Sunday, 18th Feb 2007

To: Camp Ethiopia #5

First of all, should mention that I have fixed the photos in the 16th Feb and 17th Feb postings, if you want to go back and have a look at them...

Walked up "The Gorge". Woke up this morning singing the "I'm gonna ride the gorge!" song. The Blue Nile Gorge is a famous place in Ethiopia where the road goes 18 km down, followed by 22 km up. Bumpidy rough road, but beautiful! Had just started down the gorge when we came across this huge traffic jam. Cars and trucks were blocked and were only eeking through at about one vehicle per 15 minutes. See it here in the picture. It happened when a truck went sideways and almost over the edge. On a bike, however, I managed to walk slowly, slowly past that mess and continue on. Continued singing the "I'm gonna ride the gorge!" song until about a quarter of the way down. Bumpidy bump. Bumpidy bump. "Enough of this!" I thought, not needing an excercise in holding brakes. Hitched a ride down with the next passing truck...

But here is the best part! Walked up (almost) all the way! What a great day! Fell in love with Ethiopia and Ethiopians again. When I got to the bottom of the gorge, I handed my bike over to Jack, one of the Tour d'Afrique leaders, and started hiking up! Jack said, "You're going to walk 22 km up?!" I said, "I'll go as far as I can and see what happens." Great, though long, day!

Started walking and many of my fellows passed me on bikes. After a while, I was on my last sip of water. Was wondering what to do. Could see from my GPS that a little village was coming up in about 4 km, but knew I couldn't make it that far with no water, in the heat. Just as I was wondering what to do, like an angel, a truck going the opposite direction from me came by and a man held a big 1.5 liter bottle of water out the window. "Do you want some water?" he asked. How could he have known?? Where did THAT come from? I said, "Yes! Thank you!" as he handed me the bottle.

Didn't go too much further before coming upon a young boy, who turned out to be a real saviour, showing me all the local short-cuts for walking up that gorge. He introduced himself by saying, "Give me money." A bit of a rocky start, but things got much better after that. I quickly learned that his name, in fact, was not Givememoney, but rather it was Getch. Getch first took me on one cool short-cut, that cut off about 2 km of road. It went straight up, though! I kept getting out of breath and could only go about 10 paces at a time. The excuse that I kept using with Getch was that "I am old." He'd sweetly say, "Yes, yes," and stop politely with me. When we got to the top of the first short-cut, we walked a bit on the main road and then came across a young buddy of Getch's, named Ababbu. That's about the time that we had the camera adventure.

Very funny. I tried to teach Ababbu (12 years old) how to use my camera so that he could get a picture of me and my hiking partner, Getch. I'm going to show you the 3 progressive pictures he took. I tried to explain that you look through the screen. When you see us, then "click!" I showed him by taking one myself and showing it to him. Then, I handed the camera over to him. I'd barely had time to stand next to Getch when...click! The first snap! I went back to look. Here is that first attempt. As you can see, not a bad first try, other than that my head wasn't there. "O.k., take two," I thought, and tried to show Ababbu again how to use the camera. Again, I'd barely had time to stand next to Getch when...click! The second snap! Only this time I could see that Ababbu had the camera turned around backward! As you can see from picture #2, however, this resulted in a nice close-up of Ababbu's face. "Quite cute," I thought, "but let's try again." This time, I think Getch was getting the idea of what you were supposed to do so he helped me explain to Abbabu. Third time's a charm! Here's the shot I was after - the one with me and Getch.

After about 2 more very, very steep short cuts, following paths that nobody other than Getch and his friends would know were paths, we came to the main road again. On my own, I definitely would have gotten lost because several times, I started going off one direction and Getch would say, "No, no," and point to the right path-that-didn't-look-like-a-path. By now, we'd walked together for a couple of hours. Getch then pointed up the main road and motioned that I now must follow the main road. He had to go fetch his cows, which apparently was the reason that he was going up the gorge in the first place. I said, "This way?" and motioned the main road. He said, "Yes." I said, "No longer this way?" and motioned straight up. He said, "No." This was quite a disappointment, but off Getch went to fetch his cows and off I (and Abbabu) went along the main road. We didn't go much further on the main road before Ababbu himself found his cow and left me. Alas. So, I walked and walked and a few more cyclists passed me, including Sarah. I was thinking, "How sad that I can no longer take the short cuts."

