Suthiopia

The disk, the infamous disk, has found its way into this big boxy technological advancement and thus, I bring you a piece of the trilogy:
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There was a time, hours and hours ago, in Thailand, that I apologized for an absence of a mere few days from this space. Obviously, such concern is no longer so forthcoming. Perhaps the shift to absent words comes from the newfound anticipation of the unknown that I experience now; from the shift away from awe and wonder at Hmong dress to expectation of the abnormal of Sudan. Perhaps the lack of literary addition to cyberspace (and with it, to knowledge, or at least impressions) comes from complacency in existence. After all, to drag emails out of people at home expanding on the extraordinary in their daily lives is a nearly impossible task requiring repeated proddings and pleas for news that may keep one foot harnessed to "home." And why? Simply because they've come to expect the everyday - the lunches with colleagues, the drives to the store, the conversations with friends, the first glimpses of the sun in the mornings. Somehow, the simple task of living life sways us into an arena of disrespect for the mundane. We fail, that is, to see the fantastic in our world as we stand in a corner cubicle making photocopies. But it's there.

So maybe that's it. My average day of photocopies or o-chem is instead filled with plates of injira or customs officers in their underwear. As change becomes my life, it becomes insubstantial - its noteworthyness diminishes. Or, maybe I don't write because when one travels through a few of the world's poorest nations, with GDPs measured in the hundreds of dollars, internet access takes something of a dive. Blogspot just hasn't quite made its way into the information highwaylessness of Kassala, or the amazingly slow serverness of Ethiopia. Hell, it's hardly made its way to northern Kenya, where the post office provides the only access, and as with governments everywhere (and particularly the African variety), can't seem to do so very efficiently.
But to think of the changes in my life over the past few weeks, and of the lessons learned and novelties seen, heard, experienced, makes my head zip 360s . To think that I must transcribe the happiness, annoyance, anger, and paradigm blasted to pluto of the time of silence so that others may have at least an incomplete glimpse of what it is to stand in the heart of the Rashaida tribe drives my motivation for literature downward. After all, my journal's heard it all already.

But alas, I must try.

The permit to Kassala was all but dismissed as irrelevant despite cries by a hotel worker that it was a "very big problem." After all, I'd made it past all the checkpoints on the roadside without incident, so worry was at a minimum. As the police officer who was meant to check my credentials exclaimed "I love Americans!" my uncertainty dissipated, and moreso when he bought my every meal and served as my personal guide.

But his genuine kindness could not erase the feeling of discontent walking through the streets as the only white face for hundreds of kilometers no doubt. The stares were more than the usual curiosities, I felt, as they morphed into animosity. The motel owner was clearly convinced that, being an American, I obviously hated Muslims. Yup, and that's why I'm in Sudan, right? Even as I managed to convince him of my unhateful intentions, and to sway him a bit into believing that not all white faces are evil, the exhaustion I felt from my location on the globe and the stares in the street did little to boost motivation to fulfil my diplomatic duties. Someone needs to be amabassador of the west in Kassala, but why did it have to be me?

Compound with that the heat that didn't relent despite Ibrhahim's assurance in Khartoum that his home town of Kassala would have "cool weather." It pounded me even as I climbed up the sugarloaf jebels jutting out of the desert plain in a blatant display of how rock, and mountainy things everywhere, are wholly superior to the bland monotony of endless plains. Endless blistering hot plains - and I don't care how much sustenance the latter may provide. Mountains reign. And why in the hell people would live in the vicinity of these mountains, but be so heinously out of shape that they must stop for a cigarrette after a white boy from Colorado manages to lug their asses up only 100 feet of the thousands to go, I fail to comprehend. A few jebels (that, after all, really weren't mountains) and a view into what may have been Eritrea were not enough to keep me stuck to Kassala. Not even the donkey carts dominating the streets, or men toting daggers and swords could lure me to fully appreciate this dusty market frontier town. So after my one full day of Kassala's intrigue, I left.

Three hours later, in Gedaref, I met a UN worker freshly out of work due to the lack of Eritrean refugees remaining in Sudan. Luckily, Darfur and the south both provide ample opportunity in his line of work. He asks what I think of the Sudan, politically, so I was honest. In my one-week in the country obviously wholly informed opinion, Sudan has the bleakest outlook of any country I've visite. Even Burma seems preferable to the Sudan.
Border Disputes. Genocide. Civil war. Stagnant, backwards economy. Refusal of government to recognize diversity. Racism. Unnecessary, unwarranted stubborness in the faces of the international community. High incidences of infectiuos disease. Refugee influxes and outpourings to and from neighboring coutnries. Environmental degradation. Deeply rooted, blatant corruption. Unmanageable, inefficient, stifling bureaucracy. History of famines. Lack of adequate climate in the north. Threats of secession. No infrastructure whatsoever. And a completely heterogeneous mix of humanity that never should have been thrown in the same little box in the first place.

Oh, but the people are nice. The ones, that is, who aren't killing each other.

Then on top of this outrageous perception, I sit in the back of an open topped lorry as I watch a man chase down a rickshaw, in a scene I found pretty comical until, of course, he pulls a woman and child from it and proceeds to argue with her in the middle of a field as the rickshaw drivses away. It looks to have potential to turn violent, but no one seems to act. The small child, perhaps two or three years told, stands solitary and watches - from the iidstance he appears unknowing, non-understanding as his mother is hit. She is tackled to the ground and blows repeat. I cringe, unsure of what to do. Unceratain of my own fate should I intervene, and simultaneously disturbed by my own inaction. I almost hate myself for failing to leap to help. A man on the street bolts toward the scene - faster, that is, than the rest of the onrushing male crowd. I think help is on the way, but as this heinous excuse for a human arrives, he hits too. An object - a newspaper perhaps, I don't know - he swings across her face as she hits the ground. The crowd stands, complacent, inactive, uncaring, unhelpful. Inhuman. Negating notions of common existence.

