Nairobi to Moyale to Addis Ababa What I Saw

I am the last person who would like to listen to myself tell a story about my life. Personally, I dislike the way I tell stories, but telling stories is one good way to kill boredom and so I will tell it anyway. If you have read this blog before, you might have come across my lamentations about not getting a job because of lack of experience and may be because employers would rather employ foreigners, etc. Well, the Lord heard my lamentations and landed me a job, if I, a non-native speaker of the wonderful Queen's Language, have used that phrase right. And the Almighty, they say, when he starteth to bless thee, thou will be overburdened with blessings, if that is possible. The job is in my profession teaching/writing/anything to do with the English language. The only problem is that he gave me a job exactly a thousand miles away from home, and literally that not the expression! Once again, if you have ever read this blog particularly where I lament about the background I belong, you should have guessed that probably, this story is about the journey of a thousand miles whereby the protagonist will not afford a cheap plane ticket to fly wherever s/he is going. And if you guessed that, I swear you are the best listener and thinker there is. To be precise, I got a job in Ethiopia, the land that was never colonised, of beautiful people, of the great Haille Sellasie (forgive me if my spelling is wrong Africans, to modify Mark Twain never seem to spell or write any word the same twice). That was through the email, and so I was still in the Pride of Africa, better known as . . . Kenya. I prepared for the journey as much as I could, and my folks, who were a hundred p.c. against me going to that 'foreign country', made sure that since I had made up my mind, they would throw a graduation party, which was much against my wishes. This will be a subject for another day. So after the party I finalised and started the journey, of which I am going to narrate to you. I surfed through the Internet and could not find a cheap enough plane to ferry myself to Addis Ababa. The cheapest or rather lowest, was over 530 USD for a return ticket. Now, that may be very cheap to some but it wasn't for me. The monopoly of Kenya Airways and Ethiopian Airlines on that route made it a very expensive route, considering that it was only one border you were crossing, or a onecountry flight. I ignored flights and concentrated on road, since we have no good enough rail network in Africa. At first I was worried because all who had gone to Ethiopia by the same route said that there were no direct buses from Nairobi to Moyale, our border town with Ethiopia. At least that is what every travel blog had. They all suggested what we call connection in Kenya. This is where you take a bus that takes you as far as it goes in the

same direction that you are going, and when it reaches its final destination (not the film) you take another one from there and so on until you arrive at your destination. I almost gave up until one smart blogger said that there was actually a direct bus, sorry I forgot hiser URL and so I cannot credit him/her. Before I forget, I hate connections because with luggage, your journey becomes a nightmare. So the blogger said that at Eastleigh, aka Little Mogadishu a city within a city I would find buses to the border. I did and booked and waited for the bus, which they lied would depart at three, and it took me more than six hours waiting. When the journey finally started the bus started the over 900km sluggishly. It went to a gas station and carried extra fuel in twenty-litre jerry cans and that confirmed my fears of the journey taking forever. They filled the tank and carried more than ten jerry cans. From Nairobi all the way to Isiolo I have nothing to tell you because I slept and the ride was smooth. I woke up when the bus stopped at Isiolo, a town exactly in the middle of Kenya. It stopped to pick up a police officer who was our escort. Past Isiolo, we have bush bandits who give nightmares to any drivers plying that route. These bandits are usually armed, not with machetes but with guns and they make a living that way. They are what would be called highwaymen elsewhere. They particularly like that route because that is the end of the tarmac road; the rest is a loose surface dirt road with potholes and is practically unusable during the rainy season. All that stretch to Moyale through three deserts, one of which I remember as the Chalbi Desert is not tarmacked. And the Chalbi Desert is one big desert. It is flat and so you do not see the horizon but just vanishing points. There are no trees in this hot desert and if you happened to be dropped there and had to walk, you'd have to personally ask the Lord to give you a shade. In fact, a shade here would be better than a glass of water because as soon as you drink your water you need some more. And there did not lack a tree every hundred miles or so. There were also cattle grazing on the little grass that had sprouted after the short rains that rain here and the owners were no where near their cattle they were miles away in the shade of one of the few trees. As a result of the above, we got a puncture and we were lucky to have got just one. The fellows of the bus did not have a spare tyre for reasons only known to them, and so we had to waste a whole hour and a half waiting for them to mend it. That was at a place called Laisamis. After that there was the famous Marsabit, I do not know what for. I actually thought it was nothing but desert but it wasn't. It deserved to be a town except that it never had any tarmac. It was as dusty as towns I read about in the novels about Dusty Fog, in the wild wild west. The journey continued after that and I saw places that justified that Africa is truly the last wild continent. There were miles and miles of nothing but rocks, and then there were miles and miles of short grass. We then stopped at a place called Turbi, which the locals told me meant in the local language seven peaks which actually were on the mountains surrounding the place, seven of them.

