselves are carved in to the rock - that is, the workers started with a flat stretch of rock and carved down 10 to 15 metres in to it, eking out a large hole in the ground with churches that are carved - rather than built - from the same rock, in the middle of the hole. Unfortunately photos don't really do justice, to the size, intricacy of the work and the unique nature of buildings that are carved rather than built.

As our guide led us around the churches he explained that they were built supposedly in the space of 23 years, following the plans that were divinely revealed to King Lalibella. They were all started and finished at the same time, and apparently at night angels would appear and work until morning when the mere mortals returned to work. The angel story, told in all earnest by the guide, was what got my incredulity meter going, but Ethiopian history is filled with stories that would give a Sceptics Association years of joy. The founding myth of Ethiopia, that Queen Sheba (reputedly an Ethiopian, although there is no historical evidence that she ever existed) headed off to Jerusalem, had a little dalliance with King Solomon to whom she bore a child, then headed back to Ethiopia after nicking the Ark of the Covenant (what Moses got when God gave him the Ten Commandments on Mt Sinai) The original ark is apparently in Axum in the north of Ethiopia but nobody is allowed to see it – apparently if you do you will burst in to a ball of flames. All churches in Ethiopia have a copy of the covenant, but again they are behind curtains and nobody is allowed to see it. Also each of the churches in Lalibella has its own cross, found in the waters surrounding each church and supposedly made from perfect gold.
After hearing all of these stories one's curiosity is peeked – it is difficult for an enquiring mind, to say nothing of a cheeky atheist's mind, not to start questioning things – especially when they are hidden away behind curtains. Particularly when there is no cogent reason for the curtains – if God revealed the rules to live by to Moses you would think that God would have wanted that everybody got to see these rules so they knew what they were supposed to do. And if angels really did help build the churches why are the churches now cracking and falling apart, surely the work of angels must be divinely perfect ? And why did the angels just work at night – they could have saved the workers a lot of effort and worked during the day as well ? And wouldn't the workers have organised in to a union and demanded that the scabs (angels who surely wouldn't have been paid) be excluded from working on the project ? If the crosses are divinely created can when test them to see their composition ?

Needless to say not many of these questions went down very well and everything reached a head with a bizarre conversation with one of the priests who guard the churches. When the Czech guy who was in our group asked a priest a seemingly innocuous question, the priest admonished him for inquiring too far, and said that it was not right for us to know all of the mysteries of God. He said that seeking to know is a lack of respect and that asking questions is blasphemous. He then told us all to leave.
Suddenly it all felt a little like the Wizard of Oz, all smoke, mirrors and curtains, no questions allowed. When questions are asked about why things can't be seen, or what the hidden things contain, no cogent explanations are ever presented. It feels like a game of hide and seek – every time you ask a question that reveals an inconsistency a new supernatural, and therefore unexplainable, answer is invented.
Those with faith, and religions in particular seem to think that any uncertainty arising from an inability to explain things has to be covered up and hidden away – as though if you find out that they don't have the answer then the whole system of belief will collapse - at some point somebody will come along and tug at the curtain to reveal the real truth. In the end the experience was ruined by these ridiculous explanations, in fact every time I entered a church or even saw an Orthodox priest from then on I couldn't help but think about the silly game they seemed to be playing. For me
the supernatural and fantastical explanations undermine the meaningful work that is created as an offering to God. It is wondrous enough to think that people alone created these buildings eight or nine hundred years ago there is no need for angels.

Caught on first

Wandering about Ethiopia sometimes feels as though I have been caught in the Abbot and Costello Who's on first ? routine. Quite often when an Ethiopian sees you in the street they simply yell out "You!". Initially I was a little confused by this and did genuinely respond with "Me ?", to clarify whether they were actually referring to me - somebody they had never met before, thought I was the President of China or thought my shaggy hair made me resemble a sheep. To this the response would simply be "You !"

After a while I realised that it was me they were referring to, and that the confusion that I responded with got a few laughs from the speaker, his friends and surrounding viewers and gave me a convenient  exit strategy. I started adding a few pointing gestures trying to demonstrate the difference between you and me, topped with a few bemused looks and most times people were so confused they forgot to even say "Give me money" !

So I often wander about town and have exchanges which go something like

You !
Me ?
You !
Me [point to me], or you [point to you] ?
You !
Me [point to you] or you [point to me] ?
You... [loss of certainty]
You [point at me] or me [point at you] ?
Yo...m...me ?
Oh, me [point at you. Exit stage left]

A moment of genocide tourism

There are not altogether that many, although probably too many, places in the world where you can walk around the tombs of 248,000 murder victims in the space of a couple of minutes. The mention of Rwanda for most people brings to mind the hair raising events that occurred in that country in 1994, from which Rwandans are still recovering today. In some ways the genocide in Rwanda has developed that almost super-historical status, like the Holocaust; the mere mention of the word invokes so much revulsion, a rush of grotesque images often generating a cold chill and raising the hairs on the back of your neck, leaving the details often forgotten.

Background

There seems to be a difference of opinion about the ethic and historical distinctions between the two principal ethnic groups in Rwanda - the Hutus and the Tutsis. In around 1700 the nomadic Tutsi clans came from the upper White Nile to Rwanda and
Burundi where they established themselves as a minority, ruling caste over the local Bantu, the Hutu. In the memorial in Kigali, a European anthropologist suggested that when the colonialists arrived they found Tutsi and Hutu living together in relative harmony. Rwanda was first colonised by the Germans and then the Belgians, both of whom used divide and rule tactics, favouring the Tutsi to further their colonial aims. In the late 1950's with the end of colonial rule in sight, the Belgians swapped sides to favour the Hutus - who preferred democracy and then independence. Ethnic clashes occurred in 1959 when the Tutsi king died, and the first independent government in 1962 was Hutu dominated, and introduced quotas for Tutsis. Many Tutsi fled to neighbouring countries, and proceeded to launch guerrilla attacks against the Rwandan government. In 1972 thousands of Hutus were massacred in neighbouring Tutsi dominated Burundi, causing even more anxiety in Rwanda. From this time until 1990 there were repeated massacres of Tutsis in Rwanda. During the 1980's many Tutsis in exile in Rwanda aligned themselves with General Museveni, who came to power in 1986. In 1990 the Rwandan Patriotic Front, based in Uganda and lead by the current President Kagame (a key lieutenant of Museveni) invaded Rwanda with 5000 well armed and well trained troops. The Rwandan called for French and Belgium assistance, which they received, and were successful in repulsing the rebels. The army then went on a rampage, killing many Tutsis and Hutu sympathisers, who they accused of helping the rebels. Thousands were murdered and hundreds of thousands fled to Uganda. The RPF invaded again in 1991 and 1993. In 1994 all parties attended a peace conference in Arusha, Tanzania, where a power sharing agreement was reached. However on the return flight home the aeroplane containing the Rwandan and Burundian presidents was shot down by Hutu extremists killing them both. This was the tipping point for the unleashing of the Hutu extremists, those in suits within the government, the military and the Interahamwe - the militia made up of young Rwandans, trained and armed (often with machetes and other simple farming implements) by the men in suits. Lists of Tutsis and Hutu sympathisers had been prepared and the militia went from door to door, pursuing the people on the list, and then proceeding to hack them to death, and then did likewise for any of their relatives who were present. The militia also killed ten Belgian UN peacekeepers, because they knew it would provoke the Belgians in to leaving, and remove any potential for UN intervention. Guess what the Belgians did ? They upped and left - leaving a small UN force under the command of a truly heroic Canadian by the name of Romeo Dallaire.

