The Return to Addis: Much Ado About Nothing

16th-22nd January - Days 109-115 – Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The return to Addis felt much like the return to Cairo several months ago. It was a city that had failed to completely capture our emotions the first time around but we returned to it with an air of familiarity. We could get off the SkyBus and jump straight onto the city minibuses and know exactly where they were going. We didn't have to stand at intersections trying to remember maps and work out which way we were supposed to be going. We could wander down the road to restaurants and bakeries where the staff would recognise us. Much like our return to Cairo, it felt good to be “home”. We checked back into the Rita Pension in the still fantastically named Democratic Republic of Congo Street, intending to stay just enough time to get our Kenyan visas and get out of there. As it turned out, my health had different ideas and I ended up too wrecked to get out of bed for most of the week. M sat patiently while I repeatedly announced in the evening that I felt better, only to deteriorate again during the night and be completely unable to drag my backpack to the bus station. Getting more and more frustrated, I decided to drag myself off to the doctor to see if my Somali Salomonella was still causing havoc.

My benefactor at the hospital was the fantasically-haired “Dr. Solomon” who inspected me, couldn't find anything obviously wrong and so ordered a test of everything my body could possibly contain in order to see if something was wrong with me. Apart from a short but sharp set of abdominal pains every hour or so, my only seriously annoying symptom was the immense tiredness that could hit me at any time of day, mostly in the morning and the afternoon. A blood sample, urine sample and stool sample later, I was asked to wait for a while.

A few hours later, Dr. Solomon asked me in again and told me that the tests had mostly come in with completely normal results. On one hand I was happy that nothing serious was going on but on the other hand I was a bit disappointed – this crap had been going on for about 2 weeks now and I wanted a name to whatever was getting me down. Nonetheless, Dr. Solomon suggested that I had some form of Gastroenteritis and put me on antibiotics for 5 days. Further hope in terms of recovery, lessened short-term hope in terms of beer consumption – and I was running out of days to savour Dashen Beer. The next few days were spent with a monotonous repetitions of promises of intent from me to get going “tomorrow morning” and retractions of this statement the following morning as I realised again that I was too tired to move. I was growing tired of this pretty quickly.

M though, ever the optimist, dragged me out of bed for some valuable fresh air most days – a visit to the National Museum was lined up, as were various trips around town to sort out various boring errands. I cursed her under my breath at the time but it was useful to have some kind of excuse to get out of that room. The National Museum tour was a quick one as the Addis minibus system for once got the better of us and we only arrived about half an hour before it closed down. It was still enough to see some of the skulls and bits of ancient people (including the famous Lucy) that various palaeontologists have found knocking around in Ethiopia. And we can confirm: Lucy is indeed rather small.

Aside from that our plans didn't work out at all – The Kenyan visas were never obtained, our plan to get to Arba Minch didn't come off but this is how it goes. After sufficient uselessness, I announced to M one morning that I was planning to leave the next morning. I failed, but announced to her that I would try again tomorrow. This I managed, and by 11am we were out of the room, where I realised that my bag had joined the growing ranks of things belonging to me that were breaking – the straps were falling off the back. After some head scratching, a tailor was summoned by the receptionist at the Rita, and somehow he managed to thread the straps back on – a job well done!

T's bag gets fixed. Nothing more remarkable than that.

By midday we were on a bus heading south. I felt far from perfect, but it was good to be on the road again.

Unfortunately the only other picture we took during that week in Addis... it's not even funny, is it?

Same Shit, Different Day

6^th -13^th January - Days 99-106 - Hargeisa, Somaliland

If you're looking for tales of swashbuckling adventure and/or piracy, go somewhere else for you won't find it here. It wasn't supposed to be this way – after our disappointment in Berbera we decided to head out of Somaliland and back to Ethiopia to continue our charge southwards, stopping in Hargeisa only to get our Ethiopian visas and munch on one or two of the Oriental Hotel's unbeatable steak sandwiches. This plan turned sour after about 12 hours when we woke up early to head to the Ethiopian embassy. Instead of heading out towards Hargeisa's eastern suburbs, I headed towards the bathroom and threw up all over the place before going back to bed. This was followed by repeated violent ejections from many sources and it became clear that I wasn't going to be ready to leave any time soon.

