How not to go backpacking (a cautionary tale from China)
This was my entry to the 2011 Bradt/Independent on Sunday Travel Writing Competition. It didn’t win, but I recently discovered that it was longlisted! (And published here!) Such a morale boost – especially as, looking at it now, I can see it definitely ain’t perfect – take the lack of dialogue, or the trying to fit waaay too much into 800 words… But still, I’m pretty pleased with it. Any constructive feedback gladly appreciated…
weirdly enough, i have never been to perth
This is a story of stupidity and luck, youthful foolishness and old-age kindness. I hope you like it but I really really hope that you learn something! Namely, kids: don’t forget your umbrella. It’s all that stands between you and a cheery scene like this:
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Dicing with danger in Dali
Some people risk their lives scaling snowy mountains or rafting down rapids. To them I say, anyone can do that. To dice with danger in a laid-back, lakeside tourist trap? That takes a special kind of talent.
Though maybe talent’s not the word.
The day starts so promisingly. I traipse the hectic market of Dali, southwest China, haggling for jade jewellery and watches from Switz Erland in a Mandarin whose only words are numbers. Cobbled streets wind down to a lake that glitters in the baking noon sun – but my friends and I set our sights higher. We head up, up towards the fringe of town where the land shoots into the cloud-capped Cangshan mountains.
the charming town of Dali
At the chairlift, the ticket-seller proffers an umbrella. We look at the sky, and decline.
Our chair sidles up the mountainside, away from the grey stubble of the receding town and over thick, dark forest dotted with graves. We barely register the bruising sky and spiking wind before the rain starts – and then starts to hurt. The tourists that pass us, descending, don’t even try to hide their hilarity: four guys and a girl in shorts and t-shirts, no sweater, mac, or umbrella between them, inching up a mountain in a hailstorm.
We reach the top just as the rain stops, soaked to the bone and a minor spectacle. Those not looking at us peer over the rail of a terracotta-red gazebo at the town far below, spread like crumbs on a corner of the lake’s vast mouth. A tiled roof curves over their silhouettes, its spine spiked with coloured bulbs and its rafters painted with bright, intricate patterns. But at the far end we spot something even brighter – a bonfire.
We fork out for translucent macs in bubblegum colours, hoping they’re somehow cold-proof too, and make for the flames, where we sit devouring noodles in slowly steaming plastic robes. The man opposite me folds his girlfriend a heart from yuan as we shiver and sweat and peel clammy plastic from our saturated skin, hot in patches but mainly very, very cold.
couple with yuan heart. awww
Two hours later and we’re no further from pneumonia, or the chairlift. We decide to walk ourselves warm along the tourist trail, a wide paved path that winds for hours between rock-face and thin air to a chairlift and guesthouse on the other side. (We remember it from the guidebook).
Walking works! Soon our only focus is the breath-snatching scenery of our route: rocks bulging out of the cliff just overhead, mists drifting peak-wards like the spray of broken waves, thin silver ribbons of water dropping off cliffs and down through endless forest, their tumbling amplified by metres – miles, maybe – of rock. There’s man-made marvels too – the duo that speed round border-less corners on a dull metal bike, the lookout-points with their curling-leaf roofs and blue-and-white scenes. ‘Caution, drop down!’ read stone slabs shaped like parking meters near the sheerest sections, the ones where the roots of trees can’t even cling.
rather him than me
We arrive with just enough light to discover the motionless skeleton of the chairlift, and, bizarrely, a giant droughts board splayed with counters, the final moves of a game the giants have abandoned halfway through. What we don’t find are buildings, or people, or signs of life. If the guesthouse exists in our guidebook, it definitely doesn’t here.
To make matters worse, when the sun sets – as it promptly does – the rain arrives, once again. We didn’t bring waterproofs, we didn’t bring guidebooks and we definitely didn’t bring torches – but we did, thank the lord, bring mobiles, and between us have signal and an LED light. Our hostel’s manager recommends retracing our steps to an inn near the other chairlift – so off we set, one phone to guide our way along the smooth, increasingly slippery path.
giant chessboard. no, really
My friends all think the situation’s hilarious, and for a while their singing mixes with the pelting of the rain. (I’m practically hugging the wall). But it gets louder, and the phone flashes with two stomach-turning words: ‘battery low’. Without light, we’re just sliding along a cliff in the dark.
Then, just as it dies, another flickers distantly. Nearing, we make out a hut, and when we knock, two old women greet us and heap noodles onto plates and blankets onto tables. We sleep in the barn, huddled head-to-toe under a sky of striped tarpaulin, dusty brown bottles and framed calligraphy faintly visible in the dim glow of a bare white bulb. It’s the best sleep ever.
In the next weeks we cross semi-collapsed mountain passes in blind mist and trek along the world’s deepest gorge – which is definitely not paved – but neither scares me like Dali. Some people risk their lives scaling snowy mountains or rafting down rapids – I only wish it were that hard.
This was post was written as part of ’48 hours of blogging for East Africa’, an initiative started by US site The Daily Kos, which aims to use the internet ‘to get as many people as possible talking about the food crisis over the course of this weekend’ – and raise more money in doing so. I’ve already written about the East African food crisis for Oxfam; this post considers it from my own personal perspective. I hope it inspires you to donate something!
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As an intern with Oxfam in Ethiopia, I learnt pretty early of the bad drought affecting some southern regions this year. But the first time it really registered for me was a few months ago, when I went to Shinile in the southeast.
I went to learn about Oxfam’s cash for work schemes, which pay poor pastoralists to help construct trenches, dams, etc to protect their pasture so that in future drought years, their animals won’t die and they won’t lose their livelihoods. It was great to hear how the money had been a lifeline for people in the current drought. But something else came through loud and clear – this was no ordinary drought, and, in the escalating situation, our support was no longer enough.
At this point, the drought there was not yet a crisis, and there was still hope that things would get better. ‘We are waiting on the rain’ said Hanura, a grandmother and carer of five. But though it did come in the end, it wasn’t long or heavy enough to change anything – for the cattle, most dead or dying, or their owners, losing their lifeline, their income to buy food, and walking half the day to get water.
On my last day, I’d just finished talking with Hanura when I heard a commotion in the distance – I thought it was a fight. But when my colleague and I approached we found an incredible sight: forty-odd women (and children) standing in a long line, clapping and swaying and chanting our names. They’d come to meet us and thank us for listening to their problems and requests. It was incredible – smiling, joyful people in bright psychedelic robes that dazzled against the pale sand and the pale sky like a vision. And then suddenly it was over, and we watched them disperse into the pale landscape.
