I believe we saw this advert travelling in South Africa. This beauty parlour offered “pedicure” and also “menicure”. At first I thought it was something to do with a cure for men! but then I realized that it meant “manicure”!
It also offered make up, eye lash and foot massage! But that is not all, to the right of the main sign there were other “Special” offers (written in white):
“Relaxer back and lower straight back”, “Straight back”, “straight up back extension”, “Twist back(?)”, “Twist long”, “ewist (twist?) med”and ewist (twist?) short”, “wool dre… (dreadlocks?), “eye lesh” and “men cure”.
You will agree with me that it was a great offer, all packed-up in a shipping container!
This was seen is the main road between the cities of Corrientes and Resistencia in Argentina. The cities are separated by the magnificent Paraná river and the road connecting the two is truly busy. It was while driving on the motorway that we spotted this oddity. We almost overlooked it but then we spotted something wrong. Can you see it?
It is not easy to see what is wrong! Here is another picture taken when the tractor got closer and with a different angle:
Usually, tractors move on four wheels! However, these gentlemen were driving -rather unconcerned- on three by some miracle of engineering equilibrium!
I am a great believer in sharing activities away from work to strengthen team spirit. I proposed to my project colleagues to take advantage of a special cheap offer of Zambia Airways (ZA) to spend the week of Christmas 1992 at on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in Northern Zambia. I had found out that there was a lodge known as Kasaba Bay that looked like a good place to stay there. I saw it as an excellent opportunity to visit this rather remote part of Zambia while doing some birdwatching, game-viewing, and fishing.
A great map of the area produced by Ndole Bay lodge. Copyright of Ndole Bay lodge (http://www.ndolebaylodge.com/). Kasaba Bay lodge is on the top right while Ndole Bay is on the top left. Nkamba Bay lodge is on the bottom of the map in the large Nkamba bay.
It was decided that a group was to travel by air: Bruno and Dominique with their two girls Fanny and Collette and their babysitter Beauty. I would go with Mabel, our children Flori and Julio and our babysitter Annie. Although Flori and Fanny and Julio and Collette were over two and one years old respectively, they were used to travelling and Zambia was, for all they knew at the time, their country as they were all brought up there.
Although Giuseppe would not join us as he was spending the holidays with his then girlfriend Lieve in Chipata, Anders, after collecting his girlfriend Birgit who was arriving from Copenhagen, would come by road to join us later their rather ambitious trip to Dar es Salaam. In retrospect Giuseppe was probably the wisest…
We booked the Kasaba Bay Lodge for the week, and it was a full ATR 42 (with about 50 passengers) that landed at Kasaba Bay after an uneventful flight of about two hours. The lodge was very close from the runway, so we got there before our plane started its journey back to Lusaka. The place looked promising with its small bungalows very near the lake shore and a rather large swimming pool with a comfortable thatched bar next to it. Although we were technically in the rainy season, the sky was clear, and it was warm, ideal conditions to enjoy swimming and fishing. We were informed that the the prevalence of bilharzia was very low as very few people lived nearby. Things were looking up and we were very happy to be out of Lusaka.
The plane passengers aimed for various destinations and about one half left by cars while a group of about twenty of us were taken to Kasaba Bay lodge where a reception committee was waiting for us. We did not need much imagination that the reception was rather more solemn than usual, and we were somehow surprised at the rather numerous security personnel stationed at the lodge. There was something amiss and this was dispelled soon with the Manager´s announcement.
“Ladies and gentlemen” he started, “welcome to Kasaba Bay lodge. We would like to inform you that His Excellency President Chiluba has honoured us with his presence at the lodge [1]. For this reason, all bookings that are not part of his entourage have been cancelled” That was all he could say before he was rudely interrupted by the waiting crowd, outraged by being “lodgeless”! This of course included us and even the so far polite Japanese visitors that lost their composure!
While the riot was taking place, the Manager tried, fruitlessly, to calm us down. Eventually, realizing that our protestations were futile, we stopped complaining and listened. “Please, do not worry” said a now dishevelled and nervous Manager, “we have made very good alternative arrangements for all of you. You will be taken to another lodge. He then proceeded to inform us that there were two boats ready at the yetty to take us to our new destination and he invited us to move there and wait for instructions.
While we were walking towards the lake, we saw our plane taking off and we realized that we would be at Lake Tanganyika for one week and that we better enjoy it. The ten of us were place in the same boat while the Japanese group and a couple of other foreigners were given the second one.
We were going to a lodge somewhere on the lake shore that I believe was an earlier version of the present Ndole Bay lodge or one sited in that general area. I regret that my memory fails me there.
By now it was near mid-day and the heat was getting intense. The boats were indeed at the jetty but far from ready and under the sun (the nearest trees were around the lodge!). We boarded and accommodated the ladies and our offspring as best as we could under a makeshift shade made of khangas while Bruno and I made sure that all our luggage was loaded on our boat. While this took place, provisions were also being loaded.
We saw rice, bread, cabbages, maize meal, and a couple of cool boxes brought to the boat. While this took place, we established communication with our skipper and learnt that we would navigate about three hours to our destination, that it was only a name to us at the time. The heat was intense, and our children were feeling hot and unhappy, so the situation was getting difficult when loaded was completed and we were ready to go.
