PART V – What went wrong? ...and continues? Or Life as a Bumpy Fantasy Road

Spontaneity is the spice of life

Ok... There might be one more entry after this one... So let me tell you the truth about life, the universe and everything... We can’t tell the future... I came here with an objective but no specific expectations... But even if I had no expectations, things were still different than what I was not expecting... So to stay positive, I looked at everything from a funny angle... even when it was not really funny... It is now too late in this trip and it would be too long to explain everything that was and was not achieved – I might make a summary of everything (including some more serious thoughts) in the last entry - so instead, I will share some of my fantasies with you! I hope that if you ever thought I had secrets or that I was mysterious, this will make you change your mind!

My very special skill

I recently discovered that I had the special skill of getting in people’s mind. It happened on a bus – where most of the exciting stuff takes place in this entry – as, as usual, many people kept staring at me. They also always smile at me when I have to stand with my neck bent because the roof is too low or when I lose my balance. I started to concentrate on what the passengers were thinking and I started to hear their thoughts as if they were expressing them out loud. They were all asking themselves if, being on a public bus, I was only visiting or I was out of money.

Then we went on a road where there were ‘street horses’ and something even stranger than the previous happened. Looking at the horses in the eyes, I could read their thoughts as I was scratching one of my numerous flea bites. They thought I was lucky to be able to scratch myself because the only thing they had thought of to get rid of their fleas and get a little relieved of their itchiness was to stand in the street so the wind produced by the cars would make them feel better.

Not easy to be an Idol

I secretly always wished to be an idol and I did become very famous here... People come to me to shake my hand and even though they don’t ask, I know that they secretly want pictures with me or that they would pay to have my phone number... The same thing happened to Aliez and a boy had the guts to ask her phone number and she gave it to him... This guy has been constantly calling on our phone nonstop for more than a week... We sometimes turn the phone off for a few hours and when we turn it back on we have something like sixty missed calls... This boy became scarily obsessed... but what can we do? All this because we were on TV... I can’t even describe how it was when I got to Debre Sina as almost every kid had seen me too... It felt great to be that famous... If you don’t know what I was doing on Ethiopian TV, you could go back to the first entry or you could read the following... In my first week here, I attended the filming of an Ethiopian Idol episode (I swear I didn’t know what it was going to be - it is as popular as BBB in Brasil... or hockey in Montreal)... And because the producers think that showing foreigners is good for the image of the show, they showed me and the people I was with... I don’t know how many times I appeared during the show, but I know that in the only few minutes of the only episode I ever watched, I saw the same sequence of the same white woman (probably also pretending to understand the show) very often...

My ticklish zone

I’ve never been especially ticklish... but one night, on a mini-bus on my way back home, I felt something on my right leg... I couldn’t see what it was because it was dark and the mini-bus was crowded as usual... but after some people got off and I could see what it was, I saw a little mouse going up and down my leg... actually, it wanted to go up but every time I moved my leg to show the mouse to Aliez, the cute little thing went down... The same thing went on a few times until a guy on the bus saw the mouse and got really scared and then everybody knew about it and my new little friend also got scared and went to its hole...

Policewoman

Many organizations here work on gender issues. Many of them work on empowering women. Still, there are women that got empowered too much. I was on my way to Debre Sina on a bus that seemed to be in good shape... The seats were fixed to the floor and the doors closed. Everything was going normally – the bumpy road, the loud music, the people jumping, the kids laughing, some people getting sick, the chickens panicking, people staring at me... everything was just being normal... Until there were problems with the bus transmission – which got fixed the first few times – but it could only get worse and it did.

We got on a new bus and a few minutes later, a policewoman came on to check if we had tickets but no one did even though we had paid... There had never been tickets before – it seems to be a new system they want the drivers to implement and this woman was taking it seriously... She had a long argument with the employees and I could say that the driver had good arguments... well... not really but still... she forced the driver do drive back to a city we had just passed – to get in the bus station – and to pay a fine... Finally, the 190km distance between Addis and Debre Sina took us about seven hours and I thought it could never be longer.

