Dangling from a rope in the middle of Ethiopia

Well… what a lovely evening for Thursday night it is… and tomorrow mila and I are going to the roxman dacha in Connecticut… where I will lie on the beach… do nothing… read Alchemist by Paolo Coelho – a book everyone recommended and I have a feeling I will absolutely hate… and that’s about it… the weekend sounds stunning… does it not!

Right now feel enfeebled by another round of thera-flu I am drinking… at 1215 @ night, mind you… for this ridiculous virus is still working its way around my office… XXXXX went home sick on Tuesday… got anti-biotics on Wednesday… and I feel like dog poop this afternoon… a lovely, easily repeatable and fully foreseeable pattern this is…

Anyway… lately have been thinking of Magnus and where he is…for all the pleasures of my life… a certain rush of insane & mindless risk taking is clearly missing… like I haven’t done anything absurdly stupid… like dangle from a goat-hide rope twenty feet in the air… with no safety rope… and my skeletal biceps as my only insurance…. in the cliffs of Northern Ethiopia…. Trying to get to some monastery where I will learn about the latest in AIDS prevention and medications (samples of which I have @ home!)…. Yes… nothing matches that feeling… that split second… when you pause for a second from madly driving yourself to the top… realizing… that first of all, the rope you are clinging to really does smell like a corpse of a rotting beast of burden… that second… its really far down and still pretty far up… and that third… there is really a LOT of local people down there, mostly faithful women, eagerly staring upwards in my direction wondering if this particular farangee will make it up to the monastery or in god’s hands in the rocks below… luckily frenzied panic doesn’t allow me to consider these points… and I madly continue paddling up the rope… forgetting that as a child I was always a horrendous tree climber… and that heights really never were my thing… and that shit… I think I made it to the top… that the lovely Ethiopian people greeting me have seen many white people before me and really don’t care… and that shit… I am still alive… I am still breathing… that I have a water bottle in my backpack and some cigarettes in my pocket… and that my biceps are about to explode… that I cant see for all the sweat pouring off my forehead… and that all I can do is lie down on the filthy stairs pouring warm water on my head, dragging away on that fine cigarette which five minutes before seemed like an eternal impossibility…

And then we walk around the monastery… and see the ancient scrolls… and see the coolest looking Orthodox priests ever… meet the local cat… see the locals dragging over sewer water that they will have blessed before drinking… learn the history of Ethiopian church… admire the fine bright red towel with jesus Christ’s mug on it – sold at a Christian convention near you for $9.99… holding a place of honour amongst ancient artifacts… and listen to a local scholar talk with great eloquence about history and religion and AIDS… or how the latter is just an easily curable white man concoction…

And its all fine and well… we meet a pair of nice Icelandic boys… blonde and young… and way cooler than I ever was at 23… and Magnus comes to the conclusion that in my 4 days in Ethiopia I must have met all four Icelanders currently present on the Horn of Africa… I nod my head… But thoughts of sampling the AIDS medicine in my pocket are quite distracting… I think its oatmeal… but am not sure… kind of afraid to taste it actually…

And now its time to head back down… the same way we got in – by a long stinky and quite unsecured rope…. Icelandic boys are joining us for the ride into town… and Magnus is passionately chatting away to them in the ancient Norse tongue… Probably not too many speakers of that in Dubai either…

We approach the rope and my heart palpitations begin… getting up was easy… I was too stupid to realize what I was doing… getting back down… now that’ll take some courage… and the gentleman with the rope – all 115 senior citizen pounds of him (see picture) – gladly agrees… for he is demanding a king’s ransom of 20BIRR ($2.20) per person for the privilege of lowering us back to safety… one of the Icelandic boys gets outraged and starts arguing… no more than $5 BIRR… no fucking way! He insists…. But the old man insists and so do i… ‘if there is one time in your life to overpay for something, my friend’ I say ‘ this is most likely it…’

And down they go… one by one… first Magnus… with a healthy smile a big backpack and my camera in tow… then Pavel… our insistently tacit Czech companion for the day… and then the Icelandic boys… At a negotiated rate of 10BIRR per person… they all disappear into the abyss before me while I choke away at what I am convinced is my last cigarette… I think my last thoughts which now to think of it, I don’t remember… I check if my palms are sweaty.. and they are… and I give a once over to the older gentleman with the rope… noticing a slight pungent smell of sweat and whiskey in the air and remembering the comment of one of the Icelandic boys about how the old man had a bottle of liquor with him earlier… swigging away quite liberally… while a couple of guys sitting next to him tried to convince him that he might be getting too drunk for the job of a rope handler… but hey… money prevails over booze in these parts… and whether the bottle was finished or not I don’t know… but out the monastery I go… clinging to that god awful, filthy stinking goat rope….

The first steps are immeadiately fatal…. I look down… see that I have a good 60 to 70 feet to go… that its quite high up… that there is a lot of people watching me…. That magnus is off to the side aiming at me with my camera… and that I am scared shitless…

As fast as my ascent was just an hour or so before… as slow and frightening this descent is…. I try to maintain control as I go down… but start speeding up… that scares me so I put sharp breaks on… with what now feels sturdy goat rope burning into my palms… and my legs in deadly python wrap…. And I am hanging on… and now stalled… and swinging back and forth… maybe with 30 or 40 feet to go… and everyone cheering… from both above and below…. And magnus actively snapping pictures… and me being swung forwards and backwards on this stinking rope… half way between life and death…. But at least with great fanfare….

By the time I got down… I must have lost at least three to four years of my life… though I would not admit it out loud… I really thought I dodged the grim reaper out there… and for the rest of the day… sitting in our rusty white van… listening to atonal Ethiopian folk music… riding on some of the worst roads I have ever seen… all I could think of was how lucky I was to still be alive and how appropriate it would be for me to now be somewhere safe and sound, like say my bed in new york… where I don’t have to play anymore games with god almighty or attempt to bet my life on physical skills that I have absolutely no confidence in….