THERE IS ONE PAVED ROAD OUT OF ETHIOPIA...

... and David and I took it with relish.

(I feel comfortable making this statement given that I have now crossed through all of the open borders in the country, and none of them without bruises on my butt and dust up my nose.)

Satisfaction in the smooth exit aside, I have really enjoyed Ethiopia, and summarizing all the various experiences I've had over the four weeks we've spent here is not an easy task. But I will try..

Most Important thing first, The Food: MARVELOUS

Ethiopian food is, in a word, MARVELOUS. Generally, meals consist of a saucy type of dish, perhaps meaty or soupy, served directly or in a small round dish atop a huge (no, really) crepe-like pancake called injera. The courses are often spiced deliciously with red berbere, and on "fasting" (non-meat) days, you get to eat the just-as-delicious vegetarian "fasting food".

A few of the usual suspects:

Shiro - absolutely delicious yellow-orange chickpea-butter puree, often served as a fasting alternative (tegabino) but sometimes served with meat (bozena shiro). MAGNIFICENT.

Wat - a sort of tasty stew with hunks of meat, the most common being doro wat (chicken). Rarely ordered by me because the meat comes still on the bone, and you have to use your fingers to grip the slippy, saucy flesh and rip it off. Let's not talk about the state my hands are usually in when I'm eating. (Though I must give the Ethiopians credit, more than almost anyone else they provide you with a chance to wash your hands before eating.) Also popular is the extremely spicy kai wat.

Tibs - bite-sized hunks of pan-fried meat, usually lamb, served in a red berbere sauce. usually spicy, but sometimes a bit tough. David and I concurred, this was our least-favorite dish.

Injera - the bread it's all served on. About two feet wide (the edges are often folded in when it has to fit on a normal dinner plate) and 8mm thick, injera doesn't have much of a taste but soaks up other flavors wonderfully. To eat the gooey main dishes, just use your right hand to rip off some injera, scoop up some goodness with it and cram the whole tasty bundle into your mouth.

Maharaberoisvxneubweolmijr (spelling approximated) - this m-word dish is the best idea ever, and roughly translates to "a little bit of everything". Your injera will come heaped with little piles of all sorts of goodness, some spicy, some not, perhaps also little piles of raw veg to much on, and disgusting purple beets that you can feed to David, quick before they stain and taint all the rest of your food.

Western food, especially Italian food, is also widely available, and has been very smoothly integrated into local cuisine. I have several times seen Ethiopians scooping up tomato-sauce spaghetti with handfuls of injera. Unfortunately, Western food seems to dominate the dessert menu, having replaced whatever national sweets tradition may have once existed, and I have despaired of ever finding something like a truly "Ethiopian" treat.

Best Thing Eaten: Shiro, whether tegabino or bozena, was generally the best part of my life any time it happened.

Best Thing Drunk: delicious coffee, locally grown and freshly ground, served floating on a half-cup sea of hot milk and topped high with white foam in the national drink Ethiopians inexplicably call a macchiato.

Worst Thing Eaten: Most of the desserts I tirelessly forced upon myself in a desperate search for a good Ethiopian dessert are serious contenders for this prize, but ultimately I gotta pick a local winner: the juice. Infallibly, when Ethiopians think of juice, they think of.. avocado puree. I couldn't make this up. Stir that into your fresh papaya juice with a squeeze of lime. FOUL.

Ethiopian Money:

Minted in paper denominations of 1 Birr (USD $0.09), 5 Birr (blue), 10 (maroony brown), 50 (pale orange), and the lovely 100 Birr (jungle green). In general the bills are in far better shape than those of the Sudan, though the 1 Birr bills are usually of a hue closer to black than to their original white. (Acquisition of a brand new 1-Birr bill is actually the only way I learned what color they originally are.)
The coins, on the other hand, are often quite brilliantly shiny new. There is a large silver coin (0.50 Birr), a small silver coin (0.25), a large gold (0.10) and a small gold (0.05). I spent about two and a half weeks hunting for the theoretically necessary 0.01-Birr coin, but eventually gave up after repeated restaurant bill-roundings to the nearest 0.05. I despaired of ever finding this coin, which would be worth less than one-tenth of an American cent, until the magical day when David presented me with a whole fistful of them. They look and feel just like the one-yen coins we used to have as bingo chips in class (it was cheaper), and are worth almost as much.

I must say, I'm relatively impressed with the state of the money - the bills are newish and, other than the 1-Birr, mostly intact, and the coins are in great shape. In lieu of my own theories on why Sudanese money was in such poor shape, David has postulated that it reflects the confidence of the populace in their government. To him, it indicates simply that banks- the authority by which unacceptable money is filtered out of circulation- do not enjoy full patronage among the populace.
I suppose he's probably right.

New Hygienic Lows:

In Ethiopia, we saw toilet seats again. It was a pretty exciting moment (see post on my brief stint in the high life), but it led inevitably to another crack in my cleanliness facade..

Up until this point in my life, I was psychologically unable to perch upon a toilet seat that did not belong to myself, family, or a close friend. I cannot justify this rationally; it's simply a fact that I learned to deal with.

At least in the case with clean facilities, I no longer suffer from this handicap.


Music:
Unfortunately.. I did not find myself falling for the pop scene.

Ethiopian pop music tends to feature the same single synchopated but relatively uncreative beat, offered in two speeds, repeated without variety for the full ten-minute duration of every single Ethiopian pop song.
The singing, if you could call it that, seems to consist of the vocalist wildly flinging his or her voice rapidly around a series of far-flung notes. In the case of female singers, it deteriorates to a frantic, high-pitched shrieking that, when blasted at maximum volume in your ears continuously for more than a few hours trapped in a stuffy bus, makes your thoughts run along dangerous lines.

Our feelings for and impression of Ethiopian pop coalesced into one single extremely popular Teddy Afro song. David and I heard this song many dozens of times while here, and upon hearing it "one last time" on the morning of our last day, we both smiled that we would never hear it again.
Stupid fools we were, for we did not anticipate that in our last four hours before actually crossing the Kenyan border, we would hear it four more times. We both swore that it was actually still playing in the streets behind us as we walked out.

Thankfully, Ethiopian music, though faithfully and fervently loved by Ethiopians, enjoys little popularity elsewhere. I can't imagine why..

People:

After the Sudan, the first thing I noticed about Ethiopia is that there are simply a heck of a lot more women around. It's probably only a normal amount, but it was an amazing sight after the pseudo-Sharia states of the Sudan.
The second thing I noticed (also a contrast) was their hair. Beautifully styled in dozens of ways, braided, straightened, curled, beaded, half-veiled, or plaited along the scalp, it's absolutely stunning to look at. (And the way the women carry themselves, you can tell they know it too.)

This is another part of the national psyche that I respect and admire: Ethiopians do tend to have a noticeable pride in themselves, their ethnic identity, and their homeland (though they might not always identify this last as Ethiopia). And they have a lot to be proud of; no matter where you go within these borders, their country is stunning, historically rich, and fascinatingly diverse.

Other than that.. I will be honest. It's hard for me to fairly assess the Ethiopian character, since the national attitude towards foreigners (faranji) is disdainful, openly mocking, or opportunistic. There were of course cases of Ethiopians who were friendly and kind, and who treated us with respect (especially in Tigray or the ethnically Somalian regions), but we always felt lucky to find them. Sadly, such people were soon made harder to find by the defensive attitude both David and I adopted to protect ourselves: suspicion by default of anyone who approached us, bordering on downright hostility if they proved to be tenacious accompaniment. Many well-meaning, curious, but shy Ethiopians could have been put off by that. And so our international understanding deteriorates with each new foreigner instead of improving, as foreigners carry away stories of being mobbed and scammed, and locals hold memories of tourist coldness and hostility. It's not an easy problem to solve, but I think re-assessing the way we think about NGOs and the implementation of foreign aid could be one place to start.

It's like a tight spiral staircase, international charity is.. a theoretically beautiful concept, and one I support whole-hearedly, but one that is not without serious implementation challenges. And if you're not careful in how you construct it, it's going to end up hurting the very people it's meant to serve.

New Words Learned: Amharic (with a touch of Tigrayan and Oromo)

I made some progress with Amharic and really enjoyed using it at every opportunity, though unfortunately I didn't get very much past the "survival Amharic" level. Tigrayan, while fun to hear, offered several sounds reminiscent of Arabic that I could never manage to produce from my own throat.

Telling phrases: I hate to say it, but "bakachu HIDOU!" (Please leave us alone) came in handy more than once.

(It was necessary for me to learn 'hiccup' in a variety of local languages. Sikuta, hikta, nahuda, higo, and ekisuu managed to imprint themselves decently enough that I can remember them all, but unfortunately not well enough for me to always get the right word in the right region.)

Best Scam: So many of our early-morning bus-rides end up with us waiting to depart in a poorly-lit gravel parking lot with a beautiful blanket of stars overhead. I have always loved stargazing, and never miss a chance to stand around like an idiot, head back and mouth open, staring up, to piece together the few shapes I know in the sky.
Doing this in Shashamene, I ignored my usual orbiting contingent of hopeful scam artists, until one demanded my attention with a highly creative ploy: noticing my gaze, he pointed at the sky and then at me and brusquely declared, "NO BUSINESS!" He then stuck out his hand and intimated in the worst of English that as a foreigner, I owed him payment for enjoying so fully 'his' night sky.
I can't actually call this a "worst experience" 'cos it frankly made me laugh my pants off.. which I shamelessly (though not literally) did right in the face of the enterprising star-businessman. And David did, too, when I told him.

Best Experience: In rural Wukro, we met Bereket, a guy employed by the awesome Tigray Tourism Commission to lead us up into the rock mountains of the countryside, ascending to the area's famous centuries-old, rock-hewn churches. The churches, amazing though they were, ended up playing second fiddle (for me anyway) to the incredible view obtained from the top of these cliffs - it looked just like New Mexico! - and the delightful experience of clambering around on them in the fresh air, enjoying the unfeigned, jovial banter of my first Ethiopian friend.

Could I live here? My experience living in Ethiopia would probably be a very challenging and very rewarding one, and while I do think I would ultimately end up loving the country, I think I probably would leave it for the same reason I sadly left Japan - I would never, ever, truly be welcomed as belonging.

Classic Quote: Here in Ethiopia, in many ways the most challenging country so far, David and I have often encountered an entrenched, unquestioned lack of understanding between the locals and tourists who come here. The expectation of pens, the impression of coldness, the false ulterior friendliness.. all are indicative and causal of the strange barrier that has risen so often here to prevent genuine affection between people of different cultures.

One odd phrase came to symbolize this mutual misunderstanding for me: celebrating my birthday with a drink all around, David and I were both surprised to hear the locals cheerfully toast me in unison, "Welcome the Dead!"

I politely toasted back and sipped my wine, working up the courage to ask a moment later why in the world this would be an appropriate birthday phrase.

"Welcome the dead?" They had no idea what I was talking about. They had actually only been wishing me a Happy Birthday.. Melkani Lidet.

