The only easy day was yesterday

Place: Matema customs station.
 

Tunes: Oh boy... (no, that’s not a band)

This village idiot here tried to oil our brakes and to set them on fire. The other guy was a "local businessman".

 

Metema main street. Oh boy do I feel like going through.

Why so sad? Be happy!

Quality electrical wiring. Someone had done the job properly when the house was built but when a fuse blew, no-one knew how to fix it so they went around this.

Inside the bigger customs station. A random lorry battery in the middle of the floor. Maybe someone should fix the door frame? 

 

At least the bird had some luck today.

At the bigger cuctoms station. We are not amused.

Posh Land Rover accommodation.

More happy faces.

But now we have beer!

And beer!

And food (?).

And a top quality shitter. Who could ask for more.

Finally we got through.

 

Early start and off to the border. Nothing eventful on the way there. The weather is getting a bit cooler as we are going up to the hills. On the Sudanese side, while waiting for the carnets to be stamped, this village idiot was buzzing around the bikes. He seemed harmless, but when no-one was looking he managed to pour some motor oil on the breaks of two bikes. Nice! As the police was watching, we did not give this guy what he deserved and he proceeded to play with some lorrie’s brakes. Idiots like this are allowed to stroll around freely on the border zone. Another day, another 9mm moment.

At the Ethiopian customs the shit hit the fan. We met a British couple, Kate and Mick (www.steeringourwaytocapetown.co.uk), who told us the bad news. They have been stuck for three days at the customs as there has been a new law issued on Saturday.

Essentially, you now need to deposit a guarantee that is worth several times the value of the vehicle on the border before your vehicle is allowed in. This is to guarantee that you do not sell your vehicle during your stay. Usually these arrangements are done with a carnet, but they apparently do not accept this document anymore (or choose not to do so).

At the moment there exists no system for you to get the money back. So you can pay them and go, but you will never see the money again. For the Brits, they wanted 23.000 USD for a 17 year old Land Rover. For us, they could not even come up with a number. There are apparently options to arrange this guarantee through an insurance company or a travel agency but they will no doubt charge millions for one. If they even know about this new law. Fantastic governance and preparation by the government (= The Leader) and by customs. 

In conclusion, the border is de facto shut for vehicles. All of us have no visa for Sudan anymore, so you can’t go back or forward. No-one at customs has a clue what they are doing and everyone is too scared to make a decision one way or the other because they might have to take the heat if they make a mistake. The retired Major General (WTF!) running this Micky Mouse operation is not budging one inch. He says that the law should be the same in all border crossings, but maybe they are different in different stations, but this is his interpretation. He is being a cunt and he knows it. 

You guessed it. There is more work for that 9mm right here.

All this bullshit (like in Egypt) makes you feel really welcome to a new country and you would just rather not have anything to do with this place. Please all tourists hurry up. This experience gives you some idea of what the state of Ethiopia is like, inept and amateurish.

The Belgians arrived also today and hit the same wall as everybody else.

So, we (most of us at least) are camping here. But I went to a brothel. Like all brothels here, it doubles as a hotel when necessary. I will spare you the details, but this place was the worst room I have slept in my life. I would not have touched any surface in the room if I had a choice and I would not have put my dog in this room for a second. The window was four bars in front of a hole in a wall and the door could not be locked.

The toilet was also beyond anything I have seen before and the pictures do not do it justice. Unfortunately there is no way to capture the smell in a blog. 

As for tomorrow, no-one has any answers at the moment and I go to sleep without any idea what tomorrow might bring.

To end on a positive note, we are no longer in Sudan and my stomach pills have run out (and they worked), so beer is back on the menu. We had some injeera (the stuff they had in an Ethiopian restaurant in Belgium was so much better than this) and beers. As the brothel gang made their way to the place of ill repute we stopped by a couple of places for beers. The locals seem very helpful and cheerful. Even with all this, life is not that bad with a full belly and a cold beer in your hand.

Day two:

First thing in the morning, some good news from the Finnish embassy in Addis Ababa, who have been very co-operative with this situation. They will help us but we need details on how they can do that. 

The sub-boss at customs agreed to a guarantee by the embassy and. Off we went to a bigger customs office in a place 30km away to cause trouble there. There is no fax machine in the village here so we needed to go to the next place anyway. 

The bigger village/town was about 20-30 km away and we needed a minibus to get there. And of boy, what a minibus. The rear suspension had worn out a long time ago and the back end was bouncing around like in a clown car. Or in America. For the first time in my life, I would have wanted to have a helmet in a van.

The driver of course wanted to do good time and was flooring it whenever possible, but there were many stops to drop off and pick up people, to avoid livestock, mad people, naked people and other people throwing stuff in front of you, so progress was slow.

Once we got to the (second) customs station, the boss here agreed to help us with this arrangement as the border office took the responsibility. So he would not actually have to do anything. 

Sometime later after we got the "guarantee certificate" from the Finnish embassy via the only fax in the village under close guard by men with assault rifles. Then back to Metema in this ”back seat erection” bus and there was more of the same lunatic driving as we had on the way here. At least no naked wild men throwing shit at the van this time.

At the Metema customs office sub-bosses office (that seems to be open only a couple of hours per day) we presented the certificate we got from the embassy and asked the $1000 question. Can we go?

No, you can’t was the answer. He was not happy with the precise wording of the certificate from the embassy, so Peter had to go to the fax machine again to get a new - reworded certificate from the embassy. 

The Brits were luckier than us, and so were the Belgians despite some initial resistance from their respective embassies. Their certificates were accepted straight away and we are all free to proceed. They still decided to wait for the morning as there was not much daylight left. They can camp in their tents on top of the cars, so that's well posh.

Peter finally got back with a revised paper from the embassy and we also got the green light. And the carnets got stamped as well, which they did not even recognize as legal documents earlier. Go figure. The Finnish Embassy in Addis really helped us out a lot in this debacle and very quickly. Our big thanks to them.

Even if we all are finally moving, the problem still persists for other travelers who will be piling up on the customs parking lot - or junkyard as a normal person would call it, until the customs can get their shit together – which will take a long time. Before that, you will be at the mercy of whoever happens to be running the show. Once they feel that you have suffered enough and show you who is boss, they might let you go.

We relocated not far from the border after it was all sorted to make sure they did not think of another new law on the next morning. We drove to the next village (with the bigger customs station) and found this seedy hotel that looked a bit better than the previous brothel and as it was getting dark we decided to stay. Real men would have gone all the way to Gondar for about 180 km in the dark, but I am sure we will improve our lame performance on the road in the future. 

I thought that the previous night was bad, but this was probably even worse. Nothing else was available and you can't go on riding through the night, so what can you do. At least there is beer and a sense of relief. And tomorrow morning we are good to go and see Ethiopia properly. The rooms here were insanely hot and the music from the empty disco and the equally empty TV room next door mixed together into this cacophony that kept me up and lasted for hours and hours well into the morning. 

The music in that fucking disco was so bad that it probably gave me cancer.

Every AV system in Africa we have seen (well, heard) so far has always been on 100% volume for some reason. Do people want to get the best bang for the buck or is it a status thing? 

Earplugs were not sufficient and I could not sleep. There's also something in the mosquito net that is making me itch. 

Not so good night from here somewhere.