So I find myself in Africa after I had made a promise (to myself) to stop, put the bag down, and go home and make a sedentary life. My hair is turning grey (and some is falling out), my body is breaking down, and I am much more dependent on my charm than ever before (luckily it comes in large doses). At 37 I’m supposed to take that next step, I think? Yet, I’m not quite ready to stand in that orderly line and get on that orderly bus that travels down the highway of social order at the posted speed limit. Tediously seeing life through the windows of my television or computer screen still does not interest me. Naa, I would rather crest the waves of a sea of entropy with myself steering the vessel on my own course. So the road calls and, with no guilt, here I go again searching for wisdom on the gypsy highway.




TRAVELING WITH THE HERD

The child’s head slowly bobs up and down, down, down until his neck is cradled by my sun-burnt red thigh. His mother’s onyx colored eyes are closed yet her grip on her boy is vice-like. Around her forehead she wears a beaded band of greens, blues, reds, and blacks of which the band links down to the base of her earlobes and attaches to heavy wooden ear plugs, the pull leaving a quarter inch hole large enough to see through-a one inch wide flat piece of bone protrudes from the midst of the band and extends over her brow; her dress is one large bolt of cow leather of varying stains of brown and grey, tanned with the acids of goat urine, which emit’s a strong indicative smell of the endemic tribes of the region; around her neck she wears the weight of no less than 100 necklaces quite dull individually but as a conglomerate bright and thoughtful; she wears no shoes. Across from me, her husband shoulders a Kalashnikov and handles a 6 foot spear as if it was an appendage. They are Samburu and they ride in our truck for free-a fair trade for not attacking the vehicles that traverse this stretch of dirt that spills south from the border of Ethiopia (there are no such deals with the cattle rustling Somali shiftas (bandits) that cross back and forth between the deserts that fringe upon their lands). The African sun pours down like a rain shower and I breath deep another cloud of frontier Kenyan dust. The woman passes me her child and hastily makes her way to the back of the truck and (you know what’s coming Ali) vomits. Samburu are not used to car travel. The couple exit the truck, take their child from my arms, and say, “Goodbye mazungu (white person)”. This is what you get when you travel with the herd and quite frankly I wouldn’t have it any other way!




YOU KNOW YOUR IN ETHIOPIA WHEN…..

-its 95 degrees outside and everyone around you is still wrapped in a blanket.

-putting it through the uprights is no longer a football term it represents successfully driving at an erratic speed between a herd of goats and a mule (one can replace mule with cows, camels, sheep, children, etc…)

-your hiking scout is armed with a rifle circa 1945 and is always pointing it at you and smiling.

-you mention the word chicken and your scout returns with a chicken and expects you to kill it, skin it, and dress it but you pay your mule driver 10 birr to do it for you.

-your mule driver is excited about making 10 birr (bout 70 cents).

-the tout that just got your bag off the bus after you told him not to get your bag off the bus and now wants a tip is wearing a shirt that says “I got lei’d in Hawaii!”

-you are shouting at the person selling you water because he is selling it at Faranji (white face) prices and you lose your temper over about 6 cents.

-your waiter double charges you for everything you ordered, swears it is the normal price, you ask a local if it is right, the waiter now realizes you have caught him in a lie and charges you the normal price and then is upset you did not give him a tip.

-a whole town (Harar) of Muslims is stoned on chat (look it up)!

-on average about 20 times a day you turn to Ali (aka poopstain) your travel partner and say “that girl is beautiful!” (Ethiopian women are smoking!)

-the “first class” bus makes a bathroom stop and all the men get the bushes on the right and the women get the bushes on the left.

-everyone you walk by yells “YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU, FARANJI, FARANJI, FARANJI, FARANJI and then asks you to give them your shirt, water bottle, headband, book, actually whatever you have or might not have.

-you are drinking the best coffee in the world and it only costs 15 cents

-you see a pothole free road with divider lines on it and believe that it could only have been divine intervention.

-two men are arguing and 20 are overseeing the argument.

-you share a seat in the pub with a goat (replace goat with mule, camel, chicken, etc…)

-the local Oromo women give you a look as if “I can kick your Faranji ass if I want to” and you believe they could.