Debre Markos was more complicated than most of the towns I’d passed through and it wasn’t entirely clear which road was the one that led out of town and headed north. I stopped to question a group of young boys, but they all pointed in different directions and I left them still arguing amongst themselves. The men wrapped up tightly in their shammas against the morning cold were even less helpful. They were reluctant to take their hands out of the warm folds to point and only answered me in words, words that I didn’t understand.

I was standing astride my bike trying to get oriented when a man on a Chinese bicycle came cycling up to me and stopped. The brand name of these bikes was “Phoenix”, but everybody pronounced it “phonics”, which amused me.

This man gave me to understand that he had seen me cycle into town the day before and had been lying in wait outside my hotel since dawn for a chance to talk to me. We cycled along together and he acted the tour guide. He pointed out a field of tef. He pointed out a cow and a house. He then surprised me by asking if I had had any problems cycling in Ethiopia.

It was an unusual question from an Ethiopian and I wondered if he had seen me during one of my lunatic phases. But he appeared to be genuinely interested and I told him the whole story and about my theory of the two faces of Ethiopia, the private and the public, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

He claimed to know exactly what I was talking about. He said that once he cycled all the way to Dejen (the same 70 km distance I’d done the day before) and people threw stones and sticks at him, chased him, teased him and laughed at him. He said that they were uneducated people and didn’t understand tourism. He also said that they considered anyone on a bicycle to be an insane person, and so felt justified in tormenting them. A cyclist was not ‘normal.’

About 5 kilometers outside of Debre Markos the road crossed a river and began to climb. Till then it had been downhill and even on his ‘phonics’ he could stay with me. But he couldn’t ride his bike uphill, only push it, and he said goodbye and turned back.

A Partially Improved Goat Track

I had looked over my maps pretty carefully before going to sleep and it looked to be about 300 km from Debre Markos to Bahir Dar, my next major landmark. Depending on the terrain I could do that in four or five days, with the last day being a hard one. Bahir Dar was right at the base of Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, and I assumed that as I got closer the gorge would reappear and the terrain would get quite difficult. I’d read that the last 44 kilometers were quite spectacular scenically and in cycling-speak that translated into lots of ups and downs.

While measuring distances I noticed that as I approached the village of Denbecha, about 35 kilometers north of Debre Markos, the road was going to change. Up till then the road was represented by a double red line with orange in the middle. According to the map’s legend that was a primary paved road. But near Denbecha it changed to an ominous looking red line, much thinner with dots all through it. I looked at the legend, but for some reason out of all the various lines used to represent roads in Ethiopia this particular dotted line was not explained. It wasn’t even there.

My Michelin map confirmed that something happened to the road, but it was even less helpful. It had no less than 11 different types of road indicated (22 if you considered that each one was sub-divided into two colour schemes) and I understood none of them. The language was vague as if written by a politician who didn’t want to commit himself to any one point of view. Roads were “all weather,” “improved,” and “partially improved.” “All weather” sounded good, but it left me with an uneasy feeling. They said “all weather”, but I think what they really meant to say was “bad weather” as in “after a flash flood the road will probably still be there, but we can’t guarantee it.” And “all weather” I immediately associated with “all terrain” as in “all-terrain vehicle.” It’s true my mountain bike had been custom assembled to be the ultimate all-terrain travelling machine, but as the Blue Nile Gorge had demonstrated there was terrain and then there was TERRAIN. “Improved” at first glance was also a nice, positive sort of word, a good word in any situation. An improved road has got to be better than an unimproved road. Even “partially improved” is better than nothing., but partially improved relative to what? A partially improved goat track is still not going to be much of a road. And most disturbing of all the markings on the Michelin map got tinier and tinier as the road moved north till after Gondar it was reduced to a series of red and white dots. It looked like a particularly venomous snake writhing its way through the mountains.