I’ll never forget their spirit and energy in the face of hardship many of us could barely imagine. They didn’t want handouts: they wanted us to support them through a situation where they could no longer help themselves. They’d even written petitions, in English and Somali, requesting more cash for work. ‘We need to work, but with the drought there is no rain, no crops to harvest, no food’ said one woman. I left feeling incredibly humbled, but also concerned, at how much our support so clearly meant to them; and both the urgency of conveying their deteriorating situation and fear that doing so might not change anything – that Oxfam might not have the capacity or the resources to give them much more support.
Three months on, so much has changed. The drought has worsened rapidly to crisis point in parts of Ethiopia and Kenya and famine in parts of Somalia, and is now a global news story. Oxfam (and the UN and many other aid agencies) has launched a campaign and a massive response; in Ethiopia, Shinile is a part of it. I think of the line of women thanking us for listening, and am so relieved that it meant something; that their voices have, in effect, been heard by the world, and they’re getting the life-saving support they desperately need.
Three months on, I am also now helping in a more direct way: supporting Oxfam’s drought response in Ethiopia, chipping my own bit off the mountain of work that providing life-saving support on this scale requires. Here in the Addis Ababa office, I’m surrounded by people working an ungodly amount of hours seven days a week, every week, with teams on the ground across the worst-hit areas, giving life-saving assistance to those who need it most: from rural communities to Somali refugees in Dolo Ado refugee camp. Water, food vouchers, cash transfers, water-purifying tablets, latrines, refugee protection, the list goes on. I’ve watched the response gather pace with excitement: one day plans on paper, the next teams of experts arriving in the field, new boreholes meeting thousands people’s daily water needs, 600 tonnes of supplies ariving in Dolo Ado…
Of course with successes come frustrations alike, but the dedication and ability of my colleagues in delivering a complex, logistically challenging and ever-growing response is nothing short of inspiring – though far from unique in those responding to the drought. I only hope that we can all provide enough assistance to the ever-increasing number of people who need it – according to UNOCHA, as of August 2, only 37% of the estimated amount ($398,400) needed forEthiopia has been funded, and only 44% for the Horn of Africa as a whole, with $1.4 billion still needed. This is why donations can really make a difference. And, as I learnt talking to poor families in Shinile: a little really can go a long, long way.
DONATE
Obviously as an Oxfam employee, I’m somewhat partisan, so not sure I can pick an organisation to send donations to as other #48forEastAfrica bloggers are. So here are links to donate to two:
Donate to the Oxfam GB East Arica Appeal
Donate to the Disasters Emergency Committee East Africa appeal
NB this from the WiserEarth blog (though replace $ with £):
Remember to add $.01 to your donation so it ends up being $5.01, $20.01, $50.01, $100.01, and so on. This will enable Oxfam to keep track of all Daily Kos donations.
More about #48forEastAfrica
The event aims to increase understanding of the causes of the crisis and how problems that include marginalisation, conflict, a lack of investment in small-scale food producers, and a changing climate must all be addressed in the long term
Participating blogs so far include 350.org, WiserEarth, tcktcktck, DeSmogBlog, MIT Climate CoLab, BPI Campus, Climate Change: The Next Generation, RedGreenAndBlue.org, and MedicMobile.
Follow the action at the project homebase East Africa Food Crisis: 48 Hours of Action. Use the hashtag #48forEastAfrica.
Horn of Africa Drought Facts (combined sources from DailyKos)
• More than 12 million people are affected in Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Sudan and Uganda
• Nearly half of Somalia’s population is facing a humanitarian crisis – almost 3.7 million people
• Over 2 million children under the age of five who are suffering from malnutrition; 480,000 are severely malnourished
• UN declares famine in two districts- Bakool and Lower Shabelle – in southern Somalia; anticipates spread of famine throughout the entire southern Somalia region.
• Women are disproportionally affected by the drought as they are the last to eat when food is limited.
• Aid response nearly $1 billion short of what is needed
• Immunizations have begun in Daab Refugee camp, where medical teams are in serious need of additional supplies.
• Over $1bn has been committed but a further $1bn is still required to save thousands of lives
The most surprising and amusing part of writing my blog has to be looking at how it’s discovered. I don’t know how Google search algorithms work, and looking at what leads my way definitely doesn’t clarify anything, but I think I like it like that – how for all the searches that match the content of my blog, there’s a big chunk related to it only by a sprinkling of shared words, like star-crossed thoughts colliding vainly in the night. If you think about, there’s something pretty romantic about Google – matching up thoughts, desires, interests over the surface of an unfathomable deep – but sometimes …it’s a really bad matchmaker.
1) things that make sense (…and horses)
In the spirit of this post, all its pictures were sourced by re-searching some of the search terms in Google Images. This one: frequenters
The boring but gratifying category of searches I actually want people to find me through – Ethiopian New Year, Addis Ababa stuff, International Women’s Day, the London Underground, etc. Unsurprisingly, searches for the last, particularly on maps and history, send the biggest chunk of traffic my way; Dire Dawa and bajajs (and Dire Dawa bajajs) also feature highly for some reason.
But the single phrase/notion that brings in browsers the most? That’s something I never would have guessed. Turns out there’s an insatiable demand for ‘black horse with white stripe’ and its endless misspelled, odd and overly-specific permutations: black horses with lightning strikes on them (harry potter: the horse years); horses with a stripe-you can only see their face; black horses morgan with white strip (who’s morgan?) etc etc.
Someone should start a website, there’s clearly an unfilled market niche here. Who would have thought that likening myself to a horse would be such a good idea?
2) the slightly alarming
The predictable flipside of writing about Addis Ababa nightlife: the searches for prostitutes (or ‘night girls’, or ‘working girls’ – how strangely coy). Though that someone would feel the need to search for ‘Bole prostitutes’ instead of just walking down any street in Bole any time after about 9pm is beyond me… And though after writing about prehensile penises (penii?), I anticipated a bit of phallus-related traffic, the phrase ‘penis tube’ didn’t come to mind. How intriguing. Also in this category: sexual tube map (erm, what would this entail?), sexual experience underground train, sophie’s world sex scene (…did I miss something when I read the book?), street hookers asia (…really, no idea how that wound up at my blog).
'sleep in london': american students sleeping in the london law courts: from 'passions of former days', an amazing blog of old photos. this is EXACTLY what google is for!
Within this category we also have the slightly-alarming but massive ego boost: the subcategory of searches for my name, and, more creepily, of my name with location/job/other specifics. Who am I kidding, I’m very flattered. Just please, no stalkers…
3) the google lucky dip
Herein the incredibly generic phrases that were directed to the blog god knows why. Of all the websites in the entire world that could cater to your interest in ‘coca-cola’, ‘front of car’, or ‘boys’ (‘boys’!) – is mine really up there?!
