Telecommunications in Ethiopia was absolutely frustrating – one would consider the sending of an sms successfully from a roaming cell number to be nothing short of a miracle - no kidding! Internet access was limited to dial up. We ended up buying a local sim card in order to keep family in the loop with our progress. We are in the buzzing city of Nairobi, over a month after our last posting – it’s great to be back where there is running water, flush toilets, warm showers and an uninterrupted electricity supply.
I won’t be able to summarise all of the highlights and lowlights of the last month but I hope that I will be able to give a blended summary of the two.
Let me begin by saying that the journey through N.Kenya to Ethiopia was tough. The rumors of Cattle Rustlers as well as Bandits were slightly unsettling. The environment was also harsh, hot, desert dry and the gravel roads were extreme. The one section of the road was intensely corrugated for a continuous stretch of over 100km, any bolt that was loose on the bike was loosened and the whole tail light of my bike fell off. Fortunately the nuts and bolts were not lost and the repair was easy. The harsh road also provided us with our first opportunity to do a tube change on my back wheel – good times!
This was not the first of our tube issues, between Jo and myself we have now done 5 replacements – we now have our tire repair process down to a T. Although the ride through the north was harsh, the scenery was stunning.
We had made contact with a group of young South African’s doing Global Challenge (a year of missions in Africa, moving south from Egypt to South Africa). We weren’t quite sure where we’d meet with them as they were on a pilot mission with no cemented plans. Initially we were to join them in Sudan. That fell through and it worked out that we would meet them in Jinka, Ethiopia, on our way to the North. The scope of their mission in Jinka was unknown to them and us, until we arrived there. We met with the local missionary who is from one of the tribes. Basically there is an issue in 3 of the tribes where children are deemed ‘mingy’ if their top two fronts teethe appear before the bottom two. In these 3 tribes it is a serious curse and the child is killed, so as to remove the curse - they have recently started a children’s orphanage to rescue these children. The bigger vision is to reach his tribe with the Gospel. Once he has sorted out the orphanage then he will be able to devote more time to evangelism. We got stuck in and started helping renovate the buildings that the orphanage was to move to at the end of this month. We had a really blessed time, working with the Challenge group –
From Jinka, we went to Addis Ababa, not much to see but did manage to experienced some their local tunes (sing and vibrant dance) as well as their spicy food – which always includes their Njera which I would describe as a fermented pancake – definitely palatable.
We then did the historical loop in the Eth highlands. The whole loop took about 2 weeks and was definitely a highlight from both a tourist and a riding point of view – riding the roads with bikes was absolutely phenomenal. Most of the road was not straight and the route of over 2000 km was packed with long stretches of mountain passes which snaked through the highlands, requiring the bike to lean significantly to one side or the other with most stunning views.
We managed to see the Blue Nile falls, visit the 6 ancient Castles in Gondor, the Obleisks in Axum as well as the famous Rock Hewn Churches in Lalibella…all very interesting and I hope to share those experiences in detail when i return to SA. Having completed the historic loop, we spent some time with Jo's folks in Sendafa, a town just outside of Addis Ababa. It was fantastic to catch up with them and find out more about the childrens work they are involved in.
From Sendafa we missioned down to nairobi. Although the total trip was less than 2000km, it took us 6 days of intense riding. We returned via a different N.Kenya road. We hoped that it would be more bike friendly, that is less wear and tear. This may have been so, but it was much more effort for the rider. On two of the days we rode for 12 hours with a break here and there! On both days we didn't make our destinations (this was a blessing in disguise as the destinations we had made were dodgy towns), and so we bush camped. On both occations we rode our bikes a few 100m off of the rode and pitched tent. They turned out to be fantastic settings with a bright canopy of stars overhead.
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