Sudan

by Kathy

19th - 29th October (Metema - Gedaref - Khartoum - Meroe - Korti - Dongola - Abri - Halfa)

As we plied the road from Gondor to Metema I found myself entertaining unexpected butterflies in my stomach. I don't think I'd felt nervous approaching a country since, I dunno, some Silly-Stan in previous years, so it caught me off guard.



This was an irrational fear. I knew this because all travellers' tales of crossing Sudan regale its warm hospitality proving the highlight of every overlander's trip. I also knew it was irrational because my 'ratio-meter', Mr A F Butcher, sat beside me is only capable of measured responses to any given situation. Some things warrant feelings of fear (1) or not (0), and was clearly current ly set at 0.




Still, in saying that, the Sudanese embassies in Pretoria and Addis had made it pretty clear that they didn't like strangers around those there parts. And Sudan, previous state sponsor of terrorism and former axis of evil shortlist contender is not the greatest friend of the US and, by transferrence, the UK. This had been confirmed by the US national seen running from the Addis embassy in floods of tears. With all this in mind, how on earth would they receive us at the border?



Turns out with a nice cup of mint tea and an offer of a bed for the night to rest. The border staff were most concerned at Alex's post-Kitfo health, and so we sat at the border, drinking tea, discussing Alex, and moving on to education, politics and local infrastructure. These discussions were punctuated by the occasional stamp or perusing of papers and offers of more tea.



We sipped our tea with some post-Ethiopia suspicion. Indeed Alex opted to reject his tea outright behind the immigration building. But as the minutes ticked by we realised there was no catch. It was as if we were being hosted rather than processed; a border first. After 2 hours we prised ourselves away and finally drove off. Really, that's all you need in Sudan - time and tea.



Arriving in the first major town was equally as straightforward. A friendly motorcyclist guided us to the bank of our choice, where a friendly policeman took over the assistance. As Alex went to change money I nervously guarded the vehicle, but people merely smiled or greeted me as they went on with their day. I felt like we'd been released from some kind of siege.



As I sat there was a minor collision of a car and a minibus right in front of our Landi. I ducked down behind the wheel, waiting for the fireworks to start, but they never came. The policeman intervenced, helping the drivers negotiate, with no raised voices or tempers in sight. Everything was resolved in such a relaxed way, before Alex had had a chance to say 'Change Dollar?'.



And so the scene was set for the transit through Sudan. There was desert, driving, time and tea. Khartoum's red tape misery was offset by a loverly stay with a friend's friend Stephanie, working for IOM, who gave us the lowdown on their work in southern Sudan and more.



Northwards to the Nile, with more tea, but pyramids and ancient temples added to the mix. We learnt the true meaning of 'furtouk' (sp??), which entails being welcomed for tea and refreshments, in the villages along the way. A typical encounter may look like:



Step 1: Invited for tea through hand gestures. Tea is served, smiles exchanged

Step 2: Names, origins and marital status established through much gesturing in the absence of common language. This included audit of people present and their relationship to the home owner

Step 3: Opinions canvassed o global figures such as Barack, Bush, Brown, Blair and Beckham, and other celebrities brought to you by the letter 'B'. Opinions registered using the 'Thumbs Up/Down' mechanism e.g.



Barack = 'Thumbs Up' + smiling face

Bush = 'Thumbs Down' + sad face



Kathy & Alex abstain from any voting on Al-Bashir



Step 4: Complicated ranking system of above celebrities using hand gestures and stick in sand

Step 5: Petition of thanks and extrication



These exchanges were often as hilarious as awkward to all involved and really made the long journeys shorter. We were once asked if we thought Sudan was dangerous we laughed tea through our noses.



