sharpness of the turn would prove this reaction of the vehicle.
I was no experienced driver at that time. Today I would switch
back and let it slow down. That time I trot on the brake pedal. The car
reacted quite normally: brakes of wheels on the ground seized, the
others let it go. The car was putting its wheels of left and right in turn
to the ground and every time it came near to one side of the road zig-
zagging wildly. It was made worse by the movements of my wife and
son sitting on the rear seats without safety belts. Fortunately, no
other car was in our vicinity at that instant. To the left the ground was
about 30 feet below road level, on the right that difference was 8
feet. I tried to draw the vehicle nearer to the right side in case of a
run-down. At last, near the right side of the road, the car hit a big
stone with its bumper and stopped. But, as the right wheels ran off,
the car turned on its right side, all the glasses on that side went out,
and it stopped above 8 feet of nothing, supported only by a bush of
wild roses.
We left it climbing through the left door and waited to somebody
coming to help us to put the car back on road. Silence was enorm-
ous. We examined each-other, what injuries we had, but, fortunate-
ly, nothing serious happened. I have still been in a shock, but they
were in good humour, the boy was even giggling. Before us the road
was rising and running between two hills. This rise ahead and those
hills blocked sight, but in some minutes there came a noise to us,
the sound of many motor vehicles. The next minute the first trucks
emerged above the hump of the road.
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It was a military convoy of at least twenty trucks laden with sold-
iers and military ware. They were East-Germans and Ethiopians.
They stopped opposite us and after greeting they tried to pull the car
up by a tow-rope Louis had given me in any case. The rope would
not do, it tore at once. Then a couple of men put it up by hand. One of
the soldiers sat in, turned the key off and on again, started the
engine and said:
“Please, at your service.”
Before we could say a sentence, they sat in their trucks and
drove on. We could only wave them off in gratitude. When we re-
mained among us, we could speak at last. My wife and the child
were both happy to survive the accident. They have been unhurt,
except my wife's leg with a scratch of rose thorn. My forehead was
bleeding a little, I hit it in the rear-view mirror.
This accident would slightly change our relationship to driving.
My wife would not sit in for about four months. I would have this ex-
perience repeated in my dreams for even longer. Later we would
drive that stretch of the road again, and I would solve that riddle: the
curve has been sloped to the outside. The roadbed might have sunk
down and so, geometry of the road has changed. Anyway, my
speed never surpassed 40 miles per hour at that road again.
Before I decided to take my son out of the Russian school, our
daily routine began with taking him there. It lay well out of town, as
the first emperor, Menelik II, had given large lands to the four big-
gest European powers for their embassies. The Russian embassy
site was one of them. Road was busy and, although I developed a
route along the old and new administrational buildings and it was a
smooth one, I suffered a lot especially from a local, the Aeroflot
Soviet Airlines office head, who was taking his son on the same way
to the same school by his Volkswagen beetle. He was overtaking
me in sharp curves, his pride could not let him allow a “farange”
(stranger) to arrive before him to the place. After delivery of the child
to school, I drove to my office on the other side of the city. My daily
route was 50 miles. It stopped it, when my son began having his
lessons at home. The next year it would not be better, then I would
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African countryside
drive twice daily to the International School at the other end of the
town.
After the accident our car has been repaired in two weeks. Ato
Tezera, the chief of a workshop I inherited with my car from the
German sociologist, would always do a prime work. His workshop
has been called “Autosilverio” after the former owner, Ato Silverio.
Anyway, the only day that my car spent damaged in the parking
at our house, was enough to be seen by my neighbour, another
Hungarian expert. Charles, formerly chief architect of our capital at
home, was the senior architect in town. Revolution Square, the
venue of yearly military celebrations, was nicknamed Polonyi
Square after him. He said on sighting the car:
“You are an extremely lucky person. You smash your car in an
overturn 200 kilometres from town, and not only nobody is hurt,
even the car can come back on its own wheels.”
During these two weeks my colleague, Thomas, took me to the
office. After that my place has been switched to the nearby office of
Bekele, I made only 10 miles a day. This break in driving in the near-
Christmas weeks was a great luck. Otherwise, we would have been
going somewhere and having troubles. The family of the French
schoolmaster has been attacked by gunmen on the road, and both
his wife and elder son killed by bullets. It was a revenge for a local
child hit on the road by a white car. Any white car could have been an
enemy (also mine).
For my family and me this careless period has been a great luck.
We have made big walks in town through suburbs other whites
would detour far. The town's backbone is Churchill Road. It starts
from the railroad station on a smaller height and leads through the
centre of the city. It is the lowest point of the road. The square is
housing some very important offices and their National Bank. Our
block of apartments has lain nearly on that square. Here the road
meets the other main highway of the country that is the Dessie Road
leading to the namesake town in the East, to the seat of the Region
of Wollo. Perhaps this is the only part of the country, where the maj-
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ority of the territory is no high plateau. Even here can be found the
Danakil Depression named after the local people, its deepest point
lies 370 feet below sea level. The Danakil people have not been
much more developed even a few years ago than they had been
several thousand years ago. North of Wollo lies the Region of Tigrai,
where the same Tigre people are living as in Eritrea.
