A New Record

I have reached a new personal “best”: An entire week without a shower!
I’d never been so dirty in my life! For the first couple days of bush camping, things were perfectly fine. But then suddenly, we got far enough North to where camels dotted the landscape instead of fertile fields and the roads became nothing short of horrible: So bumpy that you’d bounce a foot in the air from your seat and so dusty that you could hardly breathe. We have a buzzer in the truck to alert the driver if there is an emergency or if we need to stop for a wee. (One long buzz for an emergency, two short buzzes for a pee stop, and three short buzzes for a photo stop.) The roads were so bumpy that one of us hit the buzzer for a pee stop but got stuck on it so that the driver thought it was an emergency stop. He meant to brake slowly, but the bumps made it so that his foot slammed on the brake. It wouldn’t have been anything more than a sudden stop except Gary was standing at the back of the truck. He flew head first into the metal step locker and ended up with gashes on his head, arm, and leg. Poor Gary.


At some points, we couldn’t drive above 10km/hr because of the poor road conditions. Even if we were driving slowly, the dust would fly into the truck and just blanket us. Some seats were worse than others – dust circulation patterns or something - but if, for example, you had on a v-neck, you got an especially heinous dirt patch on your chest in the shape of a V from where the skin was exposed. Any books lying on the truck got so covered in dust that you couldn’t read the titles off them. Mike has some amazing pictures up on his blog that show just how dirty some of us got: http://mcottam.posterous.com/ .


My pictures just don’t do it justice the way his do. When you are that dirty, you just didn’t have a chance at getting clean with the usual baby-wipe shower. Normally, I use two. Even if I used a dozen I would still find dirt circles on my arms the next morning. Ew.


Apart from the crappy roads and utter dirtiness, it was actually an amazing few days! We only had 17 people with us so there was a lot of space on the truck and just more of an opportunity to talk to people you might not normally talk to. I only had to discreetly move to the other end of the truck once, when I could smell someone’s BO. (Normally, the wind blows through enough so that you don’t smell the people around you…) Good reading time on the truck too: I finished my first Murakami novel and am now on to Stephen King’s It. The best part was the food(!): Jambalaya, Cheeseburgers, Homemade Bread, Cheesy Pasta, and Steak-In-A-Can (SPAM). (Okay, for me, SPAM isn’t exciting, but everyone was excited for our first and only SPAM meal on the truck: SPAM steaks with mashed potatoes and gravy.) Surprisingly, a lot of people had never had SPAM and were really happy with it.


The bad roads didn’t last the entire time and by the time the truck arrived in Addis, we all looked normal enough – or at least not filthy. I was one of the first to have a nice, hot shower although it was pretty disgusting to see brown water going down the drain. All clean now and enjoying Addis Ababa! Next stop is Bahir Dar and then on to Lalibela, Axum, and Gondor!