Jambo Davey

April 2007 (Kenya/Uganda)

Eating fresh fruit salad at an outdoor stall in Nairobi.




JAMBO DAVEY!



Francis was fortunate to have very good friends. At his funeral, Davey met Katy for the first time and they fell in love instantly! Their marriage two years later was memorable. Since then, Davey has attended SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) where he studied Politics and East Africa. As he had never been south of Morocco, he wanted to come and see these parts for himself and at the same time, to do some research into the efficacy of NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisation) in Uganda. It suited us both for him to meet me in Nairobi for a week’s holiday.

As soon as our bags were dropped at the hotel after his evening arrival, we were out to walk in the streets of the CBD. Nairobi is the financial capital of Africa, hence its desperate attempt to keep the streets clean and free of hawkers and beggars. I remember only too well the frustrations I had in West Africa to try and obtain money. All transactions had to go through Nairobi first, and whenever there was a delay, that town was blamed. Some Colonial habits die hard: The 20 shilling coin in Kenya is still called a ‘pound’, although it is not worth much. Being a timid female, I had never ventured out at night in Nairobi and it was wonderful to feel so free in Davey´s company. His enthusiasm, intelligence and happy character meant that we could just enjoy the experience. Beggars came out of the shadows and people happily greeted us. This upbeat state of affairs persisted and I am forever grateful to him for opening up a world where I feared to tread. He would talk to anyone and instantly make friends. His lovely sense of humour is exemplified by his astute analysis of a vainglorious ´monument´ which Arap Moi (disgraced previous President) had had erected to himself. The structure spelt out his name MOI, but in no time, Davey had christened it into the French word ´moi´, thus accentuating this man’s arrogance.

Davey´s intelligence and questioning nature was such a tonic for me after a rather bleak time of little intellectual stimulus. Cynthia had kindly offered to host a luncheon and I could bring my friends. Walter, a Dutchman with a Ugandan girlfriend, was a generous taxi driver. He had also once very kindly taken me walking/camping near a crater lake to the west of Nairobi. It was full moon and sitting around the campfire for hours, never stopping in our conversation, had prepared me for Davey and his questioning mind.

We were soon on the overnight train to Mombasa and then spent a night in the little hotel in Kilifi where a ride on the estuary in a dugout catamaran dhow in the very strong moonlight was pure delight. We in the West forget how wonderful the sky can be without light pollution and it has been a joy for me to live by the phases of the moon during this trip.

In Lamu we stayed in a self-contained apartment on top of a beautifully furnished house within the town. It belongs to a well-known Kenyan artist friend of Cynthia, who had recommended it to us. Pure joy to look over the rooftops and to use the little reed-surrounded toilet stuck on the flat roof. Davey excitedly enjoyed seeing the sunrise over the archipelago from his room. His enthusiasm meant not much sleep...

Our return flight to Nairobi from the little airstrip across the water on another island was delayed until we finally boarded a ´plane, just to be dropped off in Malindi (north of Mombasa ) for the night. No problems! Luxury living with swimming pool and Italian food! Malindi is the favourite watering hole of the Italians visiting Kenya and everywhere you go in town is aimed at them.

We were back next day in time to meet up with Stacia, to whom I had introduced Davey at Cynthia’s house. She comes from Chicago and had taught locally for an NGO the year before. After that, she had returned with money collected from friends to work in an orphanage in Kibera, a ´slum´ suburb of Nairobi. It is the largest ´slum´ in Africa and is featured in the film ´The Constant Gardener´. Travelling westwards in the train one overlooks these tightly built corrugated iron structures with narrow lanes and no water or electricity for mile upon mile. Thousands of people live in overcrowded spaces, yet they manage to maintain a living. Davey and I arrived at the appointed place before Stacia met us. We were immediately surrounded by men who were obviously under the influence of drink and drugs. In his inimitable way, Davey was instantly high-five-ing with them, dancing and singing and generally making friends and creating a happy atmosphere. Tensions which an average mzungu like me would have created through fear were instantly dispersed. Stacia and friends arrived and we spent many a happy hour exploring this amazing area. And wherever we went or stopped for a drink or to look at articles for sale, we only met enthusiastic welcomes. Why do we have to fear or condemn people because they live in conditions other than what we in the West accept as desirable? One of my pet-prejudices is against the way the mzungu and other aid-workers in Africa manage to generally find themselves in protected and isolating compounds. No wonder they are regarded as beings from another world. And of course, the image of our lifestyles as depicted in film and TV does not help. On the other hand, most people think of Africa as a place of illness, starvation and poverty, which it emphatically is not.

There is a great tide of disaffection with NGOs taking place. I only reflect my own thoughts based on what one hears. A hilariously cynical book about the whole aid business is ´Cause Celeb´ by Helen Fielding. Do read it! More cynically but truthful, is the book ´Emma’s War` by Deborah Scroggins which depicts the scandal of inter alia, the waste and misappropriation of aid food and medicines in Southern Sudan in the 1970s and 1980s. And most people probably know about the way the Live Aid relief was sold off to Uganda instead of reaching the starving people of Ethiopia. But that is another story of incompetence and corruption with which I will not even begin to deal.

In Ghana, I met researchers who were looking at the way these voluntary organisations double up their activities and do not co-operate. Each NGO of course wants the little old lady in the West to give her sixpence to them only. Cynthia, an experienced historian and anthropologist, has been commissioned to investigate the same phenomenon in the north-west of Kenya. In Uganda, the President has asked for an inquiry into the over 5500 NGOs operating in that country. I was told about one district in Uganda where there were over 200 NGOs covering a relatively small area. During and just after the Rwandan genocide, the country was awash with NGOs all trying to do their own thing and thus getting in the way of each other or doubling up their activities, yet they expected the over-stretched United Nations Peacekeepers to protect them as of right.

Stacia is justifiably sceptical about NGOs, because money, which friends had given via an NGO, never reached the orphanage. Also, the local NGOs were cross with her for not directing funds through them. It meant they lost out on the 25%+ administrative fee. I might sound sceptical, but too many stories are going the rounds. My favourite was told to me by a friend who was in Kenya when he met a young woman who was having a luxury holiday. He asked her how she could afford it, and her reply was that she worked for an NGO and that it was the financial year-end and if they did not spend the money, they would not get the same funds the following year. I know this goes on all the time in business, but we, the public who contribute to these funded organisations, should question them far more. Davey was to study these aspects of NGOs in Uganda.

We travelled overnight by train to Kisumu on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria, but the train was late as usual and we did not have much time to enjoy the ever-moving sea of hyacinth, which is the lake, whilst eating fresh tilapia in one of the many Hotels (Kenyan for ´restaurant´) on the shore. Sadly, hyacinth, killer Nile perch (30 species of endemic Lake Victoria fish consumed by them), pollution, agricultural chemical poisons, diminished water and lack of fish is slowly killing off Africa’s largest Lake. But some of the wonderful 5W ladies of Kisumu managed to meet us and have a brief reunion! For the record, it is here that Barack Obama came to visit his grandmother and the streets/roads were lined with flag-waving well-wishers. And that was before he officially decided to contest the Democratic nomination!

