[J] After five months in Awassa, we finally went back to Addis Ababa to go and pick up Helen and Dave from the airport. We were lucky enough to cadge a lift from a colleague at Debub who was travelling to the capital for business. We checked into the Yonnas Hotel where we spent some of our in-country training back in February and went off to rediscover the city.
When we first arrived in Ethiopia I wasn't overly impressed with Addis. I thought it was dirty and polluted and didn't even notice the shops. Well after a while away we now realise what a gem it is. We spent the best part of two days wandering around the city amazed at all the objects for sale. We went in supermarkets saying things like "Wow - look at all those olives", "You can even get soya-milk here". "Hmmmm - look at all that chocolate/cheese/marmite etc. etc.". We've now realised that you can buy pretty much anything you could ever think of in Addis. In Mercato we even saw inflatable "Saudi-Air" aeroplanes!
Everyone told us that when we went back we'd love it, and they were so right. We had mushroom soup, mille-feuille cake, ice-cream, yoghurt, croissants - things we haven't seen for over 5 months. If you think we spent most of our time eating then you wouldn't be wrong!
We also visited the library in the Black Lion Hospital so I could try and get some articles for work. I found 3 out of the 10 or so I was after. I had been told there was a photocopying service available but this turned out to be incorrect. I was able to take the journals out of the library - I'm not sure how much this had to do with the librarian having studied in Debub - and was told to go to the post office to get the papers copied for 25 cents a page. We finally found the way to the PO, were searched and allowed to go in and eventually found a man by a photocopier. I asked him to copy the articles and it became apparent that he didn't have a clue how to use the machine. After a failed attempt in which he copied half a page, he admitted it might be better to go along the corridor to the photocopying service! Here I was blatantly overcharged at 50 cents a page despite telling the annoying woman - in amharic - that I knew it should only be 25 cents. I was in a bit of a no-win situation as I didn't know of anywhere else close by where there was a photo-copier and I had to get the journals back to the library. So I handed the money over whilst muttering various insults under my breath. We went out the front entrance which faces the hospital and were walking towards the gate when we were turned back by security guards and told we couldn't exit this way and had to go all the way back through the building and out the back entrance. Grrrr. Mum I think you need to come over to do VSO and sort these PO workers out because so far the PO here has not impressed me. In Awassa you can't even send anything except for letters. I found this out when I tried to send a couple of pressies to the UK. The man behind the counter asked me if I could send them from here. I thought it should be his job to know that but it turned out for anything more than paper, you have to go to Addis to post it. Not exactly convenient!
Anyway we still managed to have a great time and we feel like we know our way around the city a bit better now.
[J] After discovering we had to buy a ticket for 2 Birr to enter the terminal we eventually got into the airport and successfully met Helen and Dave. Thankfully their flight was on time and there were no complications with customs or anything like that. We had a taxi waiting and scooted back to the hotel. It was late and we had to be ready by 6 am to catch a lift back to Awassa. We were really lucky that someone from the Uni in Awassa was going back and had room for all four of us. We travelled in style in a new Toyota Land Cruiser so we got back to Awassa before lunchtime.
We spent a few days in Awassa. I had to teach in the mornings and Neal had to invigilate one afternoon but thanks to Keith's map they managed to navigate themselves when we weren't around. One afternoon we walked up Tabor hill and asked our serategna if she wanted to come along as she had expressed an interest in the past. She joined us and so did Abu. We didn't think Butulay was quite old enough to manage but she was happy enough to stay with a neighbour where she could watch TV! It seemed Almaz really enjoyed our little excursion, I don't think she goes out much and Ethiopians generally don't view going for a walk as a leisure activity so I don't think she'd ever been to Tabor before. She kept jumping into bushes and asking us to take her photo. On the way down the hill she pointed out a nice plant. We agreed it was very conjo so she uprooted it and it's now planted in our garden! Isn't that illegal in the UK?
[J] We decided to have a BBQ to honour our first guests in Ethiopia. There's a cool homemade BBQ in our house left from the guy who lived there before us. So this was our first try - it turned out to be a British BBQ as it started tanking it down with rain halfway through lunch. This didn't really spoil the fun though, we just moved the BBQ under the porch and carried on regardless. I have to say it was pretty good scran. Keith and Lori brought chunks of meat which they had marinated in some precious HP sauce ready for kebabs. Fred and Lidy brought some fresh fish from the market and also some very tasty salads. We supplied some veggies to go on the kebabs and I attempted to make some veggie burgers which tasted ok but as usual with veggie burgers fell apart completely - luckily I had anticipated this and cooked them in foil. We also had baked tatties and some corn on the cob. What a feast, it will definitely need to be repeated - though perhaps when the rainy season is over.
[N] Continuing our run of good luck we headed up to Addis in Uni transport that was heading up for another reason already. Helen and Dave were starting to almost feel that they were missing out by not having taken a bus in Ethiopia... We had an uneventful trip with no close calls with cows, only a steady stream of travel sickness from the daughter of someone else from the Uni travelling with us.
After checking into the Yonnas Hotel, we took a line taxi into town to familiarise H+D with Addis Ababa. Can't remember quite what we did, but I'm sure that it involved coffee and cakes at some point. We had a workshop to attend the next day, concerning the development of high school laboratory manuals in physics, biology and chemistry. This gave H+D the chance to sample the wonders of the national museum - which sounded a bit like somebodies attic. We've yet to visit, but we weren't encouraged to hurry ourselves along.
Our flight out of Addis was on Friday morning at 6.30am. When we confirmed our flights the Ethiopian Airlines guy had told us that we were to check in two hours before the flight time. I'd asked if this was really necessary and he begrudgingly revised the requirement to an hour and a half. So being the diligent traveller and having heard that occasionally the flights actually depart early, we had booked a taxi for 4am. Because the taxi was on time and there was no traffic on the road we actually made it to the check-in desk two hours prior to departure. This was all well and good, except that there were no staff there. And no other passengers either. Eventually a desk opened for a BA flight to London so we asked what was going on there. Well not a lot really. So we just took a seat and waited the hour or so that it took for a random queue to materialise in front of a check-in desk with no apparent activity behind it. Seemingly this was the frequent fliers who knew what was going on so we joined in. Sure enough we were checked through and made our way towards the departure gate.
