Like this:

　In which we visit a desert Oasis and the Jade sea, a remote Benedictine monastery, the enigmatic tribes people of the Omo valley and finally arrive in Addis Ababa.

A lot can happen in a month, but watching one middle eastern country go into revolution after another is surely something momentous that I will only see once in my life. At present we are watching 24/7 coverage of the protests in Libya, interspersed with clips of other middle eastern countries having democratic spasms; Egypt, Quatar, Bahrain, Jordan. Chucking out all these stagnant squatting dinosaurs is a positive move for the reigon. On a selfish note, if we can’t enter Egypt when we get there, it will mean a six-country detour to get around to Morocco and Spain instead. Fingers crossed for a peaceful transition for all our sakes.

And in the meantime, we are looking at Kenya and Ethiopia, with no mains water, even in the cities, and no sewage or rubbish collection, with class sizes of between 40 and 70 children per teacher, no universal primary education, millions of children going to work in the fields or breaking rocks and living on cents a day and think “surely you can’t be far behind, for chucking out your own parasitic parliaments.”

　

Our trip from Nairobi to Addis Ababa has taken us through some of the most remote, arid and poorest reigons of Africa. The North West corner of Lake Turkana and the Southern reigon of Ethiopia is home to a kaleidescope of tribal peoples, all of whom survive by subsitence agriculture or as nomadic herders. The do not own property; their wealth is in their animals, their status and the jewellery they wear.

It has taken us just under a month to drive from Nairobi to Addis Ababa following the Lake Turkana road. After finally securing all of our onward visas in Nairobi we were able to leave on the last day of January.

In the scheme of our whole trip we have spent almost three months waiting for things at Jungle Junction in Nairobi; wating for a new Carnet de Passage, waiting for new bank cards, waiting for the cause of electrical gremlins to be uncovered and hunting around for batteries, a stove and for oil. This last layover was by far the longest, but probably also the most welcome. After a year of being on the move I was certainly feeling like a rootless refugee, and was quite exhausted by the perpetual motion and the grind of Africa. There are little pockets in Africa where there are hot showers and electricity, and you don’t see women and donkeys carrying huge loads and being flogged every day. It is also an exhausting daily battle when children beg for food. Every encounter is agony. Give it to them and encourage the begging, or refuse to share what I have plenty of?

Monday 31 January – Embu Slopes Villa Hotel.

It feels great to be leaving Nairobi and setting off again onto the second part of the journey. The only problem is, over a year has gone and we are only just half way! Such big, difficult countries and long stretches without water or services ahead. It reminds me very much of leaving Cape Town; the fear of leaving “civilisation” and setting off into Africa. Fear of being without things, of trouble and the unknown. Every available space, as well as quite a few unavailable ones, is crammed full of all the good food that can be bought at Nakumatt. With strategic buying I am hoping that the vegetables in our little fridge can last for a week. Four hours driving takes us out of Nairobi and into the countryside where corn husks and banana peels litter the streets instead of plastic bags.

1^st February Castle Forest Lodge.

Castle Forest Lodge is somewhere we could bring our parents, and quite a few people working in Kenya have done exactly that. Only about an hour past Embu, Castle Forest lodge is set in the lush greenery of the slopes of mount Kenya. The water in the river is cool and potable, the cropped lawns and cosy firelit dining room delightfully English. And there is a freezing swimming pool, continually flowing with icy water from Mt Kenya and surrounded with elephant footprints. The four friendly dogs are kept in at night so that they don’t harass the elephants – and get squished by them.

2^nd February

We took a two hour guided walk in the forest, smelling the bush magnolias and natural camphor that grows here.

3rd February Range Lands Hotel, Isiolo.

Paul and I spend half an hour filling up every jerry can and bottle available. As the cold, abundant water flowed over my hands, spilling out of the cans and onto the lush grass, I thought about the long stretches of dusty road ahead of us, and wondered if our 90L capacity would be enough. When I wondered this aloud Paul said “there are people doing this route on motorbikes, and they aren’t carrying 90 litres of water.” He’s right. There are some people doing it on pushbikes, too. Range Lands hotel marks the start of a relentlessly dry stretch, all the way to Addis Ababa.

