Ethiopia Reprise: Simien Mountain Trek

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On March 8, I left Gonder for Debark, the first step on a trek to the Simien Mountains. The bus for this part of the journey was the worst I encountered in Ethiopia.

The gravel road was so bumpy that the bus shook so much I couldn’t see how it held together in one piece. Some bumps were so strong, they threw me a foot or more out of my seat! I learned new strategies to try to prevent damage to my already tender spine: when I felt a big bump coming, I lifted myself out of the seat by tightening my calf and thigh muscles. This eased the strain on my spine as I descended back into my seat. Then, the bus broke down. This time, they managed to fix it, so we didn’t have to wait for another bus to come along. We stopped in a beautiful village in the middle of nowhere and the locals were friendly.

A women cooks injeera the traditional way and some children say “hi” in Debark. Then, there’s a statue of a Wallia ibex in the town square.

I stupidly drank the local thala, a sorghum beer probably diluted with local water. Ironically, I likely got sick from the water, not the beer. I spent the night of March 8 in the rather primitive Red Fox Hotel, which also served as a local dining and music hall.

For the trek, I planned a five-day excursion. I hired a scout with a gun (required because hungry locals could theoretically rob a rich trekking ferengi, although apparently it had never happened) plus a horse and a horse tender to carry my stuff. I didn’t realize I was getting sick until I had trekked halfway of the 5-7 hour hike from Debark to the Sankaber on March 9, the first camp in the Simien Mountains. The trek itself was beautiful.

At this point, I felt really dizzy whenever I had to walk upwards. The horse and horse tender had taken a different path to camp. Finally, I told the scout I needed a ride in a car – I couldn’t walk the rest of the way. He still urged me to walk. So, I lay down on two boulders near the road. He wasn’t happy. After awhile I puked between the boulders. Then, he understood i really was sick and helped me to get a ride.

We got a ride on a truck to the first camp at Sankaber. Once in camp, I vomited again. We met up with the horse and horse tender who helped the scout move my stuff over to a primitive lodge where I spent the night of March 9 rather than trying to set up my tent. i had to pay about US$5 extra, but it was worth it. Even though I didn’t want any food, I knew the scout and horse tender wanted to use my stove. So, I tried to help them with the instructions about how to use the stove. I was using it for the first time and the instructions said nothing about removing this little plug blocking the fuel line. It took us quite a while to figure that one out, but eventually we got the stove working. I slept for a long time.

The next morning, on March 10, we made tea using my stove. I still felt sick as a dog and wanted to head back to Debark, much to the disappointment of my scout and horse tender. I heard some ferengi were camping at Sankaber, so I went over to talk with them. It turned out to be some Canadians I had met at Belegez Pension. Unfortunately, they were going up the mountain rather than down, so I couldn’t hitch a ride with them. Instead, scout and I got a ride on a minibus jammed full of people. The scenery on the ride down was wonderful, and eventually I did get to sit on the very edge of a seat for the rest of the ride down to Debark. In Debark, I rushed to get onto a bus to Gonder, that same very bumpy ride I had taken on the way from Gonder to Debark. I arrived in Gonder exhausted on the evening of March 10 and decided to recoup at the Belegez Pension. I spent March 11-12 recovering in Gonder.

Ethiopia Reprise: Gonder Palaces

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On March 7, I flew from Axum to Gonder to experience the Gonder palaces and to get ready for onward travel to the Simien Mountains, back to Gonder, then on to the Ethiopian-Sudan border at Metama-Gallabat.

I met a young, recently engaged Ethiopian couple from Addis on the taxi ride from the airport to the town of Gonder, alternatively spelled Gondar. We quickly agreed to spend the day sight-seeing together, so I checked in and dropped my bags off at the Belegez Pension, then rode in the taxi up to the Goha Hotel where they were staying. The Goha Hotel is probably the “best” hotel in town with wonderful panoramic views of Gonder town below.

