Only in Ethiopia

I didn’t realize that Addis Ababa is at 7,800’ until I stepped off the plane and my breath began to materialize in front of me. Situated in the Ethiopian highlands, it is hilly. Streets, constructed to follow the terrain, twist and turn and annihilate any sense of direction I may have ever possessed. As the taxi we (myself and three Canadians I met at the airport) rode in made its way through town, the sky behind the surrounding mountains turned a brilliant rusty orange as the sun rose. I soon realized that Addis is a city of runners: people surrounded every roundabout, stretching and warming up. The streets themselves appeared as through multiple marathons were taking place. And in a colossal square off to the side, hundreds of people made their way back and forth up dozens of terraces stretching from end to end.

We drove on the right side of the road. Which was a huge relief, except I was finally getting used to looking to the right before crossing the street after several near-death experiences in Nairobi. My brain was simply baffled.

People in Ethiopia are so nice. Cars and trucks stop to let you finish crossing the street. Taxis, uniformly crazy oldschool cars painted white and blue, don’t attempt to rip you off. When a driver needs directions, he pulls alongside another cab in an adjacent lane, they roll down their windows, and proceed to engage in a yelled conversation as they continue toward their destination. In general, people are welcoming. At hotels, they’re actually happy to help you with anything you need. Even when guys hit on you on the street, they’re nice about it. “Let’s get a couple beers” is invariably preceeded by small talk, and then, “You want to get a coffee?” However, that could simply be the norm in a culture ruled by coffee. And I, having become used to dealing with Kenyans, felt genuinely bad for being so standoffish.

Poverty in Addis is so much more in-your-face than in Kenya. Beggars and cripples appear everywhere you turn, amassing near church entrances. Walking down the street you pass sacks scattered about, until you realize that there are people in them, attempting to sleep during that transition time between the frigid night and blazing day. They blend into the city landscape- you don’t even realize they’re there, even a couple meters away. Some have managed to erect cloth lean-tos against concrete walls; others have found small containers in which to construct cocoons. Those are the lucky ones, and they are few.

However, they do not harass you. Children are not exploited, following and clamoring incessantly in your face. Beggars and hawkers (of which there are many) approach, ask for money, and move on.

So, Thursday morning we arrived in Addis, found the hostel, booked a couple rooms, dropped our stuff, and set off to explore. I’ve never been a coffee person. Up until arriving in Addis I’d had maybe a swallow or two and resolved that it tasted like dirt. That may have all changed when we stepped into this little hole-in-the-wall widely believed to have the best coffee in the city. You walk in, tell the lady behind the counter what you want (coffee, mocha, mochaccino or latte), you pay 6-8 birr (60-80¢) and she gives you a color-coded chip. You then proceed past displays of old coffee makers and varying cases of coffee beans to the espresso counter and trade your chip for said specified drink, watched over by a wooden moose head sticking out of the wall above. And yeah, it was pretty damn good.

We found our way to St. George’s cathedral, which was, at the moment, in services. We sat on the wall and waited, surrounded by beggars parishioners shrouded in white, across from a dozen or so boys set up to shine shoes. We walked in when it appeared services were over and the gate had been opened, slipping off our shoes and passing between priests making the rounds outside the church, to find ceilings painted sky-blue with golden stars and alters erected in every room surrounding the central area (hidden by deep red curtains), often accompanied by giant cow-skin drums. People prayed, some standing, some kneeling frozen with hands raised, perfect reflections of biblical paintings displayed within gigantuan gold frames in famous museums. Upon exiting, before we climbed into the bell tower of an adjacent building, five men dressed in black walked into the compound and around the church, then entered, bearing a coffin. Apparently, we crashed a funeral.

Later we searched out the Ethnological Museum, housed in the old Imperial Palace, which also serves as the library for the current main university within the city. We were going to go gawk at Lucy, who resides in the National Museum, until we realized that she’s actually stored in some dusty old vault and they actually only display casts of her bones.

