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Goodbye Ethiopia, welcome Ramadan!

The last 35 kilometers passed quite fast, with the bicycle making strange noises like it usually happens when the day before we catch a lot of water.

Arrived at the border to enter Sudan you pass through a barrier made by a rope, I pass under, a typical Ethiopian Sheppard tells me that he wants to check my luggage … I pay no attention … and I go to the office where they stamp passports … the sheppard runs after me … and repeats the same story … I ask him to show me his card … he has it! We go back again he checks, he asks me if I have a laptop, and who can prove that it is mine … he checks roughly in the panniers and lets me go …

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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’ …

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“Il fuoco di un camino
non è caldo come il sole del mattino…”

(“The fire of a chimney / isn’t as warm as the morning sun”)

After yesterday rain finally the sun, the departure is hot on a easy road … I do not remember a hot day since Addis …

The buses in Ethiopia have a speaker on the roof, it is nice to hear them come, they are joyful and I think the music also keeps the children away from the road and maybe donkeys and cows too … today my theory that the closer you get to touristic centers the more begging and stupidity increase has today found many practical demonstrations … the stones which were not reaching me for some time have reappeared … one thrown at me by a nice young shepard from a hill was the size of a apple … Continua a leggere→

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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. Continua a leggere→

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‘Quando ghe nè più, ghe nè a mo!’, is a say from where I come from, which would translate something like when there is nothing left, there is still a lot.

If last night at five, while I was going forth and back from the toilet, somebody would have told me … you will do 94 km I would have laughed … I thought the stomach was a strong point of my poor body … instead some spicy food betrayed me … I had the lucidity to drink salts and to eat some dextrose sweets to have a bit of energy to start again … when the alarm went off at 6,56 I switch it off … I am finally sleeping well … for breakfast I manage to drink some tea in which I put as much sugar as possible and I eat three doughy Enervit cereal bars which Serena gave me in Nairobi and are getting finished …

On the way back from the last trip to the toilet, at 5,11 I receive a message from Giorgia, who says she has woken up with a craving for crackers Doria, myself too I would eat a packet crunchy and with the salt on top I think, neither me nor her will satisfy this craving … the food visions come often on this journey today in a mountain village there is a smell of goat … which made me crave goat cheese … the little one is moving a lot hopefully he will turn …

At the beginning you go down to 1800 meters of Finote Selam, where I stop to take a tea, the waiter, embodied by my guardian angel, brings me without me asking some focaccia bread, which I managed to eat very slowly. Then the uphill starts again slowly slowly until the 2536 of Kosober, a uphill of 13 kilometers is a living death. Immediately after Finote Selam I bought for 2 birr, a plastic bag with a dozen yellow lemons, small, bitter and juicy … at the end I will have only three left … they have a very thin skin I peel then with my teeth and hands and then I chew them in a mouth full … it seems to me that my body appreciates and needs it … as I write I am feeling a bit hungry … let’s hope for the best …

Today with energies next to zero I did not take many pictures, I never looked at the altitude, I stopped many times, to buy something to drink, to put oil on the chain, to eat lemons, to speak to people. In a typical mountain village there was a gathering of male farmers waiting for the distribution of fertilizer, I was thirsty and I wanted some water, a young guy went from hut shop to hut shop , at the end he managed to find only a Fanta pineapple, excellent for digestion, I left hime the change as a tip for all the effort he put … 22 kilometers from Kosober I stopped to lubrify the chain, as usual a circle was formed, with elders and younths asking me where I was coming from, where I am going, which nationality I am … tire, chain and paper (map) are also Aramaic words … These stops helped to start again with a smile …

Dembecha N 10° 55’ E 37° 48.333’ – Kosober N 10° 95’ E 36° 93.333

94 km