After lunch at the hotel, where some delightful singing birds joined us, the fiances hemmed and hawed over whether she was well enough to go sight-seeing. We decided not to pay the taxi driver big bucks the following day, but instead to walk down to town ourselves to see the palaces and whatever else we could see. I liked the paintings at the entrance to what looked like a small cafe.

King Fasilidas founded Gonder in 1635 and the town remained Ethiopia’s capital for 250 years. The Fasil Ghebbi, or Royal Enclosure, includes the six palaces of King Fasilidas and his descendents, as well as a Royal Archive Building and the remnants of lion cages.

In our trek across the city, we came across the old outdoor stadium used for socialist-inspired gatherings during the Derg era in Ethiopia. Every Ethiopian town seems to have one or more.

We also visited Fasilidas’ Pool, which is dry year-round except for the Timkat (or Epiphany) Festival each January.

After our tour of Gonder, I return to my room at Belegez Pension. On the door of my hotel room is an AIDS prevention sticker.

For one of my lunches, I ate delicious fasting food at the Habesha Restaurant across from the entrance of the Gonder palace complex. A tame goose lives inside the restaurant and eats up food scraps when the proprietor isn’t looking. I went back to the same restaurant later with a Belgian screenwriter named Eric and his son Thomas who I met at Belegez Hotel. They had just returned from a Simien Mountain trek and urged me to go, despite Eric’s knee injury during the hike to Gich.

 

Ethiopia Reprise: Axum Museum, Trilingual Tablet, and Adwa

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Following on my March 6 visit to the Axum obelisks, I entered the Axum Museum and made an excursion to the trilingual tablet stored in a shack nearby.

In the museum, they have interesting old crosses, the second of which was found near the Church of St. Mary Zion. There were also some interesting drain gargoyles, probably of a similar period.

There are stone inscriptions in a pre-Axumite language called Sabean from the middle of the first millenium BCE.

Interesting human figures, three-legged pots, coins, and miscellaneous other items at the museum.

This woman was weaving and selling baskets outside the Axum Museum.

And here is the Trilingual Tablet, in Ge’ez, Greek, and Sabean I think.

Here’s the “taxe” that brought me there (poor horsie!).

We drove by Queen Sheeba’s bathing pool. And we saw a sign about a military leader apparently killed by the Eritreans.

And there is a great sycamore fig tree in town.

Many Ethiopians and others visiting Axum stop by also at Adwa. In fact, the country celebrated a holiday related to Adwa on March 1 while I was traveling there. Ethiopia is the only African country to remain free of colonial rule. The Italians tried in the late 19th century and the Ethiopians defeated them at Adwa on March 1, 1896. The Italians did later occupy Ethiopia during World War II for some years, but basically Ethiopia is the only African nation that has been consistently free of colonial occupation.

I also thought about visiting the rock-hewn churches at Lallibela before heading on to Gonder on March 7, but decided that I had to move forward. Many people rank the Lallibela churches as a must-see and I’m sorry I had to miss them this time around.

Ethiopia Reprise: Axum Obelisks

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On March 6, I flew from Addis Ababa to Axum and landed safely at the Axum airport.

A guide from the Africa Hotel was there to pick me up at the airport. After I checked in, he assured me I could wait until 1:30pm to check in at the Ethiopian Airlines office five minutes from the hotel, then go to see the obelisks, the museum, and other sites of Axum. So, I took his advice, reading email and blogging briefly at the local Internet cafe, then eating lunch with an Italian woman, born in Libya, who was designing exhibits for the new Axum museum, not yet completed. Checking in at Ethiopian Airlines for the flight to Gonder the next day, March 7, was no problem. Then, the guide brought me to the obelisks. By the way, I really would recommend seeing Axum without a guide if you can. He didn’t really help out much.

The obelisk the Italians finally returned to the Ethiopians a couple of years ago rests on its side in a few parts awaiting its re-erection probably in time for the Ethiopian millenium celebrations during our September 2007.

My guide, wearing his Che Guevera T-shirt, showed me an excavation site. One of the largest obelisks has tumbled to the ground. Nearby is an eight-pointed stone compass.

