A number of people have tried but been unable either to "follow" the fascinating blog of my travels http://www.whingeingbanker.blogspot.com/ , or post comments, or see more than 3 of my 29 (29!) postings.

"A number of people" I imagine you scoffing cynically. "A number of people", I repeat doggedly in the face of your cynicism. Well? One is a number isn't it? Nay, in my fumbling attempts at humour I do myself an injustice. A significant number of people have made one or more of the above complaints.

This is entirely the fault of Google and their henchpersons referred to earlier in my blog. Incompetent ninnies.

Seeking to get to the bottom of this, and possibly a bit of titillation, I myself tried both to comment upon and follow another blog published on blogspot. That of Peter ("Lord") Wilson, a notorious City rake. If you're interested, it is http://www.bowlerhatsandflatcaps.blogspot.com/ It's about killing things. Have a look.

Now, I am as computer-savvy* as the next 60 year-old luddite, but I will be damned (Sir) if I could get it to work. And it is not only I. Peter brought in the big guns in the shape of his 14 year-old boy. Ha! If a 14 year-old can't figure it out nobody can. So there. I had been feeling down, disillusioned, despondent, disheartened, depressed and demoralised at the absence of any but a few comments, and any but one "follower". But now I have a new spring in my step, and (in the immortal words of Arthur Freed who put them into the mouth of Gene Kelly) a song in my heart, and (as he went on) I am ready for love.

But, and here is the rub, Michelle my Canadian travelling companion has succeeded both to follow and to comment. On the other hand she is both young and a recognised genius. That last bit is true, even if it is only recognised by me. On yet another hand, she is a North American - but then (in the immortal words of Joe E. Brown in Some Like it Hot, when he found that his fiancee was in fact a man played by Jack Lemmon) nobody is perfect. Apart of course from the wives of any man still reading this rambling drivel.

On the subject of Michelle I might add, in response to her specific request, that she is in fact 3 inches taller and 30 pounds lighter than she actually is in real life.

To the first and second of the above complaints (remember them? I do realise it was some time ago) I have no answer. To the third it is only necessary to go to the foot of the first page, click on "Older Posts" and keep clicking until you get back to Cairo. Duh. Do not (I repeat do not) attempt to read them in reverse order. Marek did so and it seems to have done strange things to his head.

Adieu, as I often say in my facteurp (see earlier postings) French.

Chris (don't miss the P.S)

* P.S. And why (a number of people have asked me) are there no photos on my blog? Just because. OK?

Gieves and Hawkes in the Simien mountains.

We arrived at the grimly poor town of Debark, our base for hiking in the Simien mountains. The altitude is 2,800 metres (9,250 feet), which is 400 metres higher than the highest ski resort in the Alps. It's cold and the grinding poverty is palpable. I don't know what they eat here, but there is nothing to speak of in the grey and dirty market except for onions and cookware made from beaten-out oil drums, spread out in heaps on the muddy ground and ineffectually protected from the elements by rudimentary structures of eucalyptus poles and ragged flapping plastic. Everything is dusty and grimy including the ragged barefoot children, but I fancied the atmosphere was one of determination rather than despair. One man's entire business seemed to be trying to sell one pair of second-hand trainers, but at least he wasn't begging.

But still wherever we go people wave, blow kisses, kiss their thumbs and race the truck in bare feet at altitudes where just walking leaves some of our party breathless.

These mountains are really something. Unfeasibly large sheer-sided rocks, waves, corrugations, egg-box patterns, dizzying drops and vast walls of rock filling one's entire field of vision.

Here the mule outdoes the Hi-lux as the chief mode of transport. I tried riding one. It was a bit like trying to have a conversation with a profoundly deaf person or, better, an autistic child (in this context I will make no mention of Marek - who, having now read my attempts to make him famous, has become uncaharacteristically taciturn with me. He'll come round, I know he loves me). I tried riding a horse too – an ancient pack animal with no teeth. My sympathy that such a poor old creature was still in harness was tempered by the consideration that in most other countries she would have been dog meat years ago. At least here she still had some commercial value. Her tack was made from string and bent wire. This old lady had made love to so many donkeys that she was bow-legged and probably thought of herself as a mule. She certainly behaved like one.

The truck is very inefficient at these altitudes which, combined with the many steep inclines, gives us plenty of time to marvel at the panoramas which greet us at every hairpin turn. We spent two nights camping in the Simien mountains. At the first site, a late-arriving group of tourists made the mistake of asking Marek to move his tent so they could pitch theirs in a neat group. I could have warned them not to mess with a Pole who had just finished a long struggle with aluminium and canvas in less than hospitable conditions.

The second camp was at 3,600 metres, over 12,000 feet. This is now 50% higher than Val Thorens and above the height at which it is a disciplinary offence in the RAF not to use oxygen in unpressurised aircraft. It was miserably cold from the moment the sun set, and it froze hard overnight. Most of us were equipped for the desert and had not expected such conditions in Africa. Even fully-dressed and with a borrowed blanket and knitted hat to supplement my lightweight sleeping bag, I was awake all night with the cold. I have already told you (several postings back) how Marek greeted the dawn.

In order to trek in these mountains our group of 18 had to have 2 guides and 3 armed scouts. My group set off for a peak at 4,400 metres (over 14,500 feet) but the pace proved too much for a 60 year-old former wage slave. Apparently my maximum safe heart rate is 160. Thinking I might be overdoing things I stopped to check – 176. From then on I made regular stops and saw the rest of the group gradually disappear ahead of and above me. I was still a few (OK, a lot of) metres short of the top when I met them coming down, and silently affected a pained expression and a severe limp as a possible justification for my performance. All a bit embarrassing for a newly-qualified ski instructor who had been (very subtly) bragging about his familiarity with high altitudes.

It didn't seem to faze Pierre though, and he's a year older than me – but then he's always been a clean-living man. Not only that but let me tell of one of the scouts, who hung back to keep me company. During one of our breathless conversations (I refer to myself only, his conversation was annoyingly breathful) without more than a few words in common, he communicated to me that we were both born in the same month and year. Smug bastard (forgive that remark, it was only made for effect, he was lovely guy and shared his modest rations with me). I was dressed in full safari gear and butch-looking hiking boots bought only recently at Black's Leisure - in both Chiswick High Road and their sale. I also carried an avalanche probe - not that there was any snow, but because I thought it gave me a rather professional panache, as well as something to lean on. He, on the other hand, was dressed in plastic sandals without socks and, rather improbably you may think, a two piece pin-striped City suit. This is the gospel truth. I didn't embarrass him by asking to see the label but, although ill-fitting and very worn, it was well-made and elegantly cut. It could well have been Gieves & Hawkes. I really should have asked him to show me that label, it would have made a much better story - damn. All in all, as you will have gathered, I felt a bit of a twat.

Fear ye not, there is more self-pitying bleating to come.

Chris

Poor and meaningless content?

Google and their henchpersons have rejected my blog as a medium for their advertising. Here's why:

"It's our goal to provide our advertisers sites that offer rich and meaningful content . . . . . We believe that currently your site does not fulfill this criteria".

This criteria? This bloody criteria? I would accept "These criteria", or even "This criterion" but not sheer bloody illiteracy. Why is there never a pedantic Polish grammarian around when you need one? And why is there no bloody preposition before "our advertisers"? And why don't they learn to spell "fulfil" properly?

They go on to say: "Your site does not comply with Google AdSense policies or webmaster quality guidelines." OK . . . well . . . now . . . . I might have to concede that one. I may have been a little desensitised to profane language as a result of the company I have been keeping. But it's still a load of fucking bullshit - simply speaking - for example - et cetera, et cetera.

So if you want to give something to Susan Aitchison to get bright Ethiopian kids off the streets and into university, you're going to have to put your hands in your pockets and get in touch with me. Seriously, if you are looking for something to do with your undeserved wonga, and if you want to see exactly who it goes to, and exactly how it changes their desperate life chances, and exactly how it will help improve the economy of a shit-poor country, and if you want to know that every single penny ends up in the kids' empty hands - give it a go.

You're not going to live forever, you'll probably die with money in the Bank, and if there's an afterlife you may be struggling to find some good deeds you can lay claim to when you reach the pearly gates (the gates of heaven that is, not the gates of Purley). When the recording angel looks in the direction of your trembling pointing finger and sees an Ethiopian doctor doing something marvellous, who otherwise would have been cleaning shoes and probably dying in the gutter - he's going to look at you and break into a radiant smile and clasp you to his bosom.

Where else can you get all of that for a few paltry quid? There are no tax breaks yet, but it should get UK charity status soon. If not, in the immortal words of Victor Kiam (google him if you're under 50, or some sort of foreign Johnny), I'll give you your money back. I wonder if he's wishing he had done a bit more for his fellow man while he had the chance. Too late now Victor me old mate.

Chris

Ethiopia from scratch (omitting the stuff I've already bored on about)

Let's wind back to the day we crossed from Sudan into Ethiopia. And get some sense and order into this thing.

But first a brief Marek-style digression:

- this load of old cobblers has had 2478 hits so far - from 17 countries. Please keep looking in, and clicking on the ads (if and when they ever pop up). Some Ethiopian kids will be grateful, and you will encourage me to keep on spouting. A double whammy at no cost to you!

