Flight 701 Ethiopian Airlines left on time, not with us on it sadly, the strikes at Heathrow left a backlog which had priority.  Ours left two hours later.

We were met at Addis Ababa by Eskinder after a longish deal getting visas – the tiny office only accepted Euros or dollars and we had neither.  Had to change money to birrs anyway so that was ok.

Addis Ababa is spread over many square miles having grown up over the 20th century.

The original consulate was a collection of tin roofed huts near the Entotto Hills and one used to go across a vast tract of land by mule.

The Chinese have contracts to build roads and whilst some are complete, the one outside the Global Hotel is ‘up’ and chaotic with contra flow and some very deep holes.

Blue and white taxis are everywhere, not much private traffic, over laden buses with no glass packed with locals hanging out over the metal safety rails.

Piles of fruit and vegetables on stalls, bags of charcoal, flocks of goats gathered on a crossroad, people sleeping rough, scavenging on heaps of soil.  The odd cow.  Pleased to see the fruit as we were led to expect the worst with no fruit or veg.

Its quieter than Calcutta, no horn blowing unless there is a complete blockage. Huge slums behind the tin hoardings.

We lunched Western style by the Museum which is in the university compound. The collections in the museum are minimal but interesting – artifacts from several hundred years BC showing fine stone carving and good pots; a few bronze pieces.

One of the loveliest was a lamp with a dog catching an ibex from 200BC. Some interesting photographs, tools and clothes; those worn by royalty or ecclesiastes were velvet with gold or silver embroidery.

The enormous throne of Haile Selassie of wood inlaid with ivory is there alongside that of his queen. There is a fabulous sword and other weapons belonging to King Tewodros and a good painting of him riding a white horse emerging from a gorge with his troops.

There are examples of cotton spinning and photos of the many different forms of huts and various tribes. Greek influence in the early pottery, both in wine jars and painted pots. Examples of their many different forms of crosses.

Our guide was difficult to understand and fell into the trap of telling us what we could read. This evening Eskinder took us to a local traditional restaurant with Jan Burgess and Auriole Mayo travelling together and just completed the northern route.  www.yod.com.

This was our introduction to injera the national dish, made from teff, a cereal widely grown and very nutritious, however, it is made into a pancake after a fermentation process which gives it a slightly sour taste.

It is served very cold in a huge flat disc upon which various hot foods are placed, cabbage, rice, chickpeas, lentils, wat (a spicey concoction) spinach etc – all were very delicious.

One is expected to eat with the right hand, tearing off pieces of injera and using them to carry the other things to one’s mouth.

Alongside the main dish was a plate of rolled up injera, like a pile of flannels badly in need of a wash..

We drank honey mead from little carafes held between two fingers, it tastes fairly innocuous and is very acceptable diluted with a little water. Our hands were washed by a waiter bringing a large metal jug of warm water and soap dispenser, both before and after the meal.

Musicians and dancing girls entertained us and encouraged some guests to join in – including John.  They do extraordinary movements with their shoulders.

Bahirdar city and Lake Tana
The driver was at the hotel at 5am and drove through empty streets for the Bahir Dar flight.

Good breakfast at the airport – a triple omelets sandwich with chips which we passed to a nearby western group.

Wossan was our guide for Lake Tana and The Blue Nile falls.  Before setting out on the boat we enjoyed coffee by the lake in a bamboo café built around the most enormous parasitic fig.

A pleasant trip across the lake in a small boat with 15 hp engine, several papyrus fishing boats were passed – these only last a few months before disintegrating – waterlogged I suppose.

Ura Kidane Meret monastery – the peninsula’s most famous, is a short walk from the jetty along a tree lined path. There are many locals selling souvenirs, passed a little inlet where there were several papyrus boats beached and clouds of butterflies.  Monkeys leaped about eating quamquats.

The monastery is of circular construction, three spaces within represent the Trinity.  Naïve holy paintings applied to cotton fabric adorn the wattle and daub walls.  Various crowns and robes have been donated to the monastery and are guarded by two men with guns.

An elderly  revered nun had died leading to much chanting and ceremonial activity, sadly they didn’t want us to watch.

A praying pilgrim was squatting against the wall of the shady building housing the museum pieces, his lips silently moving, a rather grand priest turned up and gave him a perfunctory blessing.

Pelicans abound, many in huge flocks.  Children ply the waters in the papyrus boats laden with hay or firewood.  The second monastery was near to the lakes outlet on a small island, its floor was strewn with newly cut hay.

This monastery is dedicated to the Virgin Mary who legend has it visited lake Tana – and indeed created it – she was thirsty and pointed to the ground and God made water – rather a lot of it, it runs from here almost to Gondar and takes 6 hours to cross.