A succinct and discreet summary of T's week in Hargeisa

M, always the willing soldier, ran around getting me water, food and toilet paper while I slowly decomposed in bed, spouting nonsensical rubbish as I hit a 40C fever on the first day. Thankfully that and the throwing up was a thing of the past by my second day in bed and I was left to deal with the fallout – digestive malfunction and a lethargy which was abnormal even by my own high standards. M graciously took my headache for a day before she too got rid of it, and we spent the next few days lying around,recuperating and generally racking up the energy levels again. Our money levels rapidly running out and Somaliland not being host to any sort of ATM, we managed to get some money wired over through Qaran Express (as Western Union isn't in Somaliland either – thanks Mommy and Daddy!).

Our money transfer was slightly more official than this. But not much...

With me out of action,M took up the reins of paperwork monkey heading the task of getting us out of Somaliland. Her first attempt on the Ethiopian mission failed because she didn't get up on time. Reminiscent of our Djiboutian embassy escapade in Addis, her second attempt failed due to the mission being closed for Ethiopian Orthodox Christmas. Her third attempt nearly failed because of my non-presence although she managed to persuade the officials that it would be OK to put a visa in my passport despite the fact that I was in bed a few kilometres down the road. How many decibels this required is a matter I can't confirm but the visa is firmly in place and ready for use anyway.

Energy levels are still not very high, but we think they're high enough for us to get going early to Ethiopia tomorrow.

To get my laundry sparkling, I use "Top"! T poses in front of laundry he had very little to do with

When the sun set on the east

4th January - 6th January – Days 97-99 – Laas Geel and Berbera, Somaliland


The trip to Berbera via Laas Geel was probably filled with as much entertainment as we would get in Somaliland. From our car windows we spotted an old piece of warfare (read: a tank), baboons, warthogs, camels (OK, dromedaries) and even a funky tortoise! “From that bush to this one – one day!!”, our driver was eager to explain the old shell's movements as he seemingly stopped the car on the same spot every day to show the tortoise to tourists on their way to Laas Geel. There were also some small mole-like creatures running around and across the road, but due to communicational difficulties between us and the driver and guard we never found out what they actually were. I could give the Somali word for those as indication here if I even remembered that anymore.

"Say 'cheeeeese'!!"

When we arrived at Laas Geel I was happy enough after seeing my first warthogs and baboons in the wild and probably would not have cared all that much even if the rock paintings would have been just barely visible or otherwise lame. But they weren't. They were pretty damn impressive in fact, both in how well they have preserved and in how skilled in graphic precision the painters have been for their time. Estimates of the age of the paintings vary between 4 000 and 10 000 years which makes them the oldest discovered to date, and I have to repeat what has been said about them – had they been found anywhere else they would be on the list of Unesco World Heritage Sites by now. The guestbook at the site nonetheless tells the story of how many people are aware of the place and make the trip here – and to Somaliland for that matter as most people coming here also very likely visit the site – each year, with some four Finns beating me to it as well!! Dammit.

M playing Indy.

Hail to the cow!

In between wildlife spotting we also tried our best to learn some Somali from the guys taking us to Berbera, but it seems our brains have less and less capacity left for any new languages already at this point. The fact that Somali words seem to be nearly as long as Finnish ones doesn't help in this respect. We have been pretty much full up after our first phrase: 'Wadmaahat santahai' means thank you. For the ride to Berbera we managed to repeat what we were told at least and smiled our way through all the checkpoints in fluent Somali sharing the love about where we were coming from and where heading to.