The journey was bone jarring, whatever that means because according to my understanding of it, it was full of bumps and all in that untarmacked road. That, coupled with dust that got inside the bus, which lest I forget was actually a lorry turned into a bus, made the journey the most unpleasant I ever had. This particular song by Mighty Culture about a land so far away kept coming to my mouth, no matter how I tried to disengage from this world. A word of advice is that if you really have to use that bus, go there a day earlier and ask if you will get the cabin (with the driver) because at the back people are killed! You will have to pay a few dollars more, about ten which had I known I would have paid with a smile and a huge tip. So the driver did his best to try and crack our bones to no avail. We stopped at a place called Sololo. The beautiful Somali girls of Borana ethnicity alighted and the bus remained gloomy. Dark, too, was approaching. O they were so beautiful that if I was from a community that does not allow intermarriages I would marry and tell them to go hang themselves. I contemplated living there one day. The journey continued and after some hours we arrived at the dusty town of Moyale. It took us exactly a full day. The fellas in this town gawk at anyone who looks different from them. Now, I know Africans look alike to non-Africans but in Africa, we actually see the difference. The border is usually closed the customs and immigration offices to be precise and you would not like to cross and be trapped. The police there seem enjoying to arrest. So I had to spend the night in Kenya. Now by the time they open the border, the buses to Addis Ababa have left. They actually leave at a few minutes to six or after five thirty, what they call twelve o'clock and eleven thirty locally in Ethiopia. So when morning came I crossed the border and had to spend the night at the filthiest lodge you might ever come across. I blame the taxi driver who when I told him cheap took me there. The bed in my room had over a million bedbugs which woke up at night and started their nocturnal suppers. The first night there I woke up at midnight and sat up the whole night. The following day was a Sunday and I had to use the banks which are usually closed then. In this country ATMs are not yet so many. Before I forget, the roads in Ethiopia are far much better from Moyale to Addis Ababa the road is a smooth tarmac may be our Kenyan politicians can learn from that, be envious and build us roads. The taxis in Ethiopia and the scales are so different from those in Kenya:

Monday morning I took the bus to Addis with a ticket that was doodled through, a language they called Amharic, which used a script worse than hieroglyphics. I held a ticket that I could not say what it said. If it told a police officer that I was an illegal alien who they could prey on I could not tell.

Now, lest I forget, I did not eat a thing at Moyale on the Ethiopian side. I am not racist or something of the sort but what they cook is harmful to Kenyans. They had this thing called Injera, their staple food as they told me. It looks exactly like in the pictures below: (this is the same plate), costs around $10 (Birr not dollars!, around 50 bob in Kenya money). All I did to the mess below was just touch a little here and there. Their food is full of red pepper so if you have ulcers DO NOT visit Ethiopia, they will pepper your food whether you asked them or not!

The thing that looks like a mkorogo is actually one, or a pancake that tastes sour. It must be three times as big as the one we make in Kenya, and five million times as not good-tasting. It seems and tastes like it is not cooked in any cooking oil and that plus the sourness gives it a hell of an unpleasant taste. It serves as the plate because it is served in a tray so it is the plate to the mess on top of it. I would not lie and say what they top it with but I saw some Irish potatoes. The rest is a mystery. But I really wish you saw one of the locals eat it, you will think it is milk and honey, you know, that Heavenly recipe. I tried it just once and if I was told to eat it or be deported, I'd choose B. So I saw a lot of Ethiopia, slept in a city called Awassa with wide clean streets and home to the University of Awassa. It is a place I wished I could live in too, after Sololo in Kenya. All this time I had experienced linguistic difficulties with the locals who only spoke Gibberish, sorry Amharic. They

seemed to wonder how you could not gibber along like the rest of them, sorry that word appeared and stuck on my mind soon as I heard the first word in that language. The people of Ethiopia have a sense of pride which is not far fetched?: They were never colonised, they claim to be descendants of King Solomon's and Queen Sheba's, (though if there was any wisdom they took it must have been Sheba's they get irate faster than a snake whose tail's been cut off - must be because of too much pepper and reading an illegible and incomprehensible script.) They do not speak any of the major world languages Chinese, English, Arabic, Indian, Swahili, Igbo, Zulu, French, Spanish, or Portuguese which they call foreign languages (they are proud of it). They have beautiful women, (I would trade your most beautiful sister and two of your aunts, plus your mother if I had to, to get the ugliest around here that's how beautiful they are here!) Their money is not named after any other, you know like the common dollar, peseta, shilling, pound it's simply called Birr and when saying it make sure you brrr more than you biiir. They claim an attachment to Israel. Their country is also considered holy by the Rastafarians who actually believe that one day, one day, Haille Sellasie will come and take them away from all those Babylons they are in, including Jamaica, to this land called Addis Ababa. To be truthful, they have all the reasons to be proud. Plus they have a unique calender which I have not learnt yet and so I cannot tell whether today is Tuesday or Wednesday, and we are in the year 09 here! I might also be three hundred years old or just ten! Whenever you tell them the right time, in the international way, they call it European time. To them, one o'clock is seven in the morning or in the evening. Twelve is either sixes. Nine is three and so on. And so as I write this in this lonely hotel room I am hungry because rice here, which happens to be a staple and my favourite alongside ugali where I come from, is nowhere to be seen, even in the greatest restaurants here. By the way, I am in a city called Nazret, which was named so by one of those ancient rulers, either Haille Sellasie or Mengistu, but was later renamed Adama the local people's name for it. However, Nazret has stuck on it, you know being nice sounding and having Biblical connotations. The area is predominantly Christian and I have just heard that in some days they do not cook meat but fasting foods, including fish which is not in the calibre of meat here. I have not been to Addis and soon as I get there I will tell you what I will see. Adis. PS A word of caution, if you are gonna have to travel by road, please do not say that 'I will buy a lot of stuff which I can use later when I arrive at Addis'. DO NOT even think about buying stuff which is cheaper on the Kenyan side. There are more customs check along the way than there might be in N. Korea. And the police here just hate anything from the other side. I had a dozen good quality boxers which they took without my knowledge and I just realised after the shower. Now I have to run free till I get some which are as good and relatively cheap. Sometimes they get your stuff and strew it all over the bus, in case your bag was inside the bus. The good way to beat this, although not a hundred p.c. guaranteed, is to buy the appropriate travel bag and make sure that when you alight you look like a tourist because they might respect your bag a little then. When the bags are up in the carrier of the bus, you will not know what they are taking or leaving. If you lock your bag you will be called to unlock it; called because you get out of the bus and stand some distance away. PPS You gotta watch your mouth here, if you know what I mean. I don't even know if I haven't crossed the line myself. If anything happens to me, just remember I warned you.