Touring Ethiopia

by John and Gail Murphy

We have set about meeting our neighbours…Tanzania, Uganda, and most recently Ethiopia. Ethiopia is far different from anything we have experienced so far in Africa.

It certainly stands outside the core of East Africa in many ways.

First of all even arriving in the dead of night about 3 hours late due to an aborted takeoff at on the end of the Nairobi runway, we were aware that Ethiopians keep to the right like Canadians…which now feels weird to us.

Then, wanting to charge the phone up during our 3 hour stay in Addis Ababa before going back to the airport to begin our tour, we noticed that Ethiopia uses European style round plugs rather than the big ones used everywhere else we have been in Africa.

The people look different…dark yet more finely featured and slender. Most of them speak Amharic. Many tribal groups live in the non-electric world, no phones, no running water, traditional clothing that hasn’t changed in centuries….maybe even millennia as some women still wear goatskins.

Their food is different, all based on injera, their spongy thin pancakes about 60 cm in diameter. Ugali, the staple of East Africa, is an unknown.

Gelada baboons are truly beautiful. I’ve never said that about baboons, but these ones are magnificent.

They are also known as the “bleeding heart baboons” because instead of enflamed rumps, their sexual display patches are on their chests.

The males have luxurious manes that flow behind them as they move and make them decidedly leonine in appearance.

They are endemic to the highlands of Ethiopia.

Time is different in Ethiopia. They work from a different calendar, the Ethiopian orthodox, which is running about 10 days later than ours. But time on the clocks is different too. Not only do they call 7:00 am the first hour after dawn (which is similar to the Swahili translation) but they actually set the hands to 1:00.

Ethiopia has a history as we know it marked by the carbon dated bones of Lucy, palace ruins of the Queen of Sheba, huge Aksumite stele marking graves in a pharonic style, the painted parchment bibles, Christian churches in continuous use since the 2nd century, books, paintings.

Indeed Ethiopia boasts that it is not only the cradle of African Christianity and but the veritable cradle of human life.

We felt that we were frequent flyers on Ethiopian Airlines by the end of the first week. After our slightly hair-raising flight into Addis Ababa (means “new flower”), we left early the next morning on a flight to Barhir Dar to visit Lake Tana and the headwaters of the Blue Nile.

We took a boat cruise out to an island monastery where a funeral was in progress. Christian churches are usually round structures, illustrated inside and out with stories from the bible. They have a veranda-like first area, then an inner area, and then the holy area where the copy of the Ark of the Covenant is kept.

This copy is taken out of safe-keeping on the festival day for the saint of that particular church and displayed to the faithful. These special days attract pilgrims from afar.

Pilgrimages attract beggars and hawkers selling formal ceremonial velvet umbrellas trimmed with gold braid, elaborate crosses of metal or wood to wear around your neck.

The beggars flaunt their afflictions…sores, amputations, leprosy, birth defects, blindness, sickly children etc. in hopes of bigger tips.

We checked out the Nile Falls which are a mere trickle since the hydro diversion was put in place but they must have been spectacular from the length of the escarpment where they fell, and still do in the height of rainy season.

In Barhir Dar our guide took us to a private home for the first of many traditional coffee ceremonies. Coffee is like a religion in Ethiopia. Not only do they produce very high quality shade grown coffee, but they love coffee (unlike Kenyans who grow it but prefer to drink tea.)

The equipment is laid out on the floor on a bed of fresh leaves or green grasses for a proper coffee ceremony although in the airport the plant material was artificial.

Incense is burned while the woman of the house washes a couple of handfuls of green coffee beans.

Then the beans are put on a flat plate and roasted over hot coals until they are well-blacked. Then the plate is passed by each guest and the fumes are wafted towards the guest to be savoured. Then the beans are crushed into a fine powder in a mortar and spooned into the clay coffee pot which sits to boil on the coals.

Coffee is served a few minutes later in tiny cups with lots of sugar, but generally not with milk. After the first round, the grounds are boiled again to make a second round and then a third round, which is still a pretty dark and potent brew.

This procedure is followed 3 times a day in many homes and takes 45 minutes to an hour each time.

The next day we drove to Gondar to visit a family castle compound dating back to the 6th century and belonging to Fasiladas.  Ethiopians refer to as their “Camelot”. Haile Selassie’s lions lived here most recently until it became incorrect to keep animals confined in such iron prisons.

Fasiladas bath, an enormous swimming pool still filled once a year for a mass baptism , is not too far away.

Into the air for a quick flight to Aksum, dating 4 centuries  BC. Huge stele mark the graves of the rich and famous of the day. Grave robbers have had their way although it is reckoned that there are many tombs completely undiscovered making this place a tourist gold mine to rival Cairo one day in the next millennium.

The Queen of Sheba is thought to have lived here and people still bathe in her pool and draw water there. Her palace ruins are immense, although it is not clear today why anyone would find the particular site attractive.

Aksum was at the centre of several trade routes and may have been a buzzing metropolis long ago instead of the quiet little town it appears today. It is still the heart of Ethiopian Christianity as the actual Ark of the Covenant is said to be safely kept in the holiest spot in the old church.

Back on the plane to Lalibela where King Lalibela (the Honey eater) commissioned the carving of churches right into the rock of the mountainside in the 12th century. They are amazing!  Carved down, down, down, then hollowed out and windows, niches and all the decorations carved out of one massive monolith.

