Uganda tomorrow

I'm in a town called Bongoma or something. It's actually a pretty decent town. It's only some 40 km from the Uganda border.

Today was a perfect cycling day. Everyone was nice on the way. I started out late but I still cycled for about 100km.

I ate lunch in this mud hut place. Lumpy ugali, little dried fish, vegatables and a cup of tea. That's pretty low class food so I was a bit surprised how much the guy over charged me. I paid without complaining so he says, "Oh yeah, and add a dollar for tea." I paid again without too much complaint. Then he claims he doesn't have change so could he keep the dollar change? At this point I was cracking up at the audacity of it.

As I left he tried to charge me an additional 30 cents for using the table. I still start laughing when I think about that man.

Tomorrow I cross to Uganda. Everyone says that Uganda is great. There is less gang voilence than in Kenya. The landscape is lush. There are milk trucks driving all over. We'll see.

Through the desert

My mother once told me a story and for some reason it's been on my mind recently.

Back in the day they had these tent revival meetings where a traveling evangelist would come to town and preach to everyone. One of these preachers used to draw a crowd by promising that at the end of the sermon he would lift the heaviest person in the audience using only his teeth. I guess he had some kind of harness device which he used.

They had no TV in those days so he used to draw huge crowds and everything was grand. Then one day he tried to lift a 300 lb farmer and all his teeth were ripped from his mouth and sent spraying out into the first two rows of the audience.

My mother's stories all have a moral at the end. This story could easily be a metaphor but normally my mother's morals were more straight forward and literal. Certainly, I never saw my mum lift anyone with her teeth.

Anyway, I'm in a small town called Isyolo. It's in northern Kenya. From Ethiopia to here is a really bad dirt road and desert. It also has a reputation as pretty dangerous so it's a relief to be past that.

From here it's tarmac. The next milestone is Nanyuki just 80km away. The thing is that Nanyuki is at the base of mount Kenya and the elevation is 4000 m so it's climbing all the way.

There was a mouse in Awasa that destroyed my micro USB converter and makes posting blogs trickier. It sort of sucks to blog about stuff that happened a while back. I'm going to do it anyway probably. If anyone complains I will ban their IP address. No actually, I'm just playing. It's really encouraging to read everyone's comments and emails. Thanks people.

Blogging from Ethiopia

I've tried to update my blog many times in Ethiopia but this is the first time I've been able to. There is only electricity for three days a week generally. Only major cities have internet access. The internet access is very bad as well.

I'm safe and doing well. I'm in a city called Awassa. It's a really nice place about 500km from the border to Kenya. The plan is to push hard and cross the border into Kenya.

Ethiopia has a reputation for being a hard place to cycle. That's been true. But it has a lot of charm also. For the last two weeks no child has thrown a rock at me. The adults are great. The food is tasty. The cafes are fantastic.

Will block more later.

Skipping Sudan...

I'm flying to Ethiopia tomorrow at 10:00. It's a big dissapointment to not go through Sudan. Crossing the Sahara is the most difficult challenge in going from Cairo to Cape town. There are other deserts on the way but they all have roads...

I basically have been procrastinating these last few weeks. Not because of any hope that I'd get a visa but because life here is comfortable and predictable. It's hard to leave.

Sohag

When I got to Sohag I was assigned a body guard, Mohamed, and told to stay in my hotel. Mohamed agreed walk around town with me for an hour which was pretty cool of him. Otherwise I just sat around drinking tea with the hotel staff, Mustafa, Osama and Shitos, pictured above.

At this point I decided to just take a micro-bus to Luxor.

Assuit

I cycled for an hour from Mallawi before I was given a ride by the police to Assuit. I already blogged about the hotel situation there (btw. $11 is a fair price for a 2 star hotel in Egypt) but I left out the more interesting story.

If you didn't know anyone in Assuit you aren't allowed outside the hotel. I was glad that Mohammed from Mallawi was arriving and I'd be able to visit him. Otherwise it was house arrest. The rooms had TV but I didn't come to Egypt to watch "The Naked Mile." with Arabic subtitles.

I was supposed to meet Mohammed at the gate to Assuit University but he was late. The policeman at the gate had been trying to invite me for tea and after waiting and waiting for Mohammed to arrive it seemed rude to not drink tea with him.

The guard house was small and poorly lit. It had a front room, a bathroom and an closet. There wasn't tea available (a first in Egypt) but he did have a selection of hard liquor (another first in Egypt). I don't drink so we ended up talking only.

It wasn't very long before I knew that he loved America. He loved sex. He wasn't married. He loved sex with his boys. I was getting more and more uncomfortable. Then he started touching my leg.

This was the point where I said, "I don't want to be rude, but I have to leave. I'll be back in 15 minutes to see if my friend has arrived." I was out the door before he grabbed my elbow. He led me across the road to the other guards and told them that I was trying to walk around town without a police escort but fortunately they didn't particularly care and I was free to go.

Mohammed was there when I returned. I really worried for him. That policeman might want revenge and I was gone but Mohammed was still there. So far it has been over a month and nothing has happened.

Mallawi

All through Egypt people kept telling me that Muslims and Christians were friends. When I saw this church and this mosque next to each other it seemed really to illustrate the concept of religions living side by side. Actually it turns out that back in the day there was an official policy of building a mosque next to every church.

When I arrived in Mallawi there were a couple of pentacostal missionairies staying at my hotel. Basically they were going where the Spirit led them. At first they thought maybe that was to the country of Malawi but then they realised it was to the city of Mallawi so here they were. Counting Egypt they were visiting seven countries for a month each. One of the countries was Afganistan which impressed me as very brave.

They almost certainly came to Egypt with tourist visas because evangelism is strongly discouraged here. At several of the police road blocks they asked me if I were a missionary. I'd respond that I was a tourist. Then maybe they'd ask me if I didn't love Jesus and I say of course but seriously I'm a tourist only...

I spent the rest of the day in Mallawi with Mohamed's family. He is a student at Assuit University but today he was helping his father and cousins at their hardware store. His father was reading the Koran when I arrived. It takes him 11 days to read through the entire Koran and then he starts over and reads it again.