Meanwhile around one million people, out of a population of around 6 million, and caused a couple of million refugees to flee to near by countries. Road blocks were set up, to stop people fleeing the perpetrators, all Rwandans had their ethnicity marked on their ID cards so it was easy for the potential victims to be identified. Those not caught in their homes, or fleeing on the roads were often hunted down where they sought refuge - in churches and schools, which were sometimes sealed off and bombed - killing all those inside. A tide of hatred washed over the population, and whilst the story of those who risked their own lives to protect others are many, the truth remains that millions of people, who formerly lived together as neighbours or even family, either took up weapons and killed people, or turned away and acquiesced. The streets of Kigali were littered with dismembered bodies - when the RDF forces took the capital all of the local dogs had to be killed because they had developed the taste for human flesh.

Interestingly Commander Dallaire had been informed that the Interahamwe was being trained, that plans were afoot to kill the Belgian peacekeepers to get the Belgians out of the country and that massacres were imminent, prior to the beginning of the killings by a high level defector in the Government. Dallaire sent an urgent cable to UN headquarters in New York, advising of the imminent threat, suggesting that even a small UN force would likely to be effective, and requesting such a force be sent. What happened - almost nothing. The matter was pretty much avoided, and the requested force did not arrive until over two months later. The first troops to arrive were the French under Operation Turquoise, which effectively created a corridor to the south and west through which the perpetrators could withdraw and escape in to the Congo. The world had failed to leave up to the creed of never again, and there was blood on many people's hands.

Genocide tourism ?

I visited two memorials in Rwanda, the first in Kigali, the capital, and the second in Kisuni, in the countryside near Rwanda's second city of Butare.

The memorial in Kigali sits in a suburb, down a hill just out of town, on the side of a small hill, above four long, thin terraces, in a stark white building. From the entrance you look out across the terraces across the small valley to the steep hill covered in houses and topped by a group of skyscrapers, some inhabited but many in the process of being built - giving the city an air of bursting, new vitality.

We started our visit with a tour of the mass graves where most of the 250 thousand odd victims in Kigali alone had been interred in four mass graves, covered by two 200 metre long concrete slabs about thirty centimetres high, each occupying one of the terraces that we had seen as we approached the memorial. It is almost beyond comprehension to imagine that around thirty percent of the population of a city were killed in the space of a few short weeks, by their neighbours, friends, family, all fellow citizens in a frenzy of organised violence. And here they lay beneath, crammed in on top of each other, beneath our feet. Looking at the city in the background it was difficult to see how these bustling streets, and smiling faces, could have been the scene of a bloodbath, emptied of the living and filled with the rotting corpses of the recently slain.

We then headed up to the museum and had a wander around. Strangely I was a little under whelmed - the exhibition was well presented, leading from a historical account of Rwanda, through independence, the build up, the genocide and the aftermath. The design of the building suited its purpose well, as I wandered around in circles following the exhibition the sense of space made me feel confused, claustrophobic and a little afraid. The room at the end containing thousands of pictures of the victims was very moving. However it never really had the knock-out effect, that left me floored when I visited Tuol Sleng the Khmer Rouge torture chamber in Phnom Penn. Perhaps here the wounds were to recent, there was not many graphic photos, not much description of the horrendous acts of violence, not much detail about how people were convinced, bullied or threatened to do what they did.


A few days later we headed out to Butare, and while Damo went off to track the chimps, I headed out to Kisuni. I met a soldier on the way who decided that rather than answer my questions about directions, he would escort me there himself. In that very African way he took my hand in his and we proceeded to walk down the road, hand in hand, something that takes even the most open minded Western man a while to get used to.

There is almost no flat land in Rwanda at all, there are simply big hills - volcanoes, less big hills - small rounded peaks, and then your ordinary, everyday hills. The school at Kisuni sits on a big hill, immediately surrounded by small hills, with a back drop of other large hills encircling it. It provides an excellent vantage point, it can be seen from far off and the views it affords of the surrounding countryside are panoramic. All of the hills are green, most are completely covered in a patchwork of square fields containing crops, with some of the summits are near verticals side of the hills covered in eucalyptus groves. You can see the dull orange of the gravel roads weaving their serpentine way off in to the distance, around the sides of hills, done through the valleys and along the ridge lines.

As we entered the fenced off compound a truck filled with rocks arrived and headed over the right where a large group of men and women were working. The soldier explained to me that some of the mass graves had started leaking and the bodies had been exhumed in order for the foundations to be laid in rocks and the tombs rebuilt and resealed. We met the caretaker who searched for the keys in the new yet to be completed, two storey memorial building at the top of the hill, and then lead us around the back to the old class rooms. There were about ten or twelve rows of six, simple, square red brick buildings with corrugated iron roofs, scattered across the side of the hill in neat rows, all looking very much like classrooms. I noticed that the windows facing the sun were all covered in large tarpaulins, secured to the roof.

The caretaker lead us to the building furthermost down the hill, whilst he opened the door I stared out around the valley, the sun was quite high in the sky, basking all I could see in a bright light which made the greens of the flora and the reds of the earth and the contrast between the two seem almost surreal. It was an idyllic, pastoral scene - there was almost no sound at all other than a few birds singing. Here and there I could see people working in the fields, and the odd cow or goat wandering about. As the door to the classroom was opened, I looked in to the dark room and was unsure of what I was seeing. In each of the four corners of the room were hip high simple wooden benches, about the size of a double bed, covered in bright white human skeletons preserved in lime. In the centre of the room was a small table with a stand of flowers on it. As I entered the room I noticed what was perhaps most confronting about the remains was that rather than being laid out as for a funeral many of the victims were preserved as they had been found, reflecting them in the moments before their death many were twisted and writhing in pain, mouths open to expel a chilling scream of pain, some cowering in fear from the death blow they were about to receive trying to protect themselves or shield young children or skulls and bones deformed or smashed as they were killed. I walked further in to the room and couldn't tear myself away from looking at the macabre spectacle, usually their is a distance between us and death, but here it was thrust upon me. The details that the lime permitted to be seen were incredible, despite many of the skeletons effectively being flat, it was still possible to see holes in skulls from hoes, broken bones, bits of clothes still attached to some victims. I looked outside to the bright sunshine and back in to the room and didn't know what to think.

Meanwhile the caretaker had been opening the other rooms and when I came out of the room for some air, he pointed me to the second room. Likewise it was filled with the same disturbing scene, this room contained more young children, some no older than two or three years; the next room had more young people; the next mothers and babies and so on. After I had seen six of these rooms, I looked out at the surrounding countryside and thought to myself, what am I doing here ? Is this the height of insensitivity, the disturbing depths to which tourists descend to try and capture that authentic experience ? Do I want to reach out and touch the bones so that I can feel the genocide - so it is more real ? Am I honouring the people who died or is it just another stop, a Holy Planet must see, on my tour of Africa ?

As the caretaker locked up all the rooms, I stood under the shade of the veranda looking out on the countryside and my mind kept loping back to how could this place and these people have done all this. I imagined what it must have been like for those victims who cowered in fear for a couple of weeks, held together in a large hall, denied food and water so that many died of dehydration, to be then set upon and hacked to death. There chilling cries would have rung out across this small silent valley, and everyone in the surrounding area who heard must have known what was happening - and yet they either participated or turned a wilful blind eye to the tragedy.

