Travelogue 218 – February 28
Seaside Madness

I can’t say I’ve ever seen much of the town of Bosaso: glimpses from squad cars and the sheltered tourism of a few days, surrounded by guns and hidden behind polaroid windows. But I’ll try my hand at a patchy and prejudicial portrait.

Discounting the mad fragments of city life spied from the inside of a squad car, my first calm vision of the town is from the roof of the International Village. This hotel, this haven of silence, is a series of white villas set around a broad concrete expanse dotted with spots of green: magnolia, oleander and palm, ferns and frankincense. To complement the exoticism of the human menagerie, white and Arab and black, that would normally populate these quarters, there are in residence some odd animals. There’s a ragged old ostrich and three or four lovely, delicate little desert deer of some variety with straight, corkscrewed horns. I have them nearly to myself, it still being too close to the holidays, and because of news of the kidnappings.

From the top of the villa that hosts my room, I can look out over the town and to the Gulf of Aden. The sea is sharp blue. The minarets are white witch’s hats. The dense homes and shops are colorful in a way that makes me think of the Mediterranean. Though the roofs are iron, they’re painted soft blue, green and red, like colors in children’s chalk. The sturdy walls are white and yellow and pink. Facing west, you look toward one of the formidable, tawny ridges that encircle the town, this one marching right to the sea. Out there among the scrub is the dinky airport. In the foreground are soccer fields where kids raise dust all afternoon. Turning away from the sea, you see the outskirts of town and empty desert out to the high hills beyond.

That afternoon and evening, we hear gunshots near and far. The police have found and besieged the kidnappers and the clans protecting them. I sit on the patio with a book in my lap, and I listen. It’s an odd feeling. The next morning, I hear that three bad guys have died.

Abdurashid arrives that evening. Everything seems copasetic. No more interrogations. He and his group go to sleep at a cheaper hotel. In the morning, we do some sightseeing. We go to the port. It’s a nice contrast to the Djibouti port, being just a curling finger of concrete and buttressing stones, reaching into the shallow bay to the abrupt point at which war began and funds ran out. Getting into the port area is a matter of chatting up the guards, a pleasant reflection of how everything gets done in Somalia. With so much to fear, there’s little fear. Everyone is accessible.

At dock are a fabulous collection of small ships that ply the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, many of them wooden and looking vaguely medieval. The only metal ship in the harbor looks to be from Egypt. From every long and shallow window protrudes long tawny muzzles and the sleepy eyes of Somali camels. The bustle at the docks is everything I missed in modern Djibouti. Here and there are a few small cranes, but most work is strong hands and bent backs. Trucks are rumbling in and out, all of them painted with sunset scenes and palm trees and stings of nonsense words. No one has a second thought for the white guy.

From the port, exit from town is a straight shot south, down the only paved road in town. Straight the shot may be, but choked with intense business. If you think life stops when governance stops, check out the markets of Bosaso: miles of stalls, crammed streets, and the din of happy commerce. And strangely, the guns dwindle here. One of the more remarkable sights will be the money merchants, men at stalls with boxes, bags and chests full of dollars and Somali shillings. That so much storage space is needed for shillings isn’t surprising. It takes a fistful to buy a cup of coffee. And you’ll notice that all these clean and crisp bills were printed in 1991 ...! No, it’s not the boxes and boxes that will surprise you, but the absolute lack of security. Not a gun in sight around these guys. This can stand as our parable about mysterious modern Somalia. The clans would not allow tampering with the money-changers.

Another fun item that will strike you as you crawl along the main avenue is the state of street art. Many shops have rather elaborate paintings on their walls, describing their wares, colorful representations of car parts, food items, cosmetics. And each little mural is accompanied by a proud signature and phone number. It makes perfect sense, of course, in a country where literacy is somewhere around 35%. It makes for a festive street, especially combined with the piratical art on all the trucks. It occurs to me that this might be the training of a few medieval European artists. It’s a valuable service. It’s profit and prestige for the wealthier shop owners.

Outside town, beyond the land claims in the form of rectangular plots surrounded by stones, marked off by the local bourgeoisie, the desert begins. We head toward the high, barren ridges.

Travelogue 217 – February 20
We’re the Same

1.5 I’m driven to the western precincts of Bosaso, where streets wander among random compounds, the walls and gates of which are painted colorfully. One such gate is guarded by men in uniform. Inside, the courtyard is well-tended, green with gardens and white with clean concrete. Soldiers smoke and chat.

The house is cozy. Behind a door off the foyer is a large, air-conditioned room with a long, polished conference table. On one high wall is a vast world map. On another, behind where I’m seated at the table, next to the Sarge, who has become meek in this place, are two full-sized flags hanging side by side, the Somali and the American. On the wall opposite are fuzzy photos of wanted men, presumably terrorists. There’s a smaller room through an open archway, where two secretaries and a computer sit idle.

Here I’m entertained by a succession of well-scrubbed men, always entering in pairs and always a degree higher in rank than the ones previous. Our first hosts are young. They could be Somali students from the U of M, taking a break between Micro and Macro, between stats and frats. They follow the familiar interrogative trajectory, from reassurances through the friendly and inoffensive, into the taunting and predatory.

Recess is interrupted by the adults. This pair is tall and middle-aged, casual manners draped over intensity. The first is full of concern and bonhomie. The second is dark and sarcastic. He has lines of world-weariness in his face. The first delivers his plum line right away, the line he will resort to more frequently than the thin poetic imagery can bear. He directs my attention to the flags behind me, side by side. ‘We’re the same as you,’ he says.

Mr. Sympathy pulls out a pad and pen and begins asking simple questions, gazing into the cool, conditioned air of the room and pulling non-sequiturs from it with all confidence. He meanders; he repeats. Eventually he asks how it is that I came overland from Hargeisa, though the central question in my little drama is enacted at the airport. That’s the cue for Philip Marlowe to take over. He doesn’t stand on ceremony. He repeats that there’s nothing to worry about, but within minutes he’s digging through my luggage. I name every item to relieve the tedium. ‘That’s my underwear,’ I say. ‘This is your underwear,’ he says. ‘You carry a lot of underwear!’ ‘Yes, I like variety,’ I say. ‘That’s my camera.’ The juniors are excited by this. They demand the memory chip. Sure, why not? They dash off to play on the computer.

I haven’t eaten yet, and Marlowe begins to weary me, so I become taciturn. He carries on with my stuff. He delights in the scribbles in my notebook. There are some box-like sketches from a discussion about one school’s layout that he finds particularly titillating. Mr. Sympathy says this is Marlowe’s specialty; he’s a very good artist. You don’t say. Marlowe asks about phone numbers in the notebook. ‘Yep, a guy I met in Djibouti. Try it. Say hello for me.’ Marlowe reads a bit of prose back to me. ‘Personal thoughts,’ he says with a smirk. Yep.

There’s a phone call. I don’t know it at the time, but it’s the office of the Vice-President of Puntland. This is Abdurashid reaching out to help from the capital city of Garowe. He’s on his way, but it’s a five-hour drive. What I do know is that the tone in the room changes. Marlowe starts folding my clothes and packing them neatly back into my bag.

I’m summoned into the secretaries’ office. The juniors are enjoying my photos. They’ve found some from my trip to Tigray. Several show the guys in Saba’s family fooling around with old AK-47s from the days of the civil war. ‘What’s this?’ That’s me with a gun. ‘Hm. Is that your girlfriend?’ Nope. ‘What’s HIS name?’ That’s Mark. They scribble this down on a bit of scratch paper on the secretary’s desk.

In case one should think I’m brave in being sarcastic with this bunch, I have to renounce any credit. The feeling of fatigue they inspire is just like being stuck after school with a bunch of pre-teens whose parents are late. For ferocity, the lizard cops in Ethiopia have these clowns beat.

My grim minders in the first room are concerned about me. They order some food. They tell me that everything, including my photos, will be run by the CIA in Djibouti for clearance. ‘Cheers,’ I say, raising my new bottle of water. They insist on a photo, and take it while I’m chewing the roll they’ve brought. They want me to stand in front of the Somali flag.

There are a couple more performers late for the show. They march in like firemen. The latest boss sees me and comes at me. ‘What are you doing here? Do you want to be killed?’ I pause and reply, ‘No’. There follows a beat, and the man stalks away in disgust. This might be the moment I want to be remembered by, though the comic effect was unintentional. And though this just might be the most human of this Keystone crew. He’s tall and thin, and it looks like a quarter of his skull was staved in at one time and stitched back in place a la Frankenstein. He sits calmly across the table from me, and there’s a look of intelligence in his skewed eyes. He reassures, but in a way that rings true. He then directs his attention to a series of folders that are brought in, clearly none of which apply to me.

The show finally does close. It’s been decided that I will be housed at the International Village, where by all accounts I’ll be safe. Indeed, I have to judge by the proliferation of guns on the premises of this spacious compound that they’re right. We’re all friends on my last sweaty ride on the hump in the back seat. My friends remind me of that fact with many warm-hearted testimonies. ‘Remember the flag! We’re the same!’

Travelogue 216 – February 15
The Wolf Pack

1.4 I don’t get to sleep right away the first night in Bosaso. I have a few visitors. First comes the hotel owner, obsequious but insistent, at 9pm. When did I come in? How did I arrive? Where am I from? Oh, I see, I see, with a wide smile and glittering eyes behind his glasses. An hour later, he returns with an officer from immigration and his son to translate. The same questions and more. The official wants my passport. They are stern until it’s time to leave, and then there are lots of reassurances. The reassurances will become a ritual. The official takes my passport with him. I lie in bed for a while before I can sleep, wondering who will stop by next.

The next morning, I have to take my leave of Ali, whose pleasant company has been the sole comfort of my trip to Somalia. I’m supposed to catch a ride with a friend of Abdurashid’s down to Garowe, the capital of Puntland. But first there’s the matter of my passport. Everyone is eloquent with reassurances as we drive through the crowded blocks, my face hidden behind tinted car windows, across town to the police station.