But we did not go as we were waiting for chickens and eggs! These did not appear for another fifteen minutes. Once several birds and a few crates arrived, we started our journey and soon we forgot our past experience and got into the contemplation of a beautifully green lake in sharp contrast with the dry mountains that framed it. “Over there is Doctor Congo” joked our skipper referring to the opposite shore, the then Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The water was amazingly clean and warm, but we avoided touching it too much just in case.
It was a relief to set off and to dry our sweat with the lake breeze at last. As soon as we moved from the jetty we realized the enormity of this true land-locked sea with an area of 32,900 km² and a maximum length of 673 km. Encased by the Rift valley mountainous range, the dark green colour of the water was an indication of its depth that averages 500m but that can reach down to 1500m, one of the deepest of our planet. Apart from a large population of Crocodiles and Hippos, several fish species are found and the lake is renowned for its more than 250 species of cichlid fish, most of which are endemic.
We were not after cichlids but sport fish, mainly the Nile Perch (Lates niloticus), although we knew that there were other large game fish such as the Tiger fish (Hydrocynus vittatus) and Vundu Catfish (Heterobranchus longifilis). We were also aware of the off chance of catching a real monster, the Goliath Tiger fish (Hydrocynus goliath) that also lurked in the lake’s depths. Although unlikely, we knew that some world records for these species had been set here and came well prepared, just in case we had a chance to challenge them…
I had heard stories at Lusaka of people that had caught Nile Perch at the lake, and we had fished them in Kenya years before at Lake Victoria. Apparently, they would catch large perch by trolling at a considerable depth using a barbie doll as their lure! As my daughter did not agree with me using hers, we settled for the more conventional deep action lures! I chose the largest I had.
It was probably the usual African optimism that led the Manager of the Kasaba Bay lodge to say that the trip to Ndole would last one hour. Perhaps he did not know the place, or he travelled in faster boats. Ours, a long wooden contraption with a rather small engine, took the three hours that the skipper mentioned to get to our destination. By the time we arrived was mid-afternoon and we were low on drinking water and, except for our two younger and still suckling babies, we were all suffering from the heat and sunburns.
We disembarked, luckily before the other boat, and we walked in a single file towards the lodge. This was simple but the rooms were nicely set in the garden among rocks and nice tropical plants. There was also a shaded veranda where food would be served. A couple of good BBQ stands were also there among the boulders in the garden. There was no swimming pool but a nice sandy beach where some rather derelict but still usable straw umbrellas were placed. The lake water was amazingly clean, warm, and calm, very tempting to jump in but we decided that it was best to find our rooms first as there would be time lateer to enjoy beach life!
As we walked Bruno said: “Let’s go quickly to get our rooms before the other people pick the best” so we walked fast and got to the reception first and negotiated for our rooms. Although I am not sure that we achieved much, at least we felt satisfied! We were pleased to note that the rooms had new mosquito nets and that they were quite cool thanks to the straw roofs. So, we had a chance to relax and cool down after quite an eventful day. But the day was not yet over.
At about six in the afternoon Bruno made an appearance. “Let´s go for a beer” he said. We agreed and walked to the bar, a roomy where a barman waited for us. We asked for a couple of Mosi beers (the Zambian beer at the time) but we were informed that there was no beer in the lodge as they had not loaded any on our boats! “Maybe with luck they will bring some tomorrow” he said traying to believe his words. This was a bad start!
We spotted a fridge that was plugged in, but we were not sure that there was electricity or that anything was inside it. In any case we insisted: “So, what can we drink then?” we asked. The rather apologetic barman replied, “there are a few sodas, but they were just offloaded from the boats, and they are hot!” As we were not prepared to suffer hot Cokes, we asked what else could he offer, and the choice was whisky or green powder juice!
We did not feel like a scotch, so we settle for the green juice. This was another error. We were served glasses of room temperature green water, which tasted sweet with a weak apple after taste. It was rather undrinkable, and we baptized it “Green Mamba juice”! and we only drank it that day!
We realized that the bar situation was critical and decided to secure the bottle of whisky, so we went to our room to get money. When we returned, we learnt that our only hope for a decent drink had already been “booked” by the Japanese group. “We are in a bad condition”, Bruno said while we were leaving the bar never to return!
[1] The late Frederick Chiluba, then the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, had beaten Kenneth Kaunda in the first democratic elections and he had probably decided that he needed a rest after the campaign. (Or maybe he shared my thoughts on team building and chose the same location!).
As I mentioned before, my work in the Transmara in Kenya took me often through Narok when the weather was dry and I could drive through the Maasai Mara Game Reserve, up the Oloololo escarpment and then through the wheat fields and Lolgorien to Intona Ranch.
During the rains, however, the Maasai Mara would become muddy but still passable but the road on top of the Oloololo escarpment would be deep mud first and then there was the infamous soapy red hill where the journey ended -at least for a while- for many!
Benson, Joseph and the Bushsnob resting after going through the water-logged Lolgorian road.
Those wet days I would travel through tarmac via Kericho until reaching Kilgoris and from then to Intona through a muddy but shorter route that, usually, we could negotiate, but not always without trouble.
Stuck during one of the few ocassions that I was driven to Intona (with visitors) via Kilgoris.
Narok was a classical “border” town in the sense that it was the last stop before you entered into the “wilderness” beyond. It was in Narok where you re-fueled and bought your last essential supplies for you and your workers. The latter would go for the needed vegetables (read cabbage) as well as meat to last them for the two weeks spell they would spend at the ranch.
