62 – The walled city of Harar

Wed 27th Jan, In a van en route to Addis
Woke up before the sunrise so that i can catch a sunrise photo at Harar Gate. The walled city of Harar was created to keep out the Oromo invaders. And till now it has stood. I walked around the main gate area, all the shops were still close so you could say it was more of a recce. I then found myself at the Shoa gate where i ate fuul dunked in chilli powder and a shai (5 birr!)
Went back to the hotel, left for a look at the old town. There are apparently 82 mosques just inside 1 square km of old town. It is a small area, but the density of little alleyways make it a quaint little town to spend a day. Then of course you have the people. The women are dressed in red, purple, yellow and orange, whereas the older men had their orange beards. We weaved in and out of the alleys and roads, ocassionally finding ourselves on the outside of the wall.
Besides the wall itself, there were also the markets outside the walls, in what is termed the new town. Even these markets had their alleys and little nooks and crannies. There was the main markets, the smuggler's market and the recycling market. We didn't buy anything of course, but it was just the experience of walking around these lively markets that is so exhilarating.
I got my minibus ticket (130 birr) to Addis in the afternoon.. The bus is a night bus, and by leaving at 7pm today, i would reach Addis with plenty of time to recharge, but i would miss the famed hyena men feeding session just outside the town walls. =/
The minivan ride was nuts.. Drunk Addis guy on Harari wine and stuffed with qat made so much noise throughout. There were three police checkpoints too. They were more interested in the locals and anything they might have smuggled into Addis though. I was generall left alone, other than a few frisks.
Pardon the quality of this entry, which really doesn't do Harar justice. I might reupdate this entry later on. I'm rushing through and posting so that i can go back and watch Egypt vs Algeria which comes up later tonight! Hope the photos will suffice for now.

61 – How much dust does a duststorm dust if a duststorm does storm dust?

Tue 26th Jan, Some local dump, Harar
Today we make the long journey from Hargeisa, Somaliland to Harar, Ethiopia. After the complimentary breakfast, we take the minibus from just behind the hotel to the Wajaale Station (1500 shillings) where transport to Wajaale could be found. What i thought would be buses turned out to the Toyota Mark II cars instead, and these charged 5.5 USD per pax to the border town of Wajaale. As usual, we waited for the vehicle to get full before going. The road was sealed, until we turned off onto the dirt track towards Wajaale halfway.
Here the terrain got interesting. We must have gone through this terrain at night when coming into Somaliland by 4WD. In the horizon, duststorm after duststorm loomed. We passed by a few up close. Around 2.5 hours later, we arrived at Wajaale. The main road here is still a sandy track. After doing the border necessities at both sides (the immigrations building is unmarked), we took a public bus to the next town Jijiga (20 birr, 2.5 hrs). The standard annoying Ethiopian asking for 10 birr for lifting your bag on top of the bus is back. =)
The road got better as we went west. And the scenery got greener as well.. I suspect it was rolling qat fields we passed through. I counted, along the way, there were 7 police or military checkpoints. The more thorough ones strip searched the passengers, one made me go on the bus roof to open my padlocked bag. The locals had to show their IDs. All these because of the proximity to the border.
From Jijiga, we took yet another bus, this time to Harar (23 birr, 2 hours), which meant we arrived in Harar only at around 8pm. Along the way we passed through the Valley of Marvels, so named because of the boulders standing on top of each other at impossible angles. I'm sure there is a story to this valley, but at that moment in the bus no one could tell us.
We reached Harar and found all the hotels to be full, due to some big meeting going on in the Oromia region. We were forced to stay in one of the local places, with no power point, water for shower etc (30 birr). But the beds were comfortable, so I had a good night's sleep.
p/s im back in Ethiopia, so i'm posting from emails again since we cannot access the blog web page.

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