4^th February Yare Camel Camp, Maralal

By 4.30pm it had already been a long day. The horizon wriggling with dust swirling twisters, long acacia thorns perforating my flip flops. The last time we knew where we were was in the little village of Wamba, at midday. Now we are backtracking 40km to the biggest village we have passed, consisting of a small primary school and a couple of huts set on a hill. We are hoping we can stop there tonight. When we get there we meet a Samburu man, a teacher, who wants to go to the same big town we were aiming for, Maralal. He’s ready to go now and looking at the map we think that we are probably only an hour away.

At 7pm dark is falling, and the three of us are having a break, drinking juice and eating buiscuits by the side of the road, enjoying the early evening light and the peaceful quiet of the scrub. Out of the blue Paul asks the teacher, Phillip “Is it safe to drive this road at night?” “Oh, no” he says “It’s not safe at all. Lots of bandits. They rob cars, motorbikes, everyone.” The early evening takes on a sinister cast. An approaching motorbike is greeted with suspicion. I pack away the food things quickly, inwardly cursing our descision to press on for Maralal when we could be tucked up safely in Phillips’village. I ask him what he thinks we should do if we encounter bandits. He says that they have guns “but they never shoot” and if there are men standing in the road we should “pretend like you are going to slow down, but then speed off.”

The problem with this plan is that Maralal is at the top of a small mountain and going uphill Nandi couldn’t outrun a geriatric bandit using a walking frame.

We make Maralal without incident, about half past nine.

5^th February

We take a day off to recover from a long day’s driving.

6^th February

We had a lovely fire and it seemed a shame to waste the coals. I put a few beetroot, one potato and an onion in some foil into the fire before we went to bed. In the morning the parcel had been dragged out of the fire and torn open. One beetroot was tentatively nibbled. The potato was half gone. We were able to salvage the other three unsampled roasted beetroots for dinner (with lentils. Delicious.) as well as spot the likely culprit, an elegant and silent black weasel.

7^th February – Baragoi Guesthouse, Baragoi.

Driving to Baragoi we cross rivers and have our first encounter with what will become a familiar sight. Women and school children in uniform are digging holes in riverbeds to collect a cup of foamy, muddy water to drink. The children are on morning tea break, the women laboriously filling jerry in cans this way, which they will later carry kilometres in the heat to their homes.

Baragoi guesthouse; a fawlty towers experience. They offer to make us dinner…but do we have any ingredients? I give them cabbage and carrots and tomatoes for our meal. In the bar they have to send out for our warm beer. If we had wanted to drink the local gin mixed with water that would have been fine. Probably the local gin sterilises the water better than chlorine, but then again giardia parasites going on a drunken rampage in my gut probably isn’t worth the risk. Sober giardia wreak havoc enough.

In the morning the “manager” collects payments for dinner and car minding…and then the people who actually did these jobs come to us to demand payment.

8^th February New Directions guesthouse South Horr

We were lost again yesterday when we ended up stuck in Baragoi, trying to get to South Horr, so when we see a truck heading up what might be the right road we get excited. “Where are you going?” “South Horr.” Excellent. They consent to us following them. It probably still saves us time, since there are no sign posts and it is easy to go twenty, thirty, forty kilometres down the wrong road here, even though with two stops for circulating what appear to be equally knackered tyres around the truck’s wheels, 40km takes us over four hours. But we get there, and no precious fuel wasted. There is no petrol station between Maralal and Arba Minch, in Ethiopia.

New Directions is a Christian campsite that prohibits alcohol, tobacco, drugs and profanity. Nothing like a prohibitive sign to make you want to yell “Stop being such a stupid drunk bastard and pass that f*cking joint over here!” I don’t like campsites covered in DO NOT signs, because it makes me feel like a kid and I think DO NOT signs encourage people to behave badly.

If I ever open a Christian campsite the sign at the front will ask people to express gratitude, to take time to pray or meditate, to be respectful and to feel welcome.

9 February

We’re staying an extra day at New Directions because a lovely couple we met at Lake Nkuruba Community Campsite, Uganda have arrived. They are going the same way as us, they have a newer land cruiser than us and they have a GPS ( and a co-driver who knows how to use it. The essential accesory that we never quite acquired even when we had a GPS.) So they are the perfect people to go in convoy with across the next stretch. South Horr to Arba Mich in Ethiopia is probably the most remote section of the whole Africa trip. The Turkana route is famous for breaking cars or sinking them in sand and for bandits and pitiless tracks that peter out into nothing.