We arrived in Kampala in Uganda in time for Ben, Davey´s friend who teaches at a local school for local wages, to welcome us warmly and give me his bedroom whilst he went to stay with a colleague who lives in another one of the six houses in his compound. The boys went out for the night (and this was followed by many similar outings) and I enjoyed stories of the Kampala nightlife from the distance of a hangover-telling, although I did join them on occasion and could admire the prostitutes, who overran the bars, more closely. They were generally very beautiful and their dress-sense and makeup could be the envy of any London West End lady. Davey was happy to show them his wedding ring and they respected his loyalty and just had a good time with the boys.

One day Ben generously killed one of his 4 chickens for supper and I enjoyed showing the boys how to disembowel it. My father’s sister had had one of the most extensive chicken farms in South Africa in the 1950/60s when well-fed and free-range chickens were a total luxury. She supplied the very large hotels in Durban and the whole of South African Railways with eggs. Every Christmas she would give over 50 chickens to friends as presents and my job was to help get them ready. It sounds macabre, but we are just too far removed from reality in the West whereas here in Africa, it is a pleasure for me to get back to what living is about. If we want to eat meat, the least we can do is to know where it comes from and how it gets there. I might sound as though I have been here too long, but it is just that I think the people of Africa still have a sense of how to live with nature which we so often deny ourselves. Discuss!

I soon left to stay with Liz, Ben’s mother, in Kabale in the south-west of Uganda and Davey departed for an NGO with which Liz had arranged for him to get some hands-on experience.

He subsequently made all kinds of contacts and I am sure is full of ideas and plans for the future and an exciting MA dissertation. I eventually disappeared into Rwanda and we could only say goodbye via email.

It had never been my intention to visit Uganda during this trip southwards, but Davey had inspired me to go back up north and there was no reason why not to do so. I had been in the south of Uganda in 2002 when I took part in a first-ever sponsored cycle ride from Lake Mburo to Rwanda for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. Collecting money and asking friends for contributions was horrible! But the trip was great and I did manage to see the gorillas. Since then, there have been similar cycle trips every year. What stands out in my memory is the beautiful scenery and deep lakes amongst high mountains with numerous islands. Quite magical!

Liz lives in Kabale where she works for VSO and is an incredibly experienced and competent worker. She is involved in setting up a grass-roots anti-corruption NGO. It is only through teaching via community-based organisations, that the understanding of ´corruption´ can be taught. When she and fellow NGO workers are together, my mind reels with the way they talk! It is a shorthand language with acronyms being used all the time. She had hoped that I could assist a local NGO which works with disabled people, but once I visited and realised that the Chinese Manager, who has only been here for two months, needed to get a grip on the situation himself, I threw in some ideas and left them to it. Too many cooks…

One of the volunteer people with whom Liz works, is a local Tourist Guide. Warren was enthusiastic to learn all he could from me about Guiding. I had been sceptical about the quality of guiding instruction the local college was giving when I visited them and Warren subsequently told me that he lectured there as well as at the local university. Anyway, the outcome was that he asked me to give a lecture to students from both organisations. It was hard work! African education is still in the area of students just sitting quietly at their desks and never making a sound. What they take in is a debatable point. Later in Rwanda, I spoke to a VSO Educational Consultant and he was in despair about the system! Why teach children complicated fractions when they will never need them and cannot understand anyway? And I remember in Kenya sitting in on a class in an orphanage I was visiting in which the teacher was telling students about the sun and planets. I was very tempted to tell him that Pluto had been declassified and was no longer a planet, but when the books from which teachers are teaching are old and out of date, one cannot interfere. Being in huts or outdoors under a tree does not lead to checking things on the internet! Anyway, to return to my lecture: I realised that the students did not take in a thing I was saying when I tried to ask questions. My role-playing baffled them and there was total silence. Therefore, I took them all outside to emphasis that Tourist Guiding is a Practical Profession. This really threw them into a state of confusion! Whether my presence had any lasting effect, is debatable, but Warren wrote copious notes and was inspired!

I manage to put the cat amongst the pigeons at times when I say that compulsory education should be stopped. Here in Africa, where it is regarded as such a privilege to aim for and when people go hungry to pay for school fees, my attitude is incomprehensible. In the West, however, we have had over 100 years of compulsory education and it has not necessarily produced an educated population. Where education is free and compulsory, there are often students who just do not want to learn and as a result, disrupt the class for those who do. In England, teachers are often just trying to maintain discipline. Students who have to stay at school until they are 16 often leave without being literate. Is this a scandal? Not necessarily. As long as facilities are available for them if they ever want to learn, let them go and become entrepreneurs or labourers. They will manage. I have recently read H G Wells´s ´The Time Machine´. Written in the 1890s, it is the first real science fiction book. But he was a realist. He could foresee that mankind was not necessarily going to go on being well-educated and better through the application of science and education. Mankind’s striving for happiness will eventually lead to diminishing of intellect. Oh dear, I am treading on toes!


The above was sent to Davey to have a look at, and

Davey responded with the following…
I like your digs at attitudes to slums/poverty, the comments on non-governmental disorganisations, and the brief critique of the attempts to institute universal education. Perhaps the most damning criticisms I heard to do with the latter were practical and grave: There are simply not enough schools and teachers to cope with such a programme.This has resulted in classes of up to 200 kids being taught by some barely-qualified (but doubtless well-meaning) buffoon.
It also means that kids are not able to help their parents out in whatever work they are doing, or even simply take care of household responsibilities while the parents are working elsewhere.Western attitudes to this latter aspect are often based on some spurious notion of what children can and can't do and what they ought to be doing. e.g. the Dutch woman who taught at the Masaka disabled school related to me in shocked terms about a family she met in which the 5 yr old daughter was expected to look after a 3 yr old sister during the day. I don't know how common such circumstances are, but surely we have to weigh such arguably undesirable situations with others in which young children learn domestic responsibilities and useful skills, not to mention building themselves up physically by carrying water butts etc.