I’m guided into a large room with lots of chairs and a desk and told to wait a minute. That’s the last I see of my escort to Garowe. Men drift into the room, one at a time. Everyone is very deferential. They sit here and there. I assume they have petitions with the same officials. It turns out they are cops of some sort or another. After a while, in comes the Sarge, and everyone jumps up out of his chair in a show of respect. The Sarge wears sunglasses, a military shirt, a black Adidas cap, and a pistol in his holster. He sits at the desk, and he fidgets.

We start by looking over my passport and some other papers. There’s desultory discussion among the men in the room. Minute by minute, they lean in eagerly, inspecting me with growing hostility. I sense that it will be open season soon. It reminds me of writing workshops I’ve attended: polite comments in the margins, but once the pack is assembled, all bets are off. It isn’t long before they’re baring their teeth and glaring at me, snarling and slapping my passport against the desk repeatedly as they argue. There isn’t much questioning in this interrogation. It seems as though they’re arguing the entire case themselves, taking increasingly damning positions for the prosecution.

The central fact in my case is that they neglected to stamp my passport at the airport. They took my money, flipped through all the pages of the passport with the proper disdain, but didn’t stamp it, and I didn’t notice. Finally there’s no help for it: they have to take me to the big bad man at the police headquarters. We pile into a few of the ubiquitous white station wagons. The big, bad, and balloon-headed personage sits at a massive desk facing a long conference table, where I and my entire police escort sit. He hears them out with glowering eyes, puffing a cigarette with great malice. He asks me one question, and then immediately commands that I be silent, glaring at me for long moments as though to burn all insubordination out of me. I try to look chastened. He turns back to his empty desk and dismisses us with a few words and a wave.

Back at Sarge’s office, I’m informed that I’ll be fined $1,000 and taken back to the airport. This seems as good a cue as any. I reach down for deep indignation, and I announce with a good deal of righteousness that I have it within my power to bring half a million dollars in aid to this country’s children, but that if I board a plane today, I will make sure that not a penny arrives. What’s more, I’ll make sure everyone at all US embassies in the Horn and among my community of aid agencies knows that Puntland needs another ten years of time-out.

There’s a pause. Sarge muses behind his dark shades. The others relax into their chairs. There’s a flurry of muted discussion. The Sarge leans forward with his hands clasped on his desk. He now delivers a long complaint in his patchy English about how I’ve misunderstood. Everything they are doing is only for my safety. The logic is tortuous, and there’s little in the semblance of an argument to follow, but I become convinced, nodding with sympathy. ‘I see. Yes, I see now.’ How could I have been so selfishly blind? There are more mutterings. There’s a phone call. There’s silence.

Sarge seems very self-satisfied. He eventually tells me they’re taking me to see someone else. I cringe, but the officers are very reassuring. There’s nothing more to be done. We all start to chat like old friends. I tell them about the schools in Addis Ababa. Sarge spent many a year training in Ethiopia, so he speaks Amharic. I pull out my camera and call up photos of my kids. The Sarge consents to a picture, and I capture him and his chief jackal behind the desk. He doesn’t take off his shades, but he smiles.

Word comes that it’s time to move. We form the convoy. I take my customary position in the back seat between two of the sweaty jackals with guns. Here I go, one dark degree further into the shadow worlds of Somalia.

Travelogue 215 – February 7
Bosaso

1.4 The plane descends. The sharp-edged hills back away, allowing us an expanse of flat dirt for landing. The runway is unpaved. We taxi forward and as the plane turns, I catch my first glimpse of life on the ground in Somalia. The Bosaso airport is no more than a small jumble of squat buildings behind a guarded fence. Once we’re stopped, a stream of people runs toward the plane to greet arrivals.

There won’t be anyone to greet me. I have no idea what I’ll do. As I inch my way down the plane’s aisle, among piles of Hajj kitsch, I strike up a conversation with Ali Hussein, the Yemeni guy stranded with me at the airport in Djibouti. He is a short, quiet man with humor in his eyes. We disembark down the stairs, among the arrivals handing bags down to locals. He leads me out the gate and across the gravel of the yard to an office with one desk. We’re surrounded by men in uniform and with guns slung over their shoulders. One man resembling a civilian looks over our passports and our faces with distaste. Ali has to lend me a twenty-dollar bill to pay for my entry visa. I should have watched closely where the money went.

Outside, Ali bargains with a taxi driver. A crowd gathers, and they are surprised by Ali’s Somali. He makes them laugh, which I know is critical to the bargaining process in this part of the world. We get into the dusty white station wagon and we’re driven out the gate of the airport, shuddering along the desert dirt road, swinging down and up through gullies. It’s a road I’ll get to know all too well.

You enter town through the wealthy west side, big houses built haphazardly in the open spaces between old town and the airport. Here are your first symptoms of life without government. There are no services. There are no asphalt roads. And the houses are built exactly wherever home-owners feel like laying foundations. Advance into town, and you’ll encounter the legacy of law and order, though no active signs of them. The streets resolve into a grid, though they are still all dirt. And structures conform to ghostly zoning.

Ali Hussein has a hotel in mind as safe enough, the Juba. There are walls and fences. The rooms are pretty nice. There’s a clean lobby and patio. It’s beyond his budget, but I offer to pay. He has a long dialogue with the skittish man at reception, who eyes me with misgiving. We learn about the kidnappings.

It’s only been a week or two since a Spanish woman and an Argentine woman were kidnapped from these streets and held for ransom. The man at reception shakes his head with dark displeasure and says that he can’t guarantee my safety. I have to stay inside the hotel and out of sight. We have no choice but to agree.

There’s no food in the hotel, so I wait in the patio area in the day’s last light while Ali goes out for dinner. There’s a Chinese guy at the next table. He gives me a glance as dim and dismissive as does every bearded man who passes on his way to wash. I sigh with What-have-I-done on my lips. I’m well used to being despised – I’ve been married; I’ve traveled in Arab countries; even worse, I’ve traveled in Western Europe – but the feeling here is raw. It’s like I’m being sized up for slaughter. But the sun is sweet on my shoulders. It’s all I have and almost enough.

Ali returns with spaghetti. I’m to discover that Somali dishes are scarce in variety, and they all revolve around spaghetti or rice. What’s more, I have to eat with my hands. Apparently, there’s a well-evolved technique to it, involving a deft turning of the noodles around the first two fingers, while scooping other items up in the palm. I make a terrible mess and give up on technique, grabbing and stuffing with abandon. Our napkins are pages of a newspaper.

Ali and I try an after-dinner walk, seeing if we can make it around the block. One hundred meters on, an old man leaning against a wall makes a lazy comment, and Ali takes my elbow and turns me back around. Day done. I go to my room, ready to sleep.

Travelogue 214 – January 28
Djibouti, Adieu

1.4 When I packed for the trip, I counted costs on my fingers, and then added a few more, but I hadn’t the prodigy of digits required for this port o’call. Two days out, and I’m worried about money. I discover that the majority of my hundred-dollar bills are no good here. Money-changers have decided they won’t touch hundreds older than 2000, scared of counterfeits. Anything produced under Bush, I suppose, seems false. In desperation, I show them my credit card. They shrug.

I’m directed to a bureau de change that occupies a lower rung on the greasy ladder of respect. It’s run by two Indian guys, one slender and effete, the other too big for his clothes. The latter broods from under a low brow and the dense black hair that stands above. Despite his bulk, he moves like a cat. This is the one who deals with credit card withdrawals. He handles the phone with surprising daintiness, and responds to static and snubs from US offices with great equanimity.

The slender one and I lean against the cash counter protected by inches of semi-transparent plastic. We watch the milling henna beards and skirted loafers. There’s a constant roar of chatter. The crowd moves in waves across the plaza. Disputes erupt. Members are exiled and followed by jeering men. Old men with canes are held apart by broad-chested younger ones. Cacophony subsides into its mundane form. The outward appearance of aimless chaos is deceptive. This is very directed chaos. It’s business: commodities and ships and sales. In his gentle Hindi-tinted voice, my friend explains how these agents fluidly shift through a broad spectrum of languages moment by moment, Somali, Afar, French, English, Arabic, Amharic, Hindi, a modern Babel that’s probably little different in essence from Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean ports for centuries. It’s the ugly and cheery age-old jostle of language and money.

My transaction is a no-go. The monolithic brother hands me back my card with an expression of perfect irony, his gaze utterly disengaged and drifting out the window. His serenity is appealing. I head back to the ‘Historie’ for a beer. There’s nothing to be done. African siesta has settled in, a white blanket of finality.

I stare blankly for a while. I return to my room. It’s a long siesta, but the peace of defeat is lulling, and ultimately rewarding. When I return in the time of long shadows to my internet place, I stumble upon a key to unlock secrets. My power of money is restored. I’m flush and rejuvenated. Ah, sweet electronics. I’d share more, but I hate to burden Cheney’s vigilant web boys with more secrets. The world is so full of them now, all so threatening, all so scary.

Myself, I’m scared enough about the trip ahead of me. I’m up early, jolted out of anxious imagery of dangerous journeys. The taxi cruises serenely to the airport. I’m directed by serene cops to stinky chairs in the lounge. The place hasn’t properly opened. People in uniforms arrive in slow, staggered waves. Passengers come, too. The passengers start pacing. Something is wrong. They can ask questions in the right language, and they find out our plane is delayed. After more pacing, our plane isn’t coming. We stand outside in a group, arguing with the guards. One jilted passenger is Ali Hussein. He’s Yemeni, but grew up in Mogadishu. There is a trio of jolly businessmen from Jordan. There’s the svelte pair of expat Somalis from Sweden. Ali Hussein explains for me the comings and goings of airline and airport officials, the interminable loud negotiations.