Mikele Lidet.. Welcome the Dead, indeed.

24 ! ! !

(February 26th, 2009)

I spent my 21st birthday wandering the streets of Venice on the last day of Carnivale, en masque, ultimately getting serenaded by a flock of large, drunk Italian chickens.

The next year, though less of a Kodak moment, was no less joyous as I spent it in Texas’s best medical center getting the MRI that would prove my four-year-long (now six) hiccupping stint is not, in fact, indicative of a brain tumor.

Birthday 23, though I wasn’t expecting anything, turned out to be just as delightful, as my entire elementary school threw me surprise birthday celebrations, complete with Ingrish renditions of Haapi Baasudei from every staff, teacher, and child (and awesome homemade cards).


Given such a run of luck with birthdays, I hardly could have expected anything special from this year, but again I was wrong – and David truly made it memorable. From seeing my first zebra herds – UP CLOSE! – on white savannah grasses and managing to sneak past at least a dozen crocs in Lake Chamo of Ethiopia’s rift valley, to photographing pelicans, storks, herons, and eagles fishing and almost inciting a hippo charge, I’d be hard-pressed to say it didn’t set a new high for birthdays.

Even better, of course, was that the crocs didn’t decide to try out American flesh instead of pelican; that the hippo decided we weren’t worth the energy after his first warning leap; and that the huge tse-tse flies buzzing about us all day landed elsewhere than on me. In other words, that I successfully survived 24 complete years of seriously fantastic living on this planet. And to prove that survival effort (for which my parents do not give me nearly enough credit), here are 24 ways in which we have skirted probably-fine-but-potentially-really-unpleasant situations so far on this trip, such that I am alive.. to see my 24th.


1) avoiding the infamous Nile River parasites
2) not alarming or annoying the trigger-happy military guards outside Bashir’s palace in the capital
3) battling off in a four-day war the triple-attack eye/throat/stomach virus
4) extricating ourselves on the Day of Rage from the sudden angry mob in Omdurman
5) not getting bitten by the wild and possibly rabid dogs that charged us in the Kareima desert (they were chased away with rocks by locals)
6) sustaining 140 bug bites in a single night with no lasting infection
7) slipping under the radar of the ICC backlash in the Sudan that, despite the BBC’s warnings, didn’t result in nasty foreigner-targeted violence (for us, anyway)
8) keeping a cool head and a tight grip during the great Shihedi fistfight of the 18-year-old male population
9) not sliding off the seriously slippery rocks in my slippy flip-flops at the bottom of Tis Isat, the Smoking Waterfall and the source of the Blue Nile
10) managing with a great force of will to retain all of my body parts (and most of my things) in the 4 a.m. Lalibela bus-crush
11) walking away from the Great Bump of the Dire Dawa border bus that almost rearranged my spine
12) just barely managing to keep my footing on the sheer rock-faces we scaled to reach the Tirayan rock-hewn monasteries (or, more honestly, timing my fall so that when it happened, someone else was there to grab my hand)
13) not having to spend the night of February 10th out on the streets of Djibouti
14) getting hopelessly stuck in deep Somalian desert sand, but not without rescue in the form of the next LandRover
15) religiously using Purell to ward off Hepatitis for the first three weeks of this trip (during which my innoculation was not yet effective.. oops)
16) meeting only with the crappiest of aims from the glass-bottle-hurling kids in Berbera
17) not chancing upon the occasional suicide bomber or other interesting fanatical militant during our time in the Somaliland
18) feeding a half-wild Harar hyena mouth-to-mouth for the sake of a picture and David's amusement
19) not tipping over or crashing (miraculously enough) in any one of a number of crazy bush-taxi rides
20) not angering the defensive, nursing warthog upon whose den we stumbled in Bale Mountain National Park
21) remembering with remarkable reliability to take my malaria pill every Tuesday
22) not catching the malevolently squinting eye of the preying crocodiles of Lake Chamo as they floated by us in their deceptively innocent log-like way
23) quickly getting away from (and thus losing the interest of) the angry hippos who started to charge us
AND no. 24) surviving the last, the smallest, and probably the most serious threat yet of the trip, the huge black and yellow tse-tse flies who buzzed around us all day on my birthday, innocent bugs infamous for their coma-inducing and occasionally fatal bite.

Yessir, we have survived all these (and more).. and I'm officially 24 !

The Other Ethiopia

Re-entering Ethiopia from the Somaliland land border, I admit I sighed a bit with anticipation at what awaited me. After a week of respite, I still wasn't ready for the screams of FARANJI!!! MONEY!!! and throngs of adults- older than I am- insisting that my 23-year-old self is responsible for their family's maintenance. I will admit it, I gritted my teeth on that border a bit.

But I was wrong.

Upon arrival in Jijiga, in the eastern and culturally more Somalian area, David and I did our usual scheme where one of us goes unburdened to locate and arrange a cheap hotel, and one guards le baggage. I was on guard duty at the corner of two streets, and soon enough attracted the attention of a boy. He held out his hand to me repeatedly, asking for money, so wholly undeterred by my lack of interest and my polite refusals that I tried my old trick and began to sing. So I stood there with our stuff, leaning on David's bag and singing the French national anthem, while he kept me company with his hand out, chiming in with his refrain of "money.. money, money." A typical scene.

But not for long. Within moments a man ran up to the boy, grabbed him by the arm, and hauled him bodily away a few meters to lecture him very seriously in Somali. I was shocked. I stopped singing and, jaw half-open in mid-Allons, started staring instead.

Then the most fantastic thing happened.

Still angry, the man came back to lecture me, just as severely and in just the same tone he had used with the boy,
"DON'T give him money!! If you do, this will become our CULTURE!!"

I wanted to marry him.

Unfortunately he was less interested in me, and stalked proudly away.
I gazed fondly after.

It wasn't just him, either: a few minutes later I acquired another beggar boy, and soon after he too was scolded and chased away, this time by two passing woman. I couldn't believe it. Could it be a coincidence?? It was at this point that I realized that there had been no crowds of would-be scammers around me; I had not been beseeched by adults for money; in fact, few people were really paying me much attention at all. Was I in the right country?

Amazing but true. Throughout the rest of our time in that region, we experienced remarkably less begging and con-artistry than is normal for the northern, touristy regions, and I even managed to create delightful (if fleeting) friendships with various women shopkeepers and sweet-sellers in the marketplace. (Mostly just because I knew the Somalian word for 'thank you' and 'hiccup'.) Still, this was an Ethiopia I had not expected, an Ethiopia I would have foolishly denied.. but an Ethiopia that very much deserves to be included.

So, I would now like to make an addendum to my previous impressions, and specify that they do not accurately represent Ethiopia as a whole. While I would bet my hijab that many visitors to Amhara, Tigray, or the capital have felt as I have, it must be said that another Ethiopia does exist.

My Favorite Almost-Country

Drumroll please... and I present to you, my beloved (for you are beloved) readers.... TADA! Somaliland!!! Is it a country? Depends who you ask!! Is it long for this world?? One can only hope...

The People
I have only three words to say about this: I. Love. Somalilanders. They have an attitude that is at once laidback and enthusiastic. Don't ask me to explain this.

About foreigners, Somalilanders are exuberantly curious, often shamelessly so, and they greeted our appearance in their almost-country with overwhelming delight. (And assurances of how safe it was, followed by admonishments that we weren't travelling with a body of armed guards.) This delight and curiosity, especially from women, was at times so energetic as to make me (the bold Westerner) a bit SHY - as when a group of giggling women my own age screamed and busted out camera phones to snap my picture. Suddenly and inexplicably horrified, I whirled around and covered my face with the edge of my black hijab (well, actually it's only dark, dark brown - the black was a bit sombre for me). They were not deterred in the slightest, and chased me for several blocks, catching me as I walked out of shops or dashing around in front of me, phones held aloft, to get that shot, until I finally gave up and, laughing, stood still so they could come up and get an un-blurry close-up. (David permitted himself to be photographed as well.)

The 'curiosity' actually extended a bit further with him - several modestly-veiled and (in theory) conservative Muslim women came right up to David when I wasn't around and informed him outright, "I would like to know you!"

Hmmm...

Food: Spicy but Plain
Unfortunately, the country's exciting security situation and fun national attitude does not extend so far as their palette, and I found Somalian food to be rather dull. Rice and spaghetti are basically the staple of very meal we had, and the toppings varied very little. Typically, camel meat with some vegetable shreds and oil. The camel meat provided the only variability, in its degrees of toughness.
Like the Sudan, there was also plenty of fried street food on offer: doughnuts, dough balls, triangle-shaped samosas, and my favorite, a rich, almost scone-flavored dense cake fried to a thick, brown crispy and vaguely sweet crust. Good anytime, fabulous when piping hot.
Worst Thing Eaten: the third time I had the same rice-veg-camel meat dish, it was served upon a platter that had apparently been cleansed exclusively with sand. It was very much noticeable.
Best Thing Eaten: Despite the boring mains, Somalians have hit upon the perfect food for breakfast. They prepare a large, thin, slightly tough pancake for breakfast, a perfect flavor mix between Ethiopian injera and a French crepe, which is delicious alone and even better with a sprinkling of sugar. After the first sampling, I insisted we have them every morning.

New Linguistic Horizons: Somaliland was basically an Arabic refresher, though I did manage to get a sparse smattering of Somali thrown in there. Mostly pleasantries (and the local word for hiccup). However I am also lazy, and failing to get Somalian numbers straight in my head, I just became quick to ask before every price negotiation, "Tat kallim bil Arabi?"
Telling phrases: I managed to imprint one new phrase into my mind upon our belated afternoon arrival that first day: "WaandaaLanahay" - "I'M TIRED."

Money (or, my brief stint as a high-roller)
Given that Somaliland is technically a pseudo-legal country, the money printed and circulated by the government kind of feels like play-money. And it's worth almost as much!

The bill of choice here is the lovely blue 500-Shilling note, the king of all Somali denominations (of which there are three). This juggernaut, which crowds out the lesser yellow 100-shilling note and puny orange 50-shilling note so effectively that they are hard to find for a money-fiend like me, is worth roughly US$0.08. Given that prices are not actually THAT ridiculously low, paying for a hotel room, a meal, even a candy bar requires a stack of bills as thick as your hand. Immediately after exchanging money the first time, David and I retreated to the privacy of our hotel to sort of our stacks. Sitting on the bed with piles of rubber-banded bills scattered around me, I felt deliciously like a money launderer.
(Pathetically, this is the closest I've ever come to organized crime.)

I was crushed to realize that no coins are minted here at all. But honestly, how could they be? Surely it would cost more than four-tenths of a cent for the metal to make even a 25-shilling piece...

Classic Quote: Arriving in Hargeisa that first afternoon, after the Wild Night Ride of No Sleep that became the Never-ending Sleepless Day Ride Until 2 p.m., the only thing David or I cared about was a nap. For whatever reason, I made it into my bed quicker (a rare feat), leaving it his responsibility to turn out the light when he came back from the bathroom. He failed to do this, heading straight for his bed, prompting the snarling remark from me that can only be read as indicative of my extreme fatigue: "You didn't turn out the light, you stinking waste of flesh."

