POLITE NOTICE: NO ALTERNATOR, NO MOVE

IN JULIA'S WORDS

A corner on our block in Nairobi

It’s a very cute thing about Kenyan public notices: they’re all headed “Polite Notice”, and probably would be if the message was “Take one step further and you’ll be beheaded, shrinking dick”. We’re getting very familiar with such polite notices here in Nairobi, stuck as we are up a pitted African road with a car without an alternator.

Our merry plan to conquer our necessary admin (getting Rehana’s meds, a dentist, a car service and new tyres) in Nairobi in less than a week fizzled to a halt, as did our alternator last Thursday. Boldly we had sought out two new tyres in the jammed heart of Nairobi, after a visit to a downtown dentist (Rehana’s teeth has turned orange thanks to her TB meds, she was looking too authentically Ethiopian for comfort). 

Of course, a mechanical issue came up at the tyre dealers when the dastardly device needed to release the spare tyre from beneath the car broke, and we had to go to another dealer in the kidneys of Nairobi to get it fixed. [I say “of course”, because it’s a fact that any given attempt to tick off all on any given list will generate a whole new list that was never originally considered. Like when you get someone in to clean your carpets and they manage to smash a garden lamp on the way in and leave magnificent scrape marks on your newly painted walls, fo’ zample.]

So off to the traffic-jammed industrial area we drove, to another branch of the tyre dealers. We gave the broken tool to a mechanic to fix and I decided to check the tyre pressure on our two, very handsome new BF Goodrich All-terrain carboots. This required a 10 metre drive to a pump. Simple as a pimple this seemed – but it turned out to be a bridge too far. Because, although the car started, it wouldn’t idle and cut out as soon as I took my foot off the gas.

The tyre people brought out their battery testing device and diagnosed a failing alternator.

It was hot and the week had been a mission, which is when such news tends to make the head fall and shoulders slump. Especially when it’s – A G A I N – the AAALTERNAAATOOORRRR! Because MAAAN have we D U U U U N the alternator. In fact, we’ve been under the threat of car power failures – or is that load shedding? – almost from the start of our trip.

Our own profound ignorance of everything about our battery system was definitely behind our stumbling appreciation of the limits of power storage when we just started out in Mabibi. Then in the second week of June in Ngara, northern Malawi, when our fridge declined to work, a dying battery was our conclusion.  A few days later in Mbeya, Tanzania, we seemed to resolve the problem by replacing the main battery.

We went on for about two months from there without any power failures, if a few brownouts, until that out-and-out failure on 16 August in the midst of the vast vistas of sandland called Sibiloi National Park, west-northern of Kenya. And then, the terrible limp we had in Mike’s batteries’ care all the way from there to Arba Minch, where Terror Lekota’s look-alike Mamush eventually found a stop-gap solution with an alternator (he called it the “dynamo”) that wasn’t exactly right but worked. Mostly. For the next 50 days.

So when our alternator once again ceased to be a dynamo in Nairobi, we were referred to a garage some blocks away from the tyre centre in the industrial area. We trudged off amidst the hot traffic’s growl to Alfa Motors. It looked credible enough; Mr Singh the Main Mechanic in Alfa’s workshop insisted we drive our halting car back to them, he’d take a look. 
We trudged back through the dust and fumes to where it had failed a few blocks away, and I gritted my teeth and worked the revs while taking any perhaps-gap in the unbroken clutter of traffic so that I wouldn’t have to stop and therefore stall. We only stalled once, and booked the BRC into Alfa Motors – 4x4 experts with a Toyota parts centre in the showroom. The portents looked good.

Who could ask for anything more than Mr Singh?

Right now, exactlyprecisely when we’re getting BRC back is not definite. Mr Singh confirms it needs a new alternator. But being 20 years old, a huge engine, and petrol, such alternators are not to be found behind every Acacia.
In fact, they’re almost nowhere in sub-Saharan Africa at all. Not at Toyota dealers in Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, Namibia, or Zambia, anyway. There was doubt that there was one in South Africa (and therefore we’d have to order one from Japan, and work out what to do with up to a month’s wait).
But Dear Prudence, the supersleuth from Outsurance who’s working on our claim (how smart was that to take out Out in Africa insurance?!?), hunted down what appears to be the alternator we need. It’s been a week of hit-and-miss getting it here, but as of Friday 19^th October, it’s apparently been with DHL.

My fondest hope, as I now tap, is that this absolutelyright alternator is winging its efficient way to Alfa Motors, Industrial area, Nairobi, Kenya. And, one hour after he receives it, Mr Singh efficiently slips it in to BRC’s failed middle as effortlessly as a fool on a banana. [This will have to be on Tuesday, Monday being Mahujaa – or Heroes – day, marking 50 years of Kenya’s independence from Britain]. 

BRC’s engine roars BRC-like back into life as if it is impatient to be on its way on its spanking handsome new carboots, and Mr Singh calls us to collect it urgently less it uses its bullbar for uses other than fending off bulls. It’s raring to be off, just like we are. 
Then we whisk past the shops and stock up, before rolling with fine music in our ears and the earth unfolding behind our windows towards Uganda. And only ever think of an alternator again as a very beautiful piece of machinery with its gleaming copper coil innards and shapely thick-metal casing.