In addition, malaria was feared but they often did not get the chloroquine to protect them from it so we needed to get them from the pharmacy in town that happened to be next door to the butchery named “Jamaica”. Although the chemist was well identified, its neon sign was “interesting”. It read “Madawa” and “Duka la dawa” which mean drugs and pharmacy in Ki-Swahili.
Clearly, there was not enough room for the sign to be placed vertically so an ingenious electrician has placed on its side! Although I never seen it in its full glory during the night, I would have loved to have seen the face of the Hoechst general manager when he/she saw it for the first time. The sign is probably no longer there after all these years neither is Hoechst that is now part of Sanofi-Aventis.
Kilgoris also offered an interesting sign that was the meeting place in the Transmara when, with my boss Matt, I met Alan for my first visit to Intona Ranch [1]. Our rendezvous was the “Kilgoris Nylon Night Club” that, I must confess, I never saw its inside although I would have stayed there in case of breaking down as there were few other offers for accommodation in the place.
Judging by the disproportionate and (to me) unfortunate increase in the number of lodges and camps in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve that went from less than ten in the 80’s to a staggering 118 today [2], this night club is probably now a resort belonging to one of the major international hotel groups. Although the name of a few possible owners come to mind, I leave it there!
This did not happen to me (although it could have done) but to an FAO colleague that spent time in Ethiopia doing consultancy work. I repeat the story as he told it to me a few years later, when I was working in Rome.
The fellow had just completed his work and, as it is customary in Ethiopia, he was given a good farewell party and he was presented with a few gifts. As he was returning to Rome for debriefing, he was also asked to take a few letters and small parcels to Ethiopian relatives living in Italy.
The protagonist of the story also stayed at the Harambe Hotel like us. As it happened to us also, he was given a room that he found smelling too strongly and asked to be moved to another one. After checking a couple of rooms, he picked the best available and decided to go for dinner to be ready to get up early the following morning as getting through the “necessary” procedures at Bole Airport demanded time and lots of patience.
The guy came back to his room after dinner and he had the impression that the smell in the room had increased but he could not be bothered to ask the reception to give him another room so he opened the windows to the chilly Addis air and went to sleep.
The following morning, he took a taxi to the airport, happy to leave the smell behind as it was still strong in the room. The taxi was one of the blue and white Lada cars that were probably imported “en masse” from the then Soviet Union years before. Most of them were in some degree of deterioration. The one he took, apart from a worn upholstery and dirty floor mats, it also smelled bad!
Without any problems he got to the airport and went through all the required moves until, eventually, he could relax and seat at the waiting lounge for a while, until he could feel the same smell again! At first he thought it was still in his nostrils but soon he realized that it was not and that it was coming from somewhere at the lounge. Before he could do much about it the flight was called and he boarded, found his seat and literally passed out until he was woken up for breakfast, a couple of hours from his destination.
The plane landed and, while removing his bag from the overhead compartment he felt a wet patch in it and when he smelled his hand, trying to identify the cause of the spill, he recognized the familiar smell that had followed him throughout his journey. So, as discreetly as he could, he inserted a hand into the bag and soon contacted the wet culprit. It was one of the parcels that had given to him by someone in Bedele!
He disembarked and, as soon as he could, he removed the stinky packet and -to his horror- discovered that it was a chunk of an Ethiopian bovine that had kept him company while making its presence felt all the way through his journey!
He immediately contacted the airport authorities in Rome to hand over the smelly meat to be destroyed. This took quite a while and afterwards, to add insult to injury my friend, a veterinarian, was given an ear full about the dangers of bringing beef into Italy as well as not travelling without checking what you carry with you. The latter, an issue that has become critical nowadays!
While writing about our Ethiopia days, I found this finding. Let’s see if you can see it. I think it is pretty easy but…
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
To take this close-up I needed to climb the rocks that are seen behind the croc in the previous picture as to at a safe distance from the “sleeping” beast. That is the reason why the head is pointing to the opposite side in the second picture.
Recently it has been discovered that, as it had been observed in other animals, crocodiles are able to sleep with one-half of their brain at a time, a phenomenon known as unihemispheric sleep. During this kind of sleep the eye neurologically connected to the ‘awake’ hemisphere remains open while the other eye is closed [1].
I was not able to check the condition of its eyes to tell what was it really doing but, in the light of the research mentioned, to ascertain its status would have demanded a close inspection that I had no intention to do and I am quite happy not to know!
As I mentioned earlier, we needed to travel to Addis roughly every month and, after the first twelve months I got promoted and that meant that we gained access to an expatriate shop known as the Victory shop. Although this impressively named shop could only be compared with a small supermarket in Kenya, to be able to enter it was a moral boost to our remoteness and complemented our food needs. It also offered the option of buying several things in one place and even find some imported stuff.
Despite our newly acquired privilege, we continued to visit the Mercato, attracted not just by the food but also in search of handicrafts. Ethiopia is well known for its rather unique jewellery. Various silver crosses of different sizes, shapes and materials as well as gold ornaments of different kinds, particularly the rather large rounded earrings and other items are sought after by both Ethiopians and visitors.
Although we bought a few crosses and other silver trinkets, we were more interested in other kinds of crafts such as textiles and baskets, the latter in particular we liked a lot. So, while I attended meetings and did project procurement and other official tasks, Mabel spent many hours shopping at Mercato.