This latter point is especially interesting to me in view of the chronic child obesity problems we have in the more civilised parts of the world.Much of the universal education programme has been motivated by a desire on the part of the NRM to appear 'progressive' in the eyes of the donor community - regardless of the efficacy of such programmes and their potentially disastrous effects on Ugandan family life.
Meanwhile, an intellectual (Omar) told me, the quality of education at a higher level has been deteriorating due to 'commercialisation' of the main universities and the co-option of graduates into NGO jobs. The commercialisation purports to re-structure university courses according to the job market, which means that the degrees are becoming almost exclusively directed towards business and the NGO sector.
This may sound good and practical, but the result is that there is very little room for encouraging critical thinking and promoting socio-political, and even aesthetic, awareness.
The intellectual, Omar, teaches at Makerere International - the second biggest university in Uganda. Almost all of his students, he said, were intent on getting a cosy job with a foreign firm/NGO, and were fixated on consumer goods.
Interestingly, my favorite teacher at SOAS also made similar complaints: "Where have all the student radicals gone?" he asked.
While I have been struggling to find an answer to this question in the English context, Omar provided one for his country. The NGOs and businesses are not only not interested in 'politics', they actively discourage discussion of political affairs. Someone who appears too 'political' will simply not get a job, or will not get promoted (or even get sacked) if they start taking an interest in trade unions (or whatever) while already employed. Such an environment makes it very difficult for an intellectual and even arts-based scene to flourish, especially as the middle-class audience that typically forms the core of such scenes are precisely those who are embracing consumerism and the 'de-politicised' world of foreign employment with such enthusiasm.
The scare quotes around 'political' and 'de-politicised' are there because, of course, in such affairs, everything is 'political'.
The presence of so many foreigners who are effectively re-structuring Uganda's economy, society and culture is surely a matter for political debate. You mention people complaining more about the efficacy of the NGO programmes etc. In my experience, yes and no. People in Uganda seemed generally uncritical of the British presence, past and present. They had a certain antipathy towards the French and Yanks who they deemed arrogant (prejudice doubtless passed on from the colonisers). They might not have had an independence struggle on the scale of the Mau Mau (indeed nothing really comparable), but that doesn't mean they were not exploited and continue to be.
The real antipathy seems reserved for the MuHindi community - and understandably so, in a way. Because the mzungu pay better wages and pay them on time, because they treat their workers well, and because they even intermarry, they are seen as generally beneficent - which is great for people like me, who are treated so hospitably as a result! However, I noticed a complete lack of cynicism (amongst almost everyone) re. Blair's and Clinton's attitudes to Africa. , Omar the intellectual said that during both Bushes' administrations, and during the Conservative years (in UK), Africans tended to be left alone to forge their own futures. He went further, saying that during colonial times, people like him (who questioned the proliferation of foreigners in his country) had a target: basically a pith helmet. "Now" he said with a smile, "I don't know where to shoot. They're everywhere and doing so many different things, you don't know who the good guys and the bad guys are..."
I (pretentiously) used terms like 'network power' and 'diffuse strategies' to conceptualise what was happening now, and he agreed. There were good, straightforward projects (he said), such as those of the military that we all talked about at Cynthia's - where, e.g., they come into a village, dig some wells using Western technology, and then leave. Others, however, are more keen to re-structure society on deeper levels, attempting to create new types of people (basically modern, liberal citizens) rather than simply helping what already exists, to work. Ultimately there are no black and white answers to these vexed and complex questions. For one thing (despite Omar's distaste for liberal internationalists like Blair/Clinton) it is not really useful to imagine an Africa without foreigners meddling in it - there will always be muzungu there making a buck, at least.
The real question is what kind of 'interventions' are more beneficial for the objects of intervention.That is a very moral question concerning what kind of society and future does one see as desirable for Ugandans. But that does not mean it should not be asked.
By hobbling the radicals thru education reform and an effective silencing of political debate, 'Development' (as a general project) becomes what one British critic has termed 'The Anti-Politics Machine'. There is no debate because there is no question that development along Western lines is undesirable. The debates are how to enable Development, how to encourage some narrowly conceived notion of 'citizenship', how to eradicate child labour, or whatever - not whether these outcomes are desirable or even possible in the first place. This is analogous (for me) with the new direction of British politics: Blair's Third Way, with his emphasis on globalisation as "irreversible and irresistible", basically starts from the premise that the left/right debate is over - that there really can be no ideological debate now, simply a kind of tussle over which elected bureaucrat gets to oversee the implementation of Thatcher's legacy. Thus debates on 'Britishness' emerge, no longer centering on what kind of economy we should have, but on what our 'values' are, whether those immigrants next door are 'like us' or not, etc.While previously the domain of fringe racists, such arguments are now being taken seriously in No.10 Downing Street - doubtless partly because of our higher exposure to Islamic terrorism (Thanks Tony!).In the Ugandan society, such a situation is manifest in the tendency to attack the easy target of the MuHindi businessman, while ignoring the presence of the impoverished and illiterate Ugandan Asians, and more importantly, while not addressing the environment which enables the kind of exploitation that is deplored. Omar the intellectual emphasised the connections between this ignorance, the education reforms, and the presence of rich mzungu employers and experts all over Uganda. Sorry for this slightly vague ramble, but I thought you might like to hear the results of my 'investigation'. In the end, I didn't exhaustively probe the new Heart of Darkness or whatever, but the taster was delightful and fascinating.It has really only whetted my appetite, and as I said in my last mail, I am very much looking for any excuse to get back out there and really get stuck in.


Davey’s remarks were sent to a retired expat Historian who has spent his life in East Africa and now lives in Nairobi. I include it just to make one aware of all the thinking that is going on around the world. Lateral thinking is finally being considered!

Hi Hilda,

Interesting! A can of worms!

In my view, the current 'development apparatus' which is variously being offered or imposed upon or claimed by Africa is based on a narrow definition of technology. It is a technology/science which draws all things toward urban conglomerates, toward traffic jams, toward crowded school rooms, toward people who need antiretrovirals full time to stay alive, etc. etc.

In a recent article in the New York Review of Books, Freeman Dyson suggests that this distorted matrix of modern civilization is but a short phase in the evolutionary process. In his optimistic view, in future science/technology will become more relevant to the needs of the masses of people living in rural areas and will draw on and apply to a much broader range of resources. I suspect he is too optimistic. But I do agree on the need (and hopefully, a trend) for a focus of science and technology on the welfare of both urban and non-urban folks. Clearly the present pattern is not workable for the long run.

A book by Paul Dawken entitled 'Blessed Unrest' tries to quantify in the broadest terms those millions of people groups around the world who resist the dictates of modernity or, alternatively, identify new and more humane applications of technology. Dawken compares these armies in favor of alternative options with the human immune system. One obtains some sense of the intended shape of the human being by examining the workings of its immune systems. Similarly, one obtains a sense of what the future of the world might look like by examining the cumulative work/vision/experimentation by the 'alternatives'. Interesting.

Like the wag said: 'Don't change your mind; it is reality that is wrong!'

Best wishes. Many greetings. Harold Miller
Although I had read the book, I did not choose the following quotation. It was sent in by Stacia who had so happily taken us around Kibera and who was having big problems with the local NGOs who did not like her ‘hands-on’ method of helping in an orphanage.

Quote from "The Zanzibar Chest" by Aidan Hartley:

"... Only a handful of volunteers were there to help at the start. Every humanitarian disaster is a golden fund raising opportunity for the charities. One Christian outfit worked all day praying rather than distributing food, shelter or IV fluids.... Africa may be the world's poorest place but it is rich in men of God. It's unfortunate that the Africans no longer boil them up in pots and serve them for dinner."

Leaving Ethiopia and early Kenya - Feb - March 2007

CULTURE?


‘DO OR DIE’ the large headlines in one of the numerous Kenyan newspapers screamed on the Saturday. For an Englishman, this is an expression often used, but for a Kenyan not so fluid in English, it must have been a bit mysterious. Too many deaths from unnatural causes makes one interpret it differently… However, the difference in cultural interpretation was soon explained. The headline was referring to the World Cross-Country Races to be held in Mombasa that day. Fortunately Kenya won the overall team prize and no one had to die. In conservative Ethiopia that headline would have been impossible.

