From Dilla

I arrive in Moyale covered in dust. I have spent the last 18 hours drifting in and out of sleep on top of a truck. For long spells I gaze through the rattling metal bars at fields of black lava rock and swirling dust. The corrugations and holes in the road slow the lorry to 20 km per hour for most of the 400 km journey. When we arrive I haul my bike from the truck top, with the help of the guard and driver, and ride down a dirt side-street in search of a room. I have spent the last two nights sleeping on the floor of a hut and the back of a lorry and I fall asleep without eating or washing. 

I wake early and ride across the border into Ethiopia. I stop at a courtyard restaurant and get a shot of black coffee and a big sour pancake with spicy red sauce.  Men come in to drink the coffee and they shake my hand as they pass. The people have lighter skin here and the women are beautiful. I spend the day writing and planning my route north. Late in the afternoon I go to the bakery. The ceiling is very low and three men sit in the dark, scrubbing their teeth with twigs. Rows of square white buns rest on a stone block. I buy six and a jar of honey to eat on the way to Mega.

Out of Moyale a narrow band of worn asphalt unfurls across the windswept scrubland. Ten-foot high anthills and patchy-leaved thorn bushes cling to the loose red earth.  Every few miles I pass a cluster of mud huts set back from the road. They are circular with concave roofs overlain with torn black plastic sheets that rustle in the wind. The walls are cream or red and some have charcoal drawings of leopard and wolves scrawled beside the low door frames. Men lead large herds of horned cattle through the scrub and small groups of camel chew on Acacia branches. 

At the first village I pass, a large group of Borena women are tying branches together to form a fence. They all have plaited hair that hangs to just below the ears. Some have faint blue crucifixes tattooed in the centre of the foreheads and they all wail softly and sway from side to side as they work. I stop for a glass of tea and watch long lines of donkey being loaded up with bulging sacks, many of which bare the faded stars and stripes of the American flag and have ‘USAID: A Gift from the American People’ written in blue and red on the side. 

As I head north the land turns from red to cream and the sky is a solid mass of light grey cloud. It is very quiet and for long stretches the only forms on the roadside are the towering anthills. I pass a group of Borena women carrying heavy loads of firewood, who run from the road when they see me. I arrive at Mega, a little town halfway up an escarpment, in the early afternoon. As I sit to eat, children in rags stare at me like an alien has landed. I sleep here and ride 100km to Yabello through the vast flat scrubland the next morning. Occasionally lorries pass and men in flowing white robes whip their horses aggressively as they gallop through the dust. I pass a cattle market in a village and weave through streaming lines of trudging oxen. In Mega I was told that in order for young men to marry here they must prove their worth by jumping over bulls, whose backs are smothered in butter. 

From Yabello I climb out of the low-lying dust fields of the far south into Juniper forested hills. I am heading for Hagere Maryam, a town 100km north. By late morning I am out of food and the climbing wears me down. I take breaks every six or seven kilometers and grind my way slowly upwards, as my legs begin to falter. On the outskirts of town there is a large crowd in the road. There are many young men and women dressed in long black gowns, holding mortar boards. There is a great commotion as I try to pass and people rush from every direction and tussle to pose for a photograph next to me. I stand for fifteen minutes, smiling, while new-graduate after new-graduate stands beside me grinning excitedly into the old-fashioned cameras clicking away in front. Eventually I tangle free and ride the final mile into town. 

From Hagere Maryam to Dilla the road climbs and climbs, and flattens for a short stretch, and climbs again. Thick drops of rain fall in torrents from the dark sky and I am shivering as I pedal stubbornly up the steep slopes. Families shelter in thickly thatched round huts and I can smell the smoke of warm wood fires hanging in the soaking air. Tall flat-leaved plantain trees smoother the roadside and mangy horses stand pathetically in the curdling mud. When the rain stops crowds of 20-30 children rush from the fields screaming and tug at the bike as I crawl up the rising hills. I arrive in Dilla, exhausted, having taken eight hours to ride just 110km.