Ethiopia – The Roads
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007I traveled over 5000 kilometers of roads in Ethiopia on this trip. Other than the trails I was on last year in the Congo, these are the worst roads I have seen. Aside from the minority of well-paved roads, the roads are either pothole-covered asphalt, poor gravel roads or extremely poor tracks full of ditches and rocks. Many bridges do not exist and you have to traverse through the water. Given how poor is Ethiopia, the amount of mountains and other difficult terrain that must be traversed and the rains that wash away the land, it is not much of a surprise. The big surprise to me was finding more roadway projects being worked on than I have ever seen in my life. The projects far exceed what could possible for a country with limited means. My first day out of Addis Ababa gave me a taste for the difficult roads and the construction projects going on. I met a British couple that night who are living in Ethiopia and were just finishing their loop by road of the northern sites. She complained about how Ethiopia needs to spend money on education and not roads. I said that the roads are so bad that they need to upgrade their infrastructure as well as education if they are going to joing the 21st Century. I did not understand what I was talking about!
vagabondrick