The Longest Day Ever (or, What Not to Do on a Road Trip)

We’re on a dirt road leading to a nameless patch of villages. I’ve got the window down, despite the dust floating inside the car. And I’m showing a photo of an elephant to an old man who speaks no English. He wears a sarong wrapped around his waist, a turban wrapped around his head, and a wooden walking stick wrapped around his arms. The merciless late afternoon sun partially blinds me.

How did things get this way? How did I get to this moment, here and now? Why on earth am I showing a photo of an elephant to a random villager?

***

The day had started out well enough. We’d had a peaceful sleep among the oryx and gazelles of Awash National Park. We’d awoken to the sound of the sprinkling waterfall nearby and the friendly chirps of the birds. And we’d breakfasted amid families of vervet monkeys and baboons. Awash National Park hadn’t been the safari of our lifetime, but we’d been at peace in its arid, prickly heat.

Later that morning, we’d driven past herds of camels up into cool green hills. The villages had overflowed with the most vivid of clothing, and even though we’d been stared at and cat-called as though we were aliens, we’d felt happily stimulated. We were driving east, toward exotic Djibouti, and we were making excellent time.

By the time we’d reached Harar, the only large town with accommodation possibilities, we’d driven 350km, a new record for us. We knew that a mere 30km further was the Babille Elephant Sanctuary, offering camping and the possibility of seeing a rare sub-species of forest elephant – yet another of Ethiopia’s endemic animals.

It was no wonder that we forewent Harar’s sub-par hotels for the possibility of more bush camping.

***

Bruno’s GPS point is wrong. I have no map, but a small paragraph in my guide book states that we may have overshot our distance. A local in Babille town confirms this thought. We head back and begin looking again for the sign-posted turnoff. To not avail.

We have a photo of an elephant in our Mammals of Africa book. We begin to show it to locals as our non-Amharic way of asking where the sanctuary is. The consensus is that it’s down a dirt road and past a hill. That corresponds to my guide book and a possible point on Bruno’s GPS.

So we go for it. It’s 4:30pm, 80 minutes before sunset.

And that, my friends, is our mistake. Lured by a sleep amid elephants rather than between walls, we make an amateurish decision. We drive down the un-signposted dirt road into nameless fields and villages. We drive, and drive, and drive. The actual distance is only 14km, according to the GPS, but it is 5:30pm when we finally conclude that either we are on the wrong road or no such elephant sanctuary exists.

By this point, we’ve been driving almost 11 hours and almost 400km. Bruno is exhausted and disappointed and stressed by all the children running after our car and latching onto the back end. And that’s why he doesn’t see the pink-painted box in the middle of the path. That’s why he drives over it.

And that’s why the nail the size of a middle finger jutting out from the side of the box punctures our tire.

With the hissing sound of our collapsing tire, our morale deflates. Already, an entire village of excited Ethiopians are crowding around our vehicle, leaving us barely enough space to check the tire and do the required work. I try to help Bruno – I hold the flashlight in the setting sun, get him water, and help tighten the wheel-screw-thingies. But who am I kidding – I know zilch about car mechanics.

So instead, I analyze the crowd. Everyone is smiling and laughing, staring at our misfortune as though we are Teddy Afro – the most popular contemporary musician in Ethiopia – come to do a free, impromptu concert. We are the most exciting thing they’ve seen in weeks. They are the worst thing we’ve experienced in months.

Eventually, despite trembling fingers, Bruno gets the tire changed and we are again off. It is pitch black and now we have to drive another dusty, bumpy 12km to the main road without – god forbid – getting another flat.

Eventually, we reach Harar, find the single hotel that will accept our vehicle in the parking lot, have a rushed dinner and a sponge bath inside the car, and throw ourselves into bed.

And as I lay in bed with the light off, listening to the dance party happening not far from our window, I laugh to myself. In two-and-a-half years of traveling overland with Bruno, we’ve never had a flat. We’ve never driven 425km in a single day. Never been on the road for twelve hours straight. Never arrived after dark to our accommodation. And never fallen into bed quite this shattered.

I’m lucky this is only my first time experiencing this kind of day, I decide.  I’m pretty lucky in general, actually.

And with that, I close my eyes and fall fast asleep.