"On the road between Addis Ab ..." a Ethiopia Travel Page by frockland

When I was in Addis I heard plenty of rumours about this trip: Its dangerous, long and exhausting and unsafe or in other words: Better fly! On the other hand there were some rumours that since a couple of weeks a regular bus would do the leg. Anyway - I missed probably the best lift in my life and so I had to do it the hard way. I arranged a taxi to pick me up at the Baro Hotel in Addis to bring me to the bus station. The taxi driver was a nice guy and of course he was trying to overcharge me like anybody else.

He picked me up at 4.40 am and we went to the bus station, where I tried to make advantage of my colour when I asked the officials if I could wait inside. No way! Wait like all the other passengers! Oh my god! Can you imagine what will happen when the gates will be opened? Two - maybe three hundred people will invaded the station in hope of a good seat.

At 6.00 am the gate opened and a stampede for the best seats began. Like a miracle the Moyale bound bus was parked next to the gate and there was only one passenger sitting in the bus. I became suspicious that something may be wrong. After another 20 minutes 15 more passenger were waiting to depart when one official stepped onto the bus telling us that there are not enough people in this bus to depart. Ok – that’s the catch 21. But things went luckily the other way round. Instead of cancelling this bus, passengers from the Shashemene bus were put in here. How lucky I was

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Addis Ababa bus station

It seems to be a custom to start the engines at 6.00 am and so about 50 busses started to warm up their engines and to pollute the air at the same time. 15 minutes later about 20 people were sitting in the bus, chatting tears because of the fumes. Breathing was worse than having a cigarette in Mexico City on a busy road crossing!

The bus left at 7.00am and made his way down to Dilla where a stopover for the night was planned. The road was a tarmac road and quite scenic all the way with the rift valley lakes in the distance. The vegetation was unbelievable green as the rainy season just had begun.

My travel mate on the seat next to mine was 17 year old and leaving his family and his village for the first time to travel to SAR to his brother to start a job there. Imagine travelling for job for 6000 km overland in Europe! He spend a lot of money on buying chat My brother told me that there is no chat down there and I will miss it a lot! He was a nice entertaining acquaintance during my trip.

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Dilla main street

In the late afternoon we arrived in Dilla, a pleasant village with some nice cafes which make it worth having a drink or a Latté Macchiato! I found a room in a hotel not far from the bus station with an ok room. Oh yes - hot water is working! Never ever trust a hotel manager! Of course it was not working. There is a power cut off at the moment! Anyway – there was no hot water but I was used to it. The next morning I went to the bus station and onto the bus. When it left the terminal there was a kind of a problem and the driver and conductor were fighting with another guy at the entrance. Then the bus left and after some hours there was another problem with one of the passengers. The driver jumped out of his seat to smack that guy if not some other passengers had stopped him. So we went to the next police check point and a big discussion started. At the end the police took the guy and went off. The whole bus seemed to be happy and relaxed now, but nobody was willing to explain a Faranji what exactly had happened.

In the afternoon of the second day the bus rattled into Moyale. On the first view it’s a nice small village and I felt pretty much welcome. I got a quiet room in a hotel away from the centre and had a relaxing evening. The next day I decided to stay here because it was the first of May and I was not too sure if there will be transport in Kenya as it is the International Workers Day and also a public holiday. So I spend the day with talking to brokers, had a hair cut and loads of Latte Macchiato.

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Moyale - view on the border crossing

The next day I left the hotel at 6am to arrive early on the other side of the border to catch a ride with one of the trucks. The border is opening at 8.00 am but I asked the housekeeper to let me wait inside. He agreed and even called the officer to stamp my passport. So I didn`t had to wait for another hour. I went to the Kenyan side, bought my visa for 50 $. The officer was sitting underneath a poster which was telling the customers Do not bribe! The formalities were straightforward and after 5 minutes I was ready to leave the office to find transport going to Nairobi. Since about one hour I was acquainted by an Ethiopian guy who offered me to arrange a seat in a truck. When he saw that it was no problem to do it myself he started begging but realised quickly that there was no business possible for him. We shook hands and said good bye!

Now the part of the trip should start that made me feel nervous. All guide books give some warnings about Shiftas in the northern regions of Kenya, and there are plenty of stories about them:
Shifta is the Amharic word for bandit, but also was applied to any group that opposes the Ethiopian government. These shiftas were probably Somali raiders who routinely crossed the borders into Ethiopia and Kenya. Partly political, partly tribal, partly ways of life, these groups were and still are active throughout the whole Horn of Africa. Their modus operandi when we were driving through their territory was to make a sneak attack at night, starting off with a machine gun spraying a village with bullets, followed by the rest of the shiftas rushing in with their old Springfield rifles and spears, stealing what they could. (travelogue by Wayne Kessler 1966) or In the central mountainous regions, bands of "Shifta" occasionally ambushed travelers. The shiftas were armed groups of either local patriots or bandits, depending upon whom you asked. It seemed to me that they robbed everyone indiscriminately, so I would lean towards the "bandits" camp. I heard a second-hand story of a Dutch vagabond who had awakened in his roadside camp with a big lump on his head, badly beaten, wearing only his skivvies and socks, with all of his belongings missing and his travelling companion dead beside him. Shiftas had attacked with clubs as they slept, and neither ever knew what hit him. Normally I would have taken such second-hand stories with a big dose of salt, but this one was gravely reported to me by the officials at the Ethiopian government tourist office in the capital city of Addis Ababa! (Chick's 1975 tramp through Darkest Africa)

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Truck blocking the road

I tried to get some information about the current situation but the Kenyan officials calmed me down. There had been some small problems but this would have been a long time ago! Of course they wouldn´t tell me that the police does not have the situation under control!

I booked a seat inside the cab although its much cheaper to travel on the back of the truck. Passengers there have to sit on the bars and if goats were the load, which is often the case, it means either getting wet if it rains or finding shelter amongst some smelly cheap.

We left at 9.30 am and it was a 12 hours ride to Marsabit, the first stop over in Kenya. The beginning of the rainy season made the road a bit muddy but on this day we passed all the stuck trucks. The next morning we went off at 6.00 am but only for one hour. I was already thinking about having a hot shower and a decent meal at night time in Nairobi but it all came different: A truck was stuck and blocked the road. Six or seven trucks were already waiting on the other side heading up north and now our convoy had to stop. The drivers went off their trucks, had a big discussion about the situation and nothing happened. After on hour a few guys started to do some digging to clear the tires of the road blocking truck but when they tried to move it out of the lane it slipped and blocked the road even worse than before. A woman often travelling on this road told me that it happened during one rainy season that trucks were stuck for more than a week!

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Upperhill Campsite in Nairobi

At midday a truck was driving right through the bush next to the road. How embarrassing! Immediately the truck assistants started the engines and did the same. But now there was another problem: All the drivers were gone back to Marsabit to have breakfast and a rest. …One truck went back to pick them up.

At 7 pm we arrived in Isiolo where the tarmac road begins. John, the driver, stopped for dinner and told me that he would like to continue driving in one hour. At midnight he was still driving. The windows didn´t close properly, it was rainy and cold and I asked him about when he would stop for the night. In the next city he stopped, arranged a hotel room for me and told me to pick me up at 5 am. I didn´t understand why he was so keen on driving but the next morning I found out that he has only one day off in a week. This means that if he would manage to arrive early he could gain half a day. At 9 am we arrived in Nairobi, just in time not to miss the morning rush hour.

It was an extremely exhausting but interesting trip. I was happy that we didn´t had any small problems with shiftas and that I spent the money for a place in the cab!