I had hoped that we would find someone to go in convoy with, and we literally could not have found anyone better. Urs and Luzia have been coming to Africa regularly since before they were married 30 years ago. Africa is their great love, they have crossed the Sahara several times, and work to support a dizzying array of projects here. The swiss couple really know how to travel in Africa and it is great for us to watch how they handle locals and beaurocracy.

10^th February

Western clothes have mostly dissappeared. Women and men wear beautiful diplays of beaded jewellery and loin clothes.When we stop materialise out of the scrub to beg for water in Swahilli “Maji, Maji!”

Herds of camels slope into the road, the curve of the earth is revealed on the treeless plains.

And then, over the crest of a hill is our first view of it; Lake Turkana. The Jade Sea. The brilliant blue expanse, too large to see the borders of it, glitters in the desert. The water is too brackish to drink. It has Africa’s highest concentration of crocodiles. And it is cold, deliciously cold for paddling.

In sight of the lake is Loyangalani, a truly exotic palm covered oasis in a pale expanse of sand. Most people are dressed traditionally, wearing ear stretchers and wide collars made of beads. Most of the town is comprised of round huts, like slightly deflated soccer balls resting on one flattened side. They are made from woven palm fronds. A part of the (not very good) film The Constant Gardener was reputedly filmed here.

The heat of the day is flattening so the offer of a swimming pool at one of the campsites seems very appealing… until we learn Loyangalani’s strange secret. Yes, the water from the underground spring is potable, the most important quality in a desert spring. But it is also a volcanic spring and the cool blue painted pool that the Hotel staff are are tantalisingly filling with water for us is boiling hot.

12 February – Wild Camping, Sibiloy National Park.

At Urs’ urging we are up at 5am, trying to beat the heat. Even at 5am there is no respite; I peel my sweaty body from the top of the nylon sleeping bag, wishing for the slightest breeze.

At lunch break we get it. We are relaxing and eating under Urs and Luzias awning when suddenly Urs shouts “Close your car! Go and close your car!” It’s smaller than a tornado, but would easily surround a house. A larger version of the dust twisters that are a constant feature of the landscape is swirling towards us. Urs’ awning begins to flap. I close the car up while Paul helps the Bohlens with their awning. In the end it is a false alarm, the twister contines a wide arc around us, but even the little ones make a right mess.

It’s a little bit of schadenfruede, but I am happy when, even with the GPS and it’s accomplished operator, we manage to get lost in Sibiloy National Park. We are meant to be following a short track around the outside, but we have managed to end up in the middle of the park about an hour before dark. It seems peaceful, and despite the incongruous fact of seeing about thirty armed rangers at the gate (a para military force, really) and knowing that the park contains no animals that could require such a force, (the park was formed to protect fossils, not live animals) we don’t think anything of wild camping in a riverbed in the centre of the park.

It’s delightful to take my pot of warm water and soap out into the bush, and wash under the stars without any lions to worry about.

It’s not until our next stop, Ileret, that we get the news that a man was killed here yesterday, in a tribal conflict that we find out always plays out in the national park. So that explains all those heavily armed rangers in trucks.

13^th February Father Florian’s Benedictine Mission, Ileret.

About 1pm we arrive in Ileret, a village given the feeling of space settlement on an inhospitable planet by the use of tin sheeting to line the traditional soccer ball huts. The huts are tiny and in the heat, the tin walls must be unbearable. Father Florian visits a sick person in one of these huts in the afternoon, which must be like going into hell.

Father Florian is one of Urs and Luzia’s innumerable contacts. Projects run by the Benedictines often receive funds from Urs and Luzia’s NGO, Faraja. In addition to being a Benedictine monk Father Florian is also royalty. His other title “His Royal Highness” is not used, despite the fact that he is a direct descendant of the last king of Bavaria. He is a friendly and welcoming man, and I would like to have had a few more days with him to try and understand the good he believes he is pursuing.

All through this area we have met Christian missionaries trying to convince the “resistant” (their word) Turkana and other tribal people to abandon their traditional practices and beliefs, to come to the light of Christianity and Capitalism, to property ownership and “decent” clothes, and I find this ideal backwards and despicable. But I am utterly fascinated by the people who have given up their own pursuit of weath and family and career because they think that homogenising the world is such a worthy goal.

　

Before coming to Africa I thought that slavery and the practice of Christian missionaries eradicating the cultures of the world ended last century, being frowned on by the enlighted world. But sadly, the Toureg and other Arabic people still keep slaves in the North of Africa, and Christian churches are still supporting the missionaries who are intentionally eradicating the richest seam of cultural diversity in the world, which exists here in the Omo valley and surrounds of Africa.

