I am sitting across from God’s Bridge, an exquisite mountain separating two incredible lakes, both easily within view. The Paradise Lodge is truly just that. Two gentlemen are sitting behind me speaking in French about how perfect the six o’clock hour is for living. With the sun rising over an idyllic miasma of lush green trees, I’m inclined to agree.
Yesterday was neither the tortuous nor torturous drive I’d anticipated. We left Addis around 7:40 after another delicious breakfast at the Panorama Hotel. Two bowls of warm grain cereal prepared me well for the drive ahead. The scenery of outlying Addis was as I’d remembered – rows of dilapidated corrugated metal buildings intersperses with ramshackle shacks for people to sell their wares – anything from sofas to large filthy looking water drums either blue or yellow in color. People waved to us periodically as we passed and Mary, Seth, and I chatted nonstop with our driver Abraham and our guide Abraham, whom we referred to as the Abrahams for lack of a better solution. They were generous guides, explaining everything from the water systems to the supremacy of Ethiopian runners, a fact about which they are terrifically proud. We didn’t see the hordes of kids running in the streets with soccer balls – a memory very distinct from my previous trip. Neither did I see the hobbled donkeys that had disturbed me so. The driving, however, is the same: pedestrian survival appears to be optional as the cars use horns as a loud indication of forthcoming demise should you and your cattle not immediately vacate the road.
As we left the city behind, we found the corrugated buildings turn more into tucals, the typical thatched round homes that pepper the Ethiopian countryside. The clothing of the residents did not seem so traditional as more people seemed to be wearing various degrees of what I would call American-style clothing rather than the long white reams of cloth I’ve come to expect – especially from the women. The clothes were typically in various states of wear, some nearly in tatters – though the women always seem to have a burst of beautiful colors regardless. An intrusive thought had me wondering how they keep their clothing so vibrant when they wash them in pools of such dingy water by the roadside – Cheer and Tide take note.
Of course the further into the rural areas we got, the more frequently we saw children, especially toddlers walking without clothes, pants in particular. Bottoms to the wind, they still waved enthusiastically as we drove passed. At a certain point, the kids along the side of the road began to hold out their hands to us, pleading in an unusually happy tone, but pleading nevertheless for our empty water bottles. They use these to collect their own water. As I realized my own ignorance at thinking four years ago that they’d wanted money, Seth boisterously began insisting that his mom and I start drinking faster so that he could throw the bottles out the window to the cheering children.
After about an hour, it became necessary to stop for a bathroom break. We pulled into a World Vision ADP office and were escorted to an bathroom building with individual doors, not unlike what I’ve seen in Griffith Park by the merry-go-round. Of course when I entered one, I was immediately flummoxed by the large drain on the floor and the spigot overhead. Resembling a shower, the room did not seem appropriate for the purpose I intended, and after contemplating that certain bodily functions could not process through that drain, I quietly removed myself from the stall to check out the others. Imagine my relief when I went into the adjoining stall and found a toilet. Of course, relief could only slightly mitigate the horror at having almost peed in their shower. In the stall two doors over, Jake got locked in when the handle fell off, but thankfully, they were able to fix things quickly – that stall was not the type of place one would want to spend a leisurely morning.
We drove for several more hours, dodging cattle, goats, and a horde of monkeys dashing across the road. At one point, we even had to wait as two donkeys had themselves a romantic rendez-view (intentionally spelled that way for reasons I will explain to you OFF-line). Seth and Mary seemed to think my giggling and bright red hue were amusing. In hindsight, I suppose they were.
Lunch was the first real indication for me personally that I was about to start feeling the differences of Africa. The restrooms were now legitimately pits in the ground, and without practice, women are seriously compromised when it comes to this way of peeing. Holding onto the walls for dear life, I tried to balance, squat and not let my pants touch that floor – all for dear life. The food, too, was pretty tough to take. The chicken seemed somehow glued to the bone, and watching Henry break a sweat as he tried to tear at the bird poor Mary had long given up on, I wandered how hungry I must have been to consume my own. The others seemed equally uninspired by the pasta without salt and rather tough beef dish. Nevertheless, Henry continued to consume everyone’s leftovers before we all headed off for the remainder of our drive.
The road turned bumpy after lunch as we set out on the last 150 kilometers of the ride. It was nowhere nearly as bad as I’d expected. It was more roads in construction and pothole-peppered asphalt than the off-roading I’d thought we would encounter. Nevertheless, we slowed our pace as we attempted to mire our way through the dust storm kicked up by the trucks in front of ours. We stopped again at a beautiful lake to see the water while we waited for the last of our four cars to catch up to the caravan. After that, the Abrahams put us in the rear of the caravan to allow the others to set the pace, and it turned out to be great! Abraham, being the one in charge, then offered Mary, Seth, and me a couple of brief opportunities to stop – knowing Abraham (2)’s lead foot would have us catching up in no time. Our first stop was for BANANAS! We had only slowed down when the hordes of young girls surrounded our car shouting, “One burr!” and “You! You! You!” I pulled out a sheet of stickers and gave them to the kids. They laughed riotously as they placed them on their noses and cheeks and foreheads – thankfully distracted enough to know that we were not going to buy bananas from them all. When the first scrumptious bite of banana landed in my stomach I realized how starved I’d been for fresh fruit. Knowing only peeled fruit is okay to eat, we’ve be limited to none practically.
The following stop was a bit more spontaneous. I saw a truck in a small spring bed spraying water and thought, “What a great image!” I asked to stop and take a picture, but by the time the car had pulled over, there was a football-sized group of kids teeming between me and my photo. So I opted to take photos of them. Trying to tell them to stand back so I could fit them all in was pointless as they all jockeyed for the front position. Given that they were all carrying large bundles of sticks pointed directly at my head, this got a little precarious and so Abraham politely intervened and got me back safely to the car, but not before I got a great shot of a kid hamming it up with a mouthful of bananas.
The evening drew to close with a large table of tired people waiting “Africa time” for dinner. Translation: Poor Jake waited almost an hour for fish. Keith and I got into a heated discussion about the alleged purging of African American names from Florida voting in 2000, but other than that, the night was uneventful.