- Marek saw an early draft of this posting. His first comment: "Nothing special" (what did I care?). His second: "This is bullshit - simply speaking" (I cared even less). His third: "Why do you make so many grammatical mistakes?" (that gave me pause for thought - English is his 5th language). Finally: "I am giving this work a school grade of F. F for fucked-up". There you go, the 6 week delay in this posting is his fault for shaking my confidence. See if you can find any grammatical errors now you Polish whotsit. Apart from the deliberate ones of course. (You see, that last sentence did not contain a verb. That was deliberate - it's obvious to anyone but a grammatical nazi).

- Pierre asked me "What means this word Marek say 1,000 times a day"
"What word?"
"It sound like '. . . facteurp . . .' he say it all the time" Have you got it yet? Click on an ad to celebrate (if you can see any yet).

Right, back to business.

Crossing from Sudan to into Ethiopia was an experience I want to record before it is lost forever to my failing memory. We spent an inordinate amount of time at the border in dust and heat before we were able to leave Sudan. The Sudanese bureaucracy is Kafkaesque. Apart from a visa and a police registration certificate, I now have 8 Sudanese stamps in my passport. Once through all that we had to endure the Ethiopian immigration formalities. Much less taxing, but time-consuming all the same. It was strange to be in a typically African temporary “building” in a desert frontier station, but with the most sophisticated electronic identity-checking equipment I have yet encountered.

You'll think I'm exaggerating, but really there is no need to exaggerate when describing the Ethiopian landscape. Within 15 minutes of crossing the border, we passed from desert to rolling green countryside reminiscent of Cornwall. It conjured up the moment in the Wizard of Oz when the picture changes from monochrome to Technicolour©. I suppose it is no coincidence that the ancient Ethiopians struck their boundaries where the topography changed from fertile agricultural land to worthless desert. That was before anybody cared much about oil. As we climbed into the mountains, the landscape changed from Cornwall through Scotland to the Alps.

Ethiopia has produced many of the world's fastest runners. Altitude must be a factor, developing the hearts and lungs of people, particularly those whose lifestyle involves hard physical activity – viz. everybody. Again and again barefoot boys raced the truck and were easily able to keep up with us for long distances - or even pass us on some stretches.

I have to say it again. Nice people. Children run to the side of the road to greet or gawp at us as we pass. Everybody smiles delightedly, or waves or kisses their thumbs at us- a big old dirty British truck a long way from home.

After a month in Arab countries, and despite the almost shockingly green landscape and cool climate, this is real Africa at last. Women with loads on their heads, naked children driving bony cattle, woollen cloaks over bare legs, ragged clothing which is indefinably African and that constant feature of real black Africa – people walking. In the middle of nowhere, walking, walking, walking.

Our first base in Ethiopia was the mountain town of Gonder, once the seat of Royalty and fabulously-rich but now rather the opposite. It's a nice enough place though, situated in a bowl at over 2,200 metres. Nestling is probably the right word. There's a lot of ancient stuff – ruined palaces and fortifications – and one church spared by invading Muslims when they occupied the town centuries ago. You can google them if you want – I won't.

The sharp contrasts with Sudan were not finished though. Suddenly thunder cracked and a huge downpour ensued. We can all probably remember the greatest deluges we have experienced. This came third on my personal scale, and I have been on the planet for 60 years. And here comes the cliché: it was lashing down. But the really big deal was that only that morning, not far down the road, we had been kicking our heels in the arid heat and dust of a squalid Sudanese desert town.

It was actually cold here. So much so that an open fire was lit for us in the bar of our hotel as we congregated for our first beers for a long while. This being Africa, there was no nonsense with kindling or firelighters. A liberal application of diesel and some plastic bottles produced a blazing fire in seconds.

Down in the town, I engaged the services of a shoe shine boy. We agreed a price of 10 Birr (40 pence). Job done, he demanded 40 Birr insisting that he had quoted 20 Birr . . . . per shoe! Either, times being hard, his normal clientele can only afford to have one shoe shone at a time, or there are a lot of one-legged men here. I had intended to pay him 20 birr in any event, but in the circumstances he got 10. I doubt I will be hearing from his lawyer.

The next amusing little scam went like this:
- A boy approached offering a SIM card for about 6 quid. The normal price is nearer 2, but you have to find a telecoms office, bring your passport, 2 photos and a completed application form whilst the counter clerk takes private phone calls, converses with other customers, argues with his boss, fiddles with the aircon control, switches off his brain as a blond western woman in shorts walks past the window, and other T.I.A. delaying tactics.
- It was evening and the kid's proposal would save me a lot of time and hassle the following day, so I agreed on the basis that he first installed it and showed me it was working.
- He did, making great play of breaking it out of the backing card. I paid him and the transaction was complete.

Next day I started getting text messages from a Scandinavian lady. I don't understand Swedish (if that's what it was) but some of the words were international – if you know what I mean. At first I took this as an expression of anger, but smiley faces and closer reading suggested that she was communicating deep affection (at the very least) to someone of the contrary gender.
Clearly the card was lost, stolen or discarded and after a couple of weeks of test messages from the phone company it was blocked. I had to jump through the hoops and pay another 2 quid after all.

Danny our Anglo-Ecuadorian driver laid on an educational trip to the premises of a local business. After two dry weeks in Sudan he was able to demonstrate his impressive ability literally to organise a piss-up in a brewery. On the way back (no. Danny wasn't driving) we found a great little music place in town. If it's not called a shebeen, it should be. A rudimentary building in which we were the only westerners (and very probably the only ones out on the town that night). It was clearly a popular venue with the locals, most of whom were traditionally dressed. The entertainment largely comprised percussion performed by a matronly lady sitting cross-legged on the floor kicking up a storm with 4 drums. A couple of young men strolled around playing one-stringed fiddles and collecting small tips. We got some valuable instruction in the Ethiopian style of dancing – which I will happily demonstrate to anyone who cares to see it. One of those great nights out.

At a historic site the next day, a group of Germans took some photos of me whilst I was on the phone to Shelagh. According to my companions it was not my hangover that interested them but my pose. In my crumpled travel clothes, with my cheap cotton knock-off of a panama hat pulled down over my eyes and my hands cupped in front of my face to shield the phone from the wind, I appeared the very picture of furtiveness. I feel quite proud of that – one does aspire to be a colourful character.

The best way to get around Gonder is by motorised rickshaw (tuc-tuc). They cost nothing, and I am wondering whether it would be possible to hire one with a driver for a month's tour of the country. Or I might just stick with that Toyota hi-lux I'm going to get.

En route from Gonder to the more remote parts of the hinterland, we passed numerous roadbuilding sites. Men sitting at the controls of huge machines. Women in twos or fours carrying large stones on stretchers. I have no further comment on that particular subject.

All along our route new roadbuilding is going ahead alongside the old dirt roads. It will all be different in a year or two, but for now the old rutted track takes us through the centre of villages and even farmyards, and it's all surrounded by a green landscape increasingly reminiscent of the nicer parts of England. Except for . . . well, well, there's another Chinese factory.

Here, looking like a line of motherless ducklings, comes a convoy of six brand new shiny red trucks carrying roadstone. Is that script along the sides Amharic? Nope – it's Chinese. The manufacturer's name is Sinotruck – a Chinese company of course.

How long before the kids here are learning Chinese at school, wearing Chinese branded clothing and listening to Chinese pop music? A new, possibly more benign, colonial era seems to be beginning. I hope the Africans will get a fair share of the benefit. At least it is increasingly worthwhile for kids to study and train for the skilled jobs the Chinese will create. It seems probable that part of what has held African countries back for so many years is that there has been little incentive to sacrifice time and money developing skills for which there is no job market.

In remote poor areas there are frequently packs of children wearing over their ragged clothing the bright pastel shirts which pass for a rudimentary school uniform, walking to or from school. You can be certain some benign foreigners are supporting these schools. Sometimes there are notices: the subsidies may come from the EU, or UNESCO, or the Norwegian Government (who, rather than spread their foreign aid budget so thinly around the world that it makes no measurable difference, have chosen to focus mainly on Ethiopia). If the Chinese get in on the act, and they may already have done so, the Western powers will have to get used to steeply-declining influence in these countries whose land and natural resources are going to be so vital to the world economy in the future. The not-too-distant future.

Look, there go more Sinotrucks. And those diggers, tankers, earthmovers, rollers, bulldozers - all Chinese.

Our road again takes us through the heart of farming communities. No tractors, just mules. It struck me, looking out over the fields in this green and pleasant land, how much it looked like 18th century landscape pictures of England. And then the reason hit me: everything that happens in these fields and pastures is achieved with muscle – animal or human. There is no mechanization yet, but it is coming – from China.

What will happen then to all these people whose work and strength is needed to farm the land now? One high probability is an increasing tidal wave of humanity pouring into the cities, boosting their slum populations to frightening levels. Meanwhile here’s a statisitic which shocked me: in 1980 the population of Ethiopia was under 40 million. Today it is over 80 million. In a society where there is no welfare provision for people too old to work, long-term food security comes from having children. That can only be cured by increasing affluence, but rapid population growth engenders only poverty. Scary isn’t it?

