Aching Knees-Trip Journal

5.7.08 Asawa, Great Lakes Region, Ethiopia

One thing that has held constant through all the exigent, arduous, uncomfortable journeys that I have undertaken in so many countries is that, sooner or later, for better or for worse, they all come to an end.
No matter how much water is leaking on my shivering body from a broken window, hours on end; no matter how badly my knees and feet ache from pressing into the seat or body or obstruction in my vicinity; no matter how the absence of seat padding makes my posterior ache and moan; no matter the dust storms swirling inside the cabin as we bounce merrily down the chosen dirt path; no matter the driver or conductor, either born in the mold of Mario Andretti or a 95 year old grandmother, with no medium ground, ever; no matter the incessant stares and mobbing at the strange westerner, who surely has the means for better, faster modes of transport; they will all come to an end. For better or for worse.
I will bound out of the dusty bus park, taxi stand, or rickety airplane hanger, touts in chase, pack shouldered, gaze forward, countenance steeled, prepared for the unknown.



"However powerful the forces of history, the precise catalysts of change are often unpredictable. So, too, are its agents."
-Robin Wright, Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is a also a prison."
-Henry David Thoreau

"Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together."
-French Romanian Playwright Eugene Ionesco