When the caretaker asked if I wanted to see the other rooms - there were around fifty of them - concurred with him that it wasn't really necessary. On the way back up the hill he showed me the central hall where all of the victims had been brought and told they would be protected - it was filled with shelves of clothes and shoes, many victims had their clothes stripped off them so the killers could wear them. He also showed French armies flagpole and volleyball court placed on top of mass graves, as they permitted the perpetrators to escape. On the way back to the memorial centre I asked the caretaker my routine question about how the survivors and the relatives of the victims can go on living today knowing that there are many among them who were perpetrators and will never be held to account, how do they bury their bitterness and get on with life ? Without battering an eyelid he explained that he had lost his mother, his wife and three sisters at this very place, but that now Rwanda was one country where ethnicity didn't matter any more, their wasn't a hint of bitterness or revenge in his voice. He paused to show me a mass grave, a narrow pit, about three metres deep, in to which bodies had been thrown, piled on top of each other until the hole was filled. He said that people have not forgotten what happened but that they had to think more about the future and about living together than the past.

Having asked this question of a few people, to me it seems that the forgiveness and reconciliation are a little forced in Rwanda - people don't like to think or talk about it - despite it being such a seminal event in both their lives and the life of their country. But perhaps their is no alternative - revenge and punishment will only lead to more violence, reopen painful wounds and foment more hatred. However, maybe, just maybe, Rwandans are succeeding, little by little, in that delicate balancing act between carrying on living and looking to the future, whilst not forgetting the painful past.

I still can't answer for myself the question of why I went, and it has raised more questions than it has answered, and exposed some deep contradictions about humanity. Why is is that when so many people die a life is so easy to take - almost thoughtlessly, that life itself loses meaning, and yet it is the large amount of death at once that makes us sit up and take notice and reminds us how precious life is- there is no memorial to the earlier victims of ethnic violence in Rwanda, nor to the estimated five million victims of the war in the Congo ? Why is it that the scale of the phenomena also seems to diminish and amplify the responsibility, how could individuals resist the tide of mob, yet why didn't each individual stop, think I am participating (or turning away from) the murder of one person, then another, then another and so on a million or more times ? Do individual victims have the right to demand justice, or is the fledging social cohesion, the rupture of which would no doubt lead to more violence and death more important - and who gets to decide ?

Harar and a bad day

Harar is a Muslim oasis in an Orthodox Christian nation. It was the fortified city, situated on the flat coastal plain and completely surrounded by 10 ft high walls. Inside the walls the city is filled with seemingly endless narrow alleyways - there are a few roads on which cars can fit - otherwise it is walking or donkey only. It was used as a base for the trade that came from the interior and was sent on to the Arabian peninsula - principally slaves and ivory, and until as late as 1850 it was the major market in the Horn of Africa. Later the trade included chat or qat, the plant that is chewed by people across the Arab world for its narcotic effects. It is the fourth holiest city in Islam, as Muslims that were persecuted on the Arabian peninsula fled there, and until well in to the 18th century non-Muslims (Europeans) were not allowed within the city walls. By the late 1800's the city had been conquered by the Ethiopian (Christian) king and history quickly set about forgetting Harar. Trade dried up, the market shrank to almost nothing, its high white walls began falling apart, most of the gates are gone, and the city has expanded outside of the walls in to the surrounding hills. A few tourists visit now and then, the principal attraction are the hyena feeding men.

After being in Ethiopia for around ten days and thought I was starting to adjust to the strange and different place that it is.However on my second day in Harar it was too much. I couldn't take the fact that there is no public space in which as a farenji I could escape the glare of the Ethiopians - staring at me out of sheer curiosity, resentment or more commonly as a walking wallet. As I walk the street people constantly yell out "Farenji" or "You, you, you" - it is hard to work out what to say in reply to this. If I stop to look at something a crowd soon gathers, which usually makes matters worse as people egg each other on to see how close they can get to the farenji. The more daring or linguistically skilled go on to "Where are you from ? Where are you going?, whilst the seemingly endless packs of touts will go through the list of things they have to sell me, a city tour, some chat, a coffee ceremony, see the hyenas. I have lost count of the number of times I have had to tell them I have already done all of these. There are also beggars sprinkled across the city, usually occupying large chunks of the footpath, and when they see a farenji you can almost hear the cash register ching-chinging in there ears.
The city, like most in Ethiopia, is quite filthy - dirty, dirty streets covered in a thick dust, mixed with animal and human shit - both seem free to go wherever they like. There are plastic bags, discarded usually rotting food and anything that people don't want thrown and then blown everywhere. The air is filled with diesel fumes, most vehicles appear to wear thick black smoke coming out of the exhaust pipe as a badge of honour. Combined with the decrepit old town, and a sense of a grander past the whole place is suffocating.

Yesterday I reached boiling point - as I walked down the street I wanted to shout out loud - Leave me alone - I just want to walk around and be left alone. I suddenly felt very physically and emotionally tired - despite it being only 9 in the morning. I retreated to my room, and spent all day reading, sleeping and relaxing, with the door closed on the world. I did however venture out for the star attraction of Harar - the hyena feeding.

Men have been feeding hyenas just after dusk outside the gates of Harar for around five hundred years. Hyenas are rumoured to have mythical powers, and each year in September a porridge is prepared and set out for them - if they eat it the year will bring good things, if not locals start preparing for a bad year. More prosaically keeping the hyenas well fed and happy stops them from attacking livestock, or coming inside the city walls for snacks of the human variety.

I wandered down to one of the two remaining places, to watch the spectacle of a man pulling scraps of meat out of container and holding them on a stick as hyenas cautiously approached, and then lunged for the meat. A tour bus arrived and faced its high beams directly on the the seated hyena feeder - making the whole thing a little like a circus show (If you want you can feed the hyenas yourself, even holding the stick in your mouth) Hyenas are incredible animals - looking like a mix between a cat and dog, spotted like a giraffe, their mangy fur is pulled tightly over their bulk like a stuffed animal, and they have large, muscled forearms which are longer than the back legs giving them a strange, loping gait. In the darkness they softly howled, more like a screech than a bark, and then they would lope in to the light, after being called by the feeder using a low growl. (Supposedly the feeders know each hyena by name and can communicate with them)
After ten minutes I was a little over the bright lights and the spectacle of the group of young American tourists each having their turn to get photos of themselves, so I started heading back in to the city. This being Ethiopia though of course I couldn't be left alone, first I was threatened if I didn't pay some money to the touts surrounding the hyena man - supposedly for the meat, but considering the pack of tourists that argument didn't hold much water. Then once that argument was finished I was followed by a few of the touts wanting to sell me this and that. I scurried off back to my room as quickly as I could - the day ending much as it had begun.

Huh ?

But for the grace of God - I wouldn't have made it to Maralal

Organised chaos

A bird's eye view of the central bus station in Uganda - somehow all of these minibuses squeeze in and out off one double gate and three foot of mud the day I was there - and manage to more or less leave from the same spot everyday.
Somehow most people know when you tell them you destination where to direct you to as well !!!

Masai on holiday

Ethiopia - a land unto itself

Ethiopia truly is different, something you notice everyday. As soon as you cross the border you go back six hours and about 8 years - they use the old Gregorian calendar, and the clock starts ticking at 6am rather than 12am. The people are different to the mixed Arab-Africans of Kenya and Tanzania, and the tribal and bantu peoples of Kenya, Uganda, and the more Arabic peoples of Sudan and Somalia. They have their own language Amharic (actually several), with its own script. They have their own religion, Ethiopian Orthodox, based on a story about the Queen of Sheba and the stealing of the Ark of the Covenant from Jerusalem. They have their own food, a great mix of desert simplicity and Italian flair. Almost all of the music they listen to is in their own language - three weeks without hearing any American R&B or pop rubbish - what a relief. The countryside is distinct - mountains, mountains and more mountains. And they have some very peculiar habits - everyone seems to like to piss and shit in the streets !!

