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Dessie
Entry 24 of 72 | show all | print this entry |
For the people in these areas, the tourist is the best chance to make money; Never enough to save it, hopefully enough to feed themselves and their group. Boys carry small boxes and try to sell shoe shines. Then offer guided tours of the town and countryside. Out of a group of ten boys, it doesn't really matter who you hire to dust your shoes because they all live in one house and eat from the same plate.
Heading into the North we had taken the easy route, flying over the land in a matter of minutes rather than the days that it would have taken on the ground. It was time that we got a taste for the land, the smells of the air and a sense of the lives around us. Addis was 700km to the South. The first day would take about 9 hours. We would travel 300kn and stay over night in Dessie. The next day should take 11 hours and would cover the next 400km. The night before we left we arranged for a boy to be at the bus station early for us. We each gave him 10 birr, and he would reserve a couple of seats for us near the front of the bus. It would save us an hour of waiting, and from 4:30 to 5:30 in the morning, those are valuable minutes. It also promotes business in the area and the only way to make progress is to meet the hierarchy of needs.
When we left for the bus station the air was cold and the stars were clear. We arrived to a full bus, thirty minutes before departure. The well broken in foam compressed like folded toilet paper as we sat down on the narrow bench just behind the front door. We began the winding descent into the valley below Lalibela. Just before reaching the airport we took a left and got off the asphalt road. There was one other tourist on board, a wiley looking Italian with long salt and pepper hair, a bushy grey beard and dark aviator sunglasses. He sat in the front seat beside the driver.
No windows were open, yet the dust came straight in the cabin through a large crack around the door where a thick band of weather stripping once was. We could stretch our legs into the short stairway that led onto the bus. In exchange, the dust settled on us first. We figured that after these rides we may have more of a feeling about whether or not we should fly to Tanzania.
With in an hour we heard a loud splash behind us. One of the conductors looked back with a scowl and passed back a plastic bag, saying something in an angry tone. We stopped at the first level place that we reached and two passengers jumped off the bus to vomit. The conductor grabbed a few handfuls of dirt and tossed them on the floor behind us. Then, he broke a leafy branch from a nearby bush and gave it to the passenger who had lost his curried chickpea and ingera bread breakfast to the curves of the road.
The landscape was dry, but not to the point of drought. It was nothing like the images of Ethiopia that had been imbedded in my head from shorts in the news. Houses were simple boxes, made by standing 3 inch diameter poles side by side, then packing them with mud. The roofs were pitched gables normally covered with thatch, but sometimes with metal. We made our way back up the mountain side and drove along the ridge where vast wheat and barley fields spread like taught blankets under the light blue sky.
When the bus made stops, men with baskets of small oranges and women with trays of roasted barley walked around selling their snacks through the windows. By midmorning most of the passengers had shed the towels and blankets that had been wrapped around them. We kept our cotton scarves wound around our faces to filter the constant stream of dust.
By four o'clock we reached Dessie. We were lucky that nothing eventful had happened on the bus. It was a nice ride with pretty sights. The station was a dusty yard containing about 30 busses surrounded by a concrete wall and a gate at the main entrance. The driver told us that we would leave at six the next morning.
The town itself seemed to mainly be a midway stopping point for people on the road. There were several hotels ranging in price from $1.50 to $10.00 US. We snacked on some sweet pastries and walked around a bit to get some blood circulating through our limbs. That night we ate pasta with a spicy berberi tomato sauce. The last thing that we wanted was a meal that would leave us questioning our innards for the next 24 hours. It was a precaution that we would always take before getting on a bus.
We woke around 4:15 the next morning, wanting to have a good selection of seats. By 4:30 we were at the bus station gates waiting under the cool stars. One of the guards let us in so that we were with the approximate 25 other VIPs standing near the guard hut. Someone told us to wait until five to go to our bus. Patiently, we stood talking to the guard, edging towards the busses. There was a slight tension in the air as everyone was anxious to make a claim on their ride. The thin Italian showed up and stood with us eyeing the locale of our bus. They were parked in a large U with one row in the centre. The drivers and two crew members were inside catching their final bits of sleep before the day began.
Someone clanged a pipe of the steel gate and people started to move. The Italian took off running, leading the pack in his tight, worn denim Levis. I looked at him and sort of laughed, then looked over my shoulder. Everyone else was taking off also. To the left, I saw Erin break for it, and I followed. We were the second and third to the bus after the Italian. A few more people got in line right after us. The couple behind us knocked on the door and a sleepy conductor opened up, rubbing his eyes. I held onto the bags outside while Erin went in and claimed the same seats that we had the day before.
