Cats and crows
Trip Start
Jul 10, 2006
1
21
79
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
Assab,
Eritrea
Saturday, August 26, 2006
In the morning he gave a couple of tennis balls to the kids, which they had fun with, although the sand was littered with broken glass.
At 10 am we managed to get onto another pickup going to Assab. The price was steep, 400 nakfa each, over $25 at the official exchange rate; but let's face it, they could have asked for more and gotten it (from me anyway). After the previous day's double-dealing, I asked repeatedly for assurances that we would be taken all the way to Assab, until the driver understandably started getting a bit testy, and I apologized.
We submitted to the formalities in the open air at Moulhoule, then in a small office a few miles later at Rehaita. "Welcome to Eritrea," the officer said. No more French, but not much English either. A camel walked right up to the vehicle and made camel-noises at Asilka. There was a surprisingly large cemetery at the edge of town: "Tourists who didn't make it," we joked, cocky again.
It's always a fun ride in the back of a truck, but the wind and heat are extremely desiccating. Still on a track, then a rough road, stopping to make deliveries in a couple of places. We had asked at Moulhoule, then at Rehaita and again now how long it would take to Assab, and received the same answer ("2 hours") every time. But a few minutes later, we suddenly turned onto a paved road, and then we were there.
For our first meal in Assab we ordered goat meat with injera. They hacked a piece of goat to smithereens and then cooked it just enough. Although it was still very stringy and greasy, I had a better appetite than any time since Djibouti. Four or five skinny cats gathered around our table, mewing plaintively as we ate. There were plenty of bits of fat and bone which they shared according to their accepted hierarchy, occasionally reinforced by the raising of an unsheathed paw.
The crows, knowing their place, loitered outside the door. But whenever a morsel was ignored by the cats, a crow would make a timely foray, with a quick swoop and a high hop back out the door before the cats could do anything about it.
Dani and Asilka opted for the hotel where we were dropped, but I decided to upgrade to air conditioning at the Kebal International Hotel ($19). Both the power and water proved to be intermittent. In fact the power goes off in the entire town at midnight. The Kebal had their own generator, but it was off and on all night, as though the season was changing every hour or two.
When I went to the bus station to buy tickets for next day, I learned that we need a permit to travel overland in Eritrea, obtainable from Zoba Immigration, which has just closed until Monday, therefore leave Tuesday. You have probably forgotten, though I have not, that travelling on from Djibouti by land (rather than flying on the Sunday) was supposed to be faster.
But don't give up hope: Dani decides to try to parlay his infinite supply of "Salaam aleikums" into a Saturday night special dispensation from the immigration department. He's a bit concerned, having heard that only half of Eritreans are Muslim, but I reassure him that it's probably more than half down here on the coast, the other way in the highlands.
We walk through dim streets, locate the Zoba Immigration office and knock on the gate, but after some conversation he reluctantly accepts that we must come back in the morning. But that's still good news: permit Sunday, leave Monday. Maybe.