Until then, Rehana and I are hunkering down at Angaza guesthouse. It’s the same guesthouse we stayed in the first time around in Nairobi, mainly because it’s cheapish and centralish. And because the innkeeper is Ruth, and she’s very groovy.

We don’t have a car, and we don’t care to partake of the jerk-‘n-rattle sardine-can busses and taxis which pass as public transport (sound familiar?), so our last few days have been enforced inertia. In some ways, it’s very ok.
Our Waiting Room in Angaza guesthouse has a TV with DSTV which includes cricket coverage from everywhere. Our bed is quite comfortable on which we loll as indolent bedbugs and stare at India v Australia in T20 and ODI, the Cobras and the Knights in the local SA competition, SA being humbled by Pakistan in a test in Abu Dhabi. The loo works, as does the shower, the weather is fine.

Many things are reminiscent of Joburg here. The Jacaranda’s purple framed by thunder-brooding and puff clouds that hardly move in the hot, blue-rich sky; the plumes of traffic pollution and obscene driving from decrepit taxis; slick private hospitals with urban health specialists in droves while at the nearby state hospital the ill lie down under trees to await their turn; pamphlets from Nigerian traditional healers slapped onto lamp and other roadside posts offering “Love Portions”, and magic to reclaim Lost Things and Solve Politics; restaurants (some also in the remaining malls) offer the range of safe tasties so loved at home, from Italian to Indian to a fat ‘ol steak); English is mostly understood.

Enough to make me adore Nairobi, or feel crippingly homesick? Ja well fine, NO.

IN REHANA'S WORDS

We are stuck. With our car out of commission all our plans have come to naught. We should be in Uganda, inhaling Lake Victoria’s soft air. Instead, we’re in Nairobi, sucking in foul clouds of black diesel fumes. Some days we’re quite resigned to our fate, on others we rail against its cruelty.

Its not the worst time to be in Nairobi. Its purple jacaranda canopy makes it as familiar as home. As do the car alarms and the hadeda calls in the greyness of dawn.

We’re at Angaza Guest House again (we stayed here when we were in Nairobi two months ago). Our room is en suite with a not smelly toilet and a clean shower but has an awful arch of exposed concrete where wiring was installed and paint not bought to finish the job.

Check out those thumbs: twiddle dee, stuck are we

We’re on holiday, lying in bed all day is completely justified. Our recent travails – my health and Big Red Car’s – were tough on both of us. Travelling is hard work; we have an unexpected break. No tent to erect, no meals to concoct. Our dirty washing is handed in to Ruth at reception and collected a day later, ironed and all.

We have a television with DSTV at a time when South Africa is playing a test series against Pakistan; India’s taking on Australia and the local 50-over contest has begun (for the uninitiated, that’s cricket). For Julia, there’s also the climax of the Currie Cup and loads of international rugby. We have several movie channels to surf.

On some days, particularly when India is firing on all cylinders and there’s a good indie movie to watch, I can sink into our wide, soft bed with a soporific smile. But we’ve discovered – a mere week after perfecting the DSTV remote clutch – that some days there can be nothing to watch on many channels.

I haven’t continued the routine of afternoon naps, but I sink into sleep quite early and emerge 10 to 14 hours later. Both of us have not lost our late-morning sleepability, I’m glad to report. We’re putting in the hours before we revert to our camping habits of up at sun heats canvas, which can sometimes be very early.

Our current address is very convenient. We’re on the cusp of the CBD, an easy walk downhill but a distance back home in the afternoon heat. The Yaya mall, a mere 2km or so away, offers all we might need, including the Saffron restaurant whose long menu is a joy to behold. 

The pavements on the way to the mall are hot and holey and blasted with a black fug of bus, taxi and car fumes. We’re offsetting our travel carbon footprint by swallowing a good portion of pollution daily, no need to plant a tree when we get home.

Swallowing smog 

Sometimes I forget that I am sick and I’m puzzled by my sudden weakness. I now recognise the symptoms of over-exertion, it took hold while we were walking through the Bale Forest and along the slopes of Mt Kenya.
A flutter arrives in my chest. I feel a hatch slamming down to seal my constricting throat. My shallow breaths quicken. Each inhalation is taken with a noisy gasp that disappears only when I establish a fresh rhythm of measured breaths.

I haven’t experienced that for a while, not once since our fortnight in Nairobi. Our daily constitutional to the mall and back is short enough and always punctuated by a rest while we have a meal or a drink at a restaurant. 