Unfortunately we weren't allowed through the gate because we hadn't paid our airport tax. Back to the little booth we went to each pay our ten Birr departure tax, this turned out to be required at every airport on our trip. I suppose it's only like at home, but you pay the tax in the ticket price rather than having to deal with a stroppy lady behind a glass screen who demands "money first!" before applying the purple stamp to your ticket.
Once through security we headed to the gate. The flight was delayed a little, but soon enough we were heading down to get a bus to the plane. Here we struck on a slight problem. When we had checked in, Dave's ticket had been written out for the flight to Djibouti (leaving at the same time as our flight), so when we got to the gate, he wasn't allowed to get on the bus - but was instead ushered towards the Djibouti flight. We were already on the bus before we realised that this was going on, so we were driven off to the waiting plane, leaving Helen and Dave to sort out the mistake. A little while after we'd settled in on the Fokker 50, the other pair showed up, so all was well in the end.
Our first flight with Ethiopian Airlines was then underway, after the twin turbo-props had got us into the air I fell asleep to recover from our unnecessarily early start. Apparently this meant that I missed a not too shabby cake. Shame.
[J] We arrived at the airport in Bahir Dar and decided to take the free transport on offer to one of the hotels in town. We heard reports of the hotel previously so we knew it was quite good. We arrived at the Ghion Hotel and armed with previous knowledge asked to see the manager to negotiate a VSO rate for the room. In Ethiopia there are two prices for most things, Habisha price and Ferenji price. Because we earn a rate equivalent to an Ethiopian teacher, we feel we should be entitled to Habisha price, but it's often hard work. Thankfully, the manager of the Ghion knows all about VSO and is happy to give volunteers a reduced rate. I'm sure it's not as cheap as Habisha rate but at least it's something.
Immediately after arrival, the guy who was in the bus asked us if we wanted to arrange a tour on the lake that afternoon. We had chatted with two other people on the bus and decided the 6 of us should get a boat together. So after a quick brunch of a CHEESE sandwich, we headed off. The hotel is right on the edge of the lake and it's very convenient to get a tour from there, and apparently one of the cheapest places to get a tour from. I was relieved to see that unlike the boats on Lake Awassa, the boats on Lake Tana have little outboard motors on them. This is a good thing as the Lake is VERY big, it covers over 3500sq km and is the biggest lake in Ethiopia. One of the attractions of the boat trip is to visit some of the 20 or so monasteries around the edge of the lake and on some of the many islands. Most of them date from the late 16th to early 17th century and lots have little "museums" where they claim to have various ancient artifacts.
Our first port of call was to the Zege peninsula which took about half an hour to get to. During that time we chatted to our fellow passengers, Ben and Franka and our guide. Ben is from Switzerland but is working in Addis Ababa at the moment. He works for a de-mining (i.e land mines) organisation and I think is mostly responsible for a large database of information covering East Africa and the Middle East (Ben - please correct me if I'm wrong!). He was on holiday with his partner Franca, an Italian journalist. We became quite good friends as we kept bumping into each other on our tour of the North! Franca had an Italian guide book to Ethiopia with her, which had lots of really nice photographs in it. One of the photos showed a priest from one of the monasteries holding a book or some other artifact - I forget! The guide saw the picture and got quite excited coz he knew him. He was the priest on one of the monasteries we were going to visit! We reached our first stop and clambered out the boat. We were led along a narrow, muddy path to the first monastery. We were surrounded by kids from the town wanting to chat to us and get pens / exercise books / money / or anything else. They were rather surprised that Neal and I could speak a little Amharic which was nice because it meant they forgot to beg us for so much stuff. Instead they wanted to know all about where we taught and what our students were like. We were also led past several stalls where girls and women were selling all sorts of trinkets. They weren't too aggressive though (they save that for the way back!). Eventually we made it to the first monastery, Ura Kidane Meret. We paid our Birr20 (nay chance of a discount here matey), took off our shoes and went inside. From the outside the churches don't look very impressive, they're surrounded by a big tukkul (traditional, round house-like building) but inside, every surface is covered in beautiful paintings depicting various stories from the Bible. Our guide showed us round and explained some of the paintings and told us how old they are estimated to be. The oldest part of the church is thought to date back to the 14th century (but I'm not really sure if this is true, as every church claimed this!) . Also in every church, they make a big point of telling you the paints are derived from local plant extracts, which I suspect is true but means they have to repaint the paintings every 10 years or so because they fade quickly. SO the original painting may have been hundreds of years old but what we were actually looking at had been painted over just a few years before. Well they were still beautiful anyway. There's a very distinctive Ethiopian style to all the paintings which are the same everywhere. The people are drawn with wide faces and big wide eyes. We also had a look round the "museum" which was actually just one display but also quite pretty. It contained various crosses and robes used by ancient Kings and Priests.
The next church was further down the peninsula and was called Beta Maryiam (Mary's Church). We had to pay another Birr20 each so Neal and Dave decided to skip this one. It was pretty similar to the previous church but it was a special "Saints" day for that church, so there was lots of people inside waiting for a service or perhaps just hanging out. Also at the back of the church the windows to the place where the Ark of the Covenant was were open - Every church has it's own replica Ark which is taken out and paraded around during the Timkat festival, which celebrates epiphany. So we got a glimpse of a box covered by a large piece of velvet. If I'm sounding a bit negative, I don't mean to - I enjoyed going into the churches, they're very beautiful and definitely worth a visit. I just don't think you need to visit all of them! And anyway apparently the next one we visited was best, but Helen, Franca and I couldn't go to this one as it' for men only. Our boatman offered to take us to the next island where there is a womens'-only church, but apparently it's a bit crap in comparison and we'd seen enough.