Hardening of the heart

Ethiopia has a culture of begging, and the heat of the blowtorch is focused on tourists. Addis Abbaba as the capital and largest city is filled with beggars, and you can't walk anywhere without passing a few beggars sitting on the footpath or being chased by a few kids, or having a hand thrust in the window of the minibus. And whilst you can give some money to a few people there is a limit and in most cases you end up saying no far more than you give.
You start to find yourself doing strange things, crossing the road to avoid a beggar, pretending to be engrossed in the clouds in the sky to avoid catching the eye of a beggar, or developing suspect theories about to whom you should give and then be forced to make evaluations about the worthiness of beggars – he doesn't look that bad or why should I give her anything if she has three kids.
The whole process though leads to a hardening of the heart, you can feel sympathy seeping out of you as you continually say no, and have to walk past people who are struggling to survive. When you are confronted repeatedly by such poverty it is much more difficult to forget about it and pretend it doesn't exist. And yet at the end of each day you feel like your heart is slowly turning to stone as you failed to help so many people to whom what for you is almost nothing to them is another day of life. I fear eventually that I will become so insensitive to it that the heart will stop feeling.

Training to catch a bus (Ethiopia, 13/03/09)

Having found a hotel some fifty or so metres from the bus station the night before, and having been told I would need to be at the gate to the bus station at five am, I stumbled out of the hotel at five on the dot at was soon at the gate of the bus station, a huge empty, open space the size of a couple of football fields, still blanketed in almost complete darkness. I made my way to where the security guard the night before had indicated that the buses to Robe left from and where two buses where parked. As I approached the buses I noticed that there were a number of people milling around, and that further off on the other side of the station there were a collection of other buses and groups of people milling around. There didn't seem to be much going on, so I stood around trying not to fall asleep on my feet. After about ten minutes the blinding lights of an approaching bus illuminated how many people were actually waiting, and as the bus drew nearer everybody started to madly dash about - one group groping at the side of the bus and following it as it manoeuvred in to position, whilst another seemed to be forming some sort of line. By the time the bus came to a stop the two groups had converged - and when the official looking blue lab coat attired bus boy - with the appropriate laminated ID card draped around his neck appeared the crowd fell in to a queue at his direction, about twenty metres away from the bus. Having learnt the lesson long ago that white man can't queue (at least not with Africans) I stood back and watched the action unfold. After a fair amount of jostling the bus boy then started to allow people to get on the bus - but in a way that reminded me of old PLO training videos that I had seen somewhere. The bus boy allowed about ten people at a time to proceed, and in the dim pre-dawn light as the lucky passengers half ran and half scuttled the twenty metres to the bus, the shawls, woolly hats and turbans combined with the bags under their arms that looked like automatic weapons, made it look like a Hamas run training session. When they arrived at the bus door the jam of people slowed things down as people clambered aboard. Once on the bus they rushed back and forth, looking a little like a line of ants, reserving their seats, and stowing their luggage in any place they could find, above or below the seats. This went on until the bus was notionally full - about sixty to seventy people - without really making a dent in the length of the queue. A few locals were standing around with me asking where I was going, one explained that there weren't many buses to Robe, and as the first one was already full people were rushing to get on this one. At that point I decided that if there was a transport shortage then it would be inappropriate to steal a seat from a local, and despite the monumental effort of getting up before five am, I would change my plan and head straight up to Addis. I continued to stand around though pondering whether I had actually made a decision. I then noticed that what I had perceived as a relatively orderly boarding of the bus was anything but - people were not getting on, and more strangely, off the bus with some frequency, destroying any sense of order. After watching a few Johnny-come-latelys insinuate their way on to the bus, my bemusement at the whole process was starting to crack the feeble sense of reality that I was grasping at five thirty in the morning.
Then the bus boy approached me, confirmed that I was going to Robe, said "Come on" and half pulled me towards the bus. He took my bag off me, and then allocated me a seat right down the back of the bus, so everyone already on the bus could stare at me as I walked bus. The strange thing is that there was absolutely no animosity in their faces, despite them having ran, queued and then fought their way on to the bus, they seemed to just accept that the farengi would be allocated a seat as well. Having seen locals arrive after me and still get a seat my guilt waned, when my fellow passengers started welcoming me and talking to me in their broken English, I felt it would now be rude to get off the bus. As the sun began to rise and the first light of the morning lit up the bus station, I noticed that people were still chasing buses and queuing, as we set off on our journey, and I wondered how many of them would make it to where they wanted to go that day.

A trip to Ethiopian coffee nirvana

After a largely unsuccessful day of attempted travel; I learnt my lesson that in Ethiopia buses go early in the morning, or not at all, I returned to the small town of Yabelo late in the afternoon, and thought I should treat myself. After asking around I found a place that served up macchiatos; almost everywhere in Ethiopia serves good percolated coffee, but the really good places also dish out macchiatos for ten cents, so good that they would make Italian coffee buffs green with envy.

The café was set back off the street, with a tree shaded courtyard, and three small rooms behind it. I entered inside to find a middle aged woman with a tray of cups and a jika (a small, portable metal fireplace using charcoal) with a coffee pot on the coals. Sitting next to her was her teenage sun, diligently folding toilet paper in to serviettes. Using my newly acquired Amharic, I asked for and was served my frothing macchiato - a short glass, filled with dark coffee in the bottom half, and a top half of milk wafting about on top of the coffee. Coffee originally comes from Ethiopia, and is treated very seriously, even in the dumpiest dives - this cup was superb - the bitter taste of the strong coffee perfectly balanced with the sweetness of a teaspoon or two of sugar and the smoothness of the milk.

Only when I finished the macchiato did things begin to get serious, and the coffee ritual kicked things up a few notches. Mama, the coffee master, had added a series of teaspoons of finely ground coffee and water to the pot and set it on the coals to simmer. Everything was done in a slow and deliberative way, Mama probably having done in thousands of times before. It was late in the afternoon and the dim and dusty room was only lit by a few bright rays of soft golden sunshine streaming in through the doorway; when Mama threw a handful of itan (scented bark) on the fire the room filled with thick, delicious sweet and spicy smelling smoke, drifting across the room, the sunlight reflecting of it. The earthenware pot on the fire was black and shaped like a gourd - bulbous at the bottom, a small, thin spout jutting out at a 45 degree angle, a curving handle joining the bottom and the long, narrow neck, with a thin red cork capping the top.

Whilst the room filled with smoke, and the pot boiled away Mama busied herself preparing the cups, six small squat white porcelain cups that sat in two rows of three on a small serving stand. She poured water in to one, and then from each cup in to the next until the last cup from which the water was tipped out in to a waiting container. She repeated this a few times until she was satisfied that the water coming out of the final cup was clean enough. I was joined by a couple of local guys, one in a hat with the Ethiopian colours in a band, and another older guy carrying some mops and brooms - attracted no doubt by the scent of coffee and itan.