(If it redeems the gentleness of my personality at all: although I intended to unleash my verbal attack with a straight scowl, I wasn't quite cranky enough and only got as far as "stinking waste" before I began to giggle.)

New Hygienic Lows: I no longer suffer qualms about walking on bathroom floors in my bare feet, though I try not to because it's embarassing how I leave footprints on the tile.

Worst Experience: The oddly aggressive children of Somaliland are perhaps only compensating for their parents' extreme peaceableness (and don't forget democratic values), but we have several times had some alarming encounters with them and their weapons of choice, rocks. (Though if a glass bottle is at hand, that will do as well.)

The worst of these was a little girl with a fistful of money who demanded unabashedly that we give her more. When we refused she followed us, ultimately launching a swift pickpocket attempt on my backpack. She snatched a plastic bag from the side, and and held it up triumphantly at me with enraging insolence as she started to dash away.
The joke was on her, however, as she realized a moment later, hurling the bag viciously at me upon the discovery that it was empty. I doubt it soothed her rage that the bag floated gently to the ground a foot from her, where I plucked it up again (one never knows when one will need a plastic bag). A few moments later we received her stone present. She then followed us at a distance, scowling, for a full half-hour. It was .. unsettling.

Of the seven or eight bands of children who aimed missiles at us, however, I'm not sure it was always antagonistic; often, it seemed instead like a poorly-thought-out way to shyly get our attention. And it must be added that on every occasion, adults came running from every direction to holler at the children, presumably yelling "Quit it!! Don't you know we're supposed to be a peaceful and democratic country??!"

Best Experience: The people, the people, the people.
Though I should definitely acknowledge the fun involved in writing home to one's mother: HI MUM ! GUESS WHERE I AM ???

Could I live here? ...Unfortunately.. no. Though I do love interacting with the people here, the answer is no. It's not because of profound cultural incomatibility that I say no, or a well-founded fear for my life, but a much more banal reason: it's seriously humid here, and at roughly 12:40 p.m. on February 16th in the middle of a Berbera street, I had enough and tore off my hijab. Only with a great effort of will did I keep my long-sleeved shirt on. This would probably be an issue here before too long.

All the same though.. I do hope this country manages to survive. Against all odds and all terrorists, it's such an awesome and hilarious little corner of the world.

SOMALILAND IS PEACEFUL AND DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY

... if we heard it once, we heard it a dozen times - from the very first Somalilanders greeting us at the Djiboutian border, to the curious college students who came to share dinner and conversation with us, to random adults we met on the street: "Somaliland is Peaceful and Democratic Country!!" Someone has done a very good job uniting the populace towards the importance of national presentation.

On one hand, it's easy to see where the anxiety comes from, and you can't blame them- with their rogue parent state of Somalia making international crisis headlines every other day, Somalilanders are naturally anxious to establish an ironclad distinction of their own peaceableness. Couple this with the fact that the fledgling nation has yet to be officially recognized by, well, ANYBODY, and their preoccupation with international image makes even more sense. (The foreign minister, by the by, assured us that they entertain hopes for Ethiopia.)

Unfortunately, a wicked fly in the form of cross-border Somalian suicide attacks has occasionally landed in their Peaceful Order ointment. I don't think it was coincidental that important government buildings were surrounded with heavy concrete barricades, and indeed the president narrowly survived an assassination attempt a short time before our arrival.

Imagine, then, as the Somalilanders apparently have, what would happen if a couple of the precious few foreigners in their country, highly prized Western tourists, were to be harmed somehow during their visit. Imagine the headlines. "AMERICANS MURDERED IN FORMER NORTH SOMALIA," reporters would race each other to declare in urgently solemn tones, and audiences would cluck their tongues - "Former Somalia? Well really, what did they expect??"

It is this very impression of lawlessness (although somewhat legitimate) that Somalilanders are desperate to eliminate, and it has given rise to some strange behavior on their part towards foreigners. Namely, a bizarre zeal to protect them from any contingency of danger or bodily harm.

This attention was sometimes comforting, but it had an annoying side, as when David and I were almost unable to travel around outside the capital because we refused to take a police escort. (The escort would have been funded out of the travel funds of yours truly.) The Minister of Tourism, our student friends, and random helpful adults were all scandalized at our stubbornness and tried desperately to dissuade us, but (as I pointed out with some bluntness), if someone really wants to kill us, what is one policeman going to do anyway? ("Probably run away," was David's quick reply.) They conceded the validity of my argument, but no one seemed to be terribly comfortable with the concept of Visa Numbers 0048 and 0049 setting off into the desert with only a carload of other strangers to keep them alive.

This wasn't to be the last we'd hear about the escort, either; at every military checkpoint along the road, guards panicked and urgently phoned their superiors to report our risky unarmed travellerhood, and several times flatly refused to let us pass. David of the silver Arabic tongue managed to talk our way past each time. (It really is useful having him along.)

However, the officious protection did have its endearing side, as when I was left with our luggage for a few minutes on a well-traveled street while David ducked in to a hotel to check room availability. A concerned crowd quickly gathered and, led by a matronly old lady, bodily escorted me to a more secure location a few meters away where they could protect and observe me more effectively (and post lookouts for the odd potential troublemaker). Indeed I was so well-protected that upon his return, David couldn't actually figure out where I had gone, and only the crowd's eagerness to unite us both in the same place for safekeeping established my location.

I was more than a little charmed.

Somaliland is really a unique little treat of a country, and while I'm not sure I completely believe the repeated universal assurances of its PEACEFUL AND DEMOCRATIC qualities, I confess myself falling for it anyway. Perhaps I should (as I have several times been exhorted to do) write Obama and ask him to consider making Somaliland recognition a central part of his foreign policy..

The Wild Night Ride

Looking back on the past few posts, I'm noticing a heavy bias on the actual transit part of travelling; a little guiltily, I'm now getting ready to post yet another voyage tale. I suppose we do spend a good portion of our time physically traveling, and for me, most of that [conscious] time is spent thinking of things to write about. However, to critics I would argue that the voyaging is certainly where we do tend to have some of our most interesting adventures.

..As would definitely be the case with our trip to the newly-created Somaliland.

The overland trip to and through Somaliland, upon which we embarked after brushing off the panicked admonishments of my Djiboutienne friends like so many flies, was nothing short of epic. It began in a back street of Djibouti at 4 p.m. on Thursday, February 12th, and concluded at 1 p.m. the next day, a full 7 hours behind schedule, in the capital of Hargeisa. The overnight adventure, which took place in a 5-seater LandRover inhabited for 21 hours by one driver, two roof-based spotters and 13 passengers, possibly more (I couldn't see the way-back very well), included a series of exciting episodes. Highlights include:

* Evening border crossing into Somaliland, which provided only our second encounter with real Somalilanders (first being the visa-issuing embassy staff in Addis)

* driving literally through the desert, through sand and weaving around scrub-brush, at no point following any sort of road that I could make out

* getting stuck in deep sand at about 9 p.m. and having to be dug out with the handy shovels brought along by the spotters for that very purpose

* numerous opportunities for discreet, communal desert wee-ing

* breaking some major part of our vehicle related to the wheel or possibly axle at around midnight, and tinkering with it by flashlight until about 3 in the morning, allowing another chatty gentleman in our party to decide he'd like to be acquainted with me better

* praying for the bliss of even an hour's sleep between the hours of 3 and 10 a.m., only to be shaken awake just as I was drifting off by this same gentleman to hear what witty things he had to tell me

(which led naturally to)

* one of the first times I have pleasantly passed several hours in the contemplation of inflicting bodily harm on another human

I'm also fairly certain that we lost track entirely of where the road (or, er, trail) was a few times (especially after we got separated from the other LandRover in our caravan), since by the estimated arrival time of 10 a.m. we were still, frankly, just driving around blindly in the desert.

By about noon of the following day, I was no longer convinced of the existence of Hargeisa, Berbera, or any city in Somaliland, or anything other than desert, scrub-land, camels, and the occasional herd of sheep. (After 15 hours in the car, even those failed to keep my spirits peppy.)

When we finally did roll into Hargeisa at around 1:30 the next day, I thought I had been personally blessed by God and the entire host of angels. Even looking back on the moment with the benefit of sleep, rational judgment, and a bit of hygiene, I'm not entirely convinced that I wasn't. We did, after all, careen wildly in the middle of the night through empty desert on unsafe track in a vehicle with known mechanical issues through a country hugely targeted for banditry and terrorism under protection of a government that does not yet exist.

So I do have a lot to be thankful for..

Djibouti: the nutshell impression

I only spent a few days in this interesting little corner of East Africa, so my impressions must be taken only as the most superficial. As Djibouti really has felt like a distinct cultural unit, however, perhaps there is some validity to them.. I leave to you to decide.

Atmosphere
After the Sudan and Ethiopia, Djibouti felt very pseudo-European. Colonial-style buildings lined neat, paved streets joining every few blocks into roudabouts. Storefronts boasted European products and even European names; walls sported slogans in English, French, and Arabic about keeping the city streets clean. I saw lots of tourist families (even white kids!), and plenty of other foreigners were humming along the streets in slick white Toyota SUVs with logos or flags on the side.

People
If I had to try to describe the national attitude, I guess I would say that Djiboutians (or Djiboutiens, as they would have me say), are an interesting cultural mix of self-conscious French stuffiness and laidback African friendliness. Chatting with a stranger for a moment betrays the blend: Djiboutiens speak lovely, flawless French, but seem to have almost exclusively eliminated the formal "vous" tense from daily speech, preferring instead to use the friendly, familiar "tu" for friends and strangers alike. Everyone was happy to talk to us, right away, on a personal and intimate level that was, after Ethiopia, both unexpected and delightful. While I know it's unfair to say all people of any country are one way or another, I confess the difference was immediate: within moments of crossing through the border, I felt in the joking, chummy atmosphere of our next bus none of that subtle but tangible aloofness I had been feeling for the two weeks prior. It was glorious.

It is my general impression that everyone in Djibouti Port, every last man, woman, and child, is employed either by something governmental or the tourism industry. Aside from the shopowners, taxidrivers, and hoteliers, Djibouti seems to be populated almost exclusively by ministers, military, or NGOs. The banking seems to function exclusively as a blend of these two interests. Surely other professions must exist; where they are and what they do I can't imagine.

After an interval of almost three years since I was last in a francophone country, I slipped into Djibouti French with the satisfaction of a toad plopping into an old beloved swamp. Overjoyed by the lingsuistic non-barriers (a first on this trip so far) and the amiable attitude, I exuberantly set about making friends with my bus seat-mates, taxidrivers, waiters, policemen, receptionists, random strangers on the street.. really, anyone who stood still in one place long enough. (And the Djiboutiens were kindly very happy to comply.)

