A night on the town in Bahir Dar

On a bus again the next day!

This time it was an 11 hour bus trip and I was so over long days cramped on stinking buses that I had made my mind up to spend the ridiculous amount of money on domestic flights, even though I struggled to justify a $200 flight when all around me people were starving. But those bus trips dragged on and on and on.

On that trip north to Bahir Dar I was sitting beside a guy named Sami who talked non-stop. He also did that thing that I hate that many Ethiopians seem to do: revel in pointing out the obvious; “Look it is flat here! No mountains!”, “Look cattle!”, “See? A village!”

At lunch he told me to eat with him, he didn’t ask, he told me, which actually worked out well because Ethiopian food is designed to share, always too big for one person. Throughout the meal he threw typical Ethiopian commands at me: “Eat!” he would say when I stopped for a breath. “Finish your coffee!” he would say only a minute after it was brought out. “Wash your hands!” he told me before I had even had a chance to stand up. And at the end of the meal he insisted on paying which was a really nice change!

After lunch when it was hard to continue to act interested and amused I pretended to fall asleep. Twice he shook me and asked “Kai! Everything ok?” I would tell him that I was fine and just sleeping, and then I would again go through the dramatic performance of pretending that I could not keep my eyes open any longer.

At one time he asked if he could borrow my phone. I didn’t mind but then he used it to call his own phone so that he would have my number – so sneaky!

Bahir Dar was very different to Addis, the streets were wide and lined with palm trees, it was still too crowded but had a sense of order that Addis sorely lacked.

I had heard of some attractions there in Bahir Dar, the Lake Tana with its ancient isolated island monasteries and the Blue Nile which apparently was once grand but thanks to damming it is now a trickle of its former glory. For me Bahir Dar served mainly as a stop before Lalibela’s legendary churches carved out of cliffs and hidden underground and also a potential spot for watching an exorcism. I had read an article in Sydney’s The Sun Herald before leaving home which claimed that exorcisms still existed in the north of Ethiopia, and I sure as hell wanted to watch one!

At the bus stop as usual I was accosted by swarms of men begging for my business, promising to show me the best spots, the secret spots, divulge worlds of information and show me a good time.

Again I may as well have been blindfolded when I chose my tour guide, there isn’t really a way to tell who knows something and who knows nothing, who will hit on me aggressively and who knows when to back off.

The guide I chose was a guy in his early twenty’s named Daniel. He took me to a hotel where we arranged for him to pick me up at 9am the next morning to take me on a boat ride around Lake Tana and to the monasteries left over from the fourteenth century.  He wanted to take me out to dinner but I brushed him off pretending I had other plans. Mostly I didn’t think I could afford to keep buying two meals.

Walking down the palm lined streets, with the expansive lake on my left it felt like I was no longer in Ethiopia, but instead in the Sunshine Coast or some similar water side holiday town.

Two guys, also in their early twenties, stopped me, and I wish I remembered what it was they said that actually made me stop, because by that time I was practiced enough to be able to glide down the street pushing away the advancements of men like I was Moses parting the Red Sea.

But I let them walk with me and they made me laugh. They tried to get me to have dinner with them, and I lied, saying that I had plans with another man that night.

The boys departed company and one of them, Mattias, asked if I knew how to get back to my hotel. I said I knew but he tested me and it turned out I had no idea where I was or where I had to go. So he offered to walk me back. When we got to the hotel courtyard Daniel was sitting outside my room waiting for me. What is worse was that the two boys knew each other! I was mortified, caught in the act of lying to both of them!

So I decided to suck it up, accept their offer and spend a night out on the town with them both.

First we went to a little tin shed which was a woman’s home in a dark alley of a block of similar scruffy looking shacks. We sat on bricks and she fed us her home made tej which is a very thick syrupy and highly potent honey wine. I could only stomach a glass of it.

Apart from us there was one old drunk man, the woman of the house and her two adorable children and a young guy playing a make-shift instrument which was a single-stringed, square-shaped fiddle, made of crooked wood. He half sang and half spoke improvised words, in Amahric, yet it was pretty obvious he was singing about me. The small audience in the dimly lit shack clapped along to the rhythm and laughed and cheered in sync. I asked Mattias what he was singing about and he said that his words were ‘this white girl is beautiful. She has a black boyfriend and they make a very good couple’, referring to Mattias and I that is.

