Virtual Eritrea

This is our last whole day in Eritrea and we wanted to see more of the countryside. After some troubles we could rent a land cruiser with a driver.

We started to go north toward Keren and then to the east. There we met a lovely landscape with more water and better soil. There were green grassand trees. The road was in bad condition and after a while we saw a lot of women, children and old men digging and throwing soil on it. The driver told us that it was a task for the village to keep the road so god that the local bus could go there. After a while the road started to curve and go up in the mountains. High up we stopped for tea and the driver, a former fighter in these mountains, told us a lot. Maria and Ida where not to interested and later we understood why.

We went on down the narrow dirt road which was climbing on the steep mountainside. Here it was even greener and the trees where covered with hanging moss. They have lots of rain and moist coming up from the Red Sea at this part of the mountains. We saw lots of birds, hawks, eagles and many other beautiful birds we don´t know the name of. The driver told us that several busses full of people used to go on this narrow roads to a village far away in the forest. Then the people walked for hours to a waterfall.

They stayed there for two weeks and washed themselves in the water every day. They believe that the water is holy and it brings health.

Finally we reached Sabur mountain where the Ministry of Agriculture had started experimental farming growing coffee beans. The driver talked to a man from the national service (the army) about the situation in the area as we wanted to go further to Filfile where there are lots of banana plantages.(plantations)

But the man said it was not safe to go down there. There were some incidents in the past when Jihad, a fundamentalist Muslim group, had killed some people here so we decided to go back. Back to the hotel and a fever thermometer. Now Ida and Maria are laying in bed and we suppose they got the same decease as Mats. He is by the way much better now and I, Kerstin, got some of my voice back. So, we have our ups and downs.

One up was that we met Mr Nilsson on the street. He just passed by when we were waiting for heland cruiser. Later in the afternoon we had an interesting conversation in one of all bars of Asmara. He told us that everyone in Barentu was well and that they where very ashamed that they had let us go from Barentu to Asmara in a pick up, and it took a long time to convince him that we had loved that breezy tour. He also told me about the joy they felt in Kuluko when they got an envelope with some money that we had left for the school there.  Mr Nilsson is a very charming man and he entertained me with stories of old medicine men, his work with a new translation of the New Testament, how to make marmalade of Karka that and a lot of other things.

I,(Mats) Fredrik and David went on with the landcruiser heading south to Decamhare. The landscape was very dramatic with steep, deep red flattop mountains. Then we followed a valley down and it started to be more vegetation and farming further down. This is the most fertile part of Eritrea we have seen. At a village there were lots of orange and papaya- plantations. The last village before we came out on the main road to Asmara was even the best. The whole village was covered with flowering trees and bushes in all colours. In the middle of this garden of Eden there was a home for old crippled fighters.

Greetings from Mats, Kerstin, Ida, Maria, Fredrik and David