Articles in All
Guinea 004
Tuesday December 12, 9:30 a.m.
It turned out there was nothing sinister going on at the cinder block cafe. I was imagining that these men were recruiting soldiers to fight Foufana or forming their own splinter group. Such is the power of arrival disorientation. The truth was so harmless as to be laughable. The men were gambling. The cafe I’d stumbled into was a bookie’s establishment. …
Guinea 003
Monday, December 11 8:51 a.m.
I got up earlier than usual this morning (even though I had trouble sleeping last night), showered, and left the hotel. I followed the same path as yesterday except I extended it just a little bit. I walked past the place where I watched the soccer game and continued to the corner. Here taxis wait for fares and the local mini …
Guinea 002
Sunday, December 10, Le Club Altesse, Conakry
I must skip ahead in my story here. This is the first time I have ventured out by myself. It seems a small thing, but it is not. It’s 2:45 in the afternoon, and the full heat of the day is beating down. It stuns me to think that in a very few days, I will be out there …
045 – Gondar
A Ghost in a Silent World
The next morning my eyes snapped open at 4:30. A drunk man was wandering through the Nile Hotel banging on each door in turn, looking, as all Ethiopians seemed to do in the early morning, for a friend. I called out to him when he reached my door and I offered to be his friend if he would go back …
044 – To Infrance
The Escape of the Joads
It was still pitch black when I was woken up by the Joads, their truck, and their rooster. They wanted to get an early start and started warming up their truck at 4:45. Unfortunately it was right outside my door and to my lungs it felt like they’d run a hose from the exhaust pipe directly into my room. I had …
043 – Bahir Dar to Werota
Leaving Bahir Dar
The streets of Bahir Dar were quiet and cold as I cycled through them. A group of men made swishing sounds as they swept up the road with large palm branches. Boys from a school scoccer team chattered and kicked a tattered ball back and forth. The only other people on the street padded by silently on their bare feet and stared at …
042 – The Blue Nile Falls
Speciation
The next day after a morning trip by bike to where the Blue Nile emerges from Lake Tana I returned to the Ghion to find Martin sitting in one of the lawn chairs on the grass. He was waiting for Andale, his right hand man on his project, and a second man from the Ministry of Agriculture. The two of them had helped him secure …
041 – The Ghion Hotel Crowd
In Search of the ‘Real’ Ethiopia
I woke up in the morning without a very clear idea of what I was going to do that day. I didn’t think I was going to do much. At most I thought I would have a cup of coffee, write in my journal, then ride into Bahir Dar and explore the city. As it turned out I never left …