Ethiopia – The Roads
I 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!
See I had no idea that what I had seen that first day was going on all over the country. I am sure Ethiopia is spending more on roads per GNP than any other country in the world. Furthermore, it was not until I was out on weekdays that I could see how few children go to school. By the end of the trip, I was in full agreement with her. Regardless of whether China, Japan, Europe or USA OR Ethiopia is spending the money, the amount going into roads is not justifiable especially given the education and other social issues that are everywhere. I seriously question whether this is sustainable for two reasons. First, they have too many large projects going in too strange of an order. For instance, there are road projects in the middle of nowhere not connected to any existing good roads. It appears they plan to lay asphalt on hundreds or thousands of kilometers of roads once the bases, drainage systems and bridges are finished and then work on connecting them to some existing roads. That doesn’t make any sense to me and I bet they decide to open the roads without pavement once it all bogs down and they can’t justify the pavement or the connection projects. Huge amounts of road are ready for asphalt, but they are closed (you drive on side roads) until they finish all of the road’s kilometers and then pave all of it. Second, I was on paved roads that must be rebuilt and I learned that many of there were only 4-5 years old. They were never maintained and they were built poorly from the beginning. If they can’t maintain what they have, how will they support all of this new pavement? I will say that they are doing amazing work on these new roads with drainage systems and base layers so maintenance should be less than on the “old” shoddy roads that they used to build.
The roads in the mountains are truly amazing in that they even exist. They are clinging to the side of very steep slopes. Luckily, they do not see snow. One day we traveled up to 3000+ meters and back down to maybe 1000-1500 meters three times. That was a very long day, but the scenery made it worth the effort.
Ethiopian roads have the least amount of traffic that I have seen. Especially minimal when considering the number of people and this is just another sign of the incredible poverty here. There are trucks, but less than any other country, tourist vehicles, but that’s not a large amount, only a little mass transportation and even fewer personal vehicles. The UN vehicles are out there. By the way, they spend $80-100,000 on their big, fancy, fully-decked-out SUVs and replace them before they put on 100,000 kilometers – our money being smartly spent by the UN once again. The Ethiopians I talked to about the large UN presence don’t think too much about the UN. Same stories I have heard in other countries. But Ethiopians do use all of these roads in ways you could never guess. They use them as sidewalks with millions of walkers on the roads everyday. They use them for meeting places especially in the towns and villages and they don’t get out of the way of the vehicles. We had a number of close calls almost hitting people that are oblivious to oncoming vehicles and the fact that they can’t stop as fast as a walker. They use them for work sites such as threshing grain. Yes, asphalt is the perfect surface for farm work! They drive their cattle, camels, donkeys, goats and sheep to fields and back home on the roads and it is a constant challenge to not hit any of the animals. They also have their horse, cattle and donkey-drawn carts slugging along on these roads making it extremely dangerous.
One day we came across goats on a bridge. Goats are freaks around cars and totally unpredictable. The goats started to really get hyper being on the bridge even though we were going slowly. Suddenly a few of them ran to the side and jumped over the rail. I had seen the bridge and drop to the river as we approached and I knew they had just gone over a big drop. Before we could pull over to see the mess, a baby goat jumped up on the rail in the middle of the bridge and I knew he would die from that fall. He teetered on top and only because he is a goat was he able to stabilize and get back onto the bridge. We looked over the side to see all of the goats doing OK even after a 5-7 meter fall onto rocks! Suicidal goats!
Another day we were driving through a town and came across four donkeys, two of which were lying on the ground. We knew immediately that their had been an accident and I was sure they were both dead. The other two looked stunned, but OK. One got up and it was obvious that both of its front legs were broken. It tried to walk with both of them collapsed. It was truly one of the worst sights of my life. Absolutely horrifying and I became enraged. We had seen so much bad driving on the roads, the idea that these animals had been hit in town and the responsible vehicle was not there was just too much. We pulled over and learned the truck had just gone by. The owner and his friend jumped in and the chase was on. A cop got in a few blocks later and I still do not know how that happened. Now we were the police! My guide who is a superior driver drove like a madman in pursuit. We went up a mountain and started to give up not catching the truck and assuming he must have turned off although I was looking at the few places to hide and never saw him. The policeman got out before we descended into Addis Ababa, but the owner stuck with us. At the base of the mountain, we caught up. The large truck was empty and that is how he was able to escape for so long up and down a mountain. Our driver realized that it was a defense department truck and there was nothing anyone was going to do about his crime. Chase over.
That same day we got on the road at 4:00 AM in order to get me to the Cameroon embassy in Addis before it closed. Driving in Africa in the dark is very dangerous, but driving in Ethiopia at this time is off the charts. I decided to just sleep because I knew Tetek could handle it safely and I could not remain calm through all of it. I was awaken a few times when he had to swerve or brake hard. I watched for a bit and was terrified. We would come around a corner and a caravan of overloaded donkey carts would be in the middle of the lane on their way to the market. They have no lights or reflectors and you do not see them until it is basically too late. So you have to swerve into the oncoming lane and the only thing that doesn’t kill you is the lack of other vehicles.
Only because of the lack of vehicles is Ethiopia not the most dangerous roads for my trip thus far. That honor is still owned by Peru and Kenya. But considering the number of vehicles in Ethiopia I definitely believe it has the highest ratio of accidents to vehicles. I saw the aftermath of amazingly horrible accidents where many people were obviously killed. The biggest problem beyond the general ignorance of the populace is that they overload the trucks (Ethiopians overload their carts, their backs, their donkeys and camels and their cars and trucks). They have a truck here with an open bed made by Isuzu. People call them “Al Qaeda” because they are terrorists on the road! These trucks are powerful enough to climb up mountains with way more than they should carry, but the brakes are not so good on the downhill. Time after time we saw these trucks flipped over. I saw enought (dozens) to see the pattern. Especially on very long downhills it was obvious that they were using their brakes until they fried at which point they had to crash the truck before it crashed on its own. Sometimes they got lucky and found a drainage ditch. Other times, it was quite a mess and nothing but bad luck. Miraculously, I never saw one that took out any people, animals or other vehicles. Aside from the Al Qaeda vehicles, I saw large trucks and buses with the same fate. I bet in three plus weeks I saw more wrecks than I have seen total in my life. And that is in a country where there are few vehicles. By the way, the Ethiopian Road Authority has checkpoints for trucks, but it would appear they are corrupted since these overloaded trucks pull in and pull out as if they are OK.
Ethiopians will have to change for their roads to work as they get more vehicles which is inevitable. They are going to have to stop recreating and working on them. They are going to have to make them safer. And they are certainly going to have to educate the drivers and put an end to the overloaded trucks. Whenever I will think about Ethiopia, I will think about the roads and the many beautiful and insane kilometers that I traveled. They are ground zero where the 21st Century is running into the 19th Century (or earlier!) and they surely made the whole visit interesting.
Tags: Africa, ethiopia, Travel
vagabondrick
What an eye opener! I never left Addis Ababa in my stay. Since I won’t see a somputer for a week – MERRY CHRISTMAS
My you fill your heart’s desire – love kathy
Rick: I am so glad that you are not in Kenya right now. Did you see signs of this coming!
Hi Rick – Periodically I read some of your blogs and really enjoy them. Hope you will write a book. I marvel at your courage to visit all these places and I do love ‘armchair’ travel. Keep safe and healthy!