After this crossing the road rises and leads up to hilltop, where
the Municipality building has been constructed. On the same hill
one of the Coptic Church's most important temples, the St.
George's Cathedral is situated. Difference in level on the road is
about 1,300 feet. Over Municipality, 15 miles away, rises the semi-
circle of Entoto mountains. Their highest point is above 12,000 feet.
From the city centre to Municipality the road was a metropolitan
one at that time. Walking on it from south to north you first saw
hotels and prospering tourist offices, although there was also an
empty site, where in my very first days in town during a torrential rain
a few cows perished. Poor creatures had walked down to the low-
lying area to browse, but rain arrived, the pasture turned into a ten-
foot lake, and they couldn't climb back up on the muddy bank. After
hotels there followed the Ministry of Transport, i.e. my workplace,
the ground-floor of which was the Main Post Office at the same time,
then came big stores, the Banca di Roma, etc. At halfway of the rise
there was a giant circus (in the capital there were many similar
roundabout traffic circuses, it has been no great joy, as part of the
drivers gave priority to those within, the rest did the opposite, you
never knew, who would give priority to whom), from where both to
the right and to the left important roads started. Here we found the
best shop for roasted coffee, or rather the roasting plant itself,
where I have always got the best quality.
Somewhat further, at the roadside, we found the favourite small
shops of my wife. Here you could buy everything from coffins to bra-
celets made of hairs of giraffe tails to ivory objects. And on the left
side of Churchill Road, when we are facing Municipality, lies the big-
gest open-air market of Africa, the Mercato. To discover it complete-
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ly, you need a month, walking here and there every day. It is a real
wonder. There are a multitude of spices in great heaps in bowls on
rugs spread on the ground. There is no ware you could not buy
there. During our first days in the town my colleague Elmer, who
wanted to take cocoa, but there was none in shops, said to a man on
the Mercato, offering his guidance for a modest sum, to show him
cocoa. The man took him to a small shop and there it was.
During the weeks after our return from the unfortunate excurs-
ion, my wife and the child went walking daily. Fruit and basket vend-
ors knew them well, and soon she would earn a status of “hardest
customer”. She would bargain every price to the ground. Once a
grapefruit vendor threw after her his grapefruits in his anger. She
really purchased a lot of locally made handicrafts at their true prices.
She has always had a good eye for natural beauty, and it was the
very last time she could get such things as rings, bracelets and
neck-rings made of hairs of giraffe tail. Or ivory carvings, not the
kind of Chinese 16-layer balls, but artefacts in their own kind. There
were souvenirs from lion claws put in silver or golden settings.
Her favourites were Ethiopian paintings on leather. Their char-
acteristic style showed historic events, folk habits and different
types of people of the country. All were inscribed with their Amharic
letters. These paintings sold for one birr for every person depicted.
My wife took so many -- sometimes so reasonably -- that at home
we would be able to give them away as gifts and souvenirs. My son
acquired a good knowledge about topography of the town by these
walks.
In our block of apartments, where we lived, only two of us have
been from our country. There were locals of high society -- as
Charles P., my neighbour once said: “It is a pleasant feeling to be
privileged in feudalism.” -- and Soviet military officers. One of the
latters would cause me some troubles yet. The block has been
guarded by armed men of the district council, as all big houses,
against criminals. Guards earned extra money during their duty
time by taking up drinking water from the basement into flats in
emergency of water supply.
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We had troubles not only with water. Of the two lifts sometimes
both have been out-of-order. It has been the case, when a Sudan-
ese has been looking for a Libyan inhabitant. It happened, when Mr.
Kaddhafi sent out his men to execute Libyans living abroad. Some
months earlier he had sent his message to all of them and ordered
them home, to build their own country instead of foreign lands by
their talents. Those who would not listen would be executed on the
spot. Well, in our house there had lived a Lybian young man having
good contacts with a Sudanese doctor freshly graduated. He took
his president seriously and went home. The Sudanese has not
found him and, as our lifts were not in order, he was coming down by
the stairs. He had graduated in Budapest and he was surprised to
hear a Hungarian discussion over the turn. It was my family still
waiting for lifts and pressing buttons, when somebody addressed
them in their own language. They were very much surprised to see
a local man -- Sudanese Arabs are looking almost the same as
Ethiopians -- turn from the stairs. They invited him to our home and
waited for me. That day I was busy even after work and, when I got
home, the stranger left for North-Yemen. Just to that place, because
the economic situation in his own home country was very bad at that
time, and he needed much money to be able to return to Pécs in
Hungary, to his university of graduation, and finish his specialisation
-- and also to marry the Hungarian girl, also a doctor, with whom he
had already been engaged. From Sanaa he had got a favourable
offer. About Dr. Hamid I am going to write more.