Subterranean chambers apparently held a tomb of an Axumite leader. Only rarely were the backs of the Axum obelisks carved.

The new Axum Museum, already mostly constructed, will soon be located just behind the obelisk field and archaeologists plan to excavate the old town of Axum once residents are relocated.

Axum is dominated by Ethiopian Orthodox Christian churches, including a church that reputedly has the Arc of the Covenant. The town has refused construction of a mosque for its Islamic residents.

The next blog entry focuses on the Axum Museum and the Trilingual Tablet at Axum, both of which I also saw on March 6.

Ethiopia Reprise: Last Night in Addis

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March 5 was my last night in Addis… it was a fun night!

Lynda, Gordon, Frederick, and I met Brutawit, one of Richard’s Ethiopian sister-in-law’s, for dinner at this great place called Saba (or Sheeba, like the queen). Besides excellent traditional habesha food and conversation, the place had Wollo dancing with theater mixed in. Gordon was the first to join the dancers.

Habesha is the word Ethiopians use to refer to themselves. It literally means “mixture” as in mixture between white and black.

Almost all of us ended up dancing, forcefed in the traditional way by one of the dancers, and generally having a good time. The dinner ended with a coffee ceremony. On the ride home, Frederick gave Brutawit and I both a bar of Belgian chocolate. I arrived at Richard’s place and he and I chatted a bit more before we slept and all too early the next morning Tamir picked me up to take me to the airport for a flight to Axum.

Ethiopia Reprise: Last Day in Addis

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March 5 was my last full day in Addis, which I spent partly shopping with Lynda, Gordon, Frederick, and Tamir. Tamir brought Richard to work and me to the Hilton where I bought an air ticket to Axum and Gonder from Ethiopian Airlines. They charge ferengi a premium, so the ticket was nearly US$300 to the two destinations. After I got the tickets, I contacted Gordon and wandered around the hotel grounds until eating breakfast with Lynda and Gordon at the hotel restaurant. Tamir, being a taxi driver, was waiting in the Hilton parking lot, which was kind of a drag compared to how he traveled with us on the Bilen Lodge trip.

The first shopping was with Lynda, Gordon, and Gordon’s Ethiopian Airlines friend Frederick down from Bruxelles. We went to a leather shop where Lynda and Gordon ordered jackets.

Then, we dropped Lynda back at the Hilton to start packing up their apartment. The rest of us went on to a church shop for Gordon to buy a drum to bring back to his church in Canada. The shop staff got a bit carried away and had us trying on Orthodox Ethiopian wedding gowns.

We left the shop and I got one picture of Tamir and his taxi in front of the church shop, plus a picture of an Ethiopian Orthodox church in Addis Ababa.

My last full evening in Addis Ababa appears in the next blog entry for March 5.

Ethiopia Reprise: Trek to Afar, Part II

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This blog entry is for March 3, the second day of the Afar trek at Bilen Lodge, Awash, Ethiopia.

I chose a good camping site, which meant I asked to store my stash of yummy organic vegan cookies in the lodge kitchen to avoid animals in my tent – unfortunately, I forgot the yummy cookie stash when I left! I hope someone got to eat and enjoy them. The rest of the paying guests, with the possible except of some drivers, stayed in tukuls. Sunrise was stupendous.

After my second night of camping, I decided to hitch a ride back to Addis Ababa on March 4 with Richard, Gordon, and Lynda. I also met Richard’s Ethiopian driver Tamir about this time. He had come along for a vacation and wasn’t driving. Another driver was driving the 4WD vehicle they had rented. On the way out of Bilen Lodge, we visited the hot springs (my second time) and an Afar village.

On the drive back, we saw some animals that looked a bit like deer and some large insects that looked like locusts. Aside from the birds, camels, and crocodiles, I didn’t see many other animals, including the hyenas we heard screaming at night and the lions apparently wandering the region.

