Northeast Kenya, Moyale, Ethiopia.

Holly's favoritest animal.

Rare sighting of a lion cub.

Nala.  Or maybe its Sarabi, it's hard to tell.

Miss Susie Bucaro, skillfully reenacting a lion attack on Jen.

 I only saw four westerners the entire time I was in Ethiopia. I guess it’s not really a place people go to for vacation. My ride stopped one night at a small town called Yabello. It was evening and I was told the bus would go all the way to the Kenyan border that night, but the driver got tired so we stopped.  There are no real schedules here; things get done when they get done and you just roll with it.  I like it. 

4^th day: The guest house I stayed in was on the outskirts of town and in the middle of nowhere. Sometime just before falling asleep, I heard the eerie howl of a hyena just outside our small inn. All the dogs in the village went crazy and I listened to the howls mingled with barks for a while and couldn't stop smiling at how cool it was that I was here. 

Ethiopians are very nice people, and the bus driver made sure I was taken care of because I was the first "tourist" he had ever had on his bus. He was a young entrepreneur and very curious about me.  At every stop he made sure to draw me away from the crowd and take me to get tea or snacks and talk about things.  We became good friends over the course of our several-days journey to Kenya.

When we stopped in Yabelo, he told me, in very poor English, to wake up early because the bus would leave again at 11:30, “When the sun comes up.” I was confused. 
I thought maybe he was getting his numbers mixed up, but then he wrote out '11:30' and said, "When the sun comes up, 11:30, we go." hmmmm. 
There was always a crowd around me and everyone was curious about this tall stranger among them. Finally, one younger guy spoke up and explained that they have a different time system here and that 11:30 was actually 5:30, when the sun comes up. That cleared things up.  Kenya and other east African countries use the same system but it was used more in Ethiopia than in the other countries like Tanzania and Kenya.  One hour after sunrise is 1 o’clock in the morning.  Because the countries are so close to the equator and sunrise times don’t really vary throughout the year, the system works well and makes sense.

The next day we made our way to Moyale, which is on the border with Kenya. The roads were paved but the going was slow because we stopped every few miles to pick up villagers along the side of the road. Most donned traditional tribal attire and elaborate jewelry, just like out of a national geographic movie. The city people told me that a lot of the tribal people have never been on a bus before, so when they do take the bus, they like to dress nice. It was amazing to see the change in tribal styles and the kilometers clicked by.  
The only drawback of travelling with the tribal people is that they make people close the windows because they have a superstition that the wind makes them sick.  So I sat in the back and sweat it out most of the day.

One old lady was crying. People were trying to comfort her. I asked why she was sad and they told me she had been visiting her daughter in the "city" and was going back to her village and she was scared she would never see her again. She would stop crying for a while, then a few hours later suddenly start crying again; it was sad.

The old men were the best; they looked so rugged with their beards, smiling faces, and canes worn smooth from use. I was by the door so I helped them get on and off and sometimes held their canes. They would look at me in surprise, ask the people on the bus who (or what) I was, then, upon receiving a satisfactory explanation from my fellow travelers, they would smile and get on board.  Their smiles were so bright and happy! even though their skin was worn and tough as leather.

When we got to Moyale I was running low on cash, luckily I had just enough to buy my visa. I was going to get it while I was in London but only had time to get my Ethiopian visa while there.

Northeast Kenya is equivalent to the Wild West of the U.S. back in the 1800’s.  The entire region is in dispute and neither Ethiopia nor Kenya wants to develop the infrastructure as long as things are unsettled.  So it remains very backwards.  No paved roads, some electricity, but not much else.  (In some ways it reminds me a lot of the Rez haha.) 


Somalia is not far away and the border is very porous.  The local Kenyans have skirmishes with Somalians in the area.  Moyale is a small town and there isn't much there. I was eager to get to Nairobi, but because of the remoteness, travel was tricky. There was a bus, but because of the dirt roads, the bus only makes one trip every 2 or 3 days. The people told me it left the day before, so it could be here tomorrow, or maybe the day after that, and then I could take it back into Kenya and get another bus from a different city to Nairobi. Fantastic. I didn't want to wait 3 days for a bus. Then they told me a faster way might be to get a ride on one of the many cattle/cargo trucks that left each morning to bigger towns down south. It was actually the preferred method of travel because the trucks left every morning.  They generally tried to leave in convoys to guard against bandits on the road that steal cattle and other goods. 

