Thanksgiving at the camel market

I would regret it later, but for that moment the camel milk tasted so good.
I was sitting in a dark tent with about 50 camel brokers who were enjoying the shade. The woman who offered me the milk, dipped a ceramic mug into a steaming pot of spiced tea, sweetened with lots of sugar and camel milk. She handed it to me, smiled and said something about my eyes.
I drank the tea and gladly accepted more. It was Thanksgiving after all.
I was in Bebille, in the middle of the largest camel market in Africa.
People come in from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, from the deserts of East Africa to buy and sell camels.
It happens every Thursday. I heard about it at a cafe in Harar and knew I couldn't miss it.
When I stepped off the bus in Bebille, a man said - "The borders are not always what they seem. You're in Somalia now."
And I saw what he meant. The women wore bright, colorful scarfs that fell from the tops of their heads to their ankles. I didn't hear any Amharic spoken, just Somali.
Most of the men had their heads wrapped in scarves against the heat and they all carried sticks to steer and hit the camels until they stood up straight with their necks long for the buyers to see.
The market was really just a dry, dusty field full of camels and people arguing about money.
On occasion, the arguing would end with a handshake, each kissing their own hand as a kind of promise, and then money was exchanged.
I saw a small camel sell for 5000 birr and the largest for 17000 birr (17 birr = $1).
A man with a white beard died red with henna led me through the market and had me take a photo of each of his camels.
Among the crowds, I recognized people from the Afar region where I saw the salt caravan weeks ago. Someone told me that when Afar people meet, the first thing they ask is, "How are your camels?" Before family, before anything else.
I sat in the shade at the market for hours, soaking in the sea of animals and scarves and all the noise. I knew as soon as I walked away, it would disappear into just another memory and I would never see anything like it again.
The thing I've noticed about myself - about the difference between traveling in my 20s and now in my 30s - is that I appreciate it so much more. I understand that it is a gift. A window that will close in a couple months and I will be back in an office worried about my inbox and deadlines and whether we have good art for the front page.
But for now, I'm grateful for every bit of this adventure.

I walked from the camel market back to the center of Bebille and sat in the concrete courtyard of a cafe, in the shade, and ordered a plate of goat meat and injera - a perfect Thanksgiving dinner.

Autumn feeds the hyenas

I remember months ago, from the comfort of our living room, I read aloud to Charlie and account of one person's visit to the city of Harar, Ethiopia. The author said there is a man outside the gates of the city who feeds the hyenas every night and if you ask, the man will let you feed them.
"You won't do that, of course," Charlie said.
"Of course not, honey. That would be crazy."
And yet, I found myself standing there last night - in the dark, holding a strip of camel meat, surrounded by a pack of hyenas.
"This is crazy."
I'd been sitting there for almost an hour at the base of a giant fig tree. The roots of the tree rolled over the exposed stone coffin of an ancient holy man - an Islamic scholar. A shrine.
And my mind went back and forth between admiration for the incredible tree, for the clear night sky and the flash of hyena eyes as they jumped for another piece of meat from the mouth of the hyena man.
Finally, the man came over to me and said, "It is nothing to watch. You should feed them."
When I politely declined, he picked up his bucket of camel meat and sat right next to me.
The hyenas gathered around us.
He said - each hyena has a name.
He said - his father before him was a hyena man and he has known the hyenas since he was a child.
He said the people of Harar have a spiritual connection to the hyenas. That they carved holes into their walled city so the animals could come through. And after he finished feeding them, they would go into the city and eat whatever they could find. The hyenas would eat whatever trash the herds of goats, stray dogs and circling hawks didn't eat during the day.
He said - Harar has a festival once a year when residents each put a bowl of porridge by their door for the hyenas. And if the hyenas eat your porridge, it means good luck for the rest of the year.
And somehow, the talking lulled me and the hyenas being so close made me brave enough to feed them myself.
Up close, they seem like oversized, malformed dogs. Soft spotted fur. Thick necks. Hunched shoulders and eager eyes.
He wrapped a strip of camel meat on a stick about as long as a pencil.
I held it high in the air and a hyena jumped. I felt his teeth clamp down on the stick, inches from my fingers, and I felt the teeth slide the meat off the stick.
Then, another and another.
And when I was done, I felt the now-familiar, warm rush of catharsis after another fear faced.