Further along our route, the landscape is lovely. Groves of trees beside winding streams and neat patchwork fields give way to craggy mountains and steep-sided volcanic plugs creating a fantasy scene scene of the kind one might only expect to see in a childrens' picture book.

More (and very probably more) anon.

Chris

Click on the ads. Please click on the ads.

I've signed up to allow some ads on my blog.

I don't know what they are going to be about, or how relevant they will be . . .

BUT I will get a penny or two every time you click, and it will all go to the Susan Aitchison Scholarship Fund.

If you haven't read the relevant posting below, please do so.

Whether the ads interest you or not, please keep clicking. Go on, you know you want to.

Chris

It wasn't my fault this time.

I promise I will get some discipline into this thing, and provide some sort of chronological account of where I went and wot I done. Eventually. But first there is something I want to get down. Like Marek I am developing the habit of having so much I urgently need to say that I can rarely get to the point or communicate anything of any interest or value. Anyway, I promised earlier I would tell you about this incident.

Oh, by the way (the preface to a typical Marek aside) it seems nobody can post comments on this blog - or only those with exceptional IT skills. Never you mind, like Marek I am now stuck on transmit and nothing will stop me - even the realisation that nobody is listening (or in this case reading). And, by the byway, somebody is reading. So far I have had 1,909 hits from 11 countries. So there.

Somebody who did manage to comment advised me to beware of hubris. I think this was a reference to my suggestion that my luck (hitherto rather bad) was about to change. It didn't. And here's why:

Some bugger stole my iPhone. Oh no he didn't! Oh yes he bloody did! It wasn't just the money (and on close scrutiny of my insurance policy I wasn't going to get back even 10% of the replacement cost), it was all my contacts, diary, music, apps and the sheer sodding aggro of putting it all back together. Yes, yes. I know: you can back all this stuff up into a bloody cloud or something. But I couldn't - although I'm damn well going to learn now.

As someone younger and wiser than me pointed out, bringing valuable stuff to Africa implies the acceptance of a certain probability of theft. But it wasn't my bloody fault. And the thief carefully selected MY phone out of all the tempting and valuable kit he could just as easily have laid his hands on. I'm not going to bang on about whose fault it was. It was a forgivable (and forgiven) mistake. The chap who let the villain on the truck, against all the rules, has apologised nicely, he can't afford to cover my uninsured losses, and he is an exceptionally good guy. And we came to an arrangement which distributed the pain in a manner we both concluded was reasonable. But read on - he's not going to lose out.

The police (whose investigative skills and persistence I now admire so much) arrived and demonstrated yet another useful policing skill. A bystander who must have witnessed the theft denied having seen or knowing anything. The police took him aside for the briefest of moments, and when they returned he was ashen-faced and had told them everything they needed to know. I was a pinko until I came to Ethiopia, but now I will give my vote to any party who is tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime - and also promises to kick the shit out of any scumbag who nicks my stuff.

Again the police explained that they were 100% certain they would get it back. They now knew who it was, and that he had left his workplace and disappeared. Oh me of little faith. I tried to write off in my mind any hope of recovery by means of the application of liberal amounts of beer and, when that ran out, neat vodka. It worked - for a while. The next day my fellow travellers fell into two camps: those who greeted me jovially with much back-slapping, and those who would not meet my eye. I genuinely could not remember half of the things I said and did until I was reminded. They were, in general, not good things. I do recall having to be physically restrained and a bottle prised from my fingers as I attempted to murder a sneering passer-by who looked just like the sort of chap who might steal a phone. Such are the effects of stress.

Back to the boys in blue. They were mystified by my request for a crime report to pass on to my insurers. There wasn't going to be an insurance claim. They were going to get my phone back. I accepted that the guy could not evade them for long (thank God for ID cards. It is only miscreants who need fear their effectiveness in maintaining law and order), but I opined that he would have sold the phone long before they got him. "No problem" quoth the sergeant allocated to my case (as interpreted by Dasta - and yes, I will get round to Dasta eventually) "he will tell us who he sold it to, and if that guy sold it on he will also co-operate fully". I believed him - particularly when I saw a handcuffed "crime person" in the yard with a large surgical dressing on his face. I was so angry I asked if I could attend the interrogation when they had their man. I was politely told that it might prove a little too disturbing for a westerner. Jolly good, I say. No more bleeding hearts for me. Africa sure toughens a man up.

I won't keep you in suspense. This time there is a happy ending. It took 4 weeks for the police to nail the blackguard and recover the phone. Imagine leaving your job, your home, family, friends and the town you have probably never previously set foot outside, and hiding out for 4 weeks with a phone (some superfical damage, locked, no useable SIM card, no charger, no earphones, no cables) with extremely limited saleability - unless the purchaser was happy to live with the strong probability of a late-night visit from the Shashemene police intent on a spot of light finger-breaking. So another malefactor, doubtless bruised and walking bow-legged, is languishing in a prison whose comforts and facilities are well off the bottom of Marek's "shit" scale for African accommodation. An example to the rest of the town no doubt. And he was never going to get away with it. In Ethiopia (as you will learn when I get round to telling you about the phone card scam in Gonder - I will. Eventually) you cannot buy a SIM card without full photo ID and detailed record-taking which will make you instantly traceable.

Farangis are too important to the prospects of the Ethiopian economy to let anyone get away with abusing them. The Ethiopian police make the Met look like a load of half-soaked patsies.

Next time, I promise, I will get back to doing this properly. Unless the Marek effect has taken such a hold on me that I will never be able to communicate coherently again. Simply speaking. Et cetera, et cetera.

Chris

Bogged down and sweating

The last thing I want to do is to "dis" Tom and Danny, our leader and driver respectively. They are two of the greatest guys I have ever met, utterly charming, polite, hard-working, entertaining, highly-experienced travellers, very good drivers, excellent mechanics, great company, marvellous lovers probably, and able to control extremely diplomatically but firmly a bunch of individualists some of whom are more than twice their ages. With the possible exception of Marek who I doubt can be controlled by anyone alive.

They may be kids from my ancient perspective, 25 and 30 years old, but almost unbelievably mature, experienced and capable in every possible respect - except one. Like I said, I don't want to dis them - but I've got to get this off my chest. If they ever read this I hope they will understand.

Far be it from me to claim superiority on the subject of getting bogged-down motor vehicles back on the road - but not to put too fine a point on it this is a matter upon which I am effortlessly superior to almost anyone I know. I learned from the age of 12 to drive on the beaches of Somerset and Wales where numerous land speed records were set. At times in my father's 4.2 litre Jag, at up to 120 miles an hour. Later in my own cars I went back, perfecting high-speed drifting, handbrake turns, skid recovery, oversteering, countersteering, left-foot braking and so on. Those were the days - it's all been stopped now of course. We frequently got bogged down in soft sand and so I also had to perfect techniques for getting out. Sometimes in the face of an incoming tide, so there was no time to waste. Look, I could go on about my off-road driving in sand and mud, and the inordinate amount of expensive time I have spent driving in the Alps over several decades. Just accept that unsticking motor vehicles is a field in which I excel. I know that an old, heavy truck is qualitatively different, but the same principles apply.

I don't want to bug anybody by going into too much detail, but on the occasions when the truck got bogged down, some things mystified me:
- pushing on forwards and downwards into the sand or mire, rather than concentrating on reversing back up onto known firm ground
- using 10 man power of human muscle to assist the forward motion, rather than the 200 horse power of a helpful local's 4-wheel drive standing idly by
- digging and digging into the sand or mud so that the truck sank ever deeper. Digging through snow to find tarmac is one thing, digging down through sand to reach, well, more sand is another.
- when a tractor turned up on one occasion, allowing it to use forward gear to try to pull us out, rather than reverse so that at least its wheels stayed on the ground and the tyre treads were facing the most efficient way
- taking weight off the rear axle so that our drive wheels spun even more freely.
- applying excess torque to the drive wheels by revving hard in low gears and choking the tyre treads.
- when we once had the good fortune to get help from a 4-wheel drive lorry, moving the weight forward directly over the rear axle of the towing vehicle rather than back to benefit from the cantilever effect (it is basic physics). I feel particularly aggrieved about that one after being shouted down by my fellow-travellers when I tried to explain.

Look, I could go on (and on, and probably on) but what can you do at the time? There was one callow "expert" already irritating our grim-faced boys, who were doing their level best to get us out. Any interference was only going to infuriate them further and undermine their hard-won authority. Or maybe it was just cowardice on my part. Or maybe, with no deadlines, it wasn't really my problem. In any event I held my peace. And gnawed my knuckles.

I can't claim all the credit for my forbearance. When, with wide eyes and outstretched palms, I shared my doubts with Marek (20 years driving experience in Canadian winters) he silently signalled me to keep quiet. Pierre (another car-borne skier, and a wiser man than I) responded with: "Je n'ai pas aucune opinion, aucun avis".

Fair play to the boys, they got us out but only after hours of hot, sweaty and back-breaking work.

Good. I feel better for that. But maybe, now that the therapeutic effect has worked, I might just delete this tomorrow so as not to annoy two of the nicest guys alive.

