Mouse or Rat?*
or How to get a rodent to walk on your balls (gratis)
or How to get a rodent to walk on your balls (gratis)
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For this, you will need:
1 plane ticket to Ethiopia
2 Americans and 1 New Zealander (an Ozzie will do, in the unlikely event that
NZ travellers are in short supply)
1 no-horse town
1 driver who is too polite to say anything bad about any of the
accommodation options
1 inept hotelier (aged around 16 for best effect)
1 evening meal consisting almost exclusively of raw meat
Some souvenirs made largely of animal by-products
1 irritable bowel
Begin by flying to Addis Ababa (£450). If this is a bit rich for you, do not
worry: a similar experience – with your animal of choice! – can be had almost
anywhere in Africa.
Take a couple of days to acquaint yourself with Addis, thereby enabling every
scheming brigand to size you up, offer you a cut-price room in his hotel, and
then suggest you might be interested in a trip ‘down south’ (not – this once –
a dirty metaphor). He will tell you of things tribal and show you a few photos
of bare-breasted women, and you will start to think about how people might
treat you differently at the Royal Geographical Society if they couldn’t tell you
apart from Wilfred Thesiger. [Hopefully, you reflect, they would not try to bury
you.]
Head south, after much wrangling over price ($30 per person, per day, which
will soon enough turn out to cover almost nothing), deep into the Southern
Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region. Which is all one place. After several
days of discovering that tribes-people know far too well what’s good for them
when it comes to posing for tourists, you arrive at Jinka. There is a rather
picturesque sunset over the airfield, or over what you assume must be the
airfield (given the number of cows on it and the complete absence of planes),
and you think it would be nice to sit and have a beer. The speed of the sunset
this close to the equator – never much over 15 minutes – provides an
excellent excuse to drink very quickly: this in turn produces the useful side-
effect of giving you enough courage to find a place to eat, and sample the
various delicacies from a menu which you can neither read (especially if the
locals have tried to translate it into English) nor understand when it is
explained to you (especially if the locals are trying to explain it in English).
Check into a hotel, in this instance the elite Goh Hotel, hard by the airstrip.
This is a handy extra, in case there is an outbreak of civil war or your room-
mate turns out to be
a) boring
b) a rapist
c) prone to horrendous nocturnal farting
Remember – as you always must – to clarify what you are getting for your
money (70 Ethiopian Birr). At the Goh, you are getting mozzie nets, electricity,
and showers with hot water. Hot? Are you sure? Yes, you are. How are you so
certain? Because you are a smart traveller, and you have asked no fewer than
three times [See: EVIL, DR. DOUGLAS, ed., Austin Powers, Mustafa, and the 3-
Question Formula]. Besides, the young lady from NZ is willing to share a
room, which makes all the mod cons a bargain for only ETB35 each. While you
consider the maths, idly flicking the light-switch, the hotelier seems to be
reminded of something and nips out sheepishly. He comes back moments
later, to inform you that the leccy is ‘off’ for the time being, but yes, of course,
it will be on when you return. Ask if this might not effect the operation of the
water-heater. He will say it might, but you can put on the heater now and
when he throws the fuses – in due course – the water will begin to heat.
Grab that beer or two, pausing only to play a quick round of mosquito
Centurion (which the Americans will win, of course, having the itchiest trigger-
fingers), and now it is time for dinner. Today being a day with a ‘Y’ in it, you
will doubtless be told there is only ‘fasting food’. Having been in Ethiopia for at
least a week now, you will be too acclimatised to attempt any kind of humour
based on this logico-linguistic fallacy. And just as well, since this evening it will
turn out that it’s not a fasting day, and so you can at last try the legendary
kitfo: yes, it is a little tin dish of raw meat, but no, I assure the semantic echo
of ‘catfood’ is purely coincidental…
Wash down the catfood (ETB15) with a couple more Ethiopian beers (ETB10),
taking care to avoid the Bedele Special: you have already made one Special
midnight trip to the bathroom this week, and a second might look like
carelessness in the eyes of the NZer.