Mama had removed the cork from the pot a few times, and swished the liquid inside about a bit. Once she had cleaned the cups, the pot seemed to have boiled long enough and she removed it and sat it on a large crocheted ring that was sitting next to the cups stand. A younger guy appeared from out of the kitchen with a stand shaped like a large wine glass containing glowing red coals, on to which Mama through some more itan, and the room again filled with smoke. Whilst she was waiting for the coffee to cool, she placed a teaspoon of sugar in to each cup. The pouring part required first a splash of coffee between the cups on the serving board and then Mama poured the thick, black liquid in to each of the cups. The young guy appeared again from the kitchen with a small saucer to put the cup on, and a teaspoon, and then served my the coffee.

With all of the room looking at me as a took my first sip, and the taste was incredible, a thick, smooth taste, layered with alternating bitterness and sweetness from the coffee and sugar. The burnt taste of roasted coffee mixed with the spicy, ginger like taste of the itan. There was literally a party in my mouth and all my taste buds had been invited - and shown up in their Sunday best; the ceremonyalising of the whole process seemed to add that extra layer of delight that was hard to suppress. Four years after discovering the joy of Ethiopian coffee, I had finally reached my coffee heaven. I savoured the moment for a while, etching the taste and the surroundings - particularly the light and the smell, in to my unreliable memory - hoping that one day the mere waft of ground roasted coffee beans would take me back to my Ethiopian coffee nirvana.

And the cost of the fare to get there - a whopping two and a half Bir - twenty five cents !

Post script:
To round out the day, I later returned to the café for dinner and was served an incredibly tasty dish that goes by the name of atkilt - a plate consisting of a mix of spicy beetroot salad, grated carrot salad, steamed veggies, a pesto like sauce made from greens, a biting tomato salad, surrounding a fluffy grain with the consistency of couscous, served with njera, Ethiopian thin, fluffy savoury pancakes and
accompanied with a sugo - a dark, thick, smoky chilli sauce, that set the whole meal on fire.

One day in and I am starting to wonder will I ever leave Ethiopia ?

Bizarre times in Kenya

The Wild West Kenyan Style

I am the first to concede that I have a tendency to throw around bizarre a little too frequently, but I think two recent experiences in Kenya justifiably fit in to that category.
After having been filled with delight at receiving my Eritrea visa after having to only wait a week, I was feeling pretty chuffed when I found a minivan taxi a few streets from my hotel that would take me all the way to Maralal, the jumping off point to visit Lake Turkana - the Jade Lake, in the north of Kenya.

I rocked up the next morning at 6.30, and sadly it was not to be, there was a strike and none of the minibuses were running. I wandered about between the various companies for half an hour, and then finally jumped in to one that was going about half way to a town called Nyamahururu. A few of my fellow passengers were also headed for Maralal and they began to explain to me that there was an outlawed gang called the Munkiki Gang, who extorted the minivan drivers. They had threatened any driver who entered or left Nyamahurururu that day would have his windscreen broken and his minivan set on fire - finally it looked like I might find some real danger in Africa, and I might see some action. Driving out of Nairobi things started to get a little surreal, all along the side of the main double carriageway highway people were milling about watching the road as though there had been some kind of accident. We then approached a police road block which was only letting one lane of cars through, we passed through at a walking pace as the traffic was backed up. A kilometre or so beyond the roadblock we were directed through a gap in the barrier in the centre of the road on to the other carriageway. A truck filled with Kenyan police or military was parked by the side of the road. The two or so guys in the back were decked out in the full three quarter length green bullet proof vest, with a flap at the bottom hanging below there hips down to there knees making them look like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The truck entered the traffic before us, and the guy next to me seem relieved, "Good, they are providing an escort for us". I felt a little more comfortable with the whole scenario, but about ten kilometres later the truck pulled off the road, did a U-turn and left the traffic to itself. Nobody in the minivan said anything.
We continued our drive, but strangely the few stops we made to drop passengers off were always just before a town, or just after. We only picked up one other passengers, and then the driver requested that we draw the curtains. As we drove along the side of the road was filled with people walking along, most of whom tried to flag us down as we went past. I knew things were strange when a minivan driver has empty seats and doesn't stop to pick people up. Eventually we arrived in Nyamahururu, and the remaining five of us were dropped about two kilometres out of town in a petrol station. Three local guys were also heading to Maralal, so they took me under their wing and we headed in to town to find a lift. As we approached the centre of town, things got even more spooky, I suddenly felt like I was in the wild west. The main street was empty of traffic, but all along the side of the road people were milling around quietly gossiping amongst themselves in small groups, a few groups had taken up vantage points on second story balconies, one group had climbed a water tower. All of the shops were closed with shutters drawn, even the market was empty. The quiet was so out of place in an African town it created an air of expectancy blanketing the entire place. It felt as though any minute a tumble-weed would roll through town, and two men with six shooters would wander on to the set.
Suddenly the tension was broken when a motorbike carrying a pillion passenger slowly motoring though town hit something and ended up sideways, rider and passenger caught underneath. Both were unharmed and soon on their feet, but they were immediately encircled by a large group of people, who all began talking at once, seemingly relieved that something had finally happened, and nobody had been hurt. As the crowd continued milling a police truck, filled with police in riot gear, rolled through town, and parked just off the main street.

The other guys were approached by some touts who directed us towards a hotel in the back streets of town, to wait whilst they investigated possible transport options. We headed up stairs and in to what was a dingy bar, almost too dark to see, with a few barflys already knocking a few back at eleven in the morning. To continue the wild west theme, Ma Baker came over from a table to serve us while we waited.

Eventually we made in out of town in a taxi, and rather anticlimactically, about three kilometres out of town my fellow passengers said, we are fine now, once we reach here there is no trouble. It was strange to go back to the most dangerous thing being the general state of disrepair of the car and the way the driver choose to drive. We immediately had a puncture.

Archers' Rest

After giving up my quest to get to Lake Turkana the back way, I jumped on a matatu heading for the main road. Eight hours later, after driving through some incredible savannah backed by encircling mountains in every direction I rolled in to Archers' Rest - a small town on the main Ethiopia - Kenya road. The sun had already slipped behind the mountains and it was well beyond twilight and the silvery shadows created by the almost full moon meant everything took on an extra edge. The lack of electricity and hence streetlights magnified the effect - and every now and then random objects were caught in the light of a passing vehicle, a face illuminated by a mobile phone, or a candle blown in the wind creating strange moving shadows on the hastily thrown together wooden walls of the strip of shacks which was the main street.

There were a lot of people wandering about, a large bus had just arrived, and a the back of a big truck was filled with road workers heading back to camp. I had been befriended by a fellow passenger on the minivan and he suggested we go and get something to drink and check out the accommodation options whilst the driver decided if he was to go on to Isiolo or stay the night. We crossed the road and immediately I noticed that there were an awful lot of soldiers wandering about, and all of them were carrying automatic weapons, slung across their shoulders, in one hand pointing them to the ground, or in both hands in front of their chests. We wandered in to a bar which was a few tables in a row outdoors, and four or five small enclosed sitting areas in a row. Every customer, and there would have been about fifty, was a soldier, every one was in uniform - in differing degrees of battle preparedness, and every one of them was carrying a gun, most had a few beers in front of them as well. As I sat down there was a big explosion from outside but nobody else but me seemed in the slightest perturbed. My friend explained that sometimes some soldiers had a little too much to drink, which made me feel even more uncomfortable. We had a drink and then sauntered back out on to the street and I felt the bizarreness of the place wash over me.

