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From:
Date: 26 Mrz 2006
Time: 14:12:45 +0100
Remote Name: 80.255.47.254
Back out of the internet wilderness, and time to do about a month's worth of journal updating. The five days out of Addis Ababa to the next rest day at Yabello were described by Randy as Easy day, Fast day, Long day, Hilly day, and Beautiful day respectively - and he pitched it just about perfectly. The Easy day out of Addis was fairly flat and scenic, but with very heavy traffic until the end of the day when we made a right turn off the main highway and onto the road to Moyale, the Kenyan border. We bush camped along here and I had to relinquish my borrowed Rockshox Sid front forks which had done me proud on most of the Ethiopian offroad riding. A new sectional rider, Rudi from the Siemens team, had arrived in Addis, bringing with him a new bike for Monty (frame had broken). The curse of the shocks remained with us because the brand new shocks on this brand new bike were also faulty (moved in stages instead of one fluid movement). Judy the jinx strikes again. In a brief fleeting moment of moral consciousness, I thought the best thing to do would be to offer Monty back his shocks, even though they looked more aesthetically pleasing to the eye on my red bike rather than the new gray frame. So, before I had chance to let this brief moment of weakness pass, Todd was once again dismantling the front of my bike and Gergo was once again hunting in his permanent bag for his rigid forks. We would be on road for the next week until the Kenyan border, when we would supposedly experience some of the worst off road conditions of the trip, but I decided to worry about that when I got there. The demo pair of shocks that my bike shop Leisure Lakes had kindly offered to send over to keep me going until mine could be repaired under warranty had been sent to Khartoum instead of Addis Ababa because their email system was down when I had sent over all the details of where to forward the shocks and the communication was lost somewhere in the process. Never mind, these things happen. The Fast day took us through the Kenyan Lake area, beautiful scenery and the start of the Great Rift valley was evident from the flat lanscape, rising on either sides in the distance. our campsite that evening was directly on one of these lakes, where swimming was possible as it was one of the few lakes in Kenya where Bilharzia was not present. There was a bumpy 3k offroad to get to the camp, and I started to miss my shocks again. Went swimming in the lake, snoozed under a tree and virtually the whole group wanted to stay there and have a rest day. bus alas, this tranquil idyll was shattered from around 10pm to 4am when the local party animals decided to have an all night party right next door to our tents. Lack of sleep and general disorganisation meant I was last out of camp for the next day, the Long day, taking my time to jolt and judder over the 3k stone and gravel road back to the main road on Gergos rigid forks. Midhat was the only one left at the start point back on the road, cursing like a trooper because the bike he planned to ride (Henry's Kona) was on the lunch truck which had already left, and Midhats bike was in need of some TLC that day- the gears were not shifting down to the lower rings at the front. For someone who has English as a second language, Midhat can curse pretty well. I leapfrogged him most of the morning, passing him as he was off his bike trying to fix something or manually moving the chain down to the smaller ring when there was a climb coming up, muttering and cursing under his breath. Half way through the morning I pulled over for an energy bar and a drink in what I thought was a child-free location (nice to have a break without being surrounded by a group of 20 Ethiopian kids), when a small group of kids did come over, one of them in a wheelchair (the first I had seen in Africa). I remembered going past the little group and waving to them a few ks back, thinking that Africa was not a good place to be a disabled person. The small boy in the wheelchair got out and came over on his cruthes, supported by his little friends, and dug out an envelope with some letters in it. This were copies of letters he had obviously copied out himself from a brief text someone had written for him, describing his background and how he was looking for a sponsor. I took one of the letters with me and said goodbye to the little group, quite impressed at how his little friends were looking after him (he was only about 10, as were the others - if not younger). The next town I arrived at, Kuyera, I saw a sign for an international charitable organisation and followed that, ending up at the Catholic mission school in the town. There I met with one of the Ethiopian fathers (a joint Italilan and Ethiopian missin) who spoke excellent English and gave hime details of the boy I'd just met and said I would like to help out with his school fees if he could track him down (his letter said he came from that town but gave no address). Confident that I had met a good man who would see that any money got to the right destination, I decided to backtrack for 10 - 15ks to see if I could locate my little lad again and make sure he knew that I was going to help him. I passed Midhat on the way back, who looked at me as though I were a lunatic for cycling in the wrong direction, but I couldn't see the little group again. When I gave up looking and turned around the right way again, I came across the emply chair and some more kids playing near it. Some of them knew where the boy lived, and three of them accompanied me back to the Catholic mission to try and give a bit more info to the father to track the boy down. I was invited to have some lunch there, and then was offered a lift to the TDA lunch truck, as by this time it was getting close to the cut-off time when the truck would double back and start looking for me. All in all an excellent morning - I had actually spent time with some Ethiopian kids who did not want to throw stones at me and shout "you, you, you, farranghi" and the older ones who I talked to when I went back the second time spoke English well enough for me to get a good impression of them. I've got addresses to follow up on, and I intend to do that when I get back to the real world after TDA. The Hilly day was described to us as one endless village of stone-throwing shouting Ethiopian children, and it was. I rode the afternoon leg with Huberte. In the morning of this day we had what has now become known as "the Ron Stop". Ron had offered to buy everyone icecream one day, and Dilla was the best town to try and get some icecream. This was not to be, but instead, about 25k into the days ride, we all pulled over to have fresh juice and cake, courtesy of Ron. It was a great idea, and good to get the group together instead of everyone racing off at top speed. The Ron Stop was also almost the cause of Dieder loosing his EFI. Dieder, Rudi and Gergo had stayed on at the cafe, playing cards, then decided to look for internet (Gergo managed to fall asleep in the internet cafe), and the three of them only left the town in the early afternoon, still with a full days riding to do. Dieder and Rudi turned up in camp just as the sun was setting and Gergo turned up a short while later. The Beatiful day was indeed that. Rolling, a reasonable amount of climbing, but outstanding scenery - reddish soil, desert trees dotted on the landscape, and many huge termite mounds all over the place. Coming round one of the big bends on a downhill, we spied what had obviously been a truck versus cow incident, which resulted in a six cow massacre. The stench was overwhelming and there were vultures all over the place. Quite a long day, we rolled into camp at Yabello around 6 in the evening, but no worries as this was a rest day coming up. Had a restful rest day, mostly spent cleaning bike and patching up things that needed patching up. There were two more days riding on pavement from there to the border crossing into Kenya at Moyale - on pavement, which became progressively worse over the two days. We all rolled into Moyale only to discover it was some sort of holiday day and the border would not be open until 3 in the afternoon. Much juice drinking later, the border was crossed. Another long border crossing - 50 white folks waiting to have their passports stamped for exit from Ethiopia and then entry into Kenya. Took forever, but at last we were into country number four.