In saying that, Sudan's leadership is, of course, appalling, prolonging localised conflicts in the south for political gain. This topic never came up in our trip and, in any case information is tightly controlled. In the north of Sudan Al-Bashir's government is rated pretty highly (read 'Thumbs Up') as many African leaders because 1. he's been in power for a long time 2. he's built roads. By these criteria Stalin and Mao also start looking a little rosier. Anyway, it certainly wasn't the time or the place to discuss...



And enjoy Bashir's roads we did, losing the tar only in the very northern section of the Nile. This was the very highlight of the trip, as we spent 3 days weaving the 400km through villages, low on fuel and money. En route the local road contractors even took us under their wing during a tyre change, putting us up at 2 of their guesthouses along the way. Words couldn't describe the joy of a hot shower and wonderful home cooking. We came to Sudan expecting the worst food and found some of the best.



So we arrived at Halfa with 4 litres of fuel in the tank and 0.50c in our wallet. We got our ferry tickets, parked Andi on a barge and set off for Egypt.

Ethiopia

by Alex

2nd - 19th October (Moyale - Yabello - Arba Minch - Awassa - Addis - Debre Zeit - Addis - Debre Berhan - Lalibela - Gonder)

Ethiopia - where do I begin? When asked whether we were enjoying Ethiopia whilst in the country, we typically slipped the word "rollercoaster" somewhere into the answer. I had read a number of blogs by travellers in Ethiopia, quite a mixed bag. After just 3 days in Ethopia we had had enough - we couldn't wait to leave - we were angry and fed up; but I'm happy to say that we perserved, and checking out 2.5 weeks later we will look back on our time there with some satisfaction.

For Kathy and I, having lived 2/1.5 years in southern Africa, the journey up until now had been reasonably easy, with a few obvious exceptions (er, see Tanzania...). We usually had enough of the local language (at least Kathy did), and there are more similarities than differences between the Bantu peoples of Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya etc. By contrast Ethiopians are very different bunch, and suddenly we had no common language with 80% of the people we came into contact with. Whilst East Africa was a comfortable bubble for us, Ethiopia was a culture shock.
I don't think that it's unfair to describe rural Ethiopians as 'aggresively curious' of foreigners. For much of the drive from the Kenyan border to the capital, Addis Abbaba we felt quite uncomfortable, particularly being in our own vehicle. Stopping in towns and villages along the route became something of a chore, with kids and young people crowding the windows and doors, some begging, some wanting to see what was in the vehicle, but all shouting "You! You! You!" endlessly and pointing at us. We are used to being singled out, kids from Malawi to Kenya shout "Mzungu" as we pass, but in Ethiopia it took on a whole new over zealous tone. At first we countered by mocking, shouting "YOU!" back with as much ferocity as we could muster. This soon got tiring though, and we just settled into quiet acceptance. The other major annoyance being a foreiger in Ethiopia is begging. There is a bigger culture of begging in Ethiopia than in any country I have visited, despite it being significantly better off than many of those. It was the incessant begging that got to us I think. I estimate that on average, every day 50 people would ask us for money, and after a while you realise that a lot of people view you as a walking ATM which makes you feel a lot less welcome, and sometimes angry. When walking up an alley towards some playing children, we watched the mother (standing in front of a reasonable concrete house) coach her children to say "give me money" as we walked past. We exploded at the woman sparing no expletives. She may have only known 3 words of English but she got the message. At one point I was walking along the street on my own and I heard "You! give me money!" I was tired and fed up, this must have been my hundredth "interaction" of the day, so I just showed him the bird (google it, Dad) without even turning to look. Feeling a bit ashamed I glanced back are realised I'd just flipped off a kid of about 6. Whoops.

OK. Enough about begging, and the negativity, I had to get that off my chest but now I can move on and talk about what we actaully did, which was quite a lot since we spent 2.5 weeks in Ethiopia - the longest we expect to spend in any country on this trip. There were plenty of good things about Ethiopia, although it took us a week or so to get used to being there.

