Visa Run

My visa was to expire, so I fought traffic to Nyayo house to renew it. The officer gave me a five day extension for some reason, and told me to come back in a week to get the extension. 

So I did, and the same officer told me he couldn't renew and I had to leave the country. I wasn't to put out at the thought of a last minute trip to Ethiopia, but the officer's incompetence was annoying.

So I bought a ticket, packed a tent, and planned to take public trans from the airport to a nearby park and hike around for a week. Two hours in traffic meant I arrived at the airport late, and was barely in time for my flight. All was well until immigration, where the official was very disturbed by the irregular stamps from my recent visits to Nyayo house. I explained that I didn't understand any more than him. Well, he hemmed and hawed talked to his supervisor, told me I wasn't traveling, said I would be arrested, and eventually let me through. I was the last one to board.

I made contact with the MCC regional reps, and headed to their house. I was thankful to not try to figure things out completely cold. Bruce and Rose were incredibly hospitable, and I quickly felt at home. They had a trip to visit a development site, so I tagged along on the ten hour drive north. We left before dawn, crossed Addis, and golden fields of teff and wheat as the sun rose. The fields were a patchwork of the small-holder farmers' individual stakes, climbing the steeper slopes with regular terraces.

These cattle were unperturbed by our land rover and had no intention of sharing the right of way.

From Woldia I headed west to Lalibela, a world heritage site in the mountains. I found a bus well before dawn, and my seat mate regaled me with tradition and history on the nine hour drive.

I arrived in Lalibela, wandered around the town, then ran up the closest ridge to catch the sunset.

The main attraction for most is the monolithic rock-hewn churches (I was at least as excited about mountains). But the churches were very impressive, carved downward from the surface out of the volcanic rock. Each founded upon and hollow from the living stone in a single piece

Hailu, my guide, was the son of a politician in the oppressive communist regime, and grew up with his Grandfather, the head priest of St. Georges (Pictured above). He lived in the 200 year old traditional priest's hut he's standing in front of. Some of the friends he played hide and seek with in tombs and secret passageways are priests and nuns in the churches now.

 The history of the churches is shrouded in mystery and intrigue, congruent with most of Ethiopia's long, rich past. (For example, the churches were carved in the 12th century, hundreds of miles inland. Included in the relief carvings, windows, and decorations are symbols from around the world: swastika from India, plenty of connections to Jerusalem, Maltese cross from Europe (the same one worn by the crusaders of the same time period) among others. And no one knows for sure how the connections to the rest of the world came about) I was awed at the continuity of the culture and religion of the area. Axum was founded around 500 BC, and there has been almost contiguous civilization since then. If you ever have an afternoon to invest, Ethiopian history is well worth a bit of study.

After touring the churches I headed up the mountain with Abe and Tobalo, two guys who befriended me. We hiked hard for four hours, and made it to the top of the plateau just as it started to rain. Above the sheer barrier of the ragged escarpment was heather and green fields, dotted with cattle. I was thankful that they had found a friend of a friend with a spare house. It would have been very wet to sleep under the stars as I originally planned. Our host welcomed us with a coffee ceremony, replete with roasted barley and burning frankincense.

The rain slowed, so I went to look at the sunset, and was rewarded with one of the brightest rainbow's I have ever seen.

These kids were intrigued by me, and asked that I take a picture of them. There was a fifth who fled the picture, but rejoined the group to look at the result.

I got up before dawn and sat on a rock and watched the sun rise behind the peak of Abuna Yosef. The air was so wonderful, it was even more pleasant than usual to meditate and pay attention to the sensation of breathing. The hike back to town was long and hot. I looked back towards the ridge we'd just come from, missing the cool, clear mountain air, fragrant with the smell of heather moorland.

Ethiopian air has an excellent network of cheap flights around the country, so I turned a 12 hour bus ride into a 35 minute flight.

Mt. Kenya

I've had some pretty amazing experiences recently, but am feeling remarkably uninspired in writing about them. But here are some photos of places of beauty worth far more than any number of my words.

My friend and Rosedale roommate, David Wolfer, came to visit from Cape Town where he is earning his MPH. He decided we needed to climb Mt. Kenya on a Thursday afternoon, so we grabbed some gear and set off at 0530 the next morning to attempt a 16000 ft summit. We drove upcountry, dealt with the hassle at the gate and set out across the heather.