So when we arrived at the Kebran Gabriel island monastery, us girlies just hung out by the jetty with some binoculars and watched the world go slowly by. The local people travel on the river on long thin boats made out of some kind of reed-like plant material. They often transport a boat load of rocks to sell at the market in Bahir Dar. The rocks obviously weigh down the boats considerably so the men rowing are barely above the water line. I'm sure they must get wet bums occasionally too. On the island it was quite nice not to be surrounded by kids begging for exercise books etc. They seem to have quite a scam going on. Of course, you don't tend to carry exercise books around with you but that's not a problem, the kids have slips of paper ready with their names and a postal address on. This all seems a bit fishy to me, because to have a PO Box costs a bit of money - what I'm saying is if you can afford a PO Box, then you can afford to buy an exercise book. but then when we looked at the notes in more detail it got a bit stranger. The addresses were c/o Agent so and so. So there's whole agencies set up to receive exercise books from tourists. I'm not sure how many of these books the kids will see, as they will have no way of knowing how many they will get sent - but hey I am pretty cynical maybe it's all an honest set up to provide kids with school materials.....
The only inconvenience of the Ethiopian airline flights, is that you have to confirm every trip a day or two before you go. We set off to the Ethiopian airlines office and saw there was an enormous queue. We went back to the hotel and asked them to confirm the flights by phone but unfortunately they couldn't get through. So we went back to the airlines office and went to join the queue. It is in fact quite unEthiopian to have a queuing system so we were thankful there was at least some kind of order. It was about 4:15pm when we got in and it closed at 5 pm so we hoped we would be seen before then. As we knew we were in for a long wait we decided to start playing cards - which Neal handily happened to have in his bag. Of course this provided great entertainment to the other folk waiting - those funny ferenji, what on earth are they doing. After a few rounds of rummy where we were awkwardly balancing our tricks on our knees a very helpful member of staff brought a small table over and put it down in front of us. This also caused great amusement and we were very chuffed to have our own little card table. So we whiled away the time and eventually there was only two or three people in front of us. Then a large rainstorm started - and I mean large - it absolutely bucketed it down. This was of course accompanied by a power cut so all the computers in the office went down. It was now 5 pm so the staff suggested we come back tomorrow - Are you joking? I thought - we'd been waiting for the best part of an hour and only had two half days to spend in Bahir Dar. There was no way I was going to waste another hour sitting in that office. Thankfully Neal and Dave sorted the situation out so I didn't have to start shouting at anyone. We left our names and flight detail and asked them if they could reconfirm our tickets in the morning when the power came back on again. At first they seemed quite reluctant to do this, but eventually they agreed.
After all this we were pretty hungry and it was still tanking it down with rain. We didn't really want to eat at the hotel again - not because it wasn't good, but just because we wanted to try somewhere else. Unfortunately we didn't know where anything was and after running around for 20 minutes or so getting soaked to the skin, and finding out that nowhere could cook any food because they didn't have any electricity we gave up and went back to the hotel. We got back to the hotel and to our great pleasure we found some other VSOs already in the restaurant. Amadou was there and so was Steve and his wife Salam. We'd met Steve and Salam in Awassa just a few weeks before and they were just staying in Bahir Dar (where they'd lived) for a couple of weeks before both moving back to the UK. Luckily the Ghion was capable of producing some hot food. We had a very tasty Bayanetu and for some reason the chef gave us a free fish goulash and a plate of Cheeps. These are the Ethiopian equivalent of chips, but are more like crisps. they are very thin slices of fried potato. They always go down a treat though.
The next day we had a trip to the Blue Nile Falls. Now this is one thing we definitely got ripped off on. Unfortunately we didn't have much choice as the time of out flight to Gondar meant we couldn't use the public buses that go out there. Instead our friendly "organiser" at the hotel kindly arranged a minibus to take us and bring us back at an absolutely extortionate price. In hindsight we could have hired a private taxi for cheaper. But hey ho, hindsight is always a wonderful thing. Anyway we set off and the driver stopped to get petrol. An insignificant event you might think, well yes if you can get the key out of the ignition to open the petrol cap. Our driver couldn't. Soon we had a small posse of helpers all suggesting various things. The key was covered in oil to try and slide it out which just meant there was now no way of holding the key coz it just slipped out your hand. Eventually, someone went back to the hotel to get the spare set of keys there! Anyway we made it to the village of Tis Isat next to the falls, bought our tickets at the ticket office and then our driver dropped us off in a car park and said he'd see us in a couple of hours. So we weren't even provided with a guide for our sky-high fee -humph. As we got out the bus we were immediately surrounded by scores of young boys who wanted to be our guide. H+D had a copy of the Bradt Guidebook to Ethiopia which had a pretty clear map of where to go so we decided we didn't want to hire a guide and shooed them all away. This didn't completely work and one guy followed us all the way round anyway. The walk to the falls is quite pleasant. It was market day too, so hundreds of people from the surrounding area come in to the village of Tis Isat to sell their wares. On the way to the falls we were going against this flow of people, cows and goats but it wasn't as busy as the walk back. There's plenty of opportunity on the walk to buy souvenirs, soft drinks and various other trinkets, scarves etc. In fact it's hard to get rid of them! We walked past the hydro-electric plant which takes about 75% of the water from the river before it reaches the falls, except on a Sunday where they let all the water go over the falls (best day to visit!). It's about a 20 minute walk to the falls with stunning views along the way. The falls themselves were fairly stunning. We'd been previously warned not to expect much as 75% of the water goes to the hydro-electro plant. But the rainy season had been in full swing for a month or so and we certainly weren't disappointed. In fact it makes it even more amazing when you think that we were only seeing a quarter of the water. One thing which wasn't true to the brochure was the colour. They certainly weren't blue, but brown. This is due to the all the rain of the rainy season washing lots of mud into the rivers. There's an option of doing a circular walk and getting a ferry across the river upstream of the falls and a short walk back to the village. However as we were fairly short of time we decided it would be a safer bet to go back the way we came. We bustled along with the market crowd pausing occasionally to let speeding groups of locals rush on past to get to the market. We all said "Salam" "Tena Istillign" or some other greeting as they passed which resulted either in hoots of laughter or a surprised but appreciative reply.
