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On the bus for security reasons!
I do not know if the biggest danger is the bandits or the bus, for cross-country, Moyale Express which I took last night! I am aching everywhere as if I had been in a fight with the bandits …
It is the second time I write in the morning because yesterday I was too tired. The bus left more or less at midnight from Isiolo, the manager though called me around 10,30 because he said he was scared of forgetting … The Moyale Express has no luggage rack on the roof … we slip the bike in one of the luggage boots together with some bags, a small table, maize sacks, and many containers with oil … let’s hope for the best. The bus is almost full, the manager told me that it was half empty so much so that the bike I could have put the bicycle between the seats. I find place in the last row where the aisle finishes, the one where you want to sit when you go on school trips, but to be absolutely avoided in a journey of this kind. When on a hump of the gravel orgy the passenger sitting on the first row jolts of 30 cm, the one in the middle of 60 cm, you on the last row shoot more or less of a meter … being able to you could dare to somersault or pike … it is almost always a crash landing, the children cry somebody groans, but the bus, maybe because it is called Express is on a mission: to reach Moyale before 5. Seventeen hours of bus on the gravel orgy, with some stops to pee and a fast and surprising lunch break included in the price where I limited myself to just two chapattis to avoid throwing up.
The sound track of the journey is the one of scrap-iron and glasses which shake, rebel, to the bolts and the welding which keep them together, it seems to be in a disco, or rather to a rave, where there is only techno music, with unbearable decibel and bits per second, for who like me was born at the end of the 60s … Like the youngsters who attend those places take pills to resist, here the trend is Khat, more natural almost everybody chew it, the conductor, who works hard, the driver, women with the child on the back, elders with crutches, youngsters with the jacket on Manchester United, the only one who abstains is a Somali DJ who travels next me. Khat is a small branch with green leaves. There are different techniques to chew it, some eat the leaves, all discard some leaves, I did not understand following which criteria, which were dropping on the bus floor which at the end was a green carpet. The majority chew the small branch and the youngest leaves left on the tip. The taste is not bad, vaguely thirst drenching, I did not feel any immediate effect, I do not think it gives any, if the sheppard of seventy years with the keffiyeh with whom I spent one hour of the journey has been eating them since he was a child … According to the Somali boys it reduces the hunger and helps you not to sleep, but at the arrival I attacked the kitchen and I sank on the bed …
The windows of the Moyale Express are sealed and for the majority obscured, the frame of the bus is strengthened with iron bars, there are no overhead locker … this is for two reasons, one they would fall on the head of the passengers, two, they would be in the middle between your head and the end of the jolt. Dust enters everywhere at the end, I musungu, Somalis, Ethiopian sheppards of the unidentified origin, have all the same color of dust, we are all the same even in the color of the skin and clothes.
I hope that the escort police have put on the safety catch on those old rifles, which should defend us or at least deter the prowlers, the escort changes in Marsabit and then in Turbi, at the end there is no longer any risk so much so that a policeman who got on a bit before Moyale had, reluctantly, to pay the ticket.
A jolt makes me and the three beautiful women seated next to me take off, one loses the veil, I put it back on her head, she thanks me amused.
A sheppard with the keffiyeh, the face features angular and filed by the wind, wants to get off at a whatever spot in the desert surrounding us, he stands up, next to me and starts whistling with the fingers in the mouth, nobody hears him, so he whistles louder as if to call a head of cattle, then he shouts shaking the stick, but without moving from the last row, at the end somebody tells the driver … and the bus stops … and he can get off. Everybody communicates as he can, and if nobody listens it is better to raise your voice.
Outside there is a desert of sand and black stones, which I do not know how got there, you can see ostriches and multitudes of camels, which I try to photograph from inside the Moyale Express but I fail because of the jolts, of the speed which do not allow me to center the chinks of the view left by the small not obscured windows.
We arrive in Moyale at five in the evening, after seventeen hours of dust, noise, stories of people on the move, heard or merely guessed because of the language, wild nature, police and elusive bandits, camels … Many Somalis who move looking for something they cannot find at home, like the two boys who are on a journey on the bus from Johannesburg, and it is not clear where they are heading, when you ask what do you do they say ‘I am in a business …’. Or another one who has been living for ten years and is part of a group of artists who try to make ends meet in Kenya. While I was waiting for the bus I also met a distinguished Ethiopian ‘exile’ who is studying and will go back to Ethiopia for a peaceful revolution when the time will come … After all the reasons behind my voluntary journey are small stuff compared to theirs.
I have to make a last effort, try to pass the border, hoping they will not notice that my visa starts on the 15th July, hoping that the providence will help me. I do not know well what will happen if I would be bounced from Ethiopia and sent back to Kenya … I would have to set my tent up on the limb of nobody’s land between the two border control … My hands are too dirty and dusty for the machine with the green phosphorescent light to capture the finger prints in Kenya … after a brief clean and the stamp … I launch myself to the other side in Ethiopia … it is 17,45 the offices close at 18,00 … the first person I find tell me ‘everything is closed you have to come back tomorrow!’ … then after showing him the time he calls back the two officers for the passport check … one is learning … good … the other supervises blandly… I do not have to fill any form … they take a picture with the webcam … and I have the stamp I can enter!
I am in Ethiopia, I want to enjoy it and cycle … this beautiful country … where the year is 2004 … where you drive on the right side … where there are 13 months and the date is the 4th of something …
I would like a normal hotel with a shower with a lot of hot water, there is only one like that in Moyale, I find it … it is ‘fully booked!’ … shit … I have to make do with a room named after Kakà, from Royal Madrid, in the same hotel … with the hot water in a bucket like in the bush … by now I wash well even like this … I wash also the jersey and the shorts which I leave to dry on a shrub… here outside … then I sink into sleep…
Isiolo N 0° 35.563’ E 37° 58.330’ – Moyale N 3° 53.998’ E 39° 05.284’ (Ethiopia)
511 km