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How much spaghetti in Ethiopia!
But what are they made of? They seem half way between ours and the Chinese rice ones …
I woke up a bit later than usual, despite the prayers coming from the mosque started at five in the morning and ended around seven! I cleaned the bike and the panniers, I wrote the post and I went to have breakfast. I order eggs. They are finished! What can i get? The waiter repeats by heart the same menu as yesterday … ok then for the spaghetti al ragù … after all it is almost eleven … with mango juice freshly pressed … I will end up taking three! While I am having breakfast I notice that the Ethiopian flag hanged in front of a bonk opposite the hotel, is blowing in the wind in the direction I will take … then Giorgia confirms to me that from her research it has come up that who comes down from Cairo often moans about the adverse wind in the last stages in Ethiopia … hurray I think!
I take pictures of the bamboo bike together with the small bamboo houses of the hotel, the manager says that my bicycle is ‘very smart’ … Before starting off Mohamed, Somali resident of Ethiopia, wants to offer me coffee, then another one we take pictures of one another, while we drink a delicious coffee of ‘Arabic’ blend …
Strengthened from the wind and the coffees, I start to cover the 105 km which separate me from Mega at a good speed, the pace is fast, the road is straight the dromedaries are a lot, the vehicles very few.
The first approach with Ethiopia is surprising, I am happy to be here and i think, it can be seen on my face, because a dromedaries’ sheppard tells me ‘why are you so happy?’ … Between Moyale and Mega the villages are few, the children who work as sheppards are many, in general the English is better than in Kenya and Tanzania, and the ‘th’ is pronounced like the French when they speak English, ‘ze’, while in Kenya it was more a ‘de’, so much so that thirty has the same pronunciation as dirty.
Ethiopian children are the most curious I met so far, whilst a Kenyan or Tanzanian child would have never thought to come touch the bicycle, these have no problem and they touch the gear, the speedometer, the panniers … for now they do not annoy me because I also was like that as a child …
The road is a series of uphill and downhill, broken out by long false flats, red termites’ nests alternate with white ones, small antelopes cross my path several times, many men without uniform have a rifle over the shoulder … could they be policemen in civilian clothes? … I do not ask since they greet me happily … On top of a hill where I stop to drink, a big family comes towards me and take pictures of me on their mobiles … I ask if I can also take some pictures … they agree … if I have to take a picture to somebody I usually always ask … what would I think is a Senegalese would steal a picture of me in Italy? …
Mega has nothing mega about it, if not the five kilometers uphill which precede it, on the last stretch of uphill I am encouraged by two old lunatics, some students and a girl who accompanies me holding my hand until I can manage to go up with one hand only. When on the last uphill the IPod, synced by Serena, throws ‘Eye of the tiger’ of Rocky I find the energy I do not have and I think for a second, how it could happen that we ended up off road …
There is no reciprocity in the freedom of movement. I got the visas of the six countries I will cross relatively easily, I can go anywhere without problems, with the new passport even to the United States without visa … for an African everything is more difficult, you have to prove an income, money on a bank account, insurance, a guarantor … human dignity does not have the same value … the step between a cheap dangerous bus and a very expensive rotten boat to Italy is short … it does not matter if you cannot swim it is like if you cannot drive … if the bus lands in the wrong way or the driver falls asleep the result is the same … but here nobody would talk about it … it is not difficult to cross a border in Africa if you do not want a stamp on the passport …
In Mega i found a room in a hotel with no name and no mosquito net, but they sprayed an insect repellant, the outside pit toilet, I feel that the next hot shower will be in Addis Abeba … After discarding a first hotel with disco included, a beautiful woman, Sara, has brought me here, to whom I asked if there was another place. Sara is part of the temptations which happen in a journey like this, the temptation to kick the bicycle, the temptation to go back to Giorgia and the kids, the temptation to get on a bus, the temptation to spend the night with somebody, … for now I have been ‘strong and of good courage’.
Ethiopia has welcomed me well, a great celebration on the road and a lot of collaboration, the start is encouraging. It is a unique country, never colonized, with many typical things which are only here … I hope to understand it all better!
Moyale (Etiopia) N 3° 53.998’ E 39° 05.284’ – Mega N 4° 05.696’ E 38° 31.155’
105 km