9:00pm, Sept. 24, Awash
Some impressions I would like to elaborate on but am far too tired… and also fear I won’t have time (or an electrical plug-in) later on:

-Driving in Ethiopia is almost exactly like playing one of those race car video games… Cruisin’ World or San Francisco Rush 2049… there are no rules, you go as fast as you can, use all the dirty tricks in the book, and make sure you are always mashing the gas or smashing on the breaks. Only in the Ethiopia game, you REALLY only get one life.
-Also, I can’t believe how much black smoke these automobiles belch out. If I have to endure the fumes for another few days, I think I may die of cancer before we get back to Addis. AND, Shimeles, though he proclaims to love his country and his people, seems to have a profound hatred of them when they venture anywhere near the road. Even when no other cars are coming and the people are walking off to the side, Shime will go out of his way to swerve toward them at high speed, horn blaring, until they have to hurl themselves into the bushes with a look of terror, or more often, the smoldering glare of death. On several occasions, I was sure the whole crowd would storm the car and we’d be hacked to pieces. He certainly is good at making a friendly entrance into every new town…
- The wonderful desertscape, with cindercones and cracked lava lakes and the superb flat-topped acacias and another big waxy leafed thing that no one seems to know. And once we left Nazret, the beautiful OPEN ROAD!
-The big painting of a pained Jesus bleeding under the crown of thorns on the side of a bus… supposedly to win favor with the Lord so that the passengers of that suicidal missile might be saved until they reach their destination. Unlikely… carcasses of busses, trucks and land rovers litter the side of the highway, especially around blind curves and hilltops. I mentioned there are no rules. Perhaps I should also mention that the drivers are all CRAZY! The trucks which shuttle goods from the Djibouti port are known locally as Al Qaeda … not for any religious affiliation, but for the carnage and havoc they daily wreak across the roadway.
-Huge camels, everywhere! Thousands, and all being herded along the road by the ultra-vain Afar boys, each one sporting a huge black fro and an AK-47 or M-16. For rural camel-chasing nomads, they seem more fashion conscious than the Parisiens or Milaneese. I can’t wait until we have to do business with these folks… I’m sure they’re just dying for someone to point their rifles at.
-The strange-looking Brahmin cattle, with big neck wattles, great curved horns and the enormous hump on the back. Plus the multitudes of goats and donkeys, all just pleading to be mown down along the road. Shimeles says that if you run over an Afar’s camel, they’ll kill you on the spot. I hope we don’t do that. But with the way Shimme drives…
-The beautiful round kivas with grass roofs! I’m in Africa at last! I saw baboons along the roadside, and the countryside is so beautiful once freed from the towns and cities. Mud huts and families plowing their fields the way they probably have for several millennium. It makes me grin like a fool every time I see it… and grimace whenever I see the terrible toll this hackneyed ‘modernity’ has sewn on Ethiopia.
Well, I’m sure there are many more impressions, but my shoulders are cramping, the mosquitoes are feasting on me, and I really really, really just want to lay down in this flea-infested bed and close my eyes until the sun rises or the muezzins start yodeling out their call to the morning prayer. I wonder how they ever managed before electric bullhorns? Ciao, amicis!