It’s decided that we will buy tickets on a Juba Airline flight from Saudi Arabia, headed to Hargeisa and Bosaso. We have to pay cash for these new tickets. Mohammed the Swede urges me to buy, reminding me of the price of hotel rooms in Djibouti. ‘Don’t worry,’ he assures me as we’re ushered through check-in and into the departure lounge. Thank God there is a tea counter because we spend the next four hours there, among hordes of Somalis waiting to go home after the Hajj. They all have cases and bags full of religious kitsch they bought in Mecca. They are salt of the desert earth, this crowd, simple and restless and loud folk: wizened, pacing grandpas with deep beards and piercing eyes, and miserable grandmas slouching inside their layers and shouting across the wide slouching spaces between chairs. My head is pounding, and my heart groans with remorse. I consume too much tea.

We’re caged together for four hours because they’ve overbooked the flight. The solution is to change the flight plan. The plane that was supposed to go first to Hargeisa and then to Bosaso will now go to Hargeisa with its many-throated burden and then return to Djibouti to ferry the rest of us separately to Bosaso. The plan is an admirable one in the simplicity of its logic.

Weary and resigned to an evil fate, I finally do shuffle onto this plane. Distracted as I am by misery, I still feel a sense of honor and wonder entering the vessel, so venerable an antique with its low, round ceiling and round portals. After the masses have settled into their stiff 60s seats, piled their immense bags around them in precarious ways, and warmed up for the next hour of their dissonant opera, the propellers are ignited, spinning beside my portal. We’re off.

I regain some of the romance of travel as the metal beast churns through the air, laboring at a low altitude over the northern coast of the Horn of Africa. The roar of the engines would drown out the rage of the devil himself, and the rhythmic drone and vibration rises through my spine and into the serenity centers of the brain. And finally beauty re-enters the world. The view out the starboard side is gorgeous, mountains deeply creased by erosion, brown and ancient, tumbling down to the seashore, miles of empty strands beside translucent water, glowing in bands of green and blue. There’s no turning back now, and for the moment, Somalia is enchanting.

Travelogue 213 – January 25
Djibouti, Part Deux

1.3 The lead task on my leisure agenda while I’m in Djibouti is to find a beach. Supplementary task is exploration. I have one day before my scheduled departure for points east. And the day ends up being much more about the supplemental task than the primary one. Reason: for all Djibouti’s coastline, there’s precious little beach.

The city spreads along its bit of southern shore on this enormous bay, and also along the slender, hammer-headed promontory that makes the city such a good port. Today I hike up the east side of the peninsula and back down the west side. Results in the beach scan? One, and it’s such a mediocrity that I commit myself to sore feet and a brush with sun stroke looking for that pearly stretch of sand that must serve the sizeable contingent of internationals. No luck.

Here’s what I find. Not too far up the east side, past stolid bastions of ministerial power, and past one huge church and one huge mosque, almost across the street from each other, looking like the tall, official organs of God’s potency, there is a beach. It’s a lonely stretch of brown sand, not very attractive. But sea is sea, and I’m content for a while, watching the morning sun climb, already blazing at 7am, over the water. The waves are calm as lakeside.

Behind me is what looks to be a Malibu beach club and hotel, tables with umbrellas behind a wall, and a few hungover, disheveled white people standing, bemused, in shorts beside their truck. And that could be a theme to this part of the east end, a piece of California: dusty neighborhoods under lazy palms, a little tawdry, soaked in sea-salt samadhi. But there the beach ends. Further off to the right, there’s a Sheraton, according to my memorized map, and maybe they’ve cornered some choice beach, but I don’t detour, thinking that further up the peninsula must be heavenly sands.

Wrong. Further up the peninsula, diplomatic impunity closes its grip. There are miles of embassies and residences with ch’at-chewing guards leering at passers-by. It’s a dull road, unless you enjoy eye-balling modest shows of money, mostly adhering to the dubious aesthetics of Gulf Arab luxury.

Finally, the road dead-ends at a formidable fence. Beyond is a whole lot of construction – government buildings by the look of it. Behind the last little mansion on the road is a dusty lot where something else will go up. There you can stand above the shore, water lapping against massive stones, and you can look back along the exclusive line of coast. It doesn’t look like I’ve missed any swimming there.

From the fence, you can walk back down the west side. The new asphalt road matches the tone of this side, the industrial side. Though it takes a while to reach the work. First is the massive and cold face of the ultra-luxury Keminski complex, behind high walls and intimidating security. I ask the muscle-bound guard what’s inside. A hotel. And what’s the price? He smiles coldly. ‘3,000 a night, dollars.’ Right. Further down the wall, I pass an immaculately tailored and groomed Arab man, closely followed by an immense personal guard. “Good morning,” the Arab says pleasantly, and with no accent.

Past that is the briefest of interludes with the sea, almost a beach. There’s definitely a pile of dirty sand. I’m even able to retrieve a seashell or two. And the view is all Djibouti: the huge port, looking all money, sky-high cranes and stacks of multi-colored containers, looking at a distance like toys. Sadly, you only get one whiff of the hustle-bustle, further on at the heavily-guarded gate to the port. Otherwise, it’s all admiration at a distance. And everything a port should be, the stink and the noise and the crazy activity, is hidden behind walls. One watches the cranes.

Further down the road, across from the dock, is the presidential palace, another tribute to Arab sensibilities, tall, clean lines in pastel colors, with pointless balustrades and kitschy bits from the classical catalogue, standing in the middle of a heavily-guarded compound with lots of barren soil. He has plenty of windows with a view of the port. That seems appropriate.

I return from the long walk with an impression of this place as one of those millennial, rich, authoritarian city-states that channel so much of our money nowadays. All resources are ruthlessly directed toward the port and airport. There is a native population, of course, but they are very quiet. South of the palace, I enter a few of their neighborhoods, familiar hovels and dives and one-window shops. I’ve seen the stats: they’re poor. But they keep quiet, and somehow they survive among the crazy prices.

I close the day with a beer at the ‘Historie’ again. From the patio, I watch a curious ritual. There are a lot of policemen in this town. They wear quaint uniforms that appear colonial era, khaki tan and high peaked hats. They’ve parked a van in the square. Every so often, one leads a young man from among the groups hanging around here and there chewing ch’at, over to the van, one hand at the youth’s elbow. The ritual is calm. No one complains. The police are restrained. The boys sit in the van until it’s full.

Travelogue 212 – January 21
Djibouti, Part One

1.2 My journey leads far off into the lands of our dust-kicking neighbor, Somalia. And the first stop is in our mutual midget neighbor, Djibouti. I’ve scheduled a few days there because my senses are yearning for stretches of salt water. I haven’t stood beside the sea in a long time.

Our passage through the air is short and takes in lots of distressed brown lands that slowly stretch and mellow under the influence of the sea. We come upon rows of small white clouds, and we see suddenly the blue line of the sea, landing within sight of it, the runway almost an asphalt line between wastes of blue and brown.

I’m instantly happy as I disembark. The air is humid and dense with the salty smell of the Red Sea. I don’t mind the wait for my visa, since the small airport has open doors and I can breathe in the warmth and the water.

Djibouti is a one-city nation, and immediately outside the airport you’re among the suburban streets of the capital. There are other towns in Djibouti, of course, a couple across the bay with nice beaches, so they say. But I never make it over there. I call my green airport taxi, a station wagon with the steering wheel on the wrong side, and haggle the driver down, paying no more than 1700 francs into the city, or about $10.

It’s early afternoon when I arrive downtown. The sun is blazing. The streets are empty: both Djibouti and Somalia shut down between 12:30 and 4. No sooner am I out of the taxi than I’m approached by a lanky boy with fine green grit between his brown teeth, bits of leaf of khat, the brain delight of all the horn of Africa. “Bon jour.” He matches my stride and tries French, then switches deftly to English. “What you need? You from the camp? You need girls? Big boobies. Come on.” Djibouti is a military town, French and American. Thus the refined tastes in pleasure, I suppose.

I say a cheap hotel would do nicely. “Come on,” he says again and leads the way. We start among the sunny squares of the posh part of town, pretty in a run-down Old World kind of way, a meeting of worlds: Arab arches and French arcades. This vibe falls away quickly, and we’re traversing blocks of a more familiar cast, among squalid, squat buildings and roadside stalls, among the calls and comments of men sprawled against the wall, chewing. The police stop us, apparently recognizing Shaggy Tooth and concerned for my safety. He reassures the officer, and I don’t complain. That seems to be enough.

We descend a stairway hidden among stalls, and we emerge in the market, among alleys of stalls with electronics and shoes – the surest merchandise across East Africa, it would seem. And suddenly, we’re at the Hotel Banadir. It’s an obscure doorway into a shabby courtyard. The man at the desk never quite awakens, but we do wheedle a key out of him. For $20, I can rent a room just larger than the single bed and its sagging, filthy mattress. The big window overlooks the courtyard. It occurs to me that a place that sleeps away the afternoon is not likely to respond to “Shh!” at 9.

Thanks, Shaggy. I shake his hand and make clear that I’m going the opposite way. I have very quickly resigned myself to Djibouti’s biggest demerit: the prices. I trace my steps back to the cleaner section of town and systematically find the cheapest option among acceptable beds: $60. It’s the three-story Ali Sabieh, a hotel that looks much better in the lobby than in the rooms. The bed is acceptable, and so is the bathroom. Hot water is not an option in Djibouti or Somalia. There’s only one knob in the shower. You only get a sheet to sleep under, but you don’t need more.

Outside, I find an air-conditioned bar where I can say ‘un cafe, si’l vous plait’ and I don’t even have to repeat myself, so I feel very worldly. I’m enjoying the tiny cup and the sugar cube; I lazily watch the Steven Segal movie. I’m enjoying listening to the buzz of French and Arabic and Somali. In this way, I while away the African siesta.

