The thudding of a small military helicopter flying overhead shakes the car slightly. Ahead of me the white-shirted runners continue on their way, clocking up the kilometres and ignoring the aircraft. They're enjoying running down the road that we really need to drive up, but which is blocked by police and soldiers. A dog lazes in the middle of the road, watching nonchalantly.

Walking back from the small hotel adjacent to where I have parked Chris climbs back into the passenger seat, locks the door and joins me watching the runners who are preventing us from getting to our destination. Time is running out – I should have been there by now.

Then the man on the bike turns up.

Ireechaa

When Ephraim had asked if I would speak at his “Sports Friends” conference in Bishoftu on this particular Saturday morning I hadn’t realised it was the weekend of the annual “Ireechaa” festival in Oromia, and that the festival centres on one of the several lakes close to Bishoftu. “Ireechaa” is a bit hard to define – it’s a mix of cultural and religious celebrations connected to an extremely ancient Oromian monotheistic belief system. It seems to involve some pagan and animistic practices. For example Aster, my head clinic nurse, told me that in the course of the festival they do things around and to trees – including rubbing butter on tree trunks. (Given how hard it is to get decent butter here, that feels like an awful waste…) Still, whatever the festival involves, hundreds of thousands (some say three or four million) people converge on Bishoftu once a year for the Sunday celebrations by the lake. It’s only 25 miles south of Addis Ababa and is the location of SIM’s peaceful Babogaya lakeside retreat as well as a growing number of resort hotels. Given the security situation around Addis I sought and received the permission of SIM and Bingham to make the trip, so at 6:15am last Saturday morning Chris and I set off, allowing plenty of time to get there for breakfast with Ephraim and his conference attendees at around 8am.

The Journey

Our problems start as we leave the expressway. We pay our 10 Birr toll (35p) and head for the town, but we’re soon flagged down by police who are searching everyone and everything going into Bishoftu. Seeing we are foreigners they wave us through, only for us to find that the turning we need to go down is blocked by more police. We drive on into the town slightly puzzled by the increasing number of people milling about in white tee shirts. I know of a second turning in the middle of town we can use to head east to where the lakes are and our destination is (barely 3 miles away now) but we find that’s also blocked. I phone Ephraim and explain – there is no way we can get to the conference centre; all roads are blocked. He says he’ll come and find us, and that we should head back to the first blocked road and wait there. Back we go, and I persuade the young traffic police officer (who appeared to have a congenital absence of facial muscles used for smiling) to let me go down the road. Success! Except that a few hundred yards further on the road is blocked by both police and soldiers and now we are really stuck – these guys are definitely not open to persuasion. Ephraim phones back. He can’t get through to us from the other direction. As part of the Ireechaa celebrations there’s a 10km run going on using all the roads between us and him, but he thinks it will be over soon so he says he’s sending a man on a bike. Time is ticking away. My natural inclination is to give up, turn round, and go back to Addis. However no self-respecting Ethiopian would let something as trivial as thousands of runners on a 10km run and a bunch of soldiers and police get in the way of anything, so we persist - as Ephraim is clearly very keen for me to deliver my short devotional talk.

We park up facing the blocked junction and opposite the tiny but quite pleasant-looking Biruk Hotel, into which Chris wanders in search of a coffee and a toilet. Both the coffee and the toilet were typically Ethiopian, which means the coffee was lovely and the toilet experience was such that it probably demands a blog post of its own.

The Man on the Bike

Getting off his bike, Workallegn shook my hand through the car window and said he was going to lead me through the town by a different route, using the blocked turning we had already tried in the town centre. He said it would be OK now. However with runners still pouring through the junction ahead of us I was a little dubious. Workallegn made to head off on his bike with me following, but acquiesced to a fairly sensible suggestion from Chris that he pop his bike in the back of our pick-up and get in the passenger seat to give me directions.

Sure enough the junction was still blocked – something we only found out after a police-enforced detour on to a cobblestoned backstreet going completely the wrong direction. Now I’ll cut a long story short. The next hour involved roads only a 4x4 could negotiate, ratty police, steep hills, numerous donkeys carrying piles of grass, Bajajs galore (think tuk-tuks), small markets, blocked roads, long delays, herds of cattle, and several bouts of step-retracing. As I’m bumping along on more cobblestones we know things are not going well when at one point Workallegn, a long term resident of Bishoftu, announces “oh, this is a road I’ve never been down before”.

Almost four hours after leaving Addis 25 miles to the north, an hour late for my talk, exhausted and not a little stressed, we roll up at the conference centre by a beautiful small crater lake to be greeted by Ephraim with his usual warmth and enthusiasm. I deliver my talk, we have coffee and meet several people from outside Ethiopia living in desperately difficult circumstances, where if their Christian faith became known their lives would be at risk. What a joy for them to spend a few days relaxing in freedom and the love and care of Christian company. And what a humbling experience for us to have the privilege of meeting them.

Return

The race finished, my talk done, and with an Ethiopian teacher in the back seat who needed a lift back to Addis we bid our farewells and head home. The return journey is as uneventful as travelling in Ethiopia can reasonably be expected to be.

8¼ hours after leaving home to deliver a 25-minute talk 25 miles away, we come through our front door into the peace and quiet of our little flat. A high five and a cup of tea later we’re reflecting on what eventually turned out to be a successful and worthwhile trip.

Oh, I didn’t tell you what my talk was about. I based it on Isaiah 62 and a couple of Jesus’ parables. It was about prayer, and not giving up…

ADDENDUM:

The day after our trip to Bishoftu the Ireechaa celebrations deteriorated into protest and at least 55 people were killed. It was reported on the BBC.

Today (Sunday 9th October) the Ethiopian Government has declared a 6 month state of emergency. We will find out in the next few days what this means for our life and work here.

Please pray for Ethiopia.