On Ethiopia:
- Ethiopia has some of the most desperate poverty we have seen (people with fly-blown stumps; armies of begger-kids; a disturbing number of blind people; deformities everywhere (I think this is due largely to polio); a serious amount of leprosy; even a couple of fly-covered people that Thomas suspected to be dead).
- Coming from Sudan, the landscape changed from dust bowl to New Zealand-equivalent greenery. We understand that this is only for about four months over the rainy season, but impressive nevertheless.
- The food is really really good (although perhaps not so clean, based on the state of our stomachs within two days of arrival).
- We could buy alcohol! Goodbye sharia law, hello Christianity.
- Ethiopia has some of my favorite English translations on my travels yet. For example, on menus (when they are in English) they insist on shortening “vegetables” to veges and then proceed to write “vages” instead. Hence, you quite often see things like “pasta with tuna and vages”. Immature, but it gets me every time. I also really enjoyed a sign in one hotel that read “If you haven’t reserve a Bed room. Don’t enter and exist.”
- They like to fast a lot here. This, however, means that rather than not eat at all, they do not eat meat on the days that they are “fasting”. We have to restrain ourselves from pointing out that if you are eating food, technically, you are not really “fasting” in our opinions. On the other hand, this does mean that Thomas has always got a good amount of vegetarian food available.
- Christianity is very different in Ethiopia. It is Ethiopian orthodox and does not appear that it has changed in a very long time. They are very into icons, the illustrations are pretty violent and they do a lot of bobbing, kissing walls and prostrating themselves in front of holy relics. Among other weird statements made by the church, the monks at some of the monasteries that I was not allowed into had posted a notice to tourists that they should not be offended as the reason that “women and other domestic animals” were not allowed into the monastery was because the monks would be tempted. Nice.
- The combination of rural poverty and rabid Christianity makes me feel like I am in the Middle Ages in England. The closest thing I can compare it to is peasants and serfs.
- The Ethiopian calendar is about seven years behind us – New Year is in September and it is currently 2008. They also have a different system of time under which there is always a 6 hour difference to our 12 hour clock (6am is zero for them and they go through to 12 at 6pm and then restart).
- Travel practicalities here are pretty painful. There is a government curfew on buses, so they only run during the day. The buses are incredibly old and many of the roads are still unpaved. This results in very long and very uncomfortable bus rides. Also, because they can only run during the day, every bus station opens its gates at 5am, when you have to barge your way to the bus to grab seats and then sit for an hour or more until at least 6am, when the buses are allowed to take to the roads.
- There is a lot of begging, but not just begging from the people that seem to be in the more desperate poverty mentioned above. Rather, you may walk past just about anyone on the streets (children, adults, farmers, women selling oats, people that look like students etc.) and hear: “faranji – money” or “give me money”. While western media may be partly to blame, I imagine this is mostly because some fairly stupid faranji have come through and handed out money, or sweets, or pens etc.
- And finally (and I know this is obviously a generalization): There are some seriously stinky people in this country.
General impressions aside, Gondar was our first stop in Ethiopia, which is pretty much the closest big town to the border crossing with Sudan. The border crossing itself is a muddy strip of road between two fly blown towns which you are required to walk along until you are corralled by some official or other (none of them really look particularly official, but they do have matching brown jackets) into various areas. Not much can really be said for the town of Gondar itself, however, the old castles were pretty cool and the main church was excellent.
It turns out that the rainy season is indeed rainy and while we wanted to trek in the Simien Mountains, we decided that given the weather and the costs associated, we would give it a skip. A bit of a disappointment, especially as when we drove through the area the next day, it was stunning and sunny.
We visited Aksum, which in itself was not greatly interesting, except that we happened to be there in the first seven days of the Ethiopian month when they get out a replica of the Ark of the Covenant at about 5am and have a procession around the town with it. No one has seen the real Ark of the Covenant (which apparently they have) because if you open the door to the room it is kept in, you would most certainly be consumed by fire. Thomas informed them that he was willing to risk it, but they did not take the bait. The procession itself was very lovely with many people dressed in white, carrying candles, singing and doing a lot of bobbing. It was pretty ethereal.