At 4, the shadows are long. There’s a cool breeze. People have emerged: men in colorful skirts, geezers with henna-dyed beards, veiled women, soldiers, boys selling postcards and gum. Every one of them is selling postcards. I find that odd. Later, sitting serenely on the patio of the restaurant ‘Historie’, I watch a supernaturally old crone creep toward me with her box of cigarettes and gum and postcards. She meticulously takes every item in her crooked fingers to show me. I’m hoping to see something I actually need. I settle for a lighter. There’s always a use for fire. She shuffles away, spending so many of the precious minutes left to her, down the patio, across the street, until the last shadows have melded into one.

Travelogue 211 – December 26
Back to the Source

On Christmas morning, a full moon is setting over the opposite shore of Lake T’ana. The sun isn’t quite up yet, and the calm waters are Monet shades of pink and violet. There are blessed few people out alongside the lake.

On Christmas morning, I’m in Bahir Dar. I haven’t been back to Bahir Dar since the very first trip to Ethiopia, four years ago. Bahir Dar is a town on the southern shores of Lake T’ana and the capital of the Amhara region. It’s the closest major town to the headwaters of the Blue Nile. And it’s still one of my favorite spots in Ethiopia.

Bahir Dar looks just the same, mellow streets and mellow sun. The waters are a soft and peaceful green. There are, though, a few changes. My little lakeside paradise at the Ghion Hotel has gone to seed. It still boasts pleasant garden among the rooms, but the quiet patio with chairs under an afternoon spread of fig branches, open to the breeze off the lake, is now compromised: it’s fenced off from the lake and covered by an unattractive iron shelter.

The second change more than compensates. That is a pedestrian walkway along the shore from downtown almost to the headwaters of the Nile.

I’m up at 6:30 to walk the length of it, which only takes a half-hour or so. You pass inlets wild with reeds and papyrus. You pass morning glories and poinsettia and papaya trees. Out in the lake, lone fishermen in tiny papyrus boats are checking their nets. The path ends suddenly at a marsh, within sight of the first islands in the mouth of the Nile. Actually it ends at the trunk of a fig tree, from which a startled ibis takes flight. I turn around and head back to the new T’ana Hotel, a luxury spot with a very nice patio overlooking the lake, where I can have a full breakfast among a host of travelers, Italian, French, American, Kenyan, etc.

On Christmas morning, after breakfast, I walk out the front entrance of the T’ana Hotel, which is not the feat of a few steps down a staircase. The hotel is set quite a ways off the road, at the end of a long driveway through bits of farmland. Once at the road, I catch a minibus taxi, having only a slight idea where it will go. Yes, I was right: five minutes later, we’re crossing the Blue Nile on a wide, low bridge. I call for a stop and then walk back across the bridge. The usual stern policeman sits on a chair with his gun at the start of the bridge. I don’t have my camera, so I pose no security risk. I take my time, watching the swift, muddy current below. The river is wide and punctuated by grassy isles of mud like unstable stepping stones. The actual headwaters are just out of sight.

I take a path through a primitive city-village on the shore, along dung-filled dirt alleys, following the river toward the lake. As expected, I’m stopped by a marsh. Abiu and a friend are goofing around on a makeshift pier of igneous stones from the hills. The shirtless and grinning friend cuts me a papyrus reed as a gift. Abiu offers to guide me to Debre Maryam, a church on one of the islands in the mouth of the river. Off we go.

We’re further from the lake than I thought. We trek along a wide dirt road. It ends. We trudge on, down many a walking path, crossing fields and passing small farms. Most of the farmers cultivate ch’at or cabbage. But there is also mango, papaya, banana, and coffee. I try ishr, a small orange fruit that Abiu likes, but it’s sour and gummy in the palate, not good for a sweaty hike without water.

Debre Maryam stands on an island that’s only about thirty meters from shore, across a quiet channel. Abiu and some local boys shout across for the ferry, which is an amorphous raft of papyrus reeds. They shout back they want twenty birr. I shake my head no. The boys are anxious. I’m not. I like sitting in the sun, watching the slow and obscure tide through the channel. Eventually, I say ten. There’s a lot of shouting about that. The raft drifts across.

The pilot of the raft disappears, and Abiu picks up the long pole. He and a curious shepherd boy push us off and across, so slowly and with such soft lapping of the waters I could sleep. It turns out our twenty-birr Charon is no ferrymen at all, but a shriveled old woman in sackcloth. She collects my birr with a steely glint in her eye. Charon she is because she wears the fare of a previous soul around her neck, an intriguing old coin, huge and polished almost smooth by time. It features on one side the decayed profile of some plump, eighteenth-century European lord, by the looks of him; and on the other side is a two-headed eagle.

The island is quiet. The church is closed. We see a priest in his high turban vigorously row off in his own little boat. We stroll a while among the priestly fields of ch’at and turn back. A dour midget of a priest rides back with us. He is suspicious of me, maybe concerned for the virtue of his buxom servant girl, who rows the raft for us. But of course I make no notice of her charms, immersed as I am in the wisdom of melodious waters.

Travelogue 210 – December 22
The Breakfast Club

There’s something cheering about a fat, hairy man blowing you a kiss in the morning, ‘Ciao, Giorgio,’ I cry, passing him in front of the Ethiopia Airlines building in Piassa – curving wall peach and avocado green in the sunshine. ‘Ciao, bello,’ he replies. Of course, Giorgio is Italian. But he isn’t.

Some time mid-century, so Giorgio tells me, Haile Selasse rescued forty Armenians out of Jerusalem, survivors of the holocaust in Turkey that someone in our quick State Department just discovered languishing in his inbox at an inconvenient moment. One of these was Giorgio’s grandfather. The Armenian community flourished here. (As evidence, I produce my dentist, Dr. Mickey, and the pretty stone Armenian church in Piassa.) But restless Giorgio went to Italia as a young man. There he became a sculptor. Now, at the other end of life’s journey, he’s considering coming home.

Danieli has adopted Giorgio as an accessory. Danieli is a crazy Austrian, continuing my chain of them. He’s middle-aged, a big man with a wild, greying mane, a Beethoven jaw, wide-set eyes, and a magnificent pot belly. He’s actually Israeli by birth, though central European by blood. It’s his second time in Ethiopia, and he plans to spend six months. Danieli’s itinerary is very free. His final plans seem to revolve around women. There is the girl he met on his last trip that is now in police training camp outside Addis Ababa. They touch hands through the fence. She tells him to go buy her shoes. Then there’s the Muslim girl whose daddy he appealed to to let her travel with him to Harar. Apparently the man has relented.

Yesterday morning, all the talk at the Taitu Hotel was about the Gambela girl. “Phoo!” Danieli exclaims. “She could dance!” This long story involves several Piassa night clubs, a clan of Taitu foreigners, and the girl’s sexually explicit moves. One of the implicated men was another Israeli, who has joined us at the outdoor table, a quiet young man with long hair and beard. They exchange polite reminiscences of the girl in Hebrew. Danieli wants to know what happened after he left. Giorgio laughs at him. “Playboy,” he calls him in his gravelly, smoothly accented voice. Danieli objects. “I have my limits,” he declares in his harshly accented voice. “I would never do that. She is sixteen. No!”

I’m diverted from my usual morning routine because I’m looking for someone at the Taitu, someone I never find. My routine is to collect my thoughts at the old Razel cafe in Piassa. This cafe has done something extraordinary; it has remained at the height of fashion for all the time I’ve been in Ethiopia. And it has maintained its standard in coffee and pastries. It’s a relief to know that one can still feast the palate and the eyes at the same city font.

Any day of the week, the beautiful people will come: stunning women in expensive styles to make old white guys weep and confident men in the style of confident men in Addis – which means they look like Americans on a Sunday, except their sneakers have been polished. It’s an odd sign of our times that the poor men here wear suits coats and slacks, but men with power look like they’re pushing a stroller around the Mall of America. A few young ones will appear in a very clean rapper’s uniform, something teenage American, 1998 in a white suburb. And then there are the two ten year-old boys who come in and drop a week’s salary for most papas on a carbohydrate orgy. And what do the beautiful people eat for breakfast in Addis? Burger and fries, almost universally.

But lest we forget where we are in the world, incidents like the following will happen. I look up and a woman is rubbing her head. She’s bashed her head against the serving platter of a waiter on the stairs. Everybody’s staring out the front window. Everybody is up and rushing toward the stairs and the doors, a wild look in their eyes. There’s smoke in the street, and smoke billowing into the cafe. They’re pulling down the metal grates over the windows and door. I glimpse police grabbing men and smacking them across the face. A crowd is running this way and that. I don’t move until I know what the story is.

So what happened? Apparently a car went by that was on fire. That tells you the level of tension in this place, despite appearances in the stylish spots. I set down my pen and close my notebook. I’m revisited by the agonies of the ordeal two years ago after the election. I’m reminded how all my pretty plans are vapor in the face of the next terror.

The crisis passes, and the beautiful people resume their seats.

Travelogue 209 – December 14
The Girls

The sun roars like a lion. We faranjis all have red necks. Tomorrow are time trials. I want my girls to roar like the sun.

I’m distracted this month. My most pleasant distraction is Team Tesfa, which is a new project that I shouldn’t have started. The team is just five strong, Ijigu and four teenage girls with a glimmer of promise as runners.

Meseret’s story represents many others. She’s seventeen. She moved to the city from some small town, away from her family, in order to become an athlete. Fast forward to when we meet, and she’s working in a cafe all day and has no time to train. She dropped out of school a long time ago.

Today, they’re sitting around the cafe table. The place is bright with leonine sun. My back and red neck are warm. The girls are shy and silent. They wink at each other and smile. We’re signing contracts today. These are the final documents for registration of the team. And this occurs with no time to spare. The winter’s major cross country meet happens in two weeks. I’m hoping there are no glitches. One never knows in Ethiopia, but we have a man on the inside.

Here they are, the four young lionesses, acting shy. But I’ve seen them run. Here’s lovely Meseret with her golden smile, an innocence to her, a simple confidence. She runs with regal grace, and I read that as great potential.

