26 Oct 2011
|
|
Gold Member
Veteran HUBBer
|
|
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: England
Posts: 277
|
|
A waitress/manager/prostitute brought our food over while we were finishing the  s, and put it in our room. I thought it was odd not to bring it to the table we were sitting at, but we excused ourselves, with promises that we would return after eating. I turned out to be glad that we hadn’t eaten in front of the others. The meal was served in a surprising fashion, on a metal tray larger in diameter than our bikes’ wheels, complete with a metal bell over the top. Hannah removed the cover and a wave of heat rushed out. As the steam dissipated, we looked at our meals in confusion. For starters, ‘meals’ turned out to be singular, had they not realised there were two of us? The second item of confusion was the single lone bowl of meat, stewed in a thin aromatic gruel smelling of ginger and peppers. We had no cutlery provided, and there seemed to be no bread to scoop the stew with in the Arab style. The bowl simply sat, looking forlorn and lonely in the centre of this huge tray, which was covered with the dirtiest tablecloth I have ever seen. All my expectations of Ethiopia revolved around famine and poverty, no wonder people were hungry if all they ate was a little bowl of shared watery stew.
‘I think you eat the tablecloth,’ Hannah ventured. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I answered, but she had made me curious. I prodded the cloth, which on closer inspection bore more resemblance to an old bathmat than a tablecloth. It was spongy and warm, so I tore a little corner off, still dubious, and hoping I wouldn’t get billed for it when we left. I put it in my mouth and hesitantly chewed. Hannah was right, we were expected to eat the tablecloth, and bloody good it was too. One side was flat, and the other dimpled and cratered which made it perfect for scooping up the extremely tasty stew, which to our further surprise was beef, not goat. I thought that the pancakes’ vaguely fermented bitter taste perfectly offset the gingery spiciness of the stew. Hannah on the other hand was less of a fan. We would soon find out that this pancake, injera, is practically all that is available in Ethiopia, along with the alecha, or similar stews. This made me happy, but it made Han very hungry.
After I ate almost all of our meal, while Hannah grumbled, we returned to the truckers. Over a few s, I had to admit our confusion over how to eat the injera, to which I was met with even greater confusion on their part. ‘How could I possibly have never eaten it?’ The man who originally invited us to join, and spoke the best English, sat completely perplexed, lost for words that we had never eaten the staple that for the last twenty-five years had been his breakfast, his lunch, and his dinner. One of his friends bought another plate for us all to share, mostly out of curiousness as to how we would go about attacking it I believe. The food was so cheap, around thirty pence for the large plate, including the meat, and I am sure they got their value for money from laughing at my pitiful efforts to tear, wrap and scoop without dropping it down my chin and chest. When they could stop laughing, they would try and demonstrate the correct way to eat it, but even after that, I fell some way short. A few more s later, we retired to bed, leaving the Ethiopians outside chewing chat, something else we were to see a lot of in Ethiopia.
As we got into bed, I couldn’t help but note that it was the first time that I had woken up in one year, and gone to bed in the past. I woke up that morning in 2009, and went to bed in 2002. The Ethiopians have never accepted the Gregorian calendar, so they are seven years out of sync with every other country we would visit on this trip. Fatigued by the day, and our first experience of travelling back in time, we swiftly fell asleep, to dream sweet 125 dreams, where the hills always go down, the roads are well surfaced and the wind always behind you.
Typical of our plans, we never actually made it to Gondar. Typical of our navigation, we actually thought we had. Apparently it is a beautiful city, steeped in history; it was the capital of Ethiopia until 1885, it was the site of the Italians’ last stand in 1941 and the launch point for much of their guerrilla activity against the British forces. Apparently many of the buildings bear crumbling legacy to the colonial influence, built in simple moderne styles. I’ve read that it was the site of decisive battles in the recent Ethiopian civil war, as well as numerous others against the Arabs invading from the North, most notably Ibn Muhammeds’ sacking of the city in 1888. I have been told that it is a major centre of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, the predominant religion of Ethiopia, and also a hub for the country’s Jewish population, called falashas.