Chris

Susan Aitchison Scholarship Fund

Damn it. I can't upload the annual report of the Fund. Here are some facts though.
- last year it distributed £4,746.
- this was enough to support 16 students, who otherwise could not have gone to university/college.
- that's an average of £25 a month per kid for the duration of their courses. That's all it takes to bring them out of abject poverty and give them the chance of a useful and decent life.
- all the kids are working their whotsits off
- last year they couldn't afford to take on any new kids. That means 5 or more bright kids have lost their only chance to make it out of the gutter.

In (almost) the words of Bob Geldof: Give her your bloody money.

Chris

Back on the job

Oh, I had such plans to bore you senseless with a detailed day-by-day account of every tedious little thing that has occurred on my travels. Sadly the dearth and quality of internet access as we drove deeper into the "Southern Nations" of Ethiopia put the mockers on that. Not helped by the theft of my iPhone (have I told you about that? Never fear, I will. At length) which was so useful for composing my ramblings during long days on the road.

Now I am back in business, you will have to content yourself (I take it that by now I have lost most of my audience and you, whoever you are, are now my last remaining reader - if indeed you exist. If in point of fact you don't actually exist, please let me know as soon as possible in order to spare me further effort) with odd snippets from my confused dog-eared and largely illegible notes.

Look here, I will get some sort of order into this at some point but first I've got to tell you this before I forget it forever:

Lalibela: This place is amazing. "Ooh! Aah!" I hear you say. It's got these sort of churches excavated out of the bedrock. Big ones. Bit like that thing in Petra, but these guys dug downwards. That's all I'm going to tell you, it's another one to google if you really care. Except that: the first one you see is, well, amazing. The second one is really good. The third one is good too. The fourth one's not bad either, and..... well, you get the picture. They've got 12 of the buggers, and a museum. And once you're in the clutches of an official guide, you're going to see them all whether you want to or not. At some point it became a clear "not" in my case. BTW: if you do go there, don't bother with a guide. Wander around at your own pace, on your own, in silence, and try to imagine how they might have done it and how the people must have felt when they first entered the finished churches, and how they used them and worshipped there. It is much more stimulating than a litany of facts and dates going on and on - and bloody on. And who cares about the reality of how they built them. What matters is whether you get a kick out of seeing them. There isn't going to be an exam at the end.

No. What I really like about Lalibela is the town, the people, the tej bars (patience, I will get round to them), Susan Aitchison (I'll get her too), Bim (and I'll get to him) and the Unique restaurant, but maybe not everything or we'll be here all night.

Let's start with Bim. I was walking on down the street, concentrating on trucking right . . . . Apologies, I was thinking about rastafarians and that just popped into my head, and after all those weeks with Marek anything that pops into my head has to pop out again in an endless stream of consciousness. Bim has nothing to do with rastafarians, and this is not the rastafarian part of Ethiopia and I didn't even see any when I was in the right part - due to Dasta (I'll get round to him too - I promise) telling us it would not be safe to visit their village because they were "all drunk". And they're not even Irish. Jesus Christ, Marek has done something seriously weird to my brain. Maybe I should just leave it and tell you about Bim when I'm feeling less deranged. No, let's get on with it, because it's a good story. I think it is anyway - and this is my blog and so there. Here goes:

I was routinely fending off the attentions of yet another shoeshine boy, when it struck me that my shoes did actually need cleaning. I asked "How much". "Whatever you think". That sounded pretty foolproof. There would be no nonsense about the terms of his quote when I came to pay (whoops, I haven't told you about the shoe shine scam in Gonder. I will. Remind me). He solemnly got to work and did a good job. I paid him the equivalent of two quid, knowing I was overpaying but, hell, I'm here to put some money into their economy - not to exploit their poverty - and a good shine is well worth two quid to me. I handed over the money and he stayed unmoving, still squatting, staring at the note. I briefly wondered if there was a problem. Maybe the note was forged, but he didn't say anything and I left him there. A few seconds later, somebody spoke just behind me "Excuse me can I say something?" Oh Jesus (I thought) here comes another amateurish scam. But there was no tug on my sleeve. No "Hello my friend". No "Where you from?". No "How are you?". Just a solemn boy in his early teens, still holding a 50Birr note and looking at me almost with wonder. "What's the problem?". "Can I just say that you have made me very happy?" He really meant it - for two quid. As we walked around town together I heard about his life. He normally gets one or two Birr - 4 or 8 pence - and is lucky to get three or four jobs a day. Sometimes he gets no work. He comes from a subsistence farm 25 miles from town. His parents can't feed themselves, let alone support him, and he sometimes sends them money from his paltry earnings. He told me "I have no family" and I understood what he meant. He is here so that he can go to school and he sleeps on the street. He owns a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, a pair of broken flip-flops, a home-made box containing: a couple of worn-out brushes, a small remnant of soap, an empty tin can, two almost empty tins of shoe polish. Also a ragged cotton overshirt in the bright pastel colour of his school - given to him because without it he could not attend classes. They turn a blind eye to his lack of uniform trousers. He has one other thing: a third share in a blanket owned jointly with two other kids who sleep with him on the street. This town is high in the mountains and it gets properly cold at night. I found little errands for him to run. I didn't want to humiliate this grave, clearly intelligent and painstakingly polite young man by giving him a handout. Ellen (the American nurse) and I met him later, on our way to an up-market restaurant. She realised before I did that the only decent thing was to invite him to join us. You can imagine his reaction to entering the restaurant - well, you can try. He didn't glance at the menu and just said one thing to the waitress; "Meat". I doubt he ever sees any in normal life. In fact he didn't eat much. I guess your stomach shrinks when you're always hungry. But he took plenty of food away with him to share with his companions. Africa really kicks some shit out of you.

The town: the main street is unpaved, but most of the buildings are properly constructed, there are a couple of decent hotels, the Ben Abeba restaurant (patience please), some smart tourist-orientated facilities, a disco, some tej bars (more patience please), and something strange in Africa: no hassle from kids, no begging and something you just don't see in tourist towns - childen playing normally together instead of hustling. Why? you may ask. Simple. They have made a by-law that children cannot speak to tourists unless invited to. And they enforce it - with a clip around the ear. It's a picturesque mountain town with a nice atmosphere. Poor, but not soul-searingly poor.

Tej bars. Tej is an alcoholic drink made from honey and some sort of fruit. Once you get used to the slightly sharp taste, it is quite light and pleasant. A bit like vodka and orange juice. And it cost nothing. A few pence for a small carafe. The bars are crude, but the tej keeps coming and there are plenty of locals to talk to. Or sing with. Or sing at. Or lean on. Or embrace and tell them they are your best mate. Or tell them tearfully that you are missing your wife. Or to pick you up when you fall off your stool. Jesus this stuff creeps up on you. I mean really. Tom Doyle from Cork City likes a drink, or two, or three and can hold it and remain a gentleman. Normally. After an evening on tej, trying to find his bed, he first appeared in the room shared by Michelle and Katya. I have no doubt he had no ulterior motive. Frankly I doubt he was capable of formulating an ulterior motive. Frankly he wasn't capable of anything. After the girls had gently steered him out into the yard, he still couldn't find his way home. So the next thing was that Danny the driver became aware that somebody was climbing into bed with him. A small Irishman who didn't know what planet he was on , let alone which bedroom. Danny took him back to the room he shared with Marek, and Marek reported that he slept with his legs in the bed and the rest of him on the floor. Apparently he was not a congenial room mate, for reasons it's best not to get into. I will draw a veil over my own condition. And we thought we were hard-drinking men. Oh yes, one other thing. Kelly Coogan is an Irish Kiwi - likes a drink and a bit of an old song. I distinctly remember him spending the latter part of the evening grabbing me and anybody else he could find, putting his face up close to theirs and urgently saying "Etcetera, etcetera". The longer it went on the funnier it got, and the more tej we drunk, and . . . . OK you get the picture - again.

The Unique restaurant. This isn't the smart restaurant we took Bim to. It's just an honest-to-God simple restaurant in an unadorned concrete room, run single-handedly by a shy young Ethiopian woman, serving really good food cooked on a wood fire, at prices which make you feel guilty. I tipped heavily and was told by a fellow-traveller that by overpaying I was spoiling things for the next load of tourists. Fuck the next load of tourists, the more they pay the happier I will be - as I politely explained. Try the Chicken Picata - and leave a big tip.

The only crap food I had in Lalibela was at the Seven Olives hotel. The smart western hotel with smart western prices.

Now let me tell you about Susan Aitchison and the Ben Abeba restaurant (Google it. Go on. You're not busy): Susan is a Scottish teacher who, in her own words, finds the poverty in Ethiopia heartbreaking. Instead of feeling sorry and going home she has stayed and is changing lives. She has built a restaurant on the edge of town where she is training a few lucky kids (actually quite a lot, maybe 40 so far and she hasn't been open long) to cook and wait at table. Skills which should give them some sort of chance in life. Not content with that, she has started a fund to help local kids who otherwise would have no chance of continuing their education to go to university or technical college. The sums are tiny, but she is currently funding 16 impoverished kids to study medicine, engineering and other worthwhile disciplines. Their appreciation is reflected in their startingly good academic results. Just because you are born into poverty it doesn't mean you are stupid. These could be our kids. Look, she tells the story much better than me. When I read her annual report I had to swallow hard. If you want a worthwhile cause to support where you can see tangible results you should look into the Susan Aitchison Scholarship Fund. It should get UK charitable status soon. If I can figure out how to do it, my next post will be her 2011 annual report. If I can't, tell me and I'll email it to you. Her restaurant is quite remarkable from an architectural point of view. It would be something special anywhere but in a poor African town it is extraordinary. I can't describe it, so I urge you once again to google "Ben Abeba Restaurant Lalibela". The construction alone has created jobs and boosted the economy. I have been in touch with Susan since I left Lalibela. She is going to help me get a present to Bim - two more blankets and three fleeces.