The night I arrived in Moyale there was a lot of buzz in the town about the 8 Kenyan soldiers that had been killed in a town called Isiolo just that day.  Isiolo was the town I was planning on travelling through. They were fighting with Somali cattle thieves and the Somalis were better armed than the Kenyans. The truck drivers talked it over and the consensus was that the convoys should take a different, longer route down south and go around the violent area. I thought it strange that the "new improved" route would take me 30 miles away from the Somali border, which seemed like the area we would want to avoid. But I trusted they knew best. 

They said it would take at least 2 days to get to Nairobi, subject to weather, accidents, thieves, etc. 

Morning came and I went to catch my cattle truck. All the other trucks were lined up to go.  We waited, then all  the other trucks left, and my truck was left behind. The driver had some errands to run, and so we missed the departure of the main convoy. We never caught up to them.

 The paved roads stopped at the Kenyan border.  I thought it ironic that most of the roads in Ethiopia were more or less paved but not the Kenyan roads. The dirt road was rutted, and sometimes we blazed our own trail. It had just rained and that made things even worse. It was a lot like 4-wheeling most of the time. Riding on top of a cattle truck isn't so bad. I had company; 3 boys around 18 yrs old, one of them an Ethiopian that jumped on the truck a few miles down the road from border checkpoint. I would find out later that he was a refugee and had been tortured in prison in Ethiopia and was going to the US embassy in Kenya to seek asylum. He had no documents and was literally a stow-away with us. (more on that later)

We crossed about 15 different checkpoints with armed guards during the next two days. Each time we approached a check point, the driver would stop a couple miles in advance and tell us to hide the Ethiopian. Of course, being Ethiopian, he had a big smile but a skinny body, so he fit nicely in the toolbox on top of the cab of the truck. The checkpoint guards usually just climbed up on the truck high enough to see what was in the back. Once they saw we just had wheat, they would let us go after checking my passport.

Each time we drove away, we were all relieved that our stowaway was undiscovered. At one point I asked my travel-mates what would happen if they found him, "We give them some money, they let us go," they said. 
After discussing my question for a bit, they all started laughing and looked at me-- with a wry grin one of them said, "But because you are American, you pay a big bribe!" they laughed and laughed. I laughed too until I thought about it for a second and realized how true it was, then it wasn't so funny, since I didn't have very much cash on me at all.

At one station, a particularly devoted and zealous guard was about to let us go, when he suddenly got suspicious and climbed all the way into our truck and started looking at everything. I thought we were goners for sure. The two other boys and I huddled around the toolbox, trying to block it from sight without looking too obvious. I made eye contact with one of the boys and he just grinned and raised his eyebrows a couple times. The raising of the eyebrows can mean many things in Africa; here it meant “I think you’ll have to pay a bunch of money in a minute.”  My friends were nervous in a playful sort of way, and almost seemed to be enjoying the suspense. The guard looked everywhere but the toolbox.  The Ethiopian lay perfectly still, hidden underneath jackets and my backpack.  After what seemed like forever, the guards finally let us go and our cattle truck rumbled away into the half-light of evening in the wilderness of Africa.   

The young Ethiopian poked his head out from under the jackets, grinning from ear to ear. We all laughed and gave each other high fives as the dust kicked up behind us and the wind blew in our faces.   It was a great time to be alive.

Late in the evening, we came across a small wreck. Two trucks had swiped each other as they passed going the opposite directions.  Funny how there can be a wreck out here, where you only see another vehicle every hour or two. I jumped out to investigate, and somehow lost my passport in the commotion. I was worried because now it would look really bad if our Ethiopian was discovered.  How would I explain to the police that I’m really not smuggling the Ethiopian and I really did have a passport and a visa to be in the country but I somehow lost it? That would be tricky; especially since I was in an unstable area that no sane tourist would ever visit.  Mostly I was worried about the size of the bribe I would have to pay to get out of that mess and I hadn't seen any decent size towns in a few days, let alone banks or ATMs.