*****
Harar is a traveler's dream. A walled city with 82 mosques and more than 300 winding cobblestone alleys. It feels like something out of storybook Arabia.
For centuries, it has been a crossroads - a huge market for goods from the Arab world, India and East Africa.
All those influences are still here. On one street, you'll hear people speaking Somali, Harari, Oromo, Amharic, Arabic and English.
I saw:
* A street of tailors. Men working heavy steel sewing machines powered manually with two feet by a large pedal.
* Spices, incense, tea in open burlap sacks on every corner.
* A man sitting next to a camel head, carving camel meat off the bone.

*****
I couldn't find anyone to come to Harar with me - so I got on a bus and came by myself.
But the thing about Ethiopia is that you are never alone.
It's the thing that makes traveling here so fun but exhausting on the days when you need some good old-fashioned American privacy.
Examples:
* The bus stopped in a village on the way to Harar and I sat by the side of the road next to a woman selling bananas. A boy in a skull cap with a dusty face stood in front of me and stared. When I would look at him and smile, he would beam for a second and then look away. And soon there were children all around me, standing quietly, and two women who brought stools to sit nearby. And no one really looking at me - just encircling me quietly.
* And only minutes after my arrival in Hara, I stopped at a stall to buy some toothpaste and one of the other customers heard my Amharic (attempts) and invited me to sit for an avocado juice and samosas. We sat at a sidewalk cafe and he introduced me to everyone who walked by.

So - alone in Ethiopia, but never alone.

The hottest place on earth

I have never been so scared.
A rush of the purest, primal fear I have ever felt washed over me as I stared into the mouth of a live volcano.
The lava was close to the surface, boiling about two stories down.
The lava lake is called Erta Ale - spitting distance from the Eritrean border.
It sounded like the sea as the lava splashed against the sides of the crater. Something burst and a fountain of lava sprayed into the air.
I looked into the volcano, the heat burning my face and the sulphur fumes choking me.
The lava was a black moving mass with cracks or orange shining through.
The light was all the more vivid because we hiked there in the middle of the night.
It was midnight and the moon almost full - waning only a sliver. No clouds. Jupiter shining bright and the rest of the stars drowned out by the glow of the moon.
When I couldn't take the fumes and the heat and the fear anymore, I walked away from the edge of the lava lake and sat cross-legged for a moment to take in my surroundings.
With the ocean sound behind me, my eyes focused on the moonlit landscape and I saw that I was inside of a second, much larger crater. And there were layers of hardened lava filling the floor of the place - light grey and hard as stone at the far edge of the crater and dark black and chalky where I was sitting. Fresh lava.
The sitting and pondering and visual exploration was supposed to calm my fears, but the power of the place overwhelmed me and I felt a mixture of awe and panic.
It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life and I could only stand if for about 15 minutes.
As I climbed out of there, I thought about how - in the United States - there would be boardwalks over the hardened lava, railings and stairs to get you in and out of the crater instead of scrambling up the rocks and a fence keeping you from getting to close to the edge of the lava lake.
I've always resented those fences, but I found myself longing for that false feeling of security. Maybe an informational sign or a guard to yell at me for getting so dangerously close.

Here's a YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySnI4RYirKw

*****'
There's a small village - more of a camp really - at the edge of the crater. Small round huts made of stacked stone. Some with no roof - just walls to protect you from the constant warm wind.
Since we did not live in the village, we did not have walls to hide behind. We just laid down on the ground between the huts and tried to sleep.
I woke up at dawn to the sound of a snorting camel kneeling not too far from my head.

*****
We were in a place called the Danakil Depression - the second lowest place on earth and the hottest place on earth.
We camped for five days - sleeping outside with no tents. I watched the moon move across the sky every night. Watched every sunrise and every sunset.
The place is barren - only salt and lava.
In some spots, it reminded me of Yellowstone National Park (without the boardwalks and roads and rangers). Colorful sulphur springs and geysers. A landscape so young, it's still being torn apart by it's own birth.