There’s also specific phrases which I kinda sorta wrote about… in a totally different context: live match logo of world cup 1994, or underground animals (unless they really were hoping to discover how the northern line looks like a penguin) …or not at all: protruding forehead in children, english country town shop, man running from the scene of a crime, er, minibus with kids next to them in Sheffield (?!)
4) the curious/bizarre/AMAZING
'bright town'
I get so much joy from the fairly large amount of phrases that fall into this category (which is pretty good compensation for my blog’s total irrelevance to most of them). Some favourites:
forged steel sophie moon – no idea what this could mean, but I love it.
sophie and the shadow woods where was the yellow gem hidden? I have spent years trying to think of a good musician name for myself. Sophie and the Shadow Woods …YES! Although it turns out this enigmatic, surreal phrase actually refers to a series of children’s books about a 10-year-old tomboy, so there could be issues around copyright/severely disappointing an army of tweenage girls…
велосипед – a lot more intriguing before Google Translate informed me it means ‘bicycle’
contribution of three wheeler bajaj transport in awassa – beyond its specifity, the fact it appears six times. Well, if you gotta know, you gotta know.
Wolfpeople – ?!
commercials without head underground London – maybe this should go under slightly alarming.
i need the symbol of premier england used on saxophone from the ancient days till date – no. words. (and weren’t saxophones invented, like, last century?!)
how common is indecent exposure on the underground – what is it with the london underground and sex?
guerilla helium balloons – my faith in humanity is totally restored.
Within this category we also have what can only be described as poetry: phrases of vast accidental beauty totally wasted on the philistine mind of Google. But not on me! Undeterred by the total lack of anything but nouns, I’ve made a Google Poem!
Amazing things of world
Sleep in london:
a bright town
a desolate street.
Sand of dire dawa
man walking at the river
(pit river).
Night-time bunting,
underground romance.
Shoreditch decay,
addis ababa dusk:
rain street, grass mountains
debatable monument.
Frequenters,
somali staring,
baloon makers
wolfpeople.
Chasing style and rail door.
London decay painting:
coca cola neon
samayawi blue.
– Sophiemcgrath WordPress
'samayawi blue'. erm, ok...
Actually, I do get the odd sentence in amongst the nouns – assertions, or better yet, commands. I like pretending that some frustrated soul is hunched over their computer desparate to tell someone, somehow, that ‘London Underground is hell’, or to ‘get in line’, or to broadcast the world-changing revelation that ‘somalis chew chat’. Or, my favourite, cannot contain their passion for a certain city of peeling paint and rugged hills: ‘I love Dire Dawa’. I love that someone loved it so much they typed it into Google, and I LOVE IT TOO!!
5) “things in quotations marks”
OK, I KNOW that these are just a functional way of searching for an exact phrase, but, as this website proves hilariously, the quotation mark has an amazing power to make anything look verrry suspicious. I wonder if the person who typed ‘joy of riding “the circle line”’ is as annoyed as me that it’s no longer a circle. And as for “sophie mcgrath” – nothing like a bit of well-placed punctuation to make you question your own existence.
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I can’t work out if these means my attempts at SEO are good or bad – my words attract people, but not necessarily for the right reasons. And if they are bad, do I want to get better? And miss out on a whole bizarre, baffling and hilarious world of searches? …Surely not.
‘Frequenters’: from donna_vr via chickabouttown
‘sleep in london’: from ‘passions of former years’, an incredible catalogue of old photos
‘bright town’ from here
‘samayawi blue’: from here
wandering the city #1: the secret cathedral
It’s my fourth month in Addis Ababa, and I’ve just stumbled on a cathedral.
I’d been wandering in Kazanches, past bunting trailing from telegraph poles and blankets of chillies drying in the sun, when I heard a shout.
‘Where are you going?’ called a middle-aged man from over a red fence. ‘I will show you the cathedral, it’s up this road.’
And there it is – the must-see I could never find, the last emperor’s legacy, set upon steps and surrounded by trees, all turrets and angels and creamy brown stone.
Inside, it’s beautiful: bright stained-glass tableaux, the emperor’s throne, heaven scenes on ceilings, chandeliers. But it’s nothing on the grounds, a tangle of trees and unlikely scenes.
Untended graves crowd the area, their statues maimed, their letters faint. Rusting cages litter the ground: an angel prays behind bars. Lovers lounge in alcoves, whispering.
Men and women in white shawls sit silently in the shade, eyes on the front façade, as if watching something I can’t see. At the back, a tree heavy with fuchsia flowers leaks the slightest scent into the still, close air. A blue-and-white taxi glints in the sun, Bob Marley’s face sagging on a flag in its window. From somewhere comes the faint sound of singing.
Gravel paths lead off in all directions, to padlocked gates and distant walls. I follow one past trees and over rubble until something small and gold flickers in and out of view. From behind a metal shed the scene edges into sight: a man writing, cross-legged, a candle balanced by his side. The ground around him is littered with paper.
I leave him in peace. There’s more to discover, much more. Elsewhere, an old priest with a contagious smile holds ajar the museum’s splintered basement door and beckons me over with words I don’t know. The musty room’s dim light keeps all to itself but the slightest of shapes – of women, sitting, eating, talking. Their voices are quiet and rough with age.
Behind a wall there’s even a church, bustling with the theatre of worship: figures lighting candles, mounting steps, pressing their foreheads to the circular wall. Some slip coins into bright tin boxes, others stand in twos and threes, their voices mingling with teachers’ exposition.
The setting sun gilts the roof’s fringe of bells, and a slight wind spikes the cooling air. Three girls in Sunday shawls claim the bench in front of mine; their feet move restlessly underneath. The elder two giggle and whisper as the smallest shifts to sit with me, smiling broadly, saying nothing.
This place is like a dream. My eyes catch on everything I pass as I leave, trying to take it all in, but feeling, in this place of chipped graves and faded photos most of all, how little can ever remain.
I pass the men and women sitting silently, eyes on the facade, as if watching something I can’t see. Maybe what’s left is enough. I walk out and don’t look back.
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After four months I finally found one of Addis Ababa’s main attractions – Holy Trinity Cathedral, built by Haile Selassie, the last emporer, and his final resting place. As beautiful as it was, though, the little things in the corners and in the shadows, rusting, crumbling, whispering – those are what stayed with me, what made walking away feel like losing something fragile and irretrievable, and what compelled me to write.
