Bluedome - Round the World by Bike

Northern Ethiopia to Addis Ababa. March - April.
"Everybody must get stoned"- Bob Dylan

Say Ethiopia to me and I would have thought of Bob Geldoff and speedy runners. After two weeks in the country those thoughts are still prominent.

Cycling through Ethiopia involves a crowd of up to 40 children running alongside you for a couple of kilometres after every village. At the same time they keep up a relentless shout of "YOU! YOU! YOU! YOU! YOU!" and "MONEY! MONEY! MONEY! GIVE ME MONEY!".
Decades of foreign aid (epitomised by Geldoff‚s impressive efforts) have produced a knee-jerk reaction in this nation: if you are white you are rich, therefore give me money. As I pass by they express their disappointment by hurling stones at me.
I am no longer a person, I am a mobile cash point. Something has gone seriously wrong somewhere.
The change from Sudan is drastic. It is not only cultural and behavioural, the dress of the people changes too. From flowing white galabeyahs and colourful draped robes to ragged mohican-haired children with necklaces of old keys, nuts, bolts, shells and whatever else they have found lying around. The men wear very skimpy shorts and tattered t-shirts, usually beneath a blanket gracefully wrapped over the shoulders.
With a shortage of public transport the roads are busy with people walking. Women walk shaded beneath umbrellas, a strange sight. Men usually carry a stout staff across their shoulders as they walk. Barefoot people and donkeys vastly outnumber
fume-spewing rattling vehicles. This is by far the poorest nation I have ever visited.

Poverty and the issue of money hang constantly in the atmosphere. Larger towns are busy with beggars suffering every variety of physical disability, skin ailment, disfigurement, disease and blindness imaginable. Most could easily be helped with basic medical treatment. There is a never-ending circle of people around me pleading for money. There are a lot of issues I am struggling to get my head round here. It is very, very difficult.

A man finds it very hard to believe that there are homeless people and beggars in England. However he absolutely refuses to believe me when I tell him that many of them are white. Impossible, he declares.
Apart from the 'give-me money'‚ consequences of foreign aid, the worst impact seems to have been on the dress sense of the population. In each village are large numbers of people sporting dreadful 'Titanic'‚ T-shirts emblazoned with Leonardo di Caprio and his irritating 'please punch here'smile.

As I greet people the tradition seems to be to bow your head at the same time. My cheery greeting to a chap on a bicycle almost ends in disaster as (rattling fast and brake-less down a steep rocky track) he bows low and almost nose-ploughs into the gravel. I resolve to be more selective with my salutations in future.

The roads are awful, the mountains are huge, and the kids are almost unbearable. I am sick of this lonely, hard, exhausting, boring life. I almost cannot go on. I sit in the dirt, head in hands just wishing that the 80 staring faces (I counted them) would please, please give me a metre of space or a second of peace. Please go away. Beneath my sunglasses the tears flow again. The crowd stands and stares. I feel very alone.

I spend the night with a kind teacher. His English is excellent and he tells me of his work. He teaches Grades 1 to 4, has 150 students in each class with no textbooks or blackboard. The students in each class range in age between 8 and 30 years old (in the UK Grade 1 kids are 4 or 5 years old).
Many walk 20km to school every day. It makes me wonder what on earth I thought was hard about my PGCE teacher-training course last year! Oh yes, the government has not paid his $90 monthly salary for the past 3 months either.

The long, hard slog pays off and I make it to Gondar in time to meet my friend, Rob. It has been a hellish seven days, but Gondar is high in the mountains, cool and green. I am ill for the first time on the journey, lying in my bed-bug ridden bed, vomiting into a small plastic bowl and crossing my legs and fingers: for some unknown reason the stinking pit referred to as a 'toilet'‚ is locked until dawn. I hope I can wait that long, the plastic bowl is already worryingly full.

Rob arrives, fresh faced from England and in search of 2 weeks of adventure. He has brought a new bike for me to replace the trashed Rita (my original bike!), bags of sweets and a splendid pair of Union Jack shorts! It is great to see him again: it was he who introduced me to many of the ridiculous concepts of Wildman behaviour that are helping to make this journey so ludicrous(www.geocities.com/englishwildman)!

Being with Rob is a holiday for me: I even allow myself a Pepsi every few days! I eat tuna for the third time since New Year! I could get used to a lifestyle of such decadence! In search of a quiet evening beer we enter the innocuous sounding 'Bingo Club Bar'. A quick about turn at the sight of a collection of bored looking prostitutes sitting around in this unusually named brothel. The old bingo call of 'Two Fat Ladies' could have very serious consequences here!

In Ethiopia it is still 1994 (I‚d better leave soon or I‚ll have to do my A-Levels again next year) and their calendar is very different to ours. In a rare moment of clarity Rob realises that the song was right: they didn‚t know that it was Christmas time at all. Their Christmas is in January!

I am in raptures as we cycle: Ethiopia is GREEN! There are trees and grass and all the colours and smells and sounds that go with the novelty of vegetation. Lush pastures and herds of cattle. It has been a long ride through the desert lands to get here.
Behind the obnoxious, rude, greedy, stone-throwing children is a beautiful, lush nation. There is no need to go hungry here. Management and education
could make huge differences. Abandoned tanks litter the roadside, testimony to a hasty military advance on Addis Ababa during the recent civil war.