(The guard was shockingly helpful, but recent regulation changes made payment a challenge. Note: Kenya National Parks no longer take cash, you must pay by M-Pesa or bank transfer. This can be challenge when there's no cell service, no banks within an hour drive, and you have no money in M-Pesa)

We hiked for four and a half hours, crossing 12 km along the ridge above this gorge, waterfall, and mountain lake. Not shabby for a hike from 2950 - 4000 m (10,000-13,000 ft). Especially for David, who had come from an elevation of 10 ft just a week before.

The altitude proved quite exhausting so we camped just below Mintos Hut around 13k ft. On the side of the ridge overlooking the gorge, I could hear the waterfall from its plunge out of lake Michaelson two or three kilometers away. On the other side it was completely, utterly silent. No distant bass from matatus, or roar of a highway. No wind, birds, insects, or even crawling ants. I have only experienced this two other times in my life, and it is an odd sensation (or lack thereof.)

David lay on his back for a while re-oxygenating his blood, and I sat on some rocks and watched the sun set behind our goal - Point Lenana (the slightly rounded peak in the center. To the right are Batian and Nellion, the true peaks, but these require climbing gear. Another day...)

Dawn broke to reveal a frost encrusted world well above the clouds

So we continued up the ridge, past Lake Michaelson (on whose shores I intend camp next time.)

By 1500 we reached Austrian Hut and set up camp. It was quite cloudy, but I struck off alone to the summit in hopes of a clearing. I was blessed with a few minutes of stellar view of the surrounding crags and glacier.

(which I got to crawl inside of - Visit Ice Cave: Check).

It sleeted a bit during the night. A bit more than we realized, and we woke up to white out and four inches of snow.

The hike to the peak was a bit harrowing, traversing an ice covered hogback ridge with several hundred feet down on either side.

But we made it! And down the other side. We didn't even get lost in the fog and fall into a crevasse when we ditched the trail and went scrambling through a trackless, snow covered boulder field with twenty feet of visibility. Topo maps are a wonderful invention, but I need to get some with higher resolution.

And I was elated to find a snow-melt waterfall to bathe in.

Musings on a Matatu

Rural Kenya is cohesive. As Debbi commented 'the worlds are so scrambled in the city, it's hard to know which you are in.' The first and third worlds collide, juxtaposing development and poverty, luxury apartment towers and odoriferous slums, Prados and bodas (with equally abominable drivers). The contrast in jarring. The poverty which is Reality for most of the world's population attenuates to statistics by the time it penetrates the economic bubble of the US. Here the bubble usually ends at your car window.
I'm constantly reminded of my privilege, and the distance between my existence and that of the children yelling 'mzungu!' as I pass. Nairobi is a city of over 3 million, without the systems that make a city livable in the US. Sure there's healthcare, electricity, and water (most of the time) and people usually urinate all in one place. But from road drainage to banking systems things don't just work. So everyone hurries, clawing their way through traffic and bureaucracy (with no help from laws or shared understanding). Governance is superior to most in Sub-Saharan Africa, but it still seems to exist primarily to line the pockets of the Mkubwa at the top. And when it's in no one's best interest to work within the broken system, they waste their striving like the donkeys pulling at 90 degrees from each other while hitched to the same cart, and thereby causing a five kilometer jam on the new superhighway.

Outside the city the world is different. There's perhaps a greater gap between me and the pedestrians I bike past on the 'rough road', but I know what to expect. People are working, eating (or not some days), laughing (especially at me), and passing through time at the same rate. But unlike me, 'they are on friendly terms with time, and the thought of beguiling or killing it does not enter their heads.'* I suspect the concept of seizing it is similarly foreign. And it fits together: the clear air, hot sun, strong bodies. Life is hard, the rains haven't come in two years for some people, but there's always a way. Relatives help out, school fees are eaten (classes will be there next year), cows are sold, and life goes on.
Until it doesn't. Some parts of Kenya are experiencing severe famine, and people die. But somehow that fits too. African culture does not share the crippling western obsession with continuing to breathe. Death is sad for the people left, but it's a part of life. And life means hanging hand-washed clothes on the bushes before walking to church along dusty roads. It's the driver of the motorcycle carrying 150 kgs of charcoal, piled on the back and hanging off the sides. It's the mama who tills, plants, and weeds by hand, in hope of a harvest to provide for the child tied on her back throughout the process. And the older brother who sits watching the family livestock isn't pining for the end of the day, he is living.

* From Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen, the pen name of Karen Blixen, an early settler in the Nairobi area