The front of the Palm was in fact a lively bar. Behind it was a dingy room with wobbly tables and equally wobbly chairs. They called it a restaurant, but it had none of the trappings of even a greasy spoon. Just outside the rear door to this room was a large trough where customers washed their hands before and after meals. The saddest and dirtiest towel in the universe hung on a wire beside the trough. It practically gave off a radioactive glow. The hotel proper was just a series of slapped together walls and doors extending down a corridor that was open to the world.

My room was small and basic. A bed made up all the furnishings. It smelled horribly of something chemical. Condoms used and unused littered the floor. The single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling didn’t work. There was no glass in the window and the door barely shut. Of course there was no attached bathroom or shower. But none of this bothered me. I was just glad to be off the street. I was glad to be anywhere.

It was a strange night for me. I was so exhausted that I went to my room at 3:30 in the afternoon to sleep, but it was almost impossible. My mind was racing and I couldn’t slow down. My heart kept pounding along as well and I couldn’t relax. The noise was like having a dozen people in the room with me. I always carry ear plugs and generally they work, but I was too tense to slip into sleep.

I lay there thinking about the strangeness of the world, how back in Canada everything was going along exactly as when I left. How can such different places exist at the same time? The gap separating them is vast, too vast to even comprehend and yet as small as simply walking up the steps of the next jet out.

Eventually, it became dark, and music from the bar began pounding through the room. Bob Marley tunes came up again and again. Then everything went dead and the lights outside my room went out. Power failure. It didn’t bother me, because the light in my room didn’t work anyway. But soon there came a banging at my door and the manager brought in a lit candle. I scrambled out of bed and fumbled in the dark to find my clothes to let him in. When he left, I blew out the candle and climbed back into bed. The blessed silence didn’t last long as the gas station next door switched on their generator. Eventually power was restored and the party continued.

Next to mingle with my thoughts was a small troop of determined mosquitoes. I got out of bed, screwed a hook into the ceiling and draped my mosquito net over the bed. I found it very comforting. It is held open at the top by a radiating set of arms and formed a perfect circle. The way it hung down spoke of luxury and secrecy.

Sleep still eluded me as the party went on for hour after hour. Then of course I fell sick to my stomach and spent the next hour precariously perched over the cement pad with a hole in it. The bathroom was your typical third world affair – smaller than a closet, all concrete with fungus and bugs. Dripping wet so your clothes get wet. No light so you aim and hope. The one new trick was that the foot pads were slanted on a sharp angle so I had to bounce on the balls of my feet and my leg muscles screamed in agony, more than usual. You must bring your own toilet paper of course and I’d been carrying mine around for years in the same little red stuff sack. There was no place to put anything, and I had to search the walls to find any kind of hook to hang the bag and keep it out of the floodwaters below.

Tags: Bob Marley, Canada, Ethiopia Bike Trip, mine, music