We finally got to a town that had a police "station". Mostly it was a rustic jail with an office. I told them my situation. They told me to come back in the morning. In the morning, one of the higher-ups took me aside and told me I could be put in jail for traveling without a passport. He graciously showed me the primitive jail, with dirt floors and scraps of tin for a makeshift roof, to drive home the point that I didn't want to spend a night in his jail with the local drunks. Then he slyly told me these "problems" are easier "solved" with a little extra money. I played dumb for a minute until he was very clear that if I didn't pay him some money, life might be difficult for me. I thought about his request for a bribe, and thought I would first discuss it with the friend I had made in the town. He was so angry with the police, he went inside the station and in Swahili made a big scene and everyone in the office thought I was a nice guy so they out-voted the corrupt officer and gave me a pass to Nairobi.  Once there, I ordered a new passport.  I never found the old one.

Northeast Kenya

Ethiopia overland

So I left Egypt behind and arrived in Addis Ababa Ethiopia around 2am. While in Cairo, I looked up hotels in Ethiopia and found one or two, so I sort of new where I wanted to go.  


When I got off the plane I was bombarded with a dozen offers for a taxi. From Egypt and Greece, I had  more or less figured out how to hustle with the locals and get a fair price on food and taxis.  I approached a taxi driver off to the side and asked how much to get to the place called Baro Hotel. He gave me a price, I thanked him, then went to another guy and asked the same question.  His price was about the same but a little more.  I then made him an offer of half the price; he walked away. Since the Ethiopian airport is a lonely place at 2am, I figured I was getting a fair price with the first guy. 


After a short leisurely ride (in stark contrast to Egypt) we arrived curbside at a massive iron gate. Before I got out, the driver offered to change some money.   I knew what the rate at the banks would be and I also knew black market exchanges can be better or worse depending on how you deal. 


He made an offer, already better than the listed rate because US dollars are a nice hedge against inflation for locals. (Technically its illegal to change money outside a bank.) We argued a bit and I got even more out of him; all this was done in broken English and hand signals. 


He was nervous about the kids up the street. Just then, the iron gate opened and a 90 year-old man packing an AK-47 walked out and asked if we were coming in or not cause the kids up the road might break the windows of the taxi if we hung around much longer.  

Inside I got a room for 110 Ethiopian Birr, which is dirt cheap, and the room reflected the price. The bed was lop-sided (I would find out later why), and the shower was an open pipe hanging next to the remnants of what used to be a toilet. The sink was a cement basin. I was surprised not to see more mosquitoes with all the standing water in the bathroom. It would be my first of many hand showers in Africa. There were several packages of condoms on the nightstand, but no bars of soap, which I thought odd.

There was no mosquito net, but I had been taking Malarone so I prayed it would work its magic on the malaria and keep me safe. I slept with my cloths on after looking over the sheets. I lay down and felt things moving; bedbugs. I pulled out my rain parka and used it as a sheet, then placed my sleeping bag over that. The sound of the bugs hitting the plastic parka was eerie; it was sort of like rain hitting a tarp and would get louder whenever I moved. It seemed to be working, so I settled in for the night. 


Not long after, I noticed a lot of activity in the rooms around me. It was keeping me up so I got up and was about to open the door when I saw the notice on the door about the "services" and how things were to be conducted at the "hotel." I realized then that I had booked a night in a hotel the doubled as a whorehouse. Fabulous. That would explain the two girls at the entryway, the condoms but no soap, and the broken bed. It was very clear now, and all I could do was laugh at myself. I put in my earplugs (which have saved me many times, by the way) and tried to sleep.

I left Addis the next day because I was due in Nairobi in 8 days and wasn't sure how long it would take to cover the 2,000 kilometers overland. 
The bus "system" works like this; you go to the central bus station, listen for someone yelling the name of the town you go to, then hop on as the minibus drives by. The driver and the advertiser drive around in a circle in the main area of town until the the bus is full; otherwise its not worth the trip.  I was lucky passenger number one. 