Falasha itself merely means ‘outsider’ or ‘invader,’ a term which many Jews resent, understandably after hundreds of years living in, and fighting to live in the country. Ethiopia must have one of the strongest national identities in the world, fiercely proud of being Ethiopian almost to a man, fiercely proud of never being colonised (they don’t count the short Italian occupation,) fiercely proud of their unique language and their biblical descent, their claims to be in possession of the ark of the covenant, and their history of being the first African country to take on Christianity. There is always an ‘us and them’ vibe with Ethiopians, an outsider will always be an outsider, even an outsider who has been part of the fabric of the country since the days of Solomon.
But of course, we never made it to Gondar. All my ‘knowledge’ is speculation or second hand at best. The only map we had of Ethiopia was an A5 diagram of the entire country printed off of the internet, which showed Gondar as being at the head of the road that we had been travelling all day, and approximately one hundred and eighty kilometres from Shehedi.
Soon after Shehedi, the road started to rise into the Simian mountains, scenery straight from the Lost World; imposing, ruggedly prehistoric lumps of jagged black stone shrouded in mists and flecked with vegetation that could remember the dinosaurs. Hannah asked me at one point, ‘do you think this is where The Land Before Time was filmed?’ I could see her thinking, and agree to a point, until she followed the thought up with ‘nah, maybe it is where ‘My Little Pony,’ was shot. I had to acquiesce to her logic, if not her taste in film, ‘nothing looks real, it is all too big, too out of proportion, and the colours look like they’ve come from a tube, they’re too intense to be natural.’ The observation was spot on, if an artist painted Ethiopia, he would have to mute the incredible colour and shape, for fear of making the finished work seem unreal and overblown. The hazards continued in the same vein as before; herds of cows being moved up to their winter pastures, begging children doing their best to get under our wheels, AK carrying drunkards treating the road as a footpath, not forgetting the mix of suicidal and homicidal dogs.
The rain set in shortly after midday, as it would every day that we stayed in Ethiopia (with the exception of several days where it rained from the moment we woke up.) The only concession to waterproof equipment we carried was a pac-a-mac each. Flip-flops, combat trousers and fingerless wool gloves don’t offer much water repellence. The discomfort of being soaked to the skin was secondary to the effect the rain had on the roads anyway. Gondar is high, at almost nine thousand feet, and the road up to it is by turns slick and unstable rock, slippery and tiring mud, and terrifying and unpredictable coarse gravel. For five hours we struggled to cajole the bike up steep gradients on these surfaces, turned to fast flowing rivers against us, always with a sheer drop to one side, and a wall of rock on the other. The numerous roadworks made life no easier, for long sections of the trip, new and smooth road surfaces were visible, but we had to ride along the side, in the drainage ditches and scree. Most of the traffic we shared the road with were logging or quarry trucks, which rutted and ripped up the soft slush of the countryside, and made commuter bike cross country hard work. Water running off of the mountains wore gullies for itself crossing the road, which had to be forded, and these gullies were then further criss-crossed by the lorry ruts. This cross hatching of the road surface was borderline lethal when it wasn’t submerged under water, once in a rut with our skinny tyres and tiny engine, we had no choice but to ride it out, but if the channels were underwater, they became an even more difficult pot luck, hold-on-and-hope-your-guardian-angel-works-in-Ethiopia kind of obstacle.
Eventually, we passed out of the mountains and into a natural depression, and into the great historical city of Gondar. We found a comfortable and cheap pension, threw our kit in the small but clean room, and walked downstairs to ask the owner where we should visit in the town. He looked like a cartoon, his face full of features without enough space to hang them. His eyes alone must have taken up half the available space, and the smile wrapped around the whole circumference of his head another full half. How his bulbous nose and elephant ears fitted on is a mystery to me. He was particularly amenable and a perfect gent though, as well as dashingly dressed in a completely out of place suit. ‘You no visit anyplace in town, you need Gondar for vistoring.’ So if we weren’t in Gondar, where were we? ‘You is Azeza.’ Azeza wasn’t even on our sketch map. I showed the tidy young man the map, showing Gondar as being where we were now. ‘No no no this is right not, you take route here to Gondar!’ If we wanted to go to Gondar we had to go dozens of kilometres back on ourselves, up an adjacent road. ‘Tis too late, and be’s too dark in soon, you stays here in my hotel.’