Food:
As far as food goes, this seems to rather be a European enclave. It was very very tasty, but also much more expensive than the food we're accustomed to from the Sudan and Ethiopia. David and I quickly realized our time in Djibouti was necessarily going to have to be rather short, if we wanted to walk out with something in our pockets at all.
Best Thing Eaten: We also got to try some Red Sea culture sweets: some mochi-esque jelly tasting of currant, a stringy, melt-in-your-mouth version of halwa, a crumbly and grainy red rock-like thing, and a black-and-white mint-flavored sweet with the texture of fine sand. All delicious.

New Hygienic Lows:
The state in which I arrived in Djibouti defies all description.
Suffice it to say that during the blissful and lengthy shower I took immediately after check-in, the spotless white bathtub of the Sheraton-Djibouti washed black for twenty minutes. I was excited to note that my skin was a slightly different color upon emerging.

Which leads me to..
Favorite Quote:
Dragging myself into the marble-and-glass lobby of the Sheraton after our trek was .. intimidating. The neatly uniformed guard at the door, positioned to keep out trash, definitely gave me a bit of an alarmed look-over as I hauled my battered luggage over the threshold, but was too polite to say anything.
I, unfortunately, suffer from no such constraints, and said to him frankly: "I'm the dirtiest thing that's ever stepped into this lobby, aren't I."
My only reply was an involuntary mouth-twitch.

Money: REALLY, DJIBOUTI??
You know, I was going to be all mature and clean, and pass completely through this country without one snide "Djibouti's HOT!" or "We're all over Djibouti tonight.." joke. I really was. This was the intention, the plan, and one that I was prepared to follow through with.
But then I saw the coins.
Both the fifty- and the five-franc coins feature what at first glance can only be taken as a pair of camels, mid-coitus. My shock was so great that the first time I received change I forgot myself and actually shouted to David, "OH MY GOD THEIR MONEY SHOWS COPULATING CAMELS!"
Much closer and prolonged inspection revealed that in fact, it's just one camel standing very very close behind another lying down at such an unusual angle that the standing one is tilted respective to the lying one, and the line that looks like the tilted, straddling camel's front leg is actually a very inconveniently-located saddle strap.

See, I say "inconveniently", but I have my doubts. It's just a tad too perfectly arranged just so... This was no accident. So, bring on the tawdry Djiboutian jokes! And let the amorous animals begin..

Worst Experience: Seeing the bill after any routine transaction was always a bit heart-stopping.
Best Experience: We took the opportunity to learn as much as possible about transportation to our next port of call, Somaliland, asking anyone in a position to know about the overland bus transportation through the desert to Hargeisa. Hilarious fun ensues when a friendly Djiboutienne learns that you actually lack the wit to stay the hell away from countries that have tenuous grip on their security situations.

Could I live here? Just for fun, I've been thinking about this question as I move through each country.. or to be honest, perhaps not just for fun. I'm kind of in the market.
While I know I would enjoy Djibouti for a much longer stay than these few days, I'm not sure I'll ever make enough to afford to live here. Oh well, there's always the Sudan..
...Or, er, perhaps there's not. To retrospectively answer this same question for the Sudan, yes, I could.. if it still exists in a few years.

Ethiopian Land Border Number Two

(backdated: Febrary 10th)

After a whirlwind two days in Addis Adeba, David and I headed east through Dire Dawa to cross through our second Ethiopian international boundary, that of Djibouti... a bit sad to leave Ethiopia, true, but I knew I'd be back before long. (Before about 8 days, to be exact.)

WE ARRIVED IN DJIBOUTI after what could only be described as a seriously bumpy bus ride. And this from someone who loves old wooden rollercoasters and delights in bumpy rides, metaphorical or otherwise. (In fact, as a child I used to press my head against the schoolbus window so the vibrations would make my teeth chatter gently.)
To say that my teeth were chatteriong in m y head, despite my sitting upright, does not do the experience justic. I eventually stuffed my clean-ish sweatshirt sleeve into my mouth to keep from chipping a tooth or biting through my tongue. I caught air several dozen times within the first half hour; after that, aware that at least five hours remained, I stopped keeping track. Sleep was unfortunately not a possiility, particularly unfortnate since we had woken at 1 a.m. to board the early-early bus at 2. After a few hours, I found a loose, rolling sort of position which at least allowed me to doze.
It was in this bouncing, semiconscious state when we hit something, or possibly leapt over a fissure in the Earth's surface, and suddenly everyone was airborne. I felt suddenly and briefly weightless before a smack alerted me that I had hit the metal ceiling, recently a good two feet above my head. A long, low collective moan rose involuntarly from the bus's occupants as they abruptly found themselves soaring through the air, completed with a loud "OOF!" as we made touchdown and all suddenly re-found our seats. My own unfortunate landing involved a sharp pain to my elbow and a cracking noise in my spine, but after a few moments, everything was still moveable. I had the sensation that my insides had instantaneously collapsed, or been squashed flat.

That journey over, the border crossed, and the next four-hour cramped- but smoother!- bus ride through the country completed, we were naturally very happy to arrive in Djibouti Port, and desired nothing more than a place to rest our weary, dusty heads for a few hours. Any hotel would do.
Not just any hotel was available, however; the first we tried was fully booked, as was the second, and the third. Bewildered and bleary-eyed from exhaustion, and nervous at the astronomical rate at which taxi-ing around was eating into our few Djiboutian Francs, David left me camped with our bags on the porch of one hotel and tramped around on foot to find us a place to stay.
There was nothing... and it was Somalia's fault. (Not a first-time phenomenon for problems in the region.) Turns out our visit coincided with the end of the much-reported Somalian delegation to Djibouti for the purpose of choosng a president. Applications for the post were apparently welcome from anyone willing to pay the hefty "application fee", regardless of experience (or even citizenship). How exciting! David considered having a go at it himslf, but alas the man had already been chosen by our arrival.
Presidential business concluded or otherwise, however, the entourage had yet to decamp, and hotels in town were still booked to the max - all except - wait for it - the ritzy Sheraton. With roughly 7.5 hours of sleep in the past 35 hours between the two of us and nowhere else to go, we had no choice. The Sheraton-Djibouti it would be...

...and I didn't even have the energy to complain about it.
(And dang, but those beds were soft!)

To get to Mekele, you gotta...

So there was this one time that David and Jana decided they wanted to go to Mekele, the regional capital of Tigray in northwestern Ethiopia.
Jana quickly noticed that trusty Ethiopian Airlines could fly the distance in 90 minutes for a scant forty bucks apiece.
David, however, was tracing the faint dotted line on Lonely Planet’s Ethiopia map that indicated a somewhat-passable road, and looking at the tiny side note: “Scenic Route”.
Two more fateful words have rarely been written.

Even though the joy of the Gonder trip was still fresh in my mind (and the dust in my lungs), I knew a lost cause when I saw one. Local buses it would be, the acquaintance of which would be our pleasure for at least two days. As one who hopes for the courage to accept the things I cannot change, I resigned myself to the discomfort, and mentally wrote off those days in my mind.

So, 4 a.m. in Lalibela found David and myself dragging our suitcases half a mile uphill through sand and grit, to push and fight and squeeze our way onto a crowded-twice-legal-capacity bus, at last wedging ourselves in between a foul-smelling woman and two bushels of chat.
Blissfully, bumpy bus-rides put me to sleep like a baby, and the first few hours of tight, dusty, airless discomfort passed in a wink for me. Not so for David, who by the time I woke up was suffering from the pain of having his knees banged against those of the man sitting in an improvised seat across from us, and having his feet periodically stomped on. (Not that this last was new or surprising; I’ve often thought I could write an entire posting on the travails inflicted by Africa on David’s feet. Maybe I will.)

We passed the next few bumpy hours in a small-scale battle waged against the other occupants of the bus, in which we would crack the dirty window an inch to let in a beautiful sweet breath of clean, cool mountain air, and our fellow space-occupiers would squawk and quail and push it shut again, quick, before any of that fresh air got them. I won a decisive victory about two and a half hours in – by this point I was standing up in the ten square inches of floor space in front of my seat, both feet pointed sideways out of necessity, because it was less painful than trying to sit and fold my legs into that same space. Queasily carsick as ever, I had my face right up next to the life-saving wind of nourishing refreshment that came wafting in through that cracked window. It was temporary bliss, and as the next wave of popular protest against my open window surged through those around me, I had a sudden inappropriate inspiration. Pointing to the window, I smiled pleadingly and mimed heavy vomiting. The imitation was perhaps too well-executed; both hands were involved. Embarrassing, but effective. My right to have at least an inch of open-window access
was not challenged for the rest of the ride.

After seven or eight hours in the bus, we arrived at Woldia. It was past noon, so there was no hope of catching any further local transport on to Mekele that day. Prepared for this eventuality, we dragged our dusty, battered bodies and luggage up to the center of town, where we entertained vague hopes of hitching a ride on a passing truck. It was here that the lamb melodrama played out; the ensuing staring was escaped (again, only in the nick of time) by the discovery of two free seats in a furniture truck headed our way!

Well, sort of two free seats. 'Two free seats' as in, there were two good-sized adult men sitting in the cab, and if David squeezed next to the passenger, and I sat on the console/gearshift, it all worked out. And two seats among three passengers still made for far better odds than the arrangements we'd endured all morning. Plus, it was a short
ride, 256km, paved roads the whole way (!), five hours tops! He said we'd be there by 8, which seemed a bit slow, but still acceptable. And we'd be saving a whole day!

Upon reflection, we were ourselves lamb-like in our happy ignorance of the crushing tire about to fall. After covering the first third in no time at all (up to a village where we made a furniture delivery), the driver lost all will to continue with any appreciable speed. The last 180 km would not be covered over the course of three hours, or even four, but several times that. Discussing the strange metamorphosis afterwards (he had been averaging fully 60 kmph until the delivery), David wondered if the driver wasn't trying to drag the trip out another day, and thus be re-hired by default to take us to the next town after Mekele. Indeed, he took as long as possible on the well-paved, empty road, dragging the drive past the evening and well into the night. From my vantage point on the gearshift, I had an uninterrupted view of the odometer, allowing me to pass the time working out our various average speeds - overall, before the village, after the village, up this hill, for the past 10km, etc. I discovered with some bitterness that we were getting along at a rate of about 13.25 miles an hour. Yes. On foot and in good shoes, I possibly could have out-run us. But no, neither David nor I ever complained, figuring he had his reasons.. until the breaking point.

This came at about ten after midnight, when - with only 24 km left to go - the driver abruptly stopped in the last small town before the capital, declaring that we weren't going to make it to Mekele after all and that we had better stay the night.

Not for nothing had I been keeping religious track of our progress, and I was quick to point out that Mekele was only 24 km away.

Surprised but not deterred, the driver and his friend then countered that due to the late hour, we'd never be able to find a hotel in the capital, and that we'd better stay in this po-dunk town.

This was David's turn to jump in, insisting what we all knew to be true - that hotels are 24-hours, or at least open late, and in a city as big as Mekele we'd be able to find SOMETHING, thanks very much.

