My third attempt at cycling in Addis was as difficult as the first. I hadn’t gone more than a half kilometre from the Tiru Gondar when a boy ran out into the street in front of me. He waited till I was right on top of him, took careful aim and hit me on the chest with a sticky smelly banana peel. I hit the brakes in shock and watched him run away through a small alley. Dozens of people on the sidewalk witnessed it and I looked around at them trying to elicit some kind of sympathetic response. I made eye contact with several and I made helpless motions with my eyes and hands trying to get someone to at least shrug their shoulders or maybe even come over and pat me on the shoulder and tell me everything was okay. I wanted someone to acknowledge what had happened and indicate to me in some way that they didn’t approve of it.

I didn’t get the response I was looking for. Most ignored me. A few laughed. The others simply stood around saying, ‘you you’ over and over. I put my feet back on the pedals and began cycling up the street. “Fuck you,” someone called out. A few others picked up the chorus. “Motherfucker,” shouted someone else.

I followed some more suburban looking roads trying to get away from the worst of the traffic and ended up in a neighbourhood of narrow roads and separate houses. Groups of people stood everywhere and stared in amazement as I cycled past. One man hopped onto a bicycle and pedalled after me. It was a small bike and he had to pedal furiously to catch up. He came alongside me and I looked nervously at him and smiled. He kept pace for a while simply saying ‘ferenji’ and ‘you you’ over and over again, sometimes softly to himself, then more sharply to me.

Suddenly he leaned away, took a foot off the pedal, and kicked out savagely. Again and again he kicked trying to hit me or the bike and I assume knock me over. He connected a couple of times, but without much force. I wasn’t worried about the kicking. I didn’t think he could do much damage that way. But I was worried about an accidental collision and I sped up to get away. He took aim with one last kick, but he tried a bit too hard, lost control of his bike and crashed into the ditch.

In a wide, busy street at the Mercato a man swung a heavy fist and caught me hard on the shoulder as I went past. He somehow grabbed my t-shirt and wrenched it off my shoulder nearly pulling me off the bike and into the dirt.

I pulled the wheel of my bike sharply to the left and hit the brakes to keep from falling over. I’d had enough and I turned to the man and screamed at him uncontrollably. “What do you want?! Why are you doing this?! Are you all insane?!” Other words poured out of me in a torrent as I berated the crowd. Many of them just smiled at me. This was more entertainment than they had hoped for. But quite a few more I noticed were looking at me with a grim expression on their face. A number made a move to encircle me and I came to my senses and decided to get out of there fast.

On a long and shallow downhill I saw ahead of me a child crossing the road dragging a length of 4X4. I slowed down to give him a chance to get clear, but he suddenly dropped the wood right in front of me and dashed off. Not much later another child hefted a walking stick and threw it like a spear, aiming for the spokes of my front wheel. Grown men shouted to get my attention and then held up their fists in a boxing stance, inviting me over to get beat up.

When I got back to the Supermarket, my village, the atmosphere changed dramatically. Everyone on the street knew my name. A man at the gas station clasped his hands above his head, gave a slight bow and said, “salaam.” While locking my bike outside the Alem Bunna two different customers spoke to me, unprompted and told me that since I was a very special guest I needn’t worry about my bike.

Addis continued to surprise me, but even so it was a difficult place to get lost in. I kept striking out in a straight line with my eye on a range of denuded hills in the distance, but the roads gently and persistently turned me and no matter where I tried to go I eventually started going around in a circle following the edges of the city. There was a brief moment when I thought I’d finally broken free. I could have sworn I was following a road out of Addis, gently climbing one of the foothills, but then I turned a corner and I’d somehow landed right back at City Hall and Giorgis Cathedral. I’d cycled around that circle so many times in the ten days I’d been in Addis that I thought I recognized some of the voices calling out ‘fuck you.’

Perhaps, I thought, a day will come when I’ll think of them fondly as old friends. We’ll get together in three months and reminisce about the day they first saw me and shouted their first exuberant profanity. “Ah,” I’ll say, “that banana peel was a nice touch, though.” And we’ll laugh about the stain on my t-shirt, still there after all this time.

Tags: Alem Bunna, bike, City Hall, Ethiopia Bike Trip, Tiru Gondar