Beside me is Tsion, contrast to Meseret, the brooding and proud teenager. She has a bright smile when you address her, but otherwise she sulks and slouches. She always has an argument ready for us. Even this I enjoy about her. She reminds me of a pit bull when she runs, all muscle and earthbound. She’s very determined, and so far she’s the best of the lot.

These two have started tutorial classes with Haregwa from the Shiro Meda school. Both left school long ago. Their first session is at my house. Tsion couldn’t write the English alphabet. Meseret has her troubles with Amharic writing. It’s been a long time – and those were country schools.

I’m watching Meseret as she works her way through the contract. She mouths the words, and with a good deal of animation, too. I hadn’t realized how much drama was packed into this legal document. Then again, I can only hope there is: the sound of her future in these dry words.

We sign. We stain the papers with coffee. I harangue them good-naturedly about the time trials coming up. It takes a while to explain the concept of goals. The girls chat about the course and times. We come up with a fairly modest number. Not entirely seriously, I lecture them, locker-room style, about being hungry. ‘You’ve got to want it!’ They’re smiling politely. I find out there’s no Amharic word for ambition. Of course, I shrug. ‘Anbessa!’ I say. ‘Lion!’ This is what they call Kenenisa and other great athletes. My final result: very meekly Meseret points at her chest. ‘Anbessa,’ she whispers with a self-conscious smile. I have to laugh. It’s not a boastful culture. You have to respect that.

Travelogue 208 – December 6
The Nose of Sisyphus

My first week in Ethiopia is bliss. The sun is strong. The mountain breeze keeps it pleasant. My staff is welcoming. Their work while I was gone was good. The schools look wonderful, filled with new art, thanks to the two months’ work of our volunteers from Ireland. When I arrive at school, the little ones are joyfully foaming at the mouth, brushing their teeth with tiny brushes donated by the Irish. My house is quiet and cozy. I’m thinking, ‘Well, this is pretty nice. What’s my rush in getting out of here?’

And then I really arrive in Ethiopia. Or I should say, Ethiopia arrives in me. Overnight, the super cold moves in. These aren’t charming seasonal sniffles. This is rheumy-eyed brain-melt with a continual stream out the nose, complete with bone-deep fatigue and existential woe. If it follows its usual course, it will muscle down into my lungs and take up a month’s residence as a racking cough and life-sapping asthma.

After four years as a slave to petty diseases, a question suggests itself. A hypothesis inside a question, a question inside a philosophy, a philosophy inside a regret, and that inside a breathe: exactly when was it that I committed suicide? The question suggests a method of inquiry: sifting back through the four-year trail of colds, fevers, coughs, nausea, asthma, fatigue, diarrhea, headaches, stomach cramps, and flu to assess ‘life’ as a medium of travel.

But I don’t have the energy. Tomorrow I devote myself back to the conundrum of living without living. The exit from my house lets into a subway tunnel, mucous grey, underneath the city. Above the ground is color and energy. Below are the shadows of color, a static nuisance. People are obstacles. Sound is jarring noise.

When you’re sick, you rush away from the living. You find quiet corners for tea. The topography of the city deteriorates until it’s all safe havens and bathrooms. (The latter, I must comment, is particularly humiliating for a male traveler, especially in a country where any ditch or wall will do for locals.)

Always a minor hypochondriac, now I’m a major case. I’ve been outfitted with germ vision. Disease crawls, in colonies the color of key lime custard, along fingertips and doorknobs and tabletops. A friendly handshake makes me sweat. A cough across the room makes me twitch. I douse everything in lime juice, even french fries. Glasses are suspicious. Green leafy vegetables make me nauseous.

And if this weren’t enough, if the sights and sounds of life abroad weren’t just the sunny side of inescapable alienation, being ill is the cave inside the shadow. ‘I’m sick’ prompts laughter. These faranjis! In a culture where home and family form the very fabric of the cosmos, one does not want to be the solitary bachelor in bed with only his illness. It’s one thing to prefer solitude, but no one volunteers for this type. This is lunar orbit, conserving on oxygen.

I sniffle and wheeze in my corner of the hip cafe, and I warn the youngsters, ‘Wa! Pozor! Beware! Choose your poison carefully. The Creator, Great Nature, the Father of Waters, the Belcher of Life sets out his pharmacopoeia of free will. Ponder long over the colorful pills.’ But they never listen.

Health is a philosophy unto itself. It’s a philosophy that brooks no questions. It’s the hypothesis with its own proof: innocence. Innocence is a state before decisions. Every decision narrows the playing field, just like every meal skewers the metabolism.

Wa! says the old man. But it’s just another bright day in Ethiopia. The sun rolls along its track in the sky. Prometheus has liver disease. Sisyphus has emphysema. Life goes on.

Travelogue 207 – November 26
White to Dark

We get a white Thanksgiving. It's not totally white. Maybe a half-inch on the ground. Roads and sidewalks are white. Some roofs are white. It depends on the angle they're pitched at. Parks are green with white fringes. The snowfall began late in the afternoon yesterday. I take a run just as it's getting dark.

The snow drifts down gently, yellow shadows in the globe of street lamps, like feather-tips against my face. And despite being rush hour, all seems silent. Headlights float in procession along the parkway. Some Christmas lights sparkle already. Here on the pedestrian path, there's the sound of footfall and of my breath. There are several worlds within sight of each other, but they aren't linked by any other sense.

It gets darker as I jog along. It's feeling good, so I keep going. I arrive in scenes more and more northern. There's a brooding spirit of Christmas descending, deep forest greens verging on black, with red lights and orange lights, and snowflakes drifting in as heralds of the season, soft as breath.

In the morning, it's still coming down. I awake from ten hours' sleep, refreshed and pleasantly dazed. It's my first Thanksgiving in a long time. We're scheduled to go to Therese's parents' house, but first there's work to be done. Outside the cafe, snow is gathering momentum. Still, the people are streaming in: runners from some race in town, whole families with shouting children. I'm smiling through all the noise. What's happened to me?

The mood persists. My first Thanksgiving dinner in years is altogether too idyllic. A long dusk settles over the snow-dusted world outside as I sit down to a long table with Therese’s family, three generations of them, with two year-old Gracie in her high chair. The Packers have won, and this Wisconsin group is pleased. I’ve won a good game of chess, so I’m pleased. The food is perfect, and the company is very comfortable. I’ve never liked holidays, but today they make sense. Ah, so this is what all that is about, I’m thinking. It’s a revelation.

Minnesota is emerging from its past. It lives, this place that was full of ghosts and shadows. Every corner, every address, every stretch of light was Polaroid grey with grief. There could be no relief for me here in the years after Leeza died. But I feel a pulse.

And now I leave. Midday the day after Thanksgiving, the commuter train slides underground and into the airport terminal. By takeoff, it’s night. The Twin Cities are curving grids of yellow lights. The rivers are a juncture of blackness.

The day dawns early somewhere between Greenland and Ireland. And our jet engines eat up the morning. By the time I’m out of Gatwick, and by the time I’ve made the chilly trip on two trains to Bath, the sun is low and its light is feeble. The four o’clock northern dusk descends on me.

I get only one full day in England, and then I’m back in day-hungry transit. I fly out of Heathrow, again against the sun. We consume the afternoon with the same voracity as fuel, and dusk arrives over southern Europe. We hang in shadows a long, long moment, and then it’s quiet night.

The plane is very quiet. After fueling in Amman, there are only a dozen or so of us on the plane. Most of the others know each other. On the tarmac in Amman, they talk NGO talk. Without knowing too much about it, I would describe NGO talk as something between celeb talk and bureaucrat talk. Names are dropped. Many of them are geographical names. Many are acronyms. They eagerly interrupt each other with droppings. Two pair off with a low hum of planning. They disperse when it’s time to take off again, and the solemn, black sky embraces us.

It’s the first flight from Britain to arrive on time in quite a while. Ijigu is surprised to see me. It’s fortunate he’s there. We depart into the cool mountain air of Addis Ababa. There are fewer lights than in Minnesota. There are more stars. There is the dark outline of mountains ahead of us. We cross the parking lot, and even the taxi guys are subdued in their appeals. Sober night.

Travelogue 206 – November 15
Great Nature Has Another

So I get the whole show on this trip. Yesterday it snows. It's not the kind of snow that collects. It comes down in little pellets that sting. It gathers in waves and drifts that snake across the road as you drive. I have to cross the Mississippi, and Andre's little red car shudders in the strong winds. It wants to veer into the cold, tragic river. It bucks at a sudden memory of the bridge that collapsed last summer. It wants the icy impact and wants to drown its gritty engine oil in the father of waters.

I'm thinking about the monsters alone in the bitter cold. We're dead center among autumnal holidays, days cast in the orange of failing embers, days for Time's sad glances. They are holidays that play well in Minnesota, where great nature orchestrates the blaze of decay that thrilled our New England forbears.

The day of ghouls has passed. The day of saints has passed. Leaves are thick in their yards, strewn about and spilling from piles. The holiday beasts are abandoned outside their houses. There are skeletons and witches, stuffed monsters and jack o' lanterns.

What a piece of work is man! Such ingenuity, engineering such subtle jests at God, ghoul, and self at one stroke. The ghouls walk, and we burlesque. We mock death with masks, and we give the masks to children. And our creatures, they sit in yards, naked in their futile intent. They're left to the cold, to the cool contemplations of lonely types of me on cloud-covered nights.

Contemplate things made so small in the slow typhoon of decay, while winter's first winds bare the trees, bring down the leaves, threaten snow, and chase us indoors. These satiric puppets stare down the assault alone, like giggling gargoyles. We give them up: we laugh at ourselves at last. There are a few monsters dressed up as Bush, or as the World Bank. That got a laugh weeks ago. Now the beast and the message perish together, sagging in the dust.