We left that bar and the boys took me to another one, much bigger this time, over crowded and overheated. We squeezed in to the slightest space at the back of the room and shared a crate to sit on.  The room was lively and cheerful and the energy infectious. In the empty circle in the centre of the room a man appeared playing the same instrument as the man in the bar. An Azmari I later found out he was called. He carried the same tune as the last man had and he too improvised his verses, like a stand-up comedian he would hone-in on someone and sing about them in the same high-pitched tone that was half talking and half singing. The crowd would erupt with laughter at the end of each verse, I didn’t understand a word but Mattias regularly translated for me. I knew that it would soon be my turn to be sung about, as the only foreigner in the room I was hard to miss. And sure enough it only took minutes for him to ask in English where I was from. He strung up that same rhythm and began to draw out his high pitched Amharic verse. It didn’t take long for him to say something funny because the whole crowd clutched their bellies in theatrical laughter, but it wasn’t cruel laughter. Mattias had his arm slung around my shoulders and laughed along with everyone else.

When the Azmari retreated back stage more music began and some professional dancers filled the circle. Again they performed the traditional Ethiopian dance of shoulder and chest bouncing and head shaking. The man in the centre reached through the crowd and dragged me in.

In front of a hundred clapping, cheering people I tried to mimic the Ethiopian way of dancing. I bobbed my shoulders and shook my breasts and wished the song would end.

When the heat and the energy got too much I told the boys I was ready to leave. I had a really good night and I was grateful to them for showing me a good time. But they weren’t ready to go home, and that meant that wouldn’t take me home either.

They insisted we go to the local nightclub, they insisted it was the best place to party in all of Ethiopia. I reluctantly agreed.

The club was actually pretty tragic, it was playing western music and no body danced the traditional Ethiopian dance, instead it looked like a trashy high school disco.

Mattias tried to kiss me. I pushed him away.

He apologised profusely and I forgave him.

But moments later he started again.

He put his hand on my knee and decalred: “I want to take you to meet my family. I will dress you in nice Ethiopian dress and we can have brown babies” he pleaded.

I excused myself and left.

He chased me down the stairs, out the door and up the street.

In the street he kissed me again and I pushed him as hard as I could.

“Fuck off!” I yelled and for the first time he stopped in his tracks. With his mouth and eyes wide open he had a look of horror on his face… “You said a bad thing!” he uttered in disbelief.

Not realising swearing was quite that offensive I apologised: “I am sorry to offend you, it was a bad word and I won’t say it again.”

And then he did it again, he lunged forward and planted his face into mine.

“Oh get fucked!” I yelled.

I stormed off, leaving him standing alone in the street in utter horror. I figured that if he could keep pouncing on me, I could keep swearing at him.

I was in my room for about 5 minutes before he knocked on my door.

“Go away!” I yelled.

“Kai! Kai! I missed the last bus home, I have no where to sleep”

He knocked and knocked and finally I opened the door.

“You can’t sleep here!” I told him.

But I have no where else to go, I live far out of town, I cannot sleep on the streets”.

“What about Daniel? Sleep at his house!”

“He is sleeping at his girlfriends tonight.”

“Stay with his girlfriend then.”

“I cannot. It is one room, no room for me.”

“Don’t you have friends here?”

“No”

“Well you can’t sleep with me.”

“I promise not to try and kiss you again”

“I don’t believe you!”

“I promise, we sleep with clothes on.”

“No way are we going to share a bed. Not tonight. Not ever.”

“I cannot sleep on the streets!”

“Fine! You know what, take this money and get a hotel room”.

“There will be no hotel room at this time of night!”

I told him I would try and find one for him.

We went to each of the 6 or so hotels in the area and each one was fully booked. ‘How?’ I wondered, ‘when I haven’t seen another tourist this whole time’!

I gave up, handed him money, twice as much as what I paid for my hotel room, and left: “you’ll have to just keep looking until you find one!”

I was annoyed and exhausted and I was angry at myself for actually feeling guilty that Mattias might be spending a night on the streets. I had to tell myself that with the money I gave him he could get a hotel room or a taxi home, but anyway, no way could he not have a friend in town that would let him stay there.

I couldn’t open the window because it backed onto the courtyard and there was no screen and no bars and I didn’t want Mattias climbing on in. It was hot and airless. There were at least 8 mosquitos buzzing around the room and the bed was full of fleas. My phone rang and rang and rang that night. I didn’t answer it, I just put it on silent and eventually fell asleep to the sound of it vibrating on the floor beside my bed.

That night is how I remember Ethiopia still to this day.