Friday, a cab dropped us next to a big church topped by an ornate silver cross sparkling in the sunlight, painted in bright greens, reds and yellows. A little further beyond, on a dusty road leading up through sparse woodland, we found a giant tortoise smack in the middle of our path. Upon extracting our cameras to play “Idiotic Tourist Excited By Stupid Things,” we were interrupted by a nearby soldier who emphatically informed us we were standing by the current palace. Oops. Anyway, we continued up to the Baata Church, constructed of stone and guarded by giant stone lions. Upon entering the church, the priest moved a dusty rug and opened a trapdoor, through which stone steps descended into a basement mausoleum containing four giant marble tombs. Along with the remains of Emperor Menelik II, his wife Empress Taitu, their daughter (the succeeding empress), and Haile Sellasie’s daughter, dozens of old royal and religious artifacts were set into dingy corners and alongside pillars.

Afterward, walking around the somewhat more developed downtown, we hit up a couple monuments and discovered that internet in Ethiopia runs at about the same rate as dial-up. Or slower, if that’s possible in this day and age.

Following lunch we checked out the Mercato, the largest market in Africa. Our favorite cab driver stuck with us, leading us through a giant bewildering maze of tarp huts selling food and metal shacks vending everything from traditional scarves to electric plugs to mattresses.

Saturday I flew to Lalibela. Well, technically I flew to a landing strip near Lalibela, since the town is situated on the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere in the north. The 25-km drive from the one-room airport wound us through lush green crops and past grass houses and dry riverbeds, up along the sheer cliffs of the highest peak in view. The going was made slow by hundreds of people who crowded the street, backs laden with giant sacks of  crops or steering donkeys who dutifully trotted forward up the mountain, nearing the end of a journey up to six hours: I managed to arrive on market day.

The town is perched quite literally on the side of the mountain, at an altitude in the neighborhood of 8,500’. Buildings are constructed of mud, sticks and grass, with the exception of the bank (which has the capacity to do absolutely nothing), a couple souvenir shops and a dozen or so hotels. One cobbled road winds up around the clusters of millennia-old rock-hewn churches carved into the mountainside.

After checking into the hotel, we (myself and a girl from Singapore I met on the plane) played Follow the Leader with the market goers and soon found ourselves on the edge of a colossal, noisy, theoretically organized affair situated on an outcrop overlooking the hills and gorges below. After wading though a fenced area in which men clung to groups of goats and bypassing a ledge below filled with cattle, we found rows upon rows of orange tarps erected under which women, hair set in braids for market day, sat among heaps of chilies, scooping them into buckets for sale. Beyond the chilies we found fresh fruits and vegetables, mounds of grain, spices, coffee and piles of salt and bright green hallucinatory leaves. Bundles of firewood were carefully guarded. Bees swarmed over an area where people sat behind pots of dark honey. Girls carefully watched over sacks of eggs and chickens that lay hobbled next to them. Somewhere in the middle a maze was assembled of three-sided shacks from which men and women hawked traditional scarves and dresses, secondhand clothes, and all manner of household wares. Everywhere, people shouldered their way through the masses. Children flocked, requesting American coins in exchange for Ethiopian. Or for a pen, or to be our guide, planning to demand payment at the end. Or, they simply demanded money in return for photos taken: no matter that the camera was pointed 180º from where they stood.

Later, I went in search of money. Because no one I talked to (including my guidebook) deemed it necessary to mention that Lalibela is in the middle of abosFREAKINGlutely nowhere, so I arrived with about $50 in my pocket (that’s under debate, since official sites list the exchange rate at 11 birr/dollar, but Ethiopians claim it’s 16.5), expecting to find an ATM and help myself to cash. Right. So, I asked the hotel manager: “Is there an ATM in town?” No. “Is there a bank?” Yes. So, I climbed up the hill in search of the bank and walked in breathless. “I need to make a withdrawal.” From which branch? “What? I’ve got a VISA.” Sorry, we don’t do that. “So… what exactly is the purpose of your existence?” We’re a new bank. We’ll be able to do that next year. “Great.” So, I wandered back down to my hotel. The manager said, “You know you can pay us with VISA, right?” Well, why didn’t you tell me that before? Can I buy cash from you? “Yes, that is possible.” … WTF.