A railroad runs between Addis Ababa and Djibouti apparently once a day. We saw the desolate train: it had only four cars, seemingly bereft of both crew and cargo. I took pictures of the landscapes on the way back to Addis Ababa. We saw a car with an anti-gun symbol on it, so I asked the driver and passenger what it was about. They told me it signified that they had no guns on board and wanted no guns.

We stopped for lunch at the Safari Lodge, run by some of Richard’s friend. They had great food, a swimming pool, a crazy unfinished spacestation restaurant, and a pool table where Richard beat, but didn’t slaughter me at a game of pool. Near Addis, people on the street sold firewood bundles.

Richard was kind enough to let me crash at his place for a couple of days, so we said our goodbyes to Lynda, Gordon, and Tamir, and ended up eating scrumptious vegetarian lasagna at his place before we downed a drink or two over excellent conversation and went to bed.

Travel Quote Interlude

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Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
– Henry David Thoreau

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
– Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

Ethiopia Reprise: Trek to Afar, Part I

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On March 2 through March 4, I went camping at the Bilen Lodge in the Afar region of the Awash area of Ethiopia. Unfortunately, although I traveled near the Awash National Park, I didn’t get to see the park itself. This trip is probably the closest I’ll ever get to the Herto village near where archaeologists found the human remains, unless I later get invited to join the archaeologists in their fieldwork as was a journalist from the San Francisco Chronicle. However, while there, I had the distinct impression that the Herto humans had walked through the area.

This blog entry covers the first day, March 2.

To save money, I decided to take the local bus to Awash Saba, then find other transport to Bilen Lodge.

While riding on the bus, I saw the driver approaching a herd of cows crossing the road at a speed that seemed to fast to me, then heard a thump, another thump, then thump-thump-thump as the bus ground to a halt after running over two cows, one left on the opposite lane, the other lodged under the front door of the bus.

Another rider on the bus told me the first thing that happened after we hit the cows was that the cowherder grabbed his gun and pointed it at the bus until the bus stopped. Then, the bus driver got out and started negotiating with the cowherder. Amazingly, it took less than five minutes for a traffic police officer to show up, even though we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Soon, the driver had apparently agreed to pay around US$350 for the two cows, presumably out of his own pocket. This must have represented a significant amount of cash for him as each bus fare was only US$2-3.

While waiting for a substitute bus to arrive, the riders all started chatting and we watched the herd of camels led by tribal Afar people as they passed by.

When the replacement bus arrived, it already had some passengers on it, so we had to really squeeze to get everyone and their baggage onto the bus. Some locals tried to hop the bus to the next town. The tickethandler guy had to demonstrate that he was checking everyone’s tickets on the whole bus twice. Then, he could let the others know that they couldn’t board without a ticket. All of this was taking a long time. Finally, he got a bit more assertive and started gradually pushing the local guys off the bus. Each eventually left out the front door, but the final one got angry and slapped the tickethandler across the face, then left the bus. The tickethandler spit in contempt onto the ground. The slapper ran from the bus to his buddies and got an axe, then started running back toward the bus. Bus riders started yelling and the slapper’s friends held him back from actually wielding the axe on anyone. The driver started up the bus, and we left. I made a couple of friends during the wait for the second bus and we had some interesting discussions about public health and other topics while riding on the bus.

At Awash Saba, I paid an outrageous sum of 400 birr (about US$45) to get a ride the rest of the way to Bilen Lodge. I got some pictures of the landscape on the dirt road into the lodge.

When I arrived at Bilen Lodge, Ato (aka Mr.) Makonen seemed concerned. He was worried that I wanted to stay in one of the tukuls. When I explained I wanted to camp, he was much relieved. Two Afar tribesmen associated with the Bilen Lodge helped me move my bags and I paid them a small tip. Then, I looked around for a campsite. I wanted a place that had shade in the morning and the afternoon, since the sun was quite bright and hot. After awhile, I found a place I liked and started moving my bags over to the campsite. One of the Afar guys saw me and helped move one of my two heavier bags.

