Welcome back to the Year of Caroline (yes, stop panicking, you can resume breathing :))
We did not get kidnapped in Ethiopia, I am fairly sure I haven't contracted malaria, no one went manically postal on the truck despite 11 weeks of day-in-day-out contact, and we all avoided being eaten by lions, chomped by hippos or taken out by a particularly vicious maribou stork (I kid you not, we saw one eat a flamingo, very nasty indeed). The mere act of managing to get back to London, all limbs intact, is, I think, my parents' definition of a successful trip to Africa.
Thank you to everyone for your notes and well wishes and warnings along the way. I should also take this group opportunity to generally advise that NO I have not as yet hooked up with a local sheik or prince or dictator, or a gorgeous and rich but somehow tormented world wanderer. And to bounce back some of the responses that made me laugh out loud in the tin shack internet cafes along the way....
"hey, good to hear that you haven't gone Kurtz-like mad somewhere in deepest, darkest Africa requiring me to hop on a boat to come and find you, popping hallucingens and fighting tigers all the way. the horror... the horror... the horror..."
"What the hell were you doing at a wedding singing I Will Survive?"
"Sounds like on helluva trip... It sure beats the office on a Friday afternoon... So you find me tired old and envious... Via con dios."
"No real news here so all I will say is:
a. thank goodness you are alive!
b. We will see you in London...;
c. In doing so, we are soooo looking forward to the trip photos; [note from caroline - such liars :)] and
d. Thank goodness you are alive!"
Anyway, after the last update from Bahir Dar, we spent a little more time in town there, and then continued down through Ethiopia to Addis Ababa. En route we had the first solid downpour of rain we'd encountered all trip, ironically enough in a town with no running water (or any still water as far as we could tell) - the only way through the evening was to eat early, drink all the hotel's wine, and conclude the evening sloshing across a flooded courtyard being shouted at in an enourmously cheery fashion by a half naked Dutch man on the second balcony (yes Joop, I'm talking about YOU).
Addis was a trip changeover city - like Khartoum we lost some passengers and gained some new ones, and whilst I had arrived saying loudly that I was going to pull out all the stops and actually make it to a museum, we only managed to make it as far as the Hilton, ostensibly for a swim and a hot shower, and then never even made it into the pool. It was, however, the best 85 birr shower I've ever had (around one million beers could make a bucket of lukewarm tap water seem like a great shower, but really, it was just terrific....). Addis was also a city of wonderful Italian food - those 15 cent macchiatos just kept on appearing - which was enough to make me reconsider my views on the ethics of European, or at least Italian, colonialisation/invasion of African states. With the benefit of historical hindsight Mussolini may have been a generally bad guy but he did bring the coffee, the pizza, and a really fabulous fettucine with a cream truffle sauce, to Addis, and so all up I was a happy girl. On the more socially aware side, Addis was also our first real taste of overt poverty of the limbless, eyeless, lying down on the street with your child, hands-out begging type. And on a scale that makes you wonder how it can ever be dealt with.
Once we had settled in Harry from Oxford (bless him he was just 19), Damien from Newcastle, Simon from the UK and Clyde from Bermuda, we were off out of the city again. And so we drove on to Lakes Shala-Abaya, and all of a sudden the acacia trees were everywhere, the ostriches and flamigoes were out, and it felt like the true African Africa of books and movies (the Out of Africa soundtrack got a real playing for the next few weeks). With the advent of Harry as a new card player, we also branched out into poker-for-money. It is fair to say I will never make my fortune gambling, and at 100 birr down (particularly impressive when you're playing with one-birr notes) I declared myself destitute and stropped off to bed. [I also lost at Monopoly. But Justin and I won at Team Trivial Pursuit, which I think just demonstrates the overall dominance of intelligence over chance :)]
And so the south of Ethiopia continued on with treks up in the Bale mountains, finally seeing a Simean wolf, the group trying to eat an entire (burnt) sheep for dinner one night, the inpromtou WWF/sumo wresting match outside Archers Post, Julia and I being charged by a bull at lunch one day ("just stay still Caroline, you'll be fine"...), swimming in the hot spring pool near Shashemene followed by full body contact cards and Matt finding the sambuca, our first game park at Nechisar with hordes of zebra, having to guard our dinner from the babboons at Arba Minch, and then the 3 days of Ethiopian tribes and searing heat in and around Turmi. The village visits were an experience. And on any other trip, they would have been the highlight of the area. However, this trip, we also got to see the jumping of the bulls, which was such a bizarre experience that pretty much everything else paled in comparison.
