After confirming me as the only foreigner to pass through the Eritrean war zone in 6 months, the head of Kagnew Station security said, "Too bad you didn't get any photos of the blown bridges, they're worth $500 each to the news services." I grabbed the heavy leather belt pouch containing my little camera and admitted that I had taken a good photo. It even had a guy in the foreground waving his arms to keep me from clicking the shutter. "Well, take the film out of your camera right now", said John. "It won't be long until the Ethiopians realize what happened." So I took out the almost finished roll of film and put it in my skivvies, replacing it with the spare roll in my pouch. John offered to let me use the base postal service to send the film out of the country, so the Ethiopians couldn't confiscate it. It would be handled just like domestic US mail.
Back at my room in town I packed up that film, plus another exposed roll, with all of my treasures and gifts for my family, etc. Into 2 boxes went strings of ostrich egg beads, my lovely ancient Axumite coins, my magical protective charms, everything that I had been lugging around with me that wasn't necessary to keep on traveling.
I went back onto the base early the next afternoon for a party to which John had invited me, and handed over the packages with my film. I gave Mr. Morris money for the postage, and looked around at the other Americans. It immediately became obvious why all the kids in Asmara always called me "Americani!". Of the dozen white civilians partying, 10 of them were longhaired hippie-looking types! Since no white locals of Italian extraction would be caught DEAD with long hair, my long tresses had marked me as another American in their eyes.
And a few more things were learned at that party. Kagnew Station in 1975 was only a shadow of what it had been previously. From 5000 Americans at it's height, the whole station now was only 14 swabbies and 30 American civilians. At the party were 12 American males, mostly technical types, as well as 14 of the really stunningly attractive Eritrean females I spoke of earlier. Each of the Americans had a classy local girlfriend, whose sole job in life was to look really good for him, and keep his wire highly polished! The spare pair of women were the girlfriends of Americans who had recently bugged out, due to the danger and the war and the rockets which occasionally dropped onto the base. Those two gals still had their base passes.
The reason all of those "girlfriends" were so unusually lovely is that they were the survivors. You see, there were originally a couple of thousand of these girlfriends, and as Americans would leave, the finest ladies left behind would be picked up by the remaining guys, who would trade in their previous, less desirable girlfriends. Needless to say, the two dozen who had "made the cuts" were really something, and the competition between these women in clothes, hair and sex-appeal was vicious!
I managed to get back to my lodging before curfew, and sure enough, there were two Ethiopian military policemen waiting for me, one of whom spoke good English. They knew where I had been, because I had signed the hotel check-in papers honestly, and they demanded my camera. I argued with them successfully, so they only took my film. I rewound the film much longer than necessary to make them believe it was not a new roll, and handed it over. They immediately broke open the tough little yellow canister, exposing the film to the light. After I signed a confusing document, mostly in Amharic, in which I comitted, among other things, to not go back through the war zone or suffer serious penalties, they departed satisfied. That night I heard two small explosions in town, but for once didn't hear any of the characteristic "popping" sounds made by an AK47.
When I dropped into the base the following day, things had changed dramatically, and everyone was milling about looking concerned. The Eritrean Liberation Front had come onto a remote part of the base during the night and kidnapped two American and three Eritrean radio technicians! They had also made off with two big yellow all-terrain vehicles. One of those kidnapped was Steve, a gent I had partied with only a few hours before his abduction. The ELF obviously had very good intelligence, because that night was the one time when both of the best American radio technicians were together at that exposed post. Everyone knew that the ELF radio had been off-line for about a week. The Kagnew Americans weren't too worried about their friends, because they figured the ELF had taken them to fix the radio, and would release them as soon as they had completed their task. This was the pattern which had been followed the last time Americans were kidnapped by the freedom fighters.
Even so, this new development caused four of the few remaining American workers to toss it in and leave Eritrea. Since I had admitted my Uni degree in Physics, and was perfectly comfortable with electronic equipment, these defections resulted in an immediate offer of a lucrative technical job at the base. I must admit that I considered it, but for all of the wrong reasons. When my suspect motives became clear to me, I declined. The major attraction, I realized, would have been "auditioning" the six unattached girlfriends, several of whom were already circling me predatorily, showing me subtle little marks of affection, like sitting facing me astride my knee, or putting their arms around me from behind.