The child still stands, perplexed maybe. Scarred, for sure, should he remember as he grows. Amidst this sea of dagger-toting men I wrestle with the idea in my mind of leaping forth, sprinting. Barreling into them bare-fisted. I imagine myself with a gun and dread the consequences of such possession. I hate humanity right then. My heart tears. It fights. I yell out "FUCK SUDAN" at this heinous act. I hate them. And amidst this scene, disturbing to any feeling creature of this Earth, the lorry pulls away. I hate the people I 'm with for looking on without intervention. I hate the women on the cab floor seated below, even as I pity them, for not showing more emotion as they cannot see through the lorry walls but surely know what transpires. I hate myself for doing nothing. Is it inability to act? or sheer refusal? Just what would it take to burst me out of fucking selfish ease? For what, exactly, would i reisk my life in so blatant a way? WHY DIDN'T I DO SOMETHING?

And I ponder this fucking dismal reality as we pull out through the sporadic solitary trees of the endless savannah (desert?); condemning the entire nation as hopeless after only 10 days of experience. The road cannot be too short to the border, as I ache to leave this place; albeit in a rush to an artificially divisive border. Perhaps, hopefully, the quick conclusion of mass condemnation is undeserved. Hopefully I only had bad luck. Hopefully I hit all the negatives with few positives. Hopefully - and stories of other travelers tell that probable truth. They do not see what I saw, typically. They see friendly people and invitations to coffee. So maybe they're right. Or just selectively blind.

Five or so hours of scorching sun and dust later, we crawl into Gallabat - a small straw/mud/clay village in nowhereland. One unmarked mud hut with straw roof contains a desk, and a man with a stamp. Immigration. A crew of ununiformed, deskless, examination-room-less, and sometimes pantsless men serve as customs. In a stellar mood, I told them they were "a joke." They weren't exactly pleased.

But I got my little cramped room in the back of a bar and paid my two birr for a trickle of water to be passed off as a shower, and I drank a few beers to celebrate the end of heinousness. I drank them, though, with a man who later unveiled his true cause - "Okay, now I see your bed. I need to see if it's clean or not." Oh goddamnit go away. The drunkenness of the owner of the bar, encharged with the key to my room, pissed me off a bit more, so I grabbed my money and bag and took off down the road, with visions of sleeping under stars in the desert in my mind.

But, alas...Dogs. Big scary fierce dogs. Amazing dogs. Terrible Dogs. Just before I was ready to take a stick like a baseball bat to the ringleader's head, a villager rescued me away to his family/tribe/clan's cluster of huts. A cot was produced, and after much clabber amongst the family clustered together for the night, I slept my first night in Ethiopia on a cot under the stars with men, women, children of a small community on the outskirts of the already small village of Metema.

I awoke to the "headman" yelling that the truck passing was my bus, heading to Gondar. He was mistaken, thankfully, which left me just enough time to sprint back down the road to gather my forgotten camera from the still drunk barkeep after much banging on doors, and running to jump on the bus as it threatened to pass me on the road. A few hours later, I made it to Gondar.

Gondar, where I found that Jenny would not return for some 4 days. 4 days in which ceaseless begging, hastling, haggling, following by the street kids (all of whom knew my whereabouts within about four seconds of my arrival) increased my dread of wandering to the street more and more each day. Hours were spent reading, and staring readily at the ceiling wondering what to do to rectify my dismal mood. I climbed a nearby mountain (hill?) though the dehydration that ensued did much to counter any positive feelings that may have stemmed from the experience.

The one saving grace was Wurkey, the owner of a nearby restaurant that would become my Gondar home. She fed me three times daily, refusing my money, and went so far as to hold a coffee ceremony in her home in my honor. She bought me gifts, which I loved, but which my own inability to reciprocate turned to a feeling of guilt - for was I really going to try to give her a sack of bananas in exchange for hand-woven baskets? And what else could I find in Gondar?

But Jenny finally did arrive, and after a little traditional shoulder-shaking with her Eaton-grad travel buddy, we hopped the bus to Addis (a full day ride, a stop in podunk nowhere town for a night's sleep, and two more hours drive which did little to increase my travel motivation). Nevertheless, a trip around the city center, past the African UN headquarters and a few soccer practices in a parking lot complete with surrounding recreational runners partaking in the first voluntary exercise activities we've witnessed in months got me slightly back into the swing of things.

A dinner invitation from my girlfriend to a bizzarely out of place, uber-nice Italian restaurant complete with pictures of Brad Pitt's recent visit up on the wall, and such now unfamiliar deliciousness as penne and wine did much as well. Though I will admit the contrast of my recent life to the white tie-wearing businessmen, and to the unpredictable difficulty in readapting to silverware and, well, manners in general did send me into a bit of a confused daze. Moreover, the niceties provided a geographically convenient contrast to the African street. The western abundance, western obsession with such intricacies as spotless wine glasses (not, of course, to be used as water glasses because my god what would water do in such an oddly shaped glass?) and the Ethiopian beggars, touts, dirty streets, and basic, simple restaurants geared toward the seemingly simple task of providing food - not pomp. I was a bit uncomfortable with it all.

But the food was, after all, delicious, and provided me with just the right energy boost to hop onto the bus the following morning at 4:30 and wait patiently in my seat with all the other passengers until 8 when we left on our 8 hour journey to Arba Minch.

And despite the fact that I am a thousand (more?) miles south of Arba Minch in Nairobi, I will leave you there. As time, as always, is of the essence.