Goodbye Pavement, Hello Rocks

My questions were answered sooner than I expected and the road fell apart right at the edge of Debre Markos. The pavement vanished entirely and was replaced by the same “boulder on boulder” construction that I’d already seen in the Blue Nile Gorge. I wasn’t too happy about that. A dirt road would have been fine. In fact dirt roads were often preferable to paved roads for cycling. In all the documentaries I’d seen on Africa the back roads were shown as made of a red dirt. This was a problem for vehicles because when it rained it created huge mudholes that they couldn’t get through. When I planned my trip I imagined myself coming across these mudholes and being able to (smugly) go around them on my bicycle or pick up my bicycle and just walk through them.

Northern Ethiopia, however, was proving to have very little red mud. The whole region appeared to be nothing but rock. I’d noticed that some farmers made a habit of clearing their fields of rock. Every season new rock would float to the surface and they’d pick them up and move them to the side and create fences between the fields. These walls, however, soon grew to gargantuan proportions and every year the rocks kept coming and soon they gave up. Most farmers just left the rocks where they were and they soon threatened to overwhelm the fields. I watched the farmers driving oxen through the fields and I cringed with sympathy every time the wooden plough hit another larger than average rock and the yoke jerked against the oxen’s necks. The oxen would stagger to the side and want to give up, but the farmer would give them a lick with his twenty foot leather whip and drive them on with Bruce Lee yips and cries. I’ve always thought that it must take incredible strength to pull a plough through dirt and turn it over. To also move aside literally tons of rock would require a huge effort.

I struggled along as best I could, but it was very slow and quickly became ridiculous. The rocks were piled thick and high and it was all I could do to maintain any forward motion at all. I stopped to look at my maps again and one of them indicated that the road stayed like this all the way to Bahir Dar. The farmers I asked confirmed this and said that the road became flat and smooth after Bahir Dar, but till then it was boulder on boulder. (I didn’t know it at the time, but they and my map were both wrong and I wouldn’t see pavement again for over 1,500 kilometers.)

My concern wasn’t just the difficulty of cycling (though I felt more ridiculous than usual as grandmothers carrying the equivalent of four hay bales blew past me like I was standing still) but time. I needed to complete the loop through the north and get back to Addis before my 3-month visa expired so I could apply for an extension. At the slow pace this road had reduced me to I could never manage it.

I made up my mind then and there that if by the end of the day the road hadn’t improved I would take a bus to Bahir Dar and see what happened after that. It made sense because the area I was most interested in was all north of Bahir Dar and the time I saved would be better spent there.

The Dumb White Guy Outdoes Himself

Once the decision was made I felt like a load had been lifted off my shoulders and I relaxed and it almost seemed like Ethiopia relaxed along with me. Or maybe it was the fact that the pavement was gone and the rocky road had forced a slower pace on not just me but everybody.

I got out my camera to take a picture of my bike sitting on this boulder on boulder road (I wanted to remember just how bad it was) and three young men approached me and asked me to take their picture. I was very surprised because my experience to date had been that Ethiopians did not like cameras at all, but I agreed readily and took a picture of the three of them together. I was also surprised when after I took the picture they did not then want to exchange addresses so that I could send them a copy. They only wanted their picture taken and when I did so they gravely thanked me as if I had paid them a compliment.

I was very pleased with this turn of events, since I enjoyed photography. So much happens so fast on a trip like this that I can’t absorb it all at once. I like having the pictures afterwards and I look at them again and again and the whole experience deepens and becomes richer with time.

These three young men were about to pick up their bundles of dulas, which they were taking to Debre Markos to sell when I noticed that each of them was carrying what looked to me like a feather duster. I’d been seeing more and more of these implements as I cycled north and had been wondering what they were. The handles were about nine inches long and made of a coiled wire. On the end was a thick cluster of what I took to be horse or donkey hair (a fact I confirmed when I asked to examine one more closely and gave it a good sniff). I’d seen mostly old men carrying them and I assumed they were a badge of office, perhaps religious office.