That is what this blog is for – to attempt to retrieve something of the magical, beautiful, accidents of wandering around. Addis is a city full of unexpected sights, everyday marvels, secret histories and delicate dereliction. It’s not boring, or a ‘shithole’, as someone ranted at me the other day. All it takes is an afternoon and the mood for adventure to find something that will make your day. It might be something big or something small: a cathedral, or a friendly conversation; a field full of rusting imperial trains, or a minibus with the most bizarre decor known to man. It might be a meadow full of woodsmoke and playing cards, a garden full of life-size pottery animals, a table football match in full swing on a crowded cobbled lane, a procession of children with silk flags, singing…
Stories for another day.
Photo of the Fortnight: GELADA BABOON!
A gelada baboon snacking on some grass (geladas are a rare breed endemic to Ethiopia. This one’s up north in the Simien Mountains…)
Photo of the Fortnight: LALIBELA
I’ve just got back from the probably the most amazing holiday of my life, travelling the North Ethiopian ‘historical circuit’. As anyone who’s been will appreciate, my photo this fortnight is an absolute no-brainer.
LALIBELA!
Lalibela: Bet Giyorgis rock-hewn church, reflected in a fertility pool. The 14 churches, spread over 3 complexes, date from the thirteenth century and are carved partially or wholly out of the rock. AMAZING.
(yeah, so the Photo of the Week thing didn’t work out… let’s try Photo of the Fortnight. Hey, it alliterates, it’s already better…)
10 REASONS WHY THE LONDON UNDERGROUND IS AWESOME Pt 2 (Collective Joy to Cockfosters & Other Curiosities)
So…have I convinced you yet? If you’ve read part one of my post on why the tube is frankly the best thing since the invention of the wheel – that is, if you’ve read about subterranean secrets and tube trains in the sky, flamingos and flirting and poets and puns – and you’re still not convinced (er, whatever), then read on. The tube’s awesomeness has no end…
6. COLLECTIVE JOY!
What a stage of human drama is the tube – from the miserable lows of crushed commuters united only in misanthropy to the gleeful solidarity of flash-mobbing merry-makers, it brings out the best and worst in people.
The best, though, is pretty wonderful – if not weird with it too. Take the annual ‘No Pants Tube Ride’ – one of 40 similar events on metros across the world. You’ve got to hand it to those 100 brave men and women who partook. How this escapes being indecent exposure I do not know…
Other merry gatherings include the annual ‘London Santacon’ which turns the tube festive and red, and guerilla balloon animals. Is there anything more joyous?
It’s not all fun and games, though. When Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, introduced a ban on drinking on the Tube, thousands of people took to the tube to see out their freedom in force – half piss-up, half protest. (Tube workers themselves tend to harness its political potential through the opposite tactic – staying away.)
In related topics of Underground joie de vivre, the Tube also inspires feats of charitable dedication, such as attempting to run between all the tube stations (400+ miles) in less than 9 months for a miscarriage charity, like this guy. Awww.
7. MUSIC
And I don’t just mean Baker Street (groan). The buskers are everywhere – well, 39 designated sites apparently – making all kinds of pretty noise until the wee hours. My favourite is the underpass at South Kensington, for the acoustics, and singing into them when it’s too busy to hear. (One day I’ll busk there. One day). But it’s not just live music you might hear on the tube – some stations, like Ravenscourt Park on the District Line, pipe classical music instead.
I’m not sure which is weirder, the fact the scheme was started to discourage loutish behaviour at tube trouble-spots, or that it actually works – reducing crime by 33% in its trial period, apparently. Music, is there anything you can’t do…
8. DECOR
Gloucester Road during an 'Art on the Tube' initative in 2006
Tube décor is random and wonderful. I sometimes used to imagine I was walking through the brightly-coloured capillaries of a huge porcelain nervous system. (Judging from this map, I’m not alone).
Some of my favourites:
Tottenham Court Road – shiny psychedelic pixel-vomit
Gloucester Road – soft, suave lowlight. This is basically a lounge bar without the bar.
Charing Cross – medieval-style pictures of historical London things! Like going back in time!
Westminster – the closest you’ll get to the Futuristic Zone on Crystal Maze (unless, like my brother, you got to visit it in your childhood. Lucky bastard.)
9. SLEEP!
Once I found myself near Charing Cross with a few hours to kill and an overwhelming urge to nap. Having scoured the bookshops in the vain hope of finding a SINGLE CHAIR (I know, right?), and for some reason oblivious to the plush leather seats freely accessible at the national gallery a stone’s throw away, my weary soul alighted on an unlikely beacon of somniferous solace: the circle line. Safe in the knowledge that it would just keep going round and round, I napped to my heart’s content. (and then woke up at rush-hour in a packed train, taking up two seats. My bad.)
Though, now the circle line’s a mutilated shadow of its former self (see previous post), who knows if you can still ride right round…
10. COCKFOSTERS AND OTHER CURIOSITIES
At university all our ‘bops’ (sigh) had a fancy dress theme. Once it was ‘The London Underground’. There were some great concepts – not mine, I stuck on some wings and came as ‘Angel’ – the best probably a huge, prehensile penis made out of beer cans.
The station? Cockfosters, of course.
I think this aptly illustrates the hilarity and randomness that pervades tube names. Just – why? What HAPPENED there? Also, what did White City used to look like? Why is there a DLR station called ‘Cyprus’? What the hell is ‘Penge’?
Ever wonder why Monument Station was so-called? This building is why, and it's awesome. The view is still great 300 years in, PLUS you get a certificate saying you made it to the top! All for about £3. Bargain.
At the other extreme is the reassuringly literal: Marble Arch, Monument, Bank. You know where you are with these. If you’re a tourist looking for St Paul’s, no problem (perhaps not quite so easy if you’re after the V&A…)
The names alone are pretty evocative for history-lovers too. Turnham Green – where the Royalists repelled the Parliamentarians in the Civil War in 1642!!! Monument, where 40 years later the dead king’s son built the then-tallest building in London to crown his post-fire city!!! Charing Cross – or Eleanor’s Cross, where Edward I turned his grief into stone. London Bridge. Victoria. Waterloo.
And let’s not forget Grange Hill. TV gold.
Wordnerds/quiz fans should take note, too. Apparently only 2 stations contain all five vowels – Mansion House and South Ealing – and there’s only one without any of the letters in ‘mackerel’ (God knows who and how realised this). This is quite a common quiz question, so maybe I shouldn’t tell you… oh, alright then, St John’s Wood.
This is, of course, less about the Tube and more about London, about England, about English. To contemplate these names is to contemplate the richness and long history of the language, etc etc….