She bought lovely lengths of cotton material known as “shammas”. These are light weight shawls worn by women and decorated with coloured borders. There are also plain and heavier ones worn by men and used as blankets and even as shrouds.
Assorted shammas.
Shamma for men and replica of a traditional spear.
A dress made with shamma material.
A detail of the dress.
She also bought a number of baskets of which I only have a few where we are now for you to see.
Tequyes. Baskets made of bamboo in southern Ethiopia mostly Gurage zone .
Amazingly, she was not deterred by the amount of strongly smelling rubbish that was strewn all over the place that included lots of human excrement as there were no public toilets available. She solved this inconvenience by wearing her gumboots and spending quite a time cleaning them on return! She walked with our “beggar chaser bodyguard” and both came back loaded with various shopping items.
While in Addis we also got to know the various restaurants as the food at the Harambe Hotel was truly poor. We sampled a few with various results. Eventually we narrowed them down to the great Italian Castelli where the antipasti, the spaghetti with gorgonzola and the tiramisu were truly excellent. Sometimes we also dined at the Greek-Armenian Club where we had a weak spot for the cold mint and yogurt soup and other delicacies of both cuisines. We also liked some of the local restaurants such as the Habesha and the Finfine but, because we ate local food in Bedele, we wished to change to other kind of food.
Regrettably, almost towards the end of our stay we were taken to a non-descript place by a friend who claimed that he had eaten the best chicken in Addis! We followed him and arrived to what looked as a family house. We were accommodated at one of the few tables available and ordered the only dish on offer: fried chicken and chips and waited and then waited a bit more. Eventually the food arrived but when it did, it was really delicious. As we could not remember its name, we started calling it the “Chicken Embassy” and returned to it whenever we felt like having a good chicken!
During one of the trips to Addis our car (a project Land Rover) died about 200km from Addis. After trying everything we knew to find what was wrong, we finally realized that the petrol was not reaching the engine. I recalled that, sometimes, I needed to punch the front panel of my Land Rover Series I in Uruguay to get it going again to the amusement of my companions that did not know that the electrical fuel pump was screwed on the other side of the panel!
So, we looked for the pump not only behind the front panel but all over the place and failed to find it. After that we thought it had fallen off during the journey, but we could not find where it should have been either!
Eventually, we gave up trying to do a DIY repair and stopped a lorry that towed us to the next mechanic we found while we speculated where the pump could be. The mechanic announced that these cars had the pump inside the petrol tank (a clever idea!) and that he needed to siphon the petrol out, remove the tank, open it and check the condition of the elusive pump!
After a few hours spent putting things apart, a loose wire was reconnected and the car re-assembled. Later on, I needed to take it to Addis to fit a new pump outside the tank! Anyway, we got the car going again but only for a few km before nightfall. Luckily, we reached the town of Wolisso and found a hotel to spend the night. The place, built in Italian style, clearly belonged to a gone era when travellers would find there all necessary luxuries. However, it was obvious that the revolution did not have room for frills and the place was clearly state-run and rather dilapidated.
We were tired so we dined on spaghetti and tomato sauce while we were “over served” by all the waiters of the establishment that did not have any other customers to look after!
The following morning, we were woken up by birds calling and the sound of what appeared to be monkeys screaming! We went out to look and realized that our hotel was immersed in a patch of green forest and that there were lots of birds and monkeys around us! The latter were the grivets Chlorocebus aethiops, the horn of Africa equivalent to the more common vervets (C. pygerythrus).
Walking in the park we soon discovered a large derelict steaming open air swimming pool rather overgrown with vegetation and, further on, another one inside a large hall that had also seen better days. We had just stayed at the Ethiopia Hotel (earlier known as the Ghion Hotel and today known as the Negash Lodge) that had been built in the 1930’s and that it was famous because it had been used as a holiday home by Emperor Haile Selassie, because of its natural hot springs which many believe has curative properties.
Although we continued with our journey the following morning, we made a note to return to spend more time in this hotel during our journeys to and from Bedele. We returned again and again to the point that we became rather well known to the staff that was always welcoming! We soon discovered that the hotel had a speciality, the so-called “Emperor’s Suite” that was room number one, near the entrance, in the internal patio, on the way to a closed pool that was functioning and popular with day visitors. We asked for it and, paying a small surcharge, we could have it!
When we entered, we could see that it had been a luxurious suite, with a sitting area with windows that opened to the surrounding lush vegetation, a large bedroom with a large bed and a truly oversized toilet. We felt like the former Emperor, if we ignored the neglect and smell of damp!
Once we entered the toilet, it had another surprise for us: the largest bathtub we had ever seen, almost the size of a small swimming pool! I opened the only and rather humongous tap and hot water -clearly coming from underground- gushed out. Clearly the tap was in accordance with the size of the recipient!
So, to enjoy our private pool, we hatched the plan of opening the tap to fill it up while having dinner. Immediately we hit a snag, the drain hole was also humongous and there was no plug! As the reception did not have one, we improvised one with an ashtray and a hand towel and went for dinner thinking that surely Haile Selassie had a proper stopper, but it had long gone.