In Berbera we set camp in the Dahabshiil Hotel (not owned or sponsored in any way by the money transfer company bearing the same name) after driving around a bit and finding all other places full. Full? Bizarre that the place should have such an influx of visitors... who knows, maybe the place is truly starting to bloom in the way that the Somalilanders hope for it to. During our stay in the “country” we have heard and sensed the sincere wish of its people to be recognized as a nation on the international playground. We have mostly been taken for aid workers at first sight and then been welcomed even more heartily once identified as tourists. Having said that, it was in Berbera that we were thrown a stone at by some kid for the first and, granted, only time so far.

Feelin' wrecked? Come and chill at Berbera!

Berbera is another example of a town that is loyal to the coastal concept: nice, sunny and warm yet chilled in atmosphere. We spent our first day wandering around town in the post-khat tranquil of the afternoon, stopping for some beverages by the seaside and having a late lunch a bit further along the same seaside in a restaurant recommended to us by our man Abdi Abdi from the Oriental Hotel in Hargeisa in case we'd need any assistance while in Berbera. Indeed, we found Abdi's trusted man Ali at the place and he agreed to help us with our plans to get to the mountain town of Sheekh, in the direction of Burcao. We had been told this would be cool to visit still even if Burcao had recently been marked as off limits to tourists, as temporarily happens with things and places here. To compensate for his friendly advice and help, and to watch the show put on by the resident cats and crows, we ended up having most of our meals at Ali's restaurant.

A case of the pan (edit: the pot) calling the kettle black, surely?

Welcome to the 'Eat all you can point at' buffet.

The next day we wandered northeast to the clean beaches a few kilometers out of town. We crossed paths with some locals on our way there and rode the rest of the way in their car. For about the third time on this trip, and all of them in Somaliland, we met someone with links to Finland as one of the guys' sister had just moved over to the north a few months ago. T also got to revive his skills at beach footy with the gang while I was investigating the lifeforms of the gulf of Aden and squirming as a result of an overdose of salt on my skin while wading by the shoreline. Later we crawled to the resort-style hotel by the beach for some afternoon refreshments as T's ankle gave its notice for early retirement. The place was nice enough for us to stick around until dinner time as well, especially as we were promised a free ride back into town after nightfall.

Setting up the goal posts.

Someone didn't pay attention and is not only off-side but slightly off-pitch...

Sunset #738 - Berbera beach.

Sorry... we just love these colours too much.

Upon our supposed departure to Sheekh the next morning, Ali took us first to the taxi station to sort out a shared taxi and, once that was done, to the police station where we would get our escort. Here we found out that an armed guard alone was not enough to pass through the checkpoint out of town. Chief of staff at the station insisted that we would be required to travel in a private taxi instead of a shared one. This was obviously disappointing, as we knew that a couple of Danish guys we had met in Hargeisa earlier had just made the trip a few days ago without a problem. It was only later that Ali told us that they had actually gone without getting an escort even if one of them actually told me that we should make sure we have an armed escort. This would suggest they had got some comments about their way of doing things as the strings had now been tightened right in front of us for the second time in the name of security. This also meant that Berbera would remain the furthest east in Africa we managed to go - it would be all west from now on.


We made a point of not having enough liquidity for such a trip in a private taxi and announced our plans to head back to Hargeisa in this case. The police paved way for this plan in as much that we didn't need to get an armed guard for the return trip, but instead the checkpoints would be informed about us passing through on the chief's permission. We then went and politely asked the hotel to hand us back the money we had already paid in advance for them to keep our room for when we would have returned from Sheekh, and headed to Ali's restaurant to wait for the shared taxi to Hargeisa which we sorted out on the flow.