We walked along a wide quiet street – Bahir Dar has won awards for being an excellent African town, it is clean and there are many bicycles, but not particularly remarkable.

Women were weaving papyrus baskets on the pavement, there were metal workers and a small flour mill in a mud and timber building.

The market was less colourful than its Indian counterpart but in many ways similar, piles of veg, spices and herbs, a choking smell of chillis, a small group of donkeys in a central space; awful piles of Chinese plastic tat.

Jenny continues to share her exciting Ethiopian experience on the second part of the story.

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The baby was an amazing addition. Local folks have seen the odd white trekker but never a white baby.

Thankfully there were donkeys to carry our luggage. The trekking was rough… quite flat but very stony. I was very glad to have packed my serious hiking boots.

The land is arable but the primary crop is rocks. They are used to terrace the fields, but still there are so many that plowing looks impossible.

We walked 5-6 hours each day and stayed in huts built and maintained by local villagers who also prepared our meals…injera with wat (stew) or lentils, chick peas.

When we weren’t ogling the view over the edge of the escarpment at +2600 m, we were watching the local people farm this rugged landscape by hand. It was harvest season. Grain is cut handful by handful with a small scythe, stacked carefully so that the grains are in the middle and the cattle and donkeys won’t get to them too quickly.

Threshing is done by using cattle, and horses driven in a pivoting circle to trample the grain off the stalks. John noticed that to reduce contamination the guy driving the animals must do a quick turd catch so that it doesn’t land among the stalks.

Winnowing is done by two guys who lift the stalks up into the wind to blow the chaff away. Grinding is done in a large wooden mortar with a log as a pestle. It is very labour intensive work.

The local people live in smoke filled huts that accommodate them and their livestock so they are toasty warm…I wonder if the meat tastes smoky?

We flew back to Addis and I promptly got VERY sick. The local doctor diagnosed amoebic dysentery and prescribed powerful bug killing drugs. We ordered up a double set as we figured John was probably right behind me. We both slept the next 24 hours away.

Thank God we were on an individual tour which could be adjusted by our wonderful organizer, Eskinder, at Highway Tours.

Then off to the Omo Valley, always wondering where the next toilet stop might be! Omo Valley is home to a large number of tribal groups who live very traditionally.

The Hamer women, many dressed in skimpy goatskins who rub their short little dreadlocks with ochre to give a reddish tinge.

The Konso ladies with their multicolored skirts. The Banna boys who decorate their bodies, even their penises, with white paint and jump about in athletic dance moves.

The Dorze weavers who depend so completely on the false banana trees for their food and building materials. They make their tall houses to last 80 years, just getting shorter and shorter as the termites eat the bottoms of them.

The Mursi women who cut and then stretch their lower lips to fit larger and larger lip plates…only wish they would wear the lip plates all the time because the default setting is without and is decidedly unattractive. Here it was a fashion show beyond belief as women begged and argued and flaunted themselves to earn the photo fee.

Tourism is having a negative affect on these people. Children beg for empty water bottle by yelling out the brand name “Highland”. If you didn’t know, you would think it was the Amharic greeting.

We had a rest day at Lake Awasa which was actually Christmas Day, at least on our calendar. We did some strolling along the water’s edge and bird watching a bit. The best part was the unspoilt atmosphere where we could walk without being targeted for sales or scams.

A nice hotel in this spot with a view of the lake and vervet monkeys playing in the treetops and rooftops. Throughout our tour the various rooms were billed as “best available” but some communities are not into tourist options so services ranged from bleak to fantastic.

Onward to the east of Addis to visit Harar, an old walled city with an Arabic flavour, a Muslim enclave dotted with tiny mosques.  It is cleaned nightly by packs of hyenas!!

The hyenas are fed nightly in a public place where tourists show up and watch the daring Hyena man with their car headlights as he feeds them by hand. We saw 10 adults at one of two feeding sites. Then the hyenas cruise the streets looking for garbage.

Then we headed back to Addis for a city tour and the two museums we wanted to see. The ethnographic collection at the University is fantastic and gave us an excellent review of the tribal groups.

The National Museum holds the remains of some of the oldest of our ancestors including Lucy, a tiny proto-human some 3 million years old. They are presently working on a couple of finds that predate her by quite a bit…the cradle of human life.

We really appreciated the service we got from Highway Tours. We were met at every stop; the local guides and drivers were excellent; the program at every site was well-planned. The flexibility when we were sick and needed a doctor and a pharmacy and a day chopped out of the plan were admirable.

Ethiopian Airlines got us safely back to Kenya and we moved through the airport in record time! We shopped a little knowing that our cupboard was bare at home and then headed to Soysambu Conservancy and the Mweha Lodge on the property of Lord Delamere not far from Greensteds.

