Monday 24th February 2014 Lalibela

Weaving scarves

Jordan River

Inside St George's Church

St George's Church

St George's church

Pillar, church, Lalibela, Ethiopia, 24 Feb 2014

View of Asheton Mariam, from hotel, Lalibela, Ethiopia, 24 Feb 2014

Farmland below Asheton Mariam

Mount Abuna Yoseph, Asheton Mariam

Priest with icon, Asheton Mariam

Inside Asheton Mariam

Tunnel to Asheton Mariam

Rock face, entrance to Asheton Mariam

Old house

At 7.45 am seven of us joined Bini and our local guide to begin the trek to Asheton Mariam, described in the travel guide as “the high altitude church” and visitors are advised of the difficulty of the walk and the availability of mules to assist with the ascent.

Our group decided to tackle the walk without assistance and started off with great vigour as well as a slight sense of trepidation. The path we followed was initially through the streets of upper Lalibela but soon we diverted to a rocky path that became steeper and more and more uneven. The loose stones and dusty gravel surface added to the difficulty of climbing up this zig-zag track. However, the views out over Lalibela and the surrounding hinterland were breathtaking (pun intended).

After two and a half hours of walking up the steep and in some places very narrow path heading for Mount Abuna Yoseph, we came to a slot in the cliff face that led us into a tunnel through the rock wall ahead. The man-made tunnel was less than a metre wide and maybe two metres high and we scrambled through it in semi darkness for 30m to exit at the Asheton Mariam church with us now being at nearly 4000m altitude. (Lalibela is at 2630m)

The monastery is carved out of the cliff face and its construction is attributed to King Nakuta La’ab. The stonework is a good deal rougher than the churches in Lalibela and the internal surfaces of the church are not adorned with many paintings. The priest did however produce from a dark recess a number of church treasures including interesting processional crosses, several six hundred year old painted icons on wooden folding slats and a hand written and hand illustrated Bible that was said to be over 600 years old.

On leaving the church we then climbed a narrow external stairway that led us to the upper section of the mountain from which the church had been hewn. The magnificent view of the town of Lalibela and its surroundings 1300m below was sufficient to say that this strenuous trek was indeed very worthwhile. The backdrop of Mount Abuna Yoseph in brilliant sunshine a further 400m above us, spectacular as it was still didn’t inspire any of us to continue on to reach its summit.

The downward journey was uneventful although treacherous in places where loose stone made the slopes very slippery.

After a lunch break with a couple of cold beers we continued on from yesterday with our survey of the churches in Lalibela.

We visited two more churches in the north-western cluster and then walked through a narrow alleyway to the so-called Tomb of Adam.

Undoubtedly the highlight of the afternoon’s wanderings was visiting Bet Giyorgis (St. George’s Church). This majestic monolithic church is isolated in the southern area of the precinct and was constructed by excavating downwards into a solid rock area. The depth of the walls is 15m and the church measuring 12m x 12m has a surrounding courtyard at the base of these precipitous walls. Incidentally there are no guard-rails or fences to prevent someone falling 15m over the edge which would be quite a possibility if a person was wandering around in this area at night time!

The most remarkable feature of this church is that it is carved from solid rock in the shape of a symmetrical cruciform tower. The roof viewed from a nearby high point clearly shows this beautiful and appealing geometrical shape.

At this point some of us were getting little tired of the procession from church to church but it must be said that we all were in awe of the work that must have been done to remove the many millions of tonnes of rock to build these churches.

We visited a further five churches in the south-eastern cluster one of which, Bet Mercurios had evidence of earthquake damage from the 1970s and the cracks in the rocks had resulted in subsequent water seepage.

Near the end of our visit we all had to pass through a narrow and totally dark 50m tunnel and to our joy most of us ended in heaven and not hell despite the suggestions that most of us wouldn’t know anybody in Heaven!

At this stage we headed back to the Tukul Village Hotel for hot showers, rest and later liquid refreshments to celebrate an exhausting but thoroughly inspiring day.

We leave tomorrow morning for Axum another former capital of Ethiopia.

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Lalibela – Axum

Girls at Tesfa Hiwot Elementary School

Tsion Mariam Church with Ark of the Covenant

Stelae

Stelae

Underground vault, Stelae Field

Inside church next to Tsion Mariam Church

Queen of Sheba's pool

Part of Enzana inscription

Blocks at King Kaleb's crypt

Children selling baskets from outside Queen of Sheba's Palace

Queen of Sheba's Palace

Original fireplace, Queen of Sheba's Palace

Wall of Queen of Sheba's Palace

Site of throne, Queen of Sheba's Palace

Our bus driver

We had a leisurely start to the day with a 9.30 am flight from Lalibela to Axum which is about 350km north of Lalibela; the flight taking just over half an hour in a rather old and decrepit Bombardier Q400.

Axum is the most ancient of Ethiopian capitals and is the holiest city of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church because of the Ark of the Covenant.

Our first activity in Axum was to visit a central elementary/primary school and present the Principal with a collection of pens, pencils and writing pads we’d all brought with us in anticipation of there being a deficiency in basic stationery in schools. The teachers were very appreciative and when we visited three classrooms the children sang songs and acted out short conversations in English much to the delight of all present. The students were enthusiastic and very well behaved and we departed the school with a feeling of cautious optimism as we all acknowledged that the key to Ethiopia’s future is through education.

After lunch at our hotel that took forever to appear, we drove in our yellow bus to the main stelae field opposite the church of Tsion Maryam.

The stelae field is barely any larger than a football field and contains around 75 stelae of various shapes and sizes. Most are giant headstones linked to specific kings and emperors and their families.