They told us that the best time to visit the churches is in the morning. So, bright and early Sunday we walked up to the cluster of buildings we had spotted set into the hill just above the road. Upon climbing the surrounding rock, we quickly discovered that we were crashing Sunday Mass. Men and women wrapped in white sat everywhere– in rows and clusters or alone, on rocks, on benches, next to trees, in front of houses, atop stumps, in the trenches leading to the church proper. As priests cloaked in gold and purple gathered under a blue and orange tasseled umbrella, reading from an Amharic Bible, speakers mounted in nearby trees projected the service down the mountain.

With the conclusion of the service, as we watched churchgoers make their way toward the surrounding wooden fences, a little boy reached out and handed me a charred lump of what I think was traditional Ethiopian communion bread, made in a somewhat similar manner to enjira. After managing to chew and swallow a bite, satisfying our spectators, the rest sat concealed in my hand until it discretely found its way into a trash receptacle.

My henna was a huge hit. In the rare instances when tattoos are spotted on women, they tend to be small. And, Ethiopians in the middle of nowhere don’t realize that henna fades. It started a lot of conversations, when people weren’t too shocked to do anything but stare open-mouthed. “I like your tattoo,” they called. “I like your style!” Some children wanted to touch it. Some were terrified. In this manner, an 11-year-old boy approached as we walked up the hill after mass. “Come see my house!” We followed him to a typical circular, two-story, mud-and-stick Lalibelian house, in which his family rented the bottom half and someone else lived above. Thus commenced an exceptionally awkward ten minutes, in which upon entering the tiny single room, adorned with a single bed and a mosquitoe net, his mother shot him a clear glare of shock and disapproval. She scooted over on the low wooden bench, making room for us to sit next to herself, her four-year-old daughter, and the infant girl in her arms while her son fetched his schoolbooks and eagerly paged through his English, sharing with pride his unintelligible, unpunctuated writing.

Upon politely declined his mother’s offer of coffee, the boy led us out between houses to a doorway where a girl sat next to a large round of traditional bread set out to cool on a wicker pedestal, in the midst of being consumed by one of the family’s goats. In front of the next house, another woman tended to bread still on a metal platter perched over glowing coals. Her mother beckoned us inside, cleared off the low bench, and bade us sit. After spreading a cowskin on the floor she opened enjira onto a plate, unceremoniously plopped onto it a substance that may or may not have been raw meat mixed with a liberal portion of chili paste, and presented it to us (in our honor). Her sons entered and she served coffee from a clay vessel that had been sitting over the coals. And when we finished, she refilled our cups. Apparently the ceremony continues until the coffee is gone, because she repeated the action again and was going to serve us fourths when we managed to explain that, really, in our motherland one is the norm. She gave the rest to her sons.

Later, we found our way into the churches. All of which are carved straight out of the mountain, surrounded by giant trenches and passages leading from one to the next. On the outside, the red-gray rock was worn, adorned with a patchwork of orange, green and yellow lichen. On the inside of the first, rows of columns supported the high ceiling, leading to the front, where a man prayed in front of the central alter. In a corner to the side, hidden by a massive column, several women wrapped in white prayed to a poster of Mary as a priest presided over an unseen subject of interest and another man looked on. And then the unseen woman began screaming, making me well-aware that we were crashing a birth. Go me.

A priest beckoned us out of an adjacent courtyard into a little carved room and disappeared behind a curtain, returning with the Lalibela Cross- pretty much a giant, intricately worked piece of solid gold somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 years old, that some decades ago was stolen, at which point the head priest was arrested and tortured to find its whereabouts, when it was subsequently discovered in the suitcase of an art dealer and returned to its rightful place. Gotta love it.

Inside of the third, unassuming church, we found arches and columns adorned with ornate carving and paintings mixing biblical scenes and Ethiopian tradition. A sense of complete peace was instilled by the reds, blues, whites, yellows, and greens, some flaking and faded with age.