Beaten back on two points, the driver then changed tack, complaining of how very tired he was, to which David very rightly said, "Well if you didn't drive so slowly, we'd already have been there by now!" At which point the driver foolishly attempted to claim (very energetically for one so tired, I thought) that he had been going - wait for it - 50kmph all along.

OH ho.

REALLY.

"YOU SIR." I snapped archly, "have for the past SEVEN-PLUS hours at no point averaged more than TWENTY-ONE POINT THREE KILOMETERS AN HOUR."

David and I, travelling since 4 a.m., united in our cold fury, were a formiddable team, and a force to be reckoned with. Cross but cornered, the driver got back in the cab, and we positively flew those remaining 24 kilometers to Mekele.
(I couldn't stop grinning.)
And oh, never has a bed been so soft as those wonderful, Mekele [24-hour] hotel beds.

Next stop after Mekele, the national capital... then (overland via the west) A NEW COUNTRY!!

...All said and done, I suppose it was a rather scenic route..

Ba-a-a-ad little lamb

[backdated, Feb 6th]

So I wrote about the long, ropy sheep-tails of the Sudan, and would
happily have written more had I been able to justify it to myself.
(And this coming from someone who stops not at telling long-winded
stories about rascally chickens.)
Allow me to report with enthusiasm that the sheep of Ethiopia, while
completely differently tailed, are no less endearing. Instead of the
long fluffy ropes, Ethiopian sheep have huge, foot-wide shovel-shaped
tails, the tip of which is tucked up to form a strange sort of
backwards curlicue. The best part? When the sheep run, the
spade-tails flip-flop from side to side like ticking off seconds on a
fast clock.

I don't know why I love these valid, silly animals, but I do, and
Ethiopian sheep with their floppy fat tails rank especially high.
Since my arrival two weeks ago, I have sought out opportunities to
tentatively pat one of these fluffy creatures in passing, but no such
luck until one afternoon a few days ago, when (under perhaps unusual
circumstances) I got to pat and even hold a particularly unclever
lamb.

We were having a lunch break in Woldia on our way to Mekele, waiting
for transport at an outdoor café. I was (as usual) entranced by the
meandering town sheep, and took advantage of the wait to pat a sleepy
lamb curled up in the shade of the nearest pickup truck. The lads
nearby, presumably the owners, seemed to find my fondness hilarious,
but otherwise were not terribly involved with whatever the animal did.

Which was memorably demonstrated about half an hour later… the driver
of the truck had finished his lunch and was getting back into the cab;
the lamb, meanwhile, had been ambling about but chose that particular
moment to settle itself back in the shade next to the wheel of the
truck. I was watching in growing alarm from my seat a few meters
away, when the idiot thing actually snuggled its neck and head right
up behind the front left tire – just as the driver clambered in, shut
the door, and started his engine.

I have rarely abandoned a chair so fast in my life.
I dashed over to the animal as the driver put the idling truck into
gear, yelling "STOP!!", and tugged on the animal's body. My actions
had no effect on either the distracted, backwards-looking driver or
the sluggish lamb, who just re-settled itself for what it didn't seem
to realize might be a more permanent nap.
The motor already started and in gear, the driver eased off the break
and the tire began to press backwards into the lamb's neck. In
terrified desperation I began to smack the vehicle with my hand, still
yelling, while with my other hand I reached behind the lamb's neck to
pull it free from the tire.
By the grace of the powers that be, the driver heard my thumping on
his car, or perhaps he saw signs of alarm from the other people about
who heard or saw the spectacle I was making. He abruptly stopped his
truck, as I bodily hauled the animal out from under it.

Crisis over, the intense rush of relief I felt was quickly followed
with one of embarrassment. If people hadn't been staring at me
before, they certainly were now... The amazed driver leaned over his
wheel to see the faranji girl who had made such a fuss. The lamb's
neglectful owners were openly gawking at me, and as they slouched over
(a bit SHEEPISHLY, I thought) I turned the lamb over to them with the
awkward consciousness of having self-righteously usurped another's
responsibility.
Though admittedly a little embarassed, I managed to console myself with the
reflection that: Hey, I finally got to pat a sheep!!

Complaints from Jordan

little did he know of my own posting powers in the face of blogger failure..

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jordan M. Davis
Date: Feb 23, 2009 11:49 PM
Subject: Stupid blogger

Stupid blogger wouldn't let me post my comment to your story today. Oh
well. Here it is, enjoy.

You know Jana, no matter how dire my situation here seems you always
bring a smile to my face with your simple joys (this time in the form
of a toilet seat aka. a throne in the garden of eden). I hope that
while you are living the "high life" you will not forget to celebrate
your birthday. Please don't be lame like me. I wish you well in your
journeys and I have gotten more people to follow your blog here at
Rice. Thanks for your constant musings distracting me from the never
ending flood of work, tests, projects, and life. I wish you safety and
adventure in the form of (cute) doggies that lead you places.

itsumo,
Jordan

"I have no magic power; I make personality my Magic Power. "
-The Samurai Code

Living the High Life..??

For reasons I cannot begin to fathom, since arriving in Ethiopia David (generally the hotel-choosing half of our partnership) has abruptly transferred us from lokanda scum-life to Living the High Life.

At first it made sense; we had that memorably long haul crossing the border from Gedaref through Metema and Shihedi all the way to Gondor (never to be forgotten..) So when we finally made it there, it was sort of nice to spend a couple days on relatively clean sheets. We upped the ante a bit, took a break, relaxed. A couple days satiated my luxury quotient - I was actually having a bit of trouble sleeping in such nice beds - and then I was more than ready to return to moth-eaten shabbiness in the next city, Bahr Dar.

I was to be sorely disappointed. Our hotel there was even nicer than the one in Gonder, practically a resort. I have a sneaking suspicion that the sheets were freshly washed. I felt like royalty visiting my satellite palace.

It was here that we both saw our first toilet seat in weeks, the discovery of which was naturally cause for much jubilation. We took turns sitting on it for unnecessarily long periods of time, me before we'd even paid for the room. (I cleverly snatched it while David was handling the bill.) I was forced to relinquish it upon his return, however, at which point he firmly installed himself in the bathroom. Behind the closed door soon came a long, deep sigh of contentment and the glorious declaration I will hereafter always associate with toilet seats: "I'M LIKE A KING ON MY THRONE!!"

While perhaps my audience wouldn't agree with my defining a hotel as the High Life just because it has a toilet seat (a valid definition in the third world, trust me), not even the most well-pampered Westerner could have failed to be impressed by the beautiful and vibrantly blooming flowers in and around the entire compoound. It was amazing; to David's parents, I think you really would have loved it. I felt like I was staying in the Garden of Eden.

This analogy should render it obvious, therefore, why I was fully expecting to be kicked out of paradise and plopped back into cockroach comfort in our next city, Lalibela. I intimated as much to David, anyway, whom I fully trusted to deliver to my expectations (and beyond).

I was to be sorely disappointed. Yet again. If possible, our rooms in Lalibela were EVEN NICER than the ones in Bahir Dar. I hardly got a wink of sleep!

Even now, I'm writing this from the CARPETED floor of yet another unacceptably nice hotel in Mekele. Granted, the carpet is thin, stained, and, my rear tells me, a pitiful attempt at padding very hard concrete, but still. Carpet!! To break another record, this room sports not one but TWO electrical outlets, both of which seem to be functional and which, furthermore, can actually hold the weight of a plug so you dont have to stand there and hold it to charge your camera. (Or jerry-rig it using hairclips and rubber bands, as I did all the way through the Sudan. Fairly cleverly, too, I thought. David occasionally agreed.) None of this ingenuity is called for here in Mekele, however; you just take the prongy bits and plug 'em in and poof! your battery is being charged. It's like magic.

So, you see my pitiful case. I haven't seen a cockroach, mouse turds, or the tell-tale bloody sheet stains of a bed-bug infestation in so long, I almost forget what they look like. As I've explicitly informed David, I'm feeling betrayed. All his promises of soiled, sagging bedding, all my dreams of rusty, barely latching metal doors cut into four cement walls that could only be said to resemble a hotel room with a good deal of imagination, all for naught. We're living the high life!!

Blog for the Dogs

[Backdated: February 1st]

So, I've been having a bit of a harder time making friendly headway with some of the population, and I'd be lying if I said I don't think of the Sudan at least once a day... but I gotta admit. Ethiopia wins major points for its attitude towards dogs, which seems to be considerably friendlier than that of the North and Eastern Sudan.

Religion does apparently make the difference; in this comparison I'm stacking the most historically Christian part of Ethiopia against the traditionally Muslim part of the Sudan. David has explained to me how, while the cat is respected in Islam, the dog is considered to be sort of a dirty animal. (Which I admit provides by itself a pretty strong case against my conversion, were I so tempted.)
Therefore I wasn't surprised to find that the dogs in the Sudan tended to belong to more ferile, sometimes pack-like groups, roaming the streets by night to mate, fight, and scavenge. They coexist with humans in the same way that pigeons do: there's sort of an accidental flow of resources from humans, but mostly the animals interact with each other more than with us.
Considering that I wasn't in much of a position to change anything, I thank the powers that be- Muslim or otherwise- that I never came across a dog in bad shape (which is more than I can say for Taipei). I'm grimly aware that they must exist, but they were not part of my Sudanese experience.

In Ethiopia, however, dogs seem to have reclaimed their role of family pet somewhat. Almost all the dogs here seem to be associated with a person or house, and we've even seen plump puppies tussling about in messy front yards. Interestingly, Ethiopian canines quite often have that characteristic tail-curled trot of bred dogs, though I can't believe that there's any sort of AKC organization of dog-breeding or showing here. (Ethiopia wins points on that, too.)

Of course not even the cutest, high-stepping pup here can hold a candle to my own airhead Charlie (pictured at left), who likely has no idea where I am right now but who will, faithfully, keep my side of the bed warm until I get home.

Gimme-Gimme-Gimme

[backdated: Jan 28th]
This post is a hard one for me to write, particularly since I know how it will portray my character to those I love most, and even to people whom I've never met. However, to write it any differently or less honestly, or not to write it at all, would compromise my authorial integrity, and that is a value I hold dear.

So.. if 'Personal values of mine' was going to be a list, integrity would be pretty high up, but I don't think it would beat compassion out of the top spot. Compassion in others will always win my esteem, and I hope to never grow so cynical (through much-enjoyed re-readings of Catch-22) that I am incapable of compassion.
Respect, however, is a close second to compassion, both self-respect and respect for others, and this is where I have run into trouble in Ethiopia. For me every interpersonal interaction should be characterized by respect - usually in the form of politeness, but not always. In Texan culture we show respect through great friendliness; in Japan I learned to be respectful with specific and stylized manners. Here in Ethiopia, I'm not well-informed about the unique national customs of respect, but I arrived ready to combine politeness with friendliness and the universal catalyst, a big smile.

This attitude (like a few others I've had) was unfortunately a bit naive.

