transport – East of Elveden

The road to Dirē Dawa is a long one: an eight-hour drive from Addis Ababa, or so we are told.

We left Addis Ababa at dawn, our bus rattling through empty streets shadowed by new-build office blocks. As with almost everywhere currently in Ethiopia, the pavements were piled with concrete rubble, the result of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s ambitious nationwide road-widening project, a controversial scheme that had already demolished parts of some poorer city districts and displaced many residents in its wake.

For the first hour or so we sped along a pristine tarmacked dual carriageway, the brightening horizon ahead weighed down by clouds the colour of watermelon juice. We could have been almost anywhere; or, at least, anywhere that comes blessed with a backdrop of purple-shadowed mountains and lush tropical greenery. Eventually the freeway morphed into a narrow two-lane highway, which meandered around the heads of valleys as we plied our way eastwards. Traffic was heavy in both directions. Coming towards us was an endless stream of heavily laden trucks from Djibouti, each one towing a trailer, vehicle and driver bonded in lockstep like driven cattle. We slotted into a gap in the fast moving crocodile of trucks that were heading east towards the coast, some of which were piggybacking another truck strapped to their flatbed.

As elsewhere in the country there were checkpoints and roadblocks to slow things down. We had already experienced these travelling the roads of the south, especially in Oromia state, although they had rarely delayed us for long. Sometimes they were administered by the Ethiopian army but more often than not they were manned by local militia who wanted to keep an eye on who was coming into their territory. It had not taken long in the country to come to the conclusion that, rather than the unified sense of national identity promoted by the government, Ethiopia was in the process of becoming increasingly fragmented by region, language, culture and political persuasion.

Before our arrival in Ethiopia we had made firm decisions as to our itinerary. These were based on information gleaned from online travel forums and British FCO warnings regarding more unstable areas of the country. Much of the north – the highlands of Amhara and part of Tigray – was considered unsafe because of rebel activity and kidnappings. Similarly, part of the large sprawling region of Oromia that fans south, west and east from Addis Ababa also came with similar warnings about safety. The FCO had produced a map of the country that divided the country into three zones according to perceived safety: red (‘Advise against all travel’), amber (‘Advise against all but essential travel’) and green (‘see our travel advice before travelling’). I had consulted the updated map frequently throughout the second half of 2024 in the vain hope that brotherly love might prevail throughout the land but the map did not appear to change very much. Much of the south, in particularly the area around Hawassa where we had spent the previous week, was largely amber and therefore considered relatively safe. The highway between Addis Ababa and Dirē Dawa appeared to pass through both amber and green zones, nudging the red briefly between the Oromia towns of Welenchiti and Metehara.

Road blocks and heavy traffic aside, the other barrier to easy progress was roaming animals – donkeys, goats and camels. The donkeys especially were a law unto themselves, totally unfazed by the vehicles that swerved around them as they pottered along oblivious to any danger. It seemed almost as if the animals understood the fast and loose rules of the road – fully aware that if they were harmed then their owners would require compensation from the guilty driver. On a couple of occasions I actually saw one cross the road using a zebra crossing. Camels were a different matter though, large enough to call the shots, they were generally unwilling to step aside or allow any vehicle to manoeuvre past them.

We passed through an endless parade of villages that had little to differentiate themselves from one other: a blurred flash-by of roadside settlements, all flimsy housing and lean-do shops thrown together out of scrap wood, plastic sheets and corrugated iron. The goods on sale – fruit and vegetables, flyblown meat, second hand clothes, spare parts for vehicles – were the bread and butter (or, perhaps, injera) of everyday life. As always in the Global South, it was intriguing how such a base-level financial system managed to thrive, a poor man’s economy in which ragged ten birr notes continually changed hands until all the value had been squeezed out of them.

There was another product on sale that seemed to be ubiquitous in this part of the world – we had seen it on display along almost every roadside in southern Ethiopia the previous week. Khat, the stimulant of choice across much of the Horn of Africa, is an innocuous looking leaf that resembles bay or privet. Legal throughout the region, khat is, as many Ethiopians will attest, less a stimulant, more a way of life. Our driver was clearly an aficionado; as was our guide, a young man who kept his own counsel throughout the journey and did not utter a word of information about the foreign (to us) country that lay beyond the window. The pair just stared ahead for the whole way, locked in herbal reverie as they slowly worked through the pile of leaves that lay at their elbow.

Khat seems to be very much a driving drug, an herbal alternative to the so-called energy drinks whose slim cans over-caffeinated motorists toss out of their windows along Britain’s motorways. It might even be considered to be a green alternative to caffeine, although there is absolutely no shortage of coffee in this land of stay-awake plenty. A week earlier, motoring through the coffee-rich Sidama region of the south, our previous guide, Wonde (‘Wander’), had regaled us with horror stories about khat-crazed drivers careering off the road due to lack of sleep and/or poor decision-making. It seemed perfectly believable. Between Addis and Dirē Dawa I counted at least eight trucks that had crashed and gone off-the-road; some lay forlornly on their side, while others had ended up completely upside down with wheels akimbo. It was unclear as to what had become of the drivers, although it did not look as if they would have escaped unscathed.