I asked if I could take another picture of them holding these important cultural artifacts and I questioned them closely about them. I couldn’t understand what they said, but they kept flicking them back and forth and repeating the word “Zumba.” I got out a notebook and carefully wrote the word down intending to investigate it later on. I assumed it was a religious word, the name of a minor office in the church like deacon or elder.

But of course the dumb white guy on a bike had outdone himself. “Zumba,” they repeated over and over again and pointed to the flies that were buzzing around my face. When a couple landed on my shoulder one of the men reached out with the implement and with a neat flick of the wrist whisked them away. I looked up ‘fly’ in my Amharic phrasebook. “Zemb” it said. They were fly whisks and the three young walked sedately up the road rhythmically flicking the fly whisks on each side of their heads to keep the flies away.

Beasts of Burden

My next subject was an old man ploughing a field just off to my right. I left my bike on the road and walked over to the crude fence. I leaned on the fence and watched the man as he drove the oxen back and forth in front of me. The land was not as rocky as some I’d seen and the oxen were making good progress. I wondered though how difficult it was for them. The plough was a simple wooden affair with no steel at all. The yoke was only a thick piece of wood that rested against the large humps just back of the oxen’s neck. All the force of the plough was placed directly against the humps and I saw that the thick skin was bunched up and pinched there. I wondered if it wasn’t painful. I wondered if the oxen could talk what they would say. Perhaps they’d recommend that a yoke or harness be placed on the front of their chest instead and then they could apply far more force.

I had a similar thought when I saw loads being put on donkeys. Goods were placed in large burlap sacks and then these sacks were tied to the donkeys with long pieces of leather rope. The rope was wrapped around the donkey several times and then a balancing loop placed underneath the donkey’s tail. It was a very crude system and the only way to keep the load from shifting and falling off was to tie it very tight. The farmer would brace his knee against the donkey’s body and then using all his strength haul the rope tight. This was done again and again till I thought the poor donkey would pop like a squeezed balloon.

Unfortunately they could never get it tight enough (the donkeys had to breathe after all) and the loads constantly threatened to fall off and often did. The farmers ran beside the donkeys always watching for the moment when the load would begin to slip and they’d push it back in place and then tighten the ropes once more. And worst of all the loop under the donkey’s tail rubbed back and forth till the skin was split and raw. The wounds there often went all the way down to bone and must have been excruciating. It was a puzzle to me that in all the centuries of using donkeys for transport no one had come up with a better design.

The farmer saw me leaning against the fence and when he saw the camera he too indicated that he wanted his picture taken. He signalled me to wait and then gave a mighty flick of the whip. He did it again and again till I indicated that I got the picture.

He was an older man, barefoot, and what little clothing he had was torn and ragged. The field he was ploughing was very large and beyond him I saw several more teams of oxen. I guessed that he did not own the land but was a day labourer hired to drive the oxen. He came over to the fence after several passes and offered me some tella out of a blue plastic cup. All I could offer him in return was water, but he took it greedily and drank the entire liter before handing back the empty bottle.

More Pictures

Emboldened by this pleasant experience I went back to my bicycle and waited for more willing photographic subjects. Quite a lot of people and animals were passing by my bicycle on their way into Debre Markos (there were so many I assumed it was market day there) and I framed up my bicycle and took pictures as people with interesting loads walked past it. As far as I could tell no one seemed to mind and several even came over to me and asked me to take a picture of them individually, which I was happy to do.

The women as usual carried the larger burdens. They often had a large basket filled with produce on top of which they placed a big bundle of firewood and on top of the firewood a burlap sack filled with grain. Give the men this much to carry and they immediately put it on a donkey. Some of the men had loads on their backs or heads, but they tended to be lighter things like a basket of eggs or a small bunch of dulas.

The women were invariably barefoot and I watched with astonishment as they walked over the sharp edged stones. They glided over them as if they weren’t even there. When they stopped and posed for a picture I looked at their feet and saw that the soles were extremely thick and that the whole foot had spread and become very wide with years of rough walking.

