taking the long way home. almost to the finish line.

Monday, November 19, 2007

ok. this one is going to be a long one. so grab something cold to drink and settle in for the long haul.
the last time i updated we were in khartoum, sudan. the remainder of our visit with our new friends was fun, including attending a fashion show put on by one of their students. that's right, a fashion show, in sudan. getting our visas to ethiopia went smoothly and we left as soon as we got them. our first stop was to be kassala, near the eritrean border. we woke up around dawn and headed out to the road, deciding to try our hand at hitchhiking. we struggled over the construction of a sign for about 20 minutes, to the great amusement of the gas station attendants nearby. we finally got our destination scribbled in arabic on cardboard with a ball point pen and set out to waving down cars. after about half an hour, a nice old man in a truck hauling who-knows-what stopped for us. so we rode in the cab with him, sharing peanuts back and forth (which, aside from oil seems to be sudan's only crop) and watching the scenery fly by. he took us about 3 hours and dropped us off at our turn. thrilled with the great success of our morning we treated ourselves to a coke, spilled them, and went back to flagging down trucks. however, while we were working at it, the bus to where we wanted to go came by and the large-ish crowd of onlookers quickly ushered us on to it. the bus, in a previous life, had been a truck of some sort, and the bus body that had been attached seemed just a touch long for the wheel base.




the end result of this was that jenny and i, who were riding crammed in the very back of the bus were catapulted inches off our seats every time we went over a bump; which in sudan seems to be every few seconds. the ride went well enough for about five hours, with the obligatory police check points every hour or so. but then some "secret police" who fancied themselves important noticed the foreign girls on the bus. they got us off the bus and started to talk to us about how the paperwork in our passports was wrong. we tried to tell them that perhaps this was due to the fact that they were looking at visas to egypt and argentina upside down, but they would have none of it and kept talking to us about "another piece of paper" (read: money). we played stupid and refused to bring up the matter of a bribe and the whole bus sat and waited for us. we got increasingly angry as they asked us useless questions about where we were from and whether we were democrats or republicans, and our fellow passengers got more and more fed up with having to wait for the stupid foreigners. eventually it came down to all the passengers standing outside watching us scream in bad arabic at the men who were threatening us with pulling our luggage off the bus and telling us that we had to ride somewhere with them in their car. we screamed no about ten times and grabbed our passports (which actually had about seven separate stamps from sudan and were fine) from their hands and stormed back to the bus. as a final goodbye they gave jenny a hard shove from behind as she walked away, much like any normal, mature adult might do. we got back on the bus, one of us crying for dramatic purposes, and the other explaining how hard it is to travel when everyone hates you. our fellow passengers rallied telling us that they loved us and hiding us whenever we went past a police stop. a couple of hours later we got to kassala where we were instantly told we must register with the police. having a bit of a chip on our shoulders from our last encounter we were reluctant, but they forced us to. it was legitimate and we went and found a hotel room to collapse into, swearing to leave as early as possible the next day. however, just as we had settled in there was a knock on the door. it was the hotel manager telling us that we had to, yes, register with the police. again, we objected, but it was no good. he dragged us across town to register with another policeman, with another registry book. we stormed back to our hotel and locked ourselves in, swearing that we would cut off one of our toes before we would miss the bus the following morning. and so we set off bright and early to secure seats on the bus. everyone in the bus station was really helpful. in fact, they helped us find our way to yet another required police registration, this one not ever even finding our sudanese visas and writing our information over the top of some scribbles on a cigarette carton...
and we were off. we rode various buses and mini buses all day in our desperation to get out of sudan, registering all along the way with every police stop we came across. all in all we registered 9 times in sudan, and 8 of them were in our final two day exodus. we got to the border at night, kicking ourselves for not being able to cross as soon as possible, but an ethiopian man told us that the border didnt close and we walked across it in the dark. so for halloween, we were time travellers. ethiopia just celebrated the year 2000 in september. and there we were in ethiopia, fresh faced and 18, looking forward to college, talking about how dumb the y2k scare was and being slightly disappointed that that prince song was finally out of date. the border town had no electricity and was run by generators. we were led through immigration and customs with a flashlight. customs consisted of two women with a flashlight sitting on a hill who didnt even make us take off our backpacks. we settled in to our dirt-floored hotel rooms and discovered that apparently in ethiopia, chamber pots are still a thing. we went outside to wander the town and were delighted to find that it was the anti-sudan. every other building was a bar and women in short sleeves ran rampant throughout the town. another nice feature was that everything was really, really cheap. draft beer ran about sixteen us cents and you could get lunch for about fifty cents. we hung around the border town for a day to get ready for more buses and explore the village.




