HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Getting some cough medicine for my barking cough
BUMMER OF THE DAY: No Wi-Fi as promised at the hotel – I know, it’s all I have….
WORD OF THE DAY: And, hulet, sost, arat, amist, sedist – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in Amharic
DISTANCE TRAVELLED: 336KM
Today is just a travel day to get us out of Lalibela and to break our journey in Kombalcha this afternoon making our way to Harar in the next few days. We had to travel the windy 62KM back to the main road, and I do think this a lot that it never seems as long heading back the same way you come, whether driving or walking a route, I guess you know how far it is versus going you just don’t know how far you have left to go. Before leaving Lalibela we tried out luck again at the fuel station and he did remember Zeme from yesterday but would only let us have 10L today. That’s okay as we have enough to get us through to Kombalcha anyway so we took the 10L and hit the road.
When we were in Bahir Dar and we were at the traditional restaurant they were wearing their traditional costumes and it was nice to see that they do actually wear them still in the country. Most countries have traditional costumes but they are never worn except for tourism, but here up north the men and woman are wearing exactly what they had on at the restaurant.
The drive was really scenic today and just beautiful. At one stage the temperature dropped to 13C at one of our highest points and it would have been interesting to know exactly how high up we were. It’s the usual traffic on the roads, the local buses, and people walking with cattle and wares and children looking after goats. This seems to be consistent all over the country also with the school children knocking off from school anytime from 11.30-12.30 every day and the mass exodus of the kids on the road walking home.
We take it in turns with the music selection in the car. We will have western music for half the day and then Amharic tunes for the other half. When I hear a good Amharic song, I’ll save it into a playlist with my western songs so we are getting a nice combination playlist with both options building as the days pass by.
Mid-morning we stopped at Zeme’s mums village where she grew up. It was actually over 1KM from the main road, so I stayed in the car which was parked in front of a school as Zeme made a dash to the village to say hello and pass on his mums best wishes. I felt safe enough with just 2 children passing while Z was gone, but he insisted I locked the car and didn’t move. I was happy to just sit and crank some tunes and I read my book for the 30 minutes that he was gone.
We stopped at a town at 12 noon for Z to have a shot of coffee espresso to keep him going for the afternoon. The cost for a bottle of coke and the espresso was 88 cents. Can you believe that you can get a bottle of coke for so cheap? As we were sitting there, a lady who looked like 150 years came over asking for money. You just couldn’t say no, so Zeme gave her like 10 birr, which is a lot for them but for us is like 55 cents. She was very grateful and shuffled along. Well I am not sure if word got out or they just saw the new arrivals but 2 more women around the same age bracket came along so not one to not share the love we gave them both money as well. We quickly finished out drinks otherwise we were going to be bankrupt if we stayed any longer. I am sure there is no pension plan for the elderly in this country and it dies make you wonder just how they survive. I guess with a population of 77 million it would be quite hard for the government to implement something wouldn’t it? The have just started to educate people about the amount of children they have and trying to save money for the future of their schooling and raising them costs, so it is a start in the right direction.
We drove for another 165KM before stopping in Desse (Zeme’s name sake less an i) and this is where we finally got some cough medicine for my barking cough. It seems to be getting worse than better, so we bought a 100ml bottle for 55 cents. Yes 55 CENTS. I guess it is re-assuring if I get sick when I move here it won’t be an expensive process to get better.
The main traffic on the roads are the local busses that travel from village to village and they are in the form of minivans. It is amazing to see the goods they have on their roves as we pass them or they pass us in the opposite direction. We have only seen one box fall off a minivan and luckily it was only full of chat or some other green leaf substance, so I am sure not much damage was done. We saw the box come loose and we were speeding up to tell them when it fell off. There are trucks on the roads and also a bus network called Salem bus that is like a Greyhound bus network that travels the whole of Ethiopia for long haul distances. There aren’t many ‘normal’ cars on the roads and when there is other traffic it is other 4WD’s. It is quite unusual to see a normal car out here.
After 7 hours and 336KM we arrived into Kombalcha. I needed to get some cash out and the Dashen Bank seems to be the winner in each town. So we headed to the Dashen Bank as soon as we arrived and they didn’t have an ATM but they had a portable electronic swipe system to do the same thing. I presented my Travelex card and because my name isn’t on the card this was a problem to start with. So I gave him my ANZ card and hoped that there was enough money on that to get some cash out. As I have locked myself out of my internet banking I wasn’t sure just how much money I had on there. Well after 3 swipes and the decline chitty printing out, the guy decided to make a call and with my passport, my Travelex card and my ANZ card in hand sat on the phone talking to some-one for 30 minutes. I was starting to get a little impatient at this stage and said I could just exchange some US dollars if it was an issue to which he replied just 5 more minutes. So I waited and he came back and said no to the Travelex so I suggested he try a lower amount and got that through no problems. I decided while I was there to exchange some US dollars anyway and after another 25 minutes I was cashed up and an hour in total to get the money, I have learnt the lesson to just stick to the ATM machines in the future. The assistant manager ended up helping in the end to speed things along, so was very appreciative to both of them and showed them so with my Ethiopian hand shake which was received with big smiles.
Kombolcha is a city with an elevation between 1842 and 1915 meters above sea level. It is home to Kombolcha Steel products, a metalworking factory that is part of MIDROC, a conglomerate owned by businessman Sheikh Mohammed Al Amoudi. Another industry in this town is the Kombolcha Textile Factory (KTF), which announced 9 March 2009 that it was beginning a 190 million Birr modernization project to improve the quality of its projects. At the time of the announcement, the KTF exported its goods to Italy, Sweden, Belgium and China. Tadesse Tamrat records that archeologists discovered "some remains of Christian settlements", dated to the late first millennium of the current era.
Kombolcha was used as a base by the United Nations relief organization and other humanitarian groups during the 1984 famine. On 19 November 1989 the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) claimed to have captured Kombolcha. However, the highway from Kombolcha to Assab was not fully brought under TPLF control until the Derg was expelled from Tigray later that year.
With this just being an overnight stop for us we checked into the room with the promise of Wi-Fi availability. Well we didn’t have it in the room and when Z enquired about it, it was only available on the ground floor which was okay. So at dinner we tried to login and they said it hadn’t been working for a few days…… hmmmmmm nice of them to tell us this when we enquired twice earlier! That’s Ethiopia for you and things are not done in a hurry here. Patience is something I am going to have to nurture when I move here permanently. Dinner was a mission as I am still seedy, so thinking I was being safe ordering chicken and vegetable when my meal came out and it was half a bird and it still had its neck attached nearly pushed me over the vomit barrier. Normally it wouldn’t be an issue but I just couldn’t stomach it tonight. After picking at the meal I was just happy to go upstairs and get some sleep.
Tomorrow we are off to Awash which is pretty much just another drive day to get us closer to Harar and hopefully Zeme will get a rest day soon as we have nearly driven 2200KM in 8 days and it’s not easy driving-thanks Z, you’re doing such a great job Baby xx
No comments:
Post a Comment