From Laibela we took a 3-night trek in the highlands just a little ways down the road to Addis some 20 hours rough driving away.

There were six people in our group, well seven…a couple from Quebec with their 14 month old, and two women from New York City.

John and Gail will continue sharing their amazing Ethiopian adventure 1n the second part of this article.

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Ethiopia is home to a number of diverse and interesting ethnic groups who follow their own distinct life styles, customs, traditions, beliefs and rituals.

Hamers number around 25,000 and live in the lower Omo valley. The valley is situated between Jinka and the Ethiopian boarder with Kenya and Sudan.

Hamers, mainly pastoralists, speak an Omotic language which is closely related to the Cushitic languages of Oromo.

Both men and women give special importance to their personal beauty adorned by metal bracelets on their arms and legs.

The women’s hair is thoroughly covered in a mixture of grease and red ochre coloring. The young girls flatten it and make little tufts while the married women wear an elaborate plait which covers the forehead and falls down at the shoulders and back.

They beautifully attire in their beaded skins and iron jewelry; wear their hair in dense ringlets smeared with mud and clarified butter and topped off with a head-dress featuring oblongs of gleaming aluminum courtship.

Hamers have two basic events in the progression up the social ladder. Circumcision, which occurs when a child or young man has lost his milk teeth and the ukuli bula, a big step forward in the life of a young man- a leap over the bulls.

The jumping the bull ceremony is the most spectacular rite of passage in Southern Ethiopia. This ceremony marks the invitation of young men into adult hood.

Their marriages include the handling over of a large dowry to the family of the chosen girl. The dowry, a high price of goats or sheep is the reason why there is no set age for the ukuli bula.

This of course depends on the wealth of the young man’s family, the number in the family, as well as the number of brothers he has.

The leaping over the bulls is a ceremony (similar to pilla of the karo people) to determine whether a young Hamer male is ready to make the social jump from youth to adulthood and for the responsibilities of marriage and raising a family.

The main players are the initiates who are going to jump the bulls, the mass and those who have recently undergone this rite. The ceremony takes place in clearings in the countryside and is attended by the family, relatives and close friends of the ukuli.

Decorated with feathers, necklaces, bracelets and wearing their best cloths, the maz, who is responsible to whip the women, approach the area carrying long thin flexible branches to be used as whips.

The initiate boys are required to jump onto the backs of a line of fifteen to thirty, run the whole length of this formidable obstacle, jump down onto the other side and then repeat the entire procedure three more times without falling.

During the ceremony, the maz escort the initiates to the jumping arena and help to keep the cattle together, young women who are relatives of the initiates beg to be whipped by the maz.

This order reveals their ability to endure pain on behalf of the boy they love. The more numerous and extensive the scars, the deeper the girls devotion to the boy who is about to become a man.

Finally the initiate boys walk out of the arena through a special gate way, after which they are judged to have passed from childhood to manhood. Should they fall off, they would be whipped and teased mercilessly by the women.

On the day after the jumping the bull ceremony, women gather together, dances continue for the following two days and nights.

The Mursi dueling
The Mursi are cattle headers and cultivators who number about 6000.

They live in the lower Omo valley of the river Omo about 100 km North of the boarder with Kenya.

Their territory lies between the Omo and its tributary the Mago River and falls administratively in the southern regional government.

One of their most significant ceremonies (tagine or sagine) is a duel between single young men from different territories.

At a certain age, they must face each other with long wooden clubs (donga) whose ends have a phallic form. During the fight they protect their most vulnerable parts with coarse cotton cloths.

Dueling is a form of ritual in which men from different local groups join in brief but furious single combat with wooden poles (donga), around two meters long.

Some twenty years ago contestants used to wear basket-work helmets. Nowadays these have been discarded in favor of the more effective protection afforded by widening the head around with the long swathes of cotton cloth.

Each contestant wears a dueling kit (tumoga) which is both protective and decorative. It includes a basket-work hand guard, rings of plaited sisal cord to protect the elbows and knees, a leopard skin over the front of the torso, and a cattle bell tied round the waist.

Simply participating in the fight, win or lose, is enough for the young man to receive recognition for his bravery and to prove he is ready for marriage.

The fights are a way to publicly display one’s personal qualities and an attempt to conform to the tents expected of an adult behavior.

A dueling contest (tagine) usually takes place over several days and is carefully prepared for often being discussed, within and between both groups, for several months in advance.

It is scheduled for a time of a year when there is plenty of food available, so that the contestants can be physically well prepared.

When it eventually takes place, it is treated with the utmost seriousness and like war. It is seen as part of a continuing series of events in which each side takes its turn.

The ceremony takes place every year after the harvests (November to January).

The fight is symbolic and the adversary has to be defeated but not killed. If an adversary is killed, there are serious reprisals for the young man and his family.

In dueling, contestants should never come from the same local group or the same clan. He can only duel with men whose sisters he can marry even though they are called miroga, a term used for enemies from neighboring groups.

To win the duel, one’s opponent must either fall to the ground or retire hurt. Then the victor is carried round the field on the shoulders of the local age mates.

The victorious young man wins a special prestige and above all, an attention from the young single women. He is then brought forth in front of a group of those unmarried girls of his mother’s clan who lay goat skin skirts on the ground for him to sit on.

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