I've been back in Assab for a couple of days now, and decided to row ashore in the last of the evening. This was quite a difficult process having lost both my rollocks and oars in the storm which rattled through the other night! (Somebody thought he was safer tied to the dock than at anchor!)
Anyway, its another story, but having licked my wounds at anchor for a day, I had to try and contact civilisation (mother) again. To get myself ashore, I tried to improvise with one spare non fitting rollock, a piece of string and my spare 2 part aluminium oars...... but failed dismally, committing far too little time and thought into creating a solution. Typical! So I ended up kind of canoe punting toward the shore with the horrid 2 part folding oar from Cindik's bilge. Of course the conditions rendered this useless, I realised as soon as I set off, which was far too late. Failed and the strong winds blew me downwind, dumping me onto a little beach (a 2m gap where they forgot to put big harbour rocks), smothered by a 1m high wave. Drenched! Meanwhile a 'helper' appeared, which seems to happen often when you're off the beaten track, and we hauled “Sirene”, the little dingy, up onto dockside. We dragged her all the way along the gigantic quayside t(500m?) to a position upwind of Cindik for the nights attempt to return back home.
All seemed well. I payed a visit to the only other boat here in the massive abandoned port. Well I say abandoned, it's not really. There's a couple of fisher boats and a few Yemeni traders in open 10m skiffs with outboards. No ships, no work here and nothing ever moves or happens. But there is a skeleton staff who stop the place going to ruin, kindling a glimmer of hope, always ready to receive a ship. I'm assured this is soon. But since the war, the Ethiopians ship their goods to Addis Ababa through Djibouti now and there's just nothing. No tourists, no investment opportunities, no money, no nothing.
This boat I visited, she's wooden, about 30m long. Quite beamy and quite a large crew. Tattered pieces of plywood across the deck beams, that sort of thing! The Somali boys invited me on for tea as is the custom in these parts. She carries livestock from Somalia to Djibouti, Yemen and Eritrea carrying various bits and pieces back to make the journey pay. Everybody buys their fuel in Yemen where its loads cheaper. They also told me that since the Somali government failed to govern about 10 years ago, lots of illegal and unregulated fishermen have turned up around the Somali coast . This in turn has attracted the rogues and the pirates we yachters hear so much talk about. It sounds desperate down there.
At dusk, I went out through the port gates to buy some ciggies for the soldier boys who'd helped me rescue Cindik from her dockside nightmare the other night. Didn't really know how else to say thank you. One chap beckoned me over to tell me he'd been issued with an instruction. The white tourist, me, was not allowed to return to his ship! I was quite surprised. Figuring they wanted me to wander up to the big chief in the big office up town, even though it was late, I duly headed off. It was shut of course.
At this point I really wanted to return to Cindik. I'm always uneasy when she's anchored at night. And tonight she was jumping around and snatching at the anchor. I was ready to eat the food I'd prepared earlier, then sleep for a full days work in the morning.
“NO POSSIBLE CAPTAIN!” Ummm, I couldn't quite believe it so I sat down, biding my time and started writing. I didn't feel comfortable staying in the hotel as some of the soldiers suggested. In fact, my idea was to write, and stay awake watching poor Cindik through the night from the shore.
“NO POSSIBLE CAPTAIN!” The soldiers insisted the area around the port, from where Cindik could be watched, be kept clear of loafers like me throughout the night.
Well the debate went around in circles for a while, getting more and more comical. My soldier friends then clicked their guns, threatened to handcuff me, lock me up and confiscate my writing as “anti-Eritrean”! The stubborn captain Haddock in me dug in, I offered up my hands but they could find no handcuffs etc. They were getting angrier, I was getting angrier. Luckily someone with a bit of responsibility showed up and suggested as a compromise that we head to the Police station as I had not found a place to sleep for the night.
Off we marched up to the Police station, across in another part of town of course! I was effectively sidelined as my responsible soldier friend explained our way, over 10 times, up through the chain of command to somebody who could make a decision. In this kind of scene, more and more people “arrive” who need to find out what's happening, so we explain and so it drags on and on. Eventually we jumped into the Police jeep. No-one spoke any English and I hadn't had that much time to polish up on my Tigrinyan so I wasn't quite sure what was going on. We drove to a few places, including the main immigration office. I don't really remember. All I remember was that there were 2 bags of freshly baked rolls in the back of the jeep, where I was sitting. I was offered one when I asked about them. Poor old empty stomach starting to take over the importance of the situation. Gosh! How lovely it was to eat! Very hungry. The bags were dropped off en route, presumably for brekkie in the morning.
We arrived at the private and personal residence of the big chief immigration shortly after midnight. It took less than a minute. He took my passport and having given the order to stop me returning to Cindik, gave me the blessing to return! Well the Police boys drove me back across town, through the port gates and past the most confrontational of the soldier boys and all the way up to Sirene. I then had to launch into ½m to 1m bucking swells under the glare of their headlamps and punt quite a tricky path back to Cindik, with my 2 part fake paddle, as she was pitching and rolling in the uncomfortable motion. What a night! And I awoke at sunrise a few hours later to the beeping of a horn from a landcruiser. Immigration boys. The saga not over! Out we drove past the prisoner workers and the soldier boys and up to Big Chief, who was now in his big office with little sleep.