The Afar people who live there scrape out a living by mining salt from what was once the sea floor. It's white as far as you can see - just salt.
They break the salt into blocks, load in on camels and lead it out in caravans. It takes 10 days to walk from the salt flats to the village where they sell the salt and buy supplies for the 10 day journey back.

We slept outside an Afar camp for two nights and for the most part kept to ourselves - a couple from India, two Belgians, two Israelis, a band of Polish people and an American (me).
On our second day, a flash flood made the "road" impassable and we waited for the extreme heat to dry the ground.
The Indian woman and I decided to venture into the Afar camp, unsure if we would be welcome.
As we walked between the huts, people came to their doors and stared.
I smiled and tried my best "Selamneush!" And that's all it took.
Before we knew it, some women had taken us by the hand and led us into one of their homes and made us coffee. The room and doorway filled with people - all smiling.
Then and old woman took my hand and led me through the camp to see the salt caravan walking through.
I watched the sunset with her as the camels went by.

******

After days in the desert, we drove 12 hours back to the main road over sand, lava, salt and rocks. When we reached the asphalt, we were in shock.
"It's so soft!"
"We're flying!"
"It's like a magic carpet ride!"
The shock stayed with us the rest of the night as we checked into a hotel. Washed off the thick layer of grime and met in the bar for some food and a beer.
CNN was blaring from a flat screen television. Pundits shouting opinions about Joe Paterno.
My mind couldn't take it. I stood up, walked across the bar and turned it off.
We all breathed a huge sigh of relief that the assault of the sense from the television was over and raised our glasses.
"I'll never forget that as long as I live."

A fresh cup of coffee

I had the best cup of coffee of my life today - probably the best cup of coffee I will ever have.

Picture this:
The only light in the room came through the open door.
There were no windows. And the light was filtered through the smoke coming from a wood fire she started in the corner of the room. She pushed three rocks together and lit some wood and leaves in the center of them.
She cleaned the coffee beans with water and then spread them on a metal plate over the fire. With a stick she moved the beans over the fire so they would roast evenly, turning from green to dark brown.
I noticed the floor was dirt and the goatskin I was sitting on was covering a seat molded out of mud, ash and straw.
When the beans were roasted, she took them off the fire and put on a kettle to boil.
She poured the still hot beans into a deep bowl and pounded them with a stick - mortar and pestle - until they were finely ground.
She poured the coffee into the boiling water and let it brew.
Then she poured me a cup.
Outside the dirt road leading to her village is being paved by the Chinese.
Heavy equipment lines the road and Chinese foreman stand watch. Once it's done, the trip from Gonder to Axum will be on two-lane asphalt instead of the rocky backroad it is today.
As I sipped my coffee, I thought about how the place was about to change. This woman and her neighbors will realize what they have - an incredible cultural experience with a view of the Simien Mountains - the roof of Africa.
The views from their home made me want to pull my heart out of my chest. I actually got choked up as I sat on the edge of a cliff earlier in the morning looking out on the mountains.
The air smelled like the thyme that was growing on the ground like a carpet.

Today in the mountains, I also saw:
* A huge beehive hanging from a tree.
* Baboons walking through a grove of trees - maybe 20 in all.
* And a man walking behind a one-bladed plow pulled by two oxen.


******

Mom, Dad, et al,
I am heading to the Danakil Depression. Will be out of reach for about a week. Will blog, write, call as soon as I return.
Autumn

