Faranji in Ethiopia - Part II

The next day, we were back on the bus to Addis Ababa -- this time the Sky Bus coach, which meant that it showed an amusingly English-dubbed Ethiopian chick flick but still took 11 hours to reach its destination. We didn't see much of Addis that night, and the next morning we were in transit again, this time to the north.

Velvet prayer-brellas for sale outside a church in Addis

We flew early Friday morning, May 24, to Gondar in the Amhara region. I was reading Robert Kaplan's book Surrender or Starve about the Ethiopian famine, which he argues was a highly political tool of the ruling Amharas used against rebellious ethnic groups in Tigre, Eritrea, and other areas. Nowhere we went in Ethiopia did there seem to be any legacy of famine, and far from the contentious borders with Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan (aka almost all of them) everything seemed extremely peaceful.

In the historic city of Gondar -- one of the many old capitals of the Amharas -- we stayed in the Florida International Hotel, a shining blue and orange edifice through whose lobby passed a number of Jews in kippahs. Gondar has the last concentration of Ethiopian Jews, and all of those will have relocated to Israel by next year. My first stop, though, was the Debre Berhan Selassie Church, to which I set off on my own that morning. To get there from the central Piazza, I took a scenic hilly walk through outlying huts. At the shady, secluded stone church, I removed my shoes and was taken hold of by a wizened priest in a soiled white toga. He unlocked the door for me; I was the only visitor. He grabbed my arm, trying to kiss my cheeks (apparently this is a thing they do, but it was really awkward) while showing me the holy murals. Hundreds of wide-eyed angels peered down at me from the ceiling. The church was covered, every corner of it, with color. Satan played on one wall, leading Muhammad (eek!) on another. The personified Trinity, a trio of graybeards, adorned the back half of the church where velvet curtains led into the locked sanctuary. The priest didn't speak a word of English, but kept repeating something like "gooznash" whenever I would correctly identify one of the saints.

Inside Debre Berhan Selassie Church, Gondar

My attempts at Amharic, though, did not get very far. The word for "thank you" has about 15 syllables and the alphabet is in fact a syllabary, with hooks and curls added to letters for various vowel sounds. I sat for a while with two teenage girls on a bench overlooking the Piazza as we tried to sound out phrases from my phrasebook. Sky, one said to me in English, indicating that it was too hot for us to be out in the sun.

Miriam was writing an article about Jewish tourism in Ethiopia, and we joined her and her guide for a brief visit to a model Felasha (Ethiopian Jewish) village outside Gondar. There is only one Jewish woman left there, said the guide, and she is veryyyy, veryyy old. (In fact, the woman told us herself, she is about 50.) The cottages are occupied by Christians these days, but they paint the Star of David on the whitewashed exteriors in an odd twist of marketing... although the Jews and Christians in the village were once in conflict, now it is a kind of tourist trap, selling pottery in the name of the Felasha. We sat with the Last Jew for a while, and she told us that her mother died in a refugee camp at the Sudanese border, so she return to Gondar. Mostly, though, she was interested in her pottery.

The so-called Felasha Village

We decided after that to visit the Royal Enclosure, dating from when Gondar was a flourishing capital between the mid-17th century and the mid-18th century. The compound, restored by UNESCO, contains several palaces, lion cages, halls, and outbuildings. In fact, there were still lions kept there through 1992. The stone edifices have been kept in a state of arrested decay, with creeping bits of green here and there. The air was fresh and almost cool, such that I almost felt I could be somewhere in Northern Europe.

Gondar's Royal Enclosure

Not too far away, and next to a strange modern ruin of a parade ground, were the Fasiladas Baths. Similarly made of stone, they consisted essentially of a huge swimming pool with a house perched in the center. The pool was empty and we were the only visitors. Mammoth tree roots curled around the edges. That day, it was silent, but once a year the local government spends weeks filling the pool for a big public festival that simply sounds like a giant pool party.

Roots climb over the edges of the Fasiladas Baths

We had heard of the Princess Mentewab Complex nearby, and were intrigued by its billing as the place where a long-dead Amhara princess used to satisfy her penchant for young boys. We rode a tuk tuk up a steep hill, then walked past a cluster of straw-roofed huts to reach the crumbling stone complex perched on top. Most of it had been destroyed by the pesky Sudanese dervishes in the 1880s. The highlight, however, came when we ducked into one of the overgrown outbuildings adjacent to the main church. A priest in yellow and black robes greeted us, handed us long, wispy candles, and led us into the crypt. Our light flickered over bits of old church paraphernalia and the brittle pages of books written in the ancient language of Ge'ez. Then the priest pulled back a sheet to reveal the skeletons of Princess Mentewab herself and her three sons.