The ride back to Hargeisa was nearly as interesting as the ride to Berbera had been, mostly because all the 10 of us in the car seemed to have our bets on when the driver would fall asleep at the wheel. He had apparently been awake the whole previous night chewing khat and the number of yawns he performed during the trip echoed this presumption. The ladies in the car even supplied him with a lollipop and bubble gum purchased from a stopping point, and I had my eyes on his through the rear mirror for most of the way. I was sat right behind the gearstick (local conception of the third front seat!) between him and T with no chance of sleep for myself in any case so I might as well live up to my duties as deputy driver. As you can read, we got there in the end.

Introducing the windscreen. Seems like the driver has a good track record...

Dear Mom, still alive, Love - Kids

29^th December - 4^th January – Days 91-97 – Hargeisa, Somaliland

Arriving at the Oriental Hotel at around 10am we met up (again!) with Cole and Amanda who'd been around Somaliland while we were in Djibouti. We also met Abdi, possibly the friendliest and most helpful hotel manager on the planet. He welcomed us, gave us a discount we didn't ask for, and told us all about Somaliland. We'd gained a feel for the place before even setting foot outside. When we did set foot outside, it was already dark – we'd rested for the day after our slightly bumpy ride and then went off in search of food. The restaurant format in Hargeisa seems to be uniform – you walk in, get asked what you want, ask what there is, get given a list of a maximum of 2 possibilities, and then choose one of them. You then fork over a ridiculous amount of banknotes for the pleasure of having eaten your fish/goat/spaghetti/unidentified meat, and then leave with your appetite pleasantly satisfied. The meal was followed by an evening on the qat playing Jungle Speed and catching up with the Canadian-Swedish team on the happenings of the past week. When 8am finally came, they left back to Ethiopia. As for our comedown, refer to the Gonder post...

Our charming ladies in pre-munch mode

We spent the following days wandering the streets of Hargeisa or lazing in bed watching B-class movies on the temperamental satellite TV. The city is fun, different from your classic capital city. It has one main road (wishfully named Independence Road) along which there are qat sellers, an inexplicably large amount of shoe salesmen, moneychangers and the like.

The moneychangers take up the largest space due to the amount of completely worthless currency they have to keep – and unlike any other city I have ever seen, they are happy to sit on the ground with their money in front of them, seemingly happy that no one is going to steal it. The largest banknote, the 500 Shilling note, is worth 5 eurocents. For convenience, the notes themselves are banded up into stacks of 50.000 Shillings but it still means that changing 100€ means you have to walk away with a plastic bag stuffed with 2000 banknotes. Thankfully, street crime is also very low in Hargeisa and I feel like we could walk around with large amounts of dollars and no-one would bug us about it. The lack of cash machines in Somaliland means I can't test that theory but that's how it feels.

In any other country, this would be a picture of a very desirable man. T keeps track of his 85€.

Hargeisa's prime “tourist attraction” is the war memorial commemorating the dead of the siege from the Somali government during the civil war before 1991. Rather than going for the boring statue of a soldier or a similar option which would have been explored in many countries, the memorial takes the form of a large plinth on top of which is a MiG jet of the Somali air force which was shot down during the war! It's fun, although it can't capture your attention more than the time it takes to look at the plane, take a picture of it, and look at it again. We then continued wandering the dusty streets looking for other strange stuff of which we found a little, notably an ice-cream truck and the independence memorial, a very large hand holding a map of the country.

The independence monument, where Somalilanders hint that they could do with a hand on this issue

Airplane!

Somalilanders themselves are very friendly although, unlike the Sudanese, they are also very outgoing and eager to engage us in conversation. We've had a few fun conversations too, most notably in a shop where we went to buy Coke :

Man: Where are you from?
M: Finland
Man: Ah! There are many Finnish Somalis here. The leader of the opposition is a Finn... The chairman of the Parliament is also a Finn. You should go to meet him, he will be very happy to see you!
T: I'm not sure he would have time to see us though, I suppose he is a very busy man!
Man: Don't worry! Just go to the Parliament tomorrow, and ask who is the chairman. I'm sure he will be happy to see you.