To our surprise, when we came back the tub was still empty although the water was still running. Although the ashtray, being of hard plastic, was still there, the towel had gone “down the drain” leaving no trace as the suction power of the outlet was stronger than anything I had seen before. A look in the drain showed no signs of the towel! Luckily, our initial concern of having blocked the pipe forever were unfounded as the water was still running but we could not have our bath! This we managed the following night by using a small dessert plate and a stone that, although was not hermetic, it worked quite well! We paid for the “lost” towel and, fortunately, no questions were asked.
The bath was very soothing, and we slept well, probably partly the consequence of the sub lethal toxaphene fumes inhaled, product of Mabel’s bug control efforts prior to entering her sleeping bag. She steadfastly refused to get between the sheets! We were up early because of the loud bird calls and the screaming of the numerous grivets.
After breakfast we usually continued our journey either west towards Bedele or east to Addis. Either way we could not fail to admire the beautiful round Gurage houses along the road.
Gurage houses.
House being built.Detail of a Gurage house. Credit: Pic of house: Cutaway Design from P. LeBel, “On Gurage Architecture”, Journal of Ethiopian Studies, Fall 1969.
These were not the usual straw huts, but proper large structures known as “sauer bét”. They are built with eucalyptus, bamboo, vine, and thatch. Red eucalyptus wood is resistant to termites, so the basic structure of a house can last for several years. Although without plumbing or electricity, the houses are meant to be cool during sunny days and can be warmed up with a fire in the centre of the house during the cold months.
Young Gurage coming to greet us.
Each Gurage house was surrounded by the ubiquitous false banana trees (ensete) from where the “kocho”, typical Gurage food comes from. Ensete is a drought resistant staple crop and we also saw some coffee probably for cash or domestic consumption.
We never failed to admire these houses whenever we travelled to or from Bedele.
Our tick (and later tick-borne disease) studies took us to different places of south-western Ethiopia “officially”, so we took advantage of these trips to get to know the area we were living. In our selected sites (Arjo, Bedele, Metu, Gambela and Fincha’a) the project had purchased some cattle from the local farmers, and they were keeping them for us to assess tick numbers at monthly intervals.
Tick work at various places, a rather public affair!
Fincha’a was located 295km north of Bedele, after driving through Arjo. This was a long drive that we did a couple of times. At 2300m Fincha’a was a rather cold and also damp place.
Working at damp Fincha’a.
The latter was probably explained by the existence of a dam that, for a while after its inauguration in 1973, was the largest hydro-electric project in the country. The visit I recall took place during the rains and it rained all the time we were there! This did not help our work nor our potential sightseeing!
A shy boy under a reed “raincoat”.
Despite the bad weather, along the road leading to the town we started seeing tall structures built with very long wooden poles and erected by the side of the road. On the top they had a little house and we were very puzzled by them, guessing that they had some religious significance but unsure of their real meaning.
The structures near Fincha’a.
We got to Fincha’a under rain and, while we checked in our rather basic hotel, my colleagues went to arrange for the tick work to be carried out the following day. The hotel was a basic affair to put it mildly with walls that enabled the sounds from the three rooms on each side of us to be heard! However, aware that that was the best hotel (and probably the only one?), we decided to make the best of it.
The hotel did not offer dinner so that we had to venture on the street to find an eating place and we ended up at a small restaurant where we were the only customers! Luckily it was a really warm place both because of the welcome we got from the family that owned it and thanks to the cooking that was taking place inside. Soon, after chasing the chickens away from the room, we joined in the kitchen activities and learnt a few things.
Mabel trying their hand at cooking under supervision.Dinner arrived.Mabel grinding the coffee after dinner.
Apart from food-related information, the lady informed us that the tall wooden structures we had seen were erected by local hunters that would travel east towards the Nile to hunt and, on return, they would build these “shrines” where the buffalo skulls would be placed on display to show their ability. I haste to add that I have not been able to confirm this information beyond what I was told at Fincha’a.
We ate hot (both temperature and taste) local food and had a reasonable night sleep. The following morning, we did our work under rain (not a very pleasant activity as the water runs down your back…) and we were soon on our way back to Bedele, looking forward to our warm and dry bungalow.
We also often travelled East, following the B50 road that, at the time, I did not know it had a name! After about 115km from Bedele we arrived at Metu where we did not stop until we discovered that there were some Cuban doctors working at the Metu hospital.
Passing through Metu.Spices at Metu market.Assorted goodies.
They were part of the well-known contingent of doctors from the island that are found in many places in Africa, often in areas that no one else wishes to be! We learnt that among them many specialities were covered and this boosted our confidence in case of a health problem as the facilities that existed in Bedele were rather limited. Luckily, we only visited them socially and we did not need their services.
Their presence was clearly justified judging by the number of people suffering from serious diseases that we found on the road. Apart from the blind being led by holding sticks by young relatives, many young boys and girls showed cases of tinea (ringworm) and scabies. These were mostly treated with Gentian violet with the consequence of lots of purple-stained heads around! Goitre was rather common and even severe cases of elephantiasis could also be seen.
A mild case of goitre. Credit: Internet Archive Book Images / No restrictions.
Following the road to the south-east we would come to Gore, a larger town that became known as it was the capital of Ethiopia for a short while. It happened during the Italo-Ethiopian war fought between 1935-1937. In 1935, the Italians attacked from their colonies of Eritrea and Somalia without declaring the war. After conquering Aduwa, they seized Aksum [1] and then moved on Addis forcing Emperor Haile Selassie to leave the country (taking the gold of the Ethiopian Central Bank with him!).
