Northen Kenya Day Two

Here is a picture of the only tree for miles and miles and miles.

In northern Kenya there is a village about every 50 km where you can get food and water. My plan was to eat lunch at village number one and sleep at village number two. I started late because of a flat tire but I made good time until lunch.

From there the landscape turned into a rocky, moon-like desert and the road got gnarly. It was getting dark, and I still had 20 km to the next village when I decided to pitch camp for the night.

If you have watched "The Long Way Down," this is the part where they had a police escort. Apparently the road to Marsabit is infested with Somali bandits. People assured me the bandits planned their robberies carefully and wouldn't hi-jack a random tourist on a bike. Still it would have been nice to have some bushes or hills to hide my tent.

There was a herd of antelope grazing in the distance. I admired them for a minute. I wished I knew whether there were lions in the area.

First Day in Northern Kenya

There was a time I stood on the ridge of a mountain and I looked out for miles and miles and I wondered if my eyes would ever get filled up. If after seeing so many glorious things, my eyes would not be able to take in another sunrise. But I've found that it is my memory which has been filled. I look at the picture above and I don't remember those mountains. It's not a great picture but it moves me and I feel a sort of wistfulness.

There were tons of dik-dik in that scrub. They are curious timid kind of antelope as tall as your knee. They like to stand in the road and watch you cycling. Then when you get close they hop daintily into the scrub. Once I saw one hop through a flock of pheasant without disturbing them. Another time it made me laugh to see two dik-dik getting chased across the road by a squirrel.

Ethiopia wrap up

Addis Ababa

Adis Ababa is the saddest city I have seen. Every Ethiopian beggar imagines that life is better in Addis Ababa.

The city does wrong things to your heart. After a while, I'd see a beggar, missing both legs and an arm, drag himself inch by inch across the street and I'd think, "Come on, buddy. We all know you have a wheel chair hiding in the alley."

Plus Addis smells like someone peed on it. I know that it's just thousands of people taking little pees everywhere, but sometimes it amuses me to imagine a giant Ethiopian Paul Bunyan waking up in the night.

I had the worst diarrhea of my life in Addis. It was a gas diarrhea combo. The first night my stomach bloated up so badly with gas that I puked. For three days, I just lay incapacitated on my bed burping and farting as fast as I could.

Gondar

Gondar is a mountain town with an ancient castle in the middle. The locals are wealthy and take enormous pride in their heritage.

Restaurant #1: This place had live music and traditional dancing. Henok almost got into a fight with one of the performers who hit another female performer. It turned out they were married. I didn't see it.

Restaurant #2: The owner had been inspired by a visit to France and had created a funky club themed restaurant. The cooks got into an argument with the waiter about killing a chicken. "We're women! It's a man's job!" "No way. I'm not killing it. It's against Jesus!"

Restaurant #3: The musicians ask your name and sing a song about you in Amharic. "This is Dan. He seems nice. Sort of quiet."

Bahir Dar

Bahir Dar was my favorite Ethiopian city. On the banks of Lake Tana. Drenched in rain and mosquitoes. Muddy and bohemian.

Henok and I stayed in a poorer part of town. The ladies there sell tea for 5 cents a cup from their living rooms. As you sipped your tea, you could admire their doilies and pictures of their family. At other homes you could buy local beer for 3 cents. And some of the women probably sold their bodies. Life is hard and everyone has to eat.

Bahir Dar is a cycling town. The weekend I was there, one of the main streets was shut down for bicycle races. Men, women, children, everyone on bicycles.

Conversations on the Bus

I recently had the opportunity to spend many days on the bus. The batteries on my music player soon went flat but I was fortunate to sit next to interesting people.

In Zambia I talked to a retired banker. He had took an early retirement right before the bank was dissolved so he was one of the last few to receive a pension. Even though he worked as a banker, his education was in agriculture and he used his severance package to buy a farm. Now he was the head of the local farmers union.

The government tries to encourage farmer cooperatives in Zambia. If you want subsidized fertilizer you have to join. Most of them are a waste of time.

But this guy was was quite enthusiastic about organizing people. He'd help new farmers estimate how much food a field would produce. He'd tell them how much food to keep and how much to sell. He kept records if a chicken died in order to track the spread of diseases. He knew ahead of time if people were going to run out of food because of poor rains. In Zambia, farmers are supposed to sell to authorized millers and the price of maize is fixed. He petitioned the government so his farmers could sell to a local mill and save money on transport. Also they charged a higher than official price.

One thing he was quite proud of was that he was able to secure loans for his farmers to buy fertilizer. Originally the lenders wanted to charge 100% interest but he was able to negotiate a loan for just 50% interest. Only one farmer wasn't able to repay the loan and the other farmers each had to chip in to cover the loss. The next year he took out a mortgage loan against his own property for an even lower rate.

