African Diaries VII
So long, the mountains
“I’ve told them not to make a rushed decision and seek some legal advice on what our options would be”, said J.. “I might go back to work there, and, the property has already multiplied in value, so, there’s no point in getting rid of it for now. What are your plans?”
That’s a question I have been asked and been asking myself a lot lately — and to one, a clearer answers I had been hoping to arrive at by the end of this journey. With very little hesitation, I told J. a few articulation of short-, medium-, and long-term plans: with a few more years’ of experience in this industry, I could see myself partnering with some talented and trusted designers and planners to set up operations, utilising my already existing and continously growing global network. To get there, shadowing someone who is already experienced in setting up such teams and growing them would be an ideal added experience. Where that happens, if it does, is not yet clear to me; as I no longer have any illusions of such an offer on the table at the company I have been working with for the best part of the last couple of years. Things have changed and I need to move on.
This final stretch of our trek, the final of the 3-day hiking on the Semien Mountains was a steady and fresh walk through a dense, forested area, abundant with water, courtesy of a few streams coming down the hills and the brief but heavy rain from the evening before. Until we got to barren plateau where we met our shuttle bus back to Gondar via Debark, it provided few open views of the hills and the valleys around, a sight we got so used to over the last 2.5 days. This short, secluded journey reminded me of my treks on the Lycian Way in southern Turkey with E. and E. back in Uni. days. There was much to deliberate on our future days and so many permutations of possible future short-, medium-, long-term scenarios. Well, in truth, both E.’s already knew pretty much what they wanted after Uni. was over; this, as far back as at the end of 1st year, when we were all 19–20 years of age. I think I had very different ideas back then. However, somehow, I did surround myself often with people who seemed to know exactly what they wanted — truth be told, and kudos to them, they have often kept to their foresight. Yeah, well, go on and pyschoanalyse how that fills the void of my own insecurities. The only update I can give you is I still call those E.’s great friends and we all seem to have ended up in good places, often thousands of miles apart from one another in separate continents.
Only few moments ago we were up at 4,000 metres altitude. By this point, I was convinced that my stomach cramps in Addis Ababa were results of altitude sickness. Much less severe but the occasionally piercing pain had now re-visited me since our ascent began at 3,200 metres at the base camp two days prior.
“It could have been the yellow fever vaccination kicking in at that point”, J. had proclaimed, after having briefed me about the various level of tolerance people’s immune systems have to medications and vaccinations. He hinted mine could be at low levels when I told him I felt almost no sickness or illness after getting 7 different types of vaccinations through 4 shots on the same day before I left London. It turns out, no and high levels of tolerance are good but low isn’t so much. This was still early days to see test my immune system as I have yet to set afoot in malaria-affected zones.
Of the remaining two guys in our team of four, the Swiss J. was a builder — he worked primarily on roof construction; the busy months being any time between April to November before weather would turn bitterly cold. He would take all winter months of and goes out travelling to warmer countries, always accompanied by his skateboard, never passing a chance to try the local tarmac, asphalt, pipes and bruises on the shin or the head. He put on a big smile when he told me about his skating at the South Bank on the last weekend of November. I told him, I might have just walked past him, the evening before I left for Addis Ababa, as I was lingering around there, on, well… what might have been considered a last-minute date..?
The Colombian, PhD. Anthropology J. spent a considerable amount of time in Paris, and had written his dissertation in French, but was now happily back in Bogotá — he was among a few I have recently encountered who had fallen out of favour with Enrique Peñalosa. We had some frank conversations about public transport and getting back together with old lovers, as you do, and I was often nervous that his picture-taking habits would get in the way of our catching our bus on our last day (boy, did he have a nice camera), to make sure we were back in time in Gondar, so I could get my flight back to Addis and leave the country as planned, the next day.
However, as I had learned over the past few weeks already, most things somehow ended up remaining to schedule in Africa. At least those that were running to some sort of a timetable.