Before leaving he ordered that the capital of Ethiopia to be moved to Gore and appointed his cousin Ras Imru Haile Selassie as Prince Regent during his absence. The latter fell back to Gore to reorganise and continue to resist the Italians but his efforts were fruitless and Gore was occupied at the end of 1936. Ras Imru, with his forces trapped between the Italians and the Sudan border surrendered and he was flown to Italy and imprisoned on the Island of Ponza. So that was Gore’s claim to fame although the town did not have much to show for its history.
Leaving Gore behind, we would drive another 150km west on a wide, dusty and mostly downhill road full of curves following the course of the Baro river towards the Sudan border. The road offered magnificent scenery where we often stopped to stretch our legs and have a look a the rather clean waters of the river.
Views of the Baro river on the way to Gambela.
In one of the walks I spotted this sleeping crocodile.
The heavy relief lorry traffic aiming for the refugee camps in the border with Sudan did not help our progress. Going towards the refugee camps in the Gambela area loaded, they would come back with the trailers “piggy-backed” on the same tracks, the first time I saw this really clever saving technique.
Eventually, full of dust and rather edgy with the road and its traffic, after crossing a large bridge over the Baro river, we would arrive to the town of Gambela, a completely different seen when compared with where we were coming from as Gambela, at 526m was a tropical area, particularly when arriving from Bedele located at almost four times that height!
Gambela, located at the confluence of the Baro river and its tributary the Jajjabe was founded because of its location on the Baro river, a tributary of the Nile, which was seen by both the British and Ethiopia as an excellent highway for exporting coffee and other goods from the fertile Ethiopian Highlands to Sudan and Egypt.
Already while crossing the river it was apparent that everything was different but most of all the people that inhabited the area. Although there were some from the highlands, most of them as a result of the ruthless resettlement schemes, this was the territory of the Anuak and the Nuer, people that we had not seen before in the country.
The Anuak belong to the Luo Nilotic ethnic group. They are primarily found in villages situated along the banks and rivers of southeastern South Sudan as well as southwestern Ethiopia, especially the Gambela Region. Group members number between 250,000 and 300,000 people worldwide, many of them following Christianity. The Anuak are an agricultural people, although most families keep some livestock. They are keen on fishing and they set up temporary fishing villages in times of fish abundance.
Anuak fishing in the Baro river.
The Nuer are also of Nilotic origin and inhabit a similar area than the Anuak. Their language belongs to the Nilotic language family and they are closely related to the better known Dinka ethnic group. They are pastoralists who herd cattle and the cattle define their way of living.
Both races are very tall [2] and we often watched them in amazement playing basketball at night (too hot during the day) in the local open courts in Gambela thinking that they would be sought after by the National Basketball Association (NBA) and not knowing that they had done so. Manute Bol, a Dinka of 2.30m (one of the tallest players in the history of the NBA), had been playing for the Washington Bullets since 1985!
About to start working. The picture shows a rather tall gentleman on the right!
The Nuer receive facial markings (called “gaar”) as part of their initiation into adulthood. These consist of scarification that varies within their subgroups, the most common among men being six parallel horizontal lines cut across the forehead although dotted patterns are also common. The scarifications helped me to distinguish people from the two groups and enabled me to greet them properly in their language, “male” to the Anuak and “derejote” to the Nuer.
I will come back with more experiences from Gambela in future posts.
[1] Italian soldiers found one of the Axum obelisks (stelae) (King Ezana’s) fallen and broken in three sections, one of about fifty obelisks in the city of Axum at the time of the discovery. In 1937, it was taken as war booty and moved to Italy after being cut into five pieces and transported by truck to Massawa from where it was shipped to Naples. It was then taken to Rome, where it was restored and erected in front of the Ministry of Italian Africa (later the headquarters of the FAO) where I saw it (pic is already in Media and I found it looking for Rome). It was eventually returned to Ethiopia in 2005.
[2] See: Chali, D. (1995). Anthropometric measurements of the Nilotic tribes in a refugee camp. Ethiopian Medical Journal 33: 211-7. Among other things, the study concludes that “…The mean height of Dinka men (176.4 +/- 9 cm) and Nuer men (175.7 +/- 9 cm) were significantly higher than that of Anuak men (171.7 +/- 8 cm) and Shilluk men (172.6 +/- 6.1 cm). This study confirms that the Nilotics in Southern Sudan have slender bodies and are amongst the tallest in the world and may attain greater height if privileged with favourable environmental conditions during early childhood and adolescence, allowing full expression of the genetic material…”
After a while of being in Bedele and, once the work had progressed sufficiently well, it was time to return to Addis to deal with a number of personal as well as work issues. This trip was repeated a few times over the couple of years we were in Ethiopia, an average of once a month so, probably we visited it about twenty times and we got to know the road quite well.
As I already mentioned, travel was a slow affair that required great care because of the abundant pedestrians you would meet all over. It was a day trip to get there and we would then install ourselves at the Harambe Hotel, quite an experience. The hotel was a rather basic eight-floor cement and glass building [1]. I tried to check how it was today but I could not find a web site for the hotel. It does appear in Tripadvisor though but what it says there is not too good. It has only one review: “Terrible”!