OK enough from me, until next time.

Chris

Ethiopian Police - there goes another pre-conception

Hi there,

You may detect a jaunty air to my greeting above. That's because I am feeling pretty damned jaunty.

I have had phone calls from both Shmondi (remember him?) and from Sergeant Gezay of the Tigray State Police in Axum (the one Shmondi said was "very good"). Sgt Gezay has recovered my camera and arrested three "crime persons". The camera battery was flat, so he could not tell me whether my photos had been deleted or not. He said the thief would almost certainly have deleted everything to make it harder to identify the camera.

Once I had faxed my written instructions, he sent the camera by air to the Federal Police at the airport in Addis Ababa - where I had just arrived. It got here the same day at no cost to me, and I was told I could collect it from Commander Mengisteab at the airport.

It seems that Sergeant Gezay had worked tirelessly for a week to find my camera and bring the miscreants to justice. Tourism is very important to Axum, to Tigray and to Ethiopia. A crime against a visitor is therefore a crime against the town, the state and the whole country.

The thief and two receivers are now in custody. Knowing the quality of many African hotels, I don't envy anybody languishing in an Ethiopian prison awaiting trial. I don't envy the villains when they come out of prison either - and have to face the contempt of their neighbours. I am told that in parts of Africa thieves caught red-handed are often beaten on the spot by a vengeful mob - sometimes to death .

An added bonus of the episode is the example it will give to everybody in the small town of Axum - in particular that Sgt Gezay doesn't give up until he gets his man. A spasm of Catholic guilt had me thinking that I was partly to blame for these poor chaps' undoing by putting temptation in their way. I suppressed it fairly quickly. And they did it to themselves for nothing. Without the cables and software the camera is useless.

What would the chances be of a tourist ever seeing his camera again if it was stolen in England? What would be the chances of the police even bothering to investigate the crime?

And what was your mental image of the investigative powers and attitude of an Ethiopian policeman, and his desire to help a foreigner who had been stupid enough to get his camera stolen? Not much different from mine I would guess. So bang goes another pre-conception - of mine and I hope of yours.

The laconic members of airport security and the police sprang to attention at the mention of Commander Mengistaeb's name. I was greeted by him with great respect and good-humour, and quickly reunited with my camera.

Back at the hotel, with the battery charged, I was able to report (by text - verbal communication being somewhat difficult for all parties) to Shmondi and both the policemen cited above that not a single one of my photos had been deleted. Not only did they all respond quickly to tell me how delighted they were, but the police commander in Axum - Sgt Gezay's boss, whom I had never met - also sent a similar text message.

They were even more delighted when I told them that there were several photos in the camera memory taken after the theft - including some self-portraits of the idiots who stole it. Dubious-looking young men to be sure.

I said earlier that the story did not have a happy ending. I spoke too soon.

I know, I know, I still haven't told you properly about my travels in Ethiopia to date. If anybody is still reading my drivel, I crave your patience. It is all ready to post when I can overcome some IT issues. Where is my old colleague Jon Storer when I need him?

While I'm here, I want to tell you about my first impressions of Addis Ababa. But first let me give another quote from Marek. When four of us got into a taxi after dinner at the Sheraton, he said to the driver that he wanted to go to a night club, but that first he needed to go back to the hotel to "take a shit". Presumably to avoid raising expectations of a big tip, he went on to tell him that the meal was very cheap, and we had only gone to the Sheraton because we had been camping and "eating only shit". Back on the subject of night clubs he said he wanted one with nice women "not shit". It may not have done much for the driver's English vocabulary but it seemed to amuse him as much as us.

OK those first impressions: Addis is a big, big city. Obviously it has slum areas, but they are much less apparent than in Caracas, Rio, Buenos Aires or Lima. It feels much safer than any of them. The town is generally clean with many modern buildings including shopping centres which look better than those in many English provincial towns and cities. There seems to be a small development boom - giving an air of optimism. On top of that there is much amusement to be derived from the standard of driving, which is both entertaining and an art form.

And now for some second impressions. I went to the famous Mercato, the biggest of it's type in Africa. Lonely Planet gave it an enormous build-up emphasising its atmospheric nature and the exotic items to be found there. I am now able to report that it is a proper dump - with additional African dumpiness. The goods on sale were totally prosaic. Cheap clothes, cheap shoes, cheap hardware, cheap household stuff. Every stall has piles of cardboard boxes containing all the stock not on display. I saw one box marked "Made in Egypt" one marked "Made in India" all, and I mean all, the other boxes were marked - you guessed it ....

After a thorough and methodical grid-pattern search, I found no live animals for sale and no firearms, let alone Kalashnikovs. Where the hell do these travel writers get their information from? Do they plagiarise out-of-date stuff from other writers, who in turn plagiarise their predecessors? Or do they just make it all up? It is not for me to say.

On the way back, my pocket was picked. This only increased my jauntiness. My valuables were all safely zipped away, and the poor chap only got the dummy wallet I always carry when travelling. It contained 3 US dollars, 3 Ethiopian Birrs and some expired credit cards. About GBP1.60 in total. I had to admire the technique. No. 1 bloke backed into me, trod on my toe then took my hand and kissed it whilst pouring out apologies. Presumably during this piece of business, bloke No. 2 dipped in. Even though I realised what had happened almost immediately, the only person I would have recognised is bloke No. 1 who would of course have nothing on him - his accomplice, whom I would not have recognised, having melted away with his disappointing spoils.

Maybe my luck is changing.

Chris

Ethiopia - a long story

At last. Goodish internet access. Let me tell you something of what has been happening inside and outside my head since my last proper posting.

I have been in Ethiopia for two and a half weeks. I have been to:

- Gonder, a mountain town with an illustrious royal past

- Debark, a dirty shanty town reeking of poverty (though not despair)

- the Simien mountains, where (in Marek's words) I froze my ass off, and whilst out walking uphill aiming for 4,400 metres above sea level (and failing) my pulse rate went way, way over the safe limit for a 60 year old man.

- Aksum, where my camera was stolen (lots more to tell you about that soon)

- Mekele, where I had to use a guide to be able to shop successfully for food, and where one of our party was approached in a shadowy bar by a young lady who strangely had remembered to put on her brassiere but absolutely nothing else. It was even stranger that the recipient of her invitation was also a young lady.

- Lalibela, a nice little town with 13 extraordinary churches carved by hand into the bedrock hundreds of years ago and still used. This is a place where I could consider living, and maybe I could change some lives if I had enough time left on the planet.

- and I'm now in Bahir Dar on the shores of Lake Tana - the source of the Blue Nile. Quite a clean modern town by African standards - apart from a couple of slum districts you can see worse in Greece, or even in the north of England.

I have stayed in hotels which Pierre describes with a degree of understatement as "merdique". And some a bit better, although I have still preferred to use my sleeping bag rather than the sheets - and wear rubber-soled shoes in the shower (the electrical wiring is a wonder and a joy to behold).
I have used "showers" which could make a grown man cry, and toilets which could put you off your breakfast.
And shivered all night in a tent at sub-zero temperatures, with an also-shivering and voluble Pole for company*.
I have camped on mountain plateaus and in road construction depots.
I have been delayed by a landslide.
I have bounced for hours on dirt roads until my fillings rattled.
I have swum in mountain rivers, and tried to wash myself under an ice-cold trickle of water deep in a wood, guarded by an armed scout, with his eyes politely averted.
And I have chatted with anybody and everybody who has even the smallest command of English - including a polite and friendly local lady on the hotel terrace. It was only when my travelling companions went off to bed that it became apparent that it was not my sparkling wit and tales of my grandchildren that she was interested in. Analysing this turn of events over breakfast the next day, we concluded that once everybody involved in either side of her industry already has AIDS, nobody has anything to lose, and things revert to normal. Apart from the death thing of course.

* one of Marek's morning greetings, his nose two inches from mine "What the fuck? Now I wake up, you see? Listen by the way. Now it gets better. The sun is coming. No, but last night I totally freeze my ass off. To be honest, it's totally fucked-up here. And this is it for example. Now I am getting up you know. So OK, it's OK" I was originally concerned that it would be my Joycean stream of consciousness which might give a strange flavour to these missives, but now I am sharing a tent with his spiritual heir - complete with a Polish accent.

Look, I'd love to tell you everything, but it would take almost as long to relate as it took to happen. You don't have time for it, so I'll stick to the things that stuck with me - and probably always will.

Ethiopia is the most indescribably beautiful country I have seen or imagined. I will now undertake the impossible by trying to describe it. You may need to exercise your imagination a bit and/or google the whole damned thing. Let me first sum it up by quoting something my youngest companion said to me as we looked out over the landscape: "Chrissie? Can you believe this is real life?" I couldn't.