In the 70s and 80s, there was a great deal of attention on Ethiopia's severe problems of poverty and famine, leading to an international surge of aid organizations in the country - which are, it seems, mostly still active. While I have always honored such work as an incredible manifestation of compassion, since arriving in a historically aid-recipient country I have become painfully aware of the ugly underside of this charity - and painfully familiar with the term, "culture of dependency".
It would be unfair to say that Ethiopia has completely acquired a culture of dependency, but that thinking has certainly left its mark, especially with regard to the national attitude towards non-Africans. To be blunt, I have run up against the equation: foreigner = handout.

I might be opening myself here up to charges of racism - but how about the inherent racism in such an equation? A bizarre sort of racism, true, but there nonetheless- that a certain shade of skin incidates 'mondo' (David's word) money, and that any Ethiopian who asks deserves to have their share of it.

It's true I grew up with far more than some of the children who have come running from blocks away at the sight of my skin. And it does bother my conscience not to give them anything. But honestly, I hardly have a chance to reflect on my white guilt because fending off the demands - yes, demands - for money from healthy children who only a moment before were happily playing soccer occupies all of my attention. You don't get a general impresion of desperation, as I would have imagined from the old television ads, but one of entitlement. "You are a walking sack of money, so gimme some."
It's not just money - anything we have is fair game. Carrying a few bananas for our breakfast, David was accosted by a boy who stuck out his hand and declared, "Gimme a banana!" (The former ESL teacher in me was thrilled at such lovely use of the article.) But as his repeated requests had no effect on the beggar-immune David, the boy became quite angry, shocked at our defiance. Couldn't we see that what we had was his for the needing?

I admit I did feel guilty not to give him one; in the U.S., I never give money to people who ask for it, but I give food. And since I never go far without a snack, and sometimes people really are hungry, it's usually a successful interaction. So why did I deny this Ethiopian [read: poor, unfortunate] child?

First off, he wasn't desperate, or homeless: he came running out of a shop upon seeing us, and chased us down the street demanding anything giveable he could see. And frankly, I refuse flat-out to accept that just being Ethiopian makes you needy and automatically in need of charity from strangers. If that's not racism, what is??

Moreover, I know from other experiences that if we had had something else, he would have demanded that instead; in other words, I doubt it was hunger that made him think of the banana. I once had a sweet little girl tell me to give her the shirt I was wearing. (It was the only one I had on, and we were outside of a church, so that didn't get far.) And the pens.. oh, merde, the pens. At some point in the recent past, some foreigner (or perhaps a group working in tandem) came to Ethiopia armed with a metric ton of pens, apparently with the express purpose of distributing them at random among the under-10 population. And every foreigner since then has paid the price. At every turn, David and I are accosted by screaming children who stick out their hands and pull on our clothes, yelling, "PEN! PEN! GIMME PEN!"

While such mobbing is usually (but not always) limited to children, the mindset that prompts it is unfortunately shared by a noticable percentage of the adult population. Hotels, stores, and even museums have prices several times higher for foreigners than for Ethiopians. Arranging transport involves battling the assumption that we are going to cheerfully pay six or seven different parties for the various tasks of getting a seat, keeping a seat, sitting in the seat, having our bags put on top, having our bags tied properly so they don't fall off, and then having our bags taken down again when it's time to inexplicably change buses before departure. (It should go without saying, we are quite cheerfully prepared to pay various parties for several of those privileges, but they do take it a bit far. And the key thing is, none of the locals seem to pay more than once.) Even if we casually ask directions from a 'friendly stranger' on the street, we risk getting charged 'guide fees' for it. On my first afternoon in Ethiopia, I was talking to David in my hotel room when a woman took it upon herself to come right on in and turn on the light.. and then demanded to be paid for it.

What hurts the most is that I've looked for signs that Ethiopians do this to each other as well - hey, perhaps it's just a national custom to tip everyone for everything - but really, they don't. It's the arrival of a foreigner on the scene that turns every frolicking child into a starving beggar in need of pens, every adult into a would-be guide, every establishment into a high-priced affair. I exaggerate. But really, if I thought Japan was bad for making you feel like an outsider, I had another thing coming.

Our apprehension about all this has naturally modified our behavior towards strangers. This once caused an embarassing situation in Lalibela, when a man got up to show us something. David and I both leapt to stop him- "No please don't trouble yourself! We can find it! It's fine!"- at which point he castigated us that we should graciously accept his hospitality, he was helping us, he wasn't going to try to get money from us. I was immediately embarassed (though I couldn't help thinking it funny how he knew exactly what we were afraid of), but shameless David clapped him warmly on the back and laughed, "Well, then you're certainly a bit different from most of your countrymen!"
I couldn't help being a bit secretly pleased at his frankness.

The ironic thing is that Ethiopia is the one nation in Africa that has never been colonized (unless you count Italy's brief and unsuccessful jaunt), and the Ethiopians are the first to say it. Good for them! Ethiopia's got an awesome history, and you have to respect how it's lasted more or less as a healthy, stable unit for thousands of years. But when I'm crowded by people who have come out of the woodwork to beg from me, as a foreigner distributing my munificence, I think horrible thoughts to myself.. For a country that's always proudly enjoyed its independence, you don't really act it..

That same day in Lalibela, there was a bonfire outside our hotel for St. George's Day. Not much of a night person, David declined attending; I too was exhausted, but was equally reluctant to pass up any opportunity for international socializing, especially in a country where I'd been having so little of it. Going down to the fire, I was told to sit at a table full of women. I cheerfully introduced myself and asked their names, only to commence a charade in which the women took turns inventing apparently quite witty monikers in Amharic that set off the rest of the group in hysterics. Having given my own real name, I felt a little embarassed but plunged forth anyway, repeating the false names back at them (amid more laughter) and trying to remember each one. I have learned some Amharic, but after a few minutes, conversation flagged a bit. Mostly they asked whether I already had a 'guide' for the next day (I did). Then they wanted to know who. I was vague. That was it. For some reason, I felt quite awkward and shy. I admit I ended up only waiting out the minimum polite amount of time before I could go to bed.
On the stairs back up to the room, I bumped into one of the women; I was amazed to find that her disdainful manner had turned quite friendly, and then the next minute she was writing her number down so I could call her to meet up the next day. I soon figured out why; she performed the 'coffee ceremony' that Lonely Planet cites as part of the 'siren scam' (invite foreigner over, do coffee ceremony or some other 'cultural activity', charge exorbitant amounts of money at end, etc), and wanted me to come over. Well, mystery of manner-change explained, I suppose, but it didn't exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy climbing back up to bed. I am useful insofar as I am a wallet.

The whole experience came dangerously close to confirming this horrible suspicion I've been fighting, that interacting positively with Ethiopians as a white person is continget upon a flow of money or goods from me to them.. and even then respect has not been won.

It is unfair of me to write off all Ethiopians on a paltry few weeks' tourist experience, however, and I refuse to do it, or to give up on creating positive relationships. So, I have developed perhaps unusual ways of circumventing the impression my skin gives. Most often, I sing. When children run up to me screaming "Money!" or "Pen!" and stick their hands out, I begin to sing to them. We may not have a language in common, and I refuse to perpetuate the fantasy that foreigners are walking ATMs, but it is perhaps a way to share something. Admittedly, I risk looking a little like Maria Von Trapp, walking down the street singing to an entourage of smiling children. However, it's worth it for this former elementary teacher to be able to actually smile at kids, and have them smile back, and then wave goodbye after five minutes' pleasant walk together and walk away happy.

The Tale of the Sneaky Chicken

I am, as a "blogger" (stupid term), unfortunately prone to rambling on about microscopic quotidian incidents that have little to do with anything, in lieu of actually delivering some sort of useful or relevant description of meaningful experiences and impressions.
I have repeatedly tried to stifle this impulse for this particular blog- mostly out of respect for those of David's acquaintance who are likely less interested in my own eccentricities than they are in the trip generally, or any of the number of adventures that he involves us in.
However, I beg you occasionally to allow me to indulge myself- as I would like to do now- to tell: the Tale of the Sneaky Chicken.

SHIHEDI, ETHIOPIA: David and I were walking down the only dirt road in this tiny village near the Sudanese border. As there as nothing else to do in the town and nowhere in particular we had to be, we were occupying the afternoon chiefly by rambling back and forth on The Town Dirt Road, collecting in our wake assorted bunches of children screaming "you! you! you!", and exerting a maximum effort not to be charged for the privilege by a variety of creative and budding scam artists.

David stopped at one point to more fully devote his attention to this last task. Uninterested in being helpful, I instead started watching a chicken standing next to one of the vegetable stalls set up along the Town Dirt Road. The stand, a crude platform set up about 8" off the ground, played host to potatoes, some leafy green things, and a lovely selection of red tomatoes.
As I gazed aimlessly at this chicken, I began to notice that its behavior was at least a little unusual. Namely, it was positively skulking about the roadside - not clucking, not pecking, not strutting as chickens do - but apparently doing its level best (which was not very good) to be sly.

I am not sure whether you have ever seen a chicken trying to look sly. I never had. Allow me to assure you that it is a wholly ludicrious and hilarious sight.

As I watched this chicken, sneaking back and forth next to the edge of the of the stall, it suddenly made its move - and boldly hopped right up onto the platform. My mouth fell open. Quick as a wink, the chicken leaned down to the nearest tomato and snatched the whole fruit right up in its beak. The thing was easily twice the size of its head. Then, booty in beak, it scooted its way back off the platform, dropped it on the ground, and tucked in.

My face must have been the portrait of astonishment. I had just witnessed, from beginning through to conclusion, a successful Sneaky Chicken raid.

Looking up, I realized I had my own audience. Men, women, and children loitering about the curb were watching me watch the chicken with unconcealed delight. I pointed at the chicken, still in shock: Do you realize you have just been robbed?? by a CHICKEN?? The crowd just nodded and laughed. Any concern over the purloined fruit was wholly forgotten in light of the splendid entertainment afforded by my foreign amazement.
And while everyone's attention was so excellently diverted, the Sneaky Chicken made a clean getaway.

The "Real" First Impression

So I mentioned something about Ethiopia not deserving the introductory post it would have gotten had I simply described my first impressions.. suffice it to say that the aforementioned bumpy dirt road therating its way through mountains, while potentially picturesque, does not provide the most pleasant way to travel.

We knew our trek from Gedaref, Sudan through to Gonder, Ethiopia was going to be tough. We had limited information about the transport available, and even Lonely Planet only marked the road after the border crossing with a pale dotted line. Our border crossing was slow but uneventful, marked chiefly by the dusty asphalt road petering out into a rutted gravelly dirt tracks. Not the easiest to travel along, but as a dedicated adherent to the "You Pack It, You Carry It" school of thought I sure wasn't going to let it fall to anyone else's responsibility. Certainly not any of the throngs of men and children clustering around me, trying to take it away in a bid to get some money out of me as well. They were to be disappointed.