As we got back to the main road we had a bit of an unpleasant experience as we gave our unwanted "guide" a small amount of money. Me being the bitch that I am didn't think we should give him anything but Dave said he had chatted to him a a bit and he'd pointed out a few things. So Dave gave him 5 Birr. The guide then started shouted "You agreed to give me 10 Birr - You're a liar, this is the first time a ferenji has lied to me....etc etc" I pointed out to him that we hadn't agreed any such thing and had clearly told him we didn't want a guide and he'd followed us anyway. Unfortunately when I get angry lose the ability to speak any Amharic which would be very beneficial at such times - something I must work on! Well he whinged some more so I pointed out the hundreds of people around us and told we'd just given him more money than these people would earn all day and that it was people like him that will ruin the tourism industry in Ethiopia. He backed down at this point and even said that he would try and change (yeah right!). It's really difficult to know what the right thing to do is. A lot of people are very poor but in the more touristy areas people get greedy and expect large sums of money for not really doing anything. Part of the problem is that to a tourist, it really isn't much money so they don't feel bad in giving someone the equivalent of a fiver which would take an average person 2 weeks or more to earn. I think also many tourists must feel guilty about being on holiday in such a poor country and it makes them feel better to give people money. However this raises the expectations of local people and hence they think all ferenji are rich and expect large amounts of money. To try and put this in perspective a tour guide in Lalibela will earn about 200 Birr for 3-4 hours work. Now for a tourist that seems fairly reasonable - it's less than £20 after all. But if you compare that to what we get - a teachers salary which is a fairly well paid job, we get 30 Birr a day!
Another consequence of this is the desperation of people to be your guide as mentioned above. And this leads to the common problem of being followed by someone, when you'd much rather be alone and then to add insult to injury they will demand money for being your guide at the end. In H+D's Bradt guidebook it calls such pests "Plonkers", we decided to rechristen them "Rodneys" so that's what they are!
Back in Bahir Dar we grabbed a tasty lunch in town and headed back to the hotel to get the bus to the airport at the agreed time of 12:30pm. However we arrived to angry shouts demanding to know where we'd been and that the bus had been waiting half an hour to leave and we were late blah blah blah! We explained we had been told 12:30 and pointed out the guy who had told us this who begrudgingly agreed with us and we were let on the bus and greeted with dirty looks from all the passengers who were in absolutely no danger of even being late for check in let alone miss their flights! The rest of the journey was made excruciatingly unbearable by being forced to listen to Celine Dion at full volume accompanied by various hangers-on (they weren't catching any flights) singing along. We arrived at the airport to have our bags whisked off the bus and on to a porter's trolley. "Stop" we shouted "we don't want it" in Amharic but were assured it was okay "Chigger Yellem" so we left it. Our bags then disappeared into some room where they apparently do the security checks and then were put in a queue with more luggage. This is quite good as your bags queue for you so you can sit down - and get the cards out - and when your bags reach the front of the queue you go and check-in. After checking in those friendly porters reappeared and demanded money for the luggage service ....Grrrr! We gave them 5 Birr or something and they look at it in disgust and said "Is this from all of you?" "Yes it is and don't push your luck" I scowled before walking off in a huff.
[J] We arrived on time into Gondar and negotiated a taxi to some fellow VSOs accommodation. We had absolutely no idea where it was except it was a big yellow building in the Medical College Campus and you can't miss it. The taxi driver said he knew it and actually took us through the gates of the college and right up to the big yellow building which you really couldn't miss. We then had great fun trying to find which flats contained VSO volunteers. We had met Greg in Addis Ababa the previous week and he told his flat number but him and his wife weren't in. We knew Bill and Cynthia also lived there, they arrived at the same time as us and two other VSOs lived in the same building who we hadn't met before. We tried banging on various doors asking for the VSO ferenji who lived here. We figured it couldn't be too hard as there were no more than 20 flats in the building and ferenji tend to be quite conspicuous. However we seemed to get sent on a wild goose chase. Everybody insisted they knew where we wanted to go and led us to Greg and Rochelle's flat. We tried to explain they weren't in and could they direct us to a different ferenji's house. After visiting every floor of the building we finally met Jo, a medic, who incidentally also graduated from Glasgow Uni! She pointed us in the right direction to Bill and Cynthia's flat who had just opened their door at that time to see what all the noise was about. It turned out we should have noticed it from the start by the world space radio cable coming out one of the windows - Neal had even spotted it earlier and mentioned it must be a ferenji's house.
That evening we went to a restaurant on the campus. We were impressed with the cheap draught beer, the pasta, and the fish was highly recommended. After filling ourselves up we went back to B&C's flat to watch a film on their laptop. We very impressively managed to fit EIGHT of us in their front room and I think everyone could just about see the screen! We watched Mulholland Drive which was completely bonkers, in the style you'd expect from David Lynch and was met with a somewhat mixed reaction! After the film, Helen and Dave bedded down there and we went up to Greg and Rachelle's flat and slept in their spare room.
The next morning proved to be one of the highlights of the trip, forget churches and waterfalls. B&C have got a grill and made us toast for breakfast! After brekkie we went to the main road to try and get a line taxi into town. We soon gave up as they were all full and decided to walk instead. B&C were with us so we couldn't get lost. They showed us round the town a bit, we reconfirmed our flights for the next day (with no waiting at all!) and they pointed us in the right direction to "see the sights" of Gondar.