Now that I have left Ethiopia, I can see so clearly the cultural differences between the two countries. And this is not referring to the very many more isolated communities (tribes is the new non-PC word which anthropologists may not use) in both countries, which have such immensely different ways of life, but the differences between those people who have absorbed the ‘Western’ way of life. In Ethiopia they can still not speak ‘proper’ English and are totally unaware of the fact, especially in their printed literature. The Kenyans have embraced English with relish and it is such a pleasure to once again understand what people say first time round! And in Uganda, where it is the official language and all schooling is though English, the joy of being able to communicate easily is great! However, the Ugandans are now aware of the fact that they have begun to loose their heritage and the first few years in Primary school are now reverting to the local languages.

The Ethiopian love of Bureaucracy is so stifling that it impedes their move to ‘westernize’ but, at the same time, it reflects a reluctance to change. The Orthodox Church has a very defining stranglehold too. When church services go on for 9 hours and one has to stand throughout and the service is loudly broadcast from clock towers from 3.30 a.m. onwards on one of the many Saints’ days, thus keeping one awake, it cannot lead to ‘progress’. I am not advocating that the Western way of life is necessarily 'progress', but it is understood to be so by those who adopt its clothes, technology and educational aspirations. Other elements are ignored. As an example: I wanted to see some famous but relatively remote stelae on my way south towards the Kenyan border. This involved getting a ‘ticket’ for the anthropomorphic stelae at Tutufela from the nearest administrative town (Dilla) and then a bus to a turnoff 30 minutes away. After walking about 2 miles (5km), I got to the field of about 300 stelae and a ‘custodian’ took my ticket and proudly showed his companion the official ‘stamp’ on it. Neither was literate, but the all-important stamp was the clincher. However, to get to the next set of stelae at nearby Tututi (with over 1200 phallic stelae), it would have involved taking another bus to another administrative district for a ticket and then to return to near the first turnoff and repeat the process again. I had been willing to do this mad thing, but after the first visit I was so demoralized by the incessant begging and demands made by the relatively isolated farming community, that I felt nervous of being dismissive of them and feared that my vulnerability was at risk. I say this only because the unthinking bureaucracy, which isolates visitors from money-earning enterprises, is so self-defeating. But you try to tell that to an Ethiopian! They just cannot understand it when I say that they can make life easier for themselves! The Kenyans, on the other hand, have embraced the Western way of administration and despite many scams and trying to get as much money as possible from you as a mzungu (I am no longer a faranji), they adhere to some order. And things are done with a smile and 'no hard feelings'. The occasional Kenyan beggars just greet you with a smile and say ’how are you?’

The last few days south of Addis were spent trying to get fish in the Southern Rift Valley Lakes (a small bait-like fish I dissected had to be named St Valentines Day as it was un-named by the locals) and to slowly travel towards the Kenyan border. Sadly, lack of days on my passport meant a much quicker journey than planned and I will simply have to return another day…

I had entered the Southern Region, which, like the other 13 Regions in Ethiopia, had been designated and given much autonomy when the current government overthrew the Communist Régime in 1991. Trying to keep everyone happy and to accurately reflect the different societies living there, this Region is called Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Regional Government. How is that for a mouthful every time you want to mention them?! One of the main agricultural products and food supplies is enset, a banana-like plant which is cropped when 8 years old. After much pounding, sifting, boiling, drying and pummeling of the whole root/trunk, the resultant blob is wrapped in its banana-like leaves and consumed or buried. This food can last up to 20 years, so there is never famine in southwest Ethiopia.

The ‘capital’ of SNNPRG is called Awassa and is probably the most beautiful town in Ethiopia. My walking boots which had split and were ready to be thrown out, were expertly mended by a shoe-shine boy and my hair, which needed to be trimmed, was roughly and to great hilarity, sawn into shape by blunt scissors. I bought two blouses (one pretty and one practical), and was thus ready to leave this incredibly cheap country. I had hired a bicycle for the day and a puncture, swiftly mended on the side of the road, cost 1 Birr! My final burglary in Ethiopia was also performed with consummate skill: I had just checked into a lovely old lakeside hotel in Awassa. The famous Ethiopian bird life was overwhelming and Colobus and Vervet monkeys swung in the trees around the bungalows. I threw my bags onto the bed, opened the small rucsac and then decided to go to the en suite bathroom. By the time I returned to my bag a minute later, I could not find the pack of cards I was sure I had pulled out of the rucsac. What else was missing?! I dashed to the door to see the culprit. Nothing! Then I noticed, amongst the lush plants, were strewn 54 playing cards and their torn box. Poor monkey must have been very disappointed with his theft!

Arriving too late to cross the border, my final night in Ethiopia was pleasantly spent on the northern side of Moyale. I would not have decent coffee again for a long time! Next morning was Saturday and the only weekly bus to Nairobi left at 9am. However, the Ethiopians, in their love for order and unwillingness to compromise, only opened their side of the border at 9am. When I finally emerged from the endless form-filling demands and crossed the border, it was 9.45 and the bus had left!

A truck was eventually found and I was lifted onto the metal pipe structure over the back, which was filled with large plastic containers of diesel being ‘smuggled’ into Kenya. This ‘cage’ was shared with many others and I can assure you that hanging from ropes and being bumped over impossible roads for 8 hours with fellow passengers smoking and throwing matches and butts onto the diesel containers below, is not the most pleasant of ways to travel! We often had to stop at roadblocks (bribes being paid?) and have armed guards with us, as there is still a bit of banditry going on in these parts.

We left the intensely farmed and overpopulated land of Ethiopia with its tall fluted anthills for the flat, dry and sparsely inhabited semi desert with sensuously shaped anthills. My eyes could scan the horizon once again!

My cultural exposure started the minute a very kind member of 5W (Women Welcome Women WorldWide) and her husband collected me in Marsabit that night. They are Muslims and had built their own house. Twin boys of 12 kindly shared their room with me. The house is calm and ordered and individual family prayers are said without fuss from behind the settee. On the Sunday the boys, dressed in spotlessly clean jelabas (?) went off to the Madrassa (?) to study the Koran and the husband disappeared for the rest of the day. We went shopping in the market and I used my ‘Muslim-dress’ and shawl to cover up, as it was just so ‘right’ to do so. In the house with no piped water or kitchen as we know it, I was kindly shown how to use a small quantity of water with which to wash and how to use the urine-only indoor toilet. It was the end of the dry season and they still had water because they had installed an immense underground tank to collect rainwater. I was told that the majority of people in town had to walk many miles to collect their water.

As Marsabit is isolated and trucks do not generally stop there but continue through the night, it took 5 hours of patient waiting at the local petrol station before a small truck drew up. It only had two Italian mzungus and an Indian driver in the cab and nothing/nobody in the back! I hitched and they kindly let me jump into the rattling, bumping empty truck. Only after the 6 hours of deafening shake-up (two gun-wielding guards joined us for part of the trip) did I realize how my poor rucsac had been shaken and damaged because it was so loose. Normally, vehicles are so crowded that everything is tightly packed. The story behind this empty truck was once again revealing of the intransigence of the Ethiopians. The two Italian men had been traveling down and up Africa for months in their own two 4x4s. Nowhere else, having crossed 25 borders, were they refused a visa and told to get one two days’ drive back. The poor chaps therefore had to hire the Indian and his truck and travel for two days back to Nairobi, get the visas and then return. Needless to say, they were furious and I thought of them a few days later when I heard that this road had been closed because there had been ‘rebel-activity’ shortly after we passed. But it is far from the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency and I am in no way exposing myself to areas of danger…. Coward!