Curious to see it for ourselves, we accept the invitation to go to Sunday mass with Father Florian, at a smaller village about 12 km out of Ileret. After negotiating for a time with the old men who occupy the shade of the only tree, Father Florian and his assistant lay out a small altar from his breifcase and mass begins. Father Florian gives it in Swahili, reading from a Swahili bible, and a local man translates for him into the Dasenech language.

It’s wonderfully different from mass in a Church. None of the hushed, hallowed manners of Church apply; people talk, raising their voices ever louder to compete with Father Florians speech, taking advantage of having an assembly of so many people to hear them. They shout out conversations to people in the street who shout their answers back. A bird in the tree twitters and whistles throughout. A small number of elderly people, perhaps hedging their bets, accept communion at the end of the service.

In the evening, Father Florian has all four of us as guests to his Sunday dinner, along with two Brothers. The table is laid with cabbage, spaghetti, ugali, potatoes and nile perch, as well as a one litre glass bottle, formerly altar wine, now cold water, for each person. It seems like a ridiculous amount of water, but at the end of the meal all the bottles are empty.

14^th February Evangadi campsite, Turmi, Ethiopia.

Upon arriving in Turmi, Ethiopia, the stated goal destination of our convoy, it had been agreed that we would celebrate with a restaurant meal. Urs comes over to our camp to suggest an aperitif and says “I’m very sorry, I know that I promised Champagne, but it seems that a chilled white wine is all that I can offer. Is that OK?”

Luzia brought back from Switzerland all their unconsumed Christmas nibbles, so olives and sudried tomato pate and wine are laid out on a table under the moon to celebrate st Valentines’ day and our safe passage.

15 ^and 16th February

Rest days. We are obliterated by the heat and lay around most of the day. The camp’s two donkeys, used to carry water to the tanks, hover near the fridge when I make lunch, gratefully accepting discarded cabbage leaves, onion skin, tomatoes and crusts of bread.

17^th February Rocky’s campsite, Jinka

Jinka is the epicentre for tourism of the Omo valley tribes, and the sideshow element of photographing people the way one photographs lions on a game drive comes to a peak here. An area of hundreds of kilometres around it has been affected by tourism of the most famous tribe, the Mursi.

You might not recongnise the name, but you will remember the image of women wearing massive clay lip plates wedged into a split in their lower lip. On our approach to Jinka there are painted naked little boys on stilts, trying to get us to take their photo and pay for it. Children dance by the side of the road and then run after the car to demand money. Any time we stop anywhere, people, especially children, approach us to demand that we take their photo in exhchange for two birr. Or that we just give them two birr.

18 February

At eight am we are at the Tour Guide office, two white land cruisers in a vast 4×4 jam, all trying to get their carloads of tourists up to the villages as quickly as possible, so that they can bring them back, disgorge them and then collect an afternoon batch. A Mursi girl, her disfigured empty lip dangling from her mouth down her chin like a loop of rubber tries to sell me her lip plate. She thrusts it desperately in the window, insisting that I take it. At the gate to the national park we wait about half an hour for our permit to be cleared, and all the time herds of children prowl all of the stopped cars, testing the effectiveness of various demands “Give me pen! Give me T-Shirt! Give me one Birr! Give me…Water, book, banana, earring, plastic…..” Some children, six or seven years old are working at 9am selling huge bunches of bananas or bags of oranges, and they are still there, working in the sun when we leave the park in the afternoon.

More naked painted boys along the side of the road. When we don’t take their photographs one of the boys grabs his penis and waggles it furiously, an angry expression on his face as if to say “Isn’t this what you want? To see poor Africans living in the bush, naked? Well take a photo and pay me then!”

When we arrive at our allocated village a guide (who is not a Mursi person – none of the guides or “rangers” who “look after” them are Mursi people) indicates that we should park in the only shady spot, under a big tree, already occupied by the village’s elderly men. Paul says to him “There are people in the shade already” and the guide assures us “If you drive your car in they will move.” Which is pretty much the tone of the day. The non-Mursi people of the area regard the Mursi as oddities, irrational, backwards, wild. The Mursi crowd around us, touching us, asking for items of clothing or jewellery and demanding photos. The “ranger” and the guide attempt to control them by shouting at them or physically wrangling them away from us. The longer we stay the more aggressive they become, pinching us, grabbing my breasts, yelling at us. It is an extremely strange experience, and I think you can see in the photo my ambivalence at the situation. The men, for the most part, have no lip plates and are able to remain dignified and quiet watching from the shade. The men collect all the money for the village visit ( 100 birr per person, about $8) and the women only get the money for their individual photos. ( 3 – 4 birr)

We will see if lip plating continues very far into this century. As far as I can tell it is the women who bear all the stigma, disfigurement and harm (two to three teeth are knocked out from the front of their bottom jaw, causing them to continually drool) and it is the men who gain most of the benefit; the money that tourists bring coming to see this unusual practice.

