Harar and the Leprosy Hospital

I took a bus to Harar in the east. I didn’t really know what was there, I had just looked at the map of Ethiopia, figured I’d go north to see the Historic Circle and South to see the tribes at some stage, but was waiting for the American guy Elie to go South with me and trying to find someone to go north with me, so figured a few days east would help things fall into place.

The bus drove through mountainous rural areas which were not really rural at all. The sides of the mountains were totally deforested and in its place were squares of dirt littered with tiny shacks. I could imagine how beautiful it once was, but now it reeked of the struggle for land, farming and ultimately food.

Two men on the bus asked if I was Chinese. I asked them if they had ever seen a Chinese person before and they said ‘yes Chinese people are everywhere!’

When the bus pulled over for lunch I decided to take a walk instead of eating – the winding roads weren’t doing my appetite any favours. The whole way up the street and the whole way back I was followed by a group of twenty boys shouting “Money. Dollar. Money”.

I was so fed up with them that I went back to the bus and hid beneath it waiting until it was time to go. But two men found me there and asked me for money. I said no and instead of leaving they just stood right in front of me and stared at me. I kept waiting for them to leave or at least say something but they just stood there and stared me down. The three of us stayed there, in silence, for over ten minutes. Finally the bus was ready to leave, I pushed passed them and drove away.

As soon as the bus arrived in Harar I was hounded by the usual touts trying to grab my bag and asking me where I was going. I had tried to take my bag off the bus but the bus staff told me not to, I had to wait on the footpath, that I was not allowed to get it myself. Then they told me I had to pay them 5 birr for them getting it off the bus for me. It was hard to do much with a tight crowd of twenty or so men around me touching, grabbing and shouting at me.

I eventually said yes to getting in a tuk-tuk with one guy who was really persistent, but seemed harmless enough. His name was Ramadan and he took me to a hotel, checked me into a room and carried my bag even though I tried to do it myself. I agreed to let him take me on a half day tour of Harar the next day.

When he finally left I took myself to the Lonely Planet’s ‘best pic’ restaurant, which definitely would never have been one of my ‘best pic’s’.

Exhausted after my long day and my hang-over I went back to my hotel room to read my book in peace.

Minutes later there was a knock at the door and I opened it half dressed. It was Ramadan asking if he could take me out to dinner. I politely said no and told him I would see him at 9am tomorrow.

The phone kept ringing… it was Tom.

He sent me messages asking if I am safe, if I am happy and saying ‘I miss you baby’.

The next morning at 9am Ramadan picked me up for the tour of Harar.  

Harar is a visually fascinating place, very much existing in a time from long, long ago. It seemed heavily Muslim/Arabic influenced, with bright colours, crowded market places, strange smells, hard working donkeys, crammed little lane ways overflowing with shuffling bodies and a constant hum of talking and shouting, only ever broken by the ringing of church bells and the reverberating mumble of the Muslim Call to Prayer.

Ramadan showed me the ancient gates to the city, now a skeleton of their old glory. He showed me Rimbaud’s house, the old palace, crooked buildings over slivers of red dusty streets and mosques I was not allowed to enter.

I told him that I wanted to see a hospital. I wanted to compare it to the hospitals I saw in Namibia and Ghana, and I was beginning to think that you can learn a lot about a country by the state of their hospitals.

He tried to take me to the public hospital but a surly guard stopped us at the entrance and said that no tourists were allowed in.

Then he suggested we try the leprosy hospital.

Of course I wanted to see it! 

The name of the leprosy hospital was Gendafaro (that is what Ramadan told me, I haven’t been able to find it on the internet since then). It was at once so depressing it looked and felt like a prison, and yet simultaneously it had the energy of a peaceful sanctuary.

Through the gate we stepped into a small courtyard in the centre of a U shaped building comprised of small dark cell-like rooms, cold and bare except for a single mattress.

People with missing fingers and toes were lying in their doorways, bathing in the sun. No body seemed to have much to do, and nobody was talking to each other. They seemed mildly interested in my presence but not bothered by it. I only saw one woman there amongst mostly middle-aged men.

