So, this is adieu. Or for those of you whom I live near, a soon to be given hug and hello. I left Ethiopia two days ago. Brunhilde’s been given the cleaning of her life, right down to a tickley sort of tool inserted into her vents to swipe the dust away from those little orifices. Her dashboard’s been Armor-All’d, her engine steam cleaned, her bare body parts oxy-coated. I, too, have gotten clean, with a long, long, long hot shower to make up for all the ones I missed these passed two months, as well as a mega-pedicure session, lasting two hours over two days, which, among other things, required shaving off two-months accumulation of hard dry heel skin with a scalpel. Hey, a girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do.
This evening, after our customs agents return from prayer at the mosque, we will put Brunhilde in a container and say good-bye to her for awhile. She’s been a true champ, her fortitude attested to by two rear tires so battered by tough roads that they look like rats have feasted on them, and an air conditioning hose that got rattled to pieces, leaving a portion of itself somewhere on the long dirt road between Dire Dawa and the Djibouti-Ethiopia border. It’s been an extraordinary trip, filled with indelible images, none of which I expected to see, all of which will, I’m sure, only get more vivid as time passes.
I feel actually about one-third of the way home. Djibouti is a strange place, swarming with foreign troops here to monitor the Somali pirate situation. There are Super Pumas flying overhead, Mirages doing test flights in the hazy and humid early morning over the ocean,
men in camouflage and combat boots at the breakfast buffet here at our hotel. Yet downtown the graceful balustraded French buildings in the old quarter crumble quietly, children splash in the red puddles created by a torrential downpour, Muslim ladies in long shapeless dresses and head scarves occupy plastic picnic chairs on the sidewalk, conducting government-sanctioned money changing operations, so common a sight that they carry thousands of dollars or euros or yuan or yen in their purses yet no one robs them, and street urchins swarm around us peddling stale peppermint gum and faded postcards. I’m still a long way from Walden!
It’s been a rewarding trip, as rewarding to write about and to receive your comments on as to actually experience. Thank you for reading.
-Dina
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If you’d like to know which organization I used for this ride, or more details about it, or have questions about what skill level would enjoy such an experience, post to me below.
