Why Ethiopia? Most Americans think of this country as a
wasteland of emaciated children, but this colorful country is anything
but. If you count the hordes of
European, Israeli, Canadian and Australian tourists who come here for a holiday
each year, you soon realize that this is an up-and-coming (or maybe it’s
already arrived) destination for good food, unique culture, breathtaking
scenery, and historical treasures.
Oh, and it’s the home of coffee, too.
Scott and I certainly didn’t have Ethiopia on our bucket
list of places to visit when we knew we’d be in Africa for over two years, but
between internet research and hearing a few stories of other volunteers who
went there, it seemed like a logical jumping point for our close-of-service
(COS) trip. We were thinking of
doing a bicycle tour here, but met a group of cross-continent cyclists who said
the country was their favorite to visit, but least favorite to cycle due to
hills and harassment by children.
So . . . after hearing more about it’s mountains and missing the
mountains in Zambia, we figured we’d center our time in Ethiopia around two
different mountain treks: the popular Simien mountains and the far less popular
stone churches of the Northern Tigrai region. We thought we’d cap our trip by visiting Lalibela, a UNESCO
World Heritage site.
The first ten days of our trip, a Peace Corps volunteer name
Gordon currently serving in the eastern province of Zambia who decided to use
some of his vacation time visiting Ethiopia. He also wanted to do some trekking, so the three of us
decided to fly directly to Gondor after one night in Addis Ababa. Upon arrival in Gondor, we were in a
different country indeed. There we
randomly met Morgan, an Ethiopian Peace Corps volunteer who was meeting up with
a friend from America who came to visit her. After swapping stories, we spent the day leisurely watching
the city from a rooftop café and walking around the mostly intact sidewalks, a
treat from the dirt footpaths that tend to line urban Zambian streets.
The next day, we had the hotel hire us a guide named
Philemon (Ethiopian form of Philip), and he showed us ancient wall paintings on
a church up on the hill, a castle, and a pool built by the first emperor in the
4th century.
Apparently, Gondor was one of the ancient capitals of Ethiopia long
before Addis Ababa. The three of
us booked a trek to the Simien mountains using a local tour operator in a tiny
office off one of the cobblestone streets. We wanted to experience some local nightlife, and that we
did by jumping into a bar where a trio of local musicians went around the room
with their stringed instrument and sang songs (in Ahmaric) about those of us
sitting on the edges . . . all the locals were laughing when the trio came to
us, so whatever they were singing must have been funny.
The Simiens trek was for four days, four nights, and began
with an image of the call to prayer and veiled women and men wrapped in robes
kissing priests who had crosses outside the church walls for St. Michael’s
day. St. Michael’s day happens
once an Ethiopian month (there are 13 of them!), and so does St. Mary’s Day,
St. George’s day, St. Gabriel’s day and a handful of other saints days
celebrated by the Ethiopian orthodox church. It was interesting to see the devout going to the churches
in the early morning and then doing their daily business. The five of us tourists including the
three of us Zambian volunteers, Martin from Holland and Carleen from England
all piled in an SUV going to the town of Debark, which reminded me of a dusty
Zambian town except with more donkeys than cars running around! There we picked up our guide Getenet
and a mandatory armed scout (“just in case there are wild animals”). We climbed and climbed a dusty road
with breathtaking overlooks and finally stopped at a place where Getenet said,
“here we will start walking.”
We walked no more than half a kilometer when we came across
hundreds of gelada baboons. From
our Zambian experience of baboons, we thought of them as either very timid and
scared of poachers or semi-aggressive and wanting to steal food. But these baboons were neither. Indifferent to human spectators just
yards away, they went on their merry way eating handfuls of grass and roots,
grooming each other, and making mating noises. We walked through the masses of hundreds of baboons until we
finally came to some cliffs where they perched and stayed. We walked to tents set up for us by the
group cook and met our luggage, which was carried by donkeys.
The next three days were similar except more breathtaking
views and fewer monkeys. Most of
us in the group literally had their breaths taken away as most of the paths
were between 10,000-12,000 feet! The
meals consisted of lots of vegetarian fare and we even splurged on some honey
wine after an afternoon rain-shower soaked us to the bone. The trails were definitely not empty—we
were accompanied by groups of other tourists, mules, horses, sheep, goats,
cows, and local villagers bringing grain and other goods from one mountain town
to the next, but it was all part of the scenery. We were lucky enough to see three of the rare Ethiopian wolves on the third day, and also
several mountain-sheep looking ibex on the last day, and abundant wildflowers
since it was the end of the rainy season.