As the fresh, damp sweat from walking through the jungle, negotiating the excessive mud quickly dried up when the clouds came rushing in over the orange-tinted plateau, it was a familiar scene of the past three days in this geography.
The scorching heat from the Sun would start to leave way to very quick formation of clouds as local villager boys would start heading back having failed in their attempts to sell river-washed cold Coca Colas for 50 Birrs. The shade from the clouds would require a second layer of clothing before a perfect storm would land and then leave way to a (sometimes a double) rainbow, before the sun would set behind the hills to a delicious sky that looked like it was washed with gallons of Aperol spritz.
The evenings would be extremely cold. Think 4–5 degrees Celsius. The accommodation options consisted of a tent out in the wind or beds with double blankets in very damp and cold rooms in little, stony village houses with high levels of draught.
How the beautiful gelada monkeys with their bleeding chests survived these conditions were beyond us, but we were happy (but not surprised) to see a few Ethiopian wolves, endemic to this mountain range, come down, looking for hunt in the evening and early hours of the morning.
Dinner would be served by 7PM latest, as the dark would have already been settling in for well over an hour, and although nowhere near the quality of the meals at Danakil Depression, they would be fulfilling endeavours. The same could hardly be said of breakfasts or lunch (which would be a recycled version of breakfast, i.e. an egg sandwich from the morning’s leftover eggs, accompanied by a banana which was often already a few days off, and the Ethiopian orange that tasted like lemon and looked like tangerine).
Which begged the question why we were asked to pay a whopping 400 Birrs/person tips to the chef and his assistant at the end of our journey. We got away, through my negotiations, to paying 150 Birr/each but that was still 150 Birr too much, in our opinions, when compared to Danakil Depression, the service received was pretty basic.
Now, on the upside, that provided more point of reference for me to make overly generalised comparisons between Tigray and Amhara people or the level of development of tourism in these different parts. To be fair (and this was confirmed by others later), everyone around Gondar and in the region seemed to be trying to rip tourists off — a sign of a place of international tourism that is developed enough to not care about a few bad reviews but clearly not developed enough to really understand what matters to make it a global success.
Perhaps it was because I knew what kind of landscapes I was expecting to see, or that, this was the tail-end of a long and rewarding 9-day trip across the north of and a 2.5-week journey through the whole of Ethiopia, that I found a lot of time to reflect on things. That, and the German and the Colombian J.’s spent so much time teaching each other German and Spanish, respectively, that I found a lot of time to myself to contemplate.
Think about the things that went wrong through 2018, things I had set out to do, and things that did not work out to plan. Having seen so many churches and spent a good part of this trip being briefed on Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity (which is not only a very prevalent issue to its people, a curious commonality Ethiopians share with most other African nations — the notion of religion so central to their identity, that you almost forget how they see themselves separate from the rest of the continent), it was only natural that some sort of soul searching was to take place.
In some ways, I also got the sense that, each time I looked at my fellow companions, all named single or double-syllable J.’s, so conveniently, that they, too, found some solace and solitude in these mountain ranges. That provided some level of comfort, in what could otherwise leave someone with a deep vacuum in a geography where you are by far the minority species.
No wonder it takes such a short time to bond friendships when travelling. That just seems to be one constant, that no matter the age or the condition the wanderer finds themselves in, that always seems to prevail.
Later that evening, back in Addis, A. and I had some long, very honest conversations about our mutual great friend M., how to keep relationships alive, and best business opportunities in this part of the African continent. There was hardly a better way to wrap things up before getting underway to Uganda. True, that, this country, with its deep culture and traditions leaves one with much to contemplate on. The trip up north was fantastic, a good cure to what felt like an unforgiving and unwelcoming Addis, but perhaps, as most things with such deeply-rooted cultures, it would require a little more time and effort to truly appreciate the capital city, too.
Until then… so long and thanks for all the new friends, Ethiopia.