In Osiola, I stayed with a local 5W member whose family is strongly Roman Catholic (this church is even stronger in Uganda) and who is a teacher at the local school in the nearby army barracks. The small two-bedroom house is home for five people, but they insisted on giving me a room to myself! Lovely local food was prepared and explained and one was introduced to many curious neighbours and visitors. Such hospitality is to be encountered over and over again. An adjacent Evangelical church was having a weeklong recruitment (?) and the loudspeakers were directly outside the window. One just had to think of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church’s loudhailers and the various other Evangelical outpourings I had to endure in West Africa, to know that this will not be the last time…I knew somebody in Ethiopia who was part of a movement to stop these loud overnight services and even in Uganda, there was talk of curbing them. The following day was peacefully spent with the local RC priest giving up his busy schedule to drive us around. Evidence of the devastating floods in this semi-desert area just a few weeks before could be seen outside the village.

I was now in a less isolated area and it was only a bus ride away to Nanyuki where the cousin of a friend in the UK met me. She had conveniently come to town to attend her yoga lesson and after getting soft cheeses and wine (hey, I am supposed to be in ‘primitive’ Africa!), we drove to their glorious homestead which would sit comfortably in Surrey. All the time, Mount Kenya with its snow-white glaciers caught one’s attention as it loomed on the nearby horizon. These ‘ex-pat’ flower-farmers are members of the permanent generations who have kept their love of Kenya and their way of life alive. Children go to boarding schools (often the secondary ones in South Africa) and entertainment is around the estate with tennis court, horses etc. or at the local, exclusive Club where all manner of facilities are available. Needless to say, it was a tremendous joy to mix in my own culture once again. It sounds snobbish, but one cannot deny one’s upbringing and I am not adverse to a bit of western luxury! Just to have knives and forks in place around a place-setting can be mighty pleasing! The flower farming industry is very impressive and, contrary to the current ‘anti-air miles’ movement in Europe, the flowers and vegetables grown here are still cheaper to produce and use less energy than if they were to be grown in Europe. The only way to show protest is to not buy such items out of season, but our tastes have evolved with refrigeration to such an extent that we in the West expect to get flowers, avocadoes, green beans and tomatoes throughout the year. And yes, the farmers commute with their private airplanes between farms and pay low wages to thousands of workers. On the other hand, if they did not take the risks (weather, change in fashion, disease, low yield, cost of pesticides, fertilizers and airfreight), then the thousands of workers who are feeding large families but without constant managerial cares, will be totally unemployed. I explained this risk-taking to a local woman much later when she mentioned the profits of these farmers to me. Ironically, she had employed 30 people herself a few years ago and spoke with longing about her little industry, which had gone bankrupt because one of her clients did not pay the bill for goods she had supplied. When I explained that the white farmers have the same worries and could also go bankrupt if they did not manage things carefully, her face lit up and she said,”oh, now I understand”. Despite this whitewash, I am very concerned about the depletion of water where the local Rift Valley Lakes are used for irrigation. That is another argument which saddens me immensely, although it is not just the exploiting farmers who are responsible for water-loss, depleted fish–stocks, degraded water-quality, increased diseases and so on. Poor Lake Victoria is dying at a very rapid rate.

Arriving in the CBD of Nairobi was a real culture shock! Broad, clean and smooth pavements, no beggars or hawkers, endless little eating places and Internet cafes (oh, sorry, they are called cyber cafes here) made one reel with wonder! This is a real western-style city center and I have not seen anything similar for a long time. Lagos and Accra were too ‘African’ in their busyness. So, OK, the city authorities have made it illegal to beg or sell on the streets (beggars appear at night) as the city is the financial capital of Africa and appearances have to be maintained. Ex-pats live in comfortable, protected suburbs and the streets are crowded with rush-hour traffic and endless busses packed with workers. People are very smartly dressed and the women have incredibly ornate/intricate hairstyles. One can say it is a mixture of many cultures, but, sadly, they still maintain their separateness. Despite a large group of people who have integrated, there is still a cultural divide which makes the Indian shopkeepers and white businessmen separate from the many different local cultures who man the offices and shops. I think of South Africa which is far more integrated and where the large white population means that there are e.g. shop assistants of all nations serving together in a supermarket/dress shop. Later, in Uganda, I am pleasantly surprised by the far better mix of people throughout. The Colonial culture in Kenya was far too well established for members to give up their ‘rights’, whereas the Protectorate status of Uganda meant that the mzungus never owned land and only furthered the administrative aspects in the country.

While in Nairobi, I read about the sudden and total destruction of ‘illegal’ squatters’ homes one night. It left 3000 people homeless without any form of compensation. It was being done in the guise of making Nairobi beautiful. There is a ministry of Beautification and Tree-planting which is only denying the local inhabitants a relaxed way of life. Thus the visitor can say; “Nairobi is one of the most beautiful cities in the world”. In the streets outside my hotel, while I was there, the authorities had dug great holes in the pavements and planted small decorative trees with cement surrounds which took up about half of the pavement width. This on over-crowded pavements! The tradition of beautification for the visitor is universal (think of London which is already being transformed in the East End for the 2012 Olympic Games) and I was amused in Addis Ababa when the street railings were suddenly given red and white paint for the African Union Conference earlier this year. The beggars in sensitive streets were removed for three days. In Mombasa there was frenzied activity to redesign and plant the parks and streets for the World Cross-Country races (a few weeks later when I returned after the event, the hastily planted shrubs looked very sad). In Kampala the activity to prepare hotel rooms and beautify the streets for the Commonwealth Heads of State Conference in November is a daily item in the newspapers. The Queen has to be very used to the smell of freshly-painted walls…

I settled into Nairobi and enjoyed visits to the ex-pat suburb of Karen (Karen Blixen’s house is an interesting museum of those early days) where Cynthia, the anthropologist I had befriended in Addis, was a constantly welcoming hostess. Such a pleasure to have interesting conversations and to borrow books!

The Indian Ocean lured, however. As a child and during my student days much time was spent in battling the waves of this beloved ocean on the east coast of South Africa. Here on the equator, there is hardly any surf and one has the compensation of snorkeling over coral reefs instead. The train to Mombasa was an experience I repeated quite a few times during the following weeks. It is sadly neglected and the so-called improvements promised by the SA Company which took over in 2006, have not materialized. But the remnants of the Colonial era are potent and I enjoyed the experience despite the lack of lighting and awareness that things could be stolen while one was in the restaurant car or sleeping.