After 20 minutes of dusty dragging, we located a rat-trap bus that would have put any junkyard resident to shame, perched rather than parked on the edge of the road at a 35-degree angle. After fighting with various parties over our baggage, we hurled it and ourselves onto the tilta-bus, David getting doused in gasoline in the process. Hot, dusty, and flammable, we then spent the next 50 minutes in exceptionally close quarters, straining to keep everything squished and upright in our two small seats. We were charged for three. I ended up sitting sideways in the aisle, my back against David's side and my legs stuffed against the next seat to prevent him toppling into the aisle from the combined weight of our baggage. (Friends of his may hazard what guesses they like as to how many newly-bought books we had with us as well.. but it must be said that he carried them all himself without ever once needing help.)

It was a sincere joy once the bus finally got going, as it meant we were mostly upright; after another sharing my smushed aisle-roost with three other women, however, I gave up and stood. It was wonderful to stand. There was just enough floorspace for two feet, and I could grab the cieling to keep myself from jolting around painfully, as was David's seat-bound, luggage-locked lot. Even better, the top of the bus possessed the occasional whiff of fresh air, otherwise absent in the sweltering, rank, dusty, airless and gasoline-doused interior. There were grimy windows, but for reasons that remain unclear to me they were kept tightly shut.

After a few hours we were blissfully unloaded in a village called Shihedi, where we discovered we would be marooned until at least the following day. David sought any information at all about buses going to Gonder, while I guarded the luggage and fought with the local boys who tried to take it away from me. One of them apparently decided to declare himself my protector, launching himself quite without my support at the most aggressive of my harassers; the fistfight that ensued involved an unfortunate number of people and an alarming amount of violence. My protector was defeated, both in size and numbers, but came limping back to my side to declare something along the lines of how he had fought them off. (Needless to say, not speaking Amharic, my conversational abilities were thus far limited to "NO!!") The would-be knight then asked for payment for his services. However, I felt that starting a violent fight that very nearly physically involved my person- even if it was on my behalf- was not something I was willing to pay for, and I told him so. We were exploring this difference of opinion when David returned - a more welcome sight could not be imagined - to announce that the only transport would leave the next day.
I opined that I was not above hitching. Frankly, I would have joyously boarded Jack the Ripper's carriage had he materialized. But Jack the Ripper and all other vehiculed characters let me down; unless you count Daewoo construction trucks, Shihedi was shy of transport at all. (And the Daewoo trucks were going the wrong way.. we asked.)

So the next morning at 4 a.m., we relived the ringamarole of the day before with a few exciting variables. Squeezing ourselves into seats, getting charged to put up our baggage, waiting half an hour, driving around the block, losing our driver, waiting, getting moved into a different bus, getting charged (again) for our baggage, the squeeze, the wait, the block, the lost driver. At six we finally left for Gonder in seats that almost fit our two butts, on a bus full of swirling hot dust, on a road that was a road only in the sense that it was the accepted route to get to Gonder. It was through those grimy, shut windows that I saw the aforementioned stunning mesas and spectacular valleys, and through my battered rear and queasy stomach that I registered the bumpy, winding path through the mountains. And for those who know me, this wasn't just classic Jana-car-sickness - the kid behind me vomited at regular intervals all over the floor. Hearing that unmistakeable sound, I was incredulous- I had been reassuring my own stomach with the faith that the driver would surely stop for vomit- and so stupidly lifted myself up and twisted myself around to peer down at the hunched youth. Below his head I could see the thick, fluidic mass rolling around on the floor with each bump, and him every moment adding to it.
Needless to say, my skirt, my things, and my legs spent the rest of the ride squinched up against the seat in front of me.

A day and a lifetime later, we unloaded finally in Gonder. Pushed to the end of my tether by having repeatedly had to fight for our bags and pay various parties for the privilege, I shocked the Ethiopians out of their skins by climbing up onto the top of the bus to retrieve our bags myself. Perhaps shamed by a girl (!) doing effortlessly what they were demanding hundreds of Birr for, there were no more scam attempts. We had paid our way, we hefted our bags, and walked into beautiful, historical, fresh-smelling Gonder. Gonder of tasty Ethiopian restaurants and Gonder of old medieval castles. Gonder of soft beds to finally rest in. And I understood, truly: You gotta go through hell to get to heaven.

But you can see why I posted as I did.. Of my first day in Ethiopia, the overriding memory is, unfortunately, of vomit.

Into a new land..

[backdated, January 24, 2009]
And so we crossed the south-eastern Sudanese border into a new land..

Ethiopia deserves for my first post about it not to be about my first impressions. And to be fair, the Sudan is a tough act to follow.

To introduce it properly, I must acknowledge what was perhaps ignorance on my part in expressing my absolute astonishment at this country's breathtaking, jaw-dropping scenic beauty. While I have not yet travelled far outside the Northern highlands, I am already amazed at the landscapes any painter would fall in love with. Winding, bumpy roads threading their way along mesa-style cliffs; wide, shallow Lake Tana blanketed with early morning mist; rolling expanses of pasture dotted with sheep and green-robed herding children. And this is at the end of the dry season !
I've always hated the word 'hut' as carrying so much of a certain type of connotation, but it probably represents exactly the word that would pop into your mind upon seeing the round, thatched-roof dwellings that are clustered around every village and tucked along cliff precipices. Ever one for precision in diction, I will not reject an apt word, but 'hut' still indicates to me a crudeness that is anything but applicable to these sturdy, complex, labor-intensive buildings.

The scenery is all the more impressive for its equally astonishing absence of litter. While trash is not wholly absent from the landscape, streets do not double as a public dump, and intercity highways are not demarkated chiefly by their twin borders of debris. I have even been able to locate trash-cans after a minimum of searching. Honestly, after al-Sudan, it's astoundingly clean. David and I have discovered the subtle treachery of clean streets, however: while in the Sudan we had to watch where we put each foot to avoid something rotting (or worse), here the clean streets have lulled us into the dangerous habit of walking normally. And with disastrous results: both of us have tripped several times on low curbs or uneven pavement, simply because we weren't looking down at the ground.

Coupled with the perpetually photo-worthy scenery (I'm a clicking wonder now that it's legal) is a spectacular panoply of endemic wildlife. Ethiopians are quick to tell you that their twice-Texas-size country boasts some eight hundred different species of birds, several dozen of which are to be found nowhere else in the world. One of the strangest of these I've already seen several times - a small black trilling thing with a fully foot-long flowing white tail that undulates in the most unusual way when it takes flight. We've also had a monkey drop in (somewhat literally) on our breakfast, though my Western background prevented me from recognizing it as anything other than an unusually large, strangely acrobatic cat (and my, what a long tail!).. until it was actually sitting right in front of me (and behind David). Upon successful (if delayed) species identification, I felt not excitement but a vague alarm and the need to immediately inform David. I can't explain it, it just seemed like a bit of a hazard to calmly eat one's omelette with a monkey in such proximity, particularly without one's knowledge. Only later did it occur to me to take a picture, but of course by then it was scampering off. (But at least I warned David.)

Ethiopia cannot, however, compete with the visual rainbow afforded by the various security forces present in even the smallest towns in the Sudan. While I noted uniforms in the carying hues of steel blue, white, khaki, grey, green camo, brown camo, khaki camo(didn't know that one existed), blue camo (in the desert?? really??), black, and the dreaded plainclothes, I've yet to see anything in Ethiopia more than plain old blue, white, and one boring shade of camo (brown). True, Ethiopia more than makes up the color vibrancy with its flowers, which are blooming everywhere, and which I hardly ever saw in a month in the Sudan - I think I might have forgotten that flowers exist, sort of like I forgot that rain exists.

For all their loveliness and photographicableness, however, flowers don't provide quite the same sort of fun potential as we've seen with Sudanese security forces... so yes. Am still missing the Sudan!

Al-Sudan

[original date: January 22, 2009]

Today is my last day in the Sudan. And despite my excitement to cross the border into Ethiopia tomorrow morning, I cannot hide that I am sincerely sad to leave this dusty, carefree, generous country that has shown me such an amazing welcome for the past few weeks. It is not a welcome I will soon forget.

Knowing my memory, though, I'd like to leave a fresh record of my impressions of this country while I'm still in it. I can't vouch for their implicit accuracy, other than that they accurately represent my experience while here. So take them with a pinch of salt.. or perhaps a pinch of sugar's more accurate.

The Scenery: A Dusty Faded Glory
Throughout much of the Sudan I have gotten an impression of past prosperity. The buildings look old and somewhat neglected, though many show signs of having once been somewhat luxurious. Everything is dusty, which I suppose is natural in a country situated at the end of the Saharan winds. The roads are paved, if a bit unevenly, in the largest cities and between them, but otherwise streets of packed dirt are rather common and a mouthful of dust with each passing car is a more common experience of pedestrianhood than I'd like.
Omar al-Bashir's face is everywhere in Khartoum, and is even quite common in city centers throughout the north and east. All the intellectuals who we've spoken to have referred to him quite frankly and without fear as a dictator, though, so I suppose the repression isn't complete (though it must be admitted that not all of our former interviewees are currently at liberty).
The landscape outside cities, not surprisingly, is mostly very flat (and sandy), populated by camels in the north and herds of goats, sheep, and occasionally cows in the east. The sheep - are you sitting for this? - have LONG, ROPY, FLUFFY, FLOPPY TAILS that remind me of a doggie-tail. They reach almost to the ground and caused me huge amounts of excitement that David struggled to understand when I first saw them. The sheep flip them around too, like horse tails, only they're not hair at all but fleshy, quite fluffy furry things well over 30 inches long. INSANE.
I've seen grass a few places, generally in small plots within more luxurious (usually governmental) complexes; each time I've gotten quite excited. It's no longer so strange to me to just see empty earth in places where there's no established human presence - or trash. Trash is everywhere. No, really. Everywhere. In the streets, in the buildings, in the hallways, in the desert stuck to bushes, in the hotel rooms. I long for a trash can. Don't ask me if I've littered here. Just don't. I cannot yet face the truth on that.