Cultural melange (08.03.2009 Linguistics, Kenya)

I am not quite sure what to make of the culture melange that produces the following: at a dingy restaurant, in a small, dusty windblown town in the north of Kenya, the TV is on showing Mexican soap operas (Tormenta en Paraiso - Storm in Paradise) dubbed in what sounds like Chinese accented English. Yes, is seems outsourcing has even wormed its way in to TV dubbing.
Of course all of the Kenyans are watching intently as mariachi dressed Mexicans, with hats as big as Veracruz, pants as tight as my wallet, moustaches as dodgy looking as Pablo Escobar, ride around on horses and drink tequila.
It is all a little bit too much for me, time to pull the brake on the globalisation train before it gets out of control !!!

Your mother must be very rich (02.03.09)

One day I was walking to the beach to Lamu when I met a local women who started talking to me. Somehow we eventually got around to talking about families and the inevitable came up. At first she didn't believe my answer, but after going through the names she was finally convinced, and added another interesting response to the growing list.

She said to me, "Your mother must be very rich, because your parents must have paid out a lot of money for you when you were growing up, so now you must all give her money. From so many children she must be very rich"

I could only think how my mother would laugh at that, and then probably say something appropriate like, "Yes, rich in experience"

You are what you are (12.02)

This is the receipt we received at a restaurant in Uganda, note the client name Whites

Truly with a tent (12.02)

OK so to those who doubt that the Loiterer does actually have a tent, here is some photographic evidence.

I admit I have failed to capture the loitering in this photo but I am sure you can well imagine what I was doing at the time. The landscape in the background in the Rwenzori mountains in the west of Uganda, slapped up against the border with Congo - the border actually cuts through the peaks.

Whilst Damo headed off in to the hills for a hike, I took it easy, sitting in the balcony of the restaurant, eating passion fruit in the afternoon sun, the scent from the passion fruit vine climbing all over the beams of the balcony blown my way every now and then by the breeze. This mixed with the smell generated by the sun heating the oil on the wooden balcony. The eucalyptus trees swayed in the breeze and suddenly I was transported to Anglesea, sitting on the back patio, catching the late afternoon sun in February,  half snoozing and reliving a good surf session early that morning whilst pretending to read the paper. Maybe time for the Loiterer to start moving back towards the sea.

Rwandan transport

Waiting in Kigali for a local minibus taxi to fill, I was surprised that we left when there was only 14 passengers inside, each seat occupied but no overcrowding. When I explained to a local I had been chatting to that in Uganda all of the minibuses have licensed to carry 14 passengers written on the side of them but how we had been in one with 27 people he explained

In Rwanda if the taxi has even one extra person, the police will stop it and fine the driver 10,000 francs ($20). If the driver argues the police will call the tow truck, and if the driver continues to argue the police will take away his driving licence. There are many police in Kigali, so all of the drivers follow the rules.
Before it was very dangerous travelling in public transport, so the government made these rules and now it is much better.

Rwanda is the only place in Africa that I ever saw a local person reprimand a driver for his erratic driving, in other countries people would tut, shake their heads and hold on for dear life, but in Rwanda when a driver went to overtake another vehicle approaching a blind corner, a passenger called out to him, and said what sounded like, slow down and stop being an idiot. Damo immediately applauded her and the acknowledgement crossed the language barrier, and they both ended up nodding at each other in agreement.

This was the beginning of the formulation of my Rwanda thesis, to be detailed at length soon.

When I attempted to cross the border of Rwanda and Congo, I had secreted $10 in my passport as I had been informed that sometimes the Congolese will ask for a little present to exempt you fro the visa requirement. As I was walking past the official on the Rwandan side he asked to see my passport, which I duly pulled out of my pocket and handed to him. As I was placing it in his hands I remembered the $10, and said, One moment, I have some money inside the passport. He was so careful to be even not seen to be handling any money from a tourist, which could be perceived as a bribe that the official immediately removed his hands and the passport dropped to the ground. He instructed me to take out the money and then give him the passport.
As Godwin later explained, there are always people watching, and if he eats even one dollar he will  be in jail for a long time.

Slipping in to gentle inertia

I remember studying inertia in physics in high school, and I always identified with the idea of it being a little more difficult to get a body at rest moving, than is otherwise so. When I rolled in to the northern Kenyan town of Maralal late one evening I thought I would only be there a day or two, as I was hoping I would be able to hitch a lift further north to the fabled Jade Lake - Lake Turkana.On my way up to Maralal I had passed through a few tribal areas - northern Kenya is dominated by various groups of pastoral semi nomadic peoples. The people are easy to spot because of their colourful outfits - especially the women who are usually adorned in some very colourful jewellery. There is a lot of tension between different groups, usually involving endless rounds of one group accusing the other of stealing cattle belonging to other groups. Every once in a while the Government gets involved, which seems to make matters only worse, because each group says the Government is only on the side of the opposing group, so they have to go and steal the cattle back. The inflow of cheap automatic weapons during the nineties means that many shepherds walk around with AK47's slung over their shoulders and confrontations became far more deadly. Combine this with an unstable neighbourhood - the area is surrounded by Sudan and Somalia, and there is always trouble a brewing. Whilst I was in Maralal two young shepherd boys had their throats slit (allegedly by Somalis), a local guy was shot and killed, and there were riots in the neighbouring town. Needless to say I didn't see any of this - I was relatively safe seeing I had no cows to steal !!!Before I knew it days had drifted in to each other, and I had a routine, which consisted of passing the time between meals and sleep, going. I would get up early to watch the sun rise over the surrounding hills as I strolled along the main road out of town, checking to see if any new transport had arrived the night before. I would then return to the hotel and the water would have been heated. Receiving my bucket of hot water I would bathe using my hand as a ladle - surprisingly refreshing and effective in the cold chill of the morning. I would then wander to the market and get down my chai and chapati breakfast, before wandering over to some tourism touts I had befriended to chat with them for a while over the state of the world. The touts were very friendly fellows who refused to let the non existence of any means of transport stop them from continually renewing there promise of a truck arriving tomorrow based on information they had received from some secret source. I would then head back to my room to read for a few hours to bring me up to lunch time. Lunch really was the highlight of the day - I discovered the great Kenyan dish of KK - (kidogo kidogo or little little) a pile heaped high of everything from the kitchen, normally including pilau, beans, lentils, potatoes, all topped with a large chapati and a cup of chai, for the wonderful price of fifty cents. The only way to recover from the excitement of lunch was an afternoon nap, which was followed by an evening stroll. Dinner soon followed and by around 8 or 9 I felt as though I had accomplished enough to turn in for the day. Somehow this rolled on for almost a week, and I became a fixture in the town, local kids stopped calling out Mzungu !! to me and instead just said hi. Local merchants even started charging me local prices as people saw the stinginess of my ways are started believing I really didn't have a lot of money and hadn't chosen to spend all these days in town as a holiday. I spent six days in Maralal, and the only time I got near to any transport was when a battered old truck rolled in to town and the touts came hunting me down in my room. We legged it to where the truck was parked and finally found the driver. The touts asked him how much to take me to the Lake, and when he answered even they got up and walked away. It appeared that the driver had been blinded by the shimmer of gold that surrounded me as a mzungu and had asked six times the going rate, or around $100. Glancing at his truck as we walked away I wondered to myself if his truck was even worth that much !!After a false start one day, the following I eventually threw my hat in, the touts counselled me against it, there was definitely a truck coming the next day, but I had lost hope of proceeding further, and rumour had it that it would be much easier from Marsabit the town further north on the highway. Somehow I found myself in a minivan rolling out of town, fighting as hard as I could against inertia and moving again. As if to demonstrate the principle to me in real life, after spending the whole day in the minibus slowly building up speed, the next day I found myself sitting on the top of a truck rushing through the northern arid lands of Kenya, with the wind in my hair and the sun on my face. Reaching Marsabit in a day I found that rumour was wrong and that I could likely spend another week in Marsabit waiting for a truck to Lake Turkana. I decided to cut my losses and continue further north. The next morning I flagged down a truck heading north and jumped on board. The truck was filled with same large rolls of material, so the truck boys, the two other passengers and myself found ourselves sitting on top of the cabin, as the driver flew along the unpaved road towards the Ethiopian border. By two o'clock that afternoon I was in Ethiopia, tired, covered in dust and dazed by so much movement in so little time !!

