Ashena Ashes is a hitchhiker from India currently traveling through Africa.

I was told that it is not possible to hitchhike in Ethiopia because there’s a civil war. I started from the Moyale border. Moyale is a town on both sides: Moyale, Kenya and Moyale, Ethiopia. I was at Moyale, Kenya and it was somewhere around 3 p.m. I went to the Ethiopian side and asked them, “Can you stamp my passport? I want to go in.” I showed them my visa. There was nobody on the Ethiopian side. Nobody goes to Ethiopia, it looks like. There was just one officer. He told me that I couldn’t go because the visa was not valid. My passport is not a very strong passport. I come from a third world country, so it’s very difficult for me to get visas for many countries. Most of the time my travel depends on if the country will let me in. I told him that I paid $100 for this visa and I want to get in. He said, “It’s not possible. Come on Monday.” Which meant I’d have to stay two days at the border.

So I went back to the Kenyan side, because it’s more lively. I travel with my ukulele and my ukulele bag is made out of goat skin. Everybody at the border asked me, “What is this bag?” I said, “It’s my ukulele.” They said, “Okay, play us some music.” So I started playing for them. All the officers gathered around. They had a nice time listening to my music, making TikToks. After some time, they asked, “What are you doing here? What’s your problem? Why are you not crossing in or out?” I told them that they’re not letting me in because, they say, my visa’s not valid. One guy said, “I work at the embassy, show me the problem.” So I showed him my visa. After two or three hours of waiting at the border, this guy finally took me to the Ethiopian side. He opens his office, gives me the stamp, and he’s like, “Welcome to Ethiopia.” It was around 5 p.m. I was very happy.

When I get to Moyale, Ethiopia, it’s like another world. Moyale, Kenya looks very modern, clean, the roads are nice. But as soon as I go to Ethiopia, it is like I’ve reached the 1980s. Everything is old. Everybody was gathered in a group and they're staring at me, because not many brown people cross this border. In the north, there’s a civil war going on and nobody really gives a damn about what's happening in the south. People were standing there with birr, the currency of Ethiopia, stacked in their hands, selling it on the black market. Five or six people came around me, they’re like, “You want birr? I will give you birr.” One man was like, “I will help you with the language,” because nobody speaks English there. They speak Amharic. He took me to one guy and I exchanged a little currency.

It is not allowed to travel in Ethiopia after 6 p.m. Even if you have your own car, even if you have a local transport, they cannot go on the road because of malicious groups. Just a few weeks before I entered, this group called ONAG carjacked one of the transports and killed them. Everybody somehow has guns. In the southern part of Ethiopia, you could be sitting in a cafe drinking coffee and somebody will come in with their AK-47 and bullets around their waist and just be drinking coffee next to you. So I had to take a hotel there for a night. 

In the evening, I was walking in the town. I’m going back towards my hotel room and two really young boys, 13 to 14 years old, started to follow me. When you see the Moyale border on the internet, it says, “Do not cross this border, because you will get kidnapped.” I started to feel unsafe around these two boys. There was this group of Muslim women in burkas. They were selling black market petrol. I stood with them. We didn’t speak the same language, but they understood what was happening. They told these boys to go away, “Shoo shoo.” I sat with them for five minutes. After these boys left, I went to my hotel room and stayed there.

The next morning, I was on the road trying to hitchhike. I wanted to go to Turmi. I saw there was no local transport, there’s nobody with their own cars. I couldn’t find anything for a long time. There was a bus station, which was the best I could do at this point. The bus was full of people and contraband. Shoes, clothes, soapbars, flasks, name anything and it was on this bus. It was so crowded that people were using buckets to sit on it. And the roof was completely full. It’s a lot of illegal merchants in this bus, people buying things from the border to sell in their place. But I didn’t understand.

There were four checkpoints to reach the destination. The first checkpoint, everything was okay. I’d made friends already. Ethiopian people are friendly. They were sharing their culture, smiling. I ate some injera for the first time. There’s no place to breathe even, but it’s going good. At the second checkpoint, they put our bus on the side. A lot of people had tension and stress on their faces. People were crying. One said, “Go and get your bags, because if you do not get your bags now, you will not get anything.” 

I went to the officer with my passport and said, “This is my very first day in Ethiopia. I want to understand what’s happening, because I have one bag on top and a few bags inside where I was sitting.” He said, “We have confiscated this bus because it is full of contraband.” I said, “What’s the contraband?” He said, “Of course, there is illegal commerce, but there are also traces of illegal weapons. We have to take all of these things.” There was a room where they were stashing everything. So I said, “Sir, as you can see, I’m a traveler. I just need my bags.” So they let me the inside the bus. I took my ukulele, water bag, this and that. My backpack was on top of the bus. I said, “I need that.” He said, “What color is it?” I said, “Blue.” When they gave me that bag, the upper part was completely torn, because they were checking everything thoroughly. I moved all the things that were on top inside.

After two hours, they let all the people go. They couldn’t really do anything. They just took everything from that bus and put it in the room. I think they were like, “How can we figure out who is who? There are illegal commercial people here. They have already faced loss because we’ve taken their things. But what about the traces of the weapons? Who do they belong to? Is it this girl? Is it this guy? Is it this old man? Is it this old mama? Is it this young boy? Who is it?” There are many buses, so they’re like, “We’ve done what we can do, now they can go.” At this time, people who’d been friends with each other were fighting with each other. There was so much tension

Two women on the bus spoke English. One of them was pregnant. I was like, “Girl, you need to just rest up.” But she was an illegal trader, so she wanted the business. I gave her my sleeping bag, which is like a cushion, so that she could have some support for her back. She actually got in a fight with one of the guys. Then there was another lady, she was a teacher in Arba Minch, very beautiful. She was so relaxed after all that. She was drinking a beer. She was putting water in her beer to make it lighter, I saw that for the first time in my life. She offered me some and I told her, “Wow, you look so relaxed.” She’s like, “This is life. This happens when we are illegal traders. We’ve lost things. We are in Ethiopia, there are always risks.”

The journey was not yet over. There were more checkpoints. But now they were trying to save the few things that they had left. They stopped at one point and made four big sacks of things. Before they reached the last checkpoint, they picked all of these four sacks out of the bus and gave them to four children on the road. I thought, “Maybe somebody reached their destination and now they’re getting their things and going.” We crossed this checkpoint. They check the bus, everything is cool, we’re moving forward. After some time, I see those four boys with the four sacks coming from the other side of a forest. They hid their stuff by taking it through the forest to the other side of the road. These boys were asking for more money, so the drama is not over yet. They started to negotiate and gave them the money. Then all four sacks were put inside the bus again.

Finally, we reached a place called Konso. We hadn’t made it as far as Turmi. The bus stopped because it cannot move after 6 p.m. It was a village area with tribal people covered in red mud. The next day, I hitchhiked to Turmi in a four-by-four Land Cruiser. I was standing there and this guy asked me for money. I said, “I’m just asking for a lift.” So they let me inside. Usually, when somebody gives me a hitchhike, I tell them, “I can play some music for you, if you want. That’s all I have.” So I played some ukulele for them. They told me they work for an NGO and were just looking to make some extra money, so that’s why they asked me for money. We drove through broken roads to Turmi, finally.

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