The Nairobi Hospital is our immediate neighbour, there's only a low fence separating it from Angaza. With so much free time on our hands, Jules and I spent most of a day there while I got examined from head to toe: blood tests, X-rays and more.
Strange bulgy lumps were travelling down my veins on one arm. Jules and I were both puzzled, then worried. So we took ourselves off to our neighbourhood private hospital and went to casualty. The young, superprofessional doctor was puzzled. He had no idea what was causing the lumps so he sent me to the lab for a battery of tests.
I have my X-rays and an eight-page report from the lab. There's nothing else wrong, I only have TB. The doctor, and I, think the lumps are caused by my veins still protesting the drips that tore into them two months ago.
There’s no need for any fretting, everything’s fine and getting better.

Best neighbour for a sickie

We couldn’t have chosen a better place than Nairobi for a breakdown. We’re quite comfortable in a middle class part of town and our car is at a Toyota specialist. Best of all, we’ve got a policy with Outsurance that covers mechanical breakdowns. 

Why am I not enjoying a time out in bed when that was guaranteed to make me happy in Joburg? Why do I often catch Julia literally twiddling her thumbs in the twitchiest way possible?

We are both itching to be on our way. Our Ugandan visas, hard-won from a very stroppy woman months ago in Pretoria, are expiring in our passports. Nairobi’s lovely enough but we’ve had enough. We’ve seen all we can within walking distance and metered taxi rides are extortionate.

We spent most of a day at the art museum

We are both blessed and cursed with mostly-reliable broadband. When we’re not staring at the television we’re glued to the smaller screen of our laptops. We’ve been reading newspapers every day – online and in print – and we’re appalled at how badly they’re written and how poorly conceived many stories are. 

The Westgate mall coverage is close to pathetic. The politicians either talk drivel or are evasive and the reporters are getting nowhere close to the truth. Reading Kenya’s columnists make South Africa’s worst appear erudite and intellectual. Their attempts to take positions on the International Criminal Court’s prosecution of President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto are a garbled mess.

For an hour or two we were gripped by the race row at City Press newspaper, but then we were horrified. I can’t see how the relationship between editor and staff is going to be rebuilt and I still fail to see the charms of letting it all hang out on Twitter. 

Kenya’s celebrating its 50^th year of independence today, and is completely tangled in race politics. People attempt to defend voting for politicians indicted on charges of crimes against humanity on the grounds that they had to support “their” men. 
They point out that this year they didn’t hack their neighbours to death with machetes on the way home from the polls, why does the ICC want to dwell on the past? Most Kenyans tell us what tribe they were born into within minutes of meeting them, and what makes them superior to others. They all only vote for "their" politicians. Almost makes our politics seem mature.

The feathers and the beads are charming. The Samburu and Turkana raiding each other with AK47s to amass livestock for lobola is frightening and deathly. The Maasai expecting a lion to be killed before manhood is attained is dangerous and will damage Kenya's high-end tourism industry. Mzungu pay a lot of money to see lion. The fact that people of different tribes seldom contemplate intermarriage in this day and age is pathetic.

It is time to move on. After 50 years of politicians favouring only their tribal communities, Kenya needs to work towards a post-racial future (as Ferial Haffajee would coyly name it). And we need to move west.
I'm on holiday, dammit! I shouldn't be reading the news. Look how irritated I am! I've been reading the news every day for 21 days straight and I'm frazzled. It's time to go stare at a lake.

EXIT ETHIOPIA WITH A BANG

IN REHANA'S WORDS

ODOMETER READING:  255 787 (We’ve driven 17 015km since April)

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS ABOUT ETHIOPIA

In other countries the roads authorities build and maintain roads mainly for the benefit of the drivers of the vehicles using it and the passengers they convey. It’s also a great way to get tons of cheap plastic junk from ports to shops and markets.

The Ethiopian Roads Authority builds and maintains roads for the benefit of the people of the country, particularly those who live along its flanks. There’s no better place to meet an old friend to catch up than on the solid white line. Actually, there is, on the solid white line at the top of a blind curve. Even better, why not visit on the white line on a corner seventeen goats are tripping across, piss running down their legs as they hear on the oncoming truck?

There can’t be a worse place in the world to drive than Ethiopia. Julia figured out how to do it: accept that the road was created for the people not the cars, and you start to understand that you need to navigate through mayhem.

The road’s a great place to dry your produce. Everything you sell will be coated in the grey or brown dust thrown up by passing cars, trucks, taxis and buses. And the passing horse carts and donkey carts and herds of horses and donkeys and cows and goats.

In Ethiopia it's mostly coffee beans dried on tarpaulin on the side of the road, forcing oncoming traffic into an unexpected single lane. Coffee leaves are also dried on the side of the road. So are beans and grains and rice.

When they’re all dried and ready to sell, why bother picking them up from the side of the road? Invite all your neighbours and set up a market on the side of the road.
The neighbours will all walk along the side of the road between your village and theirs with their goats, donkeys, horses, hay, wheat, rice, cloth and other goods for sale. And then they’ll walk home along the side of the road with all the goods that they bought.

Bales of hay and other materials are constructed on the side of the road. Timber is strewn across half the highway and the truck loading it blocks most of the remaining lane.

Khat is piled high on the side of the road and the Isuzu trucks that race the leaf across the country park three deep while they’re loading.  The discarded parts of the khat bush (only the small leaves at the top of the branches give you a high) are left in huge heaps on the side of the road that the rain pulps into a muddy brown hill that oozes towards the white line.