This land is green and mountainous. That doesn't get us halfway there. This is Abyssinia, formed by unimaginably extraordinarily violent volcanic activity millions of years ago. Subsequent erosion has left great volcanic plugs rearing thousands of feet above the already crimped, scolloped and crenellated mountains, in shapes which could almost make you revise your views about intelligent design.
- "Yeah, yeah" I hear you think "Thousands of feet! Listen by the way. This is bullshit of course. To be honest you are totally fucked-up you know. And this is it."
- "No wait" I telepathically reply "I have marvelled at the Helaba and Heron Towers (google them), so I know exactly what 660 feet looks like and can extrapolate with some accuracy".

There are great slabs and spires and monoliths, so huge and regular you would think them designed and built by man - except that they are so damned big and there are no mobile phone masts on the roof.

Dotted around the mountains are wooden chalets which anyone familiar with the Alps might take for the holiday homes of very rich people. On closer inspection, they are basic agricultural buildings or the most rudimentary dwellings imaginable - with dirt floors and eucalyptus pole walls infilled with mud and dung. Perhaps the most quaint of those Alpine chalets started life not very differently, when the European mountains were similarly the habitat of poverty-stricken subsistence farmers scratching a living from the poor mountain soil. That was before the Alps became the playground of the rich of course. All Ethiopia needs now is snow.

I haven't even started on the rolling countryside, spilling down from the foothills and almost indistinguishable from English pastoral scenes from the days before the internal combustion engine spoilt everything. You know what I mean: haystacks, meadows, people actually in the fields doing stuff, cattle and horses grazing beneath spreading green trees. More of this later.

No I'm sorry. I really can't do it justice. Go ahead, just google it all. Or come over here and have a look. You'll need a bit of time though.

It's all, all too much. I haven't begun to tell you any of the things I promised in paragraph 1, sub-section 2 above. I will. And more.

Aby-bloody-ssinia. You couldn't make it up.

Chris

Bad and good in Tigray

I know, I know, I haven't told you anything yet about the week or more I have already spent in Ethiopia and here I am sending you a contemporaneous report about what happened to me last night and this morning. I will fill in the gap when I can - there is some extraordinary stuff to report.


Meanwhile: yesterday I arrived in Aksum. It's in Tigray on the border of Eritrea. Sounds scary, no? Well, the war is long over and this is just another scruffy little African town with its best days centuries behind it. I say that as though everybody knows what a scruffy little African town is. Maybe you do and maybe you don't, but I do now and if you want me to fill in the details you'll probably have to wait until I get back. Meanwhile please accept that this is one of them. As well as half-finished buildings - partly occupied and already in need of considerable maintenance - dirt roads, tin roofs, tuc-tucs, Hi Luxes, camels and donkeys carting firewood, this particular one has old churches, ruins, antiquities etc. etc. Groan. Am I a philistine, or is there a limit to the quantity of dead stones that a normal human being can work up any enthusiasm for? I really didn't come here to tick off the "must-dos" listed by Lonely Planet. I want to know how people live.

After a not-at-all-bad Ethiopian dinner with some of our companions, Marek and I went out in search of a cosy bar for another beer or two, or three. It was a long job uncovering any wheat anongst the considerable chaff, but at last we found one. I went to pay for the drinks - and my camera was gone.


Wait for it . . .



Wait for it . . .



GONE.

Stuff the camera. There were four hundred photos I had taken over the previous five weeks, some of them pretty damned good, stored on the memory card. It was no consolation that it had little value without the cables and charger - it was gone. I ran up and down the street hustling hustlers and yelling at wide-eyed boys selling (or more correctly failing miserably to sell) chewing gum and cigarettes. Soon everybody within five blocks knew the story, and my proffered reward increased from two weeks' average wage to a figure which had a growing crowd forming around me. Everybody seemed to be genuinely empathising with my distress (by the way, there is no happy ending) and questioning each other animatedly about what they had seen, or knew, or thought, or thought somebody else thought. Lots of reassuring hands reached out to console me and a barrage of helpful suggestions threatened to stifle me.


I shuffled back to Marek with my brain windmilling and found him chatting to a couple of local students. They already knew my story and reassured me with the news that they had been instrumental in a Dutch tourist recovering his camera in a similar situation. There was nothing more to be done that night, but they promised to come to my hotel at 6.30 the following morning to do something or other. The rest of the evening is a blur.


At 6.30 I stepped out of the front door just as they slouched up in their hoodies, on time to the second. These are students remember, and it was 6.30 a.m. They went straight into action, first quizzing the hotel receptionist then every vagrant, street kid, tuc-tuc driver, cleaner, delivery man and shopkeeper on the streets as we headed for the police station. Everyone they spoke to was evidently shocked, bursting with sympathy, and begging me not to worry. Again, a small crowd formed wherever we stopped and many of the people held their hands to their mouths in sympathy and distress.


The community police station was indistinguishable from a farmyard, complete with livestock. The official on duty was bare-legged and dressed in a blanket, but he brought out a dusty exercise book and, with intense concentration and the tip of his tongue protruding, slowly wrote down everything my attendants said. Occasionally he paused, looked up at me and shook his head.

We returned to the hotel, repeating our interrogations of anybody and everybody - with the now familiar response. A street kid who had sold me a packet of tissues the night before seemed close to tears. Back at base, a heated conversation took place with the anxious receptionist and soon all the hotel staff were pressed around her, all talking at once in Amharic. The hubbub ended when a proud-looking young man in the smart uniform of the Tigray police entered the room. One of my new friends (Shmondi Grmay believe it or not) whispered to me that this guy was good, really good.

Off we all went again pouncing on every passer-by with increased vigour. This seemed to be the crime of the decade, in a place where not so long ago young men were slaughtering each other with AK47s and worse. It seemed strange to think that a generation earlier these fresh-faced and straightforward boys would themselves have been engaged in the carnage. Inevitably it emerged during the day that Shmondi's own father had died in the war. His mother died later in a medical accident. Jesus Christ - and I was feeling sorry for myself.


Eventually the constable felt he was sufficiently briefed to go away and ruminate over his findings in the equivalent of an upstairs flat in Baker St, pausing briefly to exchange mobile phone numbers with me.


Shmondi and his partner were not satisfied, and we continued to scour the whole town talking to everyone we met. He assured me that he knew every chancer and low-life in Aksum and that my offered reward would far exceed the street value of a stolen camera.

When we ran out of people to talk to, they led me to their college on the edge of town. It looked more like an industrial complex, but it was fairly modern and by African standards well-maintained. Our route took us through grain fields, past new community housing complexes and a part-finished ring road being funded by (you guessed it) the Chinese, and up to the principal's office. He wore a neatly-pressed dark blue suit with an open-necked white shirt and a magnificent white straw hat. His dignified but affectionate demeanour towards the boys seemed to confirm what they had told me: that they were the top-scoring students in their respective faculties of tourism management and construction engineering.


He expressed deep and genuine regret that such an occurence should have taken place in his community, and we agreed that there are a few bad people everywhere. I didn't give voice to a fleeting thought that it didn't seem to apply in Sudan, or that there might after all be something to be said for Sharia law.


He invited me to address all his students, assuring me that between them they knew everybody in town and by the end of the day the whole of Aksum would know what had happened. So I went from classroom to workshop, to lecture theatre addressing students of construction, IT, design, engineering, tourism, textiles and a host of other disciplines I have forgotten. Although all the courses were conducted in English, Shmondi had to repeat everything I said in a mixture of Amharic and the heavily-accented English which the students seemed to understand better than mine. Perhaps they regard my English as heavily-accented. All those bright looking and eager kids gave me their rapt open-mouthed attention and more than once a round of applause - presumably indicating sympathy rather than gratitude for an entertaining diversion from their studies.

Five hours had passed since we started our enterprise, so I invited the boys to have breakfast with me. Pausing only for some serious face to face stuff with a youth whose appearance lived up to Shmondi's description of him as the town's most notorious receiver of stolen goods, we went to a cafe where I was the only westerner - possibly the first ever to judge by its appearance and clientele. I told the boys to order whatever they liked, and they did with gusto. As we ate and the other customers received their food, they called across to us a greeting which translates as: "Let us now eat together". The bill for all three of us came to less than two quid.

It was only the imminence of their own lectures that persuaded the boys to leave me to my own devices, and I am certain that their efforts on my behalf will not cease soon. When I offered them the equivalent of ten pounds for a good ten man-hours' work, their jaws literally dropped and they were evidently embarrassed to take it. I felt ashamed.

Right. I've lost my camera. I've had an experience a tourist couldn't buy. I've had a VIP tour of a fascinating educational establishment. I've met two really good kids whose happy confidence in their futures I hope to Christ is not going to be disappointed. I've eaten real local food in a real workman's cafe. I am briefly the most famous man in town. I've missed out on seeing some old stuff I really couldn't give a toss about. I've spoken more to Africans in the last few hours than in the previous five weeks. I've at last begun to realise my ambition to see how the people live (see above). On balance I would call that a result.

Chin up, the sun is shining here.

Chris

Sensory overload and escape from Khartoum.