Breaking up is hard to do

After two and a half months travelling together, Damo and I were to go our separate ways - both heading back to Nairobi, before he flew out and I made my way further north. However, I was taking the southern route via Tanzania (to avoid paying another 50 bucks for a Ugandan visa) and Damo the quick route through Uganda. For our last night we had chowed down at an Indian restaurant, that actually took our "hot as you can" request literally, and served us up a dahl and curry made from the fires of hell. We finished the night with a few fine ales at a local bar, and managed to roll home by 1 or so.
I had to take a 6am bus, so I struggled out of bed at 5.30, and we said our goodbyes, and I found myself wandering through the streets of Kigali alone, with a backpack a fair amount lighter thanks to Damo taking some things back to Australia for me. I arrived at the bus on time, but the moment I sat down the previous nights dinner came back with a vengeance, causing my stomach to spend the next three hours painfully rumbling away, shooting pain through me every time we went over a bump and leaving me in a cold sweat. The only time I escaped this pain was when I managed to fall asleep for 10 minutes or so every now and then. I finally reached the border 3 1/2 hours later, feeling tired, sore and a little alone. I passed through Rwandan immigration, walked across the bridge over a chocolate brown waterfall with a frothing pool at the bottom, and then up the steep hill for a kilometre or so to Tanzania immigration.
Weaving between the long line of trucks I managed to find the immigration office and presented my passport to the immigration official, feeling rather tired and worse for wear. After he looked through it with a passive disinterest he informed me that I would need a new visa as I had left the East Africa Community (EAC) area and my visa said single use. Blood started to rush to my head, I tried to control the rising frustration that I knew would blossom in to anger by attempting to explain the Rwanda was now part of the EAC, and that when I had purchased the visa on entering Tanzania they had told me that I could go to Rwanda and return to Tanzania on the same visa. We parried back and forth a few times, and to his insistence that I needed another visa I suggested that he needed to check with his superior. He paused for a couple of minutes whilst re-examining the passport. My spirits began to rise and I thought that my silver tongue had persuaded him the error of his ways or that his boss was not around and he would simply stamp my passport to get the whinging mzungu out of his office. My joy was short lived, a second official entered the office and they had a chat and then the boss arrived. The first official explained the situation to the boss, who then proceeded to repeat what the official had told me. At this point I suffered a sudden rush of blood, and one of those out of body experiences where my mind separates from my body and watches my body go about things without quite being able to direct the show. I tried the I had been told at the border line, the Rwanda is part of the EAC line, I already have a visa line, I am just travelling through line - but all were to no effect. He simply rejected each one in turn - I have not been told of any changes so you must get a new visa. The frustration was welling up inside of me, and I could hear myself starting to yell at him, which any rational person knows is only likely to harm my case, but rationality was in short supply. Eventually I cracked, and in a fit if pique yelled,
   
    Well if you are going to make me get another visa then I am not entering Tanzania"

and stormed out of the office. ( I may also have stamped my foot) The Loiterer at his petulant best. (Later I realised that for some reason I had treated the situation as though I was bargaining with a souvenir seller, expecting them to call me back and say, OK OK, last price)

I walked back down the hill between the trucks, pass the waterfall and over the bridge, fuming the whole time. As I approached the Rwandan immigration office it occurred to me that I was in that often imagined situation whereupon I had been stamped out of a country but couldn't enter the next country - trapped in no person's land. I started to worry that Rwandans might want to make me get a new visa, requiring the payment of more money. Fortunately the Rwandan immigration official swallowed my story that the Tanzanians wouldn't let me in to Tanzania and simply revalidated my old visa - I suppose technically I had never left. The whole painful process had taken less than thirty minutes and I was able to jump back on the same minibus that I had arrived on, and was soon on my way back to Kigali.

I arrived back in Kigali just as the skies decided it was a good time to open, and the rain started hammering down. I managed to find a minibus to the bus station to get on another minibus to the Ugandan border. I thought my luck was changing when I was the last person to get on to minibus but the driver then decided that the bus was overloaded and that I would have to get out. I ended up waiting another forty five minutes, trying my best to find shelter from the downpour, until we eventually had enough people to fill the minivan and we headed off. A couple hours later, at around four in the afternoon I was at the border, having effectively crossed Rwanda in less than a day. The Rwandan official had to double check my passport, noticing that I had been stamped out and stamped back in, but he waved me on. As I walked across the stretch of no person's land that separated the two border posts I was thinking of ways of sneaking past immigration in order to avoid having to obtain another visa for Uganda at the cost of US$50.  I walked past the first gate, and then sauntered towards the second gate, so far so good. I past the second gate and was in Uganda, but just as I was about to approach a waiting taxi, a guy rushed over from the immigration office, pointed to the office, and said "Where are you going ? There is the immigration office there. Why are you trying to enter Uganda ?" I pleaded confusion saying that I had been looking for a toilet. He clearly didn't believe my story and accompanied me in to the office and proceeded to explain to the immigration officials what I had been doing. After a bit of playing dumb, some smooth talking, and slapping 50 bucks on the table, I managed to get a visa and off the hook - one run in with immigration officials per day is enough.

After waiting around at the border for another forty five minutes, under the glaring eyes of the officials, the share taxi eventually left, and I rolled in the nearby town twenty minutes later with not much money in my pocket, and not much energy left in the bank. The taxi driver had told a local guy and myself there was a night bus to Kampala and then dropped us in the middle of town and disappeared. Both of us kind attached ourselves to the other, I thought his language skills and local knowledge would come in handy, and I have no idea what he thought. Needless it to say it was a disaster, we walked the length of town - about two kilometres, to be told we had to go back to where we started. When we eventually got back there, we were then told to go back to where we had just walked to. Fortunately we were rescued by a friendly local, who in response to my mate's question, said why don't we speak in English and then pointed the ticket office across the road. By this time I was almost ready to sit on the ground and start crying or laughing, or both.

