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‘I think I am the first ferenje who stays over for the night here’ I say to the couple escorting me to the hotel with no signpost.
‘Noooo … there was another one in September two years ago …’ they answer … we laughed for five minutes. They kept saying ‘not the first, the second!’ …
There was a drawing on my school book in primary school which pictured slaves building the pyramids, I remember the never ending rows of slaves carrying one stone each. Today on my way to get a tea in Kosober, I saw a similar scene, obviously without the slaves, but many women were climbing a ladder made of branches and ropes, to the last floor of a building with buckets full of cement … I noticed that the most physical jobs, like carrying wood, are done by women.
How long, and high, is this Ethiopia! I have pedaled for 1363 km and I still have more than 300 to go, with some uphill to 2300 meters, more than anything what has given me difficulties is the cold, by now I am Zambian, and the rain … today the hotel, 40 birr less than 2 euro, has no shower but a dignified toilet outside for all its twenty rooms, but it is not a problem since I had an abundant shower in the 15 km before Hamusit, this time the rain mantle did not hold, it rains always towards the evening, today the rain caught me off guard when I was already thinking to have reached. My grandfather used to say that the seconds between the lightning and the thunder, indicate the kilometers of distance from the spot where the lightening has fallen, 10 seconds 10 kilometers, I do not know if it is true, but this evening lightning and thunder, were one after the other, actually the thunder was starting when the light of the lightning was not yet over …
From Addis onwards I have not been very lucky in matching stages to big cities like it happened in Debre Markos, today I had to skip Bahir Dar where the manager of a small supermarket, a passionate cyclist, supplied me with an excellent logistic support which allowed me to check my emails, and to eat a plate of spaghetti alla carbonara in an acceptable time to start off again. The carbonara here is made with mortadella … I cannot remember where a young boy told me ‘have you learnt to eat Ethiopian food?’ … ‘Yes, injela’ … ‘What about spaghetti?’ … ‘Actually they are Italian!’ …
Many people move in Africa in these hotels that when I ask ‘is there a hotel?’ they tell me ‘no’ meaning not good enough for you, ever since Zambia I saw families, students going to visit their parents, people going to hospital, others doing ‘business’ … in the morning everybody washes getting water from big buckets, with plastic jugs, everything is slower they get up at five to be ready at seven, I am more up-market in these places I wash summarily, and often I sleep in my cycling outfit … but I understood that a bed with four walls around of any kind, with something on top not to let the rain inside … it is always a bed and I sleep always well on it.
In Ethiopia they greet each other shaking the right hand, bending slightly forward, rotating your right shoulder until you reach the one of the other, I do not know the meaning, but lately they often greet me like this …
Kosober N 10° 95’ E 36° 93.333’ – Hamusit N 11° 78.333’ E 37° 56,667’
150 km