In Mombasa I decided to ‘push out the boat’ and joined a tourist group who were taken south for a few hours and then into a boat from which we could float next to the local dolphins and drop over the side to snorkel over the coral. This is a Marine Park and it is good to know that the area is being protected. On the island we were given very elaborate courses of crustaceans and the tourists were given an exciting walk through the local village. Well, being used to this, it was just so embarrassing for me to see how every doorway is festooned with things to sell at hugely inflated prices. But the visitors could go home and say they had ’slummed it’. What upset me more though was the fact that I had been amongst the beautifully slim Ethiopians for so long and had not been exposed to ‘normal’ tourists for so long. Thus I was a bit horrified to say the least at having to face these half-naked bloated white bodies from the West. Apart form the insult to the culture of their host country, what the locals must think of our sedentary and over-fed lives, I dare not imagine!

Escaping the over-touristy south, I moved north towards Lamu, the centre of over-touristy exploitation! But on the way, I found a magnificent estuary with a small hotel on the edge of the water where I was the only guest. One could have a beer and meals under the terrace roof and watch the sun set over the water and bush. Walks along the edge of the tidal estuary lead to the sea and a ride in a dugout catamaran on the sublimely peaceful estuary was just heaven! For those who need a total ‘away-from-it-all’ experience, this is it! And for a spoilt traveler like me who really does not need a ‘break’, it is still magical and worth using for the unwinding we all need. Remember the name Kilifi….

Lamu is all it is renowned for….An island in a protected archipelago with an Islamic town of tiny alleyways where one can generally touch both sides of the high buildings, where the 3000 donkeys are the only means of transport and one can eat freshly caught fish, hire a boat to go to the many islands and snorkel or just swim and play by the white sandy beaches.

After Lamu I took the train from Nairobi in a westerly direction to the shores of Lake Victoria. Here the 5W members who live in Kisumu and environs entertained me royally. Days were spent in going from one home to another, always being offered margarined bread and sweet milky tea, or a meal of local produce. It was fascinating and I was humbled to be so spoilt. The 5W members are all part of the local Quaker Friends’ congregation. However, when one thinks of the aims of George Fox to have a quiet, contemplative gathering in a hall, one will not find it here! The Sunday services throughout the morning are designed to attract the young people of today. Thus the preacher was enthusiastic in his loud and very active lessons/prayers and singing. The congregation danced and waved and generally filled the church with deafening noise for long sessions. T.I.A. as they say; This Is Africa.

It occurred to me that I had been exposed to many different cultures within a short time. Perhaps this chapter does not do justice to them, but I am aware of the fact that one has to tread gently…

Bale - early January 2007 (published out of order!)

EVEN WITHOUT A COMPANION, IT CAN BE FUN….


Addis Ababa means New Flower. This city is surrounded by the Entoto Hills to the north and, at 2,500 meters, has a very bracing climate. It can take up to three weeks to acclimatize. If you go into the Entoto Hills early in the morning, you can see many athletes training in the even thinner air. Ethiopians are justly famous as long-distance runners.

Addis is also in the middle of the country. If you think of a simple drawing of a flower with petals and make Addis its centre, you can envisage my trips. Each petal is a rough loop: to the Northern Historic Sites and back; to the western Gambella area; to the Eastern Harar area; to the south-eastern Bale mountains area (this trip) and then finally, to the Southern Rift Valley Lakes where I shall be continuing south to the Kenyan border (the stem of the flower). I have seen very little and there is much more to see and know, but being on my own in such a vast country, means that it is not always easy/safe to just go-for-it. That is not as daunting though as the tedium of being stuck in a bus from 5am for 14 hours, which happens far too frequently. Busses do not travel by night, so one has to be up and ready so early to get a seat, although one can wait a few hours before setting off. The Ethiopians do not like fresh air and insist on all windows being closed and curtains drawn to keep cool. So I peep out of cracks/holes in tatty curtains to assess where we are going, but the journey is beginning to loose its appeal. Not that it was any more comfortable when we had our own 4x4 with Ingrid! One still had to endure the bumps…

Two students who had said they would go with me, withdrew because of exams at the
last minute, so I decided to go alone to the Bale Mountains area. It is a very high plateau and includes one of the National Parks where the lush growth ensures more animal and bird life than many other of the so-called Ethiopian National Parks. How does one change centuries of dependence on the land for indigenous people when they are suddenly told that their area of livelihood is now a ‘Park’? It does not encourage lots of wild animals. Thus people remain in many Parks but are slowly being given ultimatums to get out. Hard though when grazing is of a premium and your cattle are hungry. Illegal ‘poaching’ is tolerated.

I reached the area I was going to explore, which is to the west of the Bale Nat. Park , after two days on a bus. Early on the second morning we drove through the village of Bokoji, which is at a high altitude, and is famous for producing many the world’s greatest long-distance runners. Some were out there running beside the bus…

Being completely on my own ensured many stares, comments and giggles. It was not too pleasant as I am still incapable of learning the language and one can get very tired of having to constantly turn left and right to acknowledge greetings or the inevitable crowd of beggars or just children and adults accosting one as a Midas-figure. A ‘white-skin’ really evokes all kinds of images for these people who have only seen them/tourists in lush western films or unthinkingly dishing out coins and notes. We really are considered to have unlimited riches and the expectation is ‘give give give’. So I was very relieved, after a few minutes of searching for the office, to be met by a Guide and to be taken to the HQ of the Integrated Forest Management Plan. This is an Eco Tourism Project which was set up by the very efficient Germans, who know how to create walks in forests. The project is now being run entirely by the locals and all monies go straight into their own pouches. One pays for a Guide, for a horse or two, for the horse-handlers, for the camp-site, for the cleaning lady, for the use of stoves/cooking facilities, for the cooking of the food you bring… Thus it is distributed evenly because, e.g. the horses go back the same night and other local handlers take over the next day. Cleverly though, to maintain standards, the Germans instigated a ‘default system’ which means one pays less if the horses are late or have sores, if the bags are badly loaded, if there is no firewood, toilet paper or tea/sugar and so on. Camp sites are evenly spaced within 2-8 hours’ walk.

It was too late to leave that day and I set out early the next morning with my new Guide on a gari (horse-drawn cart) for the first 2 hours before we had to leave it and handle all out luggage and food for another hour. Base Camp is set on the side of a hill so that one can enjoy the sunrise in anticipation of the trekking ahead. We had a cooked brunch there and then set off with our three horses (they know how to make money!) to the next camp. At times I would get on a horse to see the world from a different perspective, but most of the time one was negotiating stones and eroded ruts or hills on very diverse paths, so that concentration was needed. And when one did need a horse because the going was tough, the horse could not take you anyway. After two days I decided that a horse was an unnecessary luxury. The first night’s camp is at 3460meters and one can enjoy the sunset after a hard day’s trekking. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, unable to breathe properly. It felt as though I was drowning. Altitude sickness…

Despite all the overgrazing and erosion, which is part of the countryside wherever one goes, the mountains and valleys are extremely pleasant to go through and one is very conscious of the different bands of altitude vegetations: lower in the valleys are the very tall Juniper Trees dripping their berries, mosses and lichen-beards (yes, the berries taste like the ones from the bushes in the UK which are used in gin-making). Colombus monkeys with their broom-like tails for balance seem to fly from tree to tree; the vast Hagenia trees (some with their parasitic trees - I cannot remember the name - slowly choking them to death) with fragrant bunches of male/female flowers. The female flowers are elaborately dried, crushed, fermented, distilled and finally used as a medicine. How did they ever discover how to do it?! But that is the secret of African medicine….; then the bands of St. Johns Wort (Hypericum) Trees covered in their wonderful yellow flowers - I did not feel depressed!; this evolves into red-hot-poker-covered grassland and then, higher up, layers of large Erica (heather) Trees which come in two main variations. They look alike, but taste differently and one can tell which is which by the way they have been grazed by the cattle. The preferred taste results in a small cropped bush. Once up on the higher plateau, the inevitable Giant Lobelias take over. These strange plants have a thick stem with a mass of fluted leaves coming out of the top. They look like those giant Christmas balls some authorities erect on lamp stands as decoration for the Festive Season. When we were all recently huddled in Ingrid’s tent during a very sudden and unexpected rainstorm in the Simien Mountains , we were peering out at the Lobelias though the tent entrance and were amused by the rhythm they were setting up. As the horizontal leaves filled with water, they dipped with the weight and then emptily sprung back, causing the scene outside to look like an orchestrated man-made concert. Well, many sculptors have used this effect in water fountains.