Despite the freezing weather at night, the trip itself was a success.
On the last morning, we said goodbye to our guide and scout
and the three of us Zambian volunteers hired a car to drive us by road to
Axum. The guidebook said it was
“one of the most beautiful” in all of Ethiopia, although also one of the most
treacherous (this is in the country that has the highest road traffic
fatalities in the world). So . . .
rather than risking public transportation, we had a 4WD minibus to ourselves,
which lent itself to plenty of time taking pictures of the scenery and
continual bulldozers and workers with pick axes slowly etching a harrowing road
into the cliff. At one point, we
had to back up so the oncoming car could come through. As darkness approached, I saw huge pack
animals come within one foot to the right side of the vehicle. Doing a double-take, I realized they
were not horses but lines of 2-3 camels, carrying grains on the paved road!
We finally got to Axum late in the evening and had a good
night’s rest on something other than a tent before taking the quick tour of
this other capital city that’s even
more ancient than Gondor. In the
morning, Scott, Gordon and I woke to a pleasant Sunday with people enjoying
breakfast and coffee on the sidewalk café’s of Axum. We saw a road blocked off and then a bicycle whizzed by and
then we realized we were in the middle of a race! The spectators cheered as Ethiopians (mostly without helmets
and some on mountain bikes ) circled around in endless laps. We found a juice bar and drank a
mixture of guava, banana, avacado, mango, and lime fruit smoothies before
seeing the ancient sites.
First we toured the church compound, which houses the
alleged Ark of the Covenant, but only one person in all of Ethiopia is allowed
to go into the actual room to see it.
Then a monk showed us crazy old artifacts in a room that looked like a
parish hall rather than a building that houses kings’ robes from the 4th
century, books painted on goatskin, and crowns of ancient emperors finished in
rubies and gold. The monk then
took us to the modern church where we took off our shoes and heard our voices
resonate from one side to the other.
We found a guide who showed us the archaeological sites up the road,
including huge pillars that the ancient kings used as tombstones, and lots of
underground caves and houses.
There was also an ancient “pool” that is now like a muddy reservoir
filed with little naked boys bathing, girls fetching water, and cows drinking.
Gordon went back to Zambia, and Scott and I spend another
leisurely day in Axum catching up on laundry and e-mails before taking the
public bus to Adrigrat to start another 3-night trekking—this time more
leisurely where we would be staying in community lodges. We had an entire afternoon to kill in
Adigrat and found it a drastic change from Gondor and Axum in that we were
absolutely the only tourists in the entire city. Instead of people coming up to us and hounding us for tours,
they said a genuine “salaam” as they smiled and waved, and we did our best to
learn a few key words in Tigrinia, the local language. The locals in our $5/night hotel (down
from $60 and $20 in Gondor and Axum, respectively) invited us to watch an
Italian version of pool they played with their hands that night, and treated us
to a coffee ceremony complete with incense and popcorn in the morning before we
met our guide for the trek.
I found the
organization TEFSA tours in a guidebook, which touts as a community-based
trekking project. The tour itself
was impressive, albeit a bit more pricey than the Simiens, but we didn’t see
another tourist the entire time except on the way in and out. The villagers prepared us lovely meals
of injera with all sorts of vegetarian toppings, and we had the official coffee
ceremony and even had the time to drink the traditional 3 cups of coffee with
the locals while watching breathtaking sunsets from stone lodges each
night. We also had the rare honor
of watching an Orthodox Mass performed in a rock-hewn church called Jesu
Gorghot for the festival of Saint Mary.
It was only us, our guides, and five priests and a deacon and included
lots of chanting, incense, and walking from the back alter room (which we were
forbidden to enter) to the main church area. They read Ge’ez scripts from ancient goatskin books and even
invited us to eat very thick injera after we left. Overall, very surreal, and I couldn’t help but imagine the
same exact ceremony happening in the cave-church when it was built in the 4th
century.
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