Gas?

About an hour into the drive, we came to an unmarked intersection. Eric, clever Eric, decided that it was a short cut that had just been built. It was, to his credit, going in the right direction… We turned off. An hour later, we were on the windingest, most hilly, incredibly tight road I have ever seen. We made about 10km an hour, and that was pushing it. The hills were, as they are in all of Ethiopia, spectacular. There was not even one other car in the near vicinity.

Seven hours later, quite close to sunset, it looked as if the last of the huge mountains were over. We were on fairly flat ground, but still winding our way around. It was then, on that last climb, that our car sputtered to a halt. We rolled backwards. Our driver, as confidently as I’ve ever seen, opened the hood and started working. He siphoned gas from the carburetor with his mouth. He blow air through the clogged filters. He did everything he could. Unfortunately, he couldn’t piss gas, because that was what we needed.

A passing goat herder said that it was a three hour walk to the next town and, by the way, it is quite dangerous to walk at night. We hired his services as a guide and a few of his friends to watch the car. Trent and I mobilized. We put on warm clothing, got out the water purifier, strapped on chains and anything else we could find that looked threatening, including a long SCUBA knife that Cristina had in her bag. I was legitimately worried. I’m not exactly traveling with a light load: my backpack (full of junk that we just bought) weighed a good 45 pounds. My computer bag was another 25. Three hours of walking with that kind of weight would be torture. We were hungry. We were thirsty. We were scared.

The full moon lit our path and would provide at least a few seconds of warning if we were attacked. After 45 minutes, we were saved. A truck, the only vehicle we had seen since the unmarked intersection, miraculously appeared. The driver stopped and we all hopped into the back. An hour later (at 60 km/h) we arrived at the next town. That would have been one hell of a three hour walk. In fact, we probably would have walked all night to get just half way. We thanked them as they dropped us off at the hotel, some two hours after dark.

The drive to town gave us time to calculate our fuel consumption. It was clear that our driver had shortchanged us and not refilled the car. For him, who was making about 40 birr a day, the extra hundred birr was two and a half days of pay. We were furious, but each of us was at least in part responsible.