Every Isuzu truck driver and about 80% of the rest of the traffic on Ethiopia’s roads don’t like being overtaken. Soon as they figure out what you’re up to, they swerve across your path, forcing you back behind them. Then you have to signal for all you’re worth – indicate, hoot (apologetically, not too brash), roll down your window and wave in the most friendly way – before you try to get past again.
This time, he accelerates just as you’re about to take him. Usually, you have to wait for him (always a him) to decide to let you pass. He eventually slows down and an arm comes out of the driver’s window, a hand languidly beckoning you forward.
You scream at the fuckfart poesprick as you pass the driver’s window but you can’t see his face. There’s a curtain across the window and half of the windscreen.

This bus is quite plain compared to the rest

I’m sure some highways in Ethiopia were made with white concrete, but they’re as black as the tarred ones because of the goat shit deposited over the years. Goats love afternoon naps on the white line. But only in Ethiopia. In other countries they have more road sense than the humans. No animals have road sense in Ethiopia. And no humans. Not one human.

The road kill is horrific in Ethiopia. It’s easier to look away when you’re the passenger. We’ve finally seen the end of the tether. It’s a horse who displays its years of abuse in the middle of a traffic jam in Addis Ababa. Its ribs and hips are distended and its shoulders and flanks bleeding. We’ve seen a few of these horses, and several lashings and bashings. Sies! Some Ethiopians are cruel to animals.

Male Ethiopians are extremely affectionate towards each other in public. They walk in the middle of the road not only holding hands, but with fingers intertwined. When three men walk together they all hold each other’s hands. And when they’re not holding hands they’ve got their arms around each other’s shoulders. Women aren’t as affectionate, probably because their hands are full stabilising the heavy loads on their shoulders as they trudge uphill.

We love Chinese road builders. They’re everywhere, even where there’s only two Acacia trees and 20 goats. Ethiopian roads are getting better. I’m very glad that I drove the mountain pass outside Addis. The graduates of the special needs class, whom Julia says designed and supervised the building of the pass, put steps in. I kid you not.
On a very steep gradient and several switchback corners, they put in steps. You have to turn the steering wheel sideways when going both up and down; otherwise you bump your exhaust pipe against the step. The Chinese were only a few kilometres away from that pass, they’re going to spoil the fun.

In Addis Ababa they love making U-turns. Partly because when they built their new highways, they forgot to put in exits. So they made little holes in the islands and cars make U-turns ever so often. They turn very wide, so they bring up to three lanes of traffic to a standstill when U-turning.

But on roads with no islands and plenty of exits, Addis drivers still make U-turns all the time, without indicating. And the impatient fucknut pigbastard drivers don’t hoot impatiently or close down the space for yet another U-turner who’s suddenly stopped in front of them. Strange

Okay enough. This is “some final thoughts” not “all my thoughts” which, on the subject of Ethiopian roads and Ethiopian drivers, can go on for several more pages.

The truck, tuk-tuk and goat dodgem roads

Ethiopians were never colonised and this is clear as a bell wherever you go. They are Ethiopians and they’re not trying to be someone else. They love Ethiopian things. Okay, many of them like European soccer, but (see Ethiopian drivers above) some people are stupid.

Ethiopian people like their language. They don’t call each other “nigger”, they read books published in Amharic, they have three television channels on which only Amharic is spoken. Their politicians are very lucky – they get workshops in small villages onto the prime time news, not only their city conferences.

They have a language war – some are trying to reform the Ethiopian Orthodox Church by campaigning that its Bibles and its sermons be in Amharic – the language of the people – and not in Ge’ez, the language of the priests.

They have a religion that is unique in the world. Its adherents seem to adore it and it is incredible how many young people kiss the gates and steps of the churches.

Ethiopians love their music; they don’t listen to Beyonce or Rihanna. I don’t much like Ethiopian music. There’s a female ululation that descends into a warble that I dislike intensely. I don’t like the monotonous chanting music that the churches blast out for days on end, very loudly of course. The music channel on Etv has the world’s most naff music videos, especially all the rural dancing with shepherds’ staffs. And the shoulder shimmy dance.

Ethiopians love their food. They eat out, a lot. They know what they want, every restaurant has virtually the same menu and then some restaurants are just spectacular. But the same menu establishments have a wide range and the food is almost always guaranteed to be good if not pretty damn tasty, even in the smallest villages.

Decoration inside an Ethiopian restaurant, packed with locals

The traditional vegetarian (fasting) food is always a sure and spicy bet. Doro wot, a chicken “stew” that blows a hole at the top of my head, is a winner. But Ethiopians, by and large, have a problem with their chicken. They’re stringy and tough. Send them into the middle of the road, that might tenderise them a bit.

