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‘Rain rain go away!’ …
‘Where are you going?’ asks me an old man in smart clothes in front of the pharmacy of Gondar where I am vainly trying to park the bicycle on a muddy road … ‘to the pharmacy, but I do not have the bicycle stand …’ ‘do not worry I will keep it’ … the pharmacist told me that I have eaten ‘poisoned food’ and has given me cyproxin to take every 12 hours … ‘are you travelling alone?’ asks me the old man ‘yes’ … ‘I will pray for you’ …
After having commuted back and forth between the bed and the toilet this morning I was exhausted and uncertain whether to extend my stay in Gondar of another day or to reach Aykel 60 kilometers from Gondar where the last two peaks of 2300 meters from the sea level conclude the never ending Ethiopian uphill. Aykel seems to never arrive, after the first ascent you go down a lot and then up again, slowly, slowly … ten kilometers from Aykel … the little one has turned around … he is ready like me for the final downhill … I cannot match to this news a dull defensive stage … I want to reach Seheti 34 kilometers from the Sudanese border …
The rain waits for me on the second uphill, first light and vaporized, then increasingly harder … I will get wet three times and dry twice … because the last shower is 10 kilometers from Seheti …
From Aykel you go down on a nosedive for 15 km, on the downhill I meet some army platoons training, without weapons, divided in two squads, they walk fast in the opposite direction I am coming from, every time I pass in the middle I do the military salute lifting the hands from the handlebar … they reciprocate enjoying … after the first pure downhill, the descent becomes a demanding up and down, where you go down more than you go up but you have to pedal, throw yourself again, I turn often using the ‘pivot foot’ because with the rain the brakes have loosened … fun beyond description … when the foot finds the road and the friction starts … and you feel the speed under you … and the bicycle goes where you want … so what announced itself as a small anonymous stage transformed itself in a great goodbye stage to this surprising and tough Ethiopia … you always go down with a few uphill more or less steep … as if to remind you that nothing is easy and you have to commit yourself always to the top until the end …
In the villages in Ethiopia the TV is watched in bars and restaurants, the news is the program which attracts the most people, every new is commented, often with jokes, today they were showing the protests of the Ethiopian Muslims, who feel penalized by the Orthodox Christians, then the financial crisis in Europe, with the images of baffled traders in front of the computer … spread … euro … France-Germany pact … I am not sure what my friends form Seheti have understood … finally the Olympics everything is ready the first event will be the marathon there is great expectation and hope for the male and female Ethiopians athletes … everybody knows all the athletes from Abele Bilika to nowadays … when the news is finished the bar empties … this is the power of information …
Tomorrow I will enter Sudan, the environment, landscape, roads and climate will change and we will come back to 2012 … from the Ethiopian 2004 … the reason for this delay is the different calculation to determine the day of the annunciation of the birth of Jesus.
Gondar N 12° 6 E 37° 46,666’ – Seheti N 12° 78,065’ E 36° 40,937’
156 km