Contrasts (Day 26)
By admin. Filed in Ethiopia |
Today marked our transition from Sudan into Ethiopia. The border towns of Metema and Gallabat were separated by a thin piece of rope and a lot of outdated bureaucratic paperwork. We got our exit stamps the night before by filling out an entry form that had “entry†crossed out and “exit†written in. On the Ethiopian side, the process of checking each passport against a non-indexed, non-alphabetized list of unwanted visitors could have taken all day. So once the first few passports started coming through, we all slipped through the border and waited for the TDA staff to deliver our passports in the evening.
The contrasts from one side of the rope to the other were immediately obvious. There were more children everywhere. Their familiar calls of “hello†were replaced by “You you you you you!†Building styles and donkey carts had changed in appearance. As soon as we left the town, the landscape left a huge impression upon us. The endless flat desert was replaced by hills and trees. Temperatures were a little cooler as well. The views of the canyons along the way were stunning.
Camp was next to a small village at the top of a significant hill. An area around the trucks was cordoned off with a piece of colorful string to keep the locals at a semi-comfortable distance. It soon became clear why: when we set up camp, everyone from the village came up to the line and just stood and stared at us until darkness fell and they wandered off to bed.