One of the attendants at the Princess Mentewab complex and a young boy

The road to Princess Mentewab's

Thanks to Miriam's article about the Jews, we were able to attend Friday shabbat services with the last Ethiopian Jews that evening. The Jewish Agency for Israel has an office in Gondar and brings in young Israeli women to teach Hebrew and prepare the final emigrants for their journey. As soon as we entered the compound, we were swarmed by tiny children shouting to us in Hebrew. The back of the courtyard had been set up with long benches for services, and a sheet down the center divided the men from the women. Like many Ethiopian Christians (and perhaps Muslims as well), many of the women were dressed in white, with shawls wrapped around their heads. The only distinguishing factor, we were told, is that felasha women sometimes tie a topknot with their scarves. Of course I didn't understand either the Amharic or Hebrew parts of the service, but many of the children who had followed us back attempted to do the prayers. At the end, the rabbi appeared and broke bread, passing it around on large trays. By next year, all these people will be gone, and this bit of culture will have disappeared.

We ate dinner on cowskin stools before heading out for a night on the town. Gondar isn't huge, but we managed to find a cozy spot of life pulsing at the Balageru Cultural Nightclub. In any country but Ethiopia, I would have steered very clear of anything that called itself something so dubious as "cultural nightclub." In Egypt, that would probably mean belly dancers in mummy costumes. But at Balageru, and at a similar venue in Addis later on, we were the only foreigners in the house. Ethiopians, it seemed clearly, really enjoy Ethiopian stuff -- they seem to feel little need to imitate any other culture, but neither did they seem to aggressively reject 'foreignness.' Perhaps it comes from the fact that the country's brush with colonialism was so brief. The attitude seemed to be: "Hey, what we've got over here is working pretty well for us right now." A fairly hip, perhaps upper middle-class crowd lined the walls of the club, which was decorated with traditional-looking paraphernalia of unknown use and lit with red and purple UV lights. Guests sipped the local beer or a bottle of ultra-sweet Aksumit wine, while a man with a square, banjo-like instrument and woman in a traditional white, embroidered dress sang to the beat of a drum. We were told the lyrics were satirical, so we just tried to laugh when the other audience members did. Spotting us, the duo of performers approached and sang to us in Amharic... All we got out of it was "Obama! America! Ethiopia! America and Ethiopia!" so we knew it was about us, and it seemed to be friendly in tenor. Eventually everyone got up and started wildly gyrating their shoulders -- often in a face-off with another patron. I decided to get in on the shoulder dance and got in the middle of the crowd with the singers. When I sat back down, a man across the table leaned over and yelled: "Miss, you are the BEST!" Confident I had mastered the elusive shoulder dance, I retired for the night.

View of Gondar

A sad attempt to capture the vibe of the cultural nightclub

The next day, we began our trek into the Simien Mountains. We had hired a trekking company (highly recommended) to ease the stress of the trip and because we had limited time: to procure all our own equipment could have taken days. A van that was, amusingly, blasting Shakira's Waka Waka: This Time for Africa drove us to the base camp at the mountain town of Debark, where we picked up an entire entourage of cook, guide, assistant cook, and scout (later to be joined by porters and their mules). Our guide, only 24 years old, was one of only 3 female guides in the whole national park. We hiked with her that first day a few hours to our first campsite. Our scout, picking up the rear, wore an old camouflage ensemble and a cape and slung a rifle that appeared to date from the American Revolution over his shoulder. Perhaps to keep away the hyenas. We plunged into an expanse of green that was like nothing I have seen in at least a year. I was reminded most closely by this woodsy sense of peace and clean air of hiking in Vermont as a kid, although the Ethiopian cliffs were a bit more dramatic. Also, for example, there are no troupes of baboons in Vermont. Shortly into our hike, we encountered a gaggle of about 50 baboons hanging out on the grass and picking each other's nits. These are vegetarian baboons, so humans are cool with them, and in fact they allowed us to approach very, very close.

Our trek begins

Baboon sighting #2 (of many)

When we arrived at our campsite, our cook, Fanta, had already pitched our tents and had popcorn and a canteen of tea out for us on a little folding table. After dinner, we sat around the campfire he had built and Alex brought out his water bottle full of strong Ethiopian honey wine, tej, to share with our convoy.

