An Africa that astounds

My maiden trip to Africa helped clear many of my misconceptions about that continent.

Belonging to an era that watched Bob Geldof's ‘Live Aid' concert in London in the mid-1980s to raise funds for the famine-stricken people of Ethiopia, I assumed the country would be one hot, dusty place.

Imagine my surprise then when on my first day in the capital, Addis Ababa, I had to put on a light jacket for my morning walk. The city reminded me of hill-stations in India, particularly Shimla and Ooty — pleasant weather, bakeries all over the place, and warm and welcoming people.

The Ethiopian capital, however, appears to be caught in a time warp — most of the taxis are the Russian Lada variety of cars and one gets to see more Volkswagen Beetles on its roads than possibly anywhere else in the world. Situated on the foothills of the Entoto Mountains, the city spreads itself across the hillsides. There are several important and interesting sites worth visiting in Addis Ababa, such as the Ethiopian National Museum and the Addis Ababa University, the country's largest and oldest. The city, however, has a rather unique charm of its own. A newly developed city, it till recently had no concept of urban planning. Hence, it has no city centre where people can hang out. Instead it rambles on in a natural way, making each walk anywhere in the city a different experience.

It also comes as a surprise to learn that Ethiopia is considered an excellent aviation gateway for the entire African region. So much so that the ground staff at the Bole airport had to be assured that we were not transit passengers but visitors who intended to spend some time in the city.

And it proved to be time well spent not only because of the natural beauty of the place but also the interactions with the locals. Whenever the locals recognised us as Indians, the conversation invariably proceeded along these lines: “Hello”, “How are you?” “Namaste”. This probably has something to do with the presence of many Indian teachers living and working in this country.

In fact, the Indian influence and presence is visible all over the Ethiopian capital. The 2,000-strong Indian community includes many teachers, representatives of international organisations and, increasingly, entrepreneurs and businessmen.

Our next stop was Sudan, a country under western sanctions for several years now. The thud with which the Ethiopian airline Boeing 737 touched down at Khartoum airport made us wonder if the pilot was one of the many Indian ones who had got a flying licence using fake documents!

The Sudanese capital offers several glimpses into what life is like under sanctions. Checking into our hotel, my eyes fell on a notice that said: ‘Due to instructions from the Central Bank of Sudan US dollar notes prior to 2007 and credit cards cannot be accepted'.

The paranoia about the West is very visible here, as our group discovered. While a soldier forced a member of our group to delete a picture of a Khartoum tourism bus clicked on a mobile phone, another had to surrender her camera to the court. She was kept waiting at a police station for a few hours because a local woman had complained about being photographed.

But life goes on, sanctions or not. All it takes is a visit to a local hypermarket to confirm this! It was stacked with Frito Lay chips, Gucci shoes and suits, the best of perfumes, and Sony televisions and Apple iPads.

Like Addis Ababa, even Khartoum has a lot of history and character to make any visit to this city memorable. Khartoum is actually made up of three distinct cities — Khartoum, Khartoum North or Bahri, and Omdurman — which are divided by the Nile and its two arms. The Blue Nile flows between Khartoum and Bahri, the White Nile between Khartoum and Omdurman, and the merged Nile between Bahri and Omdurman. The confluence of the Blue and White Niles, known as Al-Mogran, lies just north of the bridge between Khartoum and Omdurman. Perhaps not picture-postcard beautiful, but there is definitely something very moving about the sight of these two rivers merging.

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