After the ghouls, the monsters, and the monster-saints come the veterans in this autumnal parade of futility. Coincidentally, I'm led to the VFW bar on the eve of Veteran's Day. The Liquor Pigs are playing here since the Viking closed. The stage is set in the large dining room, where long cafeteria tables have been moved aside for dancing. Old couples sway and turn to the see-saw rhythms of guitar and fiddle.

Craig and I sit in the bar proper, where craggy old men brood in isolation, suspicious of the new crowd. Our table is underneath the huge screen lit with football action, and very near the display case with a stuffed bald eagle. The room is dimly lit, with ruddy autumnal light. It's like an evening in a folk America forever preserved from the summer light of places like ... Iraq?

I have an appointment in another America, or I might have basked in this soft, artificial light. The next place will glare with brash light and blare with splashes of music. We'll drink margaritas and play chess as though a library had a bar and attendants in very tight clothes. As though a library might pass around mikes and project Spanish words to obscure pop songs on a screen.

Mexican karaoke: the one with the mike gets to pace among the restaurant tables. The matron at the next table belts out accompaniment. She must be somebody, the way everyone stops by for a greeting. A group of very white university students surround the center table and studiously ignore the activities. One of the boys is coming up with excruciatingly self-conscious ploys to touch the girl next to him, the one sitting very straight, whose choo-choo hat is turned very precisely to the right of center and shifts not one centimeter all evening. Me, I read the words as they are sung, sure that my high school Spanish will kick in suddenly, and I'd better not miss the elementary sentence that will trigger it. I'm pretty sure no one sang 'te quiero'. But the choo-choo hat was blocking some of the screen.

Travelogue 205 – November 1
All Saints

Today is All Saints' Day, and a better day couldn't be had for wandering among the unmartyred. The heavens are crisp and clear. It's just chilly enough below to keep mortals awake, but the sun warms their animal backs at midday. Me, I spend my unofficial lunch hour strolling among parks downtown, soaking as much of that autumn heat as I can through my jacket of animal skin.

Today is also called Hallowmas, or the mass of the hallows. Thence comes the name of the e'en preceding, during which the graveyards yield up their messengers. Indeed, in many countries, celebrants of the Day of All Saints follow the ghouls back to their resting places. They make festive picnics among departed relatives, their minds far from the examples of saints.

It makes sense when one realizes that the first saints in Christian tradition were the martyrs. And the first celebrations of their lives were eucharists performed over the graves of martyrs. Celebrations they were, history tells us, as would befit a triumph of the purified soul. And so it is, the dead always leading the way.

I like saints. Maybe it's the Catholic blood in dead daddy's blood, dried genes that thread through the planet's soil back to the old Hapsburg empire. Maybe it's just the fun reading they make. Heaven's prerequisite that saints produce miracles is a wise strategy, judging religion by entertainment value. I'm not sure how miracles inspire morality, love or compassion, but the stories keep our attention. Maybe they evolve from the heroes' tales from the ancient world, tales that may simply be telling us 'ayzu', in Amharic parlance: take heart, be strong.

But then the strong among us are freaks, after all. There isn't too great a divide between ghouls, heroes, saints, and the undead, is there? Gandhi and Spiderman, Einstein and St. Francis: they all cast morbid spells on us with their uncanny powers. Most of appreciate St. Francis for talking to birds more than for his efforts to imitate Jesus in poverty and humility. And at the end of the day, is that such a bad thing?

Miracles and super powers. I'm reminded of the early Christian saint who grew copious body hair just in time to save her virtue. I'm reminded of Abuna Aregawi, Ethiopian saint and founder of the famous Debre Damo monastery in Tigray. When he reached the foot of the cliff below the future site of the monastery, God provided a huge serpent for him. At St. Michael's directions, the snake gathered our venerable saint in his coils and pulled him up the cliff. This feat becomes the model for the subsequent tradition for entering the monastery, climbing up by rope -- by which we mortals are reminded of our profane nature.

I was there in April, and gave it a good effort. That was after hiking about ten kilometers with five kilos of sugar on my back for the monks. It is absolutely a lovely spot for a miracle. The monastery stands on top of a tall mesa, and there really is no entry but up the clean white cliff. A bearded monk with a mischievous grin preceded me, swinging side to side and climbing with alarming agility. I launched in, sure that some residual, incorruptible spirit left in me would rise to the occasion. And sure enough, that little bit of saintliness inside got me a little bit of the way. I reached a part of the cliff where the rock bulges outward. I stopped, secure on a couple footholds, and made Satan's mistake of looking down. That's where I stopped. Some boys scrambled up after me and wrapped an extra rope around me. Up above, a husky man of god pulled while I climbed. No miracle from Jarvis for the books. But, to be fair, most visitors don't even try without the extra rope. Perhaps that just demonstrates stupidity on top of my unholy normality.

Another cool reason to study the stories of our saints is to learn a lot of arcane terms like heortology, menology, paterikon, and my favorite, synaxarion. I've decided this is the greatest reward to religion. I doubt it will turn any keys to heaven, but it will make for some delicious language. Just tasting words like these makes you feel like something is going on. I'm inclined to think that's enough, but I'm pretty easily satisfied on the spiritual plane these days. I always liked classical languages. Super powers and Latin: that is a killer combination.

Anyway, tomorrow is All Souls Day. That's when the normal set get some attention. All the dead faithful saddled with sin, stalled at the very portal to heaven, are honored on All Souls Day. The good news is, we get to nudge them on with prayers and masses. It's nice that the regular guy gets his day. It makes for a quiet holy day. The ghouls sleep in. Michael's divine pythons sun themselves on mesa tops. Mortals drag themselves to chilly, cavernous churches to pray. Ave, ave.

Travelogue 204 – October 27
Intermittent Sunshine of the Lungs

I slept ten hours last night, and I can still say that I was out of bed before the sun was up, though that was at seven-thirty. The authorities over time have delayed Daylight Savings so that we can all feel like eager individuals. The very first thing I do – and there is not a dot of exaggeration in this statement – is to put on my running togs and enter the nearly freezing Minnesota dawn in my shorts.

I have resolved to be healthy on this visit home. I am compelled to because my lungs have declined into a scary state. There were a spate of nights in Ethiopia in which I awoke breathless, chest burning, dim and distant Christmas lights drifting across the ceiling. I was forced to track down an inhaler, and I thought my travails were over until I took a run yesterday. About halfway, the moribund lights started slowly spinning and my lungs were squeaking with the terrific effort of keeping my legs under me. How dispiriting! I determined then and there, doubled over, hands on my knees, that I must purge this disease. I must exert discipline over my frail frame, purge this delicate house for the fleeting flame of life, forge strength where there is weakness. I've got to exercise.

Sweet old October plains, they give me hope. The sky is absolutely clear. A full moon hovers over the western fringe of bare branches. And Saturday morning is quiet. I pass only two neighbors walking their dogs. Therese lives on a parkway. That means a long, straight stretch of plush grass. This morning, I can report that my lungs showed signs of recovery, slight though they may be.

I'm taking a risk that is greater than pushing empty lungs. Therese has lent me a sweatshirt, and the logo on front, in loud yellow and green, is 'Green Bay Packers'. The letters can be seen for blocks. It can't be much worse than wearing a silk screen portrait of Bin Laden.

I don't linger after the exercise, but wash up and pack Andre's vehicle, cherry-red Jetta, with laptop (Steve's) and cell phone (Roxana's) to do some work (all mine). Oh, but the tedious lessons of life never cease. I learn that 'wireless' isn't the uniform quantity that my imagination – faithful to visions of the world as a happy place – has projected. In the first two cafes, I find that the wireless service isn't strong enough for my little machine. By the time I've made it to lucky number three I've had so much coffee that I am very ready for work, juggling two or three internet windows and the same number in Word, while glancing through the local paper.

That's good because I got absolutely nothing done in transit. These days, flights are like long trances. I surrender myself to stasis and to movies – movie after movie. And I can report two good finds among the half dozen or more I devoured. My favorite was La Vie en Rose, the story of Edith Piaf. I was lucky to have no neighbor in the next seat, as I had to wipe away a tear or two. Edith and I share so much painful history: upbringing in the brothel, raw talent nearly undiscovered, the struggle in the streets of a city devastated by war and depression, drug habits and ruthless men. Well, okay, in my case substitute mediocrity in the suburbs, addiction to sugar, and good women who find me a disappointment. But let's not quibble; she and I are kin.

And then there was the movie about the space mission into the sun: beautiful young people on a cool rocket ship equipped with long tracks of mood music; inaudible dialogue that's clearly profound; distress signals; disobedient shipboard computers; evil and diseased humans; a mission to save the planet. It doesn't get any better. Much of it I saw twice, as movies on British Air loop. It's impossible to catch any film at the beginning.

'Sunshine' the movie was called. And once we were out of London, all the sky was just that. It followed us to the ground in Minnesota, sweeping the runway clear of gloom for us. And it's been sunshine ever since, chilly but brilliant as children's hopes – slums of Paris, slums of Ethiopia, California ticky-tack, all one, – visibility high.

Travelogue 203 – October 14
New Day on the Streets

I get a call at 3pm today. I get a string of calls. It’s my next group of volunteers, calling from Heathrow. These volunteers are three sisters from Ireland, and they will be spending two months here working with the children. It’s thoughtful of them to call. They’re telling me the flight is leaving on time. I even get a call from Suzanne’s husband in Ireland. I pick them up tonight at 1am.

I’m due to leave Ethiopia in a week, if all goes well. But it doesn’t feel like it. Maybe it’s arrivals. Maybe it’s the arrival of the sunny season at long last. Maybe it’s the false lull in school activities – (in actual fact, things have never seemed so precarious.) Maybe it’s the abeyance of the relentless string of Ethiopian maladies – head, stomach, head, stomach. Maybe it’s the return of my regular shoeshine guy from the countryside after the holidays are over. But I seem to see the streets again. Where was I before? A kind of anxious business fog, I suppose.