…Cockfosters. You’ve gotta laugh.
Let the music transport you by rd saunders
No Trousers flashmob picture from a great set by Idil Sukan
Balloon animals by Aslef shrugged
Gloucester Road by Tim Carson
Monument stairs by tht studios
Tube tunnel by the amazing MSH*
I0 REASONS WHY THE LONDON UNDERGROUND IS AWESOME, Pt 1 (Secret Stations to Sexual Tension)
There are lots of reasons to hate the London Underground, and I experienced most of them last month when I was back in town renewing my visa. All the old chestnuts were there: the stifling heat, the crush-hour misery, the ‘planned engineering works’ that mess up your weekend, and some new ones, just to mix it up a bit: an hour and a half, for instance, stuck on the District Line (‘signal failure’ – definitely a euphemism), or the heinous, sadistic renovation work just begun at Victoria Station. ‘You are advised to seek alternative routes until spring 2012’. (This is necessary as Victoria’s the most used station – 76 million people a year, you know – on the whole system. It’s also, apparently, a suicide hotspot. Er…)
And yet. And yet. I ADORE the Tube. Except at rush hour – obviously – my love is eternal as the Circle line*, solid as, er, Monument, Wapping great, Barking mad and everGreen Park (ok, I’ll stop…) Here’s a mere ten reasons why (handily split into 2 bites-sized chunks)…
1. SECRET STATIONS
Every time on the tube I find myself shoved by a door, I stare out avidly into the wire-strewn dark of the tunnel beyond. Why, you ask? Well, beyond being incredibly deep and existential, I’m looking for the SECRET STATIONS that Blue Peter taught me, many moons ago, are dotted around the network. Secret, largely, in that they’re now abandoned and overlooked, though the tube also has a shady WW2 history of secret meeting-places and hideouts for the great and the good, just to add to the coolness. Some forgotten stations are, ironically, a bit more high-profile now, used as settings for films (ie Aldwych Station), or in tours like this one – newly launched at £25 a pop, it’s pricey, but – the chance to step back into a lost (under)world? I’m sold.
These pockets of past are only the tip of the iceberg of the tube’s awesome history, though – just think of the role that a whole 50 stations played as air-raid shelters in the Blitz. (I’m sure you’ll thank me for reminding you of Keira Knightley’s horrific death in Balham station in Atonement). But of course it doesn’t stop there – the London Underground is the oldest metro system in the world, after all (the Metropolitan Line opened in January 1863), and London is pretty damn ancient. Going underground, you can’t help but dig into the past.
Aldgate Station, for instance, is ‘built on a massive plague pit, where more than 1000 bodies were buried in 1665’. At the risk of sounding morbid, I find this really exciting – there you are, just going about your daily business, readin’ the metro, waitin’ for the train – and below you lies the whole incomprehensible tragedy of human experience…
2. URBAN DECAY
Shoreditch Station, yours for a mere £180,000
Though – fun fact! – not all tube stations have buildings above the ground, generally for every secret bunker there’s a derelict ticket station above it, crumbling gloriously or adapting modishly. This enthralling website is a catalogue of mesmerising decay – from eerie desolation to artful dereliction, graffiti scaling the walls like ivy.
Shoreditch Station, the newest one abandoned, is no exception . Its fate currently hangs in the balance – it’s up for sale for £180,000 – pretty good value (for the area, I mean…) and who knows what it will become, probably just another trendy bar. Hey – if anyone’s rich and generous, I will be eternally grateful.
Its trains, though, already have a new life – as ‘tube offices in the sky’, their carriages converted into offices for a theatre company, all arty decorations and rickety stairs. Amazing.
NB the above-linked Going Underground is a really interesting blog which partly inspired me to write this post, and to which a fair chunk of it is directly indebted – as it is to this piece on random tube facts. Thanks Annie!
3. MAPS MAPS MAPS
I could write a whole post – posts – just on this, but I won’t, because it’s already been done, and much better than I could. (I’ll just steal bits of it instead). Where do I begin? There’s the tube map itself, a perfect synthesis of contradictions: completely user-friendly though wildly inaccurate, visually delightful though principally functional. (There are some grave imperfections, though, as anyone deceived into an infuriating 10-minute street-level meander ‘changing’ at Bank knows…)
Tube-style map of world rail networks
Unsurprisingly, with its elegant lines, rich colours and obvious referential potential, it’s spawned a genre of tributes – not least on its own front cover (a recent one replaces station-names with emotions), but also from artists far and wide.
The range of awesome adaptations is vast, so here’s the merest few: a typographic map, a film map (stations replaced by films shot nearby), the ‘London-on-sea 2100’ map that re-imagines the city if sea levels rise to predicted levels. You know how TFL briefly took the Thames of the map, to general uproar? Pretty soon we could be wishing it were less conspicuous…
My favourites: the Guardian’s music map (each line is a different genre) and the brand-name map, one of the most puntastic things I’ve ever seen (that’s saying something). ‘Vickstoria’, genius.
Finally, a shoutout to the ‘Animals of the Underground’, an art project ‘started by Paul Middlewick in 1988 after he spotted an elephant shape while staring at the tube map during his daily journey home’. The website displays a whole menagerie of colourful line-creatures.
I love that while most people would think, ‘oh, a flamingo’ and get on with their lives, he went home and created a website so that the whole world could share in the joy of tube-animals. What a hero.
4. POETRY
When Johnny M wrote Paradise Lost, I bet he didn’t picture it next to an advert for menopause pills. But then he didn’t bargain on the Tube, that great leveller where Milton and Menopace mingle, where high art and hygiene collide – thanks to the TFL’s initiative of putting excerpts of poetry in amongst the ads.
Unfortunately, in my ever-humble opinion, a lot of it’s pretty mediocre – and most, at least judging by the TFL’s list, is pre-20th century, let alone pre-21st – so I worry that people will be (further) put off poetry. But sometimes you do stumble on a gem, and, either way, it provides a moment of interest, of beauty even, in the midst of the numbed exhaustion of the daily commute.
Take this:
Loving the rituals
Loving the rituals that keep men close,
Nature created means for friends apart:
Paper, pen, ink, the alphabet,
Signs for the distant and disconsolate heart.
Palladas (4th century AD), translated by Tony Harrison
First three lines, so far, so meh, but – there’s something about the last. I think it’s ‘signs’ – like the words don’t even matter, just them being there, meaning, above all else, ‘I am thinking of you, I care’ – that’s enough.
A poem for travellers.