I asked him if he wasn't worried that he would lose his farm if the rains were poor, but it turns out he used part of the loan to insure the crops. I didn't know small scale Zambian farmers could do that.

Sometimes people make me all kinds of optimistic.

Random Lagu Story

I wasn't able to visit Sudan on this cycling trip, but I have been there in the past, to visit my brother. At the time, he was working for Samaritan's Purse setting up schools. While I was there I shared a tukal (room) with Lagu, the famous Sudanese mountain climber.

Anyway, Lagu is in Uganda these days. It was good to see him. This picture was taken on Christmas last year. This is a story that he told me.

There is a stream near the Samaritan's Purse compound in Sudan. When I was there it was dry, but during the rainy season it has a couple feet of water.

Once during the rains, a truck arrived at the banks of the stream. The driver had his assistant get out and test the water. They decided it wasn't too deep. Unfortunately, the thing they didn't consider was that the bottom of the stream was just drifting sand. They were soon very stuck.

They worked all afternoon but couldn't move. In the evening, they decided to give up for the night and use the Samaritan's Purse/Community tractor to pull them out in the morning.

The next day Lagu happened to pass by the stream in the course of his morning activities. The truck had fallen on its side and sunk into the sand. Only little bit was sticking out above the water.

The tractor crew tended to sleep late and by the time they got out of bed and down to the stream, the truck was completely submerged. It took them a while to find it.

Lebna

I've changed the name and picture in this story for privacy.

Henok and I met Lebna the evening we arrived in Bahir Dar. We were drinking coffee by the lake and he came with his friends to talk to us. He was in grade six. He spoke English well. He was getting special tutoring from an American organization that helps orphans. He wanted to be a doctor when he grew up. You could see he was exceptionally bright.

We weren't expecting him, but the next morning Lebna was waiting at the door of our hotel. Apparently he went to school in the afternoons and anyway he says, "Today is Saturday." So we took him with us to breakfast. We stayed in Bahir Dar for quite a few days and got to know Lebna pretty well.

After breakfast he asks can he have $10 because he wants to buy an Oxford Dictionary.

When you are cycling through Ethiopia, probably one person per kilometer will ask you to give them something. Mostly it's kids, but sometimes it is people with real needs and I wish I could give them something. I never do. I said no to over a thousand people per month while I was there.

But the Oxford Dictionary idea was unique and charming so I said, "How about this? You can earn some money. Henok and I are going to Gondar. We want to store some luggage here and pick it up on our way back. We'll pay you a dollar per day to keep it for us."

The next morning a disappointed Lebna tells us that he can't store our stuff. His mother refused. "She says that our house is not secure enough and if thieves found out we had your luggage they could kill us."

He also admitted that the story about the Oxford Dictionary wasn't true. The truth is that he was really asking for the money for his mom. She has HIV and needs money for treatment. He was afraid to tell us because of the HIV stigma.

I consider myself pretty progressive, but the truth is that if he had told me the truth at the beginning I probably wouldn't have agreed to help him in the first place. I liked the Oxford Dictionary story. It was charming. It was solvable. A one time gift of ten bucks. Done.

HIV is a heavy thing, I don't know how to handle it. I especially don't know how to handle it when you are twelve years old. When your dad has died. When your mom is sick.

Lebna lived in a shanty town. The house was small. There was a sitting room in the front. He and his mom shared the bedroom in the back. They had a television in the bed room. Some evenings Henok, Lebna and I would rent a kid friendly video and sit on his mom's bed and watch it together.

Lebna's mom was a sweet lady. She was frail and thin. She didn't speak English. She was getting some free ARVs at a clinic for her HIV. I got the impression the clinic was some distance away. The clinic had given her some HIV posters and she had them hanging on the walls of the sitting room.

When we left we gave Lebna's mom $20. Henok told her that Lebna wanted to buy an Oxford Dictionary, but she knew their budget and should choose how to spend it.

The Birds

You see a lot of birds when you cycle. All kinds of different interesting birds with long tail feathers, and funny beaks and so many colours. But normally it's hard to take pictures of them.

This picture was taken in Ethiopia where a driver had killed seven donkeys the night before. There were around 200 vultures feasting and having a good time.

In Ethiopia, you always suspect that the drivers are a bit buzzed, and bug eyed from chewing "chat." Chat is a mild stimulant and drivers like it because it keeps them awake. It is Ethiopia's fourth largest export.

The thing which I hadn't realized is that donkey skin is very tough except for a patch near the tail. The vultures go in the back door and eat them from the inside out. Which is a bit gruesome really.