Keren May 30th 2001

 

After another very good nights rest and breakfast with Eritrean style coffee in the morning we will walk a bit through Keren and the surrounding mountains with Hirity as our guide. She was born in Keren.

The public transport in Keren is operated by mini buses. I wonder how I would find the right bus if I was on my own. Hirity explains there is only one line. So eventually you will arrive where ever you are going.

I must have eaten some contaminated food the first evening in Keren. It is getting worse by the hour. We buy some medicine in the local drugstore (left mine in Asmara) but they do not help at all.

Later at home in Holland I realize it was a big mistake not to visit Agordat and Barentu after Keren. These towns are so much closer to Keren than to Asmara.

On our way to the Asmara buses it is raining cats and dogs. Yesterdays prayers are answered for the second time. Soaking wet we enter the bus to Asmara. We have chosen for the bus because it so much more adventurous than the taxi. But the hard benches in the old buses are very uncomfortable. The bus stops every now and than to give the passengers a chance to pee (in the field). Close to us a child it getting sick and starts to vomit.

In Asmara we have diner with Berhe and Bisrat. The bill is 93 Nakfa (less than 10 dollars) for the four of us (eating and drinking). Even after visiting Eritrea for the third time, I am sometimes surprised by the price of food in the Eritrean restaurants.

 

People waiting for the bus in the center of Keren.

Traditional dwelling (Tukul) in Keren.

Family in Keren - woman preparing the food.

Woman with her children in Keren street.

Workers digging grooves for the Keren waterworks.

The donkey is used to carry the purchases home .

Viaduct of the former Eritrean railway passing a dry river bed in Keren.

Mebrat and Hirity walking in the surroundings of Keren Eritrea.

Thousands of beles in the surroundings of Keren Eritrea.

Maria statue just outside Keren at the road to Agordat
 (close to the English military cemetery).