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Published: April 28th 2008
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The Drivers
Demiss (right) and his buddy. OK I better be quick. Total power outage and running on laptop batteries. Your guess is as good as mine as to how long I have 😊
Will try and let the photos do the talking for this entry - there are a few! Plus 2 videos if batteries allow.
Another Six O'Clocker Falling out of bed at some ridiculously early time we stuffed our bags and headed downstairs to the motel hotel compound where the two 4x4's were parked. The driver of the rental vehicle was clearly on the ball - he had the bonnet open and was shaking an unfeasibly large amount of sand/dust from what I guess was the air filter. Demiss, our driver, was nowhere to be seen, but given his day of puncture trauma yesterday we didn't grudge him an extra 40 winks.
Waving goodbye to Mugadu as we left the compound we headed out of Nekemte and towards Assosa.
The left is right, right? The whole driving experience for day 2 promised to be much better. With two less people in the car, Sara and I spread out on the back seat and Jerry took pole position in the
Mendi
Shai/Buna break front next to Demiss. Unfortunately it is this leg of the journey that requires the 4x4. The road from Addis to Nekemte is mostly asphalt, with the odd off-road detour around an accident. From Nekemte onwards it varies.
Widely.
From beautiful, dotted-lined tarmac with little crash barriers to, well, steep walls of dust!
Beneshangul-Gumuz is an 'emerging region' which means it has not reached the development status of most of the other Ethiopian regions and suffers with restricted infrastructure and communications. Road building was clearly high on the agenda, given the amount of half-finished activity we passed, however when the road is being worked on, you are diverted off onto the dust/dirt/mud for miles at a time.
To make the whole journey that much more interesting from the back seat, the Ethiopians drive on the right, unlike the UK (and apparently it's neighbours Sudan and Kenya) where the normal driving position is on the left. As you swing around bends and dodge sleepy goats its hard not to ram down your foot on the imaginary brake as your own driving instincts scream at you that everything is wrong 😊
It also seems to be fair
Mendi from the cab
Brollies to keep the sun off!?! game to drive on whichever side seems the smoothest (or least congested with small, furry quadrapeds). This results in some nervy games of chicken where you stare at an oncoming truck full of diesel heading at you at 80km/h, lights flashing while we take the racing line on a bend or slalom around a herd of donkeys.
Of course, after a few hours of this it becomes the norm and you ignore the road and just check out the scenery or listen to a few tunes, wondering idly if the mental picture you have painted of Assosa will match reality. Though VSO tell you to zero your expectations before arrival, it is very hard, particularly if you have been in contact with VSOs already there, checked their blogs or zoomed in on Google Earth.
Where is my money? So as the day wore on the heat increased and you appreciated the reason for starting journeys at 6am. Between 6 and 10am you have a period of relative cool before the searing heat of 11-3pm. With luck you can finish journeys by lunchtime which is good for you (you get to a new town in daylight - always
Good road..
..time for a snooze. easier to navigate/find a hotel/get food/shop), good for your driver (he doesn't fall asleep in the heat) and good for the car (it doesn't have to do the entire journey in 40 degree heat.
The other very good reason is that your really, really do not want to be driving on the roads at night. Without streetlights, MOTs and cattle fences your chances of avoiding incident are seriously reduced. Added to the fact that most long distance truck drivers chew 'chat' the local stimulant (leafy plant) to stay awake.
As we had noticed since leaving Addis and even more so leaving Nekemte, the number of ferengis had decreased considerably - not that the places we visited were packed with tourists, in fact, in Nekemte I think our VSO buddies said there was probably only 20 or 30 ferengi living there, though as a stop off point en route to other south western parts of Ethiopia, you would see NGO employees passing through. We were about to add 5 new ferengi to the 4 already in Assosa.
You can usually judge how many ferengis are in town by the reaction of the locals - both adults and kids.
Bad road
Brace yourself! In Beneshangul-Gumuz, white people are still a novelty and adult reactions vary from secret glances to full-bore, walking into lampost staring. The kids also act as a yardstick.
In Addis, they target you for begging and parents will make them sell 'soft' (tissues) to you as it is incredibly hard to say 'no' to a cute little kid, clearly very poor, trying to make a living selling toilet tissue. Sara constantly told me off as I couldn't say no, saying the kids should be in school, not on the streets working. My view is that education comes after survival. If you have nothing to eat today you sell toilet roll. I guess like many issues you encounter in developing countries, you examine what facts are available, analyse your experiences and come to your own decision on how you handle them.
In Nekemte the kids are clearly pretty sharp. We have been back there since and in our experience more of them ask for money than are just curious about you. The cries of "you, you, where is my money?" and "give me my birr" massively outweigh the simple smiles and offered hands for a happy handshake.
In
No road!
Mind that house :) Assosa the kids are still sweet. From a distance they will shout 'ferengi' but are too shy and only the boldest will approach for a handshake. We are not yet viewed as walking cash dispensers, but in recent weeks I have been asked by one or two for money, which is a shame.
From China (without much love) There is another type of ferengi in Ethiopia - one that appears to be tolerated, rather than welcomed. The Chinese.
Every stretch of road-building activity will have at least one chinese guy, usually dressed in blue, with a wide brimmed sunhat on directing the activity of a gang of Ethiopian workers.
There seems to be a grudging respect for the work they do as more than one Ethiopian has been quite open about the fact that the reason the last 80km of road to Assosa is still dirt not asphalt is because the contract went to an Ethiopian road-building company, not a Chinese one.
We have found the Chinese people we have met (on the roads or on the field trip) to be very friendly and always nod hello or give a waved 'Hi!'. We have also
heard that they get charged even more in terms of "ferengi price" than us westerners. It seems a bit harsh, given that many are just employees of a Chinese corporation and are probably thousands of miles away from their homes and family out of financial necessity rathan than out of choice like us VSOs...
Are we there yet? With almost 8 hours of driving behind us and having crossed the Dabus river (which separates Oromia from Beneshangul-Gumuz), passed Bambassi (the first Assosa Zone woreda on the fringe of Beneshangul-Gumuz) we finally spotted our destination. Driving past the airport, with Inzy, the landmark, single-tree topped hill, on the left we entered Assosa.
Parking up at the premier hotel in the region - "The Bamboo" - where Jerry and Pascal would stay until Demiss found a house for them, we crabbed our way out of the 4x4s and rubbed the blood back into our legs.
So this was Assoa. Our home for the next 2 years!
Our 14 months of applications, planning, preparation and training and farewells had finally reached its climax...
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non-member comment
WHY YOU GUYS ARE NOT SHOWING US THE BEAUTY OF THE CITY.I LIVE IN THE USA.I WAS THERE A YEAR AGO.I SAW ALOT OF INTERSTING THINGS IN ASSOSA.