Driving into the south to the country the only evidence of the famine we saw was the motel car park over brimming with UN vehicles. The country side was very pretty - rolling hills grazed by cattle and camels, beautiful birdlife everywhere. We didn't realise at this point, but it would be the most mundane landscape we would encounter in Ethiopia. If Rwanda is the land of 1000 hills, then Ethiopia is the land of 10000 mountains. We spent a pleasant night in the Nechisar National Park. We bush camped on top of a hill between two sweeping valleys, an incredible view. I woke in the night to the sound of hundreds of hooves shuffling past both sides of the tent. A huge heard of zebra was moving down to the lake shore for a midnight drink (to avoid the now drowsy crocs I suppose) and moved right around our tent and landy.

The zebra in this park are known for herding over 100 in number. I couldn't tell you how many there were just then however, I was scared that if I took a peek I would startle them into stampeding over our tent!

Addis abba leaves all the previous african capitals in the dust. At 7million people, it is big, vibrant and colourful. It is also extremely noisy. I'm already used to being woken up at 5am by wailing imans calling the faithful to prayer, but in Addis the Ethiopian Orthodox christian priests don't just call the faithful to prayer, they broadcast the whole ceremony over their public address system. You can see this in 2 ways: either it turns all of addis into one giant prayer meeting, or it encourages laziness - why get out of bed and go to church when church comes to you.
Our time in Addis was marred by The Horror. These are the words I will use to remember our days wasted at the sudanese embassy in Addis. I don't want to delve too deep into this one, but in summary the embassy was the most unpleasant beaucratic experience of my life. I can only summise that Sudan maintains such a dreadful mission abroad to filter only those souls who really want/need to go there. I hope to soon forgot the week we spent coming and going, caling copying waitng and paying. Luckily I have a memory like a seive....

The highlight of our time in Addis was meeting up with another Link colleague, Michael Ambetchew. He and his wife took us to Asqual, an Ethiopian restaurant in Addis probably a little orientated towards tourists, although patronised mostly by ethiopias. We watched and heard traditional song and dance, drank honey wine and shared a single huge plated of delicious ethiopian food. It was a lovely night - Kathy and I made a mess of everything that we even looked at - not being hugely experienced at eating using Ethiopian bread (injera) as the only utensil. I'm sure we provided entertainment for our hosts...

On from Addis we visited the spectacular rock hewn churches of Lalibela. Dating back centuries, these buildings are quite something to behold. I think I was more taken from a civil engineering point of view than a cultural one, but that's me. The area obviously receives a lot of tourists, and correspondingly we found moving around much easier than in other similarly rural areas of ethiopia.


Our final drive in Ethiopia took us along a fabulous mountain road with breathtaking views to the east and west. Our final destination was Gonder, hailed as Africa's Camelot. We had a great couple of days relaxing and eating some great ethiopian food. I was so relaxed in fact that I let my cullinary guard right down and ate some Kifto - a kind of raw minced meat. Mistake. Oh well, it was bound to happn sooneror later...

By the last week in Ethiopia, we were really enjoying our time there. We met some lovely people, and saw some great things. Funny to think how negative were our opinions 2 weeks previously. Onwards and downwards (topographically speaking) to Sudan, the true home of beaurocracy.

Kenya

by Kathy

27th Sep – 2nd October (Malaba – Eldoret – Lake Nakuru – Nanyuki – Isiolo – Marsabit – Moyale)

Kenya was the very first country I visited outside of Europe and the US in university holidays in 1997, when I was 19. I remember getting off the plane in quite a haze and being the victim of a bit of a heist within minutes, being whisked off to the taxi driver’s brother’s so-called ‘safari firm’. It was probably the luckiest scam ever, as we ended up in the Masai Mara game reserve completely unplanned and enjoyed a fabulous, if rather, erm, budget, safari.

