10:30pm, October 8, Same place:
Well, I’m still at it. Stepped out briefly to give my shoulders a break (it’s a little uncomfortable writing with the computer in my lap, but I can’t afford a room with a desk) and picked up some groceries/snacks in lieu of dinner tonight, among them a packet of milk. Ohh, blessed milk! How I missed you! (I never did get to try camel’s milk. Did have one opportunity, when some ragged children on the roadside rushed out as our car sped past, waving old water bottles full of a white goo.
‘Do they want water?’ I asked.
‘No, they’re trying to sell camel milk. Who’s going to buy that stuff, anyway?’ said Shimeles.
‘I would,’ I said. ‘Let’s stop.’
‘And who’s going to take you to the hospital?’ said Shimeles.
And we drove on. )
Anyway, I drank my milk out of the packet. I’ll never get used to that: packets of milk. Rather inconvenient. But it was so good. And I ate a whole can of apricot halves and some tea biscuits and juice. Mmmm… dinner in bed.
I’m really into this journal writing thing. I can’t figure out if it’s because I’m journaling on my computer, which allows me to type, whereby I can write fast enough to capture my speeding thoughts…. Or if it’s because this experience is so interesting, I can’t help but want to put it down… Or if it’s because I know I’m going to post this online for the general reading public, which excites me, even though nobody will probably ever read this far… Or if (most likely) it’s because I’ve become an introvert and am too afraid to venture out into Addis’ nightlife alone (who would I dance with?) and writing gives me a good excuse to stay in without feeling like a loser. Ah well, it is a good excuse. I’m glad I’m doing all this writing. I’ve been reading over some of it today, and it’s nothing special, but still, nice to see my thoughts on paper… er, virtual paper. A good exercise. And I like to write when I’m in the mood, which has been quite frequently these past few weeks. I should go to bed soon, but I’ll leave you with my impressions of driving the highways in Ethiopia:

Imagine Anarchy, in its most complete and unrestrained form. Now capture it, cage it, and compress it so that all its chaos must manifest itself in the one truly free outlet of expression it has: the highway system. Imagine a world where there are no traffic cops. There are no traffic laws. There are no safety standards for automobiles or semi-trucks, no safety protocols for highways, no maintenance, no oversight, no rules, no boundaries, no courtesy, no sanity. Just pure, plain fun on the open road.
Driving back from Afar, especially the drive between Nazret and Addis, I knew for absolute certain that we were going to die. We were driving about 160 km/hr, for one thing. The roadside was scattered with constant reminders of the sacrifices that were made daily to the Road Gods, for another. My favorites were a car impacted so completely into a bridge railing that the car had been nearly sheared in half, and had proceeded to burn itself to cinders; a gasoline truck which had been literally rolled into a ball-shaped piece of metal after catapulting down almost 1500 near-vertical feet of cliff-face; and a semi-truck with two trailers that had obviously lost a tire at an inopportune moment, slammed through a bridge railing and descended cab-first into a large boulder about sixty feet below, in such a way that accordioned and compressed the cab into the trailer behind it so completely that pieces of the cab were visible at the back end of the trailer. All were accidents that had occurred that day or the one previous, though I don’t think anyone was much concerned with trying to recover the bodies. What bodies? They had all probably vaporized. You can’t even collect dental records from crashes like that.
When we first left for the Afar, I was informed that the steady stream of tractor-trailers which travel back and forth from the Djibouti Port are known locally as the Al Qaeda. At the time, I thought it was somewhat humorous. I have since learned that there is no humor in it at all. Mom, no matter how bad you think the semi trucks are on the highways of the western US, believe me: we have a lot to be thankful for. The drivers of these trucks seem quite truly hell-bent on exterminating themselves and as many innocent civilians as they can in a spectacular tumbling fireball. There is NO oversight of the truckers or their trucks. Of course not: The companies resist any oversight because it would cause them to lose money, and the government won’t tamper with the companies with a ten-foot pole because those trucks are the literal lifeblood of Ethiopia. No trucks from the port, and the country grinds to a screeching halt. You would not believe the kind of shit you see on these roads. First of all, the roads themselves are terrible. There might be a washed out bridge over a 100 foot gorge. On the main highway. No sign, no barricades, no warning, just a dirt track off to the right where you can do a drive around. But no other evidence that you should slow down and TAKE that dirt track, instead of barreling ahead toward certain oblivion. I don’t know how many horribly wrecked vehicles I saw crumpled in a pile of boulders, where a simple ‘detour’ sign would have saved several lives. No sign in place before the crash, no sign erected afterwards. But a mangled semi-trailer is usually a good indicator that something’s amiss.