Most of the men were also barefoot, but those that could afford it wore simple leather or rubber sandals. A few had twenty-year-old basketball sneakers without laces. One man wore a pair of old church clogs, the kind with thick black heels and the uppers so hard and sharp that they could cut into your ankles. I doubt he wore them for comfort, but more as a status symbol.

While taking the pictures I noticed that the men with their donkeys always came down the winding road while many of the women carrying their immense burdens took short cuts through the fields. I didn’t think I’d be able to get an answer, but I tried to ask the men why this was so. Why didn’t they take the short cuts as well? One of the men understood my question and he went over to the side of the road where a field of tef blew in the wind. He made motions of eating the tef and pointed to the donkeys. Of course. If they tried to take the short cuts through the fields the donkeys would try and eat the crops and would be more difficult to control.

A Sympathetic Chord

When I got back on my bike I continued to move slowly and stop to talk to people at the side of the road. There were a lot of young students and when I came across one young boy who spoke better English than most I asked him to show me what was inside his notebooks. He proudly opened them and displayed page after page of grade 10 history notes on the United States, Australia, France and England. I asked him if he also studied Canada and he said yes, he had studied Canada. Then he quizzed me.

“Canada is part of what continent?”

“North America,” I replied.

“Correct,” he said.

I gave him back his notebook and then he asked me for one birr. I asked him why and he explained that he had to get up early and walk a long way to go to school in Debre Markos. He had had no breakfast and was very hungry. When he got to Debre Markos he wanted to buy some bread. I noticed that he carried nothing besides his notebooks and I asked him about lunch. No lunch either he said. He went to school for half a day and when he returned to the village in the late afternoon he would have something to eat before going to work in the fields with his father.

A man I spoke with also asked me for one birr. He was a farmer and going into Debre Markos to sell the large bundle of hay that was balanced on his head. The bundle was so large that it hung down over his face and I couldn’t see him at all. He was just a disembodied voice coming out of the hay. This trip into Debre Markos was a rare pleasure for him, since his land and village was far away. He wanted the birr so that when he got there he could treat himself to a cup of coffee and a cigarette or two and pass some time gossiping with the other farmers.

In an odd way it was appeals like this that really touched a sympathetic chord with me. So much of the poverty that I’d seen, particularly the beggars in Addis, was so far beyond my experience that it was difficult to relate to it. And since I found it difficult to relate it was also difficult to sympathize. But I could perfectly imagine the situation of this farmer. This trip to Debre Markos was probably the first time he’d been away from his land and tukul hut for a month and he had probably been looking forward to it as a treat. But without any money he could only walk the streets and look with envy at those sitting inside enjoying themselves. A single birr in his pocket would mean he could join them, could sit down and buy a drink, could be a man.

It was also the small medical problems I saw that touched me most, those conditions that in the west were easily prevented and cured and yet left untreated could turn a life into one of misery. In this category would be something like an infected insect bite. I’d had experience with this myself while travelling in the Philippines. A number of mosquito bites on my feet had gotten infected. I did nothing about them thinking they would heal themselves, but they didn’t. The wounds grew and grew until they were large circles about the size of a quarter. The wounds opened and oozed pus and it became painful to walk. Finally I visited a local clinic where the wounds were examined and treated with antibiotics and within a few days the sores were gone. But if I hadn’t had the few dollars to pay for the antibiotic I would have been stuck with those suppurating sores probably for the rest of my life. Indeed in the Philippines I saw people with such sores and it was clear they’d been there for years and probably would never go away, would never heal.

On this day I encountered an old man who appeared to have exactly this problem. I saw him resting against a large boulder and when I stopped to chat he pointed to a large number of oozing sores on his ankle, foot and instep. He then pointed to the bags on my bicycle asking whether I had any medicine that could help him.