Stroll back to the Goh, and strip down for a shower (killing a few mozzies while
you’re in there). Ah. No light. No hot water either. Did you forget to put on
the water heater? No, you did not. Then where is the [chosen expletive] hot
water?! Come to that, where’s the cold water?!!
At this juncture ‘words’ may well be exchanged between you and the young
man at Reception. Not to worry, he will smile cheerfully: the electricity can be
restored at the fuse box. There, light! And the shower? It’s not working? No.
It’s. Not.
An aging flunky will now be despatched to see about the problem. You will be
slightly perplexed as to why he heads straight to the other side of the
compound, and not to the bathroom with the shower in it… but you have read
your Lonely Planet: Ethiopia & Eritrea, so you are fully aware that things are
different in Africa and that what seems to you like patent stupidity and
effortful inefficiency is actually just A Cultural Thing.
Once the aging flunky has filled the cistern on the roof – with a plastic
measuring jug – and the water has heated itself (miraculous correlation to the
throwing of the switches in the fuse-box), and you have had a tepid shower,
and muttered dark imprecations about bills, hoteliers and involuntary
discounts, you slump onto your bed, wrestle with the mosquito net, and feel
damn good about the fact that there’s nothing like a good night’s sleep…
It is 4am and you are wondering why you are awake. Just before you crashed
out you recall chuckling as your gut competed with your companion’s over
which could make the most ominous rumble; but all seems fine in that
department. Then you hear it. A scrabbling and scraping somewhere over by
the wall. Confident (don’t ask me how) that no-one is making improvements to
the decor at this early hour, this is an unappealing sound, with even more
unappealing implications.
In fact, the sound seems to be coming from beside your rucksack: specifically
from the side-pocket in which you have stored you souvenirs (more
specifically, a necklace made out of evidently unwashed knucklebones). You
have no flashlight, because you are an idiot and a snob and used all your old
camera batteries to run your Minidisc player because you just couldn’t hack a
week in Ethiopia without a little Mozart. So you sit, and you listen to the
scratching. It’s noisy.
After you-don’t-know-how-long (the total darkness of an African night makes
time-telling tricky), the sound seems to fade a little, and then change. It no
longer sounds like a massive rat trying to chew its way through German-
designed alpine equipment. No, now it sounds like a massive rat trying to climb
up a sheet.
If you have ever aspired to hear the patter of tiny feet, fair dos. If you have
ever hoped to feel the patter of tiny feet, well, then let me be the first to
suggest you urgently reconsider. You don’t have to have watched 1984 to
recoil at the footfall of a rodent between your outstretched legs. Anticipation is
all, and knowing that you wore pants this evening (if only because you were
even more concerned about what the fleas might do to you) is not much of a
consolation.
You think of yourself as an adventurous sort, naturally, and hope other people
consider you a man of parts. You would very much like to remain a man of
parts, but (Bruce Parry, eat your heart out!) there is now a rodent standing
four-square on your scrotum (gratis). You are 100% convinced that if you
move so much as a hair – on your head, or anywhere else – matters might get
much worse. You can see nothing, not even the net that is all that separates
you (and what makes you you) from the Bollock-Devouring Beast of Jinka; but
you could draw an anatomically precise diagram of the little bastard, starting
with the ten tiny claws that are currently poised upon each of your nuts.
In the darkness, you consider your options, trying not to be distracted by the
sound of your pubic hairs curling. It occurs to you that maybe this was what
high school physics was all in aid of – working out what kind of weight/size this
animal might be, judging by the pressure being exerted on your nick-nacks
(something about force divided by surface area, wasn’t it?), and whether the
tensile strength of the average mozzie net would enable you to hurl the
bugger against the wall before he realised what was what and decided to make
a serious impression on les objets sphericales. While you consider all this, you
realise you are glad you can’t see anything.
Time will pass. Maybe ten minutes, maybe an hour. And then the knacker-
nibbler shifts his weight, turns, and walks off, without so much as a thank you
or a cuddle. You take a few seconds to consider what just happened, and
whether it technically qualifies as a sexual encounter. And if it does, were you
complicit?