I managed to bargain down the price of the ticket, which left me with about three bucks in my pocket to get from Kampala to the Kenyan border. I decided to keep the money in my pocket rather than buy some food - I hadn't eaten all day so why break the fast now. The bus arrived at 10pm, looking like it had been ten rounds with then champ, and already filled with people. I managed to get the last seat, which was right up the back. The back row from left to right went, woman with baby, man with baby, former heavyweight champion of Uganda, very tired mzungu, man with baby that wouldn't stop crying, and woman with baby. To add to the general aroma of urine, sweat, vomit and fried chicken and chips, every time the baby sitting on the man's lap to my right moved the putrid, gag inducing smell of old and fresh nappy urine mix wafted up, pass my nose and in to the ether. (It was so strong it is the only time I have seen an African pinch his nose and shake his head at a smell)

After sitting motionless for an hour, whilst the air became so hot, thick and foetid it was almost unbreathable - not one person opened a window and I was covered in sweat. As many people as possible were crammed on to the bus, including about 15 passengers who were standing in the aisle, and we finally set off. But the misery didn't end there, for the next six hours, along with the periodic wafts of nauseating urine smell, I had the pleasure of sitting directly under a huge speaker which blared out the worst that Ugandan music has to offer. It was so loud that even my Ipod at full volume couldn't compete. Naturally the driver decided to drive as fast as he possibly could, despite the rickety state of the bus, which meant that every time we hit a bump we were sent flying, driving my knees in to the sharp metal of the seat in front of me and making any sort of sleep impossible. To top things off, Mohammed Ali sitting next to me decided that my shoulder looked like a good pillow and fell asleep with his head resting on my shoulder.
At some point I must have fallen asleep because as we rolled in to Kampala at 4.30, I was suddenly jolted awake. I escaped the bus as quickly as I could, and managed to find an empty seat in the open air compound. As the sun began to rise at around six, as my luck would have it, the skies opened again and I watched the rain pour down for the next two hours, turning the compound (and most of Kampala) in to a pit of mud.
When the rain finally stopped I managed to make my way through the mud, and all the other rubbish that the rain had washed on to the road, and find the bus station to get a bus to the Kenyan border. I eventually found the minibus to the border and did a double take when I was told that the cost was thirteen thousand shillings - I only had five thousand shillings in my pocket. After completely failing to drive down the price - no African ever believes a whitey when we say we don't have any cash - I wandered around the chaos of the station wondering what I should do. After a while I decided I would get a minibus to as far as I could afford - Jinja - and then try and hitch the rest of the way. So I climbed aboard a minivan going to Jinja - all the drivers gave me the look of see I told you he had money , and I was on my way again. I had 1000 shillings (50 cents) in my wallet and about a litre of water left.
I slept all the way to Jinja and then got dropped out of town on the highway. I walked a couple of kilometres to get away for town, and then at a roundabout dropped my bag by the side of the road and started hitching - trying to flag down the few cars and trucks that were passing. Naturally the sight of a mzungu peaked everyone's interest and I think I spent about 2 minutes in total of the next hour answering the same questions over and over - where are you going ? why ? why don't you take a bus ? where are you from ?
About an hour later a car stopped and picked up a guy who was also waiting for transport. The driver, dressed in the full bishop regalia - radiant purple and embroided gold, called me over. He said the name of the town where he was I headed, I told him I was going to the border (I didn't have a map) and he said that I would be closer to the border, and indicated that I join him. He asked me to sit in the front because once the police saw a mzungu there were less likely to stop him and try and hit him up for a bribe. About two hours later I was dropped in a small town under the scorching sun, and the bishop seemed to accept my response that I had no cash to his question about paying him for the ride.

I wandered out of the town, and started dong the only thing I could - hitching. After about 10 minutes a truck stopped, and I quickly ran up to speak to the driver. Yes, he was heading towards the last big town before the border, yes he could take me, but how much would I pay. I explained I only had 1000 shillings, he smiled and said jump in. He turned out to be a friendly guy, he was on his way to the large cement factory to pick up a load to take to Kampala. We got back to talking about the fee and he said - I know what your problem is - you don't have any change - you only have big money. I explained to him that I had come all the way from Kigali, and that I could get money at the Kenyan border but until then I only had 1000 shillings. He asked me how I had eaten, and I explained that I was waiting until I got to Kenya. We went on to talk about how brave he thought I was travelling around alone, it always strikes locals that someone would travel alone without having family to visit, as though there were traps waiting to ensnare people where ever they went. As we were approaching his destination he reached in to his pocket and pulled out 10,000 shillings - $5 in real money - but a huge part of his monthly salary - and motioned for me to take it, saying I could buy some food. I refused and he insisted, but I continued to refuse, telling him the lift was more than enough. In the silence after the exchange I was overcome by the incredible generosity of Africans in general - how a low paid truck driver feels obliged to hand over some of his hard earned cash to someone he has just met - and is already doing a favour - was beyond me. Despite my hunger, tiredness, the smelly sweat enveloping all my clothes, the layer of general filth I was covered in, I suddenly realised these were the moments that made it all worthwhile - discovering that under that thick veneer painted by a paranoid Western media so afraid of what is on the other side of the world in deepest, darkest Africa, that in fact the other is quite like if not more human than us, or me. I was glad to be in Africa and glad to be on the road - all the bureaucratic hassles faded away, a moment of sheer bliss.

>From the town where I was dropped I found a minibus that would take me to the border for my last 1000 shillings. I wandered over to Kenyan immigration, who rapidly folded up with their argument that because I had been to Kenya I needed a new visa. They ended up inviting me in to their office and we chatted about Kenya for thirty minutes or so. Nothing was going to stop my moment of bliss !!!

The irony of it all was that I probably arrived in Kenya before Damo having followed the same route, although I never did see him again.

Linguistic groping in the closet, listening through a sieve

It has been nine years since I have really spoken French - first learning it in West Africa, then trying my hardest to make myself understood when hitch hiking in France. I am pretty sure that the neurons in my brain that were trained in French joined together in a collective action of mass treason against those damned surrender monkeys and gladly welcomed in Spanish as a replacement. However from the very first Rwandan I spoke to, the old, bespectacled matatu driver, it became readily apparent that French was going to come in handy in this former Belgian colony. Suddenly the usual French greetings, and a few basic phrases starting spewing forth from my mouth, and I seemed to understand what they were saying, and they seemed to understand what I was saying - it felt like Mozambique and Portuguese all over again - some linguistic fun to be had dredging through my brain searching for old words and trying to transpose across languages.

However, once things moved much beyond the pleasantries I started to realise that my French was lousy - constructing sentences became an incredibly arduous process involving first trying to find the vocabulary by racking my brain, and then doing a comparative analysis from Spanish to see if the Spanish word would trigger a memory. Next I would need to get the words in the right order, again I relied on my Spanish grammar, and finally I would have to conjugate the verb - which made me realise that I had never really got much past the first person in French. A few times I would start a sentence with we and then have to give up and revert back to the first person, I, simply because I couldn't conjugate the damn verb. It often felt as though I was groping around blind in a dark, linguistic closet, grabbing on to whatever I could find, then feeling it with my mental fingers to see if I could tell from its feel, sound or construction what it was.

Listening likewise proved to be quite a difficult activity. It is not very often that I had a conversation without background noise, and disappointingly  Rwandan French was often unlike its West African counterpart - lacking clarity,simplicity, and a gentle, lilting almost sing-song rhythm. Rwandans seemed less concerned about annunciating and had a penchant for mumbling away at speed, then looking at me with expectant eyes, waiting on my answer. Meanwhile for me, it often felt as though I was listening through a sieve - hearing every other, or third, or fourth word, and then trying to fathom some meaning from the seemingly disparate parts I had managed to comprehend. Whilst context gives assistance, helping smooth over the gaps and allowing me to get some semblance of meeting out of some phrases, the out of the blue question or statement often left my completely perplexed, as I racked my memory, trying to fit some of the square words I had heard and understood in to the round holes of what I knew things to mean, within a time frame which made conversation possible. And all this under the pressure of Damien having started the conversation with, "I don't speak French, but my friend here does".
Damo and I, dedicated self improvers at heart, often converse in Spanish for practice, but also as our secret language knowing that most locals won't be able to understand us. However, in Rwanda I found myself speaking and listening to locals in French, talking to Damo in Spanish, and then adding English to the mix every now and then.
Needless to say by the end of most days my brain was aching from the effort.