I try to live a fairly simple existence. Man on a boat drops his sick crew off as close to an airport as possible, continues on to meet his father. And it ends up in this great big drama that sucks all these people in. Its amazing. I had to pay big chief 40US$ for an entry visa. We both knew exactly what the score was. You see, as a foreigner, a rich foreigner, you have to pay to leave as well as coming back in. My orders were to attend the Eritrean embassy in Djibouti to get the entry visa. Which I did. The guy there was nice and shiny on the outside but one of the ambitious bureaucratic types who put more obstacles in my path as I found solutions which I guess threatened him in some way. The upshot of it all was to leave the passport and call in 5 days(!) or take the passport. Well with Djibouti eating all my campaign cash and the shit I put up with to get through all the paperwork for Poppy's flight, legal like, And my worries about Cindik..... I took the passport.
I had to make a 100km run by speedboat to Obock on the north shore, to pick up the land cruisers in order to cross the desert back to Assab.
The speedboat carries the chat back to the town. (Its an East African leaf that poor people chew all afternoon, like a coca leaf.) There was a whole boatload of this stuff. Its all legal. Except today the big port chief decided no passengers could travel with the chat!! So I had an escort port boat to the other side of the harbour where some other Obock boys had a boatload of French tourist they were shipping to a hotel near to the port. So I rode with them. For free. It was quite weird actually having spent the whole journey with ordinary people, poor people, to then be with the rich protected Europeans.
I found a ride with 20 Somali refugees in the morning. They had all this stuff, bags of clothes and items and luggage. 6 people were sitting on the cab of the Toyota landcruiser as the back was packed to the hilt, the rest of us sitting astride the gubbins. Health and safety eh? We had to travel about 15mph the vehicle was so overloaded. They were heading up through Sudan then across the desert to Libya to try and get on a boat to Malta. 1000US$ for the trip.
I tried to explain this all to big chief, that I had a sense of urgency, I needed to get back to my boat to prevent the major accident I'd had a hunch about and perhaps in all the confusion Allah had granted me passage across the border without trouble. He didn't really agree. He was annoyed that the Djibouti agent had “enquired” about me and the boys on the border weren't doing their job properly. He said his boys must have thought I was Eritrean to let me back in!
We both agreed I'd come straight to immigration and see him upon my return, which I tried to. Except the clerk at the port obviously didn't understand the real rules. Well it all ended amicably and I got my passport back. No hard feelings. But what exactly are the real rules?
I wont go into a diatribe about it now. I got lucky. And the night I got back to port, The SE wind had been picking up through the day. Cindik was tied to this great big fender thing used for the large ships moored at the port here. (It is a series of 10 tyres with a load of long thin branches spiked, shoved and forced through the centre of the tyres. Around the wood at each end of the tyres is an iron manacle to which the whole contraption is chained to the wall.) Anyway the great big fender thing broke. The old unmaintained iron sheared away on one side leaving poor Cindik with slack ropes, rolling and crashing and smashing into the dockside. With five soldiers we struggled with Cindik's mooring ropes to try and move her to another fender, a safer place. 3 large ropes frayed with the excessive motion that night, and snapped. The starboard davit is damaged, paintwork dinged, dented and scratched. A few fenders punctured. Oh and the rollocks have gone! Nothing too major. It could have been disastrous if I'd listened to the wait 5 days attitude. It could have been really bad. Anyway I had to dramatically jump aboard, cast off the snapped mooring line and reverse at full speed to lie at anchor. Thought I'd take some ciggies to the boys, say thank you like.
The diatribe bit which I cant resist writing now is this: I believe that if a man (and his lovely wife) can assemble the resources and skills to build an ocean going craft from nothing. And if you can apply navigators knowledge and learn from experience the lore of seamanship to get yourself safely across the water. Then I believe you are entitled to land ashore, with all due respect to the locals, in a new land. OK some times you may be robbed, or even killed, that's the risk you take. But most times you can trade, ask where to fill up with water etc. Just have a little rest even, in someone else's “patch”. This “entitlement” is older than the written law of the white man. Its older than passports and paperwork and its older than economic population movement control. Its not to say I travel without a passport. It's not to say I don't apply for visas in advance and pay my money. I'm not saying I'm above the law either. Sometimes little things happen in your favour, as long as you play the game. It doesn't last very long, the system learns from every action and you've got to be completely innovative. Every time! That's the spiritual aspect.
I'm just saying that some of us KNOW there were certain protocols which pre-date the law of the white man. I have always met people in the exotic places my little sail boat arrives in that definitely have a similar understanding and remember the old established protocols and mutual respect.
They need to be applied here in the modern world, now more than ever. Less we forget where we came from, and give away where we're going to.