When I was in my early teens, Mom implemented a curfew where I had to be in the house before dark. Like every teenager I was stroppy and outraged. Mom explained, “I guess a new witch doctor has moved into the area, because there have been several witchcraft related killings recently. They could tell because the hearts, livers and fingers had been removed. Your father and I are just concerned that since you and your sister are the only white kids around, that might make you a target.”

I bet, if that witchdoctor hadn't moved into town or if he had used normal, non-human ingredients for his witchcraft stew, I would have turned into a total party animal. I would probably be out late every night carousing and club hopping instead of sitting quietly at home playing computer scrabble with the blinds drawn and the doors barred and bolted.

I'm passing through Tanzania now and took a few days off in Dar. You maybe saw in the news how a bunch of albino people here have been killed for witchcraft. My understanding is that it's often in rural areas where everyone knows everyone. For one killing where they had a suspect, it was an acquaintance of the albino guy who lured him away from his house at night.

I think Tanzania has more albino people than other countries I have been to. Perhaps I just notice them more in light of the news.

So far no foreigners have been killed. Our wealth helps us some ways. The local police protect us, to protect the tourism industry. Our relatives and friends would hunt the killers down. Expats get used to operating at higher security levels because people are trying to rob us all the time. We have our walls, razor wire, security guards, burglar bars, dogs and guns.

Starting off again

I have been staying in Uganda since Christmas and tomorrow I leave. I'm taking a very fancy bus to Dar es Salaam. From there I'll travel to Lilongwe. Hopefully, my bike is still there and I can cycle on from there.

The traditional ending for this kind of bike trip is Cape Town, but I'm only planning to go as far as Durbin. The trick is that when I hit Durbin, I'm going to loop back up through Botswana and end in Zambia.

I decided to change the ending when I was cycling in Ethiopia and everyone kept telling me that most people cycle through Sudan and go the whole way by bike instead of skipping bits here and there. Once I realized that my trip was completely ruined, I just said screw it, I'm not even going to bother going to Cape Town at all.

So Malawi to Mozambique, South Africa, Botswana and finally Zambia. It will probably take around four months. My parents will be in Zambia by the time I arrive. I also want to live in Zambia, so I'm going to try figure out a way to settle down there and make a living etc etc etc. That's what I have decided.

I'm extremely nervous about this next leg for some reason. I've had nights when I wake up worrying that my bike had been stolen and I just couldn't get back to sleep. Every time I leave my bike behind, I worry a lot.

I had the flu earlier in the week. I have a sore throat and it's turned into a sore jaw and ear. I'm also a hypochondriac. Whenever I get a sore throat, I secretly worry I have rabies.

My bus leaves Kampala tomorrow at 7 AM.

Dejen

Ethiopia has it's own ancient calender and time. It's desperately confusing to figure out the time and date is. For example, someone might say, "We'll start at 1 o'clock and end at 8 o'clock." But the 1 o'clock is Ethiopian time so really it means 7 am and the 8 o'clock is just regular 8 am.

Also computers are sometimes set to Ethiopian time and date. Sometimes the date is wrong so that they can use pirated anti-virus software. Other times the date is wrong because the CMOS battery died and it resets on bootup. Anyway, the result is that you can't check gmail because the SSL certificates are from the future.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that it's as confusing as pants.

Ethiopia also has it's own ancient branch of Christianity. It was the day before Easter 2000 when I reached Dejen. For the fifty days leading up to Easter, Ethiopian Christians don't eat meat. I also didn't eat meat because it wasn't available. One butcher used the down time to repaint his shop.

Then on Easter everyone has a feast. Cattlemen from three hundred kilometres away drive their herds to Addis Ababa. I have never seen such happy butchers as in Dejen that day.

For myself, I hung out with a guy called Henok just shooting the breeze. At one point I was just joking and I said he should join me. But instead of laughing, he said it was a great idea. "So uh... What about your job you were telling me about?" Turns out that I had misunderstood, he didn't have a job currently. "But you were going to school though. You can't leave that." No no. School was out for two months.

In the end, I decided it would be pretty cool to have company so I agreed to buy Henok a bike and let him come with me. It was sort of risky thing, because he could have robbed me blind but he seemed like a nice enough bloke and I felt I could trust him.

Toilettes

We were discussing toilettes yesterday. My feeling is that Ethiopia has some of the worst toilettes ever.