The first night went smoothly and the second day brought dramatically varied terrain. Sometimes it was something out of a science fiction movie, with vast slopes of knobby yellow grasses punctuated by lone palm trees. Sometimes the trees were low and mossy, and sometimes we followed the edge of dramatic cliffs. Sometimes we encountered a herd of sheep (or a herd of children) that seemed to belong to no one and come from nowhere. A child would appear, spinning and cracking a whip, and then scamper off across the open horizon. A handsome black and white bird would swoop down every now and again, and once or twice we spotted a klipspringer or a bushbuck hiding in the brush. As it was the beginning of the rainy season, the skies were often a bit cloudy and most views partially submerged in mist -- something of Casper David Friedrich's The Wanderer. 

Alex, The Wanderer

Caspar David Friedrich, The Wanderer

Just before arriving at our second campsite, we passed through the round thatched huts of Geetch village balanced sideways on a steep hill. We stopped by an old man, shoeless, who was plowing his field with a team of sinewy oxen of mammoth size. Our guide explained that the government had decided to relocate all the villagers out of the national park in order to protect it the environmental detriments of overgrazing. I'm not happy about this, the old man stopped to say. Young people can find something in Debark. But me? I'm too old to learn a trade. What can I do?

Old man plows his fields in Geetch

That night, the rains came early, around 4pm, accompanied by roaring winds. We huddled in the cook's shelter wearing all our clothes, and one of our tents collapsed irreparably. With all three of us curled into one, the interior of the tent flapping against our faces, we managed to emerge victorious the next morning. We descended from Geetch in an ethereal post-rain fog for our final day of hiking. We reached our highest point at 3900m above sea level on a cliff that jutted over a broad green valley. Mostly we walked in solitude, savoring our last few hours of silent lushness.

Morning at Geetch campsite, after the rain

Eventually the road appeared, again from nowhere, and we were driven back to Gondar. From there, still burned to a crisp and unshowered, we were taken several hours to the south to the city of Bahir Dar. Perched on Lake Tana, Bahir Dar is a tropical - even malarial, for some - counterpoint to mountainous Gondar. Fortunately we'd stocked up on prophylactics just in time and took on buggy Bahir Dar with zeal. We checked into the Ghion Hotel, where the aging buildings were surrounded by waist-high, blossoming gardens, which made up for the dangling wires and generally seediness of our room.

The next morning we hired a motorboat to take us out on Lake Tana. There was not much to see around the lake itself, but the Zege peninsula - where we were welcomed by a small monkey balanced on a log -- was something else. The narrow trails leading between the monasteries were lined with vendors of the cone-topped furry lunch boxes for which Bahir Dar is famous. There weren't many other visitors, though. We visited two round monasteries, each brimming with flamboyant colors. The second, at least, was quite large and had a modern complex for the monks built up around it. Monasticism, it seems, is alive and well in Ethiopia. The monasteries are perhaps best represented visually:

Paintings from one of the Lake Tana monasteries, Zege Peninsula

Vendors on Zege Peninsula

We then motored to the source of the Blue Nile, a nearly unnoticeable gap in the lake where hippos are said to dip, though we saw none. Later on, off the boat, we headed to the Blue Nile Falls, the site that is currently causing intense ire in Egypt because of the Renaissance Dam that is in progress. We followed a short path and a suspension bridge to the falls themselves, trailed by a horde of small children demanding money. And also my shoes, which they attempted to unvelcro from my feet. It was hard to believe that this large trickle of brown water was the focus of a threatened war!

Miriam gains a following on the suspension bridge to the Blue Nile Falls

The next morning, I tried a new delicious Ethiopian breakfast food: chechebsa, bread mashed with eggs and honey.

Chechebsa at Wudu Coffee

Then we were off to the Bahir Dar airport, a two-room gig whose degree of completion was inversely proportional to the zeal of the security staff. Back in Addis that night, we made our way to the National Museum, only to find that its pride and joy, the protohuman "Lucy", was not currently on display. Still, we got to see an ostentatious throne donated by the Indians when Haile Selassie instituted a national education system. Beyond that, the museum was largely empty of displays -- perhaps another product of its lack of European colonial penetration. We dined at Serenade, an apparent hideout for African Union officials, whose African-Mediterranean flair manifested itself in the form of a five-course dinner. Because that drained us of all our remaining money, we sat out the rest of the evening in Fendika, another "cultural nightclub", attempting to master the shoulder dance... and then on the floor of the Addis Ababa airport... before returning to simmering Cairo in the wee hours of the morning.