Driving – Part 2

So, one of the other things I like about driving in Ethiopia is stopping for a drink and some food in the restaurants and cafes we pass (if I’m honest, most things in my life can be made pleasurable by the addition of food!). We’ve driven from Lalibela to Addis via Dessie or Bahir Dar so many times we have our regular places now. This one in Gynt, where L and I sat waiting for the tires to be mended, does particularly good tibs (strips of meat cooked in spices).

We’d finished our portion of tibs and had started on Ab’s by the time he came back to the café – minus the tire still being mended. They were working on it, replacing the inner tube, or something along those lines. Doing something to ensure we could continue driving safely, anyway.

By the time they’d finished, and we were able to continue driving, it was getting dark and there was no way we wanted to drive the four hours to Bahir Dar. Driving in rural Ethiopia in the dark is dangerous – people say it’s because of the shiftas (bandits) that can strike, but I’d be more worried about stray cattle – or even people – wandering in the road and us not being able to stop in time.

Apparently you’re more likely to die from a car accident whilst visiting Africa than you are from an illness or by being eaten by a big animal (I just know I’d be the exception to that rule). When I lived in Addis, I didn’t think Ethiopian driving was that bad – slightly frantic, maybe, and enough to make my Ethiopian friends returning to Addis think twice before driving a car, but not too bad. However, since I’ve moved to Lalibela, we’re always having near misses where a lorry has come bombing round the corner on the wrong side of the road (you’re supposed to drive on the right, guys) or someone has decided to run across the road at the last minute (the four hours where there were no cars coming and the road was completely clear obviously wasn’t a convenient time).

Anyway, whatever the more pressing danger, we decided to drive for around 2 hours and stay the night in a town before leaving early in the morning to drive the remaining few hours to Bahir Dar.

Normally staying in the hotels is also a great part of driving cross country. They’re nothing fancy, but we’ve found some nice ones, and it’s an adventure – finding a good one, arguing about whether I pay franaji price or Abesha price, settling in, trying out the restaurant (if there is one), all of that stuff.

God, these ones were terrible though. I turned down the first hotel we looked at due to the fact that the shared toilet was so revolting you could smell it from three floors down. The other hotel wasn’t much better, but at least the toilet didn’t smell quite so bad. My bedroom didn’t have a light bulb, so if I wanted to read I had to sit in the corridor, and the door only opened from the outside so Ab had to come and let me out when we left in the morning, but we were so tired by that point we took it. Well that, and there were no other options.

The hotel was just so miserable. It’s not the money that’s needed – it doesn’t matter if the hotel is scruffy or bare or whatever, but it’s the sheer lack of interest and care that makes it all so depressing. It’s the little things; rubbish all over the floor, bins not emptied, dirty toilet, all of that stuff. It would take so little effort.

Still, Ab told me that the majority of trade used to be the soldiers who were based here, so presumably they didn’t really care about light bulbs and clean toilets?!

We all got a reasonably good sleep, though, and we set off at 6am the next morning, just as the sun had risen. The road was less bumpy than before, so I managed to doze off as we sped past the people perched outside their houses making coffee, and kids taking the cattle and sheep to the river for water.

Of course, every time any of us heard a strange sound, we would turn the radio off and stick our head out the window, trying to hear if there was a leak in the tire … but we managed to get to Bahir Dar without any more flat tires, and even made really good time. I’ve still never been quite so relieved as when we had a complete new set of tires fitted.