Ethiopians love their coffee. And so do I. There’s vendors performing coffee ceremonies on the muddiest pavements in Addis, spilling frankincense fumes into the environment.
The smallest of towns has an establishment with a gleaming coffee machine, producing Americanos, cappuccinos and the strong black shots of coffee that Ethiopians love. I love macchiatos, I like the way the brown foam spills down the cup as I lift it.

Ethiopians have visible health problems. The naked and half naked mentally disabled people on the streets are distressing. So are the people who had polio. Their clever home-made versions of wheelchairs are inspiring.
There hardly seems to be any squatters. The state is building sub-economic housing in every village, town and city. In the rural areas homes are quite secure, even the wattle and daub of traditional homes in the south and straw and mud plastered wattle-framed houses in the north. All have zinc roofs – much more secure than in neighbouring countries, although very ugly once the rust gets going.

The land is beautiful. Most of the people live on the land, and off it. Their fields of grain a month or two before harvest is a sight to behold, especially when the wind whips through fields of wheat, exposing tufts of gold atop sheaves of green.
The people are beautiful. The children especially. Even the ones who scream “you, you, you” soon as they spot you, segue into “you, give me money” and throw stones at you when you don’t.

IN JULIA'S WORDS

27 September

Under the growl of an approaching thunderstorm, Rehana actually lolls, as if on holiday, on a deckchair beside a Shashamene hotel pool. It is large, blue almost, alongside which Rehana has skinny-set-up herself. I sit nearby to write with a hearty glass of Meta Premium beer at my elbow.
Our Addis experience was probably a bit leaner than others visiting or living there may experience, although it’s hard to imagine how it could even begin to be a swish and luxuriant joint, even for the rich and Wellington-booted.
No-one can dodge the ankle-thick sucking mud, nor the absolutely insane traffic jerking and lurching over not-roads around deadends where construction work has made half the city into a cul-de-sac.

Rehana relaxing at the pool in Shashamene

Julia tense and scared that a tortoise is going to nibble her tootsies

I had to get off my lounger to prove that tortoises don't eat toes

Both our visits to Addis have been dominated by lengthy stays at garages under the attentions of mechanics. We were fortunate to have a fab Addis mechanic recommended to us – Tadese is his name – when we’d just entered Ethiopia, and went to him first to sort out the electrics/battery to do with our fridge. 

This time around – five weeks later – we needed him to again help us figure out battery bugs – our auxillary battery is not charging as it should. Perhaps because it’s old? Perhaps the alternator jerry-rigged for us in Arba Minch has a fault? Perhaps because it’s inhabited by a djinn of tenacious character?

Plus we had a puncture on the road from Lalibela to Debre Tabor on our way to Gonder, 10 days ago. Heading down the hill of a tarred road towards the town of Gob Gob, I suddenly felt an unusual bumpity-bumpity-bump that was repeated far too regularly for my liking. Either the road had a strange and consistent corrugation, or something else was up. I stopped the car to take a look – and yes, it wasn’t the road, it was a flat tyre, the right rear to be precise.
Rehana was still a feeble thing at this stage, and I on the taut-side of anxious at the best of times. This was exactlyprecisely NOT what we needed. Plus I’ve not ever changed a tyre on my own – let alone one on a beast like the BRC. But what can two girls do when they’ve a blow-out, alone, 60km from their destination, other than their bestest to get it together?
Well, that is what we did. We unpacked our tyre-fixing apparatus and gathered ourselves for operation Jack-‘n-Replace.
We have two spare wheels. The one is attached to a bracket that swings out from the back of the car on a sturdy hinge. What makes this wheel complicated to take off is the registration plate and wiring that is wrapped up in its middle; it’s riddled with electric-fixings and twiddly-fixity things you hesitate to go near. So easier, then, or so the theory went, was to get the spare tyre kept under the car.
And this, almost all agree, is not easy to get out at all (thieves must definitely be put off). It involves thrusting a long metal bar with two bits that stick out from its end through a small dark hole above the rear bumper. The two sticking-out metal bits then have to be fitted into, somewhere in the dark unknowns of the undercar, two convex grooves.
Once you’ve got those two metal prongs from the bar into their corresponding grooves, then you turn the metal bar so that the spare tyre is slowly lowered by a chain on to the ground. Which may sound like a doddle, and could be if you were gifted in this way, but for the rest of us simple folk matching the metal bits into the corresponding grooves is fucking mission impossible.
The only view you get of what you’re aiming at as you plunge the metal pipe through the hole under the rear bumper is the slightest, dimmest, most unhelpful one. In all its wise wisdom, I can’t see how Toyota has arrived at this as a fine engineering solution to the problem of storing and changing a tyre. Given that their engineering often causes me to swoon, this is not lightly said.
A significant crowd of white-dusted children had gathered to gawk and scrounge by the time we’d unloaded the tools. Being the Well One, I endeavoured for the first 10 minutes to get the dastardly bit to fit into the unscrewing device so mindlessly hidden from sight under the car. I very grumpily failed, and Rehana settled down to do her best.
The only other vehicles that passed by during our stuckage were disinterested combi-taxis, but just as Rehana shouted, “I’ve got it!” from the rear as the metal rod struck home (I was grimly sulking at the car’s front), a huge truck came past us with brakes hissing and gasping as it slowed down. It pulled up in front of us to a stop.
We never did learn his name, but refer to him most lovingly as “Black Man” (this was spray painted on the back of his truck). Black Man was our hero, shooing us aside as the inept damsels we are, throwing himself heedless of oil, dust and stones under the car as needed, overcoming each little glitch as it came up, until our  bust wheel was off and the spare one on. 