Somehow we found our way into a set of giant, steep steps that led down absolutely nowhere, unless you felt like jumping a good five meters and landing on the solid rock bottom of another trench. Apparently we were intruding on private territory, because an ancient priest poked his head out of a side chamber we hadn’t even noticed in the dark and demanded that we come. After stepping over a void and climbing up some steps, we slipped our shoes off and monkey walked across the sketchiest ladder in the history of mankind to emerge in a tiny chamber decked in posters of Jesus, Mary, Solomon and old Ethiopian kings, ancient prayer books and a bed, lit by a tiny window carved into the wall. From next to his bed the priest extracted a tub full of religious bread and handed us each a chunk. Fantastic. When he started to pass out water, we told him no. Then he sat me down, pulled out a prayer book and began mumbling nonstop under his breath in Amharic. At which point he either expected me to follow along or he completely forgot about me. I honestly couldn’t tell, until we attempted to make our exit and he demanded that we give him money.

Around midday, we found our way down to the Church of  St. George– quite literally a hollowed monolithic rock cross rising 30 m from the floor of a void carved from the mountain below our feet. From where we looked down upon its blazing red walls, we could see out into the distant cliffs and valleys below.

The (more) ancient churches we explored that afternoon were secluded, hidden from sight of the road. We found at least one massive supporting column punctuated by a giant crack, kept from splitting entirely by a tiny, unreassuring metal bracket. The structures sat within a maze of underground tunnels with uneven floors, which we navigated by the light of our cell phones.

After rising early Monday morning, we followed a guide and began to climb into the cliffs above the town. As we navigated the terraced land, we wound through mud-and-grass houses nestled into the trees, accompanied by sunflowers and cattle, occasionally shrouded in cooking smoke. We passed men and women on the trail, herding donkeys and carrying goods strapped onto their backs toward Lalibela. They regarded us as ridiculous: why would we want to walk up here with no reason? Off the trail, old men watched over goats and cows as the grazed under lone large trees wandered the cliff’s gentler slopes. We reached a point where we quite literally pulled ourselves up rocks set into the mountain’s side. “I told you we would climb like monkeys,” our guide commented. Toward the top of our climb, the dry, arid landscape characterized by sparse shrubbery, succulents and bright orange flowers began to resemble a stunted, temperate forest. Evergreens clung to the cliffs, grasped by giant wads of lichen that hung from needles and trunks. When we found ourselves at the top of the outcrop, we felt like we were on top of the world. Mountains dropped away on all sides to land riddled with ridges and canyons far below, disappearing into distant haze under the clear blue sky. You know that song, I Believe I can Fly? It was like that, except better. And then a skittish, shaggy rock hyrax decided to make an appearance, and endemic Gelada baboons began calling from below hidden among the rocks.

As we picked our way back down the mountain we found entire families of farmers bringing in the harvest, whipping cows and horses with sticks as they trod endless circles through grass that had been laid down on bare ground, separating grain and pushing it downward. Apparently our guide was acquainted with one of the farmers, because he sat us down on some rocks to watch as he and his daughters released the animals and began beating the crushed grass before removing the stalks to use as animal feed and sweeping the grains into piles to be collected in sacks. His older daughter disappeared for a few minutes before returning to present us with a jug of  traditional “nonalcoholic beer” and a flat basket of charred, soggy traditional bread. Of which we subtly left the majority of consumption to our guide.

Then, giving leeway to the adjacent steep drop and dry valleys below, we began navigating our way up and around the back of a nearby peak. A good 40 minutes later we arrived at a hidden monastery carved into the mountain, watching over the landscape spread before us. An ancient priest demanded 100 birr for entrance to the monastery. “We’re kind of churched out; we’d rather not.” Our guide then informed us that the 100 birr was not an option, seeing as we had approached the monastery from the wrong side and had already seen its humble exterior. “Well, that’s not our fault. You’re the one who brought us this way.” “Well, then we have to go all the way back around.” “Fine.” A moment of Amharic conversation ensued, after which we were notified that the priest had granted us passage through a short, narrow, pitch-black tunnel to the shorter trail that would lead us back to Lalibela.

As we crossed back through fields of crops to the ridges above town, we were accosted by hordes of children filling our vision with handfuls of wooden crosses on leather thongs. “Lalibela Cross!” No, thank you. “Take home Lalibela Cross!” Really, NO. “Lalibela cross!” Exasperated and at the end of my patience, I finally enlisted our guide’s help, figuring if he was going to rip us off and play us all day he could at least do a little good. “Hey, will you tell these guys we’re Jewish and we don’t believe in Jesus?” I highly doubt he indulged us with a direct translation, but we did thereafter find ourselves walking through relative peace and quiet.