In Egypt, guys are supposed to squat to pee because peeing standing up is considered unhygienic under Islam. Also since Egyptians often wear robes, you can pee more modestly squatting. In Ethiopia on the other hand, guys consider it unhygienic to step in pee, so they stand just outside the bathroom door and aim from a distance.

The good news for me was that in Ethiopia you can buy the same Egyptian brand of tissue paper. It comes in a pack of 10 tissues. I carried one in my pocket at all times. Other people cannot afford tissue paper though so a lot of newspaper and leaves are used. Newspaper would clog up the toilette so you have to throw it in the garbage afterwards. If a garbage bin isn't provided, then you can just toss it on the floor. I tried to explain to that tissue paper was OK to throw down the loo because it was designed to not clock things up, but everyone was doubtful. Also if there is a garbage can brim full of used newspaper, you may as well throw your tissue in too.

Some places are maybe too remote for a daily news paper and maybe they're inside a courtyard so no leaves are available. In that situation the hotel owners are supposed to leave some water so people can clean up. Some hotel owners are lazy. You can tell which ones are the lazest by the number of poo smears on the wall.

Basically everyone has the same amount of poo on their fingers and everyone shares a common desire of not crossing with another smear as you wipe your hand on the wall. It sort of creates a pattern. So all across the toilettes of Ethiopia you find the same disgusting finger painted mural of prairie grasses waving in a cool Autumn breeze.

Old Ethiopia Blog Posts...

So... Anyway... I have a bunch of Ethiopia blogs that I never posted...

As I said, I procrastinated for days in Addis before I started cycling to Gondor. I didn't have a map at this point so things are a bit hazy. I'd wake up not knowing the place name, and cycle through a bunch of places and finally go to sleep in some other place. I think it took me either 2 days or 5 days to get to the Abai Gorge.

You can actually see the gorge from a long way off. To me it looked like there was an enormous valley and followed by hills. I figured I would take a day to cross the valley and climb the hills the next day. But really you just go down for a long way until you hit the gorge and then you go down and there is a river and then you cycle all the way up.

The Abai river is the Ethiopian name for the Blue Nile. The Japanese government is building a new bridge to replace the older one. I gave my remaining biscuits to the guards on the way down and then on the way up the guards on the other side invited me to eat lunch with them.

There is a shady turn off a couple kilometres from the bridge. It has a small water fall where truckers shower. A couple ladies sitting on blankets were selling tea and soda pop. Occasionally monkeys will wander through and you can feed them if you want.

It takes three hours from the turn off to reach the ridge line and Dejen, the nearest town. There are 92 kilometres of winding road from one side of the gorge to the other.

Back in Uganda

So basically the story is that I cycled down to Lilongwe, Malawi. And had many adventures and so forth. Then since it's almost Christmas, I found a safe place to store my bike and got on the bus. I traveled three days and three nights to finally reach Kampala, Uganda.

This is a picture of Dad from when we went to Jinja, Uganda, in July and I discovered the macro button on my camera. If you look carefully you can see he cut himself shaving.

When my two older brothers graduated from high school and moved to the United States, Dad presented each of them with a razor. The thing is the new kind of razor blades are the biggest scam ever. Everyone knows it doesn't cost Gillette $1.45 to make a razor blade. When Dad saw that soon you wouldn't even be able to buy the older style razors he bought extra and stored them for when his sons started to shave.

Somehow, though, I missed this little coming of age ceremony when I graduated.

Anyway fast forward a decade. I'm living in Fremont, California. I work as an engineer for a computer company in Silicon Valley. Dad and Mum are visiting.

Dad sits down next to me on my bed. "Son," he says, "You know how when you graduated from high school I gave you a razor?"

"Uh... No Dad." I respond, "That was only Noel and Jason. I never got a razor."

"Oh," says Dad. He looks relieved. "Well it turns out the new razors with the three blades give a better shave." Dad stares at the wall for a moment thinking. "I don't know. Perhaps it could also be they use lower grade steel in the thin blades these days. It seems like the thin blades don't keep their edge like they should."

"Ah well." He says as he puts his hand on my knee and starts to stand. "It's no use trying to kick against it."

Anyway. Family. Merry Christmas.

Crime and Punishment

Mbalala Uganda.

I guess the guy in the yellow shirt must have stolen something because a mob was chasing him down. He fell down in front of my window and people started kicking him and stamping on him.

The big guy holding him by the shirt possibly saved his life and definitely saved him from getting even more beat up. He pulled everyone off the guy and made people calm down a bit. The security guy with the rifle and the red sleeves also helped calm things down.

When the police arrived they dispersed the crowd and drove the thief to jail.