As I have mentioned, Ato Bekele, my boss, has taken my sug-
gestions seriously and, beside our partnership at work, we have be-
come good friends. January has come and my boss organised our
trip to Assab. He helped to convince his director to permit the parti-
cipation of my family, too. We travelled by a long-cab Datsun pick-
up. This trip took us two days there, the same back and one in the
town, and it was an experience never to forget. Bekele has been
making that trip twice annually as an average. He knew the country
along the route as the palms of his own hands. The pickup was be-
ing driven also by the same truck driver, who was present this time.
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The aim of the trip has been to find a proper place and, if possible,
survey the conditions for the installation service for three hundred
FIAT trucks ordered not long before and due to arrive in a short time
at Assab on board. The trucks were to promote to the capital on their
own wheels after that.
Up-to the national park we knew the route, but after it sights
were new. That 540-mile distance can be divided to three equal
legs. First one is to the fork, where the Dire Dawa and the Assab
road divides. Second leg is from the fork leaving north, until mount-
ains near Djibouti are reached. The third leg follows the valleys of
those mountains. The second leg starts in some miles after the river
Awash, that leaves its north-eastern direction after rounding the
national park and flows on in a northerly course, crosses the Harrar
main road. After the bridge the road follows the same direction, then
the leg going to the land of the Danakil forks out to the left. At both
sides of the route the land is almost empty and it is very flat, you see
an African savanna with dry grass and occasional bush, only one
peak of a mountain, a very special one, comes into view. This is the
Ayelouth arising at about the middle of the whole leg. It is so con-
spicuous that you notice it already 70 miles in advance, it is no ac-
cident, the height of the peak is almost seven thousand feet.
Around that place, somewhat to the North, there is a settlement
of Afars, named by other people Danakil, meaning nomad ones.
The settlement is named Ghewanee. They are naturally beautiful
people, but very characteristic, especially men. They were head-
hunters until about the Second World War. In the book of doctor M.,
there is a story, when the author had insulted one of the boy-
servants unintentionally, and could avoid being killed by him only by
his light sleep. The exceptional pride of these people made the boy
to beg him for death, he said he would not be able to remain with the
tribe having been defeated.
Fortunately, when we visited the place they were no true
nomads any more. This is the reason why their name in their own
language, the Afars, were widely known that time already. Since
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their giving up nomad life they occupy some territories in Wollo and
Hararghe -- this area is called after its seat, Harrar, this is the land
claimed also by Somalia, otherwise it is almost empty, nobody lives
there, as it is a dry stony desert -- regions within Ethiopia, but the
majority of these people lives in Djibouti, by its old name French
Somalia, which had been kept by France also during WW II. The
name of this mini-state is The Land of the Afar and Issat. By cloths
these people are not very much different from other Ethiopians.
They use similar gabby as the Amhara, but they do not need any
trousers under it, as their climate is hot because of its low altitude. In
their desert land there is a depression 370 feet below sea-level.
That arid land is the hottest place on Earth, peak has been measur-
ed at about 130 degrees F. Their desert can boast with an endemic
beast, the wild ass of Ethiopia. A relative of this animal lives in
Afghanistan. Another peculiarity of the Danakil Depression, in the
middle of it an active volcano arises.
Our route followed a course south of that depression. But
climate has been out-of-order for an unknown reason, as on that
land, where rain falls as rare as every second year, we made our trip
in a lasting slow rain. Something extraordinary must have happen-
ed as once we saw a group of ostriches of more than a hundred
individuals, whereas ostriches are seen always not more than five
in a group. Before reaching that mountain-cone Ayelou we saw a
man in a very dirty rug carrying something. It was an ostrich egg. We
stopped and bought it for five birrs (2.50 dollars). Soon there were
two more eggs for sale. We bought all. They survived the route and
two of them -- only their shells -- are today in our cupboards on
show. After return from the trip we gave one to our friends the
doctors, and two of them we consumed, one as an omelette of 33
hen-eggs (by weight), of the other, where I took care of blowing out
white and yolk to different bowls, my wife baked a fine cake.
At the settlement after the cone we stopped to take lunch. The
Afars stood around us and one by one we had to shake their hands.
They were very wild figures with their long sword, without sheath, in
their belts. Some of them had rifles, too. My boss, Bekele, told us,
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African countryside
these people pay a big respect to men judged earnest by their be-
haviours and sights. May be, they had seen something in me, too. It
is also possible that all happened by the principle "the friend of my
friend is my friend too", as they had seen more than once Bekele
and the driver in the company car there.