Clearly, today we would not stay there but at the time, being the base for the “Bedele people”, compelled us to accept the system that was in place and we decided that we were able to survive there, a decision we questioned every time we visited it!
It would be unfair to dwell only on the problems as the hotel had a few good points. The absence of communication facilities between Addis and Bedele meant that we always arrived without a booking but we always found a room. Whether this meant that we were given some kind of priority treatment or that the hotel was half-full most of the time I will never know.
Being the base of the people from Bedele meant that all messages would be delivered to us there. It was also well sited and it became the fourth angle of my work square, the UNDP and FAO offices and the Ministry of Agriculture being the other three.
In addition, it had the advantage of being within walking distance from the few shops that offered the food we needed and, immediately after our first arrival, a young boy (with a small stick) appointed himself (or it was placed by the hotel) as our “beggar-chaser” and waited for us to come out to walked with us all over the place [2].
Entering the hotel the dampness and the smell of carpets in need of a good cleaning hit you hard but, luckily, you adjusted to this rather fast. The receptionists were nice and the situation improved once we became known and we even got access to fridge and freezer to store our food, after some protracted negotiations.
Several times we rejected rooms because of various reasons such as strong urine or damp stench, doors that did not lock or lumpy mattresses. At first, we rejected a couple because of the cockroaches but soon we discover that they were part of the hotel perquisites and that a certain population level was to be expected.
However, there were some rooms that were truly cockroach breeding grounds and these became Mabel’s worst nightmares. I recall it vividly getting up at night, turning on the lights of the bathroom and seeing hundreds of them rushing back to their hideouts! Soon, after uselessly trying to find a cockroach-free room, we made a list of our “liveable” ones and we requested these at the reception. This was an important breakthrough!
The breakfast was another sad affair, served on the rather dark and stinky first floor restaurant with a very poor service and rather plain food. For this reason, we made the point of -as far as possible- not having luch or dinner at the hotel. In this way, provided that we kept the midnight curfew in mind, we got to know a few places to eat out.
“Why did you keep coming back to it?” you may ask yourselves and I could not really give you an answer as we often ask the question ourselves! However, we kept coming back and it added more experience to our lives.
Work in Addis meant various kinds of meetings that, at least, were not equally monotonous. Those with UNDP meant constant defensive statements while the ones with FAO, naturally, were more helpful. The Director of the Veterinary Services was a tough cookie, arrogant and authoritarian and neither the Director of the Bedele Laboratory (an extremely kind and nice man) nor myself (or both combined) could do much to score points with him.
However, the really difficult meetings were those that took place every six months, the tripartite ones. As the name indicates, these involved the donor (UNDP), the implementing agancy (FAO) and the recipient government. The only advantages of these was that they brought the Veterinary Department closer to FAO to defend us against the incisive questions of the donor. Luckily, we survived these meetings and the funding was maintained as originally planned.
On the first journey, apart from work problem solving and getting food, we needed to get a 220v to 110v transformer for our printer as I had bought it from the US without realizing its voltage. We were pointed out to the Merkato as our best option and on a Saturday we set off to get one as well as a drill chuck key as the one for my drill had disappeared during the move from Kenya.
To say that the Merkato was large would be an understatement, it was humongous and incredibly crowded and dynamic. Despite this, there was no apparent danger despite seeing very few policemen and we felt quite comfortable walking about, some of the very few “ferengis” (foreigners) we saw at the time.
Italy, under fascism, invaded Ethiopia in 1936 and two separate markets were planned to segregate the Italians from the Ethiopians. The Arada would be for the former while the Merkato was developed for the rest of the population and, naturally this is the one that still survives as a very vibrant place and reputed as the largest open air market in Africa, no mean feat!
It will be impossible for me to describe the Merkato and I present you with one of the videos that I found interesting to give you the dimension and dynamics of the place. Although it is a more modern Merkato, I believe that it still maintains its character. There are other videos on the subject also worth watching.
Credit: Wildlife Israel Yuval Dax. I recommend that you watch it with at least 720p.
Needless to say that I easily found my needed hardware items before our attention got diverted to the countless craft shops offering the most amazing silver and gold as well as beautiful baskets and Ethiopian textiles. I will go back to these on a later post with more details.
After walking for a while we heard some shouting and, curious, we went to see what was up. We arrived at an open area with lots of rubbish accumulated where a goat, sitting on its haunches and sporting a rather large “beer belly” was enjoying a beer straight from the bottle. Unfortunately, I could not find a video of this particular customer but there is one of another drinking a soda [3]. Times definitely have changed!
The first visit to Addis soon came to an end and it was time to return to Bedele and, as usual, once we got there and a week later we learnt that our new car had arrived so we needed to get back to Addis to get it but that is another story!
[2] This may sound unacceptable for many today but I can assure you that the famine and poverty in Ethiopia at the time were such that people asking for food and/or money were in such numbers that they would stop you from walking!
To get petrol for a journey in a war economy was not just filling up at a petrol station. It required the application for petrol coupons and getting them through a heavy government bureaucratic process as these were treated like golden sovereign coins by the Ministry of Agriculture’s administration.
Once that was achieved, a travel permit was necessary. Personal details were passed to the administration and that took a couple of days to be processed. Finally a small paper written in Amharic with a few stamps and signatures was given to me and we were ready to go.