..and also in the Immigration Department of the Foreign Ministry.

Man: I have a wife and 14 children! But now I want another wife. I would like an Italian wife.
T: And is your wife happy about that?
Man: Ahh yes, she is very very happy! (looking at T's picture) Is this your picture?
T: Yes it is. Not a very good one but it's still me.
Man: Yes you are right, you are not very photogenic. (looks at M's picture) But you are very beautiful! Would you like to be my wife?

Taking photos in Hargeisa is fraught with difficulty - as is avoiding electrocution when going out to buy a Coke

The only downside of tourism in this country is that the government is rather paranoid about the security of foreigners. We were not allowed to leave Hargeisa without an armed escort and a hired car – something which obviously put a bit of a hole in our wallets. Intercity travel isn't allowed without an armed escort either, and most of the country is off limits – our intention to go to visit Burao was foiled because “some guys were caught there a while ago”. One evening while eating our spaghetti we were told by the police to go back to the hotel. We finished up, and walked back to the hotel while the police crawled after us in their car to ensure that we were actually going back. Abdi called them up the next morning and explained to us: “they were chasing some guys last night. That's why they told you to come back”. That's how it is around here.

Hargeisa was a nice place to hang around in, but with our cash reserves running out we needed to get going. Abdi sorted us a car and a guy with a gun to drive us to Berbera, on the northern coast, with a stop at Laas Geel on the way. For the first time in a week, we managed to get up on time to get going.

M's Mathematics: Several kilos of spaghetti + 5 or 6 goats = Somali lunch

Ouch.

28^th-29^th December – Days 90-91 – Djibouti City to Hargeisa, Somaliland

After being stood up once, we decided to take our destiny into our own hands and marched down to Avenue 26, the dusty chaotic road filled with Jeeps and trucks headed to Somaliland, most of them held together with no more than a few rubber bands and some used chewing gum. Contrary to any expectation we may have had, we paid up and were on our way within about an hour. The road was smooth, the car was reasonably comfortable (given that there were only 11 people squeezed into some kind of 4x4) and we made good speed. Within an hour, we had arrived in Loyaada, the border village. Leaving Djibouti was straightforward – names and occupations went into a book in a small hut inhabited by large numbers of flies, and we were sent through on foot while the car was searched.

Our ship of the desert in some village somewhere in Somaliland late at night

Maybe it was the lure of the unknown but those hundred or so metres filled me with anticipation and excitement in a way no other border has. Somalia has been a mess ever since I can remember and Somaliland has emerged from it peaceful, and organised, with every organ of a state functioning, yet no-one recognises its independence, which it declared nearly 20 years ago. In the eyes of everyone apart from Somalilanders, this place is still a part of Somalia. I celebrated our arrival by losing my phone. We had been to another state-which-isn't-a-state about a year ago – Transnistria, a communist wannabe which broke away from Moldova around the same time that Somaliland tried to secede from the rest of Somalia, but I felt that this would be pretty different and I was impatient to see how Somaliland looked, felt, and worked. Before we could do that, though, was the small matter of getting from Loyaada to the capital, Hargeisa.

The track consisted of smooth sand (for a happy 20 minutes) or rocks and monster pot-holes (for the rest of the 17 hours or so). The guy sat opposite us spent the entire trip munching qat or snorting cheap perfume (a habit I don't think I'd ever encountered before) and the back of the seat we were on detached itself from the metal bar supposed to be holding it in place. For most of the trip, we were thrown around like rag-dolls in a washing machine, hitting our backs on the metal bar, our heads on the roof, and various body parts on the knees and shoulders of other passengers. This continued until about 4am when we stopped for a rest in a small village, where we looked up and saw a sky like neither of us had ever seen before – we could hardly see the night sky for stars, bands of stardust and various other twinkling celestial features. I'm not much of an astronomer but I could have watched it for hours. As it was, I was too tired for that and so I fell asleep on a table while M did battle with the cold. At 6am we set off again and a few hours later we arrived bruised, battered and tired in Hargeisa.