Today, the taxi is dodging a couple guys on bicycles. They are pedaling desperately. God knows I would, too, feeling pretty vulnerable among the weaving taxis. But you do see more bicycles around town these days. And that includes some sportsmen up in the mountains.

I haven’t stopped my training excursions into the mountains after the Brits left, even through my various illnesses. It’s too sweet up there. And I love the sport. I’ve been contemplating founding an athletic club here for talented but disadvantaged young people. Saturday morning, we took Ijigu’s latest recruits up over the mountains to time them in a ten-kilometer run.

There are so many runners here! Once we’re in the hills, we pass runners alongside the length of the highway we travel, pacing along by themselves and in packs. It’s impressive. We release the crew from the minibus and start the stopwatches. The two teenage girls are real heroes. They’ve never run this distance, but they turn in a good performance. Meseret is sixteen, and she lives alone in Addis Ababa, working at a cafe. She has great potential. I hope I can get this team up and running.

I’m so inspired by the athletes that I get up early this morning for a run. Five minutes into the run, I recall I’m no teenage star. There’s no sensation like being breathless in the Ethiopian highlands. It’s a good reminder of one’s limitations.

An hour later, I’m in the taxi riding behind these desperate bikers, who don’t look so desperate, after all. They almost seem to be taunting the taxi drivers, coasting down the steep hill in the middle of the road.

I’m reminded of my summer in Minnesota. There’s a movement among proud cyclists to take over the roads. Every so often, you encounter a mob of them pedaling along, blocking a major city street. I came across one of these mobs one day while I was on my bike. I had to cross the street that they were merrily commanding. Their group was a good quarter-mile long, so I endeavor to weave through their mass. They’ve been taunting motorists, yelling righteous slogans. When suddenly they see me weaving among them, they turn indignant eyes upon me and get ready a shout, then stop in confusion. I wave an apology. I’ve compromised their moment.

I notice another trend in Addis: cheesy cowboy hats. There must have been a recent shipment dumped into the city’s markets, because the hipsters are wearing them in droves. The wayala of our taxi is wearing one, leaning out the window proudly, shouting and dipping his brim into the wind.

Jackie’s gotten kind of ‘street’ lately. Maybe it’s her teen years. She’s coming up to her third birthday. I think it’s nutrition. The new housekeeper (I’ve been through a few lately) is very scrupulous about feeding Jackie, and feeding her lots of meat. My courtyard looks like a charnel house. And Jackie has begun to growl at any approach, especially if one of the ubiqitous bones is nearby. At first, it was cute, like the teenager’s first cool outfit or sulky snarl. Now it’s tedious. I lecture her, but she rolls her eyes.

The best part of these days is the return of clear skies. Standing in my courtyard soaking in the sunshine, I feel empowered to let myself drift into some eddy of timelessness. There’s no better cure for stress. And I had forgotten about that moment during this season, right about 6:30 in the evening, when the sky flares into a riot of colors. Suddenly there are east-west swaths of turqoise alternating with violet and rose. The few clouds are green and purple. Jupiter appears in the west, just above Scorpio, which is still invisible. Tonight a crescent moon, just leaving Libra, becomes luminous above the roof of my house. Just as suddenly, the sky is uniform, gloaming blue, still beautiful. It’s night.

Travelogue 202 – October 5
Money and Monkeys and By the Way

9.13 Sticktown is just a fading dream in lurid colors. We wend our way silently down and across the great gorge, its villages asleep under the majestic river of clouds. We stop just over the other side in a town whose name is too long to recall. We are now in Oromia. Across the river to the north, we were in Gojjam. Signs are in the Roman alphabet again, in the funny, vowel-choked Oromo spellings.

We have our first meal and lots of coffee in a cozy, new hotel. We stand in their courtyard, in the warm sun, for a while. Spirits are revived.

In a couple hours, we arrive at the tourist spot of the day: Debre Libanos is a monastery and famous holy site, founded by one of Ethiopia’s dearest saints, Tekle Haimanot, in the thirteenth century. It’s one of the most important monasteries in the nation. Nothing remains of the original. Apparently the old building is a casualty of medieval Muslim-Christian wars. In modern times, it was victim to another war. An insulted Italian viceroy executed 267 monks and 129 deacons during the occupation.

You turn off the main highway to get there, and almost immediately, you’re struck by another one of those surprising Ethiopian panoramas. Off to the left, there’s another Wild West canyon, hazy and roseate strata captured among the roadside trees. ‘Oh, that’s pretty,’ we say. If we hadn’t just come from the granddaddy of great gorges, we might have been more wowed.

What we are excited about are the baboons. Pete and I have been watching all trip, knowing these are the hills in which to catch sight of the famous gelada baboon. By this stage of the journey, we’ve given up. But there they are, dozens of them in the grasses just beside the road. We get out and commune a while. It is odd to see animals so closely related to humans, to watch how they move and to try to gauge what’s behind the eyes. I like the big guys, the giant old-timers with great wigs of brown hair and insanely sharp teeth and bright red chests. They are content to pick shoots of grass and chew while we watch. But we have to stop the drivers, who think it’s funny to throw stones at them.

The monastery itself is another Haile Selasse structure, something so like a shiny toy in the distance, set against high cliffs, a toy you want to like and yet is just too awkward. We stand at the gates and debate whether we’ll go in. Mark doesn’t hesitate, but starts down a trail alongside the compound wall, toward the closest cliff, which hosts one of those high silvery falls.

We are still debating when we’re approached by a couple monks or monks-in-training. One is a dwarf. They offer us a tour, and we agree. It turns out the tour leads down the very path Mark has scampered down ... illegally.

The trail leads across a creek and then up a steep incline, up stones set as stairs. We aren’t really sure where we’re being led, but our guide, the dwarf, is having a good time. He’s joking and babbling about the monastery. His English is very good, and yet I’m still not sure what he’s saying. Pete and Neil have convinced him that Thomas is eighty years old and needs special attention, so we leave him behind to tend to our ageing friend, who, in fact, does need extra time to climb this hill in his expensive street shoes.

We discover at the top of the climb a damp cave. This was the original attraction for the great founding ascetic. He found this dark, cramped space, with its perennially dripping ceiling, perfect for prayer and meditation on the nature of God. There you go.

It’s while we’re there that we first notice the clouds. ‘Uh-oh.’ We aren’t quick enough. Halfway down the steps, the rain comes, and within minutes it’s a downpour. We run for cover of a tree. We dash across the swelling creek, jumping from one slick rock to another. We run for the cinder-block lavatories, which absolutely reek. Safe inside, we share our concerns about poor Thomas. We wonder what may have happened to him. We hope he’s all right. We debate who will go looking for him. He shows up, and we can’t help laughing: he’s completely drenched and forlorn, led by the arm by his small attendant. The cliche ‘like a wet cat’ fits Thomas so perfectly no one dares utter it.

He takes it well. We wait out the storm, pinching our noses. Eventually, we make a run for the minibus, where we find a crowd of locals has taken refuge. An elderly couple wants a ride to the highway. We’re willing, but we ‘re having trouble getting started. Mark’s been found out. Several monks have gathered at the door of the minibus, hollering at Mark. The dwarf is shoving an open palm in his face. Mark will not budge. He didn’t take the tour, he insists. He was going for a walk. None of us intervene. This is between Mark and the cliff gods. It turns out Mark wins, with the help of the drivers. Or does he win? About a half-hour down the road, Mark discovers his watch is missing. Spooky.

Travelogue 201 – September 22
Journey to Sticktown, Part Two

Drive up the north side of the Blue Nile Gorge on New Year’s Day and you pass through villages hanging on to hillsides, cultivating lovely green terraces hundreds of meters above the murky river. They’re not farming on New Year’s. You catch them in droves along the ‘highway’ – read dirt road, that nonetheless is their Main Street – clapping and singing in groups. These groups are circular and everyone is clustered very closely. They are struck dumb by the minibus full of faranjis that comes around the switchback ... struck dumb for a moment.

Across the great, wide gully, an hour or two ago, we were joking foolishly about the shifta, the local bandits. On this side, the jokes are picked up again. The boys have a penchant for chasing our van. They shout and laugh, they call out for money. A few run alongside for as long as they can. We call them ‘Kenenisa’ after the running champ and national hero.

But around every curve in the road, the groups become more formidable. And it seems that the equipment for boys in this singing and clapping ritual is a hefty staff that is rapped rhythmically against the rocks in the road. We’re still laughing when scores of boys are chasing the van, swinging their sticks. But we’re exchanging wide-eyed looks at the same time. The minibus takes a few loud blows. The driver halts once, and the kids immediately turn tail.

Every curve reveals a new congregation. ‘Stick people,’ we advise and slide the windows shut. ‘You! You!’ they shout with aggressive smiles, and they run. I could be in Paris, ensconced in my carriage on some narrow, barricaded street, upset because my powdered wig is askew.

We pass through the hilarious Terror unscathed, only to find some of the most glorious scenery awaiting us near the top. (See last entry and photo, please.) Our goal is – seemingly has been for days – the town of Dejen. At last it appears, some few kilometers past the ridge’s edge, as we ride into placid green hills like the ones on the other side. How could we help but notice the chebo piled up in great, upright piles like teepees: sticks and sticks. These will be burned later in celebration. Sophisticated wits that we are, we dub our new town ‘Sticktown’.

The name seems to fit. What better name for a pony express stop in the old Ethiopian Wild West? There’s Main Street, the highway, and the rest is slippery mud among squat, frontier homes. Dangerous men with white gabis over their shoulders walk along the highway. Others watch us from dark tea saloons. Our hotel is a compound behind high walls.