I stood in the dark watching the stars as the drivers and conductors did their equipment check. The sky was clear and I saw a shooting star heading south. I took it as a good omen. Before too long, I realized that it was too quiet for a bus yard with so many busses in it. Poking my head around the front side of the bus I quickly gathered what was about to happen. A loud speaker boomed with a raspy voice. I turned to Erin and told her to get ready and to hold on tight.
As I looked back around I saw the gate start to open. Behind it the two hundred or so towel wrapped heads that I had seen started running towards us. The work day had begun for the bus crew. Everywhere, people started shouting where they were going. "Lali, Lali, Lali!" "Addi, Addi, Addi!" "Moya, ya, ya, yale!"
In a couple of seconds I was engulfed in a dusty melee of people scrambling to find a seat and fill a bus. Women were making high pitched yelling noises, children were crying, men were throwing elbows and setting screens, the elderly were taking swings with their canes. Conductors were yelling at each other while grabbing and pushing people into their busses. It was great. Within 15 minutes we were near capacity.
I stood with a group of people at the rear of the bus with our packs. There appeared to be very little order to the luggage system. People would argue and gesture for a while, and then one by one a porter would throw the cargo on top. It was typical for third world travel. Reed cages with live poultry, packages tied together with wire and rope, even a couple of live goats, all fastened to the roof. As I watched them strap all of the baggage down the sun started to rise. The black faded into blue and then into a bright orange along the eastern horizon. Twin mountain silhouettes framed the view down into the valley where we were bound.
The ride started at a quick pace. We were out of the gate and passing other busses by six. We drove through big crops and small towns. We slowed for livestock on the road including cows, oxen, sheep, goats, and camels. The land was green and our bus had a lead on the rest. I only minorly worried about the peculiar sound that the breaks made.
I was reading a book as we coasted down an incline and into a small town. Someone gasped and I looked up to see a minibus turning into the street right in front of us. The driver pulled the wheel hard to the left and avoided a direct collision, but the sides hit. We ricocheted to the left, skipped of the road, hit a man and landed face fist in a ditch with our rear wheels in the air.
The window behind us had shattered on impact, but nobody on the bus appeared to be hurt. I looked back to see an older woman staring blankly forward. There were pieces of glass in her lap. She was shaking her head. From the view through the front window we knew that we wouldn't be taking that bus to Addis. All that we could see was dirt. There was an unconscious teen under the bus and several women were screaming. A couple of people carried the boy to a Red Cross ambulance that was parked near by and it took off promptly, probably returning to Dessie.
We hopped out of the rear exit into a tense, labouring world where the average life expectancy is 45 years. But also, a world in which it is not uncommon to outlive a child. There wasn't panic. People were speaking softly and pointing. The Italian walked up and told us that they were sending another bus. There was not much to do but wait and wonder about how much timing effects our lives and how lucky we were to not have been hurt. By any number of tiny actions between Dessie and Addis, the accident could have been avoided or could have turned out much more tragic.
Compared to my first bus wreck, the rest of the ride felt uneventful. A few hours after the wreck we piled onto a bus that was designed in a regards for at least 10 fewer people. We ran out of gas once and barely made the hills. We chewed on barley and smiled with our neighbours, most of whom were chewing chat. We were stopped, lectured and fined a couple of times by transit police for having too many passengers, accident or not. We averaged about 25kph. The hills and turns were stretched even further by a precautious driver and an overloaded bus.
By the time that we made it to Addis that evening we were ready to get off. We waved goodbye to the people who had boarded with us in Lalibela and caught a cab to our hotel. Deep in our hearts we knew which path we would take to Tanzania. From what we had gathered, it would be a two day trip through southern Ethiopia to the border. From there we would find a truck that was going to Nairobi. Normally there are several trucks that leave around the same time in the morning. They travel together in a convoy through the northern Kenyan desert because of bandit danger. That part of the trip would take three days. The road between Addis and Nairobi is called "the longest road in Africa." And, Nairobi is called "the crime capitol of Africa." From there to Dar es Salaam would be the downhill part of the trip. We should be able to catch one bus that would make the 16 hour trip in one day. Including the $20 Kenyan transit visa, the trip should cost us no more than $75 and take about a week of time.
Making that trip was not something that I wanted to think about just after arriving in Addis, but the time was coming. This is where we would see if we truly would stick to our claim of having more time than money. Opting for the plane would be simple and safe. The road would be hard and potentially dangerous, but it would save us half a month's budget. Besides that, one day we would be able to point at the globe and say "I know what that looks like," even if it is desolate wasteland.
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