I can't dance, but I did anyway

There are times in the United States when tourism is just a reproduction, an after-image.
The scheduled shoot out in the streets of a Western town, the sepia photos you can take wearing Wild West costumes, butter churning in a colonial village.
Honestly, when I saw the Ethiopian dancing at the touristy restaurant in Addis, I thought it was an approximation of something that once was.
I was wrong.
At 11 p.m., the streets of Gonder were empty and quiet. The only sound came from a small square building with a sign in Amharic.
Along with the sounds of drumming and singing, a warm light poured out of the front door. The music was lively, that it took a moment to adjust to the reality of the place once we walked in.
One room. Linoleum floor. The warm light was coming from one bare bulb. Chairs lined the walls leaving the floor open.
In the center of the room was one woman wearing a white, hand-woven dress singing loudly.
Two women pounded on the drums and an old man stood behind her pulling music out of a one string fiddle.
I'm not sure what it's called - this style of singing.
The woman went from person to person and sang to them.
It was free form and spontaneous. She made it up as she went along. Friends would shout out things for her to sing - something flattering, something funny. Then they would dance - the singer and the subject.
It was the same dance I saw in Addis - shoulders lifting, head moving, the rest of the body still.
When she came to me, she asked my name and pulled me to my feet and belted out a song about me in Amharic. Who knows what it said (I'm probably glad I don't know). I heard my name a few times in the song.
She took off my scarf and tied it aruond my waist and showed me how it is used in the dance.
I mirrored her movements, which got smaller and smaller as our knees bent and we moved closer and closer to the ground. Then up again - spinning around each other leading the spin with one jerking shoulder.
The Ethiopians were hooting and clapping and the fiddle and drums were getting louder and louder.
And for a moment I completely lost myself.

A visit to Awramba

The leader of Awramba - a village of about 400 - sat with us in a tiny room built for just such a thing, meeting with visitors and telling them the story of the place.
All his clothes were handmade from cloth woven in the village. And as I looked around at all the women sitting with us, I saw that their plaid button up shirts were made of the same thick cloth.
Awramba is about two very painful, rocky miles off the highway between Bahir Dar and Gonder. It's an intentional community - very different from other Ethiopian towns.
Begging is not allowed. No children mob you; no hands stick out from the side of the road.
The founder of the place believes that education is the way out of poverty - not begging.
In the center of town, there is a huge library full of books in Amharic and English. If visitors want to give something, they are encouraged to donate a book.
Ethiopians - who are a deeply religious people - are skeptical of the place because they have no church or mosque. The founder said, because of the conflict religion can cause, if you live in Awramba, you are not allowed to say if you are Christian or Muslim - only that you believe in the one Creator.
In 2001, Awramba got its first media attention and people started making the trip to see it.
I can't imagine they get that many visitors because the road was hell and as we got about a half mile out, children started running out of the hills and the fields, throwing both hands up int he air to wave. They ran next to the minibus the entire way into the village (we couldn't go very fast on that road).
After we toured the village, we sat and ate injera with lentils and said goodbye with lots of hugging and smiling.
Some boys chased our van down the road and tossed a peanut branch into the window. It was heavy with peanuts still hanging from the roots, covered in dirt. I've never seen a peanut straight out of the ground before. They grow underground like little shelled potatoes.
We divided the peanuts and tore open the soft dirty shells and ate them. Fresh like that they had a red skin and had the taste and texture of peas eaten straight from the garden.

Just another tourist

In every country - even in Ethiopia - there is a tourist trail. And I am on it. They call it the historic route and the checklist includes a stop at the Blue Nile Falls near Bahir Dar, a visit to the ruins of a castle in Gonder, a trek through the Simien Mountains, a visit to the ancient city of Axum where the Ethiopians believe they have the Ark of the Covenant (most churches have a chamber in the center with a replica Ark of the Covenant that can only be seen by the priest. Man said, "Without the Ark, it's not a church."), and Lalibela to see the rock hewn churches.

Blue Nile Falls - check.

After meeting in various places, a group of nine has formed, moving from place to place in a swarm of white faces. This has proven helpful for getting discounts on hotels and renting entire minibuses to ourselves.
It also creates something of a spectacle everywhere we go, which backfires sometimes.
Case in point - this morning.
In years past, the Blue Nile Falls was this incredible wall of water, one of the most impressive waterfalls in Africa. Today, the falls are still impressive but tamed somewhat by the construction of a new dam to feed electricity to Ethiopia and Sudan.
Our swarm of white faces arrived at the bus station looking for transportation to the falls. The bus station is just a parking lot full of buses with the names of the buses written in Amharic script.
Touts love the confusion and we were mobbed. After telling them we didn't believe their story that we missed the bus and wouldn't find another one and that the only way was by their personal car for a small fortune, we climbed onto the bus.
The bus windows were covered by thick, dusty curtains. It was dark and stuffy. We found seats and waited.

