Ethiopia: Rough Ride Home

IT IS TUESDAY, MARCH 5, AT THE break of dawn in Addis Ababa. The sleepy city stirs to life.

Soon, residents of the city will be out and about in pursuit of their daily bread. I, too, must get up. I have a five-day road trip ahead of me.

Against the advice of many Kenyans in Addis Ababa, I will be making the journey from Addis to Nairobi by road, through the border town of Moyale. The distance to be covered is more than 1,600 km.

My compatriots say that besides the distance, the most of the route is brutal - a tough terrain.

I have been reporting from Addis for two months. The name Addis Ababa is Amharic for "new flower."

After five years in the US, I needed a taste of something African. Addis did not disappoint. But now I must decamp, leaving behind the sights, sounds and people I have been accustomed to for two months.

I am travelling to Nairobi with four American journalists.

At 7am, the driver picks us up from Bole, the suburb where we have been staying. After packing our bags, we have a quick breakfast then head south.

The road through the Ethiopian highlands is fairly good, lined with banana and other fruit trees. We arrive at a lakeside town called Awasa. It's lunchtime, out last taste of Ethiopian food for some time. I am not sorry that I won't eat injera again. This is Ethiopia's unofficial national dish. While Ethiopians swear by it, it is too sour for me.

I loved the other food though - this country's pastries are unbeaten. Their meat too is a departure from the bland stuff I had eaten for years in the US.

After lunch, we hit the road again, heading down into Ethiopia's lowlands. Here, the terrain, the plants and animals are different.

Pastoralists walk herds of goats, camels and cattle to pastures and water points.

Acacia shrubs dot the vast plains.

Night finds us at Yabello, some 550 km south of Addis Ababa.

Wednesday. I wake up and try my luck with a dipping shower of lukewarm water.

After breakfast, we leave Yabello for the border town of Moyale, a three-hour drive.

We arrive at 11.30. Before crossing the border, we need to convert the Ethiopian birr into Kenya shillings. To do that, we have to resort to the underworld - the youngsters line up the road with huge stacks of bank notes. No one knows how the exchange rates here compare with the official rates.

We enter Kenya and I am full of excitement at the thought of returning home. It all begins well, with the warm Kiswahili welcome from the young Kenyan administration police officer manning the border barrier.

"Sasa mambo iko sawa," (Things are OK now) he tells me, referring to the post-election violence early this year and the signing of the power-sharing deal between President Mwai Kibaki and ODM leader Raila Odinga.

However, what follows is an anticlimax. Forget the nonsense about kissing the soil upon arriving home after many years in a distant land. There is nothing romantic about my entry into Moyale.

Just metres from the Ethiopian border, the tarmac ends and the rocky reality of life in northern Kenya begins

Dust blows into my eyes. We spend much of the afternoon looking for a place to spend the night and booking transport to Nairobi.

Accommodation facilities here are deplorable. Good food is a rarity; clean water is even less common.

FINALLY, WE FIND ROOM IN A small guest house at the edge of Moyale - supposedly the neatest place in town. Dust trails you to your room. In almost every way, the Kenyan side of Moyale is laughable, compared with what is available in the Ethiopian Moyale.

Roads, restaurants, coffee shops and many other amenities attract Kenyan police, civil servants and Customs officials to the Ethiopian side. It is here where they go for their lunch, dinner or entertainment.

Quite unpatriotic, you may think, but two hours in this town and I had already joined the bandwagon and crossed over the border to Ethiopia for another beef meal.

Late afternoon we cross the border back to Kenya and I join other Kenyans catching up with news from Nairobi on TV.

Hussein, the proprietor of Baghdad Hotel, a one-room food kiosk with one of the few TV sets in town, fiddles with the antenna and dish to get the best reception from Nairobi as more than two dozen people sit waiting patiently for the seven o'clock news.

Even as we watch, a sheep enters the eatery and takes its place among the people. TV and radio is all that people in this area rely on as newspapers from Nairobi arrive two days late.

At 6.30 am on Thursday, we walk the dusty track to the town centre to arrange for transportation from Moyale to Isiolo.