19 February Strawberry Fields, Konso

Before leaving Jinka we stopped briefly at the museum which has exhibitions exploring the practices of lip-plating, female genital mutilation (in which all the external genitalia including the clitoris are removed) and ritual wife-beating, all common practices in the area, are explored. Women who do not have a lip plate are not considered valuable. Those who do not remove their clitorises are considered to be “like men” because the clitoris is “something male.” Women without extensive welts on their backs from whippings are considered to be cowards.

In the afternoon at Strawberry fields we are relaxing drinking tea when we hear the hair raising sound of thousands of people chanting. As we watch, from our position on top of the hill, thousands of singing men and women armed with machetes and automatic weapons march into town. Are they going to war? No, they are on their way to celebrate in Konso the completion of a dam project.

Strawberry fields has its own vegetable gardens and does the best food we have had in weeks – Big Salad!

20 February Dorze Lodge

Dorze Lodge is set on top of a hill overlooking Lake Awasa and the Arba Minch surrounds. After a day spent looking at the famous weaving houses and buying a couple of beautiful cloths we relax at Dorze enjoying a huge bonfire on the hill. The young people from the village come in a sort of semi – formal arrangement for entertainement. They sing their unique local songs and dance, but they seem to enjoy it as much as they enjoy the small payment for it. There is no face paint or grass skirts or spears, just a jolly good time, a bottle of rot-gut gin and the full moon rising over the lake.

21 February - Yabello Hotel

Nothing like ending a hard days driving with a disgusting dark, cramped shower that smells like a urinal and a squat toilet that is even worse. (Flush, people! If it’s brown, flush it down!) And cap that off with rude staff and camping in a parking lot surrounded by running engines. Why don’t the drivers of tour groups ever turn their engines off? And why doesn’t anyone ever steal their cars?

22 February - Wondo Genet Lodge

You can’t win them all and sometimes you can’t even win a couple. The (2003) guide book raves about this place. And other people we met said that it is their favorite place in Ethiopia. I sure hope they were just extending typical African enthusiasm and politeness about our venture and not being serious. Because Wondo Genet Lodge is run down. State owned, no one cares if you leave happy or not. In fact, it seems like they would rather you left dissatisfied because then they don’t have to bother with you or your friends giving them more work to do. They are quite happy collecting a wage and watching DSTV thank you very much.

After a harrowing days driving on bad roads, watching merciless people whipping their skeletal, bleeding horses and donkeys into pulling loads that they simply cannot carry, we arrive at the very strange, empty lodge that was supposed to be a hot – spring Shangri-la. A futuristic glass design, similar to a giant perspex egg box is dingy and decrepit – the crowning feature of the lodge.

At the actual hot spring down the road it’s not so bad. The four of us at least get a pounding hot shower that even mangages to clean the filthy cracks that have appeared in my heels. Its easily the cleanest I have been in months.

23 February - Wim’s Holland House, Addis Ababa

At lunch time we say our goodbyes- Urs and Luzia will stay in a Hotel while they are in Addis, and we are heading to the only camping site. We expect to lose each other as the traffic intensifies closer to the centre. It has been a very successful convoy, and I am sad to say goodbye. As predicted, on the outskirts of town matatus and buses and private cars all form a crush to get to the centre the quickest and we lose them. It is five pm, a stressful hour to enter Addis, but now that Paul has driven in Nairobi he can drive anywhere. Eight lanes of traffic converging and no traffic lights? That’s nothing for the Nairobi graduate.

We have made it to Addis Ababa, and we are a little closer to England and to home. The foreigners supermarkets are better than I expected, carrying tinned beans and oats from South Africa, and real Kalamata olives and tapenade from the continent. We feel a little closer to Europe now, and can stock up well again for the next Northern Ethiopia leg.

Looking forward to posting again, with the beauty of Northern Ethiopia and being that little bit closer to home.