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I will go to Mekele, try to join a salt caravan and with them I want to go to the Danakil Depression.

One Year Africa: Maybe the Hot Season

Maarten de Boeck
2006-05-01 17:15:05

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to say, without anyone interrupting anyone. Of course, I couldn't understand a word of it, although they were talking about me. While I was listening to them, I feared they would send me back, that it would be over. But suddenly, after about half an hour, the meeting resolved. We stood up. Abdella summoned me to go. I was through.

At the end of the day, in the middle of nowhere in the barren desert of Northeastern Ethiopia, I met a stunningly beautiful Afar-girl. Not only I saw her, she served me delicious coffee as well. But there is more... She wore gowns draped loosely around her body. I could glimpse her bosom and her female outlines. I have to admit, her curve drove me crazy. One moment, when I returned from peeing, she accidentally dropped her scarf.... and I… almost dropped my eyes. I wish I could say there was more ... but one has to be honest.
Her name was Assna. She was the girl taking care of us after we had arrived on the first day's destination, Assobolo. A rest place where the traders break up the journey, not more than a dozen of huts, beside a flowing river. It lies at the end of the spectacular gorge we had hiked in most of the day, at the fringe of tremendous rock formations. Like Bera Ale, it was a place where the traders unloaded their animals and fed them, and ate and had a rest, and we did like them. We were staying in a small hut, not more than a wooden construction, where one couldn't stand upright. We stayed till the afternoon of the following day, resting, eating bircutta, drinking coffee, all served by Assna.

In Assobolo we left the gorge behind and proceeded over a wide open landscape. Slowly we descended below sea level. Minus five, minus ten, minus twenty, minus thirty, there were once had flown a sea hundreds of thousand of years ago.
We reached Hamed Ela at sunset. Like Bera Ale and Assobolo, Hamed Ela served as a quintessential service village for the salt trade, the place where the miners ...