The road to Addis Ababa

This one is from Charlie: The road from Bahir Dar to Addis Ababa, passes through some of the most beautiful high mountain farming country I have ever seen. Along the way one passes through Injebarra, Addis Alem, Finote Selam and Debre Markos. We were on our way to visit the District Hospital at Finote Selam and the Zonal Hospital at Debre Markos. The drive to Finote Selam is approximately 200 Km or 120 miles and requires 2 an ½ hours. Then another hour to go the 80 Km or 50 Miles to Debre Markos. We left at 6:30 AM in order to avoid some of the traffic. However, we stopped for coffee but did not know that the coffee machine was not yet warm. So we had some bread and waited for about a half an hour before we discovered it would be another ½ hour until coffee would be ready. After we asked, they did offer to go get coffee at another restaurant for us, but we decided to get on the road.
Traffic in Ethiopia, especially on this road is very different from what you encounter in the US. The road is two lanes without a shoulder. It was constructed by the Chinese and is one of the best roads in Ethiopia. However, it serves minibuses, big buses, huge dump trucks, tractor trailer rigs that are called Al Qaida by locals because so many people are killed by them (more about this later), farmers walking, farmers carrying their wooden plows, the women of the farms carrying huge loads of maybe 20-25 kilo (40-50 lbs), donkeys, people on horses, mule drawn carts, herds of goats and herds of cows.
I have seen data recently that Ethiopia has more traffic deaths per mile driven than any other African country. This usually involves a large vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed and a pedestrian. As our grandson, Michal, would say Truck: Person?, Person loses. It is a wonder that more are not killed given the congestion on the roads. A horn is an absolute must. As you go along in a vehicle, the driver first blows the horn at the foot traffic and then slows down or applies the brakes if absolutely necessary to avoid an accident.
Regarding the buses and big rigs, on our 280 Km we saw 3 significant accidents. In one village, a tractor trailer rig with two trailers had crossed the road and turned over on the side of the road. In the next village, a huge dump truck had apparently collided head on with another large vehicle and its cab was totally crushed. The last accident was a large stake body truck that ran into the concrete supports for a a bridge. It had turned sideways and flipped over. We were told that no one was injured. In addition, two of our peace corps volunteers have been involved in significant bus accidents between Bahir Dar and Addis Ababa and as a result will be going home. Anyway, we had a very good driver named Mulugeta and he got us to our destination safely, just 3.5 hours after leaving Bahir Dar.
The country that we were driving through looks to be the result of volcanic activity and thus I suppose very fertile. There are many places that look like the cores of old volcanoes like we see in New Mexico. There are neatly divided fields containing corn, millet, barley, beans, chili peppers and other stuff I did not recognize. In many cases the fields are divided by stone walls, much the same as you see in England. The productivity of these farms is not as great as one might imagine give in that the work is all done by hand including wooden plows and oxen. Also along the way, people are selling bottles of yellow and clear liquids. I am told these are very strong distilled beverages. The more clear, the stronger. Mulugeta said if you drink it at night, your breath will keep the mosquitoes away.
The hospitals we visited are struggling to improve. It rains a lot up there and there is a lack of paving, so there is mud everywhere. Then there is little or no water available in the buildings, so there is mud everywhere in the hospital. It is really sad. The hospitals been have been severely neglected over time so there is a huge amount of work to be done to prepare to really serve the people. The 17 hospitals in the Amhara region have a total of 1950 beds for a population of approximately 20 Million people.
When we left for Debre Markos, I thought it would be warmer than Bahir Dar, it is cold here (65 degrees F), but it was even colder in Debre Markos. So I had brought along light summer clothes. Boy, was that a mistake. Thankfully I had a thick wool blanket on my bed and even had hot water in my room for a shower, so I didn’t totally freeze. The hotel was nice by small town Ethiopian standards, although there was a party going on downstairs until 2 am and then the dogs started howling at 4 AM and then the trucks and buses started up at 4:30 AM and revved their engines and honked their horns, so I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep.
The drive back to Bahir Dar the following day was uneventful except that it was a market day, so I estimated that we encountered approximately 10,000 people, 20,000 cows, 30,000 goats and 2,000 donkeys along the way. I could not believe the amount of foot traffic on the road and many of the people walking were children between 5 and 12 years of age. Scary stuff.


Tuesday
Another frustrating day. The broad band connecting at work has been down for 3.5 weeks. Try as I might I cannot seem to get anyone to think this is a problem. In addition, there is no public power at the Health Bureau for the last two days. The generator sometimes comes on at 9:30 AM and then shuts down at 12:30 PM for lunch, then starts again at 2:30 PM and shuts down at 5:30 PM. Well yesterday as I worked on a lengthy document at about 5 PM, the building went dark. Apparently, the engineer decided he wanted to get home before the rain started, so he just shut it down. Luckily about half the work I had done was auto saved so it wasn’t a total loss.