Ethiopia

Now before us was Ethiopia - the coldest country in Africa. Unlike the hot desert of Sudan, where the day was +45 GD. C in the shade, it turned out to be green, humid, windy and cool, and even cold at night (+10 GD. C). Ethiopia is a very poor country. The poverty of the locals comes from their laziness. “It’s better to die of hunger than of work,” says an Ethiopian saying.

Especially a lot of beggars in large cities, so even India compared to Ethiopia seems civilized and rich country. Ethiopians, unlike Sudanese, do not call wanderers to visit and spend the night, very rarely treat them. Two exceptions: drivers and Muslims. A rare car driver who picks you up on the road usually doesn’t want money and will be happy to feed fellow travelers; and Muslims representing a religious minority here can shelter you in a mosque, if, of course, you know Muslim traditions and know a little Arabic or Amharic language, since, of course, they don’t know English or Russian.

We spent about two weeks in Ethiopia; made just in case a Yemeni visa and headed to the north-east of the country, to the cities of Harar, Jijigou, and further, to the border with Somalia. In Zhizhiga, 70 km from the border, we have already been given exit stamps, since there are no longer any immigration authorities of Ethiopia on the border itself. But in Somalia we were not allowed. During its civil war, several no-recognized sovereign states were formed on its territory: Somaliland, Puntaland, Jubbaland, and a dozen more. The representatives of the Somaliland authorities were not affected by the papers from the Somali Embassy in Moscow: they are another sovereign state!

They didn’t want to give out a visa at the border either (they called their capital, Hargeisa, to clarify this; Ethiopians are allowed free, and the “white Mr.” is a rare unexplored phenomenon!) And was sent back to the Ethiopian city of Dire Dawa. Allegedly, there is an embassy of Somaliland (address unknown), get a visa and come again. We returned to Ethiopia, already having an exit stamp of this country; we were easily missed. We went to Dire Dawa, but the embassy of the unrecognized republic was not found. Perhaps it was not. But they found the embassy of Djibouti and quickly made a visa to Djibouti, decided to go there. From Addis Ababa in Dire Dawu and Djibouti is the railway, the most broken-down in the world.