One night I was not the only trekker. It was good to share a meal with a young Englishman and we spent the night playing cards and smoking cigarettes until 1am . Fun to be naughty!

Three days of hard walking/climbing left me exhausted but exhilarated. The last day was extra hard as we covered twice the usual distance to get to a town further east than the guides normally go. But I was happy with the effort and looked forward to the next part of the trip. Sadly, I fear that the relations between the Eco-Guides and the official Park-Guides cannot be very good because the person-friendly trails are diverting business from the actual Park where the facilities are not quite so relaxed. One bus-day later, in which we skirted the north of the Bale National Park , and I arrived in the village of Goba from where no busses travel south. A front seat (or at least a 4th of a seat) on a truck was negotiated and we set off early next day to unintentionally catch the beauty of the sunrise. This road south is regarded as the highest all-weather road in Africa . It is suitably spectacular, but was built, like most of the roads in Ethiopia , for military purposes. During the time of the Derg (1974-91), there was only the one main road south to Kenya/Somalia (my flower stalk). In case it was blocked by enemy action, an alternative road was required. Lucky me! If I had had a camera, these are the scenes I would have wanted to photograph. On the other hand, when I think so positively about taking a photo, the images are imprinted on my mind. I remember not so much the lone endemic red jackal in a sea of silver, but just the effect of the world’s largest expanse of Afro-alpine moorland – the 3,500-4,500m high Sanetti Plateau - which is a silver-leaf-covered space as far as one can see.

Then slowly 2,000m downhill with the dust our vehicle created swirling into the cabin as we could not get away from it fast enough. We ended in the Harenna Forest where the contorted tree trunks made me laugh with the images they evoked. This is where a skilled cartoonist rather than a camera can come into its own. Each view of the trees created a different scene: Ladies at a tea party with raised arms and extended pinkies; ‘anyone for tennis?’ as the trunks provocatively swayed in one direction whilst holding a tennis racket; the sight of a large menacing tree saying ‘Boo’ to smaller ones leaning back in fear; ‘lets tango’ as the trunks met and parted in a sexy way. So many delightful scenes to conjure. And then down into the thick forest with very high and straight yellowwood trees (one of my favourites) giving a canopy of shade to the very lush wild coffee trees below. We drove for hours through this delightful forest and I was only sorry that I did not have my own transport so that I could stop and enjoy just being there.

On the open road once again, the scrub countryside is dotted with sculptured termite hills/pipes up to 9m tall. These are pretty straight chimneys, but they reminded me of the enormous structures I first saw in what was then called Northern Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo in the late 1950s. One can but marvel at the organizational skill of so many millions of tiny insects. In Togo I deliberately destroyed a small part of a covered termite pathway across a forest path and then watched how they repaired it within minutes. We can learn a lot from them!

In Dola-Mena I was told that there would be a bus the next day. ‘It leaves at 12’, the driver assured me.

More to the point, I looked forward to a late morning’s relaxation before getting that bus for the 12 hour journey ahead. How stupid can one be?! Having been in Ethiopia for over 5 months, I had not yet learnt my lesson. Most people use the Ethiopian time which starts at 6am as 1am . So what the truck driver had meant, was that I had to be on the bus at 5am my time. It makes sense if one is to travel for 12 hours in daylight. Of course I realized too late what a fool I had been, but it gave me a chance to hang about for three nights waiting for the next bus. One or two trucks did pass my hotel, but they were so laden already, that there was no space for one more person (without a faranji to be nice to, they manage to squeeze 6 people onto the front seat).

Next day was Timkat (Epiphany), one of the holiest days in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church when the holy Tabot (replica of the Ark of the Covenant) is ceremoniously taken to water and the blessed water is then enthusiastically used by the assembled crowds. Reminds one of the holy water of the Ganges in India . The Timket ceremony is very colourful and involves many of the dozens of garishly decorated umbrellas which the grateful/faithful leave as presents for their chosen saint’s church. However, this was Muslim country I had now entered and the Orthodox Church is not very well-presented although the small town river is a good enough source of water for the three local churches to come together.

At the end of the Timkat ceremony, which lasted for three days, I was invited by some participants and priests/deacons to have a drink of the local alcoholic honey wine called tej. We went to a tej-beat (local brew-house) where the lady in charge showed me how it is brewed. Once again, how did they ever discover that a certain bark from a certain tree is the only catalyst which can be used to turn the honey and water mixture into a potent alcoholic drink?! A priest who had had the honour of carrying one of the Tabots sat with a far-away look on his face…and this was not due to the wine!

Although I had been told the meaning of the three stages of coffee drinking which one has to go through in the coffee ceremony, when I asked the family who were later kindly hosting me, they had no idea of what I was talking about. They just did it…:- washing the beans, roasting the beans, wafting the smell of the beans towards the guests, grinding the beans, pouring the powder in the coffee pot, pouring boiling water into the coffee pot, lighting the incense in the little charcoal burner, wafting the smell of the incense towards the guests, arranging at least six small cups on a tray, pouring the coffee into them, adding at least two spoons of sugar to each cup, stirring, handing the cups to guests, adding more boiling water to the coffee pot, adding more incense to the charcoal, sometime during all this also roasting popcorn and offering it around, taking back the now-empty cups and sugaring/pouring coffee all over again (second stage), offering it again with even more popcorn; repeat for the third stage by which time the coffee is weak… all very boring… and you cannot be impolite and leave before the third cup has been consumed. But this is the traditional way in which family/village matters were discussed and resolved.

