Moyale to Yirga Cheffe, Ethiopia
Wednesday, 12th September 2007
Moyale at last! We could have fallen to the dusty street and kissed it like it was home. First, to unload our bikes from their goat prison. Fighting through a gathering and unruly crowd of onlookers we managed to back up to an eroded clay bank and offload our steeds to be greeted by a disheveled looking individual demanding that we pay him a council tax of 600 Kenyan shillings for the use of his state of the art clay bank. With the crowd looking slightly ugly and one look at the worried expression from our driver, we shelled out the cash in return for a receipt in the form of a bus ticket for 600 shillings. Africa scores again! I could just imagine the scoreboard keeping tally of our trip; the mother continent: 10, idiots on motorbikes: 0. So once again, we pay and get on with it to avoid anything unpleasant, I can’t help but reflect that these people must think that Europeans are terminally stupid and I would be inclined to see their point.We finished unloading and repacking the bikes without incident, one bike jump started and Luigi feeling under the weather, we moved onto the Kenyan side of the border. Through Kenya and onto Ethiopia, endless paper work but charming people. Two and half hours later and we emerged relatively unscathed with Luigi feeling a little stronger and free to press on into Ethiopia.
Our spirits had been lifted by the appearance of 7 Kiwis also on Motorbikes, GS 650’s, who had over-nighted on the Kenyan side of Moyale to recover from their own dual with the Isiola to Marsibit hell run. Crazily, as one would expect from the Kiwi’s, this group had been trying to get across the entire planet in chunks over some years and had been on the road in Africa for 3 months (
www.worldbybike.co.nz (com?). They had busted several shocks and ended up with their luggage and wounded bikes on a truck as well. For some reason this made us feel less like sissies with the wrong bike’s and we spent a pleasant, although very tired, evening in the company of the group, trading good natured rugby jibes and national insults.
Surprisingly to us, the only hotel in Moyale with room for was the Ghion, one of the few establishments loaded on our GPS as to be avoided at all costs – ‘site of Africa’s smelliest toilet’. We were not disappointed, no running water, generator providing only a few hours of electricity in the night and a squat latrine that made your stomach churn at the thought of having to relieve your self. All part of the adventure, we had all given up thoughts of sleeping in the linen provided by any of our hosts from Northern Tanzania and were now collapsing on our bedrolls, in sleeping bags on the beds provided.
Beer and goats meat shared around a dark table in the dusty courtyard of the Ghion sent us to our bed rolls knowing that we had to swap out one of the busted bike shocks with our last remaining spare in the morning before setting our sites on Addis Abeba and hopefully a date with DHL and the Ethiopian Customs office. So it was that we found ourselves riding through more wildernesses. Southern Ethiopia is as wild as Northern Kenya but less arid. People in traditional dress beamed and waved at us form the roadside, Ethiopia had definitely taken its happy pills today. One thing jumped out at us, all the friendly men over a certain age, waving at us, had AK 47’s strapped across their backs, bar none. No wonder Northern Kenya had a bandit problem. With any luck though, Ethiopian bandits restricted their efforts to non-Ethiopian soil. This only redoubled our commitment to reciprocate the waves enthusiastically until I felt that I was going to wear my waving arm out and started alternating waves with my left arm. We all felt it prudent to honor one of the golden rules of African Travel – ‘always wave and smile at the men with guns’.
Long kilometers passed as we made our way through bush landscape after bush landscape, the ever present peril of goats, cows and donkeys had now been supplemented by large herds of camels with scant regard for road etiquette. The camels were always tended by young men, but the cows and others were now being herded by the tiniest little children of as young as three or four years old. These little things were beaming at us and waving their sticks as if Father Christmas himself had just appeared over the horizon. My heart strings felt tugged at when I saw a little guy that reminded me of a blacker version of my own little boy safe with his Mom at home. He probably has not even seen a goat yet.
Carlo’s bike was bucking and pronking on its shock less coil spring and the going was slow with several stops to give him a chance to gather his wits. The roads were tar but far from great with pot holes and corrugations, not that we were complaining after our recent Kenyan commute. Clearly we were not going to make the seven hundred kilometers to Addis in one day at this speed and our minds turned to finding some shelter for the evening.The ubiquitous AK 47’s stated noticeably thinning and were replaced by long menacing looking spears, we assumed that we must be passing from one ethnic area to another and our GPS’ indicated that we were climbing rapidly in altitude up to two thousand meters and more. The landscape had a sudden change of heart and an unmistakable green tinge burst into full mountain forest. This was as unexpected as it was welcome, the road convulsed into twists and turns and the horizon burst into a hilly vista that skipped into the distance drenched in green, green and more green. None of us were prepared for this after six thousand kilometers of dust and thorns. We soon realized that the popular World Vision, famine plagued desert that all of us thought of us as Ethiopia was actually a myth. We had stumbled in to the vast central Ethiopian highlands where rain is plentiful and the land obscenely fertile. Village after village lined the main road and every village burst at the seams with healthy toothy children running after the bikes shouting ‘Yo, yo, yo …’. We never managed to figure out what this actually meant but figured that it must be something pleasant in Amharic the official but unfathomable Ethiopian language. Ethiopia is proud to be the only African country that has been spared the tender ravages of European colonialism apart from a brief brush with the Italians during the Second World War. Hence, a decided lack of fluency in any European language in the country and the inescapable fact that these people genuinely do run on their own calendar and clock. Maybe everybody was so happy and friendly because today was the millennium celebration and New Year’s Eve. We could see the signs of big preparations on the go in every village that we passed, reeds being cut and scattered on the floor in the villages and brightly colored traditional garments being sported wherever we looked. I felt myself being caught up in the mounting excitement and soon even forgave the fact that this celebration may mean a week’s lay over in Addis for us.
Lady luck was in our corner that evening. As we strained our eyes to pick up any sign of a hotel that might rescue us from the mounting darkness, the Lewison hotel sprang out at us form the side of the road in Yirga Cheffe, the biggest village we had seen for an hour. A rapid halt and a hurried enquiry in mimed and broken English and we established that they had room for us and were about to mount the millennium celebrations in their reed strewn courtyard and we were welcome to join.Needing no further invitation we got stuck into one of our most pleasant evenings so far on the Epic Delivery. Yirga Cheffe, we were proudly informed, is the birth place of coffee in Ethiopia as Ethiopia is the birth place of coffee for the world. We were treated to an elaborate coffee ceremony in which a traditionally robed maiden roasted us raw coffee beans over incense laden coals. The whole scene lit by colourful candles, the now roasted beans were ground and served to us in the establishment’s best espresso china. Wow, so this is what coffee actually tastes like! This was like being let into business class after years of economy. What a treat. Then fire works, drinking and what must pass for Amarhic rave music at which point we exited for an urgent engagement with our sleeping bags.
Tomorrow Addis Abeba and the moment of truth with customs.