Aggressive confrontations in Ethiopia
 

Hi all,

Ethiopia scores high in my top-5 of most beautiful countries in Africa. Mountainous, green, almost pastoral. Fairly good roads, fresh mountain breeze, ideal road trip conditions. But never before in Africa have I experienced so much aggression. I am not talking about children and grown-ups begging, or children shouting "You, You!" at the top of their voice. I'm not talking about people walking in the middle of the road shouting things in Amharric when I want to pass. Here are some incidents to show what I mean:

A child picks up a stone and throws it towards the car.

In Addis a man runs alongside the car trying to hit Thimba, who has her head out of the window. Thimba gives a loud bark and growls. The man jumps back 2 meters. Bystanders applaude (for Thimba I presume). I praise her abundantly for this effective reaction!

In a village I am driving slowly waiting for a truck. A man sees Thimba, runs towards the car, his eyes wide open, shouting, foaming at the mouth. I see him reaching for something in his pocket, maybe a knife to attack Thimba. I accelerate and overtake the truck on the right hand side, which causes even more aggression among the other villagers.

In Gonder, a man who's walking on the pavement spots Thimba and without hesitation throws his plastic water bottle, which splashes against the side of the car.

I have no explanation for this exceptional behaviour. There are dogs everywhere, small dogs, big dogs, dead dogs (I see 8 of them lying on or beside the road in one day, left for the vultures). I speak to a young backpacker from Switzerland, and he meets only very friendly people. Perhaps it's the car in combination with Thimba. I know they hate Americans, and perhaps mistake every Farangi (foreigner) for an American? Whatever the reason, I'm not feeling very welcome.:stormy:

Cheers from a far more friendly Sudan,

Gee

More on: Travels with Thimba

http://www.geehurkmans.com/blogs/img_2899.jpg
Does this explain/justify aggressive behaviour?

Hope you feel welcome in Sudan.
Regards
Schenkel

So long as you are both Ok , bid the place ******s and carry on with the journey. I for one would be reaching for the dog biscuits/ black pudding and hoping to make a friend.

Biggest hassle I ever had with Gooner in the sidecar was mobile phone photographers stepping off the curb. Head north, we have beaches and parks and sausages and dog friendly pubs!

Andy

Hi Andy,

Oh my, a dog friendly pub!! Sounds great! And it seldom reaches 40 degrees in the shade without a beer

Cheers,

Gee

Unfortunately i have a simular story to tell: http://www.afrikamotorrad.de/?report=en_transafrika

Back in Gondar, I stopped to buy fruit in the marketplace. Like always I created a huge crowd of people. The mood tipped, as the group started to ask for 'money money money". I decided to disappear, protected the kill switch of my machine with my thumb from black hands who were everywhere at my stuff and tried to pull me off the bike. No one stepped beside as I started the engine.

The guy who was playing with my light, got the handlebar in the chest, the girl, whose hands searched my pockets for money, was brought down by one of the side cases. A little more gas and I was out of the reach of the flying stones. Save...

Lost count of the number stones that were thrown at my LC, mostly in rural areas, it seemed almost like an involuntary action, see foreign car, lob stone. I did actually stop once when a particularly large stone bounced off the bonnet and gave the young lad responsible a bollocking, he seemed genuinely puzzled as to what the problem was. Seemed we were ‘lucky’ as we met an American couple who had their windscreen smashed by a kid with a good aim.

Give Thimba an extra dinner- well earned- good pooch!:Beach: defending her master and his home.

Thanks Bertrand, I sure will.

Cheers,

Gee

It seems that driving in Ethiopia (rural areas) is not very safe....

RR.

we passed through erhiopia on our AT's two weeka ago going south. we can not count the number of Stones, stickes and whatever flying in our direction. plus the idiots jumping infront of the bikes. loughing and having a blast. the country is amazingly beutiful but we were glad to made it out without killing something, someone or crash... the situation though was way better south of addis along the lakes passing arba minch.


Sent from my OMNIA7 using Tapatalk

Sadly the situation for a few years now. Never have heard a plausible explanation for why Ethiopia is so filled with rock throwing, etc.

One suggestion I would make is that travel in early morning and late in the day is better for minimizing rock throwing. Lots of subsistence farming happening so villages and roads are more quiet at the beginning and end of the day and therefore less chance for encounters with bored yet aggressive kids.

My 4-year old "Aika"

http://s27.postimg.org/yu3ny2qoj/DSC_0149_Copia.jpg


wants to tell Thimba that she's a great dog and sends her her congratulations! :thumbup1:

Thanks!
Flying back tomorrow from Cairo with Thimba, both glad to be back home again after nearly a year in Africa!:D

Cheers from Alexandria,

Gee

Best wishes and a pleasant flight.

Schenkel

I will drive around Africa again one day. Ethiopia is the only country that I'd actively look to avoid as it was unpleasant people wise. I gave it over 2.5 months but was really happy to drive out of the country. Being asked to be finger printed as I left was salt on the wound (hadn't been coming in).