we went on a walk out of the main part of town and as we went amassed a group of children who were all chanting "you, you!" and when we emerged back into town we had enough of them following us to start our own soccer team.
the next morning we got on the bus at 5 am to go to gondar, a town about 700 k away. even though we were the first people to get on the bus, and there was a plentitude of two person seats we were seated in a three person seat. we were also horrified to find that not all seats were the same distance from the seat ahead of them and ours seemed to be the smallest available. so we were crammed in a seat where our knees pushed the metal back of the seat ahead of us with an extra person who smelled strongly of body odor and ethiopian food. i should tell you a bit about the seats. they are metal benches with a thin layer of padding with seatbacks at a 90% angle and headrests consisting of a metal bar. so we rattled along on this bus on a dirt road gathering various bruises for about 10 hours until we reached gondar, a small mountain town in the west of ethiopia. off the bus all we could think of was finding someplace to stay as soon as possible. we checked into the first cheap hotel we found. the room was missing a lock but they promised it would be replaced.




turns out, the hotel was a brothel and the lock never would be replaced. so we compromised with them. we didnt complain about the various types of contraceptives we found under our mattresses, or the fleas that were biting us in our sleep and locked our entire wing of the hotel. they objected, but after enough of our screaming relented, still unwillingly. within a couple of days we had checked out and moved on to stay with a belgian couple living there and working with a local ngo. their ngo worked with local street boys, who were everywhere. they had a small orphanage and worked to get the boys some employable skills. we stayed for a few days, visiting their jobs and meeting their friends before moving on to Addis Ababa, the capitol. the trip to addis was a breeze. we took a minibus where everyone had their own seats. the road was paved and it only took 10 hours. it would have taken 5, but the road closed down for five hours for roadwork. also, we had the added benefit of catching a glimpse of some giant porcupines. they looked to be the size of a dog with quills at least a foot long or more. in addis we got our kenyan visas and basically just rested up for the trip to nairobi.




the trip turned out to be punishing, at best. five days of bus travel. getting to the border of ethiopia was not so bad because all of the roads were paved. also, by that point we were smart enough to choose our own, roomy (ish) two person seats. although, the seats are only about a person and a half wide. the bus to the border seemed only to be fueled only by the constant use of qat (a leaf that they chew that seems to have some sort of stimulant properties).




at the border we checked out of ethiopia that night because immigration did not open the next day until the bus had already left. the next morning we crossed the border before kenyan immigration opened, reserved our seats and went back to get our entry stamp. we sat on the bus at 8 am and watched as everybody yelled and screamed and got kicked off the bus and snuck back on for two hours. the commotion seemed mostly to be about seat numbers, which were written nonsensically on the backs of the bench seats. around ten, the convoy (all vehicles from the border have to travel in a convoy) took off, for all intents leaving the bus behind. but we eventually got our start down the dirt road. the bus ride that followed was the closest i think i have ever been to actual hell. the bus rattled down the road, the inside a swirl of dust and noise and smell. it was a 900k trip that took us until 1:00 pm the following day (28 hours). no stops for sleep. the bus broke down at some point and we all got off in the middle of the night so that they could pound on it by the light of their cell phones. this is when we learned that apparently white people glow in the dark just enough to attract all the giant beetles to come beat themselves against your face. just minutes before we went clinically insane we rolled into nairobi. and here we are. recovering with a peace corps friend and her parents. we get hot showers (none of the hotels we had in the past 2 weeks had water) and there are absolutely no buses involved. also, i hear that we will be having a big american style thanksgiving, mashed potatoes and all. we will be here at least through christmas. phew... so there you have it. the update of the last month and our trip from sudan to kenya. mr. ament - i know you waited a really long time for this one. i hope it satisfied.

2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Whew ... what a trip from Khartoum to Nairobi! Thanks for the post - if I contribute to the "Andi and Jennifer Trip Slush Fund" can we get an update more than once a month?! :-) See you guys at Christmas!

9:54 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope youhad a marvelous one. Love, Mom

8:10 AM

 

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home