I immediately felt uncomfortable. I wasn’t a doctor after all and had no way to know for sure what these wounds were. I guessed they were simply infected insect bites but of course couldn’t be positive. And just as with Zebachew’s little sister in Addis I didn’t want to fall into the role of the white man rushing to the rescue. But the thought of simply cycling away made me equally uncomfortable and in the end I got out my first aid kit, cleaned the wounds as best I could with antiseptic towlettes and then applied an antibiotic cream. I didn’t know if the antibiotic cream would do any good, but just in case I left him with several individual packets that he could apply later.

Just before I left, however, my worst fears were realized. He pulled aside his shamma and I saw that his entire leg was swollen to over twice its normal size and the skin looked hard and brittle. In several places it had begun to split open and it was clear the sores I’d treated were not simply infected insect bites but a symptom of a far worse condition.

In the future I was to see many people with this condition and I asked some pharmacists about it. Some said it was the result of malnutrition. Others said it was elephantiasis and was caused by a parasitic worm that attacked the lymphatic system. In either case I never did find out if it was something that could be easily treated or cured.

A New and Eternal Friendship

I considered stopping for the night in a small village called Eyola. There was no hotel there that I could see, but I thought I could find a place to put my tent. It was still early, but if I was going to flag down the morning bus to Bahir Dar it made no difference how far I cycled that day.

I got to talking with a smartly dressed young man named Azmo Wanale. He spoke English well enough to communicate and at first I took meeting him as an omen that I should stay in Eyola. He encouraged me to do so and even said that I could stay at his sister’s house. But as happened so many times in Ethiopia the situation soon became hopelessly confused and I wanted nothing more than to get away and get back on the road where at least I had some control over my own destiny.

The problem originated in part from a conflict between the famous Ethiopian hospitality and my own need for independence. All I really wanted was a place to put up my tent and for somebody to point the way to the local water source. Beyond that I was fine. I could get a meal in a local restaurant or failing that even cook something on my stove (which I had yet to use in Ethiopia). If I could do neither I could happily subsist on a diet of bread and water. My tent was one of these state-of-the-art gizmos that could withstand a force 10 gale. It was roomy and far cleaner and more comfortable in its way than most of the hotel rooms I’d stayed in. The famous Ethiopian hospitality, however, couldn’t even begin to comprehend the silliness of someone isolating themselves in a cocoon of nylon. A guest had to be taken into the home and beaten senseless with hospitality till he cried uncle and gave up all free will.

And in Azmo’s case leaving me with any independence would mean reducing his opportunities for getting stuff out of me. His efforts began the second he sat me down inside his sister’s large and by Ethiopian standards, modern house. He fixed his beady eyes on me and grilled me on just how our new friendship was going to translate into getting him to Canada. Within minutes it was considered settled that I was going to marry his sister, that I would send him books from Canada, would set him up in a correspondence course of some kind, and that I would get him a good job in Kuwait. When I mentioned I was going to try to go to Bahir Dar by the next morning’s bus he exclaimed at the coincidence. He too was going to Bahir Dar by bus the next day. In Bahir Dar there was a limitless range of things I could do for him in the name of our new and eternal friendship. And luckily for me he was a guide and he could show me Tis Abay (Blue Nile Falls) and we could take a boat out onto Lake Tana to see the island monasteries.

Meanwhile other members of the family came in and out of the room and one woman in particular gave me dirty looks. I asked Azmo about her and he said that was his sister and she didn’t like it that I was in her house. This surprised me and I asked Azmo if it was really okay that I stay there that night. He said that it was okay with him but maybe not with his sister and she owned the house.

We went out for a walk around Eyola and Azmo puzzled me further. He kept telling me about a town not too far up the road and kept asking me if I couldn’t go there. He said there was nothing in Eyola, but in this other town there were hotels and restaurants and bars. I really wanted to get away by this point but wasn’t sure of my status. Was I an invited guest in his home? If so wouldn’t leaving be a horrible insult? But if I was a guest why was he pressuring me so hard about this other town with the hotels? Did he mean that we should go to this town together or that I should go there because staying at his sister’s house was not a good idea?