It was a beautiful and exciting journey. Not even a million dollars would have persuaded me to turn around and do it again.

Once you pop... you can't stop...

22^nd -28^th December – Days 83-90 - Djibouti City and Moucha Island, Djibouti

Dig out your old vinyl collection... because there might be something there that can get you closer to our essential experiences of Djibouti. Does anyone remember that golden 70's bouncy, beepy tune... the hot and salty one... it's Popcorn!!

There's a lot of it in Djibouti, hot air and salt – and surprisingly, popcorn. I nearly fell off my chair at a café in Djibouti City when a small complimentary bowl of it first arrived at our table with our frosty-cool Desperados. Sitting in the sun sipping down several Despes throughout those couple of afternoons spent in the city, we must have consumed big bowlfuls of popcorn. And why not, as there is not much else to do in Djibouti-Ville than while away the days chewing chat – local style – or having a drink at the terrace cafés – expat style. As our bodies are more familiar with the golden hops than the bitter green bushes we chose to ride the beer wave instead of trying to beat down the bush. As for the hot air, it can get to +50ºC in the summer when most Djiboutians escape the heat to Yemen or Somalia, and a healthy +30ºC even at this time of year if it's a perfectly clear day. The effect of the hot and dry weather on the landscape is most visible in the desert areas of the west (where Planet of the Apes was filmed at Lac Abbé) and in the salt lake of Lac Assal (lowest point of the continent) - apparently. We didn't get to see these parts because we chose to go lounge on the Moucha Island off the coast for Christmas (see video in one of the previous posts) and didn't manage to find the time nor the money for any other splurges. This is 4WD-country with limited public transport services, and we all know what that means for the wallet.

Desperado (L), Desperada (R)

Djibouti City itself could not be called big, and the centre, which is made of the grid around Place Menelik, can be walked around in about 15 minutes. This worked to our advantage not only because we did not have too many days to spend in town but because the cheaper accommodation options can be found outside the centre. For the first night in town we stayed at the Hotel Banadir in the African Quarter, the cheapest one in town at 6000 DJF or 24€ per night with shared bathroom with no running water, and a fan. After coming back from Moucha we upgraded to the Auberge Sable Blanc a couple of side streets off Av. de la République, roughly halfway between the train station and the centre. This was the second cheapest we could find (or had heard of) and came at a price of 7700 DJF or 30€ per night, but was significantly better value with bigger rooms, air-conditioning, en-suite bathrooms with running hot water and towels, and, if you get to pick your room, a TV. The owner also got up from the couch on several occasions to get us soft drinks from the fridge when we were waiting around for our shared 4WD taxi to Hargeisa, which was supposed to come and pick us up from the hotel but which stood us up on the first attempt. This is just to point out the startling difference in value between the 'budget' bracket places here where everything is pricey to begin with. Beer, 4-5€. Lunch in the European Quarter, 6-12€. Taxi in the centre which, I remind you, one can walk around in 15 minutes, starting from 3-5USD depending on your bargaining skills. A round of pool at the bar, 2€.

M places her bets on how many of these ships will be in pirate hands within the next 2 weeks

Then again, Djibouti is a made-up state that exists because its location caters to French and American military and commercial purposes, so it's only natural that the prices should cater to the expats living in Djibouti working for these purposes. After the chat comes out of the bag around midday, everything shuts down and the locals disappear off the streets like a fart in the Sahara (I apologize for the directly translated Finnish expressions), so there would not even be much to cater to. Don't expect to see many tourists either. We heard from a French guy working for a local diving centre that they get one tourist in two weeks on average, the rest of the clientele is made up of the expat community living here.