In Ethiopia, as a "ferengi", it's important to know that 90 percent of the time you are paying a different price than the locals. You can try to fight it or you can accept it. And there are times for both.
Someone in our group decided to fight to price of the bus ticket. (Locals were paying about 70 cents. We were charged twice that.)
He argued and refused to pay and soon there was yelling and fist shaking and then someone came on board with a stick. And then all the foreigners were kicked off the bus.
Imagine the screaming match that continued outside the bus and the growing amused crowd. There was no winning this one.
I saw an old woman sitting on a log at the edge of the lot. I walked over to her, put my hand on my heart and gave her a quick head nod. She patted the log beside her and I sat down. She had a shaved head and a small blue cross tattooed on her forehead between her eyes.
We watched.

Once both sides had calmed down, our swarm walked out of the bus park to a nearby cafe. There were five of us that morning and I just learned the word for "five." I was able to order for us in Amharic. Not sure why something so simple makes me so happy, but it does.
The more words I use each day, the more I learn.

We did finally end up at the falls.
The guy at the ticket office said we had two choices - take a right and take a boat across the river to the falls or take a left and walk about 25 minutes (when an Ethiopian tells you walking time - triple it).
He said, "Take your first gra," laughing because I know the word for "left."
We took a gra.

One of the guys - an Irishman - seemed to collect children as he walked. He was surrounded on all sides with barely enough room to put one foot in front of the other.

On the walk, we saw:
* Huge old fig trees, kumquat, lots and lots of coffee trees and bushes of chat - some (mostly the very poor) eat the leaves as a stimulant and appetite suppressant.
* One guy bought a Pepsi from a woman on the side of the trail. He drank half and handed the other half to a child. Her mother grabbed it out of her hand and poured it into a new bottle and capped it.
* Children were selling little lunch boxes made of goat skin, selling white hand-woven scarves and small silver crosses.
* Saw one woman spooling newly spun wool onto a skein made of sticks.
* And, of course, the Blue Nile Falls!! It was hot and I was covered in sweat. I walked over the muddy rocks as close as I could handle to the base of the falls. There are no fences or guard rails or signs separating you from the crashing Nile. I was soaked in seconds from the spray. Probably a dozen or so Ethiopians were doing the same - the men stripped to their underwear, the women - like me - taking a shower fully clothed. And everyone was laughing. It felt great.

Came home dirty and exhausted, always a sign of a good day.

A long, long bus ride

4:30 a.m. Addis Ababa
There's on taxi sitting outside the hotel gate and it's full - two Dutch guys and their gigantic backpacks. I get them to roll down the window. I'm going to Meskel Square and they say they're going the opposite direction. And then the street is completely empty and quiet and dark.
No choice but to start walking. I walked down the hill and took a right, following directions I got the day before.
Across the street, as far as I could see were people sleeping on the sidewalk - each wrapped tight in white tarps about a foot apart.
I thought, "Oh, s***."
Another left and more downhill walking and a man ranting on the street corner.
I whispered, "Please keep me safe."
And no sooner had I said it than a taxi turned onto the street, pulled over and pushed the passenger door open.
He took me to Meskel Square - a huge parking lot full of buses and boys with baby stroller they converted to push carts, selling snacks.
The driver jumped out and asked around until he found my bus.
"How much?" I said.
"Free," he said. "It's safe in Ethiopia."
*****

The nine hour bus trip to Bahir Dar was uneventful except for stopping every so often so people could puke. The Ethiopian roads will do that to you.
I saw:
* As the sun rose, runners stretching, doing pushups on the sidewalk, old men coaches running behind young men.
* School children walking in their maroon uniforms.
* Herders with long sticks pushing goats and cattle.
* Mules carrying jerry cans of water along the road, pushed along by one small child with a stick.
* Rusting Russian tank in a field of sunflowers.
* Fields and fields of tef - the grain used to make injera bread.
* And the scenery! As we got closer to Bahir Dar - the mountains rose up like rounded granite fists; green and dark blue foothills; and the patchwork fields, interrupted on occasion by an Acacia tree.
*****

The big splurge on my trip was going to be a white water rafting trip on the Takezze or the Blue Nile.
It used to be legendary rafting - right about now after the end of the rainy season. Powerful rivers.
But the need for electricity in the Horn has dammed the rivers, one by one.
"Rafting is dead in Ethiopia."