By the time we approached his sister’s house again I was dreading the thought of spending the next twelve hours with this guy. So I agreed with him and said that yeah, this other town sounded pretty good and maybe we shouldn’t bother his sister and I’ll just get on my bike and keep riding. Azmo said there was a bus and it only cost one birr. He clearly meant that we would go there together, but I chose to misunderstand him and when we reached the house I went to my bike and started to unlock it. He watched me with a crestfallen look on his face and asked, “What is the problem? What is the problem?”

Feeling an awful fraud but knowing I had to do it for my own peace of mind I feigned ignorance and kept talking about how he was right and it was probably better that I ride to this town and stay in a hotel. I shook hands all around and feeling like a prisoner narrowly escaping an additional twenty years on his sentence got on my bike and rode like crazy.

As I rode I reflected that I could understand why Azmo wanted so desperately to get out of Ethiopia, or at least out of Eyola. The brutal sun had beat down on us everywhere we went. There was nowhere we could go to escape the flies. There was no electricity and no running water, no place where you could sit in any comfort. And worst of all was the lethargy and the hopelessness. As we sat in a tiny mud shack drinking warm Mirindas we were joined by some of Azmo’s friends. They slouched in with an air of total defeat and refused to talk of anything except how I could help them immigrate to Canada. And it was difficult to blame them. It’s not like they could go home, brush up their resumes and send them off to different companies. What companies? There were no companies. And to go to Addis where some few opportunities might exist was beyond their resources. And what could they do without an education? And educational opportunities were closed to them inside Ethiopia. They had one shot at going to university as they grew up and if they missed it for want of grades or money there was little they could do. Their thoughts went around and around these simple facts of their lives and the only thing they were left with was the thought of escape.

And then I arrive, the dumb white guy on a bike. They don’t know why someone like me would leave Canada and come to Ethiopia at all let alone make himself an object of ridicule by riding a bicycle. But they don’t care. My being in Eyola was something of a miracle and if there was even a chance that I would wave my magic ferenji wand and transport them to happier lives in Canada (or Italy, or Kuwait, or Djibouti, or Israel – they didn’t care where) they were going to try and take advantage of it.

It was, once you got some distance from it, a heartbreaking situation and there was no sadder element than their faith in correspondence courses as a way to get ahead. One of Azmo’s friends produced a matchbook (I can’t even guess where he got it from) and on the inside cover was an advertisement for an American company offering correspondence courses. He ran his finger down the list as he probably had done a thousand times and read off all the things he could become: computer programmer, electrician, pilot, mechanic, architect, and dozens more.

I was to come across these messages from another world several times during my stay in Ethiopia. One man had somehow gotten into a mailing list somewhere and received a notification from one of the big sweepstakes companies in the U.S. informing him that “he may have already won $10,000.” He’d already sent off several letters into the void inquiring what he needed to do to collect his prize. When he saw me he brought out his stack of correspondence and pleaded with me to help him in his quest. I tried to explain to him that he hadn’t really won $10,000, but the nature of these sweepstakes companies was too far outside his experience and he couldn’t understand. It was sad because he was a man for whom just the postage on his letters was a financial burden.

Another man I met in Harar had won “up to $27,500” plus “2 genuine diamonds and 1 deep red garnet.” He himself, however, was something of a con man making his living off gullible foreigners and when I explained to him that he hadn’t really won anything and that it was just an advertising gimmick he understood instantly. He borrowed my pen and where the form said “You are a Cash Award Winner” he scratched out “Winner” and wrote in “Loser.”

In what was a master stroke of irony this man then tried to con me with a letter that he’d written on this sweepstakes form – the only paper he had. He wrote that he needed money for a special pair of orthopaedic shoes and he needed it right away because he had a job interview the next day. (I gave him the money not for the shoes but as payment for how much he had helped me in my time in Harar.)

Tags: Bahir Dar, bike, Debre Markos, Ethiopia, Ethiopia Bike Trip