Bus ride to Mek’ele
We wake up at 4:00 am sharp and head to Mezcal Square. We had to be there at 4:30am in order to check our luggage. Surprisingly, the square, which is quite big, was full of life. Around 20 buses were getting ready for departure, and people were waiting to check their bags, boxes, mattresses, and even ladders. Some enterprising vendors were selling drinks and candies using wheelchairs and strollers to carry their merchandise. And a few curious people surrounded us. 5:10am departure, everyone is sleepy and we leave Addis on a smooth highway.
As the sun is rising, people do too and the highway becomes a simple road. Amee is still half-asleep when I start noticing some “horning” and our bus passing trucks. At this point, I hadn’t paid much attention to the road, but then I see that the driver is passing trucks by doing a sharp turn at the last minute. So I put an eye into the aisle to have a better vision of what the road looks like: A tiny road that hardly fits two trucks side by side. Now I’m fully aware and focus on the driving style. Sometimes we’ll have to brake suddenly because a truck is coming from the opposite direction, or a donkey, or goat crossing… By this time, it’s 7am and the radio wakes people up with some news in Amharic, and we pleasantly find out that the speaker is right behind us. Now everyone is awake on the bus, I exchange glances with a few people — we are the only tourists on the bus and there is some curiosity about us.
Breakfast time, a young and smiley guy comes around to distribute bottles of water and packaged cakes. The radio switches from news to some very high volume Ethiopian music, Amee and I look at each other and laugh. After 30 minutes of loud music, I put on my headphones and try to read for a bit. I could hardly focus on my book as the driving was getting more and more aggressive, so I switch to a podcast “The shipwrecks of Lampedusa.” It’s about people who try to escape their countries (mainly in Africa) to reach an Italian island called Lampedusa.
It’s 11am and I’m uncomfortable and tired of the bus. I have been on several bus trips around the world: a -20 degree 8 hour drive in Mongolia with no heater on the bus, a packed and humid 7 hour drive in Thailand, an overnight bus in China from Guilin to Shenzhen with my seat flying on every bump… but I’ve never experienced the tension of hitting a truck face-to-face or of the bus flipping over on the side of the road. There were many trucks on the side of the road that had flipped over and a few truck accidents. We see just a few cars, very few people can afford to have their own cars, so the road is 95% trucks, buses and mini vans.
I try to focus on my podcast. They talk about people who try to escape their countries because of political repression, abuse, and poverty, who are looking for a better life in Europe. On their voyage, they experience abuse, they have to stand up in trucks for hours and hours in complete darkness, and many die along the way. I look at Amee and tell her that we are actually lucky to be on this bus, she looks at me with big eyes, thinking that I’m being sarcastic. Seems it’s all about the context and the point of view.
A quick 20 minute stop to grab lunch, we only get a coke in order to minimize the risk of throwing up on the bus, several people around us had thrown up during the morning. We leave the flat plateau and arid landscape for some hills and then some mountains, and the road start to become more and more winding. We travel through some small villages, most of the houses are huts made of sticks, stones, and straw. Now we are feeling the real Ethiopia.
I’m pretty familiar with speed, racing and winding roads. I’ve raced track cars, motorbikes, been on rally cars, I’ve reached more than 300km/h but man it was nothing like the feeling I had going down the mountain in this bus… I put on my seatbelt and started to pray the “Notre Pere.” The last time I did that was 20 years ago when I was in boarding school, forced to by nuns! I tried to avoid looking at Amee to give her the feeling that everything was normal and focused on my Kindle. Four people around us were throwing up, the curtains were flying, people were bouncing from one side to the other, and of course, the music was still all the way up!
We make the last stop before Mek’ele. As we got off the bus, a man dressed in military uniform frisked each person. Some people on the bus grabbed some plants from a field. The bus organizer quickly called us back on the bus, not even enough time to pee. Our bus mates started eating small beans from the plants, and generously offered us some. A woman passenger was walking through the aisle, selling people cups of roasted barley from a large bag.
8:30pm we made it to Mek’ele, Over 14 hours on the bus, it’s time for a good rest.
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