After walking alone for about half an hour, and day-dreaming about how I was going to write up this story of Getch, I turned to my side, and... there he was! Sweating and panting! Apparently, he'd gone and done whatever he had to do with his cows and then had run to catch up with me again. He said, "Leigh Anne!" and pointed straight up. I said, "This way?!" and pointed up myself. He nodded his head yes. How exciting! So, he led me to another short-cut path. In the meanwhile, a truck came by and offered me a lift. My friend Getch, however, understood my heart, because he explained that I didn't want a lift. He probably said something like, "This crazy lady is actually walking up this gorge by CHOICE!" Getch then told me that we were going to go see his sister, who was washing his clothes in a stream. So, up we went. Up, up, up. And then we came across the sister. Here she is, along with Getch and his little brother. (Note the little brother's hair style!) The sister was surprised to see a white person walking up these local paths, but smiled broadly. After a few minutes of chit-chat, we took off walking again. The little brother was following. That didn't last long, though, because, much to the little brother's unhappiness, the sister called him back!

Getch and I walked and walked, picking up other people, both young and old, along the way. I continued to be slow and continued to use the "I'm old" excuse. At one point, there was quite a crowd going our way and we were all walking together. Here is a photo. It was taken by Abbabu, who had also re-caught up with us and was now an expert photographer. Do you see the old man with the walking stick in the back of the photo? He walked with us quite a ways. Strong as a horse, and fast! After walking with him a ways, I had to stop the "I'm old" excuse! What a beautiful, beautiful day, seeing the gorge the "local way", rather than by main road. Mainly, we just walked up, up, up, ... and steep! At one point, however, we came across a little meadow. It was so beautiful, I almost wanted to sing out a rendition of The Hills are Alive! With the Sound of Muuuuusic!!

Finally, however, and before I reached the top, Getch, Abbabu, and the others had to go separate ways. I walked alone for a short while. Then, while resting in the sun, an old lady came over to me and told me not to sit so close to the edge. She was worried I'd fall over the edge! I moved back and she sat down with me. I was eating a power bar, and gave her half. She was so sweet. She was worried about me baking in the sun, so offered me her umbrella for shade. Eventually, the lady and I walked together almost all the rest of the way. We were both thirsty. After we'd been together for about 45 minutes, one of the Tour d'Afrique trucks (that had finally made it past the traffic jam of early that morning) came by. I flagged it down and got some water. The old lady and I took big swigs of the water and continued on. She didn't speak a word of English, not a single word. Nonetheless, we became comrades in our quest to get to the top of that gorge. Just like the old man of earlier, this lady could walk much faster than me, but slowed her pace so that we could walk together. Here is a picture of her and me. Duncan took this one, when he went by on his bike. It was only about 1-2 km from the top of the gorge.

... Finally, when I was only about 500 meters from camp, Jack came out to get me. He was on his bike. When the old lady saw that I was in safe hands, she hurried on her way the rest of the way up the hill. And that was the end of my hike up the gorge!

------------------- TODAY ----------------- TOTAL

Cycled ------------ 21 km (13 mi) ----------- 2,251 km (1,399 mi)

Walked ----------- 15 km (9 mi)

Sagged ------------ 18 km (11 mi) ----------- 1,004 km (735 mi)

Total -------------- 50 km (31 mi) ----------- 3,255 km (2,134 mi)

In Saddle (or walk) - 5 hrs 50 min ------------ 139 hours 41 min

Ascended ----------- 2,374 feet --------------- 26,350 feet