Before departure, we were warned of a dangerous behaviour of pedestrians in some areas of Ethiopia where people would cross the road in front of your car at full speed apparently for no reason and, apparently, wishing to kill themselves. However, the real motive was the belief that thesepeople were closely followed by some kind of “evil spirit” and by the tight crossing the spirit would get ran over and therefore the person would be cleansed. Another extra precaution to be taken for the journey to the little known.
We loaded our Hilux pick-up and departed early in the morning as I knew that the journey was a long one. The cats in their double travel box were placed on the back seat and it left little space for anything else apart from a few clothes bags and the cool box with our lunch and drinks.
The back was also packed chock-a-block with all the rest of our essentials. These included fridge and cooker as well as food stuff to last us for a month, cutlery and crockery, camp beds, bedding, camping chairs, music centre and other essentials that were required to spend a couple of months until the rest of our belongings arrived. We also took a couple of water jerry cans and, during the journey, made up a list of items we still needed but that we were not sure to find in Bedele.
We selected a Saturday for our journey and realized, too late, that it was a bad choice as Saturdays were market days and there were lots of people moving about, particularly on the road we were using. Although the large crowds thinned somehow as we left Addis, they reappeared whenever we approached some of the populated areas such as Wolkite, Woliso and, further on, Jimma.
The road to Bedele, near Addis.
The trip followed the main road west of Addis, a rather busy and new road for us so our progress was slow. This was not helped by the habit of people to walk on the road –as seen in India- and the number of livestock that was free ranging. Of interest were some moving grass mounds that turned out to be donkeys heavily loaded with teff straw and grass to feed the abundant and free ranging livestock. There were many and they did not seem to obey orders very well, forcing us to hoot very frequently and take evasive action.
Loading!Near Bedele.
The landscape was rather denuded from trees and the fields were being planted with teff (Eragrostis tef) the main crop of Ethiopia from which the injera I described earlier is made of. Farmers were busy planting and lots of them were seen on the fields. Then in a field we saw a circle of about twenty adult people crouching holding hands in a circle. We slowed down and, to our surprise, we witnessed our first and only communal defecation we have ever seen! Whether this is a common occurrence or something rare I cannot say!
The Ethiopian revolution was celebrated with colourful arches spanning the length of the road. These were rather substantial near Addis but they started to diminish in hierarchy as we moved on and, although approaching Jimma they revived, again, from there to Bedele these were almost absent or rather poor efforts that suggested to me that the revolution was not a priority in the interior.
Passing through Wolkite, on the way to Bedele.Some of the beautiful large houses at Wolkite.
We arrived to Jimma late afternoon and decided to spend the night there at one of the few hotels available, I believe that it was called the Jimma Hotel. It was a rather basic facility but suitable for our needed rest. Dinner had a rather limited menu that consisted of chicken and chips or spaghetti with tomato sauce. We chose the latter, a clear consequence of the years of Italian occupation of parts of Ethiopia. We were the only commensals so the waiters literally fought to serve us and you needed to be careful as they would take away items from your table before you had finished with them!
Unfortunately, the pasta was not memorable but, tired and hungry, we were somehow satisfied and decided to retire early. On arrival to our room, Mabel remembered that she was told that the beds in some of these hotels had more wildlife than the countriside! So, apart from bringing the cats to our rooms, we slept inside our sleeping bags not before she attacked all invisible creepy crawlies with a white insecticide powder from our FAO medical kit that I hoped it was not DDT! In any case, it must have been effective as we slept like logs, hopefully not because of its fumes.
Mabel controlling insects by physical means!
The following morning, after a simple breakfast, we had a tour of Jimma, looking for fuel that was severely rationed. Eventually we arrived at one petrol station that took our Government fuel coupons and we left the asphalt to take the 140 km of the rather rough road to Bedele that would become familiar to us.
We drove for about two hours through farmland and then the landscape became forested and I knew that we were close to Bedele. We crossed true forests of large and ancient flat top acacias (Vachellia abyssinica) and we could see the coffee bushes thriving under their shade. We were arriving to the true origin of the arabica coffee!
After our afternoon arrival we needed to present ourselves to the political authority of Bedele to who we handed over our travel permit. The man examined our paper carefully and, after a while, he declared “your wife is not included in the permit and I need to ‘capture’ her and keep her at the police station”. I reacted strongly explaining that we were coming to live at Bedele and to work for the United Nations. The man seemed unimpressed by my arguments and remained unmoved, clearly full of his own importance!
Becoming rather worried I left Mabel with the political guy and drove to the veterinary laboratory to explain the situation to the Director who was really mortified by the situation and, immediately, came to our rescue. Luckily, after a short discussion (in Amharic), the Director announced that we could go with him and that we would go to the police the following day and inform them of our arrival.
We thanked the political administrator profusely for his understanding and left with the Director who took us to our bungalow and left us to unpack and organize our house before nightfall.
As agreed, the following morning I visited the police station accompanied by the Director and the Administrator of the laboratory. There we met with the political delegate of the previous day. A protracted discussion followed and, eventually, the Director (who was the only person that spoke English) explained to me the outcome.
The meeting had decided that Mabel’s omission from the Travel Permit was a serious mistake but also that we were allowed to stay. I was recommended to make sure in future that we were both included in our travel permits. I agreed wholeheartedly knowing full well that it was an impossible task but I was happy that I could now focus on my work.
A Bushsnob in Africa 