Possibly one of the highlights of our trip so far was a visit to the Danakil Depression and the Erta Ale volcano found there. The Danakil Depression is located in the north-east of Ethiopia near the border with Eritrea and is hideously expensive to get to for a couple of reasons, including that there is no public transport and that a few tourists were killed / kidnapped by Eritrean rebels in 2012, so a military escort is now required. We had six AK47 wielding escorts – evidence below.
The area is where a bunch of tectonic plates meet, so the big deal is geological stuff. It is also below sea level and stinking hot all year round (I think we hit 47 degrees while we were there). On the first couple of days we went to see the geothermal stuff in the area and then attempted a first run at getting to the volcano. Unfortunately, the vehicles got pretty stuck, so after getting them out of the mud, we decided to take a longer route.
We hiked up Erta Ale and spent the night near the lava lake on the last night. The lake was massive and totally fantastic. There were also some seriously noxious / toxic gases up there, which made us fairly certain that heading up there too often would not be a good idea. We asked how active the volcano was (not that the molten lava lake was not a give away or anything) and were informed that it last erupted in 2011. On asking whether there was anyone around, our guide, Abraham, informed us happily that yes, it was high season, so there were lots of people up there and proceeded to let us know “oh, we run down very fast”. Actually, standing on the edge of the lake was fairly scary (no health / safety / OSH here) and the 2011 eruption left a lot of meringue-like lava that it was pretty easy to put a foot through – not greatly confidence inspiring.
There are also a bunch of Afar people in the area who survive on mining salt, US aid and irritating tourists. One of the children actually threw a rock at my head (and hit me) at one point. I imagine that many people have wanted to do this at some stage in my life, however, thus far, have managed to restrain themselves – not so the Afar children. This encounter resulted in one of my less graceful screaming fits. Suffice to say the little sh*#s did not come too close after that. I guess I got off lightly given that apparently up until fairly recently (say the last 60 years or so), the Afar people’s intense xenaphobia was highlighted by their habit of removing the testicles of any trespassers into their region – seems like scrotal intactness is no longer an issue, but rock throwing is yet to be bred out of their children. This particular behavior is probably not helped by the parents implementing what I expect they think passes for discipline by throwing a rock at any child they deem to be misbehaving. Anyway, I watched a documentary (BBC’s Hottest Place on Earth) after going there that made me totally cringe and I cannot say that I found the “strength and generosity” of the Afar people quite as uplifting as the ditsy presenter from the BBC.
On the drive out there we also managed to see a truck on a stretch of completely straight road overturned on its side. I am still completely dumbfounded as to how this occurred and include a picture so people can join in my bewilderment of Ethiopian driving. I am happy to report that apparently no one was hurt.
Lalibela is one of the major draw cards in Ethiopia, and we duly paid it a visit. The town was a bit of a mix. The tourist section of the town was a total hole where you were completely ripped off at every turn (things like 2 different menus in restaurants with the Amharic one being about half the price). The more local areas were (generally) much more reasonable and the people were actually pretty nice. Among other things, we managed to find a tej house that would serve us tej (the local tipple which is like a honey mead) for 3 birr per glass – this is about 22 cents NZ. As far as local brewing goes, tej was actually pretty drinkable if you got the mixed version and certainly beats the rice whiskey in Asia by a mile.
The churches were pretty fantastic, if rather expensive (now US$50 per person). Basically there are a set of massive churches right in the middle of town that back in the day were carved into these huge rocks. The difference from Petra being that rather than carve back into the rock face, completely free standing buildings were created with tunnels, courtyards, etc., all within one very large rock. As can be expected, they really are very impressive.
My guide book stated that if you arrived in Addis Ababa from the West, you may fail to be impressed by this very African city. However, having travelled through Sudan and Northern Ethiopia for the past five weeks or so, arriving in Addis felt like arriving in a cosmopolitan haven. Clean accommodation, wifi, beer (although admittedly, this has not been lacking anywhere), a variety of food! There are also some tourist attractions of course, but somehow these are less exciting than the above – we did go and see Lucy though.
July 2013