There are only two options out of here. We can take a lorry for Ksh2,000 ($31) and ride with cattle, camels or goats, or we can hire a Toyota Land Cruiser.

The occasional bus that plies this road will be arriving tonight, were are told. But it may take days before it gets enough passengers to head back to Nairobi.

We walk up the dusty hill towards the bus stop. A small colourful food kiosk proclaims its name in bold letters - New York Hotel - and by it stands a small timber shop named Half-London Shop.

At the top of the hill, outside the District Commissioner's office, a plaque reads, "In memory of those officers and men who died in the Second World War defending Moyale Town and District, which was lost to Italians in 1940 and retaken in 1941."

Well, they never told me that Moyale had fallen to the Italians. Given the state the town is in now, I wonder whether the soldiers died in vain.

We round a bend and walk down the hill to the bus station. A rickety lorry with the message "Never ever give up" on its cabin wobbles past us. It is precisely the type of message I need now. Everyone in Moyale can do with a dose of encouragement.

Bad news awaits us at the bus station - The bus will not be leaving for another day or two; and the Land Cruiser we booked yesterday is gone, hired out to other people.

The one Land Cruiser that is now available will cost us at Ksh30,000 ($476) to Isiolo.

I am a little hesitant about letting my guests ride with animals on their first visit to my country. This town has only a few vehicles controlled by a small cartel of rich individuals.

After much haggling, we agree to pay Ksh25,000 ($396) for a ride to Isiolo.

However, we must take in one or two people to help top up the payment to Ksh30,000. We readily agree to the terms.

Anything at this point is good. We just want to leave.

Friday, 1pm, we hit the rocky road to Isiolo. Hussein, the young driver, must have done this trip hundreds of times. He fires the Land Cruiser at 100 kph over the jagged rocks.

The vehicle seems to love every moment of it. From this day on, I will have nothing but respect for the Japanese makers of this machine.

We hit Sololo town and later Torbi. A few kilometres past Torbi, we begin to witness nature's beauty. The land is parched, populated by millions of rocks jutting from the ground as if escaping the hot earth underneath.

Once upon a time, angry volcanic mountains in this area spewed tonnes of molten lava on this land; today, volcanic rocks dot the ground as far as your eyes can see. It is a sight to behold.

WE STOP AND GET OUT OF THE car, to stretch our legs and admire this unique landscape. Refreshed, we then continue our journey.

The road, however, remains terrible. Other debris line the roadside. An animal's skull lies among the rocks, the only sign that life once existed here.

As we cruise through the beautiful rocky land, I think of the tourist dollars Kenya has forgone by not constructing a road here. Sightseers would flock this region to fill their souls with the serenity of this remote moonscape.

We pass through Bubisa, a place whose name, the driver tells us, means the place of winds. Sure enough a fierce wind assaults my face, blowing dust into my eyes.

A police camp, dozens of huts, and a huge church that dwarfs the surrounding structures are the only buildings here. I admire the missionaries who came to put up their church here. This must be what they call having a calling.

As we enter Marsabit at 6pm, mountains line the horizon. Of all the places on this road so far, this is the town that feels most like the Kenya I knew.

In a roadside food kiosk, we grab some samosas and share a plate of chapati-mboga before returning to the terrifying road. Darkness sets in.

We arrive at Isiolo town at about 10pm where the thin tongue of tarmac road that the town thrusts towards Marsabit gives us some relief.

Never before have I appreciated a good road so much. A warm shower, a comfortable bed and the delicious steak we get at Bomen Hotel in Isiolo are so welcome.

On Saturday morning, we take time out to visit Samburu National Park and the Umoja women's-only village, where Samburu women - divorced or separated from their husbands - live without men. So liberating, I think. It is a beautiful day that reminds me of the beautiful country we have in Kenya.

We finally leave Isiolo for Nairobi, passing through the beautiful Central Kenya highlands. We arrive in Nairobi at 1pm. I am amazed by the changes the city has undergone during the years I was away - clean streets, beautiful trees lining the roads, all in place of the huge garbage mountain that the city had become in the 1990s. It feels so good to be home again.