All roads lead to Azaza (Day 23)
By admin. Filed in Ethiopia |
This was the first morning there were no mosques nearby to help me wake up. Our truck that had faithfully played wake-up music for us every day so far also failed to play music this morning. I can no longer set my alarm either, since it is a feature of my broken iPhone. Considering how tired I tend to be at the end of each day, I’m not surprised that I overslept this morning and frantically struggled to down a bowl of breakfast mush and get my stuff jammed into my locker before the trucks left.
I was pleasantly surprised to see our injured rider back in camp this morning. (I am intentionally leaving out names of injured riders so their friends and family back home can be notified properly.) He wasn’t riding, of course. One more strong rider out of EFI.
Today was our first day of dirt riding. After 49k of pavement, we turned off the paved road and covered the remaining 81k in mostly-corrugated dirt. As people’s abilities in different types of terrain varies, more riders lost EFI today and the trucks were filled to capacity. We were told that all roads should lead to our camp in Azaza that evening, but it turned out not to be the case, as more than 6 riders got lost and rode much further than 81k on dirt. Gizzy arrived at dark, and Eric came in at 7:30PM. Wayne and Patrick ended up taking a completely different (but much longer) route altogether, but still made it back to camp.
The first village I rode through was very cool, with tall grass fences along the road, and happy children and adults cheering us on. After that, attitudes varied by village. In some places locals would clap or sing. In others, people would should incomprehensible syllables, give strange hand signals, or throw sticks and stones. Villages are small with round huts made of mud or grass. Each village has a small water tower with a black & white checkerboard pattern on it.
There was one village offering cold Pepsi in the afternoon. I stopped and the children swarmed around my bike. A man that was referred to as “the police†guarded it while I stood inside the small shop and drank my beverage in front of a hundred sets of curious eyes. A man who seemed to be the chief of the village came in and said hello. Then he insisted that I give him a cigarette. I didn’t have any of course, so I told him no. Then he demanded I give him money. Again, I declined. Then he wanted my bike. I left quickly and finished the day.