We decided to go to the Debre Berhan Selassie Church to start. It's a good half hour walk uphill out of the city and we kept thinking, we must be there by now, maybe we've missed it. But we hadn't and when you get to it, it's pretty obvious (just like it said in the guidebook!). We got to the gate and saw the church was shut over lunch (for a service) from 12-1:30 pm. We have huffed and puffed our way up the hill and it was 11:50 am. Hmmmm what do we do? Do we pay the money just for 10 minutes or do we walk all that way again after lunch - in the opposite direction of everything else of course. We decided that we could probably see most of the paintings in 10 minutes and thought we might not have time to come back in the afternoon. We chatted to the old priest guy for a while and although we couldn't negotiate Habisha price, he did give us a good discount so we were happy enough.
"Ten minutes, you've got - there's a service on" he firmly reminded us as we took our shoes off and entered the church. This church is famous for the angels painted on the ceiling. Apparently there's 80 of them and they're painted in the Ethiopian style. I thought they were beautiful and I spent a few minutes just lying on the floor gazing up at them. The priest came back in and we asked him a few questions about some of the other paintings in the church. At this he completely dropped his stern exterior and became very chatty and told us we could have another 3 minutes if we wanted. We gratefully accepted and continued to chat with him. he showed us a painting of Mary that had been painted by an Ethiopian but in a "European" style. The skin colour was lighter, the face thinner and the eyes much smaller. After becoming so used to the Ethiopian style, this skinny white Mary looked quite odd! The priest seemed really pleased that we were interested in the church and kept telling us "Okay, you can have another 5 minutes", "You can stay for 10 more minutes if you are interested" Eventually we ended up persuading him that we really had seen enough and were happy enough to leave. I guess he must be used to tourists being herded inside in a tour group and then whisked off to tick off the next sight on the list because he seemed genuinely surprised that we asked so many questions.
After leaving the church itself, we spent quite a while wandering around the grounds of the church. It was very peaceful and relaxing and we were desperately trying to get photos of the bright green parakeet-type birds that were whizzing around the trees. It was quite overgrown and could have been a stunning garden if somebody had the inclination and the money to tend it. Outside the church we explored a little to find a good spot to get a picture of the great view of the rest of Gondar and the castle. As we walked back down the hill into Gondar, all the people going to the church service were coming the other way all dressed in their Sunday best.
The Royal Enclosure in the centre of Gondar is where the various kings and queens of Ethiopia built their castles when Gondar was the capital of Ethiopia. It was founded as capital in 1636 by Emperor Fasiladas and remained so for over 200 years. We spent a LONG time at the entrance trying to get habisha price. The problem not being that they wouldn't accept our ID. No that was fine - the problem was it was a Sunday and the manager wasn't there to authorise it. We were told if we came back tomorrow we could get in for habisha price but today it was impossible. We explained we wouldn't be in Gondar tomorrow, that we were teachers in Awassa, that we were paid at a local salary level in Ethiopian Birr, we pointed out the habisha price on the board that was written in Fidel and so on and so on. Eventually we decided to skip it (we're going back in September), so Helen and Dave went in and we walked out the gate. As we left a guy came chasing after us and told us to wait. He then disappeared for ten minutes or so and returned saying we could enter for habisha price. He said if we could read Amharic then we must be habisha. He also said we mustn't tell anyone or he'd get into trouble.....oops
So we caught up with H&D and started exploring the compound. It's huge and is filled with all sorts of exciting ruins which you are free to climb all over and go inside. The biggest and most intact castle is Fasiladas' Castle. We found out later that you can usually go inside this one but it was locked because it was the weekend! [Hint: don't visit the Royal Enclosure at the weekend!] Part way round, the heavens opened and we ran for cover amongst the ruins. We had a great time running from broken archway to little cubby hole around the grounds. The other visitors must have thought we were completely mad as we ran about in the rain looking like soggy turtles as we'd put our rucksacks under our raincoats - especially Dave coz his coat was green! We decided to scarper when there was a break in the rain and headed back to our accommodation via Fasiladas' Baths.
After ignoring several sets of completely opposing directions we found the gate to the bath's. Fasiladas travelled quite a way to have his baths as they're about 2 km from his castle. These baths are still used today to celebrate the festival of Timkat - or epiphany, celebrating Christ's baptism. During this festival the replica Ark of the Covenant from each church is taken to a nearby body of water. In Gondar these baths are used and it is the only time of year when they are filled with water. It is a beautiful spot and the bath is about the size of a swimming pool with a little tower built in the middle of it. You could just picture the King (or a priest) standing on one of the balconies from the tower addressing his people. The surroundings are also really nice, the enclosure is surrounding by huge old trees whose roots have found there way through the walls to become an integral part of the structure. We also saw a vulture's nest in one of the trees. Later on we saw Rachelle's photo's from the previous Timkat festival. It looked completely mad with scores of kids throwing themselves into the pool and the surrounding ledges completely packed with people.
The next day we flew to Lalibela. The airport is about 13 km from the town and we were transported into town by a minibus associated with the Seven Olives Hotel who give you a discount on the trip if you stay in their hotel. On the trip into town we could see why the airport was so far out of town. It was the only bit of land flat enough to land a plane. The area is absolutely stunning with big rolling hills which were all green as it was the rainy season. At the hotel we went through the now usual rigmarole of negotiating the price of a room. Then we had to deal with negotiating a guide. We'd met up with Ben and Franca again and decided to "do" the churches together. There were several guides touting for our trade. All of them with "official ID" which of course were all completely different and all slagging off the other guides insisting we had already agreed to go with them. Eventually we picked one (much to the disgust of the others) and fixed a price of Birr200 - an absolutely extortionate price (over 6 times our daily salary for a few hours work!) but they've definitely cottoned onto rich ferenji tourists in Lalibela.