Sherpa leaves

One nice thing about the guys at the Baro Hotel picking up local women of varied morals is that those women know their way around the city at night.
Monday was Sherpa's last night in Addis before heading south to Kenya. He wanted to eat a traditional meal and see some traditional dancing. One of the women negotiated a minibus for all 10 of us for 100 birr (about 60 cents a piece) to the Habesha near the Burkina Fasso embassy.
We ordered enough food to share and a couple bottles of honey wine.
If you haven't tried Ethiopian food before - try it. I know there's a good place in Austin and in Denver.
They lay down a sheet of Injera -a spongy, slightly sour bread and on top of the bread, they lay piles of food. No silverware; just peel a piece of injera (with your right hand only) and scoop up some food - goat, beef, lentils, cabbage, local cheese that's the texture of feta without the bite, green beans, carrots, potatoes and one hard-boiled egg. Everyone eats from the same plate.
Since this was a touristy place, they gave us napkins and washed our hands first with a pitcher of water and a bowl. Usually - no napkin and you get in line at a sink at the end of your meal to wash your right hand.
Then there was the dancing.
The highlight for me was watching two little Ethiopian girls who were at the restaurant with their families - probably 7 years old. They knew the dances perfectly, move for move - legs and torso perfectly still, just the shoulders shaking and jerking with a few head movements.
At the end of the night, when the dancers were gone and it was just the band, I danced with the prostitutes (sorry, mom) and the two little girls.
*****

On Tuesday, we said goodbye to Sherpa. He drank some bad water while cycling in Sudan and hasn't been feeling well - so we took him to the bus station (really just a field full of minibuses) to catch a ride south to a doctor in Nairobi. They strapped his bike to the top of the minivan and he was off.
In four short days with Sherpa, I learned so much. I've never met such a kind, compassionate person.
He has a video from his ride through northern Ethiopia where he was being mobbed by children. Twenty or 30 children were chasing him on his bicycle. He strapped a camera to his back so you could see them reaching for him and yelling, "you, you" or "money, money". He said it was like that the whole ride for days.
Instead of getting angry or frustrated, he said he reminded himself that he was once one of those kids on the streets of Kathmandu chasing tourists and the memory filled him with compassion for them.
And as we walked down the streets of Addis - people yelled at us: "you, you", "hey, lady", "miss, miss" and to Sherpa "hey, amigo" (because they thought he was Mexican) and "money, money". He said instead of getting angry, just slow down, take a deep breath and smile. And that's what he did - and laughed and shouted back. And it made the people laugh and the atmosphere completely changed everywhere he went.
*****

I bought a bus ticket leaving at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow for Bahir Dar. Haven't found a travel companion yet. Most of the guys at the Baro are staying there - talking about going somewhere, but not going.
In Nairobi, we called it "being porched." You find a comfy spot on a porch where you sip coffee all day and talk about life with other travelers from around the world. And it's hard to get up from that comfy spot and step back out into the unknown.
*****

Note to mom and dad: I checked in at the American embassy. The taxi driver said, "America? We call it Obamaland."
There were 16 windows in the embassy and at each one was an Ethiopian trying to get a visa. I heard one man just guessing at jobs he could do in the states.
"Do you need translators? I could be a translator."
"No. We already have translators."
And so on.
I walked past them all; I flashed my passport and the guards held the doors open for me.
*****

Luggage never arrived.
Here's what I have in my daypack:
* Eight weeks worth of Chloroquine (malaria prevention meds I bought at a nearby pharmacy)
* A warm jacket Sherpa gave me (I have to return it to some friends of his at the Yellow Bike Project in Austin when I get back.)
* Two handkerchiefs
* A yellowed copy of "The Brothers K" by David James Duncan that I found at the hotel. The cover is ripped off and it's missing all the pages after 642, but I'll enjoy it until then.
* Cheap Nokia cell phone with local number - 923798996.
* Toiletries (toothpaste and toothbrush, shampoo, small canister of Nivea moisturizer, hairbrush)
* Pocket Amharic phrasebook
* Two shirts, pants, hiking boots, scarf
* Watch and wedding ring.