But enough of abstract philosophy. Hearing, once again, the scrabbling of claw
on cloth, and realising it’s not on your bed this time, you face an altogether
different dilemma. Three nights ago you vomited noisily right next to this
young lady, and you are quite frankly astonished that she’s been willing to
share a room with you again, even to save money.
Should you wake her? It wouldn’t look good in a fairy tale… not least because
fairy tales tend not to include foul-mouthed, flame-haired antipodeans who’ve
been on the road (and the sauce) for 8 months. Still, considering the reaction
likely to be provoked if the vermin tries to do to her what it just did to you,
you reckon the risk is worth taking.
She takes it in good humour – or as good as it gets when you’ve just been
woken at 4am – and you spend quarter of an hour cheerfully recounting the
saga and throwing batteries (which you’ve now found because she has a torch,
smart lass) at the pile of rucksacks. Then she goes back to sleep, leaving you
staring at the ceiling until it gets light, and wishing you could feel a bit more
like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now.
There follows a legal dilemma. If you choose to murder the young man from
Reception, there will probably be consequences. Have you checked the
Ethiopian legal code? What do inmates of Ethiopian jails make of foreigners? Is
it a pie? Is it the pie? These are all things you might want to consider.
Because your water won’t be working (nor the lights, it being pre-dawn when
no-one could possibly need them), you wash over at the Americans’ room,
where you are steadily talked down from a murderous delirium. You breakfast
(ETB20) and impotently (almost lit.) pay the room bill, as everyone knew you
would despite all your mutterings of indescribably-uncomplicated vengeance.
As you leave the premises, traumatised and ever-so-slightly itchy, you will
notice the sign on the main gate: Goh Hotel – your satisfaction is our
profit. With a grim smile, you deduce that they will be out of business soon.
[NB. No real persons, living, dead or anywhere in between, are represented in
this article, least of all the author. It is a work of total conjecture (which I’ve
since had checked out by my GP).]
---
* with thanks to Umberto Eco
© lizardmagazine.com, 2007
1 plane ticket to Ethiopia
2 Americans and 1 New Zealander (an Ozzie will do, in the unlikely event that
NZ travellers are in short supply)
1 no-horse town
1 driver who is too polite to say anything bad about any of the
accommodation options
1 inept hotelier (aged around 16 for best effect)
1 evening meal consisting almost exclusively of raw meat
Some souvenirs made largely of animal by-products
1 irritable bowel
Begin by flying to Addis Ababa (£450). If this is a bit rich for you, do not
worry: a similar experience – with your animal of choice! – can be had almost
anywhere in Africa.
Take a couple of days to acquaint yourself with Addis, thereby enabling every
scheming brigand to size you up, offer you a cut-price room in his hotel, and
then suggest you might be interested in a trip ‘down south’ (not – this once –
a dirty metaphor). He will tell you of things tribal and show you a few photos
of bare-breasted women, and you will start to think about how people might
treat you differently at the Royal Geographical Society if they couldn’t tell you
apart from Wilfred Thesiger. [Hopefully, you reflect, they would not try to bury
you.]
Head south, after much wrangling over price ($30 per person, per day, which
will soon enough turn out to cover almost nothing), deep into the Southern
Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region. Which is all one place. After several
days of discovering that tribes-people know far too well what’s good for them
when it comes to posing for tourists, you arrive at Jinka. There is a rather
picturesque sunset over the airfield, or over what you assume must be the
airfield (given the number of cows on it and the complete absence of planes),
and you think it would be nice to sit and have a beer. The speed of the sunset
this close to the equator – never much over 15 minutes – provides an
excellent excuse to drink very quickly: this in turn produces the useful side-
effect of giving you enough courage to find a place to eat, and sample the
various delicacies from a menu which you can neither read (especially if the
locals have tried to translate it into English) nor understand when it is
explained to you (especially if the locals are trying to explain it in English).
Check into a hotel, in this instance the elite Goh Hotel, hard by the airstrip.