He’d accept no money for his troubles, but did accept that fine Ethiopian greeting – one cheek pressed to opposite cheek, while the same happens with opposing shoulders – three times from Rehana. I’m sure there was a tear or more in Rehana’s grateful eye when she said goodbye to our Supermechanic, Black Man.
The pressing crowd of dust-children and a few older women who gathered to gawk and pluck into our car for whatever they could grasp did not, however, earn our thanks. They’d hassled us and pressed up against the car and would only move back when a young man, who also took on our cause, threatened them with a stick and stones. We paid him for his trouble.

Most infuriating, twice when we tried to drive off we found that some little shit had undone the clasp on the spare wheel that attaches it to the car. If it’s unclasped, who knows what terrible damage it would do while it swings freely as we drive! We left them swearing.
And bust the tyre was – the half a kilometre or so that I had driven on it before I realised it was flat had disfigured it beyond repair. This was confirmed by a “gomeester” – a tyre merchant – at Debre Tabor, where I went while Rehana had her necessary afternoon snooze. The lovely grizzly gomeester would have moved the world to help, but alas, without any of the right spare tyres in stock or in town, he could only send us on our way.
So it was in Addis that we also needed a spare tyre, and Tadese helped us with that as well. Besides the tyre and the battery, there’s one other outstanding worry: an oil leak, from a worrying “somewhere” (I tried to get this sorted out in Bahir Dar too, but without success). Tadese reckons it’s the oil pump, but is confident that, as long as we keep an eye on the oil pressure/levels, we’ll happily roll into Nairobi.
So Tadese’s garage has been much of our Addis experience, both our first and second time there, but it’s to be expected when a hardy 20-year-old car is your wagon of choice to drive through Africa. And wow is the BRC hardy – I don’t at all begrudge it these few days in garages in Nairobi or Arba Mich or Dessie or Harar or Bahir Dar or in Addis. Its troubles have been altogether not-much, and it’s capacity for very-much huge.
I was passing the time in Tadese's small dark office with incomprehensible TV and a friendly bookkeeper behind her desk and a cash register when the strange thing happened. I heard a slight raising of male voices and came out into the cramped-with-cars, muddy terrain of Tadese's workshop, to discover our hero mechanic engaged in a impassioned conversation with a strange looking man. He was thin, bespectacled and tallish, dressed in a light brown suit with shoes as shiny as the pervasive mud would allow. He carried in his left hand a beaten leather briefcase.
Turns out he was a secret police/customs official who had spotted the clearly foreign-owned BRC as he passed Tadese's garage and was intent on busting us for the major smuggling transgressions he was sure he'd stumbled on through the Addis mud.
Open your tent, he commanded. Which would have meant some serious manoevering given how little the available space was in Tadese's workshop.
The strident retorts that brought me out of the dark office were Tadese's, laying down the law to the law enforcer. No warrant, no search. He batted the thin bespectacled bureaucrat away. Don't worry, he said, he won't come back.

Our cute "gomeester" in Addis

Rehana's ready for her nap

We did squeak in at least one “tourist attraction” this second time around, the National Museum at the Addis Abiba University. I found myself speeding past exhibitions of “Lucy” and her reconstructed remains. There’s many things I don’t like about it: the ostentatious Latinate terms that the lofty scientists apply to the different “species” of remains; the slight splinters of bone joined together with filling to create the “authentic” whole, with their childish and airbrushed renditions of “recreated” ancient beings meant to invoke their reality to me.
Worst of all is their unsatisfactory assertion that this series of findings represent in any way a coherent and convincing sequence of “human development” up to the Neanderthals we are today. Their basis for asserting that any being was “the first” seems constructed primarily on overlooking a million or more other real possibilities. 

For example, so much of the Earth’s surface is either under water or the fall-out from more recent volcanic eruptions etc. There’s too many watery and other masses hiding their secrets, probably forever, for me to go with the narrative these Lucy-ians so glibly provide to justify their own importance.
The National Museum is thankfully small, three-stories high though it is. The artefacts – earthenware pots and lamps, copper lamp holders – dated 6th century BC were most impressive, but I’m entirely over looking at moth-eaten clothes and thrones and self-aggrandising “noble” pictures of past patriarchal thugs.
Art can be a drag, but the third floor did have some ancient and curious parchments featuring the standard religious Ethiopian fare – strangely not unlike 14th century European religious stuff, with a haloed Mary and a midget of a haloed Jesus on her lap (he looking all manlike in features bar the beard, but miniature. Disconcerting, actually).

Bit too big for her lap?