NOBODY’S car here is very much maintained, but these trucks are especially bad. Especially the tires. For God’s sake, it’s unbelievable what they drive on: tires so old and bald that huge chunks are missing from the center, where the radial belts are exposed clear as day, and sometimes chunks hanging and flapping from the sides. Yes! Really! They are tragic accidents waiting to happen… and they DO happen, a lot. The trailers often drive down the highway somewhat crooked to the direction of travel, sometimes in a slight Z configuration, with all the wheels wobbling like they’ll launch off at any moment. I mean, the wheels on these trucks are ALWAYS wobbling, but sometimes, they really wobble. And the loads will be massively tall, and lopsided so they hang far off to one side and cause the whole truck to tilt, and are tied on by some very insufficient lengths of yellow nylon cord, and oversize wide loads NEVER have lights or flagging. Better be paying attention, or you’ll end up skewered on the shovel of that dozer riding in the back of a low-bed. Oh, lights. Traveling at night is near suicidal… not just because of ambush, but because the trucks are woefully under-lit. You’d be lucky to see one with two working headlights, and you have no idea if it’s an oncoming Datsun or a double-wide semitrailier with a bad lean and a load hanging over the centerline. Near Nazret, at a customs checkpoint, we saw one semi-truck with a huge trailer just suddenly go up on two wheels and flop over as it went past the checkpoint, like a dead horse, just like that, because the load was so high and off balance. It’s pretty amazing to see something like that happen right in front of you, and makes you want to say a few hail-mary’s for the remainder of your drive.
Let me give you a little summary of the type of situation which is encountered about every thirty seconds on the road between Nazret and Addis:
We’re screaming down the highway: the horn screaming; Shimeles screaming curses at the cars in front of us and at the pedestrians on the roadside who are walking too close; the engine screaming; and me screaming silently while I claw at the door handle in abject terror. The car in front of us is driving in the middle of the road… a little to the left of center in fact, driving on the wrong side of the road being a principle tenet of Highway Anarchy. Shimeles lays on the horn and floors it, squeezing by within inches of the edge of the road and the other car, who refuses to move over. We go neck and neck into a blind turn, blind turns being the favorite place to make risky passing maneuvers in Ethiopia. Suddenly, coming into view is a wall of two semi-trucks and a passenger bus, side by side by side, forming a wall across the highway, all honking and trying to pass each other, all going extremely fast with wobbly tires and off-kilter loads, and all barreling directly towards us around the turn. What follows is a mad burst of headlight-flashing, with everyone flashing their headlights at everyone else, which apparently is the Ethiopian morse code for “What the fuck are you doing you crazy bastard!?” and is entirely unproductive in every sense. The smaller cars, being us and the guy next door, try to rearrange ourselves in the space of several very short seconds. The bus and the semi-truck hurtling toward us in the wrong lane, instead of slamming on their brakes, floor the gas in a mad race to pass the third semi-trailer, despite the reality that it will take them at least eight seconds to make a complete pass, and vaporizing impact is just less than one second away. At this point, Shimeles succeeds in going fast enough to slide in front of the other guy by a few millimeters, all aforementioned screamers now screaming louder than ever. As soon as we pass the other guy, and thus having established position and superiority, Shimeles brings the car to a wildly rapid deceleration by shifting straight into second gear. Screaming horns from the front and behind. About of a third of a second left to live. The two trucks and the bus squeeze together so they are virtually touching, and leave us about a foot of highway space. Shimeles swings off to the side of the road just far enough to give the trucks about an inch of leeway. All parties are still traveling with great velocity. At precisely the place of passing, a massive pothole five inches deep and the full width of the roadway is encountered, and at the very same instant, the six-year old shepherd boy who has been hiding in the bushes waiting for this very event, leaps out and drives his herd of sixty goats right across the road in front of everybody. I squeeze my eyes shut and think of my family. Sound of squealing tires. Something thuds under the car… Goat? Shepherd? Shimeles shouting curses in Amharic, more honking and light-flashing. I open my eyes, amazed to be still alive, and a little disappointed. This is just too exhausting. Shimeles immediately brings the car, engine roaring, back to full speed at about 140km/hr, waiting for the steep hilltop ahead to thrust out astraddle the next truck in front of us, so that the whole process may be repeated again in the space of about a minute. I have never had heartburn like this before.