From Police to Hospital

We had a restless night with a lot of barking dogs, which meant Honny had to stuff toilet paper in her ears just to get a little sleep. That turned out to be a huge mistake later in the day. At 7 AM, our guide came to take us to the police and the tourist police so we could get a copy of the police report for our insurance company. They’re taking this matter very seriously since there apparently hasn’t been a robbery in the Simien Mountains for 7 years. It took a long time to get a copy of the police report because Ethiopia has a ton of paperwork and forms that need to be filled out and stamped endlessly. Our guide and the guard from our trekking trip also had to be interrogated. They were immediately taken into custody. We’re incredibly worried about them, as it seems like the police just want to arrest them to show us they’re taking the situation seriously. It’s common for the guide and the guard to be jailed. If they’re found guilty, they could end up in prison for up to 7 years. The police promised us they would be released later today, but how can we be sure? We’ll have to write or call the police in a couple of days to make sure they’re out again. We can’t bear the thought of two innocent people sitting in jail. We’re very confident they have nothing to do with the robbery. The guide had tears in his eyes as we left the police station, which is just a hut made of mud. We cried too because we didn’t want to see him sitting in a pen in front of the police mud hut. We told him we had told the police that we believed in his innocence. He was incredibly grateful for that. As mentioned earlier, Honny had stuffed toilet paper in her ears at night, and it had slipped deep into one ear. We first tried to find a doctor in Gondor. What a clinic! They managed to push the toilet paper even further into his ear. So the doctor sent us to the hospital. What a hospital. There were sick people lying outside. Some were so thin they looked like AIDS patients. It smelled like urine. We didn’t stay long. Gondor is a small medieval town, so we had to take a taxi (600 birr) to Bahir Dar, which is a much larger and slightly more modern city. We thundered along for 4 hours at 60 km/h. The taxi couldn’t go any faster. We even had a flat tire once. The car swerved wildly. Luckily, we didn’t end up in a ditch. There was hardly any tread left on the tires, so we crossed our fingers that there wouldn’t be any more flats before we reached Bahir Dar. Once again, we sought out a doctor. The clinic still looked terrible. We insisted they wouldn’t be allowed to use needles to take the toilet paper out. We simply couldn’t risk that. We’d rather go home. Fortunately, there was a skilled doctor who, with great effort, managed to get the toilet paper out of the ear. What a day we had. We were completely wrecked, filthy, dusty, and tired. So we headed to Summerland Hotel, which is a nice place. We took a long bath, had a lovely dinner, and drank a lot of wine.