I agreed with him. It was too late and too dark, and I wanted a .
The electricity in the pension, and the whole town for the matter, was out, so we sat in the draughty dining room by candlelight, while the rain wetted an ever-expanding patch around the simple wax sheet masquerading as a door. The pension restaurant was popular with the locals, all huddled around various permutations of injera, barely able to hear each other over the marble sized raindrops battering the tin roof. The owner came back with the pair of Dashins we had ordered, another of Ethiopia’s excellent s. ‘You like food now?’ I told him we did, and he suddenly looked crestfallen, as if he were about to be embarrassed in front of the ferenjis. ‘We not have anything much, we have steak?’ Hannah’s eyes lit up, she wouldn’t be eating injera tonight. ‘One steak and one injera wat,’ I asked. ‘You don’t want steak?’ The little man asked incredulously, his large cloudy eyes almost popping out of his skeletal head. ‘Only one steak. You definite? Do you think Ethiopia not have steaks? Is it surprise for you?’ ‘No no, it’s not like that, I just really like injera.’ The owner looked around, as if to check if anyone else had heard. ‘This amazing,’ he dragged a chair noisily across the concrete floor, and sat on it backwards, with his arms and resting on its back. ‘You tell me. Do other ferenjis like our food?’ I didn’t have a bloody clue, do people generally like Ethiopian food? ‘We always get told ferenjis eat ferenji food, you want Mcdonalds no!?’ He laughed with this last statement, to confirm that he meant it as a joke, but in his unsure eyes you could see the kernel of truth that this was actually the commonly held belief. I told him that although we didn’t have injera back home, I liked it, and had been looking forward to a plate all day. His unfeasible smile returned, happy that the foreigner was a fan of the local dish, and scuttled away, with promises of the best food in Ethiopia coming my way.
The injera was, as normal in Ethiopia, excellent, and silly cheap. Hannah got the poor end of the deal again, with two tiny strips of beef, pounded, charred, and then soaked in foul old cooking oil, served with a very dirty side salad of dubious origin. The owner placed her plate down with a flourish, very proud of his exotic cooking skills, ‘there, you must tells all people of England that good steak is in Ethiopia.’ Concealing her disappointment, Hannah promised she would, but I have a feeling that the promise was never kept. This was to happen many times on our journey, where people would assume they had to serve us with something ‘European,’ and then cook a very bad version of that dish, when you knew that if they would serve exactly what they ate, it would be delicious. The wat was of a different style to my first one, much hotter, and the beef was left raw. ‘Tis Ok, much chilli kill all germs,’ our proprietor informed us. Raw or not, germs or no, it was a beautiful meal, made all the more beautiful by the rain on the roof, the rhythmic Amharic soundtrack, the smoky candlelight in the low room, and the see-saw creaking of the donkeys outside.
We ate ravenously, and retired to the room. Hannah fell asleep almost instantly, sighing soft mammal noises and probably dreaming of a country with fish and chips and poppadoms. I sneaked out of the room, to sit and smoke on the communal balcony.
With no electricity, the whole street was dark, only lit by a few oil lamps in shop kiosks, and the intermittent lightning. A storm was building over the dark intimations of mountains towards Gondar, the thunder rolling ominously, and sheet lightning intermittently exposing the dark streets in bright daylight. The flashing made the streets seem all the more inky in the intermissions, the shuffling shadows of late shoppers, drunks and still awake children disappearing behind retinal burns. In those blind breaths I could only hear the people walking the muddy highway, I could only hear the dogs barking their defiance at the angry sky, two stroke bikes screaming, children laughing, traders bartering, and the donkeys braying along with the whole cacophony, not wanting to be left out. Ethiopia is not a place to go to find silence or solitude. Cars and bikes became almost invisible in the gloom, almost none had any headlights, and the ones that did never had a full set, just the one cycloptic candle burning with all the energy of a dead glow worm. I watched a 250cc motocross bike, headlights off, only visible as a screaming ghost in the night, get completely out of shape in front of the hotel, the bike sliding almost sidewards through the slime, before the rider managed to kick back into shape. Either Ethiopians are much braver, or much stupider than I am.
