Articles by Doug Nienhuis
I am a Canadian, and I am currently traveling through Asia with a touring bicycle. These are stories and pictures from my trip.
034 – Gomando
“Father, father, where are you go?”
Five minutes into the new day and I already had my first entourage of children. They didn’t call me “ferenji”, however. Not even “you you.” It seems I’d been promoted. I was now “father.” “Father, father, where are you go?” cried the children.
All in all I thought it a great improvement. The ‘father’ denoted a certain respect and the ‘where …
033 – Muketuri
The Land
The next morning the manager and the two young men watched with mute disappointment as one by one I carried my bags out into the street and attached them to my bike. Their eyes followed each one with a “give me” appeal that for once went unvoiced.
It was a bright and cold morning and Sululta’s main street was already filled with farmers tightly wrapped …
032 – Addis Abeba to Sululta
Traveller as Hunter-Gatherer
I took it slow when I finally dragged myself out of bed. I had no definite destination for that day. My goal was simply to break the inertia that had started to grip me while waiting for the rainy season to end. Even if I only made it to the far side of Addis and slept in a new hotel it would be …
031 – “Hyena! They eat you!”
I was about to crawl into bed around 10:00 p.m. I was fully packed and organized and overloaded. Suddenly Tadale saw me about to sneak into my room.
“Douglas! Are you fine?” he bellowed and shook my hand. The momentum carried him into my room, the last place I wanted him on the eve of my departure for Gondar. The inevitable happened when he saw my …
030 – Special People
The Ethiopian premiere of “Endurance” turned out to be interesting in ways that I didn’t anticipate, but which I think Abiy did. He seemed to have misgivings from the first and it had nothing to do with the 150-birr ticket price as I’d thought. His fears that he did not belong at this event seemed justified right at the first. In fact it was pretty …
029 – Opulence
It was a shower and shave day for me and I steeled myself for the shock and plunged my head under the ice-cold water. The flow of water was very meagre on top of being refrigerated, which made it even more of a shock. A heavy flow would mean I could leap in and out quickly. With the irregular drip I had to contort my …
028 – A Blessing In Disguise
The more time I had to mull over the wallet-snatching incident the more it seemed like a blessing in disguise. It told me more about the country in a moment than I might have learned in months. It became a touchstone in helping me interpret what was going on around me
It laid bare the reality of the place and the fundamental absurdity (from a certain …
027 – Tiger Spirit
Allen turned out to be a bit of a surprise. When I met him he was unshaven and wore a pair of jeans and a dirty t-shirt. From that (despite the lack of the signature knapsack over the shoulder) I assumed he was a backpacker. But he was coming from the direction of the Sheraton, which made me suspect he was a well-heeled tourist, a …