We walked down to the main entrance where you buy a ticket which allows you to see all of the main churches inside the town. Here we went through the motions of negotiating habisha price and failed dismally. We decided to try the same tactic that worked in Lalibela but that also failed here. So we decided to just chill out in the town. It may sound tight of us but the ferenji price to get in is 100Birr compared to being free for habisha. We just couldn't afford to pay it, we even asked them just to give us a discount but it was hte same old story that there was no-one able to "authorise" it. It's frusrtaing but I suppose all these measures are here to prevent corruption which there isn't much of in Ethiopia so I guess all the paperwork and purple stamps is worth it. Apparently as we left a big arguament broke out between various people hanging around. There are always people who stick up for us but when it comes down to it, it's the man with the purple stamp who decides - or doesn't. So we left H&D and Ben and Franca to enjoy the churches while we decided what to do with the afternoon. Finding a cafe that sold good cakes was a priority, but wasn't to be....
As we were walking down the street we were approached by a young boy who had heard what had happened and suggested we see the big priest man who might give the much needed authrity to let us in for habisha price. What the hell we thought we'll give it a try. So accompanied by the boy and his pal we went into a small building that was fairly bustling with activity. I think it was some kind of council offices. We were led up some tiny stairs to The Room with the Priest. We entered the room to be faced by a very intimidating figure. He was very large and draped in purple robes. Aswe entered the boys ran up to kiss his cross and be blessed. In other places, the priests usually excuse/ignore the ferenji but it soon became apparent we were expected to do the same, so we did - but we didn't run though! Then we got down to business. We got out our VSO ID, our resident permits and explained our position in our best Amharic. The priest looked approvingly at our documents and nodded "It is good, it is good". Then he looked up at us and said that we'd still have to pay 100 Birr....Oh well I suppose it was worth a try. Then we saw that kids are the same everywhere - standing in front of the preist you would have thought these were the most devout children you had ever seen As we walked back down the stairs, one of the kids called out "Don't worry, he is a crazy man!".
As we wondered down the street we drew the attention of several kids as the other boys told them what was going on. We were then bombarded with suggestions of what we should do, and did we know so and so who was a VSO ferenji who had visited last year. We consulted our guide book and decided the suggestion of visiting the church of Ashetan Maryam which involved a pleasant walk up a hill too. Then we had to pick our guide, so it was only fair to pick the first boy who had taken us to see the priest. When we tried to negotiate a price he said we could pay him whatever we wanted and he would spend it on materials for school! It's probably best not to accept this type of negotiation in future as someone is inevitably upset by the final fee handed over - but you live and learn.This rock-hewn church is at an altitude of about 3000m and it took us about 1 1/4 to reach the church. We went at quite a pace and it turned out that our guide lived up at the church and did this walk everyday to go to school. We felt completely unfit as we huffed and puffed and sweated up the hill as the boy stood patiently at various points to wait for us. The climb was worth it though we had amazing views over the town and the surrounding countryside. The church itself is meant to be one of the oldest rock-hewn (i.e. carved out from the bedrock - by angels apparently!) from the 12th or 13th century but it was never completely finished. We took off our shoes and were escorted inside to where the priest showed us various artefacts, crosses and old books with pretty pictures in. After a wander around we started our descent. By the time we got to the bottom we were definitely ready for our tea!
We invited our guide back to the hotel and bought him a drink and then paid him 10 Birr. He didn't say anything but he was obviously gutted. It's so hard to work out what to pay people. We figured that we get 30 Birr a day and that 10 Birr for a young boy for 3-4 hours work was enough. The average daily wage for a labourer is maybe 4-6 Birr a day so comparatively we paid him a large sum of money. The problem in the tourist places is people just think if you're ferenji you are rich and will pay extortionate amounts. And I guess the Birr is so weak, people feel stingy (and guilty) if they give small amounts of money. Oh well as I said, he (and so will we) will probably fix a price next time and then everyone knows where they stand.
That evening we went to a pleasant cafe for tea. Despite being one of the top tourist attractions in the country, Lalibela is very underdeveloped. there are hardly any places to eat and the hotels are somewhat shabby and very overpriced. There is a big new school though which was pointed out to us several times by children we met on our walk. there's a small village about half way up the hill on a beautiful plateau where the children walk an hour each way to get to school or go into the town.
We returned to the cafe for breakfast the next morning - much to the disappointment of the hotel manager, but it was half the price for the same breakfast as the hotel. Neal, Helen and Dave had a bit of an egg experience at breakfast. They ordered scrambled eggs and asked for toast with it. However it became apparent that "ferenji toast" had been interpreted as french toast so they each ended up with a plate of scrambled eggs and eggy bread each. I had to hold my nose while I ate my toast and marmalade - yuk!
On arrival in Axum we accepted a free ride from a bus connected with the "Africa Hotel". We were pleasantly suprised to find reasonably priced rooms (seemingly with no ferenji rate!) and a nice hotel. We dumped our stuff and set off to explore the town. The feel in Axum is very diferent to anywhere else we've been in Ethiopia. It had a kind of Western Frontier town look to it. The streets are lined with big ole cactuses and the area is quite dusty and run down. We kept expectung someone to burst through some saloon doors and start a shoot out - but luckily this didn't happen. Our list of things to do was 1) bank 2) cake shop 3) confirm tickets 4) go sightseeing. So we found the bank and H&D set about exchaniging some US$ travellers cheques to Ethiopian Birr at a horrendous exchange rate. Transactions at the bank take a long time so after a while Neal and I decided to go and confirm the flight tickets and find the cake shop. Unfortunately the Ethiopian Airlines office was shut so we had to go straight to the cake shop. Doubly unfortunately - and this turned out to be the downfall of Axum - there were no cakes. We decided to stay - partly coz we'd arranged to meet H&D there and also it was lunchtime and they did have some food. When the others turned up (with a nice full wallet) we ordered some lunch and lounged on the comfy sofa in the cafe. On the wall behind us was a enormous poster depicting a quaint "English country garden" scene - quite bizzarre. Good service isn't exactly a known practice in this country. An hour later our lunch arrived but it was very tasty and we weren't in a rush.