One crashed truck that we passed had unleashed a load of crated beer bottles onto the slope beside the road. Slowing down to make our way around the crowd that had gathered around the wrecked vehicle, the air smelled as malty as a Sunday morning pub. A couple of armed men were guarding the booty as approved wreckers sifted through the debris, placing the unbroken bottles in crates ready for resale. Who the men with guns were was anybody’s guess. It was the same at some of the checkpoints we were obliged to stop at, where youths with rifles peered inside the bus before lowering the barrier – no more than a rope stretched across the road – to allow us to pass. A single word from the driver, ‘Turist’, and a glance at our pale well-fed faces within, was usually sufficient for us to be waved on.

While khat consumption is widespread, it was something that was shared with other countries in the region like Somalia. Other aspects of Ethiopian culture are decidedly more unique. One is the country’s unorthodox calendar, which is seven or eight years behind the rest of the world. While the year elsewhere might be 2024 according to the Gregorian calendar, in Ethiopia it is currently 2017. ‘Welcome to Ethiopia, and congratulations,’ we had been told more than once, ‘here you are seven years younger.’ Another Ethiopian curiosity is the music that is played loud and proud almost everywhere, which whether traditional, pop, or the rather wonderful Ethio-Jazz that I had already developed a taste for, uses a pentatonic scale that has a distinctive modal sound to it. A world away from other African music that is generally more accessible to Western ears, Ethiopian music has a tendency to sound rather other-worldly and even a little Chinese at times.

Another facet of Ethiopian culture that sets the country apart is the food, which is quite unlike anywhere else. The mainstay of the diet is a sour spongy pancake called injera, which is made from an ancient indigenous grain called teff. This is eaten along with small helpings of spicy vegetable or meat sauces. For many Ethiopians, if they can afford it, kitfo (spicy raw beef) is the preferred accompaniment, although, perhaps counter-intuitively, there are actually two days of the week, Wednesday and Friday, when restaurants are obliged to serve only ‘fasting’ food, which is strictly vegan. Whether meat or vegetable, raw or cooked, freshness is probably the most important factor in regards to health, and I believe it was the suspicious, rather tired-looking sauce that came with the injera I had eaten the previous night in Addis that had been the cause of the stomach cramps that troubled me throughout the long journey.

We pulled into Dirē Dawa just as it was becoming dark, the onset of the city’s flickering neon countering the rapid tropical plunge into night. The journey had taken twelve hours – sunrise to sunset. Considerably lower in altitude than where we had come from, the city felt hot and humid compared to Addis’s fresher, spring-like climate. But it was as bustling and noisy as the capital, with a honking stream of three–wheel bajajs (tuk-tuks) plying Dirē Dawa’s wide boulevards. Tomorrow there would be the opportunity to visit the city’s sights, such as they were. Tonight though, after a day of unremitting motion, it was the promise of laying still on an immobile bed that held the greatest appeal.

Where’s Birmingham river? Sunk.

Which river was it? Two. More or

Less.

Birmingham River Roy Fisher

The idea was to follow the Birmingham canal system north to Spaghetti Junction. I had already traversed the city by means of the Grand Union Canal a couple of years earlier, following the canal path west to arrive at the meeting of the waters at Gas Street Basin. That time I had turned left at Aston Junction but I knew that returning to that same point it would be possible to follow the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal north to reach Salford Junction directly beneath the Gravelly Hill Interchange.

Accompanying me on this venture was my friend Nigel Roberts, a fellow Bradt author devoted to Belarus and Blues (Birmingham City FC) in equal measure, who gamely agreed to come along despite our planned route veering close enough to Aston Villa’s turf to risk bringing him out in hives.

We rendezvoused in the gleaming concourse of New Street Station before making our way to Gas Street Basin by way of Victoria Square with its Queen Vic and Iron:Man statues. A notice on the ever-present temporary fencing that characterises Paradise Circus gave notice that Antony Gormley’s Iron:Man was soon to be moved to a new home. How, I wondered, might this effect the city’s sacred geometry, its unchartered leys that converged at Victoria Square? But Birmingham (motto: ‘Forward’) was always a city that messed with its past, forever rearranging the deckchairs, refurbishing the urban fabric, reinventing the wheel and then re-forging it by means of a Brummagem hammer. It always seemed a place where time not so much stood still as had a frequent lie-down, a place that lump-hammered the past into something that never quite made it to the future.

After a swift half-pint and perusal of the map at the Malt House pub opposite the geographically incongruous Sealife Centre we set off along the Birmingham & Fazeley branch towards Aston Junction. The day is atypically glorious, warm, blue-skied – peak May, the time of year you might happily be time-locked in were it at all possible. Cow parsley froths alongside the canal path, complimenting the blossoming hawthorn. Oxlips, red campion and broom compete for attention with the lurid graffiti that seems to embellish almost any available wall space. Above a lock, daubed high on a factory wall, eponymous Roof Top Vandals have left their mark in neat, bold lettering – a noteworthy combination of art and athleticism. Passing beneath the bridge that feeds railway lines into Snow Hill Station, the shimmering reflected light from the water dances like an electrocardiograph on the concrete above.