Intense nights in Debre Sina

The previous time I had been to Debre Sina, I had taken the books so I had no more room for my sleeping bag and I had forgotten my precious lavender oil. So I used the blankets that were there and literally got eaten alive by fleas. I am sure that if all the fleas went under the blanket and jumped at the same time, I could have levitated. I told myself that the next time I would take my sleeping bag and remove both the blankets and the mattress so the fleas would never notice me... and I could sleep peacefully without being attacked... The thing is that without a mattress, a bed is not comfortable (just try it if you don’t believe me) and during the day and on the bus, I had gotten many new bites so I was itchy all night as I couldn’t really sleep because of the cold and the hard surface... The day after, my back was sore and I couldn’t move normally... It was worth the try though!

Getting closer and closer

After getting up at 5am and waiting and fighting for two freezing hours to catch a bus back to Addis, I was picked among a crowd to have the last seat on one big bus – I was then given a ticket but asked to get off right away so the passengers could go get some food somewhere... Half an hour later, we left and we had to take the sketchy alternative road that goes in the forest and along high cliffs... I was wondering how such a big bus would manage to do it... It seemed to go fine – slowly but fine – until we got face to face with a truck in a very tight 180 degree curve... So we had to go backward for a while... No one looked too confident about it (actually, the other passengers kept smiling at my very sceptical face – because the shape of my head was going from an exclamation point to a question mark and back to an exclamation point every second...) but we made it...

The first time

I had in mind the seven hour long ride to Debre Sina so after we reached the top of the mountain, I was confident that this one would go faster... but a few minutes later, a tire exploded... The driver managed to stop safely and we had to get off so they would change the flat tire for the spare one. It is always in this kind of situation that the people get to talk more to each other. I already had the chance to talk to a few people – among which an Eritrean refugee who described me the life he was having in an Ethiopian refugee camp.

Golden shower

During the wheel was being changed, some passengers went to wander to see if there was something interesting they could get from the farmers. One man came back with a big bottle of whiskey. So when the wheel was finally changed, we continued our way on the bumpy road and if people don’t mind bouncing on their seats, bottles do. So the bottle broke and I got soaked with whiskey. It was about 8am and the smell was very strong. Some people sacrificed themselves to drink what was left in the bottom of the broken bottle – whiskey and pieces of glass.

Once is not enough

A few minutes later, another explosion... louder than the previous one... Our driver was actually driving quite fast which made everything and everyone more vulnerable. The same men, went to wander to find something to replace the whiskey and they found a hut where the people were making homemade hareke... which contains about 75% of alcohol... They wanted to make me try their culture (Ethiopians like using the word ‘culture’ when they want to make us try something so we’d feel bad not to do it...) so they offered me a bottle... I had tried this thing before and I just couldn’t take it... Still, they offered me a shot of it... It was the way to say good morning to my stomach and to wake up my liver as well... And to make the rest feel like it was burning or about to melt...

Eating each other

As some people were working to change the wheel, there were farmers walking on the road with donkeys... They use donkeys to carry their stuff by the way... They obviously saw the bus and stopped to stare at us. Meanwhile, the kinky donkeys that were carrying grass – used for religious ceremonies – began to eat each other’s... grass... in a standing 69 position...They probably knew that they would be whipped very hard for having such an inappropriate behaviour in public and they were... So anyway, I arrived in Addis – I took a bus home - about ten hours after I had left the compound in Debre Sina... I sometimes wonder if Ethiopians are good at running because it can go faster than taking a bus...

Pink and soft or Rose scented and soft too

I got an Ethiopian cold lately and because I am such a perfect host for everything in Ethiopia, I had a running nose for much longer than a normal Canadian cold... Most of the people here can’t really afford buying tissues... I still got some because blowing my nose without tissues doesn’t inspire me. Toilet paper comes a little cheaper and it is called ‘Soft’ (after a brand) and we can choose the color so I got pink Soft. Once I bought some real tissues and instead of being pink, they were rose scented. They were soft too.

What really happened and how I really feel about it all

To be coming...