After a spine-jarring ride on unmade roads, through a landscape I will try to describe later, I'm now somewhere else in Ethiopia. A town (Aksum) with reasonably modern facilities including an internet cafe with equipment which, though slow, just about works. Add sticking keys, two-fingered typing and hopelessly slow speeds and you may appreciate my frustration. Even so there is so much going on outside the door of this scruffy, dusty and hot little room that it is therapeutic to withdraw into the private world of my own head for a while.


Let me give you some more random impressions from the unstoppable tidal wave of experiences and emotions constantly sweeping me off my metaphorical feet:

- The news that one of my companions had access to her own blog blocked by the Sudanese authorities. How do they do that? Why?
- My experience of buying minced beef in Khartoum to feed my little band when we reached our next desert encampment. There was none on display, but after a competent pantomime of somebody using a mincer and smiling smugly at the end result (I like to think I am getting quite good at communicating in this way - as well as providing endless mirth for my interlocutors), the butcher invited me backstage and treated me to a display of professional butchery. This involved half a cow on a hook, a razor sharp knife, great muscular effort, grunts of exertion and enormous skill. I've never had that experience in Sainsburys.
- in Khartoum, modern office blocks in landscaped grounds front onto dirt roads, with dilapidated hovels all around.
- A Sudanese family which one of us had run into on the Egypt to Sudan ferry, invited us to celebrate Eid with them and sleep over at their house. A party of twelve virtual strangers. Thankfully the man with the goat did not turn up, so we were spared the sight of the traditional slaughter. How many English hostesses would be able to improvise a first-class Christmas dinner for 16 people if the turkey hadn't arrived?. It was not unlike Christmas - a lot of dozing in front of the TV and occasionally breaking away for breath of fresh air outside. But, obviously, without the sweet sherry or ginger wine.
- our very Sudanese hostess, who I had assumed (there goes another one) was unsophisticated and little-travelled, divulged in passing that she has a daughter in Tooting and another in Cork - and two fully paid-up Irish grandchildren. Both daughters are doctors.
- I think I had a bit of an adventure on our last night in Khartoum. In the evening I walked down to the river Nile hoping for a bit of a cool breeze. When I got there I was unable to get near the river for elaborate security fencing. Realising I was lost, I looked at the GPS app on my iPhone to find where I was. The little blue dot showed my exact location, but unfortunately the map would not download so all I had was a grey screen and a blue dot. As I stood there with my face illuminated by the glow of the screen, I became aware of sudden aggressive shouting nearby. Turning my head to look across the road, I saw more security fencing, one of those lift-up barriers, sentry boxes, and pop-up bollards - and a man in uniform with one of those nasty little short barrelled guns slung over his shoulder and pointed at me. The immoderate shouting continued and the absence of another soul within sight suggested I might be the focus of his attention. Trying my best not to look like a western intelligence agent, I feigned nonchalance and pretended I hadn't noticed anything untoward. My head-down ignoring skills, so well honed in Egypt, came into their own. I strolled away from the scene for several blocks, and at the first opportunity I ducked into a bustling street market. There was a strange prickling in the back of my neck, as I braced myself for the screeching of tyres from an unmarked car full of unshaven sinister men, scattering market stalls and leaning out of the windows firing bullets in my direction. Nothing of the sort happened of course, and I arrived back at my hotel dry-mouthed and craving a beer more than ever. What was it all about? You tell me. I wonder who is more paranoid, me or them.
- I can't help wondering why the beloved leaders of these authoritarian and virtually-closed countries are so anxious about the designs of foreign powers. One would have thought that the events of recent months might have demonstrated that if there is a threat it comes from within their own borders. Between immigration, police registration, permits to travel and exit procedures, I now have eight separate Sudaneses stamps in my passport.
- As the time approached to cross the border into Ethiopia, I have been reflecting upon a couple of important questions. Surely to God, the very best place on earth to find a beer is in a desert. Why is it then that Sudan of all places is dry? And why can't you get an ice-cream? In the case of beer it is because of the 1400 year-old teachings of an illiterate dreamer. I say this with no disrespect. Holy Scripture records that the prophet (peace be upon him) could neither read nor write and that his revelati0ns came through dreams. In the case of ice-cream it is because of the frequent power failures causing freezers to defrost.

I have much, much more to say (and I will). But the sun (to adapt more immortal words - this time those of Eric Clapton, or possibly Jack Bruce or Ginger Baker) is about to close its tired eyes and so am I. What's more I can barely see the keyboard any more.

This is a hell of an experience. Oh my God.

Chris

We would like apologise for the the delay to your service

I'm in a pretty extraordinary frontier town in the Ethiopian mountains (of which more later - if I survive). Bloody lucky to find this primitive internet access, but not enough of a masochist to try to enter the bare minimum.

Meanwhile please mind the gap. Normal service will be restored as soon as possible. I've got a lot to record.

Your patience is much appreciated.

Chris

Cock up in Khartoum

As a result of a typical African cock-up, our plans to see the best-vaunted attractions of Khartoum - the old souk, and a display of whirling dervishes - did not work out entirely as we had hoped. We engaged a guide to take us there in his minibus, complete with luminous green nylon shag-pile roof lining.

Soon after we set off we arrived at the Mahdi's tomb, which we had not asked to see, and which was in any event closed. We reinforced our request to go the souk, and soon found ourselves in a sprawling retail area, where one can buy refrigerators, air conditioners, car parts, buckets, plastic chairs and just about everything we neither wanted to buy or even look at. We re-reinforced our earlier requests but became aware that we were now stuck fast in gridlocked traffic where we remained for best part of an hour. The start time for the whirling dervishes was steadily approaching, so we communicated our desire to abort the souk trip, and go straight to the dervish display.

Once free, and around two hours after we left our hotel, our hero set off with new determination. (Oh look, there goes the Mahdi's tomb again). We were dropped off at a dusty cemetery on the outskirts of town, and we hurried in the direction our guide had indicated, because the show was due to start. We were slightly mystified that there was no ticket office or seating. We were slightly disappointed that the show seemed to consist of two scruffy old men, one in sunglasses, banging drum and wailing in what appeared to be a car park. As it dawned on us that we might be in the wrong place, a crowd of white-robed men began to form a circle and grew rapidly. Then a procession of outlandishly-dressed men, young and old, broke into the arena and began to dance and chant, to the insistent rhythm of drums. The crowd swelled and the pace of the dancers became faster and faster. Their eyes began to roll, the jumping and whirling began, and more and more people broke into the circle and joined the dance - their costumes even wilder than the original performers. One dreadlocked devotee with the demeanour of an Old Testament king appeared to be wearing only a leopard-skin car seat cover. Somewhere in the middle of it all, we were drawn into the rhythmic chanting and the bowing shuffling dance of the worshippers - and we completely missed the stage show taking place at that moment in another part of town.

An old man put his magnificent walnut of a face, wreathed in joyful smiles, 3 inches from my own and chanted at the top of his voice "Allah, Allah, Allah" and, for my benefit, "God, God, God".

The upshot was that we saw, chanted and swayed with a horde of devout Muslims in a state of holy ecstasy - instead of going to a tourist show. I didn't come all this way in a rattling truck for tourist shows. And I saved the $10 admittance charge to boot. And frankly when you've seen one souk it's not a tragedy if you miss one or two.

I think the Sudanese authorities might need a little help organising their tourist industry. I have two suggestions:
1. try to make it a little easier for tourists to get into the country in the first place by making it slightly less than virtually impossible to get visas;
2. once they've got there, try to make sure that state-accredited tourist guides have some inkling of roughly where the two main visitor attractions in the capital city are located.

One little detail of the traffic jam may be of some interest. As I sat in the stationary traffic, I became aware that a surly youth was staring at me, and that his stare was full of bale. You get it sometimes in dodgy areas of London. It became impossible to ignore him, so eventually I tried to placate him with a weak smile and a thumbs' up. He immediately broke into a wide beaming grin rushed to get an accomplice, and together they smiled and waved at me until it became embarrassing - for me but clearly not for them.

I've been thinking about those dervishes, and I envy their faith, their constant reassurance and consolation, and their evident joy. I have felt this before, but I remain mystified by the certainties of both theists and atheists.
- Do I believe in God? Absolutely.
- What is it? God only knows.
- Where can I find it? God only knows that too.
- Can I tell myself or anybody else one single tiny thing about it? Of course not, we are talking here about the frigging supreme being and creator of the unimaginably vast universe, stretching to infinity and beyond.
- Does organised religion give me any insights? Absolutely not - the whole issue is far, far beyond anybody's comprehension.
- Does it care anything about me, one particle of a sort of parasitic virus destroying one infinitesimally tiny part of its infinity? I already said I don't know one single tiny thing about it.
You may add:
- Surely it's obvious it doesn't exist? Stop kidding yourself you can even begin to know one single tiny thing about it, you insignificant speck of virus from a minuscule corner of the back end of nowhere - you don't even know the questions to ask, and can't even guess at the answers, even if your insignificant pin-prick of self-consciousness could begin to handle them.
- You don't seem to think very highly of our species. Do you love your kids? Shall we just drop this now. My head always starts to spin when I am discussing matters I know nothing about.

Sorry about the rambling. Maybe I am spending too much time on my own.

Chris

More roads, and Khartoum at last.