Approaching Aston, we pass the red and blue holders of the Saltley Gas Works, scene of the Battle of Saltley Gate some 46 years earlier when the fuel storage depot was mass picketed during a national miners’ strike.

A little further on, we become aware of a familiar figure atop a building – Britannia, complete with trident, excised from the back of a fifty pence piece, supersized and raised to roof level. It seems churlish not to investigate. We detour from the canal to seek out the building and head for the Lichfield Road in the wake of two teenage girls who swig beer from cans and swap yarns in rich Brummo-Caribbean argot. It is, as we thought, a pub; no longer operating as The Britannia but as The Aston Cafe. We are now perilously close to Villa Park, or Vile Park as my companion prefers to call it. It does not bother me either way – I am agnostic in such matters – but Nigel has started to sense that he is well behind enemy lines.

Returning to the canal to press on north, the Gravelly Hill Interchange aka Spaghetti Junction is already clearly visible ahead. The last house before the tangle of overlapping roadways takes over has iron railings decked in Union Jack flags – patriotism doing battle with traffic pollution. Just beyond, a defiant stand of purple lupins, garden escapes gone feral, announces our arrival at Salford Junction. Here we detour left for a short distance along the Tame Valley Canal, the curving multi-carriageway of the M6 immediately above us, articulated lorries flashing by half-seen above the barriers as they career along in compulsive centripetal motion. Above, spanning the roadways, blue signs point the way to London (M1) and The North (M6), while beside the water a navigational signpost for boats shows the various routes out of here – west to Tipton in the Black Country, north to Tamworth in north Warwickshire, back to the City Centre and Gas Street Basin (3½ miles) from whence we have come. But there are no boats today: the troubled pea-green waters beneath the Gravelly Hill Interchange fail to match most people’s criteria of what constitutes an ideal boating holiday.

Huge concrete pillars support the roads overhead – 559 in total if you were foolhardy enough to count them. The pillars bring to mind Pharaonic temples in Upper Egypt – Luxor, Karnak – although hieroglyphs and carved lotus capitals are noticeably absent. But this whole chaotic enclave of concrete, water and channelled momentum is an unintentional temple of sorts – a nexus of late capitalism; a dinosaur footprint of transport and industry, an entropic sump. The water beneath, largely deprived of direct sunlight, is an opaque soup that looks incapable of supporting anything other than menace and monsters but here and there the light sneaks in to highlight graffiti, reflect on the water and cast shapes on the wall that mutate with the sun’s arc: accidental light sculpture, the oeuvre of James Turrell; found land art.

Locked between the various roadways, the trees and bushes of a green island rise defiantly within its looping concrete confines. It is home, no doubt, to all manner of wildlife – birds, pioneering cats… foxes. A Ballardian realm of preposterous nightmares and Sci-fi imaginings, there are probably parts of the Amazon rainforest that are better explored than this singular non-place.

Satiated with the chiaroscuro experience of this interchange underworld, we return to Salford Junction and take the Grand Union Canal south through Nechells to return to the centre via a route best described as elliptical. We pass the vast entertainment complex of Star City, another latter-day temple to mammon; then an enormous recycling plant that has a conveyor belt receiving the load from a Sisyphean procession of tipper trucks, each crushed metal parcel crashing onto the hill-high mound with a shrill clatter. In uncanny juxtaposition to this unholy clamour, set back from the water is a small pond with reeds, yellow iris, water violet and water lilies – a Monet garden awaiting its artist. But for the deafening backdrop, this might be a scene in leafy Warwickshire. Indeed this whole stretch of canal, just a few minutes’ walk from Spaghetti Junction, has a disconcertingly rural feel to it. What is more, it seems almost completely deserted of people.

Reaching Garrison Lane in Bordesley we make another brief detour so that Nigel can show me the location of The Garrison, the pub whose fictional 1920s counterpart is centrepiece to the Peaky Blinders television series. There’s not a peaked cap or Shelby brother to be seen but it offers an opportunity for Nigel to fill his lungs with the right sort of air – St Andrews, Birmingham City’s home ground is only a little way up the hill.

Approaching Digbeth, we finally come upon the elusive River Rea – a shallow, sluggish channel beneath the canal viaduct. One of Birmingham’s two rivers, the other being the River Tame that it merges with close to Gravelly Hill Interchange, the Rea (pronounced ‘Ray’) spends much of its course through the city below ground out of sight. As the poet Roy Fisher claims in Birmingham River, the Rea does little to draw attention to itself: a ‘petty river’ without memory seems about right.

a slow, petty river with no memory

of an ancient

name; a river called Rea, meaning

river,

and misspelt at that.