This is a handy extra, in case there is an outbreak of civil war or your room-
mate turns out to be
a) boring
b) a rapist
c) prone to horrendous nocturnal farting
Remember – as you always must – to clarify what you are getting for your
money (70 Ethiopian Birr). At the Goh, you are getting mozzie nets, electricity,
and showers with hot water. Hot? Are you sure? Yes, you are. How are you so
certain? Because you are a smart traveller, and you have asked no fewer than
three times [See: EVIL, DR. DOUGLAS, ed., Austin Powers, Mustafa, and the 3-
Question Formula]. Besides, the young lady from NZ is willing to share a
room, which makes all the mod cons a bargain for only ETB35 each. While you
consider the maths, idly flicking the light-switch, the hotelier seems to be
reminded of something and nips out sheepishly. He comes back moments
later, to inform you that the leccy is ‘off’ for the time being, but yes, of course,
it will be on when you return. Ask if this might not effect the operation of the
water-heater. He will say it might, but you can put on the heater now and
when he throws the fuses – in due course – the water will begin to heat.
Grab that beer or two, pausing only to play a quick round of mosquito
Centurion (which the Americans will win, of course, having the itchiest trigger-
fingers), and now it is time for dinner. Today being a day with a ‘Y’ in it, you
will doubtless be told there is only ‘fasting food’. Having been in Ethiopia for at
least a week now, you will be too acclimatised to attempt any kind of humour
based on this logico-linguistic fallacy. And just as well, since this evening it will
turn out that it’s not a fasting day, and so you can at last try the legendary
kitfo: yes, it is a little tin dish of raw meat, but no, I assure the semantic echo
of ‘catfood’ is purely coincidental…
Wash down the catfood (ETB15) with a couple more Ethiopian beers (ETB10),
taking care to avoid the Bedele Special: you have already made one Special
midnight trip to the bathroom this week, and a second might look like
carelessness in the eyes of the NZer.
Stroll back to the Goh, and strip down for a shower (killing a few mozzies while
you’re in there). Ah. No light. No hot water either. Did you forget to put on
the water heater? No, you did not. Then where is the [chosen expletive] hot
water?! Come to that, where’s the cold water?!!
At this juncture ‘words’ may well be exchanged between you and the young
man at Reception. Not to worry, he will smile cheerfully: the electricity can be
restored at the fuse box. There, light! And the shower? It’s not working? No.
It’s. Not.
An aging flunky will now be despatched to see about the problem. You will be
slightly perplexed as to why he heads straight to the other side of the
compound, and not to the bathroom with the shower in it… but you have read
your Lonely Planet: Ethiopia & Eritrea, so you are fully aware that things are
different in Africa and that what seems to you like patent stupidity and
effortful inefficiency is actually just A Cultural Thing.
Once the aging flunky has filled the cistern on the roof – with a plastic
measuring jug – and the water has heated itself (miraculous correlation to the
throwing of the switches in the fuse-box), and you have had a tepid shower,
and muttered dark imprecations about bills, hoteliers and involuntary
discounts, you slump onto your bed, wrestle with the mosquito net, and feel
damn good about the fact that there’s nothing like a good night’s sleep…
It is 4am and you are wondering why you are awake. Just before you crashed
out you recall chuckling as your gut competed with your companion’s over
which could make the most ominous rumble; but all seems fine in that
department. Then you hear it. A scrabbling and scraping somewhere over by
the wall. Confident (don’t ask me how) that no-one is making improvements to
the decor at this early hour, this is an unappealing sound, with even more
unappealing implications.
In fact, the sound seems to be coming from beside your rucksack: specifically
from the side-pocket in which you have stored you souvenirs (more
specifically, a necklace made out of evidently unwashed knucklebones). You
have no flashlight, because you are an idiot and a snob and used all your old
camera batteries to run your Minidisc player because you just couldn’t hack a
week in Ethiopia without a little Mozart. So you sit, and you listen to the
scratching. It’s noisy.