The crowd scenes do me best: the front line are dutifully endowed with human features, but from the second row of people on, the idea of a crowd is simply suggested by the repeated glimpse of a (high, Ethiopian-style) forehead topped with a rim of standard black hair.

There was more modern stuff at the museum too, some of which was cubist and fractured enough to surely inspire a future Picasso.
But, essentially, Addis is just one aspiring mire-mass of mud, road works (apparently an underground train is the biggest cause) and building sites right now, not a place to actually BE. We opted for an apparently South African inspired chain-type hotel (Formula One style), which is approximately within our budget, and has “standard” rooms to satisfy bourgeois “standard” expectations. The topic of what’s “standard bourgeois” I haven’t the hnngghh to go into right now, but will. Should. Maybe.
Alas for us, it, like so very many other places in Addis where we stayed, SleepEasy Hotel was adjoined to a building site and the hooting mud-hell where a road might be. Easy to sleep it was not.

SleepEasy is in the top right corner of this pic

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Saturday, 5 October

And so we left Ethiopia. With huge reservations about whether we had given enough of our time to a country whose people both infuriated us and cared for us with huge tenderness. That was so spectacularly beautiful and offered such a range of natural beauty.
We told customs when we entered the country that our cars would be in Ethiopia for 45 days (thinking we would go to Sudan and come back). We were now heading south, should we find the customs office in Addis and ask for more time? We have three-month visas.

But we didn’t stay. We've been on the road for seven months already and we have to drive the same distance home in five months. I'm not really capable of driving or being a passenger for more than half a day and then I need to rest and recover when we arrive. We resolved that if we have an opportunity to visit Ethiopia again, we will grab it.

We had not visited the Simien Mountains in the north because of my poor health and so I planned a two-day stop at the Bale Mountains between Addis and the border.
For the first time on this trip, I got it wrong. We ended up in a small town, Dodola, far from the hotels I had found when I hastily skimmed the guidebook. The town looked like a dusty taxi rank that only offered accommodation for long-distance drivers. I looked at Jules with horror, she looked around with resignation and we decided to make the most of it.

Dodola, another town under construction

There was a guides' office where we made arrangements for a trek the next morning in the forest flanking the mountain. We booked into the Bale Mountains Motel, which the guides assured was the place where faranji stayed.
Our grungy room had two single beds, reeking of the damp that crept up its walls and fabrics. We sat outside until it was late enough to go to bed and fall asleep quickly, around 8pm. This was the first day I hadn't had a nap since Harar - more than a month and a half ago. The room was too mouldiferous for a nap.

Our guide was yet another Abdul and yet another sweetie. He took us into the juniper forest for a short, ambling walk (all my lungs could bear).
This was our first visit with juniper trees and we’re hoping for another opportunity soon. We loved the smell, the size and shape of them, and the soft carpet underfoot. Abdul led us along a river running through the forest – utter delight.

We would have loved to spend another morning in the forest but I was wiped out, didn’t have the energy to help get our tent up and couldn’t face another night in a grungy motel.
So we fled Dodola for Shashemene 80km downhill, where the four-star (!!) E-Light Hotel offered faranji comfort. We arrived at lunchtime; Jules and I had one of our best meals in Ethiopia and retired poolside for the rest of the afternoon like proper tourists.

There was one more stop in Ethiopia, at Yabello. There wasn’t much to see or do in the town, but we had a nice visit with a local tour operator, Israel. He’s a star-crossed lover– an orthodox Christian in love with a Muslim woman. His father cursed them on his deathbed and their relationship stalled. I wonder how often religion trumps love in Ethiopia.

Then it was time to leave. The customs office at the border was closed because it was Sunday, but an official behind his desk called a colleague to come and do our paperwork. Mike was a few hours behind us. He smsed to say he had two punctures at Yabello, and Mohammed came back to the office a second time to process his papers.

Moyale is a cross border town and both sides were equally dusty. The Kenyan offering was overwhelmingly Muslim (hard for Julia to find a beer) and there were soldiers on every corner. The neverending conflict between the Turkana and Samburu people had spilled into the town in the last week of August, and the army hadn’t left after they came to restore the calm.

For five years I dreaded the road from Moyale to Isiolo. We had driven for two weeks along Lake Turkana out of Kenya as an alternative to the two-day drive we were now facing. Now that the time had come to drive that rutted, bandit-infested road, I found it hard to take the trouble seriously.

Samburu men (remember the peacocks whose pics I posted as we left Kenya?) seemed so effeminate and the Turkana men were equally languid and draped in jewelry. Hard to imagine them engaged in violence. Two of the soldiers guarding the al Yusra hotel where we spent the night were wearing plastic sandals – how were they going to chase bandits through the rugged terrain?

Our rooms were at most five meters from the loudspeakers of the mosque next to the hotel and the droning was loud, long and lugubrious. al Yusra was six stories high with a well in the centre that echoed like a prison.
No problem getting up at dawn to face the feared road – the howling started at 4am.