Sometimes the poetry spills out beyond the tube, too – like at Waterloo where a poem lured you, line by gold-etched line, out of the Underworld and into the light, just as its subject, Eurydice. Until they painted over it. (There are no words. Literally.)
There’s also an initiative called ‘art on the tube’, though as far as I can tell this so far only consists of some artist’s series of…words.
5. SEXUAL TENSION
The Tube is surely second only to libraries in this respect. It’s so damn British – sitting stoically silent, studiously avoiding eye contact with the person opposite you, covertly snatching glimpses of the fit guy/girl nearby, accidentally brushing fingers as you reach for the pole…
This ritualised repression was even documented, week on week, in the ‘missed connections’ section of thelondonpaper (itself sadly missed), though I think the Metro might do it too. I wonder who didn’t read it with a half-hearted hope that they might feature. And I wonder, too, if those who did ever got in touch, hooked up, fell in love. I can’t think of a more romantic way to meet….
TBC…
…Pt 2 is here!
*used to be, before it got a tail. But, hey, can’t complain, at least it’s a useful extension – it’s not as if other lines cover the same route, and it’s not as if, yknow, there’s a huge lack of development south of the river, with, say, only 29 of 287 tube stations there. Oh, wait…
Tube with statue by Zyllan
Brand map and train map by annie mole
Eurydice by deadly knitshade
Sexual tension by sharkbait
100th International Women’s Day – a story of hope
If there’s one thing that living in a developing country has hammered home, it’s that patriarchy is alive and very, very well. And, while it limits and defines and conditions and screws over men and women alike – in developed countries too, lest we forget – on the whole, it does it much worse to women.
I spent most of today at an event celebrating the day, which showcased the progress that is continually being made in Ethiopia in empowering women – enabling them to earn and control an income, and have a voice, and shout with it.
‘My husband used to beat me like a donkey’, said Ansha, a farmer from the central Rift Valley, explaining the effect the development projects of SEDA, a local NGO focusing on environment and gender, had had on relationships in her family. Now, not only is she treated like a human being, but she sits with him at the table to discuss family matters – before this would be unthinkable – and even attends community meetings. ‘Before, I would tell her to put her hand down’, says her husband, who has come down for the event too.
I leave full of hope – or at least the faith that, even in the face of the increasingly evident effects of climate change, the strength and passion of women like Ansha will help them make the best of it.
I take the minibus back to the office, like I’ve done a million times before. But today I see something that I’ve never seen before in my seven months here. I see a man beating a women up. Kicking her from behind, hitting her, shouting, chasing her down the street. It’s broad daylight.
Today of all days – how fitting. Progress, hope, solidarity – and with them, a reminder of the work that’s still to be done. That things change slowly, so slowly, and in bits, here and there. But – take a look these stories from around the world – they can, and do, and will.
I’ll spare you statistics or lectures, and leave you instead with a piece I wrote for today for Oxfam about the amazing things women’s collectives in Eastern Ethiopia are doing, changing their lives and changing society.
Happy 100TH International Women’s Day, everyone!
[Edit: my piece is now also up on the main Oxfam blog at: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/applications/blogs/pressoffice/2011/05/13/ethiopia-men-cant-control-us-nobody-controls-us/?v=newsblog :)]
Women's livestock cooperatives in Harshin, Somali region, Ethiopia: changing their lives and changing society
Photo of the week: Harar through a glass darkly
The eastern Ethiopian city of Harar - 4th holiest for some Muslims - seen from Arthur Rimbaud's house/museum
While i was back in London collecting my visa and having lots of fun (and the two are definitely mutually exclusive), I cruelly neglected this blog. Poor blog, I’m sorry. Here, have a photo – not much, but it’s a start. How about a weekly photo? So when I’m in the field/mega-busy, you can still feel loved. Perfect.
In defence of Dire Dawa (a photo manifesto)
In my Bradt Guide to Ethiopia, Philip Briggs describes Dire Dawa as dirty, claustrophobic and devoid of interest, and recommends to avoid.
To this I reply:
Camels, causeways, colour: first impressions of Dire Dawa
Half because I’m in the field right now so have NO TIME*, and half because perfectionism does not a productive life make, I decided to try something new: first impressions! In note form! First up under the pen: Dire Dawa. (I’m not sure it survives).
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Camels stalk down the road beside bajajs. replicas of 7000-year-old cave paintings line the walls, and murals signed ‘handicap’. under one: a crumpled cloth, legs protruding. roundabout with a rail carriage mounted in the middle. dusty yellow façade – chemin de fer. colourful buildings, so many shades, but shade – street sellers, under stretched sheets in the sun – not so much. pink shawls against pink walls . wide tree-lined avenues. ‘china mettow’ – you came from china? do you have a doll? mid-afternoon desolate streets – everyone busy chewing chat. green turrets in the distance. houses climbing up to the scrubby hills that ring the town. syria. sudden alleyways, stripes of mountain view. everything scenic, all movement framed in front of fading pastel walls. red earth river bed, parched. people walking it, birds circling it, in front of the mountains. afternoon – a row of camels marching out of the city on what was once a river. like invisible cities: there are seas of water, and seas of sand.
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dire dawa market
* the astute/facebook-frequenters among you may have noted i’m actually back from the field. yeah, this post almost never saw the light of day. maybe it shouldn’t have? thoughts on a postcard…
How NOT to start a year
I was asking for it. The last two things I’ve written are a post entitled ‘a happy new year (for most)’, and a competition entry all about the joys of stumbling on things (ooh wordplay, clever).
Inevitably, my literary conceit(edness) came back to haunt me and, at some very early hour of New Year’s Day, I stumbled – bad, onto my face.
It was, in fairness, entirely my fault. I’d just got a lift back from a colleague’s brilliant New Year’s Eve party: hundreds of people, a huge garden, free bar, even a big screen for the countdown. ‘Only in Ethiopia’ said an American behind me as we clustered round a colourful mat where, metres away, a boy somersaulted through the air from one man’s upturned soles to another. This routine was later repeated with large flaming hoops.
road near the scene of the crime
I could have used that balance a few hours later, facing the alleyway to my house. For some reason (or rather total lack of reasoning), not only did I decline my friends’ offer to walk with me, I also decided to run. Running is never a good idea in the dark and drunk (and pumps), but on a ‘path’ comprised mainly of potholes and rocks, it’s moronic. My face literally didn’t know what hit it.
I didn’t think anything of my little trip til I got home and saw blood, a line of it dissecting my face from forehead to chin. It didn’t look too bad, until it scabbed over, at which point I started to feel like one of those horses with white stripes down the centre of their face – only, y’know, less fur, more scab.
