NOTES FROM MONTH 3 - Under Constant Surveillance

After the heat and never ending flats of Sudan I was keenly awaiting Ethiopia. Crossing the border on the 2nd of March the change from the Islamic world to the christian was an immediate and shocking one, in the last town in Sudan the women were still covered head to toe, possession of alcohol was punishable with 40 lashes and I was frowned or scowled at by the more pious for the wearing of my 'oh so fashionable' bike shorts that exposed my knees. Yet a mere 150km down the road you enter Ethiopia there are beer adverts all over the roadside, late night bars and clubs and ladies wearing what would even be described as little in Europe. There was more than just booze and mini skirts though, it was immediately apparent that the Africa I remembered and love had begun.The temperature was about 10 degrees lower and this made for much cooler cycling. The first day in Ethiopia ended with some fairly savage climbs and day 2 was even steeper. The road builders in the north in thier wisdom had completely ignored the concept of switchbacks and instead the roads seemed to go straight up over the mountains. I didn't have a protractor on me at the time but im sure some of the climbs topped 40 degrees. I am sure you can imagine what its like pedaling a 50 kilogram bike up a gradient that steep.

I would often climb for over an hour and sometimes up to 3 at speeds as low as 7kph. Having come from Sudan where the surface was almost perfectly flat and an hour could yeild as much as 30 km it was a shock to cover less than 10 and feel like i'd been cycling all day. It was however a case of adaption, on the third morning of Ethiopia I tried to get up from sleeping on the floor and it took me 3 attempts but even after a week my thighs had started to change shape and I was covering much more distance per day but weight loss was still a problem.

A standard days cycling is anywhere from 5-9 hours and on the flat I consume around 800 calories per hour, in the mountains this jumped according to my watch to over 1100 for the tougher bits so I was expending between 5000 and 9000 calories a day and you just cant eat enough to make up for that kind of expenditure. The national dish 'Injera' didnt help at all either. Often the only thing available, it resembles a series of poos of varying colour and consistency on a large pancake. The pancake is the local adaptation of bread and is made with an active yeast that leaves it tasting like it is starting to mould. The different sauces on top were not bad but some were so hot that I found it hard to eat and so in all I lost out on nutrition because I simply couldn't choke this stuff down every day.

There is of course one large upshot to all the mountain climbs, what I call the reward, the high speed mountain descent. I think the maximum I achieved was a truly terrifying 83kph and the switchbacks when they came were a real thrill. If only the road surface were better the Ethiopian mountains roads could easily challenge the Alps for driving or riding thrill.

Collosal mountain climbs and bad food turned out to be minor problems though compared to that posed by the population, now im not slating the whole population of Ethiopia but very few of the people I encountered made life easier for me. All along the roadside for thousands of kilometres there is a constant stream of human traffic. A white man or 'ferenji' is rarely seen in rural areas outside of a car and I was shouted at and baited almost the entire time I was on the road. The kids shout 'YOU YOU YOU, MONEY MONEY MONEY' or simply 'FERENJI FERENJI' shouted from the moment I am seen until I disappear, the teenagers like to taunt me or pretend to hit me or throw stones or even put sticks through my spokes and it would seem all in the search of money. When I tell you it is constant I mean it, there were hours at a time where I was shouted at and when I stop it was worse. The people have no concept of staring or personal space so within a minute of stopping it was not unusual to have a crowd of over 50 people at a very close proximity all just staring open mouthed at me. Shouting or any other method of trying to get the crowd to disperse and give me some space wold only make me more interesting and the crowd would grow. At one point I was reading a book on top of a mountain, I had stopped there because I thought there to be few people around, however within 10 minutes I counted 110 people gathered around me. The old women were probably the worst, they would come straight at me and shout right in my face demanding money, when I refused this would provoke scowling, a lot more shouting and sometimes sometimes even throw rocks at me as I cycled away.

The result of all this was that I felt completely removed from the people, I felt completely alone, something that had not happened before Ethiopia and hasn't happened since. I have never felt such solitude and the baiting and harassment really got me down. On one of the last days coming into the capitol Addis Abeba I was a little ill so feeling low anyway and the baiting was worse than usual and I completely broke down. I found myself in tears for the first time in a long time. I cried in anger, in solitude, in exhaustion and at the sheer unreasonableness of the job of cycling 16,000km. After a few minutes I pulled myself together and for some reason felt a lot better but I was certainly counting the days to the end of Ethiopia.

Addis came as a real surprise, I got some much needed R&R and because of the bigger number of tourists in the Capitol I was singled out a lot less. I was fantastically looked after by a friend of some Suffolk friends and had a really nice few days there. I set out much fresher and knowing what lay ahead. The climbs were less severe and I made solid progress to the border with Kenya.

I had just celebrated my 6000th kilometer and remarked to myself how I had had fewer than 6 punctures doing it when I felt the unmistakable wallowing of my rear tyre signalling that all the air had escaped. One puncture was no cause for alarm but I then proceeded to get 4 more in the space of 2 hours. They were such bad punctures that they tore the tubes rendering them useless and by 6pm I was out of serviceable tubes and 20km short of where I was planning to spend the night. I ended up getting a lift on a truck back 5km to the previous town where the only option was to switch to the chinese style tubes used locally. This involved drilling the rear wheel rim to make the hole big enough for the valve to fit through and buying and enormous new bike pump.

The road to the border from there was long and uneventful but next came the tricky part. Research had told me that the first 500km of Kenya from the north was dangerous territory and that I would almost certainly have to take a truck. I wanted to avoid this at all costs but after very little local investigation I found that setting out on this road solo on a bicycle would indeed be most unwise. The problem is Somali insurgents that see trucks and other vehicles moving slowly down this road as an excellent source of income, holding them up with AK-47s and cattle herders with similar weapons. All of the above would see me as a very vulnerable source of income and it seemed the only logical way was to sling my bike into a truck that would travel in convoy with others. This proved above all the be very painful, I was precariously balanced on top of a large lorry sitting on what was effectively scaffolding poles travelling over the worst road I have ever seen. The heavy rains had washed away most of the dirt leaving bare rock that made for slow progress and a lots of bruising as I was smashed up, down and left to right. It took over 20 hours straight driving to get from the border 590km to Nanyuki where I was informed it would be safe.

From there it was a breeze getting to Nairobi over 2 days and I immediately loved the kenyan feel. The road were some of the worst I had cycled but I wasn't shouted at, gawked at OR pelted with stones which made the whole thing very enjoyable, I rediscovered my love of cycling and ended Leg 2 on a high note.

Nairobi also brought a family reunion. My parents were in Kenya visiting some friends and my brother Jasper had just finished his overland truck trip from Cape Town. It was great to see everyone and we headed down to the coast for a few days of sun, sea and sand. I am now on the road north to the Ugandan Border.

Fund raising is still coming in but the flow has turned to a trickle, if you have yet to donate or know someone who might be interested in doing so please do what you can. Next months update will include details of Malaria Consortium's work in Uganda so you can see where the money is going.

Still loving the texts and messages my mobile is +447590 840456 and my email is adam.wolley@gmail.com