Except, of course, for demands for “picture money.” Upon our arrival in Lalibela, we had quickly come to the realization that aiming a camera at any individual, or group of individuals, or item(s) belonging to an individual, would result in demands for “picture money.” Especially from priests and kids. Even when the woman leading her horse up the hill was a good 50 m away. I mean, seriously, kid? There’s absolutely no connection there. Just because I know two words of Amharic does not mean I’m an idiot, Ahmasegenalo muchisimo. (OK, the second word is Spanish. Whatever.)

The 28th was somewhat of a disaster, in which I arrived at the airport to be informed that my ticket did not exist. Turned out that when I switched my ticket to fly through Lalibela they changed my reservation, but didn’t actually issue me a ticket. They did, however, cancel my first ticket. And somehow on the 25th, “by accident,” I had checked in, the lady at the counter had double-checked my credit card and issued my a boarding pass, and I had gotten on the otherwise full plane out of Addis. Of which the only evidence was my bag tag, because the airline had no record of my existence that day, even in their passenger list. (What?) So, the full plane to Gondar took off without me and I crashed at the airline reps’ house overnight after being informed that the only way to reach Addis in time to return home was to buy myself yet another ticket. Oh yeah, and I had managed to pick up a virus in the mountains in the middle of the boonies of nowhere.

I arrived in Gondar mid-afternoon the next day. Gondar is a small city, bustling in a rustic, hardworking fashion. Dusty, cobbled streets are filled with rickety cars, a few motorbikes, tuk tuks and horses straining to pull loads piled high on unsteady carts composed of unsturdy branches, perched precariously above shaky wheels. After meeting up with the guy with whom I was couchsurfing, we hopped into a tuk tuk and found our way to the royal enclosure– a walled compound of castles in the town’s center from which the kingdom was ruled in the 17th century. We went into the Debre Berhan Selassie Church. Inside the unassuming building bright, flaking, ancient biblical scenes depicting saints, martyrs and lore shown from every inch of the walls and ceilings’ surfaces, brilliantly (if not accurately) illustrating Ethiopia’s history. Even Satan made an appearance, surrounded by beasts and flame. Row upon row of angles peered down from the ceiling, each face’s eyes facing a different direction, leaving no corner unseen. We stopped by Fasilidas' bath– a large, rectangular pool from which a fort-like structure rose on the north end, surrounded by walls stone walls covered in thick, gnarled, mesmerizing roots of trees rising above.

And we made our way down a dusty gravel road to Felasha, the last town inhabited by Jews before they were airlifted to Israel. The couple dozen buildings lining the road were adorned with garish turquoise stars of David. Stand upon rickety stand sold row upon row of black clay lions of Judah. A womens’ pottery and textile coop nestled just off the road sold overpriced scarves and teapots. One woman led us up to the old synagogue, a round mud building splashed with more stars of David. After informing us she was Jewish, she quickly demanded a fee of 10 birr before unlocking the building, promptly discounting her previous words. The inside of the building had been completely cleaned out: remains consisted of a couple small, cloth-covered windows and mud walls adorned with extremely faded pointillism-style patterns, where they hadn’t been worn away. Our plans to walk over to the Jewish cemetery were nixed by a combination of approaching dusk and a few unfamiliar guys who had taken it upon themselves to unsubtly run ahead and position themselves upon our projected path across the river bed that lay just before the compound, beyond a wide, barren field. 

Thursday I returned to Addis and managed to meet up briefly with Adane, my classmate, whom I had managed to reach after arriving in Ethiopia. Who showed up three hours late, and soon took his leave, citing a friend of a friend. (What?) The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing on the secluded front porch of the hostel, reveling in the comfortable, familiar atmosphere of culturally inappropriate, classic Western college-age debauchery, trading stories with other travelers.

Friday, after the ATM spat out an extra $100 of unexchangeable Ethiopian Birr, I arrived early at the airport to have a few truly beautiful traditional knives confiscated by corrupt government officials. Thus, in classic fashion, I embarked upon my 34-hour journey homeward.