Anyway, I decided to take it on the chin (!) and face up (!) to my temporary disfigurement. I could look at it as a social experiment: would it change how people reacted to me? Would they be sympathetic? And, most importantly, would it – and here I got excited – finally put an end to the relentless attention of random men?
…nope.
artist's impression of my face
It doesn’t deter the guys who try to chat me up within minutes of me leaving my house. Or the guys who invite me back to their house to chew chat (or ‘chew chat’, probably) while I’m waiting for a friend the next morning. Or the middle-aged man who matches my stride near Meganagna and surprises me with his stories of two years studying in Belgium (Belgium! <3) before the catch: ‘Where are you going? I live there too! I can go home with you? You have a boyfriend?’
Sigh. I guess they just don’t care about my injury. Maybe they’re less superficial, or maybe more – maybe I’m a farenji, and that’s enough.
As for the men and women who aren’t trying to chat me up, a lot react how I’d expect anywhere – lots of glances and a bit of staring – and a lot how I wouldn’t: asking me straight up what’s happened. (My favourite: ‘min de nesh?’ – literally ‘what are you?’ I’m sure the proper translation is more nuanced…!). Maybe it’s forward, but I definitely prefer it to covert nosiness – especially as, judging by their mime, a lot of people think I’ve been punched in the face, which alarms me as much as them.
Assuaging their concerns isn’t always easy. At first I resort to mime too, acting out running and tripping with my fingers (unsurprisingly, to general bemusement) – but then I learn the magic word.
‘Wedersh?’ says one shopkeeper, and translates for me: ‘you fell over?’ And voila! I deduce my most useful Amharic word yet. ‘Ow’ I say (the word for ‘yes’ couldn’t have been more appropriate). ‘Wedeku’. I fell over.
street, piazza
It’s touching how many people seem genuinely concerned. At the post office in Mexico, the staff gasp and elicit a blow-by-blow account of my downfall. The nicest moment comes at a fruit-stall in Piazza when the concerned attendant nods sympathetically to my (really undeserving idiotic) story and replies consolingly ‘but the rest of your face, it’s beautiful’. Awww.
So far, so tolerable – and then my friend recommends me a hospital. The next day I brave a minibus to the depths of Gerji and watch the familiar landmarks of Bole recede behind a huge meadow. I feel like I’m behind a mirror. Then the fare-collector shouts ‘Korea’ and I’m turfed off in front of a large modern-looking complex – ‘Myungsung Christian Medical Center’.
It’s quiet and almost empty, and within minutes, I’ve been registered and checked over by a friendly doctor with perfect English. He prods at my face a bit and reassures me that no, I’m not going to get gangrene. I get a blood test, and wait in the half-empty foyer, with its rows of plastic chairs and premier league, until he reassures me that my blood is fine, too. I think he thinks I’m a hypochondriac.
It’s all going great until the nurse cleans my wounds for me – with iodine, which, it turns out, is purple, and stains.
niiice
Henceforth, I have a purple face. I can see purple out of the corner of my eye, and, out of the rest, people staring. I detour home and dab at it for a bit, but it’s hopeless. Hey, well at least it’s my favourite colour…
I’m determined to stick with my plans, so my next destination? The most crowded place in Addis Ababa. Naturally.
Beyond the seductive neon bunting of the Genna (Ethiopian Christmas) exhibition in Meskel Square, crushed consumers inch round huge warehouses full of stalls selling everything from soil from the holy land to inflatable santas. It’s uncomfortable, even if your face is a normal colour.
❤ bunting
As for me, I’m the centre of attention. Once again, though, I’m grateful for people’s general inquisitiveness – it lets me explain myself, in their language, so I’m not simply a foreign freak-show, and they a nosey stranger. Of course it’s not that simple – no amount of mumbling ‘wedeku’ explains why the hell my face is an unnatural shade of purple. But the message more or less gets across, and, as before, I’m moved by people’s concern. ‘I’m sorry’ say some, in English or Amharic; others offer skincare advice (and one offers me some peanuts. Why not).
There are upsides, then, but free snacks or not, this is easily the most painful, self-conscious and generally disastrous start to the year I’ve ever had. I don’t know what, if anything, I can conclude from this whole messy episode – except, kids, don’t run in the dark.
(0h, and the doctor texted me – he thinks I have some weird type of anaemia. HAPPY NEW YEAR!)
[Horse pic: jenny downing]
A happy Ethiopian New Year (for most)
new year's meat market, shola
Mid-morning, Shola, Addis Ababa: I step outside, past fruit-stalls and games of table football, into a sea of livestock, bleating uproariously and churning the earth to mud.
Poor animals. Today, September 10, is both New Year’s Eve and Eid, and meat, a symbol of affluence and prosperity, is the only way to ring in the good times.
I’m celebrating at my friend Hayat’s house, so I squeeze onto one of Addis’ ubiquitous blue-and-white minibuses, full to bursting in the pelting rain. My neighbour, a man in a red jumper, strikes up a conversation.
Suddenly I notice the head protruding from the binliner on his lap. Delicate as a model, all clean, bright feathers and minute, baroque embellishments, a live chicken blinks at me.
‘At this time of year, we slaughter many sheep and chicken,’ the man smiles. ‘It’s the eve of his life too’.
At Hayat’s I get a taste of what he’ll become. Her mother beckons me to a feast of sweets, biscuits and orange squash, before bringing out the maincourse: kitfo, raw meat, tibs, chunks of lamb, and doro wat, spicy chicken stew – with spongey injera bread to scoop it all into parcels.
She watches my progress keenly, anxious I’m satisifed. ‘Ayezosh!’ she encourages, ‘bi!’ Hayat translates: ‘Feel free! Eat!’ And with food like this, it’s easy to oblige.
Later, nearing home, I watch sheep hides fly unceremoniously through the air to land – aim permitting – on the back of a white truck. A happy new year, for most.
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This post has been entered into the Grantourismo HomeAway Holiday Rentals travel blogging competition http://grantourismotravels.com/2010/12/14/grantourismo-travel-blogging-competition-december/ www.homeaway.co.uk
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****** EDIT: I won! I can’t believe it, there were so many great entries. Thank you so much Grantourismo and HomeAway. To any new readers – hi! I hope you like my blog, and stay tuned for some new posts throughout the week.
Also, if anyone has any recommendations for where to stay with my £500 holiday rental, much appreciated (current thought: paris 🙂 )
******
minibus
evidently I’ve been too caught up in raptures of appreciation to take a picture, so here, have a creepy postcard. google zerihun seyoum, i dare you
Where: Addis Ababa, Awassa, Bahir Dar
What: Joy on wheels. Every day from dawn til dusk the streets hum with benign blue-and-white minibuses ferrying their dozen-odd passengers along the arteries of Addis Ababa. The best place to get one is from one of the minibus stations dotted around the city, where fare-collectors rattle off destinations at great speed, before hopping on themselves when the bus is full. Once you know what they’re saying, the city is yours.
