The function of a jerrycan

Drizzle, wind and sun alternate on the last day of climbing and descending towards Gonder. The children's behaviour becomes somewhat irritating: going up the mountain they walk next to us, which is easy because of our slow speed. Going down they run with us, which is quite daunting when we're going twenty kilometres per hour. Their 'Nikes' consist of flip-flops or bare feet. Suddenly we understand why the Ethiopians perform so outstanding at running marathons. By lack of other means of transportation everybody in Ethiopia walks. Men always carry a hand-cut stick across their necks, held by one hand on the left and the other on the right of their shoulders. Almost all women carry an umbrella, protecting them from the sun rather than the rain.

The begging gets more and more insistent and persistent: "You, you, birr (their currency), money, give me your shoes, give me your shirt, give me your bicycle." Asking turns into demanding. When our solar battery-charger is stolen from Peter's bicycle while he's cycling we've had enough. The charger is cut from the net on top of his rear panniers without us noticing anything. We find out too late and the thieves, a group of some twenty children, is gone. In the next village we very quickly learn the Amharic words for 'beat it' and 'fuck off'.
In Saraba I refill our bottles at the village pump, where every family gets fifty litres of drinking water per day. When I'm finished we drink some cups of tea in the neighbouring teahouse, surrounded by the usual staring crowd. The square around the pump is filled with women, each carrying two 25-litres jerrycans. Once in a while a riot breaks out when one of the women tries to get to the pump before it's her turn. Heads get beaten by umbrellas and jerrycans. Then the silence returns in which we hear taps running until the next riot starts and jerrycans fly through the air. Strange people.

Ethiopia's position on the African continent is quite isolated. It is the only country that has never been colonized and therefore hasn't undergone major western influence. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has been having its very own unique stand between all other world religions since the fourth century AD. It has evolved independently from all outward influences and developed its own interpretations, customs and habits. The church plays a major role in people's daily lives: even the walls and fences of the many religious constructions are publicly kissed and revered. In the streets of Gonder we regularly encounter 'holy men', carrying big orthodox crosses. They impersonate the local God, bless people and collect the traditional pay-off. Also in Gonder we visit the Debre Birhan Selassie church, built entirely from wood, mud and reed in the seventeenth century, and is completely surrounded by a large walled-in garden. The interior is painted by the artist Haile Meskel.

The ceiling portraits cherubs looking in all wind directions. The walls show dozens of stories from the orthodox faith, larded with bloody scenes of chopped off heads and limbs. A medieval view of sin and God's judgment.

Ethiopia also isolated itself from the rest of the world time-wise. In 1582 the whole Christian world exchanged the Julian calendar for the Gregorian one. Only Ethiopia maintained the Julian calendar, which is why they lag behind seven years and eight months. On top of that their year counts thirteen months instead of twelve: twelve months of thirty days and one month of five. Their year starts the 11th of September. Each day consists of two twelve-hour periods, starting at 06.00 o'clock western time. In Ethiopia it's 0.00 hour at that moment.
Although there is no famine, Gonder more than any other place we saw before shows the poverty of the country. Despite the billions of dollars of western aid that have been pumped into the country during the past decades, nothing much seems to have improved. The wallets of the common people are still empty. Mud houses topped by corrugated-iron roofs stand slanting at the unpaved roads. Beggars, with or without limbs, infiltrate our conscience, on which a thin layer of callous is already visible. People sleep in the streets, dressed in rags and scraps or under some old cloth. A mentally disabled woman stands at the Piazza, staring at the traffic, bare-breasted. In the meantime people are continuously encircling us, asking for bread or money. At the same moment very expensive four-wheel-drives transporting rich Ethiopians pass us and in our hostel a three-day wedding takes place of a very well-to-do family. It is about time to reorient ourselves on themes like 'social' and 'responsibility'.

We have a number of special encounters. In Pension Belegez, probably Ethiopia's cleanest accommodation, we meet Geoff van der Merwe. He is riding his motorbike from London to his homeland South-Africa. Reason for his journey: "Nobody's ever done it before, I want to see whether I can master this challenge." He tells about stone-throwing Ethiopian children.
Polish Dorota and Krzysztof supply us with useful information and invite us to Warsaw.
Seven months after Syria's Aleppo we meet the Japanese Emy and Aran again.

Who dares to say the world is a big place? Emy and her son joined Paul Dutson's overland-truck, which is traveling from London through north and east Africa to South-Africa. The truck crew has exciting stories to tell, their trip isn't all roses either. The bad road conditions in Sudan and Ethiopia managed to tear apart even the biggest and strongest truck tyres. We've been lucky so far.
Our already diffused view of the Ethiopian people is coloured even darker when we talk to the Amharic speaking spouses of Dutch Daphne and Thomas. John and Rosalie tell us what their average fellow countrymen shout at them in the streets, assuming they don't understand the language and that they are tourists. Hopefully they're mere incidents, because it doesn't make you very happy. Daphne volunteers to become our courier and take some of our things back to the Netherlands. Great. Thanks Daphne!

Despite our negative experiences and those of the people we meet we decide to uphold our original plan to cycle Ethiopia's historical route. We go north, to the Simien Mountains, Axum, Adigrat and via Lalibela to Addis Abeba.