I had finished my reading matter and indulged in endless card games of patience or protracted walks though the village and the weekly market which produced the usual stares and comments with which I have no patience. Hundreds of camels were for sale. They are regarded as the most cost-effective beasts of burden, but I suppose, as with everything, they have their habitat restrictions and cannot e.g. be used like a small horse in the forests. The coffee industry is big, but I was reminded of the labour-intensity of it when walking past a vast yard where women and children were meticulously sifting through piles of coffee beans to check for impurities and sort the black from the brown. Please appreciate your coffee!!! This enforced stop also gave me an opportunity to catch up on letters to people without email. Postage in Ethiopia is cheap and worth exploiting. But my ‘letters’ had to be written on whatever scraps of paper I could get hold of. This village did not boast such a thing as a kiosk where paper could be bought (I remember seeing one A4 page of paper being sold from a kiosk in Ghana and I suspect the same would apply here) and post-cards are unheard of (at least I did not even try to find some; why should a place that never sees a ‘white-skin’ have a supply?). On the other hand, apart from the usual smattering of David Beckham T-shirts with his larger-than-life photo on them, there were an unusually large number of youths walking about in Arsenal T-shirts. Someone must have obtained a large surplus supply and sold them in the market. I remember somewhere else, in the middle of the remote countryside, a Chelsea supporter telling me that he had bought his whole strip in the local village market.

As one went into a more Muslim-populated area, one also became aware of the active building of new Mosques. I was told that very rich Muslims, to ensure a better place in Heaven, are using their money to build new and larger Mosques. And the habit of stopping the bus for prayers in the sand, suddenly reminded me of the Sahara trips I’d done with mainly Muslin passengers. But they do not always know the exact position of Mecca: I was amused at the football match I attended in the National Stadium some time ago, to see the thousands of fans who found a space to kneel, that they were all directing their prayers in different directions.

From deep in the south (Negele Borena…another interminable hotel overnight stop) and not far from the Somali border, we traveled for 14 hours in a north-westerly direction. This bus had only 5 shortish breakdowns and an incredible throng of passengers. I was thinking that I had never seen such a crush of people in a bus, but then reminded myself that one can see it daily during rush-hour on the London underground trains. Imagine that crowded scene between the underground train carriage doors, but with the added inconvenience of bags, packages, grain bags, chickens, baskets, crates, plastic containers, goats and so on crammed in as well. And this is for hours over a bumpy road! By the way, African intelligence once again, but how did they find out? If you tie a small piece of string between chickens’ legs, although they can walk about, they will not move and will calmly squat (and can easily be stored under a seat), but any other kind of restraint and they will squawk and protest. I have long been in awe of the assistant to the driver who manages the customers and baggage. Like minibus taxi assistants, they have a phenomenal memory for who paid what and who still needs change or is getting off where. Maybe the fact that this assistant was chewing chat helped him to keep order…

Shashemene is a convergence town on the road to Kenya and southern routes to the east and west. But it is also known for its lawlessness. I had to be very careful in the dark, looking for a bed (hotels were full, so any bed would do!), late at night. It is not the first time I have slept in an active brothel. Here in Ethiopia prostitution is totally accepted as a way of life and there in none of that Western stigma attached to it. Next morning in the dark at 4.30am a kind couple who spoke some English, asked a walker going in the direction of the bus station, to accompany me. They told me that thieves are very active at that time of the night. I suppose it makes sense as hundreds of passengers converge on the bus station in the dark.

Just outside Shashemene there is an area known as the official home of the Ethiopian World Jamaica Federation. Don’t ask! Known as ‘ Jamaica ’, the area was given to the Rastafarians by Emperor Haile Selassie. In 1930, when Ras Tafari was crowned and became known as Emperor Haile Selassie, the ‘return to Africa’ movement of Marcus Garvey in Jamaica saw this as the fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy of “Kings will come out of Africa ”. Selassie was accorded divinity and a new religion created; Rastafarianism. He will always be known to his followers as Ras Tafari. The smoking of marijuana in Ethiopia is forbidden, although the eating of chat is very legal and is now one of the country’s main exports to the Middle East . Drug-use always fascinates me: One can drink as much alcohol as one likes (and destroy families, livers or kill people with drunken driving and fights), one can smoke cigarettes legally and also cost the State lots in medical bills, yet other drugs, which may not necessarily be more socially harmful, are banned. As a very practical person, none of this makes sense to me. ‘ Jamaica ’ has been raided whilst many thousands of chat-chewers lay comatose in the streets of Ethiopia .


The road from Shashemene passes the Southern Rift Valley Lakes. Ah! I thought. I can see them from the bus! But apart from still being tired after lack of sleep and the fact that there was only a small space to peer through the curtain, not much could be seen from the road and I slept most of the way back to Addis. There had been a long-standing arrangement that I could accompany the students when they did their familiarization trip of these lakes on the 22nd January. This was as a de facto compensation for the hours of unpaid work I had done at the College. I was still going to pay for my food, but they would supply me with a tent with those of the students. Without the lecturers informing me, I accidentally found out that the whole trip was postponed. My moan is just to illustrate the lack of organization from the government-employed staff. This reflects a daily frustration to get anything done by people who have small salaries and are not motivated. Hence the trip I am writing about now. I just hope that the proposed exploration will still go ahead so that I can see the Lakes before I leave.

My second night back, I attended a film at the French Cultural Centre where excellent programs are arranged. The British Council does not even have an occasional lecture. The occasion was the first public showing of a film made about the recent return of the large stele to Axum which had been removed by the Italians at the start of their occupation. Mussolini had wanted to rank himself with the Roman Emperors of the past who had e.g. brought Egyptian monoliths from that country after its conquest. The film was fascinating and is a good example about power-politics and the bureaucracy involved. Prof. Richard Pankhurst, the foremost authority on Ethiopian matters and long a hero of mine, had started the ball rolling for the return of the stele over 20 years ago. He and his committee for the return of this stolen artifact managed to alert the Ethiopian public about the forgotten assault on their cultural heritage when they attended a pan-African football match in the National Stadium. During half-time, they marched with models, flags and petitions around the field in view of millions of spectators. Suddenly Ethiopians were aware of what had been done to them. But it still took over 20 years to shame the Italians into returning it in a jumbo jet cargo plane. Prof. Pankhurst, his wife and I had a chat before the film and reception. I had twice been invited to tea with them through their friend Cynthia, the anthropologist, but could never make it. Now we met at last. I was thrilled, but also acutely aware that, if he wanted to get organized, he could well shame the British Museum into returning the Parthenon Marbles to Greece ! Just to remind those readers who may want to agree with this sentiment, the parts of the aforementioned marble frieze which is lovingly displayed and cared for in the British Museum, were legitimately bought at the time by Lord Elgin from the authorities in Athens. The pieces not removed, were neglected and/or destroyed for nearly 200 years before the Greeks began to realize that they had a treasure lying in the sun and polluted Athenian air. How’s that for a Hilda-prejudice?! By the way, Sylvia Pankhurst, Richard’s mother, became fascinated with Ethiopia at the time of the Italian Invasion and became such a friend of the country, that she lies buried in a prominent grave in front of the cathedral.

This could well be my last blog for some time. Kenyan internet facilities are no doubt better than in this country where the government likes to keep control. Here mobile telephone users who would love to use the facilities of SMS texting (think of the way this poor country could benefit from such cheap contacts), have had that facility removed. They might be able to organize a sudden demonstration against the government… But in the Great Ethiopian Run in Addis a few weeks ago, the TV cameras had a job filming the thousands of runners in the streets of Addis without showing the V-for-Victory sign (the accepted Opposition sign) participants were waving at them. It was the 4th year of this international 10km fun run and cannot now be banned… 1,000s of Opposition leaders are still in prison…
Ingrid took photos when she was here…