Getting There Is Half the Battle

This week I have found myself on a four day “business trip” in the capital, Addis Ababa.  Well, I use that term very roughly.  I was invited by the Awi Development Association (Awi is my zone, which is the equivalent of an American county), with whom I’ve been meeting with over the past couple months, to join them on a trip to Addis to meet with potential partner NGOs.  I was starting to think about all the things I could write about this trip I’m on, and decided to first make sure I paint a picture of transportation in Ethiopia before I begin talking about the details of this current adventure.

To travel the 500km from Bahir Dar to Addis Ababa you have about five choices of transportation.  The first is flying.  It takes maybe 45 minutes and Ethiopian Airlines serves the most delicious muffins I’ve tasted in this country, but unless Peace Corps is flying me for a meeting, it is way out of my price range.  The second option is a private car, which is just as impractical as flying considering I don’t know a single person who owns a car.  This leaves us with the only three real options for traveling: a coach bus, a mini-bus, and the big local bus.

A recent arrival in Ethiopia, Selam Bus offers comfortable and roomy seats and even serves you a drink and piece of bread.  In America, these coach buses would still be considered less than ideal, but here they are my number one choice for traveling.  Next is the mini-bus, which is a 12-seater van that often seats up to 24 grown adults.  Typically on the long trips, such as the journey from Bahir Dar to Addis Ababa, they limit it to 14 though.  These mini-buses travel a lot faster than the big buses, which means you could make the trip in just about eight or nine hours.  The mini-bus is just slightly cheaper in price than the Selam Bus, and considering you are putting your life in the hands of driver, swerving around every bend, it is worth the upgrade to Selam.  Then there is the big ‘ol local bus.  Each asymmetrical row seats three on one side of the aisle and two on the other.  The benches are less than comfortable and even sitting with the skinniest Ethiopians you find yourself fighting for ample wiggle-room.  These buses cost about half the price of the Selam Bus though, and therefore still the most popular option for the average Ethiopian.  Although it can take over 12 hours, the slow speed makes it a bit safer, plus you get the added bonus of a priceless adventure, guaranteed.

Considering I was traveling with colleagues, and the association was fronting the costs, of course we took the big slow bus.  It was my first experience traveling local style for the entire 500 kilometers, but there is a first time for everything!  We woke up at 5:00AM making sure we would arrive at the bus station by 5:30AM, and the bus was already filling up quickly.  The three of us grabbed a bench towards the back and settled in for a long trip.  We started puttering down the road by 6:00AM, and the sun started to light up the sky outside my window on the left side.  I managed to get about 30-minutes of sleep but spent a majority of the ride staring at the green landscape and listening to music on my iPod.

We were making great timing, arriving at the Blue Nile Gorge just after 11AM, over halfway to Addis!  There was rumor of a landslide at the gorge, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I kept my eyes out for something unusual along the way.  We twisted our way down into the valley, crossed the Blue Nile River and climbed most of the way back up the opposite side.  I started thinking to myself that they must have cleaned up the landslide, and wondered what it had looked like.  Just as that thought was swirling around in my mind we turned the corner to a long line of trucks.  Time ticked past as we waited to move inch by inch further.  It seemed like every time I would get out of the bus to stretch, the line would move a hundred meters forward.  Every now and then four or five trucks or buses would pass us going in the opposite direction on the narrow two-lane road.  All we could see was the face of a cliff on one side of the road and a foggy abyss on the other. After a while of waiting, a couple buses from behind us passed us on the left lane, and not wanting to lose our ground, our bus followed.

An hour after we arrived at the backup we were still stopped, but now both lanes were filled with traffic heading south and I could only imagine what kind of gridlock we were creating.  Finally we found ourselves at the scene of the accident, the landslide itself.  A section of the road, about 100 meters long, on the side of a mountain, had slid about a meter and a half down and over from its original location.  Ramps made out of piles of dirt and gravel were constructed at both ends where the pavement split.  One direction at a time, cars would slowly cross this unstable stretch of road.  It didn’t seem like the section would slide any further, but it was kind of scary to think that could happen in the first place.

One of the craziest parts was there was no official directing traffic.  This landslide happened about a week before, and every day there is utter chaos to cross this section.  Could you imagine in America what would happen if part of a cliff-side road that connected two major cities had a collapse like this?  And what if one side of the traffic decided to fill both lanes of the narrow road?  And no on was at the site instructing the traffic to take turns at even intervals…? It was just one more reminder that I am still in a developing country.

Overall we arrived in Addis Ababa about 12 hours exactly after leaving, not bad considering we were stopped at the landslide for almost two hours.  It was a great experience on the public bus I feel; not nearly as horrible as it could have been.  I will update soon with the happenings of this trip here in Addis.