The (not-so) Great Escape

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That evening I had slipped out the door and made it to reception without being spotted ad stopped by Mattias, Daniel and their friends. The worst of the gastro was over, though my body felt internally bruised and utterly shattered. I had the overwhelming urge to flee Bahir Dar, and that horrible feeling of being trapped and powerless. The hotel staff arranged for a bus to pick me up at 5am the next morning. It was going to take me all the way to Lalibela on a twelve hour journey I was not looking forward to.

I had slept heavily and undisturbed, with no further signs of illness.

At 5 am I stood in the empty semi-dark laneway waiting for my bus. I waited as the sun slowly crept into my little part of the world. I watched as the light woke shadows, crying babies and feral dogs. Finally the bus pulled up at my feet at 7am.

With the help of the driver and an obligatory tip I loaded my backpack on the top of the bus and hopped in to the front seat. Apart from the driver there was just one other young guy on board. The bus took off and I was instructed to pay way too much money, and I wasn’t polite about it either. I was so desperate to get out of the city that I paid it anyway.

The bus drove about 4 blocks and stopped. The driver, and the young guy, got off and left me sitting there alone so that they could buy chat. Then they sat and drank coffee. I got off and bought a plain bread roll. I hadn’t eaten at all the day before, and though I was still wary that my guts were still gurgling I figured I wouldn’t last 12 hours without eating something.

After half an hour at this stop we boarded the bus again. It drove about four blocks and pulled up in the same lane way out the front of my hotel where I had already spent two painful hours waiting.

“What are we doing?” I tried to ask. But neither man spoke English. The driver cut the engine and the two men just sat there waiting… for something… I never found out what. I got off the bus and tried to find the hotel staff to find out what was happening.

“They are probably just waiting for more passengers” I was assured by the hotel man who booked the bus.

It was 8:30 and the sun had finished warming up and was beginning to burn. I was about to board the bus for some shade relief when right in front of me the engine sputtered into action and it took off.

I stood dumbfounded, watching the back of the bus bumping up the lane away from me. My bag with almost all of my belongings was still tied to the roof and I watched helplessly as it sailed further and further away from me.

I plonked down on the side of the road, sitting in a heap of trash. I was conscious of the smell of shit from a source close by, but I didn’t care. I didn’t know what else to do. So I just sat there. I remember feeling fairly calm, all things considering. I wasn’t crying or angry or stressed out or even making a plan of action. I just sat there, staring at the rubbish and smelling the shit. I simply didn’t know what else to do.

People walked by occasionally, gawking at me of course. Probably mildly amused at the sight of a white (therefore automatically rich) woman sitting in a heap of crap in the burning sun on the side of the road. When they asked me for money I just stared back at them. ‘Are you for real?’ my expressions plainly read. Taking the whole sight in they didn’t linger for long.

I still had the bread roll in my hands. I didn’t have anything else to do so I started to eat it. I knew that it was in-polite to eat in public, but at that time I took a slither of satisfaction by saying ‘stick it’ to Ethiopian manners.

What felt like hours later, but was possibly only a half hour later I heard the throbbing of an engine and saw my bus, saunter back down the lane way. My bag was still tied to the roof, and I was surprised to see that it still looked full. It pulled up in front of me and the driver motioned for me to board the bus.

I should have felt an overwhelming flood of happiness and relief but instead I was utterly peeved.

I stayed sitting in the pile of trash and ate my bread roll.

The driver got off and stared at me. It was hard to tell if he was confused by the sight of me and the smell of crap, if he was finally feeling in patient and ready to leave or was mortified that I was eating in public.

“If you guys can shit and piss in the street and drive off with my luggage I can eat a frikkin bread roll”.

He cocked his head, his expression changed slightly but I still had no idea what it was telling me.

Reluctantly I rose, I wiped the crap off my butt and boarded the bus.

In my diary on the bus I wrote:

“This is what I am finding out about Africa. It will leave you alone, defenceless and sitting in shit… but in the end, eventually, you get picked up again.”

The time was 10:50. I had first waited for the bus at 5:00am.

At 11:30 the bus pulled over for a half hour breakfast stop.

You might initially think that 4 months in Africa would teach someone patience… it didn’t. More and more Africa was wearing me down. More and more I was turning into a short-tempered neurotic bitch. Less and less I was able to empathise with people, to smile kindly at them. And at least once a day I was throwing a tantrum from frustration.

As I sat slumped against the bus window I was beginning to calm down. I was wishing that I could take photos through the window but each scene flashed passed in seconds. Long enough to have a moving effect on me but not long enough to get my camera out.

They were simple scenes, like naked children playing outside stick huts or a line of girls trudging up the dirt hillside, hunched over with the weight of water barrels on their head or bundles of sticks and branches loaded across their backs. Behind them were rolling hills, as beautiful as they were in the The Sound of Music. I found it simultaneously calming and thrilling. While I enjoyed those images I also wondered how much energy I had left, I wondered how much longer I could stay in Africa. It felt like my time there was coming to an end.