Discover the other millennium in Africa Written and photographed byRob Arnhem
If you somehow missed celebrating the new millennium in 2000, head for Ethiopia. It’s still using the old Julian calendar and September 2007 saw the launch of a year of events showcasing this unique and ancient country. It has proudly refused to change its calendar to the more modern Gregorian one, and this fact alone is an omen that visiting the country is special. Alone among the African states, it was never colonised, except for a brief six years in the late 1930s, by Fascist Italy. The monolithic obelisk of Ethiopia’s ancient capital of Axum, stolen then to stand in the new imperial Rome, was recently returned. But re-erecting a solid flat pillar of granite after 2,000 years of lost technology means that it still lies sadly awaiting resurrection. After battling with negative publicity since the 1970s – massive famines, epic droughts, those spectres of vultures eyeing starving children, millions dead, the end of the old order and a ruthless socialist dictatorship which only ended in the early 1990s, Ethiopia is back on track. It’s now a fledgling democracy and feeling its way, tackling the challenges of its future day by day. Poor it may be, but its past is rich, and ordinary people’s pride in their national character is obvious. If the achievements of its legendary tireless runners are anything to go by, it will catch up pretty fast. Ethiopia is something of an African icon as Africa’s oldest independent state. Remember all those fluffy Afro hairstyles in the 1970s, when Michael Jackson was still black? They came straight from the wide-eyed angels painted
on the ceiling of one of Ethiopia’s most revered churches. The national colours of the flag, striped in green, yellow and red, are reflected everywhere, from Rasta beanies to scarves.
A victim of the Cold War, batted between the USA and USSR’s largely self-centred concerns involving strategic countries like Ethiopia and Somalia, there are few relics of those times, except for the abandoned Russian tanks you see along roads in the countryside,
incongruous against a rural age-old background of men ploughing their fields using wooden ploughs pulled by stoic oxen. It was a nice thought in this land so redolent with Biblical references that swords would be beaten into ploughshares. Ethiopia is also aptly one of the world’s earliest nurseries of food crops – the African staples of sorghum and millet among them, and, of course, coffee. Arabica
coffee should rightfully be called abyssinica, for it was in these
highland soils bathed in mist and drenched in summer rains, in the Kaffa region, in fact, that coffee was first nurtured. The country is poor and remains reliant on its agricultural produce. Some 35mn cattle, almost adored by their pastoralist owners, get pampered and taken to graze daily by vigilant herdsmen. One of the archetypical sights of Africa is the solitary herder, a man or even barely more than a toddler, stick across the shoulders, minding an assortment of cows, nimble goats and those strange hairy fat-tailed sheep with weird
tiny ears and hangdog expressions. On the way north, skirting the beautiful Lake Tana, source of the Blue Nile (which is brown, but it provides Egypt’s Nile with 85 per cent of its water), with its unexpected frescoed circular churches hidden on its islands, you should head for a triangle of three sites, all within flying distance: the rock-hewn 1,000 year old churches of Lalibela, the 17th-century fortress-palace of Gondar (in real Lord of the Rings setting too – all mossy junipers and Scotch-style mist), and the ancient capital of Axum, near the Eritrean border. Decent dress is required to enter churches, and shoes are removed. Men and women are separated for worship too. The church wardens survive on tips, so be
generous. It costs little enough and they obligingly don their
glittering vestments and show off the metal processional crosses, the pride of every church.
The omens of arrival had been mixed. My tour company was Greenland Tours. Visions of landing in the northern hemisphere. Towards the end of the rainy season, there were such huge piles of dense cloud over the Roof of Africa that I wondered again if I was doing the right thing. Peering down, though, the intensity of the green below, spotlit by sunlight and silvered by thousands of fresh streams, waterfalls and red rivers, was a comfort. Not Hemingway country, but near enough – the green hills of Africa again. Ethiopian Airlines has a long and reliable history and all was well. Until I discovered that my baggage and I had been parted. Never mind. It will be here, said a sweet well-spoken girl, and I got used to the fact that I might have to wait a week or two. Outside, a beaming driver
welcomed me and introduced me to the trusty steed – Land Cruisers have swept the board of all rivals. The dashboard featured a large crucifix and several religious stickers.
I had flown in to 16 days of fasting, caught unawares. I saw that believing Ethiopian Christians take their incredible 180 days of
fasting very seriously. Fasting food is optional, but it was light and delicious. The staple is a huge floppy soft sour dough crepe called injera, which is made from teff, a fine grass seed, with negus. On two of these, a tasty selection of lentils, beans, red pepper sauce, vegetables, with excellent fresh fish from Ethiopia’s many lakes, are dotted about, and you set to work with your fingers. Superb coffee and fresh papaya or pineapple juice swish it down. Fasting forbids any meat, eggs or dairy products, but a range of food is available, including good pizzas and pasta, a legacy of the short but apparently culinarily successful Italian occupation. Beef is also very popular, as you’d expect, with the biggest livestock population in Africa. I had the best hamburger patty ever in the southern town of Arba Minch. And if you want to get really local, try the mead – tej, or araki, improbably distilled from ensete, the wild banana.