So, this is the deal as I understand it. Shortly before a male in the Hamer tribe is able to get married, they undergo a ceremony where their female relatives (but not the wife-to-be, unless she's also a relative I guess) dance, sing, toot horns, and work themselves up into somewhat of a frenzy. They are whipped untill blood runs on their back and arms and ash is rubbed into the wounds to make them scar. Obviously this is a bit violent to watch and takes a bit of internal ethical questioning, but the next bit is amazing. The males then all get painted up and then wrangle a dozen or so huge bulls into a line, side by side, with one guy hanging onto dear life to the horns, and another guy hanging equally grimly onto the tail. Then Male of the Day, completely naked, has to take a running jump onto the first bull, run across the backs of all of the rest of bulls without falling off, then, as a reward for doing that successfully, turns around, and does it again. Three. More. Times. Wierdest shit ever.
And then all of a sudden - more than a month after getting to Ethiopia - it was time to hit the border and cross into Kenya. So at Konzo we had lots of coffees just in case. Julia and I had a liquid dinner of Gouder wine and sparkling water for old times sake. Matt was beaten by a 9 year old at table tennis. Zoe washed her cornrows in anticipation of being able to take them out (thank god). Harry found two rats in his room. It had been a great country.
The north of Kenya was a little like the wild west. Whilst the border crossing itself was the easiest yet - you could have walked over into Kenya and back again a few times before anyone asked you what you were up to - getting out of Moyale and down through the northern part of the country was a little trickier. Being bandit territory and in the grip of a pretty savage drought, you had to travel either in armed convoy, or with armed guards on the truck. So we were joined by a couple of guards, we weren't allowed to stop for lunch (enter stage left Julia and Caroline cutting vegetables with sharp kitchen knives whilst truck bounces along at speed), and in our next stop, Marsabit, we weren't allowed out of the complex. Unacceptable until security went and fetched us a case of beer.
The last week of overlanding was a procession of game parks at Samburu, Nanyuki, Nakuru and Naivasha (elephants, giraffes, monkeys, baboons, water buffallo, antelope of all description, lions, hyenas), Julia, Matt and I jumping into the flash resort pool at Samburu in our underwear, acacia thorn injuries all round, a glimpse of Mt Kenya, being paddled round the tiny lake at Nanyuki in a boat whilst balancing a g&t and then trying out the adult-sized whirly-gig, an evening trading trivia with a group of precocious schoolkids and then debating the benefits (or otherwise) of marriage with their teachers, a very energetic 80s party complete with crimped hair, leggings, purple eye shadow and tie-died ensembles, and then a follow up evening of sangria and building human pyramids.
We finally headed off towards Nairobi and the truck group disbanded. We had some final drinks and tears and a very unsatisfactory evening of ten pin bowling (the lanes were nowhere near as forgiving as Khartoum's had been...). Julia and I then spent an efficient morning with the travel agent, and after hyperventilating a little over the smoking credit card I spoke with mum who gave me her normal eminently sensible advice - "just book whatever you feel like doing, darling".
So we flew out to Governors Camp in Maasai Mara and saw game park-ing from the privileged side - coffee in your [huge, luxurious, permanent] tent brought in before the first game drive; personal waiters, drink waiters, tent attendants, drivers.... Hippos coming right up out of the river to the bar for the evening g&t hour (and thus began the legend of hippo shouting).... Animals EVERYWHERE.... Tom-from-the-army saluting us every time we arrived or left camp. Stuff overlanding, I liked this kind of travel ;)
So then Julia and I waved a final goodbye to our overlanding friends Matt and Justin (who by that time thought we were mad stalkers who'd turn up in gorilla suits on their next Ugandan segment) and jumped across to Lamu for 2 weeks on the beach. To a resort called Kizingo, which was absolutely amazing. Mary Jo, Louis, Ant, Martin, and Gemma (who between them run things very merrily) were generally used to people who came on 3 night breaks and stayed to themselves, venturing out for sunsets, dolphin rides and walks on the beach. Julia and I stayed for 14 days, made friends with the neighbours, and extended our hippo shouting to underwater dolphin shouting (normally resulting in me choking on my snorkel and sort of snorting salt water in a truly glamorous fashion). And we drank all the red wine. If it wasn't for that flight to Istanbul tomorrow morning, we might never have left banda one....
So, finally (it's a long email, I know) - all my love to everyone! For those of you travelling, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. For everyone else - please come play! As for me, two weeks in Turkey and then 12 weeks in Ireland to come.... So for all you UK/Europe people, don't be shy about popping across to Cork for a visit. And I look forward to hearing everyone's news in the meantime :)
xxx C
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