Reality for the abducted pair turned out to be quite bleak. My parents followed the story and kept me informed by letter. Those two Americans were held captive for the next 18 months, before finally being released unharmed. So, the ELF broke into a gated US military compound to get two US hostages, and there I was, happily motoring through the war zone on a bus! Seems it might have been much easier to grab me.
My fifth morning in Asmara I hopped a bus along the beautiful 65 mile route down from the highlands to the grotty port of Massawa, including my first views of the Red Sea. I spent five hours at the docks, frustrated by failing to find any sea transport headed for Aquaba. Hard information was extremely difficult to come by. I took the bus back to Asmara in the late afternoon, beating sunset by a full hour.
Since I couldn't leave by road, nor apparently by sea, I deciding to take the cheap flight to Athens. I changed money on the black market, incidentally defusing two different attempts to cheat me. The flight was about 3000 miles all told, for $107. If I had changed money in a bank, the price would have been $153.
In Addis I had enough of a layover that I managed to dash into town from the airport and pick up some mail waiting forlornly in Poste Restante! Mail from home was always a treat. After bouncing in Khartoum, I arrived at Cairo airport at about midnight. I found three inexperienced French gents standing timidly together in the terminal, all with brand-new, shining backpacks, fresh from Paris. The Egyptian hustlers and con men were clustered all around them. When I approached them in a friendly fashion, and greeted them in bad but understandable French, they took a look at the mud of Ethiopia still on my boots and attached themselves desperately to me. I got them outside, and bargained for a cheap taxi, split four ways, for the 40 mile, dark drive into central Cairo. Halfway there, in the middle of nowhere, and a very dark part of the road, the taxi driver pulled over to the side. He then explained that he wanted half of the fare now, and that his version of half was twice the total bargained-for price. He claimed that the agreed fare was "each" which meant we owed him four times as much. Since those unfamiliar with Egypt might fear to be dropped off in the middle of dark nowhere, it should have been a pretty good scam. As proof of this, when I explained what was going on to the Frenchmen, they were eager to pay the ripoff, being terrified of being dropped off way out there, and I had to shout at them in English to get them to shut up. I then calmly climbed out of the front seat and started to pull my backpack from the luggage rack. The Frenchmen whimpered and whined, and I had to holler at them again to get them out of the taxi. Finally the driver understood that I was perfectly willing to get down there in the dark, that he wasn't getting a piastre until the agreed ride was completed, and that the proper fare was all he could hope for. Soon we arrived in central Cairo. The driver's perfidy cost him his otherwise substantial tip.
Now at about 2 am, I marched us to all eight cheap hotels with which I was familiar before we gave up. Every inexpensive bed in Cairo was booked that night.
I led my new French friends to the gardens of the snooty Nile Hilton, to try to hide well enough to get some sleep. Nope, a uniformed guard spotted us and came over to eject us. I used my rusty Arabic on him, and gave away some cigarettes, and he was so impressed that he showed us the best place to sleep, deep in the rose garden, and promised to watch over us, and to get the guy on the next shift to do the same. The inexperienced French travelers then concluded that I was a minor vagabonding god. So we got a few hours of much needed sleep, awakening and stretching the next morning in full view of a hundred expensive hotel windows above.
And what became of my photos of rebel-dynamited bridges? Of course, John Morris stole them from me, either to sell, or for his American Intelligence community bosses, and had to steal all of my other things as well so that he could claim they were lost by the US Postal Service. I never saw the boxes again, nor any of the wonderful things inside. I really regret losing all the photos, including those of the Arc of the Covenant. Somehow I have always felt that Mr. Morris and I will meet up again someday for a little reckoning. If so, that day is still in the future.
All in all, it had been exactly 99 days from the time I left Egypt into Darkest Africa until the time I returned. Even though my vagabond's world tour stretched to more than 1200 days, those were probably the most interesting 99 consecutive days of my life. At least those have proved to be the most interesting 99 days so far. Yeah, I can dream.
I have quite enjoyed re-reading my 1975 daily journals and letters home. Writing up the tales really brought the past back with a surprising immediacy.
Thanks for humoring me, and for sticking it out through all 14 installments.