We drove further and spent the night in a very small town called
Trena in an awfully unimportant hotel. There was neither water
supply nor electric light. Our sleep was short and we drove on in the
morning. At sunrise we sighted the Awash last time, after that it flew
on the right from us, until, passing through two big lakes, it dis-
appeared under the sand. Soon the mountainous country appeared
before us. When we reached that place, we turned on the road
leading from Dessie to Assab, the third leg of our route. It looked
frightful. Up and down serpentine roads, through salt pans and
never to pass another car, except a couple of deserted ones hang-
ing overhead on steep slopes as they ran off the road. One big F-10
red Volvo truck was still OK, only to organise salvage would cost
more than the value of the truck. There was a four-wheel-drive
vehicle crumpled as a crashed beer can. They were mementoes to
care more about our lives. But, anyhow, this last leg of our trip has
been beautiful.
In the afternoon the second day we reached our goal. Being
January weather was good, temperature only 87 degrees F. During
summer it is 125 degrees F with 100 percent relative humidity from
the sea. The town was a real Arab one and dirt was plentiful every-
where. It might be different now that it is not part of Ethiopia, it be-
longs to Eritrea, a separate country, and traffic is reduced. We have
been accommodated in a hotel consisting of several bungalows,
one of the small houses was exclusively for my disposal with my
family. For the heat we could not sleep well and the next day we did
all our work to return as soon as possible. I do not think, of my pro-
posal about the planned maintenance site there realised too much.
The company did not have money and, when one year later FIAT
363 trucks -- called “addis makina” (new car) -- would begin to pour
in by freighter ships, all the maintenance work they would spare for
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Canned roaddust
the capital, here only necessary checks would be done. There was
no possibility to get people of the plateau to work here, only a back-
to-back system of three months would do. As Bekele wanted me
here only for my proposal, he left us alone on the beach for the after-
noon, and he went to arrange his official duties. On the beach we
collected as many treasures as possible. My son even caught --
and, as they survived, he took them to the capital in our flat -- some
hermit crabs.
Leaving beach my wife asked, if there were turtle shells to buy.
We were taken to a fisherman who had five of them. We took them
all. Later I would give three of them to the Wildlife Conservation
Office to permit my visit to the western part of the country with larg-
est wildlife. One of them is with us in our house until now.
On the backward route in the first leg in one of the small villages
we found all in decorations. The son of the local party chief had his
wedding. There was an enormous tent for at least a hundred sitting
persons with tables and benches. Bekele has been caught by them
and seated. He would not let us out of this event, and we had to take
place with him under the tent. Ethiopian hospitality is really great.
So far I managed to avoid eating from any of their national food.
Now it was impossible. When our hosts saw that we were inex-
perienced, they would help us to fold and eat the food, injera with
many kinds of wat.
My wife has been working in health service for more than 30
years. Before she joined me abroad, she collected all information
possible. She knew well that in Ethiopia all the infectious diseases
of the world existed. Including at least three kinds of intestinal sick-
nesses. Now it was time to test our immune systems.
It might be funny, but not one us had any troubles from the food. I
even liked it so much, that any time after I would have the possibility
of eating their national food, I would do it. On our backward route we
slept in a relatively luxury place of a hotel for foreign guests in the
town of Nazreth. The next day before noon we were in the capital.
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Life in Addis Ababa
Life in Addis Ababa
My relationship with my boss had always been good, but after
that trip we became real friends. They visited us in our apartment
and we did it at their house.
I could see then how the unique Ethiopian coffee -- bunna in
Amharic -- was prepared. Their servant, a young girl, put raw coffee
beans on a round metal plate and laid it above embers in a charcoal
burning stove. The plate was supported by a ring fastened to the
stove four inches above embers. She aired the fire with a fan and
stirred the beans by a wooden spoon. In about ten minutes coffee
has been roasted ready. All this has been done on the floor of their
fireplace and smoke went out through the chimney.
Roasted beans still hot have been smashed in a wooden mort-
ar, ground coffee was poured into a ceramic percolator. It looked
like a sampling tube for wines -- without hole on its bottom --, with a
ball-shaped lower part of about two pints in volume and a narrow
long neck with a pitcher mouth and a handle on its neck. It was
made of black ceramics. On top of the ground coffee a needed
quantity of water has been poured, and the device was put directly
on embers within the metal ring. Soon water came to boil and it let
out steam at the top. The percolator was put aside on a textile ring --
similar to those for carrying loads on heads of women in some
countries -- and its opening closed by a piece of corn cob core.
Coffee has been poured into cups after 15 minutes.
In our country coffee is a culture. We have taken it first from
Turks during their 150-year rule here, repeatedly from Italians in
modern times. Italians had learned this trade in Ethiopia. I have
never tasted better coffee than that in Ethiopia.