|
|
Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 2 (0 Registered Users and/or Members and 2 guests)
|
|
|
Posting Rules
|
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
HTML code is Off
|
|
|
|
Check the RAW segments; Grant, your HU host is on every month!
Episodes below to listen to while you, err, pretend to do something or other...
2020 Edition of Chris Scott's Adventure Motorcycling Handbook.
"Ultimate global guide for red-blooded bikers planning overseas exploration. Covers choice & preparation of best bike, shipping overseas, baggage design, riding techniques, travel health, visas, documentation, safety and useful addresses." Recommended. (Grant)
Led by special operations veterans, Stanford Medicine affiliated physicians, paramedics and other travel experts, Ripcord is perfect for adventure seekers, climbers, skiers, sports enthusiasts, hunters, international travelers, humanitarian efforts, expeditions and more.
Ripcord Rescue Travel Insurance™ combines into a single integrated program the best evacuation and rescue with the premier travel insurance coverages designed for adventurers and travel is covered on motorcycles of all sizes.
(ONLY US RESIDENTS and currently has a limit of 60 days.)
Ripcord Evacuation Insurance is available for ALL nationalities.
What others say about HU...
"This site is the BIBLE for international bike travelers." Greg, Australia
"Thank you! The web site, The travels, The insight, The inspiration, Everything, just thanks." Colin, UK
"My friend and I are planning a trip from Singapore to England... We found (the HU) site invaluable as an aid to planning and have based a lot of our purchases (bikes, riding gear, etc.) on what we have learned from this site." Phil, Australia
"I for one always had an adventurous spirit, but you and Susan lit the fire for my trip and I'll be forever grateful for what you two do to inspire others to just do it." Brent, USA
"Your website is a mecca of valuable information and the (video) series is informative, entertaining, and inspiring!" Jennifer, Canada
"Your worldwide organisation and events are the Go To places to for all serious touring and aspiring touring bikers." Trevor, South Africa
"This is the answer to all my questions." Haydn, Australia
"Keep going the excellent work you are doing for Horizons Unlimited - I love it!" Thomas, Germany
Lots more comments here!
Every book a diary
Every chapter a day
Every day a journey
Refreshingly honest and compelling tales: the hights and lows of a life on the road. Solo, unsupported, budget journeys of discovery.
Authentic, engaging and evocative travel memoirs, overland, around the world and through life.
All 8 books available from the author or as eBooks and audio books
Back Road Map Books and Backroad GPS Maps for all of Canada - a must have!
New to Horizons Unlimited?
New to motorcycle travelling? New to the HU site? Confused? Too many options? It's really very simple - just 4 easy steps!
Horizons Unlimited was founded in 1997 by Grant and Susan Johnson following their journey around the world on a BMW R80G/S.
Read more about Grant & Susan's story
Membership - help keep us going!
Horizons Unlimited is not a big multi-national company, just two people who love motorcycle travel and have grown what started as a hobby in 1997 into a full time job (usually 8-10 hours per day and 7 days a week) and a labour of love. To keep it going and a roof over our heads, we run events all over the world with the help of volunteers; we sell inspirational and informative DVDs; we have a few selected advertisers; and we make a small amount from memberships.
You don't have to be a Member to come to an HU meeting, access the website, or ask questions on the HUBB. What you get for your membership contribution is our sincere gratitude, good karma and knowing that you're helping to keep the motorcycle travel dream alive. Contributing Members and Gold Members do get additional features on the HUBB. Here's a list of all the Member benefits on the HUBB.
|
|
|
Threaded Mode
