Addis Abyebye

Crossing back into Ethiopia went just as well as the journey had in the opposite direction. In Harar we all got back to the touristway of thinking, walking around yet another ancient walled city, however this may be the most charming so far with narrow alleyways leading between colourful houses. At night wild hyenas roam the streets, they are very tame though and we could even hand feed them raw pieces of meat. After a few days savouring the liquids available in a country which doesn't impose Sharia law we once again headed for the central hub which is Addis Ababa. We only stayed two nights on this visit then split with our newfound travelbuddies and said one final farewell to the capital and it's inhabitants we had come to know over the past six weeks or so. Elias and I then commenced a long southward bound stretch with it's first stop being Shashemane.
Shashemane is a small town surrounded by land which was once donated to the Rastafari movement by the late Emperor (or Rastafari God) Haile Selassie. After wandering around for a few hours we finally found the dreadlocked population and it's quite remarkable to find a slice of the Caribbean dead in the middle of rural Africa. Reggaebeats and Jamaican accents mixed among the bananaplantations with scents of West-Indian cuisine and marijuana, but sadly it was full of hustlers who were all out to get our money so we were quite relieved when we could get a ride to Awasa. We had intended to spend some time in Awasa, but we couldn't find any decent accommodation so we decided to keep moving south and thereby shorten the following day's travels. We got to Dila where we slept for a few hours before getting an early bus which took us to the frontier-town of Moyale, here we could cross over to the Kenyan side of town and find a place to sleep. It was a bit sad to leave Ethiopia which has been our home for a long time and I'm going to miss a lot of things: the friendly and beautiful people, the difficult language of Amharic where a simple phrase like "thank you" has six syllables, the bustrips which on a map look like a few hours at most but end up taking two days due to mountanious terrain, vehicles in bad condition and strange road-planning and of course the cheerful jeers of "YOU! Give me money!" On the other hand it is nice to know that we have only just entered a new country with loads of new impressions to come.