It’s nearly dark. Clouds are gathering for the night-long storm. We’re starving. We sit in the empty hotel dining room. We order food, and then forget about it. Four or five rounds of beer later, night has fallen and the place is packed. Sticktown has turned out for some holiday hoe-down. They are not shy. The Ethio-pop jukebox is jacked up and the bold are standing up with it, dancing for the crowd. We are the most vociferous of supporters, needless to say. The boldest is a man in a tan leisure suit. His eyes are unfocused; he coaxes the most painted of ladies to dance with him. His lazy glances settle among their bosoms. We decide he’s the mayor of Sticktown.

Soon, women in every sort of costume, traditional to tease, are standing and moving in very expressive ways. Our table has become silent. Oddly enough, the mayor’s striking wife is dressed most traditionally. She winks at me mockingly, and invites me to dance. I wow the crowd with my deep knowledge of traditional dance. Or is seems so in my foggy state. Lots of men telling me they love me: I take that for admiration of my dance style. Selam, the lovely mayor’s wife, doesn’t tell me she loves me. She just mocks with her eyes, and I can’t tear myself away. There’s a new mayor in Sticktown, Neil says.

Neil has troubles of his own. A lanky teenage boy in baggy jeans, with moves that suggest nothing traditional, has taken a shine to him. Long after Neil refuses him, he’s still mooning our way. When Mark returns from one of his stints in the Queen’s Bar – this hotel has two bars: ‘It’s like a cruise ship!’ Mark gushes – we direct the lovesick boy toward Mark, and Mark amuses us with a long, slinky performance with the boy. Alas, Mark realizes the joke and returns to the Queen’s Bar.

Bodies are writhing. Chaos is gaining primacy in the saloon. We cross the compound and climb the stairs to the Queen’s Bar. It’s empty but for our crew. Sadly, Kylo and the drivers have established a long loop of reggae songs, ‘One World, One Yawn: the Most Repeated and Indistinguishable Hits of the Century,’ is the name of the compilation, I think. Justine has taken over the area between six tables that passes as a dance floor. The (woman) bartender watches her hungrily.

I stand on the tiny balcony of the Queen’s Bar. I sway in the drizzle, and I watch the mayor and his wife leave the hotel, wondering if I should plant myself in the middle of the highway and call him out. I decide that wouldn’t be prudent. Down in the main bar, the women have fled and there’s no one left but Neil’s boys. Things might get rough.

I retreat from the night’s battles, from Marley-burn, and find my hotel room. There’s no running water in Sticktown. We wash from buckets in Sticktown, and that’s the way we likes it. We settle, greasy from the long road, in our bug-ridden beds, and we listen to African rain on iron roofs. We pray to our heavy-fisted God, and we scratch ourselves into dark, wilderness slumbers. No dreams because there is nowhere but the bogs of Sticktown. Good night, all, and Happy Millennium!

Travelogue 200 – September 15
Journey to Sticktown, Part One

Drive north out of Addis Ababa in mid-September and you encounter some localities familiar from ancient blogs, like Selulta and Chancho. But now they look fresh and Irish green. And that describes much of the half-day journey we pursue on Ethiopian New Year’s Day: bright green hills and pastures amid spells of mist. Lots of livestock.

The ten of us doze and chat. We take photos out the windows of the minibus. We stop in Fiche for lunch. A small crowd gathers to watch us. When he’s done eating, Mark entertains the children with magic tricks. It’s fun to see real amazement at old magic tricks.

About four hours into the driving, we come to the real goal of the trip. The first hint we’ve arrived is a sense of space ahead, the feeling you get when you’re approaching the ocean, a sense that the world is falling away. The sky expands. There are glimpses of distant ridges. Then the world does fall away. You’re poised on the edge of a gorge so wide and magnificent that it takes the breath away. Its far side is dim in the haze of the day.

This is the Blue Nile Gorge, and one thousand meters below snakes that grand old river, the ‘Abay’, as its termed in Amharic – a term that sounds identical to what children call their fathers.

It took us four hours to get here, and it takes us three hours to reach the opposite rim of the gorge. For one thing, there’s no asphalt on this road, (still one of two major arteries to northern Ethiopia). For another, we stop often for photos. Our first stop is only a few hundred meters down from the rim. There we find a beautiful waterfall. It crashes into a bed of boulders just beside the road’s bridge, and the stream continues on under the bridge, toward more falls. In fact, we almost become numb to the sight of high falls, like silver tassles among the rocks. They are everywhere along this road. I don’t know if this is only true in rainy season. I would guess most dry up in a few months’ time.

We’re content to look at the falls for a while, but the driver is nervous. He says this area is a favorite for shifta. That means bandits. We jump in the van, and of course, launch into many insensitive comments and alerts about bandits, boys being boys. Justine, the only woman on the trip, doesn’t find any of this humorous, but shows commendable patience.

The town halfway down becomes a bandit town. Boys run after the van, and we ask them if they’re bandits. Men with staring eyes and guns between their knees watch us from their front steps. We don’t ask them anything.

At the bottom of the gorge, among steep walls, run the muddy-brown and swift waters of the Blue Nile. Spanning it is a high bridge of Italian design. Thomas, an authority of all things Italian, squints at it and says it’s 1930s. I can’t verify that, but it’s old enough that supports have been raised for a second bridge almost next to the first.

Ethiopian officials have a thing about cameras. The drivers warn us, no photos of the bridge. This warning circulates several times around the van. And still, halfway across the span, Neil leans out his window with his camera, having tuned us all out long ago. The federal police, the grimacing-skulls, of whom I’m so very fond, stop us on the other side. There are words, but Neil calmly defuses the situation, deleting the photo while two uniformed lizards look on.

It’s a long road, but the view never gets dull. If anything, it becomes more delightful. As we near the opposite rim, we come across Shangri-La, green Alpine hills and terraces, crystalline falls and quiet farmsteads. I hope I can post a photo here.

The next morning, after our fateful night in Sticktown, we hit the road early. It has rained all night, but the morning is blue-skied. At least, it is above the gorge. When we arrive at the canyon, we see that down below the clouds have never parted. We look down into a serene and still inland sea of billowing white cloud.

Travelogue 199 – September 10
Intrepid Athletes All

Mud and mists and alarming pain in the lungs: these were our only rewards, but intrepid athletes all – well, only four of us, in actual fact – intrepid soldiers of athletics, we rose every other morning to make our assault on the mountains.

Ijigu arrives at seven to wake us. Rising from lack of sleep, from hangovers, and from the warmth of winter beds, we meet his summons. Ijigu is elite runner and general team attendant – and unanimous favorite of the Brits among my local staff. He is always cheerful and helpful, but never so cheerful as when he gets to take us out on the trails.

We pile into the team minibus and we motor uphill, nearly to the city limits. There we stretch and start at a brisk and anxious walk along the first trail. Anxious because in a matter of fifty meters or so we will encounter the first hill. It’s the longest and steepest hill of the course. It takes us literally to the top of the mountain ridge. Even the most fit among us – at sea level – are immediately breathless and light-headed, stung by the altitude. It’s a scary feeling to be so suddenly robbed of heart and breath. But, intrepid athletes all, we push through the pain and, by the end of the first week, we’re running up most or all of this incline.

At the summit, we’ve reached the rarified heights of athletics. Here, along a maze of dirt trails among the eucalyptus, train the cream of Addis Ababa’s runners. Ijigu, bored by our pace, falls into his loping, mountain habits, dashing into the trees and re-emerging at intervals to check on our progress. We plod by groups of them, doing high-step drills or passing like phantoms single-file among the trees. Kids in uniforms are playing soccer. Some laugh; some encourage. One can’t help but feel honored to be in their company – to feel exhilarated by the thin and chilly morning air and the glimpses of long green mountain slopes among the rainy season mists.

The Great Ethiopian Run was cancelled, as I reported, because of political weather, but the Brits take it in stride. We immediately begin plans for our own race. The Shiro Meda school is in the foothills. We train in the mountains. And most of our time in Addis Ababa is not spent downtown or in rich and faranji-friendly Bole, but in the hilly, poor northside, underneath the mountains. So, our run will be the ‘Tesfa Mountain Run’.

Mark and I leave the crew at John’s house one afternoon to walk the course. It runs about six kilometers along the top of the Entoto mountain range. It’s a very beautiful track, forested and still most of the way. In the last mile, the trees open up and the runner gets a panoramic view of the hills on the north side of the ridge, sloping away from the capital city. Our course ends at Entoto Maryam church, the first in Addis Ababa, established by old Menelik behind his first palace in the new capital.

The day of the race starts out cold and wet, but just as we set out in the minibus, the clouds part. We stop at the summit above my house, and we line up for launch. Two of our children hold the START banner in front of us. Wogayehu holds two stopwatches in either hand. Sost–houlet-and, she counts backward, and GO. We begin with a shout, rushing forward in a pack, until we hit the first hill.

The minibus passes us each on the course. Thomas leans out the side window with his camera and leaves us with wry comments on our plodding progress. At the end, the children stretch a home-made ribbon across the road, about a hundred meters up from the historic church. We each get a photo kicking through the ribbon in glory.

The rest of the children and parents are waiting for us down the hill at the Shiro Meda school. This is our Millennium party for the families. We’ve purchased a side of beef. Half a dozen parents sit at a long table outside, cutting up meat, onions and peppers. Bakalech is stirring with a stick the roasting food in a huge, shallow metal bowl that sits on a low fire. Inside, the parents sit formally and patiently at rows of tables. They are silent when we enter; they smile and nod at our greetings.

The kids, on the other hand, are boisterous. Mark has taught them a short song about the Millennium, which they perform for the parents. Then they sit on mats surrounding their parents while we conduct an awards ceremony for runners and for children. I’m forced as MC to announce my own award as second in the male runner’s category. I’m so nervous, I announce it twice ... and then once again at the end of the ceremony.

One millennium safely tucked away, with full stomachs and achy limbs we part. The children and teachers get two weeks off. We faranji head off to the bar to recount our adventures and victories, intrepid athletes all. New Year’s is still a few days away. Far are we from guessing the adventures still ahead ... in Sticktown.