Pros: I owe them my independence: they opened Addis up to me, revealing its strange beauty inch by inch through dirt-specked glass, and drawing a mental map that lets me navigate with ease. I can go anywhere, get off and walk, walk, walk – then hop on another and weave back. Almost anywhere you could want to go is easily accessible (and yet there aren’t too many routes), and you never have to wait more than a few minutes for a bus.
They also encapsulate, for me, people’s endless individuality, and the small, idiosyncratic ways it’s revealed. Each one is a unique mix of some or all of these elements: chair fabric, music, cassettes stuffed in slats in the ceiling, transfers on windows (my favourite: ‘I love you’), religious and/or premier league paraphernalia, dashboard fluff, hanging stuff.
They’re also safe (no theft) and sociable – a great place for conversations, with a palpably warm atmosphere (the downside being there’s nowhere to go if your neighbour’s trying to chat you up…)
Cons: at the roadside, they don’t always have the space/inclination to stop for you, and they don’t have seatbelts, so avoid the front seat (true in all road vehicles: addis ababa has a very high road traffic accident rate). And whatever comes out of the exhaust pipe is definitely suspect. They’re hard to get to grips with at first, but repay the effort endlessly. Caveats aside – perfect.
Price: 1-3 birr (5-15p). (Actually, it’s 90 cents etc – an odd price policy, but hey, there’s people standing at the side of the road with piles of change, so I guess it creates a few jobs).
bajaj
tinsel is for life, not just for christmas
Where: The leafy avenues of Bahir Dar
What: This speedy little three-wheeler is the provincial answer to the minibus, and fits a snug three (or a crushed four) in its curtained back seat. You hail it from the side of the road.
Pros: The thrill, if you’re by the door, of being ‘semi-enclosed’, as Tori put it, watching the road blur and rush beneath you as the wind buffets your face. The décor is the best thing, though – as idiosyncratic as the minibuses, but possibly with even more aesthetic abandon. Clashing colours, tinsel, premier league stickers, it’s all here and more.
Cons: Just don’t fall out.
Price: you haggle it: probably 10-20 birr (up to a pound)
gari
Where: Debre Zeit, a million tiny towns on the road to Lalibela; everywhere, probably
What: A horse and cart with bells on (literally).
Pros: Fresh air in my lungs and a soporific trot that let me fully appreciate the rural life all around me. So much fun…
Cons: …until I saw the state of the horse we’d used: pleury eyes, scabby skin, haggard body. Most looked a lot better, but animal cruelty is a huge problem here. Maybe not worth the thrill, in the end.
Price: you haggle it: 30 birr+ (£1.25ish)
toyota
What: In Ethiopia, the car in front IS a Toyota, probably a 20-year-old, slightly battered trailer-type affair*. Who knows why – maybe because all the cars here are ancient and it’s the only make sturdy enough to last.
Pros: The upside of this is a dazzling display of bad 80s bodywork, especially orange lightning zigzags. And it’s a lot of fun to sit in the boot…
Cons: Environmentally unfriendly and liable to breakdown. Oh, and one of my ex-students has a new nickname, ‘toyota carola’.
*except if you work for the UN or, to a lesser extent, an NGO, in which case it’s an ostentatiously-branded, midlife-crisis-sized beast of a 4×4 for you.
taxi
Where: Addis Ababa
What: The lazy/rich/tourist alternative to the minibus. If it ain’t beggars or vendors shouting at you, it’s taxi drivers trying to snare your custom with their own taxi-based lexicon of inanities. They tend to lurk in packs by their cabs on street corners. (Actually, though, they’re mostly pretty fun to talk to).
Pros: Pretty much the only way to get around after about 9pm, and good for bantering with the driver/practicing your Amharic. Also prone to exciting décor, with a great line in fluffy fluorescent dashboard covers.
Cons: Drivers like to charge more than agreed by pretending they have no change. Be firm, always have change, and ALWAYS agree the price before you get in.
Price: you haggle it: for an average daytime journey, about 50birr (£2); at night, expect at least 100 (£4)
skybus
young man, there's no need to feel down...
Where: Addis Ababa – Bahir Dar
What: ‘German technology at Chinese prices’, the onboard electronic display declares proudly, and you can’t really argue with that. Shiny and new, the Skybus has cut down the previously overnight journey to Bahir Dar to a mere 10 hours (including an hour stop in Debre Markos for lunch).
Pros: comfortable seats, pretty fast and you even get breakfast – a giant cake in a giant box – and a bottle of water, not to mention a choice sampling of Ethiopian TV. You pass some amazing landscape too, and cross the Blue Nile… 
Cons: It leaves from Meskel Square at 6am – who needs sleep?
Price: 240 birr (I think) – £10ish
While we’re on the subject of buses, if Addis’ minibuses aren’t your thing (weirdo) there’s also, er, lion-buses, yellow buses with the lion of Judah on their side that shuttle you across the city. My guidebook told me they’re thieving hotspots and to avoid, and, as they rattle ominously past, the silhouettes of crushed and listless-looking commuters just visible through filthy, steamed-up windows, I’m happy to oblige.
They do, however, make nice pictures:
‘by number 11′ (walking)
Where: in-between places, Addis Ababa
What: Method of, well, necessity, for the majority of Ethiopians. Drive down any road anywhere and you’ll pass smatterings of people treading the dust for hours on end to get to market, or to town, or to anywhere. ‘Keh asser-and kutur’, or ‘by number 11’, is slang for walking (get it?), awesome.
Pros: in tandem with minibuses, the best way to get to know Addis Ababa, to explore the bits where tourists never go and to chat with the locals you pass. It’s all about slow travel, man.
Cons: if you’re a white, young female on her own, you’re a magnet for genuinely nice people and complete idiots alike. The problem is you can rarely tell until it’s too late.
boat
Where: Awassa, Bahir Dar
Pros: Serene journeys through deep blue waters to hippos and extraordinary island monasteries – what’s not to like?
Cons: Did you know hippos are the most deadly african animal? very hungry, eh…
Price: a few hundred birr
camel
…duh.
and finally… trains
Oh yes, there are plenty of trains in Addis Ababa…
And lots of track…
Running south to Debre Zeit and beyond…
…just don’t expect to go anywhere.
SOPHIE'S WORLD 