Ethiopia’s an ethnically diverse melting pot, where 73mn people speak a babel of 84 languages belonging to four old language
families. The amazing range of faces you see reflect incredible genetic bloodlines. On the crossroads of Africa, the Horn, pale Hamites, dark Negroes and Semitic immigrants from South Arabia have been blending here for millennia. Like the coffee, it makes for a rich and often heady blend: Ethiopian girls have been turning heads since the time of Eve. Our earliest ancestors found their first homes in the Omo Valley and other crucially important world archaeological sites in the Great Rift Valley which is the birth scarring of this remarkable land. They left their fossilised bones in the form of Lucy and others for us to ponder our origins. This you should do immediately when you arrive with a visit to the national museum in ‘New Flower’,
historically the fifth capital, Addis Ababa. You can see the museum was built in grey socialist times, but don’t let that put you off. Addis’s bloom of newness has long since faded because the reforming
modernist Emperor Menelik II established the city on its hills over a century ago and planted its forests of Australian eucalypts, but this typically African city has its compensations. The airport is only ten minutes from the centre and visas are available on arrival for most nationalities at only US$20. It has one of the busiest and biggest
markets in Africa, the Mercado, where First Worlders can learn a lot about recycling, a selection of the world’s most aromatic and cheapest coffees, and even a Sheraton and a Hyatt if you are pining for
familiar sights. By the way, if you’re a first-time visitor wanting a big game safari, Ethiopia’s not the place. It’ll put a birder into a feeding frenzy, though, and the landscapes are so diverse that there’s always something to see.
Where did it all begin? Imagine a vast, slow volcanic bubbling beginning 40mn years ago, leaving craggy lava mountains about four kilometres high. These form the backbone of the country, the highlands, an island of ecological and human diversity, cut off from the world around it. Here fiercely Orthodox Christian kings and monks forged the dominant national identity, while Islam flourished in the lowlands to the east. This was fabled Abyssinia, now home to the largest number of World Heritage Sites in Africa. It’s a big country, the third most populous in Africa too. Just recently, the remote southwest, bordering Sudan and Kenya has been ‘opened up’. I have mixed feelings about this, but the local tribes people have come to see the arrival of tourists as a birr bonanza. It’s not the money, but the mobbing – and you will get unique pictures of a way of life that will inexorably change. On your way down the chain of unexpectedly lovely enormous lakes, from Langano to the twin lakes Abaya and Chamo, all the way down to Nechisar and its Aegean-blue waters across to the Omo River, you’ll encounter a world very different from your own. Some of these people are true nomads, adoring their cattle, and quietly looking down on most other settled folk as new barbarians. Tours generally take in the local weekday markets, and these were by far my favourites. Whether Banna or Tsemaye, Hamer or Erbore, Karo or Konso, the tribal markets are good places to meet the locals on home ground and buy home-churned butter, a calabash of honey, smart traditional accoutrements like the elegant wooden stools-cum-headrests every gentleman of fashion carries, or beadwork in red, turquoise and black, or even an iron cowbell. You’ll be spoilt for choice, but if you take photographs of individuals, ask them first and pay them accordingly one or two birr.
It’s a feast of the bizarre and the beautiful – the scarring, body painting, piercing the lower lip among the Mursi people until it can take a clay disc, shaving the head and wearing a skullcap of coloured clay sporting an jaunty feather. Modern tribal fashions are tending towards cross-over mix-and-match, with great attention to colour and detail, using Chinese-made vests and micro-miniskirts for the men, with ochred tresses and skin aprons for the lasses. A few bold girls wore an ensemble of crop tops and skins, and carried it all off with style. Move on, Naomi Campbell. The variety is indescribable. If you ever get your hands on those superb publications African Elegance or African Ark, buy regardless of price. These
natural and unsophisticated people make Paris Hilton look, well, boring and tasteless and worse.
Roads have made life easier for these tribes, and your vehicle will jostle for right of way with the ambling lines of long-horned, soft-eyed cream and beige cows, nimble goats and long-suffering sheep and donkeys. And it’s a refreshing change from urban blight and a crazy world. Not that it’s paradise on earth – roads are often rough, you see lots of funeral processions along the roads, children beg. There are problems on the borders with Somalia and Eritrea, and democracy is new. The good news was that 30 opposition leaders sentenced to life imprisonment before I arrived had all been freed as a gesture of national goodwill. With an ancient history like theirs, there will be hiccups, but let the people speak for themselves.
On your last day, as flights generally leave at night, allow a day in Addis Ababa. Hire a taxi to take you through the Mercado (the only place where I was advised to beware of pickpockets), go on up to the huge looming hill called Entoto, and enjoy the view from 2,300m, the air cool and full of the smell of wild herbs, gum trees and wood fires. I was there on the last day of the 16-day fast, and the air carried the nasal plainsong of priests officiating at mass all over the city.
On your way down, visit the Dorze market. These people, strongly Orthodox, live in the southwest, centred around Chencha, but this is their national trade outlet, where you can buy almost any item of traditional clothing. The woven and embroidered scarves, shawls, blouses and the over-the-top spangled umbrellas used by priests caught my eye. You’ll have been treated to that show of hospitality, the coffee ceremony, often enough in the Middle East, but Ethiopia has an aesthetic and elegant ritual involving incense, fresh popcorn and an elixir beyond price, all served by a gracious and graceful hostess. But have your last cup of coffee, with a sprig of rue, at Tomoca, the best modern coffee shop in town. Pick up a good supply of sealed coffee at knockdown prices, its living aroma fighting to escape, and take in the Balzac quotation above you: ‘When you drink a cup of coffee, ideas come marching in like an army.’
Start planning that itinerary. Timket, or Epiphany, the greatest festival of the year, falls on 19 January 2008, and promises to be a millennial spectacle. This is the day when all the arks of the covenant come out of their sanctuaries for the day, and the weather is cool and dry.
ResourceS
Local agent
Ethiopian Airlines, at NTT, Wattayah. Contact: Babin at
24 660313, and other airlines operating from Dubai. Ethiopian Airlines is a major carrier within Africa too, and a trip taking in two countries is feasible if you have time
Cost
Muscat-Dubai-Addis Ababa return fare is RO236
Yellow fever vaccination
Apparently required but not asked for. Anti-malarial precautions advisable
Money
Traveller’s cheques aren’t easy to cash, so take US dollars and pay in advance for your tour
)
)