Before I get going, I promised in my last post to say more about the huge artics plying the roads of Sudan. These roads are not bad at all. They are mostly dead straight and were largely funded by China in return for secure access to natural resources, and presumably to facilitate their own need to move those resources around. Apart from Artics and Hi-Luxes, another common vehicle is a Chinese coach travelling from site to industrial site. These sites, whatever, they are, are back off the road with big industrial buildings and chinese signs at the entrances. The world is changing fast.

You don`t need to know any of that. I just wanted to show off that I have been reading a guidebook. It may not even be true. The only reason I mention it is that the quality of the roads are not the reason for the frequently overturned huge lorries. We have been seeing one or two wrecks a day, sometimes completely burned out. In one case we came on the scene very soon after the incident. On this occasion the load was live goats. The crew was busy cutting the throats of the most severely injured animals. No doubt a mercy killing, but I wonder wonder how it would square with the painstakingly humane principles of Halal slaughter, and what would happen to the meat.

Last word on the topic of the roads: there are places marked on the map which are not reflected in any sign of habitation or, at best, a truck stop with one ramshackle building. I guess communities flourish briefly in the desert and then die, and the flimsy building materials are recycled.

Back to the action: the police instruction not to wild camp on the way to Khartoum meant a long gruelling drive and a late arrival at our emergency campsite - the car park of the grandly-named Nile sailing club. It will not surprise you to learn that this is a sailing club on the Nile. It may surprise you to know that amongst the few vessels there, there was none in which I would willingly have taken to the water, but there were (însert synonym) squat toilets and a cold shower. A surprisingly welcome sight to exhausted hard-bitten and dirty desert travellers.

The dusty car park was busy and full of exhaust fumes until the small hours, and our tents were pitched amongst the cars. For once I was thankful for Sudan's alcohol ban.

After a few days in the empty desert, I had forgotten about the precautions one needs to take in a humid city, so during the night I made the acquaintance of a restless zinging mosquito. Just one. You wouldn't really begrudge them one bite - they've got a living to make, same as everybody. But why can't they do the job properly in one go and take the rest of the night off? Instead they spend hours engaged in a series of little snacks, biting you over and over again in the most awkward places possible. I think it's their idea of fun. Bastards.

Next morning I opened the tent zip a crack and squeezed myself out leaving the bare minimum of space around me, carefully zipped it back up, went to the truck and collected my can of insecticide. Returning to insect Death Row, and with a manic cackle, I visited instant revenge upon any creature remaining in the tent - who may have been congratulating itself upon a profitable night.

I think it was Woody Allen who said: "The Jews invented guilt but the Catholics raised it to an art form". Somebody else said: "Once a catholic, always a catholic". I'm not sure who it was. Possibly God. (Blessed be his name).

It is still difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that I have taken the life of a tiny fellow creature, and deprived its doubtless large and loving family of a father or mother. Until the itching starts again - whereupon I think I may in time be able to come to terms with my actions.

I will now have to find a pharmacist to buy antihistasmine. The people here use Western names for most drugs, but their pronunciation is very different. I have a strategy to deal with this. I will take some of my fellow-travellers, all with different accents, so that the possibly terrified chemist will have 6 chances of getting my drift. I envisage it going thus:
- I will pronounce it correctly and my multi-national colleagues will repeat my request in their various accents as follows:
- (Fhonch): Ondy-east-amih
- (Ummerrkun): Annie-hiz-dermin
- ( Strine): Innie-hiss-tim-in?
- (Cherman): You vill provide Antihistamine vizzout furzzer delay.
- (Polleesh): Anti-heess-termin-bullshit.

Thanks for your attention.

Chris

The road to Khartoum

What ho!

I have discovered that our Nubian guide is not a luxury. It is very difficult to get through the frequent roadblocks without a government- accredited guide who can speak Arabic and organise all the necessary permits just to move around. We were planning to wild camp again on our way to Khartoum, but the police forbade it. Being dumb foreigners we would simply have ignored this arbitrary display of power, but Nazzar's job would have been in jeopardy, so we made the long slog direct to Khartoum.

The roads are marvellously entertaining. They have been built with Chinese money, and one sees a lot of Chinese writing outside industrial installations and on numerous shuttle buses - going heaven knows where.

There are two other types of very visible vehicles:

- articulated lorries comprising (get this): a 10 wheel tractor unit; a 12 wheel semi-trailer, and behind that: a 20 wheel trailer. That makes 42 wheels. I counted them to make sure. That's some rig, and it must take considerable skill to drive and manoeuvre them. Evidently that skill is sometimes lacking and we have seen at least three of these juggernauts overturned (of which more below).

- the workhorse of Africa: the Toyota Hi-Lux pickup. You see them everywhere, they rarely go wrong and when they do they are easy to fix. Even at a great age and after years of abuse and lack of maintenance they seem to start first time and keep going. They are often carrying unfeasible numbers of passengers hanging on any way they can: to the pickup or to each other. Often the passengers are sitting on top of a teetering load. When springs break, as they must with the potholed roads and these enormous loads, they simply continue jolting and banging until they reach somebody who can weld them - the work of a few minutes. They are virtually indestructible, and if I buy one now it will probably outlive me.

Toodly-pip

Chris

TINA - this is not Africa.

Salaam,

On a whim we diverted to the Red Sea. Tom had found a diving resort – a small beachside campsite with hot showers, flush toilets and little cabins, clean and comfortable, to which we could upgrade for a small additional charge. It was definitely not Europe, but it wasn’t really Africa either. Be that as it may, we all needed a brief respite to steel ourselves for the next stages of our mission.

The complex, Dutch-owned but Sudanese-run, has cleanish toilets and warmish showers. It generates all its own electricity from windmills and photo-voltaic panels. The hot desert directly adjoins the sea, and so a stiff sea-breeze rarely fails. Nor does the sun.

On the way there we stopped to have a look at Suakin (once again please note that we didn't "do" it, we are now hardcore travellers, sunburnt, filthy, with resolute expressions and a far-away look in our eyes) where as so often we were the only visitors - possibly for days or weeks. This is Sudan's historic seaport built entirely of coral and comprising self-confident architecture from two millennia, with narrow winding streets and spacious squares. It's wealth was built on slavery - you've probably heard that about every seaside town in half of the world, but this time it is true. Unfortunately when the modern deep-water container port of Port Sudan was developed a few decades ago the Sudanese government started smashing it all to bits - for what reason it is unclear. Presumably someone advised them to stop, because instead of a nice cleared site for concrete apartment blocks with stinking toilets it now looks like the aftermath of the carpet bombing of Frankfurt - and they are trying to put it all back together again.

When we got to the photo-voltaic thingy, we were the only residents. However, some lunchtime visitors arrived - a group of quite affluent Sudanese. Our guide explained that this was the first stage in the process of an arranged marriage. Before long the happy couple were paddling in the sea and found the courage to hold hands under the watchful eyes of two sets of parents and two grandmothers. A bit different to my first date, and possibly yours.

Apparently this was an opportunity for the suitor to demonstrate both his affluence and his graciousness. This was achieved by massively over-ordering food and distributing the considerable surplus to a bunch of scruffy foreigners clearly in need of a good meal. Actually that's just what we were.

The women were beautifully dressed in the colourful saris worn by those who can afford them. The fathers were decked out in clean white djellabiahs and those little caps which seem to have been crotcheted by someone's grandmother. The putative bride was fashionably dressed in Western style, complete with Gucci sunglasses, and had that curvaceous plumpness which we were told is highly admired in these parts. Her (almost certainly, to my eyes) future husband had on a worn T-shirt with a silly English slogan, cut-off jeans and flip-flops. Maybe it's a fashion thing - I was never much good at appreciating that kind of thing. In any event it seemed clear that a deal was being struck.

We plunged back into the baking desert and, punctuated by another night of wild camping, we were the only visitors to more ruins. You may like to look them up sometime, my descriptive powers cannot do them justice. They are:

- the royal city of Meroe. This fabulously wealthy place was destroyed 1,800 years ago, and there is no trace of it, apart from 66 pyramids (66!) and a lot of sand. Many of the pyramids were dynamited by an Italian in search of treasure. Bastard.

- the Naqa temples. Whoa, dude! To get there we had a long off-r0ad drive, sitting up at the roof-hatches with the wind (and sand) in our hair - those of us who have any worth talking about. Rounding a dune we saw an air-conditioned modern charabanc, with it's company name in bold Arabic script, up to it's axles in soft sand and surrounded by a large group of excitable locals. The driver was looking a bit sheepish, and nobody seemed to be talking to him. Naturally we did the heroic thing, and were plied with many cans of beer. Beer, I hear you ask. In a country where mere possession results in 40 lashes. A cursory glance revealed it to be non-alcoholic. I guess it's the thought that counts.

We have all (all the men that is) started to grow moustaches:

- partly as a hommage to the universal practice of our host country. It seems that not wearing a moustache, which never happens, marks you out as gay. Wearing a frock and no jockeys is OK though. Being gay is a capital offence. Fortunately there are no gay people in Sudan - apparently;

- partly to observe the Australian tradition of growing an ironic moustache for the full month of November. This longstanding tradition dates back a good two years - quite a time in the history of Australia.

BFN

Chris