After going back to the Ethiopian Airlines office to re-confirm our tickets without any hassle, we set off to the museum which is where you buy the tickets. Like Lalibela you buy one ticket which enables you to see all the sights in the town of Axum. Yet again we had to fight and fight to get habisha price (4Birr) and not ferenji price (50Birr). We ended up being sent to the council offices where we explained to the guy our now oft-repeated story of our situation here. He replied "So what's the problem, pay habisha price?" That's exactly the probelm we explained, no-one will LET us pay habisha price. He made a phone call - asked if we had a car?!? and then said it was all arranged. SO off we went back to the museum and bought our tickets. As it was quite late in the afternoon by this time we decided just to go for a walk past the Queen of Sheba's baths to a church that was on our map and then round the back of the town in the hills back to our hotel. We had suprisingly little hassle of people wanting to guide us - just boys trying to sell us little carved stellae.
The walk was really nice, we saw lots of tef fields (the grain that is used to make injera) and stood watching a hovering bid of prey for some time - much to the amusment of the locals. We found our way to the church but decided not to go in as we wanted to get back before dark and it looked like it was going to rain. So we carried on walking in approximately the right direction towards town and the hotel. Axum is in Tigray where they speak Tigrinia, not Amharic. Usually, when we are hounded by kids I explain that we live in Ethiopia and we don't have any exercise books / pens / sweets to give them. But I felt like a helpless tourist - I didn't even know how to tell them to go away when we'd had enough! Eventually the kids get bored when they realise you're not going to give them anything, or they just need to go in another direction to get home - I'm not sure. Then of course when we needed people around to find out the way back to town there was nobody. The path just seemed to stop and curl back round in the opposite direction to which we wanted to go. The ominous looking storm clouds were getting closer and we reckoned we didn't have much more than half an hour of daylight left. So we picked a route and followed it and ended up walking down a dry river bed which we figured led into the town centre. We rejoined a path just as the heavens opened and sheltered under a tree for a while. We didn't shelter for long though as we decided we should keep going. Luckily we all had waterproofs with us, but when your in an African rainstorm it doesn't help that much - it's like being in a power shower. We eventually found our way back to the hotel and the rain storm only lasted 10 minutes or so, so not too bad. We changed and had an absolute banquet for dinner in the hotel. We ordered lentil soup and the waiter asked if we wanted some other food too. We asked him how big the portion was and he suggested we order something else too. So H&D ordered a spaghetti to share and Neal and I Tegamino. About ten minutes later 4 buckets of steaming lentil soup arrived along with a plate of side salad and two rolls each. We started to make an indentation in the soup, which was delicious and a nice change from the usual fare on offer, when the rest of the food arrived. A big plate of spaghetti with a boat of sauce with another side salad and more bread and then a big plate of injera and a bowl of steaming tegamino (thick spicy sauce) arrived. We ran out of room on the table and the waiter had to bring extra chairs to perch all the side salads and bread rolls on. We worked our way through as much as we coud but I was pretty full before I was halfway through my soup!
[N] Next day we set out across town to rendezvous with a guide at the museum. We made had a loose kind of arrangement the day before and didn't particularly expect the guy to be there. In fact we were told that today it was the turn of the tourist office to provide guides, so we needed to back towards the hotel and ask there. Unfortunately we were greeted with a somewhat appathetic response to our desire to enlist a guide. After not managing to stir any interest in the possibity of having to get out of their chairs the two youngish looking guys sent us away with a leaflet about Axum. After considering just heading off on our own we decided to nip back to the museum as it was on the way and let them know how useless the tourist office had been. This turned out to be a good move, since we ended up being guided by a chap who was directly involved in the archaeological work which is taking place in Axum.
First we headed up to the northern stelae field which has a rag-tag assortment of these stone monoliths, either standing, lying or shattered across the ground. Apparantly there are over 120 of them, but you are rather drawn to the main few which are standing or enormous. The tallest standing stele, attributed to King Ezana, is 24m high and is has a representation of the floors of a house carved all the way up it. Perhaps the most striking monolith is the Great Stele, which is 33m long. Long rather than tall, as it has fallen over and broken into several pieces. It is carved on all four sides - again representing the floors of a multi-story house. I think the project manager for this stele probably didn't last long after the completion of this project. It is thought that when it was erected, they rather overcooked the righting of it and toppled it right over - so after spending however many years or decades carving this thing it was then pushed over and smashed into bits!
The stelae mark the tombs of the monied classes, generally a tunnel extends from the base of a stele to a tomb several metres distant. It was local law for all the wealth that anyone accrues through their lifetime to be buried with them when they die. The idea behind this was that if the next generation was given the wealth of thier parents, they would not strive hard enough and as a result the civilisation would not be pushed forward. This seemed to be particularly tough on anyone unfortunate enough to be widdowed, because the wealth was buried with the first of the couple to die. The tomb associated with King Ezana's stele has been partially excavated and has a warehouse-roof-like structure over it now, protecting it from the elements. Not particularly attractive, but I can see why it needs to be protected.
After procuring a taxi to take us around the rest of the sights we headed off towards King Kaleb's palace. En-route we took in King Ezana's inscription which is a large tablet with inscriptions in Sabaean, Ge'ez and Greek which basially say what a great guy King Ezana is and give thanks to God. It was dug up by a farmer in the 1980's and now has it's own little stone hut to live in. The palace is on a wee hill with a protective wall and more protective warehouse roofing to keep the rain out. The remaining part of the palace is the tombs underneath what would have been the palace. Seemingly, when you build your house, you include a tomb to occupy after you pass on. Provides a bit of a difficulty if you decide to move house because you have to build yourself another one. I don't think that King Kaleb is resident.