The qat effect on Place Menelik

We knew what we were in for when getting our visas in Addis, yet we were again swooshed into fantasyland about just how much we were spending after coming from the comparatively rock-bottom priced Ethiopia. During 7 days in Djibouti, of which 3 were spent on the islands, we had managed to spend approximately 700€ just in accommodation, beer and food. Probably in this order. I'd like to say that every sip of the beer in the sun was worth it, but on this continent I just cannot bring myself to do it. All is relative, and that applies here too.

Djiboutians show with pride that irony is not lost on them!

The Circus Bus

21st-22nd December – Days 83-84 - Addis Ababa to Djibouti City

Arrival in Dire Dawa at 4.30am would have been a rude awakening, if only we had managed to sleep on the minibus where we were packed in like sardines. Cole and Amanda headed off to Harar and we piled into a tuk-tuk for the ride to the Djibouti bus station, where a company by the catchy name of Shirkada Gaadidka Dadweynaha Yar-Yar Dhexe Ee Siiti apparently ran a bus to Djibouti. On discovering that the bus had already gone, the tuk-tuk guy took us to around 10 different hotels, none of which could be bothered to let us in, before finding us a cheap deal down a dirt road somewhere in the area of Dire Dawa's railway station. We dragged our sleep-deprived selves down to the bus company's ticket office before spending the day eating and sitting around. Dire Dawa is a dusty, planned town with lots of space and orderly streets but not much else. This combined with our tiredness didn't leave us with much motivation to go and explore Dire Dawa and so we ended up continuing with our sitting and eating and lazing. Eventually, the time came to go get our bags.

This turned out to be more of a difficult operation than it should have been as we could not remember where the hotel was, nor could we remember the name of it (or indeed if it had a name at all). After walking twice down the same dark and dusty back-street a guy approached us offering help and, when faced with our predicament, he went and banged on a door and ushered us in. It seemed that this was the house of an American missionary who seemed as confused as us about the reason of our being here in his driveway, but helped us out all the same. Eventually, a guy who worked for his organisation offered to take us around the local hotels, although ours did not seem to be one of them. This continued for about half an hour until M managed to delve into her memory - « didn't last night's tuk-tuk driver give us his number...? ». The number was eventually found, our new helper called last night's driver and the utterly helpless tourists sat and waited until the guy showed up and showed us to our hotel. Everyone had a laugh and then started walking us towards the bus station. We told him we'd find our way from here and didn't want to waste any more of his time and offered him a healthy tip, to avoid him having to ask for it as we were sure he would. Shockingly for Ethiopia, he turned the tip down and sent us on our way!

The bus station, when we arrived, was a typically Somali affair. People sitting around chewing khat, the stench of laziness in the air, nothing happening. Our scheduled departure time of midnight came and went, nothing happened. At 1am, utter chaos broke out for some reason, we managed to squirm our way onto the bus amid arguments and shouting and chugged down the gravel road to the border at Gelille, the journey brighted up by occasional fist fights between Somali women while the men stared wistfully out of the window as if nothing was happening. We travelled with Betty, a tough Kenyan woman who was on her way to see friends in Djibouti, and gave us her number to get in touch once we had arrived in her home city of Mombasa. « If this happened in my country, the driver would have stopped the bus by now... » she laughed. It seemed things worked differently in this part of the world. The shouting and arguments carried on for most of the 8 hours until we arrived at the border post, went through the usual checks, hopped onto a different bus and headed off towards Djibouti City.

Welcome to the "Planet of the Apes" (yup, it was filmed right here in Djibouti...)

The landscape was totally different – sand, dust, flatness and heat gave us a marked contrast from Ethiopia. The smell of khat was also everywhere, and I helped the woman sat next to me to smuggle it through the checkpoints in exchange for a bunch of it which I munched on happily until we arrived in Djibouti City – exhausted, hot and confused, yet happy to have arrived somewhere new once again.

"I put the T in Khat"

Corona bottle recycling centre