After you-don’t-know-how-long (the total darkness of an African night makes
time-telling tricky), the sound seems to fade a little, and then change. It no
longer sounds like a massive rat trying to chew its way through German-
designed alpine equipment. No, now it sounds like a massive rat trying to climb
up a sheet.
If you have ever aspired to hear the patter of tiny feet, fair dos. If you have
ever hoped to feel the patter of tiny feet, well, then let me be the first to
suggest you urgently reconsider. You don’t have to have watched 1984 to
recoil at the footfall of a rodent between your outstretched legs. Anticipation is
all, and knowing that you wore pants this evening (if only because you were
even more concerned about what the fleas might do to you) is not much of a
consolation.
You think of yourself as an adventurous sort, naturally, and hope other people
consider you a man of parts. You would very much like to remain a man of
parts, but (Bruce Parry, eat your heart out!) there is now a rodent standing
four-square on your scrotum (gratis). You are 100% convinced that if you
move so much as a hair – on your head, or anywhere else – matters might get
much worse. You can see nothing, not even the net that is all that separates
you (and what makes you you) from the Bollock-Devouring Beast of Jinka; but
you could draw an anatomically precise diagram of the little bastard, starting
with the ten tiny claws that are currently poised upon each of your nuts.
In the darkness, you consider your options, trying not to be distracted by the
sound of your pubic hairs curling. It occurs to you that maybe this was what
high school physics was all in aid of – working out what kind of weight/size this
animal might be, judging by the pressure being exerted on your nick-nacks
(something about force divided by surface area, wasn’t it?), and whether the
tensile strength of the average mozzie net would enable you to hurl the
bugger against the wall before he realised what was what and decided to make
a serious impression on les objets sphericales. While you consider all this, you
realise you are glad you can’t see anything.
Time will pass. Maybe ten minutes, maybe an hour. And then the knacker-
nibbler shifts his weight, turns, and walks off, without so much as a thank you
or a cuddle. You take a few seconds to consider what just happened, and
whether it technically qualifies as a sexual encounter. And if it does, were you
complicit?
But enough of abstract philosophy. Hearing, once again, the scrabbling of claw
on cloth, and realising it’s not on your bed this time, you face an altogether
different dilemma. Three nights ago you vomited noisily right next to this
young lady, and you are quite frankly astonished that she’s been willing to
share a room with you again, even to save money.
Should you wake her? It wouldn’t look good in a fairy tale… not least because
fairy tales tend not to include foul-mouthed, flame-haired antipodeans who’ve
been on the road (and the sauce) for 8 months. Still, considering the reaction
likely to be provoked if the vermin tries to do to her what it just did to you,
you reckon the risk is worth taking.
She takes it in good humour – or as good as it gets when you’ve just been
woken at 4am – and you spend quarter of an hour cheerfully recounting the
saga and throwing batteries (which you’ve now found because she has a torch,
smart lass) at the pile of rucksacks. Then she goes back to sleep, leaving you
staring at the ceiling until it gets light, and wishing you could feel a bit more
like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now.
There follows a legal dilemma. If you choose to murder the young man from
Reception, there will probably be consequences. Have you checked the
Ethiopian legal code? What do inmates of Ethiopian jails make of foreigners? Is
it a pie? Is it the pie? These are all things you might want to consider.
Because your water won’t be working (nor the lights, it being pre-dawn when
no-one could possibly need them), you wash over at the Americans’ room,
where you are steadily talked down from a murderous delirium. You breakfast
(ETB20) and impotently (almost lit.) pay the room bill, as everyone knew you
would despite all your mutterings of indescribably-uncomplicated vengeance.
As you leave the premises, traumatised and ever-so-slightly itchy, you will
notice the sign on the main gate: Goh Hotel – your satisfaction is our
profit. With a grim smile, you deduce that they will be out of business soon.
[NB. No real persons, living, dead or anywhere in between, are represented in
this article, least of all the author. It is a work of total conjecture (which I’ve
since had checked out by my GP).]
---
* with thanks to Umberto Eco
© lizardmagazine.com, 2007
by A S H Smyth
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
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