We drove around in the same 1/2 mile circle for about an hour until we were packed in like sardines. My knees were up in my chest because my bag was under my seat. I drove about 7 hours this way, across territory most people on see on Aid commercials. To keep from getting ripped off, you just give them what you think the trip should be, which you should find out from unbiased locals beforehand, then look away and act like you know what you're doing.  They sense weakness, and if you hesitate they will be on to you in a heartbeat, asking for more money.

We went south the first day, to a town called Awasa, then I found out that there isn't a bus from Awasa to Moyale, so I had to back track to Sheshemenee.

Outside the capital city of Addis, few people have cars so donkey carts are everywhere. Building materials are taken from what is in the area so most villages are of thatch roof huts with mud walls, just like in the movies. The larger villages of more than 100 people had about 70% cement shacks with tin sheet roofs. Kids would come up the minibus and hold up mangoes, bananas, bottled water, and peanuts for the travelers. I hadn't seen a white person or a tourist in 2 days. The entire 5 days I was in Ethipiopia I met one tourist and saw a couple white people in a LandRover driving by.

The kids new two sentences in English; what is your name, and give me money. When they saw me they were especially zealous in their attempts to sell whatever they had. I thought it was funny how local markets were selling foreign aid food, right from the very sacks that had in big, bold, important lettering 'NOT TO BE SOLD OR EXCHANGED.' Some of the bags of peanuts had foreign aid labels and had been opened and split up to get more bang for the buck. The mangoes and bananas came from the well watered highlands, which I would pass through in the following days. 


Our aid had destroyed their economy.  Sometimes giving freely is a disservice.


I could only shake my head and smile as everything I'd read in economics came as an avalanche of thoughts while watching the scenes around me. How a once profitable cotton industry here could be obliterated by free cotton t-shirts; how a pharmacy industry would never exist here while free drugs from the west were dumped here, and how an agricultural industry can be erased, not by a bad crop year, but by free corn and rice from well intentioned countries.


 I didn't think it possible that a people that had existed since before the time of the Egyptians could be reduced to this.  "What should be done with the poorest of countries?" Sitting in a minibus in the middle of nowhere a small compassionate voice in my head wanted to reply, "Give them nothing." Of course, I don't mean that in an absolute sense. We should help them all we can with raw materials, manufacturing technology, education, etc., but not with finished goods that distort their already feeble market. I could talk all day about what should be done, but that’s for another time. One thing is certain though, that the free food, cloths, and shoes being given to them is being sold at local market places.

In bullets, the following were also noteworthy:

• Small children, not more than 5 yrs old, herd cattle, goats, and sheep in the middle of nowhere.
• In the dry areas, people haul water for miles, the lucky ones have mules. children too small to carry the heavy 5 gallon barrels lay them down on the side and roll the barrels along, kicking them with their feet.
• no running water for 4 days. Guest houses I stayed in had no power for most of the night. Power is hydroelectric and rationed.  no running water.  reminds me of the Rez haha.
• Very nice people, but many are desperate to sell whatever they have to survive. They live day to day.
• I ate a lot of really good food and breads. I chewed chatt, which is a local bad habit from a native bush. The ladies on the bus thought it was hilarious. Everyone in the back of the bus eyed me for about an hour, with wide grins, anticipating some sort of spectacle to happen. It’s supposed to make you crazy for a while, but didn’t have much of an effect on me. They were mildly disappointed.  Maybe I was chewing it wrong.
• One bus listened to the same CD for 6 hours. The locals loved it and sang along. It was really beautiful at first, but after a few hours I wanted to put a hole in my head.
• there is a superstition among a lot of locals that the wind makes you sick, so the older people and people who didn't ride the bus less often made sure all the windows were rolled up at all times. Not good for me.
• The bus stops whenever someone needs a ride, sometimes in the middle of nowhere to pick up a lone tribesman, only to let him off a few miles down the road.
• I saw all sorts of different tribes, but took relatively few pictures because every time I pulled out my camera I felt more or less embarrassed at being such a tourist, so mostly I just looked at them.