More men!

I had to get up at 4am the next morning to catch the bus back to Addis.

The footpath was crammed with sleeping bodies, one after the other in neat straight rows. I decided that they needed this order because there were so many people trying to fit in, like a sardine can or a supermarket shelf. I had to walk in the middle of the road as there wasn’t even room for my feet amongst the tightly packed rows of people.

It was a winding road back around the mountain sides. The woman in front of me started to vomit, which set off the woman behind me. The humid air in the bus filled with a pungent waft of bile and I was sure I would be next.

The driver did not stop for the sick women, he just handed them both, and myself, a plastic bag. When their bags were full the women pegged them out the window to splatter on the road beside shanty houses and working donkeys.

At our lunch stop the driver sat with me and offered me some of his grizzly goat meat and bitter injera. I gagged at the thought. It looked not unlike the vomit that I had watched fly through the air and spill on the road. He bought me a coffee and asked me if I had a boyfriend.

When we boarded the bus he told me to sit up the front beside him. I pretended I didn’t understand and took my old seat in the second row from the back. For the rest of the trip he stared at me in the rear-vision mirror and tried to catch my eye. On the few occasions that he did he raised his eyebrows suggestively and I thought that now I was sure to need that sick-bag.

Even though the driver would not stop for the sick women he would stop to get off the bus to make calls and buy chat. His private breaks, along with the fifty police checks made the trip back to Addis take about three hours longer than it needed to.

The next day back in Addis I walked to Meskal Square to buy a bus ticket north, and who should I bump in to – John! The annoying guy from the first day who followed me around and would not let me go. He was sitting 50 meters ahead of me on a fence as though he knew I was coming all along. But there was no where I could turn and I had to eventually pass him. How, I wondered, in a city of over 4 million people, did I manage to bump into him on my first, and only, day back in Addis?

He looked me up and down hungrily and I cringed from his creepiness.

He insisted on walking me home, I tried to say no but he followed me anyway. I was quite rude to him. He kept telling me that I was beautiful and very fashionable (ha!) I would reply to his compliments with “oh yeah”. As we walked he would point out the obvious, one of my pet hates is being told the obvious, “this is a river! This is a supermarket!” I wanted to poke him in the eye with my index finger. He told me that he was going to get bats tattooed on his arm just like mine.

After half an hour of his nattering and my cold, rude replies he stopped and said to me:

“Don’t judge a book by its cover. I want to be your friend. I don’t want money or anything from you, just to be your friend”.

My heart sank with guilt and I softened, determined to at least be polite to the poor guy. Though it wasn’t his appearance that turned me off him (the fact he only had five teeth for example), I was rude because he was too persistent and I assumed that he wanted sex.

But when the conversation turned to sex I became certain that my first instinct was right – he did just want sex.

“Do you like sex?” he asked me.

“errrr… Sure… I guess… depends who with… with my boyfriend yes…. Actually, I have only ever had sex with my boyfriend”.

I added, trying to sound pure and give the impression that his chance of having sex with me was less than 0!

“Sex is what I like. Food – no! Food is just to shit. Sex is what I live for!”

“Not me… I like food” I said in retort.

“Sex with white women is different” he continued.

I rolled my eyes, the number of men I’d met in Africa who’d started conversations like this.

“Ten years ago I slept with a German woman” He went on “She told me what to do, and I did it… like slave. Now I am good at pleasing women”.

He topped that off with:

“You like to tell men what to do!”

“More out of bed than in bed” I said to amuse myself more than him.

He looked at me, waiting for my acceptance of his offer.

“I only have sex with my boyfriend… no other men!” I told him straight.

By this time we had reached the internet café I had planned to go into so that he wouldn’t know which hotel I was in, though it was close enough to my hotel for him to probably be able to figure it out.

“Goodbye” I said to him and began to walk away.

“I want to have sex with a white woman!” he called after me.

“Good luck finding one, I hope you do” I replied.

He chased after me.

“You come here often?” he was referring to the internet place. “I will come here everyday to look for you.

“I am leaving tomorrow for Bahir Dar” I reminded him.

“But you will be back, so I will come here every day looking for you”

“That is insane” I said. “I don’t know when I will be back, or even if I will be back, so you may come everyday and never find me”

“No matter! I come everyday anyway”

“Do as you want, but don’t count on seeing me again”. I said, knowing full well I will never be back at that internet café again.