Here with several of our colleagues we occupied 7 of their 10 rooms and welcomed in 2010. Champagne flowed. It was a lovely end to the holiday.

We’ve been back to work for a week now.

Wishing you the best for 2010!
Gail and John

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Tourism Ethiopia

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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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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Ethiopia Culture - People

It is only a day trip to take you from Addis Ababa to Harar.

For the standards of traveling in Ethiopia, it is a short route and far less exciting than the steep and curly paths of northern Ethiopia.

The road is good and asphalt in comparison to those roads which lead you in other directions from Addis.

On its most it is not passing through mountainous ranges. This, however, does not mean that it does not offer views worth taking a picture here and there.

Also a chance of seeing small mammals is quite high. Not to mention proud camels eating leaves from the trees at the side of the road.

The quick trip from Addis brings travelers to another world. Harar has been an Ethiopian town only for a little bit over a hundred years now.

At the end of the 19th Century Ras Makonnin, father of Haile Sillassie I, was sent by Emperor Menilek II to conquer the province of Hararge and he succeeded.

Hararge and its capital, Harar  was incorporated into the fast growing Empire. From then on, it started to serve as an extremely important economy base for the country and also was a scene of some of the most important political events in the 20th Century.

Harar is one of the most striking, colorful and impressive places in Ethiopia. Its history is as colorful and intriguing as the spirit of the town is today.

There are two parts – the outer one: Christian, created after conquering the Muslim town by Christian Ethiopians, and inner one: Muslim and historical, included on the UNESCO list.

The new part of the town is relaxed, clean and with some nice spots, the old part leaves an unforgettable impression. Today it still looks like Muslim towns were centuries ago.

It has been walled since the 16th Century, when this kind of protection was needed against the raids of the Oromo people. These raids constituted one of the main threats both to the Muslim Harar and Christian Ethiopia in the 16th and 17th Centuries.

Today the Oromo, make probably the biggest group of inhabitants in Ethiopia.

The foundation of Harar is attributed to Sultan Abu Bekr Mohammed from Walasma dynasty, who reigned in the 16th Century, but historians agree that the town is much older than this.

Another historical personality whose name is connected with the town is Imam Ahmed Ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, known in Ethiopia as “Gragn,” meaning “Left-handed.”

This religious and military leader made Harar a center for a new strong political power: Adal Sultanate, and led his troops in a jihad against the Ethiopian Empire.

The 14-year war, victorious for the Muslim forces, finished when Gragn lost his life in a battlefield and the successors of the Imam had to face the growing threat of Oromo raids. For over two centuries no European was allowed into the walled city. However, in 1855 British orientalist, Richard Burton entered Harar dressed as a Muslim.

French poet, Arthur Rimbaud was another famous European who not only visited Harar, but chose it to be his home. He settled there in 1880 to trade arms, and he eventually died in the city in 1891.

The city of Harar is now, as it has been for hundreds of years, a web of tiny streets leading the visitor among high walls surrounding Harari houses and their inner yards. Life goes on inside these walls as well as in the streets and colourful market places.

Colour is the most distinctive feature of the city. The entrances to private houses and to the mosques are decorated in colours, the ladies gowns and jewelry they wear are colourful, the bars and shops are full of colours.

Harar being now, as it has always been, a commercial center, brings different people from the area to buy and sell colourful goods in its markets.

Chat is among these goods. Chat chewing is something what Harar cannot exist without. This plant is cultivated and used as a drug in the Horn of Africa and in the Arab world.

It is one of the most important Ethiopian export products and Harar is the center for chat production.

The chat itself and those who chew it are to be found everywhere in Harar.

Huge bunches of the leaves are being sold, bought and transported around in huge quantities.

On Thursday nights it helps those who participate in mosques ceremonies – it keeps them awake to recite the Koran and dance to the sound of a drum for the whole night.

Harar being probably one of the oldest places where Islam was followed and taught is a town of hundreds of holly places. The shrines, tombs of holly men and little mosques spot the city and the area around it.

It has also served for centuries as a center for crafts and teaching. The works of Muslim art, the holly books and secular pieces of art like jewellery, weaponry or even baskets, are to be found in Harar museums.

And all this accompanied by hyenas laughing at night – nothing to be afraid about. They are friendly animals, well fed – as feeding hyenas is among one of the main tourist attractions in Harar. This should not be missed…

Dr. Hanna Rubinkowska has traveled extensively throughout Ethiopia and is a regular contributor to this blog.

She has specialized in modern history of Ethiopia and currently lectures at Warsaw University, Department of African Languages and Cultures.

Dr. Hanna Rubinkowska (Ph.D.)

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