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It is pouring!
For the first time I have to take out my rain cape, considering we are in the rain season I have also been lucky … after a dozen of kilometers the rain let its place to the sun.
The road goes up with very pedalable uphills, the traffic is the most intense up to now, the level of CO2 very high, the road is narrow and a almost fall in climbing back from the small side passage where I ended up because of a exceptional transport, let me understand I have to concentrate to the max. In a stretch where the trucks have lost much of the soil they were carrying the behind wheel gets stuck because of the usual problem caused by the very little space between the wheel and the mudguard. I have decided that tomorrow I will remove it. It is incredible how the more I go ahead the more I become essential.
Entering a big capital city at night allows you to see how the city modifies itself along from the suburbs to the centre. Addis, from the direction I passed through it is an uphill city, the topography betrays the presence of Italians, roundabouts and traffic lights have something familiar like the names of certain places Piazza, Cinema Etiopia, … The directions of Giorgia, plus some requests of confirmation to the police and passersby take me to the Semien Hotel without fault, it is a nice place full of life where I will have some of my clothes washed, because by hand I can no longer manage to make them clean. Without the logistic support of Giorgia I would be much behind or I would have slept much less …
As soon as I arrive I call my contact Mr. Demeke. Secretary General of the Ethiopian Cycling Federation to have the bicycle serviced. The efficiency is astonishing, he gives me appointment with the bicycle at the Cinema Etiopia, which is close by, and then he takes me to a trusted bike mechanic where we leave the bicycle. Then at the hotel in front of a latte for him and a pawpaw juice for me, he tells me of Ethiopian and African cycling. There are about twenty teams in Ethiopia and a national team which competes in tours I did not know existed like the one of Rwanda or Dubai, of which I had seen the price giving on TV, without understanding anything three days ago. He tells of the difficulty of finding good quality bicycles and spare parts, because of the high prices and the total absence, a part from South Africa, of distributors. He talks to me proudly of two cyclists one professional in South Africa and another who trains with a Swiss team.
Unfortunately they did not manage to qualify anybody for the Olympics also because of some injuries. He explains that cycling here, like in Eritrea, was introduced by Italians and describes his two projects: to organize the Tour of Nile, between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia and to open in Addis a distribution centre for spare parts for all East Africa. He is in good terms with the federations of neighboring countries and he will give me the contact of his homologue in Sudan. He entrusts me that when they meet for races with the Eritrean national team, they are all friends like brothers, even if politics goes in another direction sport unites, I never understood the Olympic boycotts and I do not think they were ever useful for anything and I am happy that Italy went both to Moscow and Los Angeles. I explained what Sport2build does, he agreed on the importance of sport as a education tool and as a tool to sustain social change. At the end he gave me some important suggestions for the stages I am missing to reach Sudan borrowing a map from the small shop of the hotel … in Ethiopia a map is called … paper … We bid farewell and you never know that in future we could do something together.
I would like to meet Haile Gebrselassie, I tried in many ways but I do not know if I will manage …
Internet is only in the hotel hall, this is a good thing, first because so I will go to sleep at a decent time, second, because staying all down with the laptops some interesting encounters are possible. Yesterday I met a Sudanese who gave some advices for when I will cross his country, he also told me, that I will find a terrible heat, genuine hospitality, and that the problems of Sudan did not end with the independence of South Sudan, and that more or less the same problems are rising even in the east …
Finally I met an Australian son of Italians, from Vallo della Lucania, who was moaning about Australia … ‘you work, eat, watch TV and that is all’, ‘too many taxes, fines and videocameras everywhere’ … ‘you are a slave of the system’ … ‘there is no history, no culture’ … then ‘if you are a single mother, black or drug addict the government helps you if you are a honest worker you are in shit …’ … ‘ the houses cost too much’ … ‘I want to go live in the Philippines, there with the police you can always find an arrangement, life costs little’ … ‘I went by bicycle from Canada to Mexico, but the giro, tour and sport suck’ … ‘when I want to sleep there is always an ambulance which is going to pick some damn druggy busting my balls’ … ‘I will have a pension at 69 years and I earn 90,000 USD per year driving trains’ … I think that an Italian train driver earns a lot less … the world is beautiful because it varies … and long live the Australian social welfare!
Mojo N 8° 59.41’ E 39° 12.14’ – Addis Abeba N 9° 00.01’ E 38° 43.00’
74 km