It is an incredibly odd and somewhat exhilarating feeling having a school of dilly teenage girls screaming themselves hoarse at your expense, asking for autographs and blushing uncontrollably as a group of their friends whip out their fancy camera phones to snap pictures of the occasion. Odd…but pretty cool at the same time.
Our two weeks in Addis have cruised by so fast that, a day before our planned departure, we decided to postpone the beginning of my journey on the bike by another day. Having been so immersed in doing pretty much nothing at all, we’ve managed to neglect the important things and have decided that, instead of trying to fix Frank and get packing, we might as well just spend another day being hungover and useless – something we have become quite adept at doing.
Addis has been an amicable host to the Majestic Imperials – an informal and completely unofficial name stolen from a local Reggae house band. The city is full of life, full of character and full of people. Despite the fact that the first road I strolled down wouldn’t have passed as a pathway used by cows en route to the dairy, the infrastructure is half decent and only improving as the skyline is littered with semi-high rise buildings making their way above the mix of old brick buildings and tin shacks, all surrounded by very optimistic scaffolding structures made from Eucalyptus poles somehow joined together in a formation more fragile than the Arsenal defence. Ten thousand kilometres from home, the concept of African Time is as strong as ever as the amount of buildings on their way up outnumbers the builders at work on them.
Nonetheless, construction seems the industry to be in if Antonio and Rihanna are to be believed. The latter is a construction student at Addis University, whom I’ve dubbed Rihanna because she reckons people note a resemblance between her and the Caribbean singer, and because I couldn’t hear what she introduced herself as. She might have actually borne some resemblance had she a full set of white teeth and no faint shadow of a moustache. I must also add that, had the people making the comparisons been as aggressively hit on as I was, they may have been seduced into saying exactly that by the tight leopard print clothing and obvious intent that failed to interest me. Despite requesting a quick Amharic lesson – a language exclusively Ethiopian, of which I know how to say ‘hello’ and ‘thank-you’ (amasege'nallo'), often as a substitute for the other – all she tried to teach me to say was: ‘I like you’.
Matt, Tom and I were enthusiastically invited to join the afore-mentioned Antonio and two construction colleagues under his watch for coffee at our local grocer who operates out of tiny structure backed by a sheet of corrugated iron and shaded by cloth hung up by wooden poles. The young lady’s stock consisted of avo’s, red onions, potatoes, bananas and mangoes – a variety not improved upon by most other vendors in the city. As a side to her questionably fresh foods she sold coffee, heated by little coals, to patrons seated on a choice of three little futons and a couple crates in a set up seen around every corner of Addis. The shot-sized cup of coffee topped any I’d ever had at UCT in my desperate attempts to maintain consciousness in between study sessions, while putting Nescafe to absolute shame.
Antonio’s hospitality was mirrored by many people as we strolled the streets of Addis, visiting the commercial hubs of Piazza and Merkato , the latter of which is Africa’s biggest open-air market and what I can only assume is the local shopping area, visited by only one other ‘Ferengi’ (white foreigner) on the day Jim and I went to check it out. It took us a little while to accept the company and help of locals who jumped at the opportunity to chat and put their English to the test, but once we realised that they were not in it to make a quick buck we were lucky enough to meet some interesting locals – including a group of 3 self-proclaimed ‘Mary J’ salesman – who saved us from hours of hopeless searching and wandering as well as the ever-present tendency for vendors to try and rip us off for every cent we had. It was by no means an unfamiliar sight to be greeted by enthusiastic and appreciative locals as we strolled on by, thanking us for visiting their country and asking us how we were despite not being capable of understanding a word of our response. Every now and again an obviously poor child would badger persistently for money, shouting: “You, You, You, One, One, One”, or simply hold their hands out dangerously near your crotch and follow you hundreds of metres down the street. Although the beggars were no more plentiful than back in Cape Town, they were different in the sense that the majority of them were in the twilight of their long lives or somehow particularly unfortunately deformed.
In general, our stay was a mellow and relaxing one where we lived in Addis for two weeks rather than visited the Ethiopian capital, if that makes any sense at all. If it wasn’t for my glaringly obvious differing skin colour to that of the masses, I would have felt more like a local than a tourist, thanks in no small way to the expat community Kizzy - a connection of Tom’s who has all but given up her home for the entirety of our stay - wasted no time in introducing us to through trips down to the local bar; The Road Runner, and a couple of house parties and braais ending up in various clubs around the city and eventually a series of profound hangovers, least enjoyed by Jim who could hardly eat until well into the afternoon on each occasion. It must be the altitude.
Most of the expats that Kizzy introduced us to were teachers at the same International School that she worked at, predominantly British and all with an interesting story of their own about how their life journey brought them to be teaching in Ethiopia. One of the teachers we met during the second of our 2 Wednesday afternoon football games on the school field invited us to have a chat to one of his classes; an offer we happily accepted.
Having cycled all of 2 kilometres -my first 2kilometres of the trip – to the school on Friday, I had no idea what it was I was going to say thanks to no preparation nor any cycling experiences to speak of. Knowing how talented I am at writing absolute crap, I figured that I may as well speak in the same vein.
Matt and Tom must have had to deliberate at some length to figure out how they would incorporate me into the presentation but, after what was probably a serious brain-wracking session, they decided that my perspective would be of some sort of value; the perspective of the unfit, rather out-of-shape, very average Joe about to embark on a not-so average journey.
What was supposed to be one English class turned out to be an entire day of 3 presentations to a total of 9 classes of kids between the age of 13 and 15 as well as some informal chats to 2 penultimate year Science classes. Jim and I chipped into a brilliant presentation by Matt and Tom that included the 3 videos they have produced and published on their website. To say the classes lapped it up would be an understatement: we were watched from across the road during our lunch break by some of the girls from our first class, asked for signatures and photographs and left every class to students whistling and applauding as the presentations concluded with the screening of the border dance video – a ritual I’m yet to figure out how I can possibly contribute to. The last showing of the video –by which time we were pretty sick of watching – ended in a small but confident Indian chap getting clapped onto the stage to do a moon walk-come break dance gig and an absolutely euphoric class leaving their final lesson of the week.
The euphoria spilled out onto the school yard as we headed out the gates to more applause, screams and shouts of: “I’ll add you on Facebook” behind Frank - Tom’s motorbike-with-sidecar - who took a record low 20 kick-starts to get going. The reception deserved no less than a non-stop 1500km trek straight to Nairobi. Instead, we pulled over 40 metres down the road at a bar to share a few draughts with the teachers before cycling home to have a look at my Accounting Board Exam results: “Richard Brotherton, we are glad to inform you that you have…passed”. The euphoria rolls on!
Tomorrow (03/04) we leave for our next leg to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. The plan is to stay at a lodge on the foothills of Mount Kenya if we are lucky enough to be invited by a friend of a friend of a cousin of a friend. Other than that, the plans are minimal: we will leave sometime tomorrow morning and aim to reach a destination that we’ll figure out after we choose which road to take. With the school send-off in a mind, a new dodgy haircut and a belly that is yearning for exercise; I cannot wait to hit the road and put some mileage onto the new, knobbly tyres of my noble steed, Nelson.