Day one on the worst road in Africa wasn’t that bad. The hundreds of accounts I had read were all accurate – it is a corrugated gravel road punctuated with sharp rock. Every centimetre of it is corrugated. Us and all of our things were all shook up. But the bad road is disappearing fast.
The Chinese have arrived and where they haven’t yet laid tar their graders made a smooth diversion alongside their glorious new gift to Africa. What was described on blogs a year ago as a 10-hour journey through hell was a five-hour big surprise with the last bit on smooth as silk tar.

Close up of one of the worst roads in the world

The graders helped, in places

We drove through this for hours. 

We camped in Marsabit, in the dust under acacia trees. Big mindshift required to stop missing the gradients of green in Ethiopia. The landscape all the way between Moyale and Marsabit was similar to what we had experienced at the same latitude to the west when we flanked Lake Turkana – lava fields populated with rocks and occasional herds of camels.

For the first time in more than a month we put up our tent and it was great to be back in it again. All of our pillows were in their proper places, the mattress was just firm enough and it smelled good. Jules and I had a sound nap in the afternoon heat.

Day two on the corrugated road was bad, and once again Jules and I found safety in the arms of strangers. One of our tyres blew 60km into our journey and we came to a halt as Mike’s cloud of dust disappeared into the distance.
A group of Kenyan surveyors employed by the Turkish company that won the tender to tar the road from Marsabit to Isiolo came to help. Jules and I had only a few minutes of bandit terror before our heroes arrived. They insisted that the ladies step aside while the men did the heavy lifting and the dusty work. With the heat baking the dust swirling up in all directions, I wasn’t going to argue with any macho man.

Moyale Road claims another victim

Our rescuers sent us on our way with warnings that we shouldn’t stop unless we absolutely had to; and to keep our eyes peeled for bandits wherever we saw big piles of rocks. I kept my eyes peeled but all I spotted was ostriches – no Samburu men with birds’ feathers in their hair and an AK in their hands.

I am hoping that we never again encounter such bad roads. We may have to travel on some like them inside game parks. But I’m not planning any more routes like those that took us out of Kenya and back in again – requiring days of driving on gravel and rocks.
I’ve had enough of that to last me a lifetime. I’m not on this trip because I want the most difficult 4x4 driving conditions, I’m doing this to get to beautiful places and meet fantastic people. I may just stick to those along the tar.

From dry volcanic rock to a green oasis at Timau River Lodge

A walk through through the forest next to our campsite

Outside Isiolo we finally found a campsite where we could linger. Timau River Lodge not only offered green grass, hot showers and clean unsmelly toilets, but also a restaurant that served up terrific chicken tikka and masala chips. We stayed for five nights.

The managing director Sean took us on a fantastic day trip which started on Mt Kenya where I managed three hours of hiking at an altitude above 3 300m before my lungs gave in.
We hiked in moorland filled with the smells of Erica fynbos and the sights of protea and red hot pokers.

Mt Kenya's craggy, but didn't hide from us like Kilimanjaro. Click to enlarge

Beautiful mountain moorland

Made it. Now to get down again

Then Sean took us about 10km down the road to another landscape: the acacia scrub and dustland that had flanked us as we drove down from Moyale.

We had driven that landscape, we knew one followed the other, but to drive through an equatorial forest (we crossed the equator twice in one day as we drove through Mt Kenya National Park) to the African dust so suddenly came as quite a shock.
And then Sean drove us through a conservancy where, among others, we saw zebra, giraffe, two cheetah, two rhinoceros, elephant and lots of buck.

Elephants in the scrubland. Click to enlarge

And giraffe, darker than ours

And now we’re back in bourgeois Nairobi, where Mercs and Beemers and Porche Cayennes crawl on constantly clogged roads.
The security has been stepped up at the one mall we’ve visited so far. We've been hooked on news of the Westgate mall siege since Ethiopia already - appalled that this could be happening to the wonderful people of Nairobi in their fantabulous mall. The siege ended as we arrived at Timau. We watched the news anxiously every night, listened to the talk shows and bought every newspaper we could find.
They now search our bags at Nairobi mall entrances and wave a metal detector up and down our bodies. But the guards all decline to search our packed car, although they’re searching the boots of all the other vehicles entering the parking lots.

Yesterday was my last visit to a state health facility. The fantastic staff at the Mbagathi District Hospital gave me all the tablets I need to take over the next five months for a complete cure. They trust me to take every single one of the 600 tablets I’ve been given, and not to develop drug-resistant TB to spread through the populations of the countries I visit.

I’m glad I don’t have to go to hospital again because Julia surrounds herself in seconds with coughy and snotty children who cling to her like she’s the Easter bunny and Father Christmas rolled up in one. But I’m also sad that my lovely and limited experience with state facilities has ended so soon.

It would have been interesting to keep bouncing from one facility to another where the staff don’t shout at me like they did at my sister who recently dared seek treatment at an Eastern Cape state hospital. I’m going to miss the surprise on the faces of the staff when they realise I’m a bourgeois foreigner and their pride when they realise that only they can help me.
Maybe I’ll keep popping into TB clinics for visits with lovely health workers.