I also remember being rather overpowered by Nairobi’s sights and smells, accidentally sleeping in brothels, saying ‘Jambo’ inanely to little children who then tried to pinch the sunglasses off my face. I remember the endless but stunning journey out to Mombasa by local bus and the beautiful sight of the Indian Ocean. The whole trip made quite an impression and I remember it in some detail unlike any other trip since.

I was quite excited, then, by the prospect of a return trip to Kenya, a wee bittie older and, ideally, a bit wiser to see what had changed. Alex was equally as excited to visit a country where his parents had lived some 30 years previously. And as if to add to this frenzy of excitement we had picked up a couple of ‘Landi to LDN’ exclusive guests, Robbie and Jessy who live and work in Silicone Valley, CA, for the first leg, helping to completely revitalise our tired chat, music collection and even future business planning.


I guess the weirdest change entering Kenya this time was being able to communicate. Despite a few teething problems similar to Tanzania (saying once again that our journey had been a great big red salty sausage) I soon got back into the flow. The other major observation, compared to Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi was the sheer amount of industry and commerce at a local level. Even very small trading centres had all sorts of goods and services and major towns indicated on the map were just that (unlike western Tanzania)! Our first port of call, Eldoret, was such a huge sprawling industrial centre it would dwarf Malawi’s national capital. I don’t know if that marks a change or not; I read that Kenya had recently fallen off the EU’s ‘Developing Nation’ list, whatever that means. But you do get the feeling that Kenya has usually been one step ahead of its neighbours, at least from an economic development point of view. And nice as it was to communicate in Swahili it wasn’t really all that necessary. On our first morning I stopped to greet two women running our guesthouse and they replied with great gusto, only to return to their conversation, I soon realised, in English.

In saying that the driving still wasn’t particularly straightforward, getting caught once again after dark on a partially constructed road to Nakuru. Once we finally arrived there after 9pm there was momentary panic to find Jessy and Robbie a transfer to Nairobi that night, in time for their early morning flight!

Once resolved Alex and I literally passed out at the first guesthouse, waking early to enter Nakuru National Park. The park itself was really stunning, with an enormous amount of wildlife in quite a small area, centred around saltwater Lake Nakuru. The stars of the show were the huge pelicans that circled like arial bombers and the flamingos as far as the eye could see.

After Nakuru Alex and I kept to back dirt roads to weave across country to avoid Nairobi and take in the sight of Mount Kenya. We seemed to cross the equator 5 times in a few hours, each crossing duly marked with a Fuji Film or other sign and a curio shop. Without GPS we couldn’t really verify that we were indeed making another crossing or simply witnessing quite wily business acumen.

From Nanyuki we started north through Isiolo and on to Marsabit. At Isiolo the tar finished and it was an almost entirely Muslim town, which we entered on the eve of Eid. It was really an enormous shift in such a small space of time. It marked the end of eastern Africa with its overlapping languages and cultures and the start of northern Africa & Arabia….We then, at 11am, threw ourselves onto the Isiolo – Marsabit – Moyale desert road, which slowly sapped our energy, water supplies and spare parts.

Alex and I have been driving on all sorts of roads and in all sorts of conditions since we left the UK and are generally pretty happy off-road. I don’t think, however, we’d ever driven on such pronounced corrugation through such heat for such a long period. We swapped driving strictly every 1 hour to keep refreshed and our speed up, and it was a long, long couple of days. Yet the sights on the way were amazing! Huge herds of camels, cattle and small animals like dik-dik constantly appeared and disappeared. Masai people were everywhere on the southern section of the road, walking huge distances in such heat. In the northern section the Berber people replaced the Masai, still with camels and cattle a-plenty.

Anyway, several punctures, new shocks and about 14 hours driving later, we finally approached Ethiopia. At one of the final outposts in Kenya one Berber lady spotted me and said ‘Faranji!’ and thrust her hand through the car window looking for some money. I guess at this point we sadly waved goodbye to wonderful, relaxed Kenya and approached Ethiopia with some apprehension.