I got everything set up at the campsite, then went into the lodge. There, I met three Canadians — Gordon, Lynda, and Richard. They immediately welcomed me into their group, buying me drinks and chatting up a storm. Gordon mentioned my Tilley hat right away and we made some jokes about that. Richard and I chatted quite a bit as he drank the afternoon away.

After awhile, everyone headed back to their tukuls to get ready for dinner. I just hung out in the lodge and met people. A group of young people working at various NGOs was traveling together as was a group of Germans and a group of French people. I met a German lesbian couple living in Addis Ababa, one a health administrator (who I ran into again later at the Hilton Hotel in Addis) and the other a school teacher. I ate the buffet-style dinner with the lesbian couple.

I was tired after dinner and went back to my tent to crash.

The next morning, I headed in to the lodge, hoping to meet up with some people to go on one of the excursions from the lodge. The excursions required a local Afar guide to keep on good terms with the local Afar villages. The young NGO types were good enough to let me join them on a trip to the local hot springs where we encountered Afar tribespeople herding camels through the pools for their morning bath and drink.

The camels and people stayed mostly at one end of the hot spring pools. I found out the reason why – two crocodiles wandered around the other end of the pools!

The last picture above is the shower that the lodge cook Alemayo lent me since I was camping and didn’t have a tukul with a shower of my own.

On the excursion, I chatted a bit with some of the NGO folks, but mostly got to know Rudy who works with the UNICEF Children’s Fund developing metrics and methods for auditing their funding programs.

The Afar tribespeople are proud and territorial. The Afar tribesmen carry sharp sheathed swords and often a gun. In previous times, they used to remove the scrotum of unwanted visitors, which amounted to a rather painful death. Nowadays, they negotiate a bit more.

One of the French guys staying at Bilen Lodge wandered uninvited to an Afar village. Some Afar tribesmen came to Bilen Lodge upset and trying to identify him. Apparently, he looked a bit like me, but fortunately they could tell he wasn’t I. When they found him, they told him that if he showed up again uninvited to the village, they would shoot him.

In the evening of March 3, some of the guys gathered around a dying campfire started for a group of Germans. The fire seemed like a crazy idea, since it was so hot out, but what the hey. One of these Germans had stolen a lightbulb from the porch on Gordon and Lynda’s tukul the night before, as observed by Richard. At first, Richard was just stunned, then he decided to try talking to the friend of the guy who took the lightbulb. The friend told him he was telling a fairy tale and went to bed. So, a feud of sorts started between the Canadians and the Germans. Eventually, Richard even stole some of the Germans’ lightbulbs. I didn’t get involved.

After the Germans had left the fire, Richard, Gordon, Rudy, a guy named Martin from Madrid, and I went over there started singing songs. They drank lots of beer. They poured some of the local araki liquor on the fire, which made large flames! Toward the end of the night, I sang “The Garten Mother’s Lullaby” and everyone went to bed.

Ethiopia Reprise: Tiya Stela Site

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On March 1, we also drove down to Tiya to see the stelae there.

According to UNESCO: “Of the roughly 160 archaeological sites discovered so far in the Soddo region, south of Addis Ababa, Tiya is one of the most important. The site contains 36 monuments, including 32 carved stelae covered with symbols, for the most part difficult to decipher, which are the remains of an ancient Ethiopian culture, whose age has not yet been precisely determined.”

Recent excavations revealed that the stones mark mass graves of both males and females (displaying breasts) who died between the ages of 18 and 30 and were laid to rest in a foetal position. One symbol appears to indicate a sword, the number of swords perhaps representing the number of people killed by the person buried below. Another symbol looks like typical African neck pillows. The symbol that looks like a Greek epsilon has as yet no known meaning.

On the way back, we saw a beautiful mountain, slowed down in a typical small town, and got stopped by a herd of cows, a premonition of events to come.

Back in Addis, the driver helped me change dollars to birrs at the bank and purchase some kersone in preparation for my camping trip the following day March 2. I took pictures of a couple of mosques in Addis.