I think the magic of Axum was brought home to us in the tombs of King Kalebs palace. Our guide walked to the back corner of one of the chambers and stamped on the floor. A hollow sound led him onto telling us what seems like an incredible story. Apparently there is a stone lined tunnel, three metres wide and two metres tall, all the way from this point to the Red Sea (over 250km away). A hundred kilometres of the tunnel have already been investigated and following further excavation after the rainy season, an anouncement will be made to the world's press. You heard it here first! Supposed purposes for the tunnel are troop movement and delivering supplies from the Red Sea ports.
Just next to King Kaleb's palace, at the edge of a field was a hole in the ground which was actually a four-way burial chamber. This was the sort of thing that the commoner people would be buried in, not the same level of granduer of enormous granite blocks forming a network of chambers. However still quite an undertaking.
[J] Our taxi then transported us to the Queen of Sheba's palace, well what's left of the palace but it's still pretty impressive. We were shown the throne room, her bathroom where you could see where the waste water drained away, and some ovens which were used to fire bricks, pottery and glass. there are still some bricks there too. Opposite the palace is antoher stelae field, there are hundreds of fragments of fallen stelae where we just wandered around trying to imagine what htey must have looked like on their hayday. We didn't find any artefacts but apparently there are loads of coins being found all the time - and sold on to tourists usually.
Finally our taxi dropped us off at a recomemded lunch stop. We ate an absolutely delicious bayanetu (fasting food) but unfortunatley the owner then rather ruined our dining experience by blatantly overcharging us - so we will not be returning there....
After lunch and coffee, we remet our guide who took us to church. We thought we were just going for a quick whiz round but oh no we got the whole experience here. We were ushered into a small building just next to the church in the same compound and discovered a baptism was taking place. We felt slightly intrusive barging in on the ceremony and we didn't take up our guides invitation to take photographs. It was interesting to see though. There were two babies, one of each - boys get baptised at just a few weeks old and girls a bit later. They were blessed with holy oil which was dabbed onto each of their limbs and then given to a rather uncertain looking young boy whose job it was to carry the baby round to the priest where they got dunked in the water. He loked rather unsure of how to hold a baby and carried it like a bag of flour and of course this resulted in much crying from the kids. After this we went back to the main church where a service was about to take place. We were given dullas (big sticks) and as we found out these are for leaning on during the long services. We watched as the priests came out from the inner sanctum and chanted and read out some stuff. They were wearing what were once very plush robes but now look quite tatty. It seems that the churches don't have as much money as I'd previously imagined - well not all of them - I imagine the churches in Lalibela are better as that's where the entrance fee goes to. An interesting feature of this church was one of the walls was covered in modern paintings. It had been destroyed maybe 40 years ago or something and the new paintings blend in witht he old but add something else too. Outside the church our guide went to speak to an incredibly old man. He then informed us he was 96 and a "retired hermit!" - didn't know you could retire from being a hermit!
We then went back to the museum and tipped our guide (officially the guides in Axum are free - but they expect a (large) tip), thanked him and said goodbye. We also had to write a letter to explaint hat our man had only agreed to guide us as the lads in the tourist office wouldn't. We headed back towards the hotel with the aim of finding a cake shop. Directions had been given by our guide. As we were walking down the road a large white jeep pulled up beside us and stopped and ur guide got out with another man who turned out to be his boss. He wanted us to confirm that we had been to the tourist office nad been refused a guide. Apparetnyl another guide had seen our man guiding us and made a complaint to the big boss man that it wasn't his turn. So we explained what had ahppened and mentioned the staff in the tourist office had been quite rude. Then the boss started to apologise and said he knew the tourism industry wasn't perfect but htey were working hard to improve it. This was something that seemed very positive about Axum. They are trying to abolish the whole habisha/ferenji price differences in the hotels, restaurants and soon for the tickets apparently too. It was refreshing to visit somewhere where tourism was being grasped as a good opportunity to provide a good service for the money that that tourists pay.
Eventually we found our long sought-after cake shop. We'd been deprived of cake for at least 3 days now and were starting to get desperate. We ordered some drinks and a selection of cakes. I have to say they weren't great cakes and we left feeling a little disappointed. But never mind we cheered ourselves up with the thought of the pizza that we had preordered for tea that night. Before dinner we decided to visit another hotel in the town. We were drawn there by a leaflet we had seen in the airport. It was for a very posh (by Ethiopian standards) hotel called the Ramhai. It advertised rooms with telephone coupled with hot and cold running water which sounded mildy dangerous. But most impressively was it's offer to "relax in our lounge with a drink and uncouth snacks" or if you fancied something a bit more substantial you could go to the restaurant where you have a whole uncouth menu to choose from. Well we had to go didn't we? We met up with Wolaita in our hotel (another VSO volunteer from Gondar who was on her way to Mekele) so she came along too. Unfortunately the hotel claimed they had run out of leaflets but we decided to stay for a drink or two anyway. We supped our beers and chatted and half watched the tv in the lounge. It was expensive as you could tell before you arrived because all the UN vehicles were parked outside! After a short time, the heavens completely opened. And this time they weren't joking. We waied a while to see if it would stop but there was nay chance of that. After some time we decided we'd just have to make a run for it. Just outside the hotel was the dry river bed we had walked along the previous day. It now had a full on river running through it. We sploshed our way back to the hotel, got changed (again) out of our wet clothes and went for dinner. Wolaita joined us and we excitedly promised to share our pizzas with her. They have an extensive menu at the Africa hotel but only about 4 things available unless you order it the day before! Our pizzas arrived and well, they tasted nice but you couldn't really describe it as a pizza. More like some slightly toasted bread with tomato sauce on top. I mean we weren't expecting cheese or anything but this......it was even more disappointed that the dry cakes we'd had earlier!