That said Addis was quite pleasant and I meet quite a few people there who effectively told me that Addis is an internal refugee camp for people to escape to from problems in their area of the countryside. London mini cab driver told me the same. I certainly meet many friendly and helpful and wonderfully kind people as per most of Africa, but Ethiopia seems a a piece of land full of tensions and as a traveller your not immune from these troubles.

Ethiopia gives you access to Djibouti and Somaliland which are nice places to visit, but Ethiopia was hard work on many overlanding levels, for me at least. I went to remote areas as well as the tourist places - overall you couldn't camp easily, driving was stressful due to roads being used for everything but being a road, stopping was always problematic in some way, food outside of Addis/tourism places was tedious and in the east and west people were actively hostile and threatening. (You cross the border to Somaliland and Djibouti and the same tribe of people are wonderful and kind??).

I meet a young Aussie/Zim couple in in Addis that had their car attacked (full of holes) and who had been under siege at a local police station for a few days after they had run somebody's foot over who had suddenly walked out in front of them. The locals were going to kill them and they were clearly traumatised by the event and were looking to end their trip asap.

On the plus side(!), the Ethiopian road police are the best in Africa? Seems they aren't allowed to hassle foreigners so never had any kind of problem or annoying discussion - hurrah!!

After 2.5 years on the road I was burnt out when I arrived, but then proceeded to have a good experiences in Somaliland and Djibouti in-between my two visits to Ethiopia and then a wonderful 2 months in Sudan.

Ethiopia can be unfriendly and frustrating in-between kindness and beauty. I don't think your experiences are unique - glad you got through ok and lets collectively hope Ethiopia can sort out some of it's tensions....

Drive extremely defensively.

We travelled by car from Moyale to Sudan via Addis, Bahir Dar and Gondar. Not one single stone was thrown to our car. We've met friendlier people in Africa (Sudan!) but Ethiopa wasn't as bad as we feared.

Last week we stopped for the night at a hotel in Hirna, a small town on the road to Harar. When we went for a walk, a crowd of dozens of children was following us. Eventually someone threw a stone that hit Ana in the head.

The adults who were watching looked quite amused. We made a big scene, and challenged them to educate their children. It was useless, nobody helped us.

The problem is that for most Ethiopians (kids and grown-ups) aggression against faranjy is normal behavior.

Josu ta Ana

There's not much you can do about that. Except don't go to them places, but I got flamed for saying that last time.
John933

I love Ethiopia
 

I was riding motorbike from Poland -Cape Town -Poland back in December 2012.
Beautiful,roads,people,food( speciality injera,I eat for breakfast,lunch diner)
Whether was perfect, no Mosquitos,bush camp heaven.
No rock been thrown at me,could be my friendly waving hand whenever I saw local people,yes meet other overlandes on bicycles and trucks they have share of rocks throw at them.
I remember one couple from UK on bicycles,kids run after them of 2 km in steep roads non stop( no wonder they are wining marathons)
Years back western country's gave Ethiopia a lot of AID,not as much any more,perhaps is the reason kids are throwing rock at them now.
I stay few times in catholic missions, super friendly people,I had been invited to people private home for diner.
Out of 23 countries I haven traveled in africa,Ethiopia was #1

Good to hear Romnek. I meet a German biker who also loved Ethiopia and stayed for 3 months- mainly because it was very cheap ;-p.

Overland in Ethiopia
 

Hi guys,

I have been riding in Ethiopia so far for 2 month and much to my surprise so far I have not got any stone thrown at me! All in all I ´d like to confirm that It´s a beautiful country, roads are fairly good, the weather is just incredible for riding, finding gas can be sometimes a problem but then you can find it for a much higher price in the black market. It´s true that you cannot camp easily or at all as every where there are people and also riding is very dangerous as there are many people and animals crossing the road but people are mostly very friendly. I have been to the north, east and part of the south and the only place I had problems was in some backroads in Tigray region where kids gathered around my bike and stole some stuff. It was any way my fault as I knew that a bunch of excited kids would only bring me problem but I still stopped to see what problems they would be. In a few occasions I had problems with the police and military too as I took a picture of a dead cow hit by a car and there was this man who came up to me, pushed my bike and took away my camera. When I asked him to give me back my camera he hit me! So I hit him back ;). People gathered around us and it came out that he was military (no ID, no uniform) and at the end I had to delete de photo. He didn´t even say he was sorry! Another time the police stopped me in Addis driving the car (they are very nice when you are on the bike and almost never bother you) and was saying that I did something wrong, etc.... He was less aggressive and in the end it was fine. Anyway, I am very happy here and like Ethiopia much more than Western Africa. I just think that it´s also a bit about us being tired and burnt out because of prior trips and take it a bit more negative. So try to be as positive as possible :).
One thing that really worked with the kids was that each time I sensed that somebody would throw a stone I started putting a friendly face, waving, saying hello and being entertaining. I only got nice waving back. I also did a lot of rides with Ethiopian riders and they have the same problem. What they usually do is to ride right towards the kids and frighten them. Here is the link to some of my rides in Ethiopia. -
Enjoy!
Mahsa