I was interested in the only man not lying down doing nothing. He was sitting on his haunches in the doorway of his room making coffee in a pot over a small flame. He had a total of two half-sized fingers, one on each hand, and making coffee seemed to me to be a little too great a task. However he must have been very experienced, he didn’t get frustrated by it and slowly, patiently and carefully, with the palm of his hands and the stubs of two fingers he managed to brew, pour and finally sip his coffee.

I wanted to know more about the hospital, like where were the doctors and nurses, were the patients permitted to come and go as they pleased, but Ramadan didn’t have any of the answers I was dying to know.

We crossed the road to the cemetery, a fitting place to be parked opposite a leprosy hospital, and Ramadan jumped the wall to open the locked steel gates. One of the permanent residents of the cemetery, that is one of those who are alive, jumped up from his slumber to show us around. We followed him as he pointed out the obvious and repeated time and time again “This is the Italian section. There is the Italian section. Over there… that is the Italian section.”

The cemetery was green and overgrown, except for the Italian section, and I found it peaceful.

We found one woman talking to her self and shouting at no one. As we got closer to her she glared at me and snarled, a shiver of fear danced inside me. “She is crazy” Ramadan told me. “She lives here and is dangerous so stay away”. I assumed it was either schizophrenia or PTSD… or both. And I was reminded again how hard life is for some people, especially here in Ethiopia.

On the way out I slipped our self appointed cemetery guide 20 birr.

Ramadan asked if there is something else I wanted to see, the museum? The gallery?

“A coffee ceremony” I told him.

He phoned his sister and asked her if we could visit and she could perform a traditional coffee ceremony for me. She obliged.

On the way there we picked up chat for everyone to chew (I felt sick just thinking about it), as well as some flavoured tobacco for the hookah pipe.

When we got there his sister was cooking for a male guest and she offered us some. Ramadan and I had already stopped for fatty, bony goat meat on soup-sodden injera which I was still struggling to keep down.

Ramadam kept trying to get me to chew more and more chat. I was starting to despise chat. He would rip the leaves from their stems, scrunch them into fist size balls and press them into my hands “chew chew” he demanded over and over again.

His sister’s handsome husband arrived home with one of his sister’s female friends. We all sat on cushions in the single-room brick house painted in blue and decorated in brightly coloured material studded with gold and silver diamantes. They scrolled through my photo’s of Namibia and wanted their own photos taken. Conversation was hard but they were all lively and hospitable. We spent hours there, and I learned to accept that in Ethiopia time moves slower.

His sister’s friend was the one who ended up preparing for the coffee ceremony while she reclined on a cushion chewing chat with her handsome husband.

First incense was lit to fill the room. Then the beans were roasted over a small fire pit with glinting hot coals. The coffee was then ground and boiled with water over the coals. Small shot-sized cups were half filled with sugar, half-filled with coffee and it was strong, too sweet but tasty.

Then the hookah came out and I smoked a heap of it, even though I don’t like smoking. The chat, the caffeine, the sugar, the tobacco and the heat of the day cooked together to make my head go light and the room spin. With the subtle high I was feeling I could finally relax enough to take it all in and appreciate the fact that I found myself in a small house in the east of Ethiopia getting high with some locals I’d just met.

When we finally left his sister’s place Ramadan wanted to go for beers. We went to the Harar brewery and drank four large beers which only cost me $1.70 altogether.  Ramadan told me he wanted to live in Canada and also said he was worried that there would be gay people in Canada. I told him if he wants to live there he has to change his attitude. I told him that he can’t think like that and expect to make friends there.

By the time the sun had set I had heat stroke, a high from chat, a come down from coffee and sugar and nausea from too much beer and Ramadan still insisted that I go to the edge of town for the feeding of the hyena’s. He insisted that it was a must and something I would regret missing. I reluctantly obliged. I was also motivated by a hope of meeting tourists there who would want to travel north with me.

But when we got to the edge of town it was just me, Ramadan and a single man with a bucket of sweating animal flesh. He wrapped the flesh on a stick for me and hyena’s would creep out from the shadows and rip the meat from the stick in my hand. They were shy animals, and so cute I could not understand their savage reputation. But with every bite from the stick my body would be thrust from balance and their strength was undeniable.

Finally I insisted on going home to bed and finally Ramadan said yes. Our half day tour had turned in to a twelve hour marathon and a really good day. I paid him more than twice the amount we had agreed on and the best thing was that when he said goodbye he didn’t ask for my number but just turned around and left.