The Food: Tasty, Hearty Monotony
I have eaten very well here, but I'd be lying if I claimed not to be a bit excited about the prospect of a new country and new culinary options. The same staples of the Sudanese diet have largely comprised my own diet for the past few weeks:
* fuul, a dish of beans and spices, sometimes with a bit of meat included, eaten with a sort of bland but thick white bread bun instead of with silverware
* shwarma meat, deliciously spiced, but with little variety, always served in that same thick white bread bun
* falafel balls, also delicious, also universal no matter where you go, also served in aforementioned heavy white bread on any street corner in even the smallest city
* hard-boiled eggs, served alongside the falafel on streets
* the sweets: delicious, flaky pastry absolutely drenched in honey and further sweetened with unique, sometimes nutty flavors. Basbusa, kokha, baklawa (baklava), all delectable, all delightful, all worth a trip to the dentist
* peanuts, which we've snacked on repeatedly, and which I discovered (to my stomach's chagrin) CAN actually go bad. Don't eat black peanuts.
So the summarized statement - very tasty, a bit heavy, and kind of .. always the same... is unfortunately pretty true. UNTIL you come to the tea.
The tea is too amazing for words.
Tea is a huge part of Sudanese culture, and women set themselves up on every corner and along every street, on little stools with rickety tables crammed with glass jars full of various different herbs they mix in with their tea. There's always a jar for sugar, too. Almost all the tea drinks are very, very sweet. Every woman's tea is a little different, and seems to be a matter of personal pride. For one sudanese pound (about fifty cents), or even less sometimes, you can go up to one of these ladies and order any kind of tea - mint tea with na'an, karkade tea with cranberry-like flavor, black tea with milk - and she'll prepare it piping hot for you right there on the spot. She's got a little charcoal fire going next to her with brass kettles simmering on it, and a bucket of soapy water for washing glasses in between customers. After she makes it, you can hunker down on one of the little stools she might have littered about her - of course anyone else already sitting with their own cup of tea will always insist you take their chair, at the very least - and use your fingertips to hold the very rim of the piping-hot glass to sip your tea. Which is always delicious, and (amazingly) always a little bit different. Needless to say, this tea culture has been one of my very favorite culinary experiences in the Sudan.
Tastiest thing eaten: a close call, but my sweet tooth prevails. The pastry.
Worst thing ingested: At each interview, we were invariably presented with hot tea. On one unfortunate afternoon, however, I was obliged to drink the greater part of the worst cup of instant coffee I have ever tasted or smelled in my life. Burnt, heavily sweetened, and reeking in flavor of strong, black pepper. PEPPER!! Why??

The Music: Beautiful and Touching
One of my best ideas yet was to hassle the students we met at Khartoum's Al-Nilein University for music recommendations, and to then follow those up. The CD I bought off the street for SDD4 (about $1.80) of Nadeer Khder is one of my favorites, and one of the few possessions I have with me that I really hope make it home.

The People: Effortless Dignity
The people here are by far Sudan's most wonderful resource. They're warm, generous, curious, friendly, funny, casual, hospitable, and overwhelmingly kind. People treat us to tea all the time. Strangers insist on sharing their fuul and bread with us. Everyone always asks where we're from, and no one seems to think less of us for being from a country whose government has hardly seen eye to eye with their own in recent past. Most of all, however, I must emphasize the inherent, unforced, natural dignity of the Sudanese people. They are fundamentally dignified.

There's an image that comes to mind when I think of the Sudanese.. it's an image of a personality I've seen in every city or town here, no matter how small. This personality is a man, middle-aged to older, dressed in the typical long white robe with the typical dusty bits at the bottom hem, striding very slowly with long steps around the trash-spotted streets with his arms folded behind his back and a bit of a paunch thrust out in front of him like a proud statement of self-worth. He is casually proud in manner, but warm, generous, and inquisitive when you speak to him. This man always carries with him a weighty sort of solemn dignity that I always think of now when I think of these wonderful people.

Sudanese coinage: Tattered but colorful
Sudanese money is minted in a series of vibrantly colored bills, in denominations of 1 pound (chartreuse), 2 (pale blue), 5 (red), 10 (peach and white), and 20 (red and purple), supplemented by three coins: a 50-piastre piece (golden rim with silver interior), a 20-piastre (the opposite), and a 10 (plain silver). The relatively modest value of the paper money, however, means that circulation of anything other than the "nuss-guinnea" (50-piastre) piece is uncommon, and indeed the coin-lover in me had to wait pretty patiently before I managed to get all three. I've never seen any coin lower than 10p, nor any bill higher than 20 pounds, though they may indeed exist.
I have had to conclude that either the minting authority of the Sudan has unusually low circulation standards, or the general population, an unusually low respect for the care of their own bills. It is extremely common, especially with the low 1-pound bills, to receive fraying, grimy currency severely ripped in one or more places; thankfully I've never had a problem when (somewhat guiltily) offering these bills to merchants. On at least one occasion a vendor busted out a roll of tape to literally piece together some small change for me, and on occasions where change cannot be made several enterprising taxidrivers have attempted to simply rip our larger bills in half - thus acquiring (presumably) exactly half their value.
Needless to say, we both put our feet down on that.

New Words Learned: some Arabic: greetings, basic questions, responses, my numbers 1-100. A pretty poor showing, I admit.
Telling phrases: If God wills it (Insha'allah), WHATEVER God wills (mash'allah), Everything's great! (Koolshi tamam), paradise (my name!)
It should go without saying I have had to learn the word for 'hiccup' (sha'kri).

Classic Quote: Booking ourselves into Wad Medani's Hotel Doha, we were repeatedly told to wait just a few minutes [more] for someone to come to bring us our room key.
After waiting half an hour, and receiving renewed assurances that someone would come "in thirty minutes", David wryly asked, "Is that a promise?"
The hotel manager's quick reply was classic: "In the Sudan, there are no promises."

New Hygienic Lows: As the Sudan represents my first real experience with the third world, there has understandably been a consistently plunging progress of my own admittedly lax standards of personal hygiene. Memorable slashings perhaps include: a much higher tolerance of dirt on my body, caked on my feet, and under my fingernails; a willingness to sleep on soiled bedding (previously absent from my character); a newfound, almost joyous appreciation for squat toilets, which I actually prefer now as the toilet requiring the least intimate interaction on my part.

Bizarre (and potentially unhealthy) Habits Acquired: To while away the hours on long-distance bus-rides (reading leads to vomit, and even I have to wake up from naps some time), I have begun to perform math calculations in my head. A crippling lifelong dependency on pen and paper to do any decent math at all means that even a minute's worth of long division can entertain me for the ten minutes it takes me to puzzle out the solution without mixing up any decimals. Consequently, I have calculated that, including end-dates, this trip comprises exactly 233 days, or 33.285714 (repeating from the tenth's place) weeks. I also discovered that January 20th represented the 25th day of this trip, at which sunset 10.729% lay behind us, and 89.281% of adventure was yet to come. (I couldn't be assed to work out the ten-thousanth's place.) Somebody get a calculator and check me. God, I'm a loser.

Worst experience in the Sudan: The mob moment comes to mind, or the Great Bug-Bivy Bedbug Bedevilment of Port Sudan in which I sustained no less than 141 itchy red lumps in a single night... but really, I've got to go with the black peanuts, or my five days of sick sick sickness

Best Experience in the Sudan: the competition for this prize is considerably stiffer, and the Sudanis themselves are to blame. My enriching and satisfying experiences interacting with them on issues both small and significant rival the number of different delicious teas I've tasted.

One experience does stand out a bit, however: in Gedaref we happened upon a rickshaw driver who was studying English, and who was more than enthusiastic to talk to us for practice. We ended up spending the afternoon together as Ahmed took us out to a lake from his childhood, and in strolling about its borders it came out that this very bright young man was a university graduate whose political differences with General B's National Congress Party (NCP) had made it all but impossible for him to find a proper job. Thus, the rickshaw. Upon my inquiring further, he revealed that he was alone in his views even among his family, who seemed to side with pragmatism over the luxury of political skepticism. I was touched by his quiet courage, and even more by his warm-hearted eagerness to treat us to his generosity.

It happened that Gedaref became our last stop in the Sudan before crossing the Ethiopian border, so we arranged to see Ahmed again as we passed back through. I cannot think of a better way to bring our Sudanese sojourn to a close than that final evening, spent sharing conversation and culture over honeyed sweets (that we had to fight to pay for) with an open-minded and intellectually curious Sudani. We left him with warm handshakes and photographs, and I hope he has a chance at a better life someday very, very soon. Like all Sudanis, and all people, he deserves better than dictatorship.

I will miss you, al-Sudan.

The Sudanese Security Forces.. at their finest

[real date: January 21, 2009]

Though our time in the Sudan is drawing to a close, it is perhaps fitting to tell one last adventure before we head to Ethiopia.. not to return (sniff).
This particular adventure involved an encounter with the police, and constitutes my most extensive experience with the security forces of another country. (Though that record may not hold up for long here.)

It started with the travel permits. David has often quipped, very aptly, that here in the Sudan we have "The best visas money can buy!" .. that is, the most expensive. What with the visas themselves, the registrations, various permissions and other fees, we have probably donated about USD$1,100 to the government of Sudan just for the privilege of getting in the door. (And no, that doesn't include taking any pictures - too much of a skinflint to purchase the scam-esque
'Photographer's Permit', I have chosen simply to snap my shots as surreptitiously as possible.)
Part of that sum went to finagling city-specific 'Travel Permits' to allow us to get out from the capital. In each city or town, we've had to produce these papers alongside our visas, with their explicit endorsement of our legality in the area, and register ourselves - me usually just as "Jana" or under David's name because the harassed police officers lose heart when they see my surname. [Side note added later: There would be no record whatsoever of Jana Marie Hutchinson ever exiting the Sudan for this same reason.]

In only one city did we have problems: one plainclothes officer in Sennar, after struggling to find a hole in our documentation, finally hit upon the one town that was just outside the border of our included provinces, Kosti. We had planned to make a day-trip there from Sennar, but the officer
explicitly forbade it.
After he left, David and I discussed the possibilities. We both really wanted to see Kosti, and if we hired a taxi to take us there and back we might easily slip under the radar of the next town, whose security forces might not be so finicky, and we could get away with not registering as we wouldn't stay the night. Ultimately we abandoned this idea for its costliness (resisting a pun for "Kosti" here), and glad we were that we did: not an hour after we left our hotel to innocently walk about Sennar's market, we realized that we were being tailed. Subtlety was unfortunately beyond the grasp of the local kid obviously assigned to spy on us, and as the (three) of us meandered together through the town we couldn't help being a bit pleased with ourselves for having decided to keep it legal.

Ironically, for all our legality, we were to spend the next night in a police compound anyway.
Making our way to the tiny town of Dinder the next morning, we immediately became the most exciting thing to be seen in weeks- and the best entertainment to be had in at least as long- for the good but bored men of Dinder's provincial security headquarters. Registering upon arrival, we received only dumbfounded stares in reply to our inquiries after a hotel. There was no hotel. There was no hostel. There was no guesthouse. There was, in fact, no tourism at all, and running shy of ideas about what to do with us, the kind officers decided to put us up themselves (free of charge) in their own headquarters.

For the rest of that day, spent in an elaborate but fruitless quest for a bank, moneychanger, or other person able to offer forex services, we enjoyed a full escort of several delighted members of Sudan's finest. Though the grimy, tired faces of David and myself that day may have betrayed fatigue and frustration with our vain attempts to do, really, ANYTHING in tiny Dinder OR its vicinity, the officers were positively radiant with the responsibility of guarding us. Don't let the stern, official-looking expressions they both immediately adopted for the sake of my forbidden (but joyously-welcomed) photo-taking fool you: they were thrilled to be along for the ride. And what a ride it was..

Day over, settling into our quarters at Dinder's police compound, I reflected on the somewhat satisfying symmetrical irony of it all. We may have narrowly escaped official arrestation that morning.. but we didn't get out of spending the night under governmental guard. Mash'allah..