The second largest stele standing is a solid granite obelisk 23 metres high and engraved with elaborate symbols. The stele was dedicated to the second century King Ezana. The granite was quarried 4km away and probably transported by elephants and wooden rollers. Erecting it must have been an incredibly difficult and dangerous task. The stele is now being supported by wire ropes anchored to concrete blocks as there’s concern about its stability. This stele has an interesting history although no-one is sure who built it.  During the Italian occupation (1936 – 1941) the 26m high obelisk was stolen and cut into three pieces and then shipped and re-erected in the Piazza in Rome. After much negotiating the looted stele was returned to its rightful home in 2005 with the three pieces each being returned by air-transport!

The largest of Axum’s stele is supposedly credited to the 3rd-century King Remhai. It was to have been about 500 tons of engraved granite 33m high but something went terribly wrong with the size and design of the supporting base that was to go in the ground and the whole thing toppled over and now lies there smashed into four main pieces each about the size of a large bus! Its decorations reveal a door and twelve windows.

We then visited a number of underground vaults/crypts lined with finely cut granite blocks; the precision of the stone masonry being near perfect.

We then crossed the road and entered the very new and garishly decorated church adjacent to the legendary Tsion Mariam Church. It is claimed to be the final resting place of Moses’ Ark of the Covenant, used to transport the tablets on which the Ten Commandments are written. There is only one man alive allowed to view this Ark and he stays as a recluse in the church until death and then a replacement is determined, a bit like the Papal election. Underneath the Tsion Mariam Church is a museum displaying numerous gold and silver crowns, precious jewels, elaborate robes, ancient Bibles and other artefacts from the early dynastic period. Of special interest were three stone tablets each about a metre high engraved with writing in three languages namely Sabaean, Ge’ez and ancient Greek. Just as the Rosetta Stone gave clues to the link between Egyptian Hieroglyphs and the ancient Greek languages, these stones have enabled archaeologists to have a better understanding of Ethiopian history by providing a stone-age dictionary!

Another nearby archaeological museum gave an interesting overview of the history of Axum. At around 500 BC or even 300 years earlier the Queen of Sheba supposedly ruled over Ethiopia (Abyssinia) which in those days included Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Eretria, Djibouti and African countries as far south as Madagascar. She visited Jerusalem to meet King Solomon and this encounter resulted in her producing a son who went on to become King Menelik I. This led to the myth that there was an unbroken Solomonic Dynasty of 237 emperors right up to the last one, King Haile Selassie who was deposed and killed during the revolution of 1974 -1991.

In the late afternoon we visited Mai Shum, a small lake about 200m long which was supposedly The Queen of Sheba’s swimming pool although there was plenty of evidence of recent repairs and modifications. It is now used as a men’s only swimming and washing area but the water is anything but clean looking!

We drove further up the hill to the necropolis of the 6th century Kings Gebre-Meskel and King Kaleb. These two underground crypts are fashioned from granite blocks that are locked together in a way very similar to the Inca buildings in Peru.

As a final piece of Ethiopian history we drove a short distance out of town to the Ruins of Dungar where there is a further stelae field but more significantly we saw the ruins purporting to be the Queen of Sheba’s Palace. There is relatively little remaining apart from the plinth for her enormous throne, a kitchen oven and some stonework associated with walls, steps and drainage. There were apparently more than 50 rooms in this palace.

Our day of exploring this famous city has given us an ideal way of ending our visit to Ethiopia as it ties the very beginning of this country’s ancient history with that of today’s 21st century developing nation.

Ethiopia is an absolutely fascinating country indeed and maybe best described a “living history”!!

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Axum – Addis Ababa – Dubai

Janet, Janet & Gill choosing dessert for lunch at Top View Restaurant

Camel train in street, Axum

Today was largely a day of travel as we leave Ethiopia and head for Jordan tomorrow.

It was with a mood of sadness coloured by anticipation that we boarded the Q400 plane in Axum knowing that our remarkable holiday in Ethiopia was now in its final stages. The flight from the far north near the Eritrean border down to Addis was through clear skies and the scenery below was of barren, jagged peaks and deeply eroded river valleys not unlike a lunar landscape. At this time of the year practically all but the large rivers are dry yet surprisingly there was a large blue lake visible at one stage and its presence amongst this parched and orange coloured desert vista was an unexpected juxtaposition.

On driving through the streets of Addis Ababa after three weeks absence, we were surprised to experience a very different attitude to the city we’d first encountered in early February. Strangely, Addis now seemed much more part of the modern world with cars, buses and sealed, straight roads and concrete motorways through bustling crowded suburbs and shopping precincts where the masses of people were in the main dressed in western clothes. There were of course the anticipated beggars, running the gauntlet amongst the traffic mayhem, tapping on car and bus windows requesting money for food. Sadly there were still the crippled and diseased lying helplessly on the footpaths with hands extended pleading for any form of assistance. And yet Addis Ababa now seemed a world away from the distant villages of Turmi, Lalibela and numerous others we’d visited. For those places the simplicity of life involves a creeping pace in which survival is based upon a never-ending quest for water and food and where religion provides essential support.

The skyline in Addis Ababa is dominated by new buildings being erected in every direction and there’s even evidence of the construction of the long awaited underground rail system. This progress once again reveals the stark contrasts evident in Ethiopia as despite the building development, the sites are supported by flimsy timber or bamboo scaffolding and the concrete work with extruding reinforcing steel in many instances looks to be of sub-standard quality.

This is truly a ‘developing’ nation (rather than the pejorative term ‘third-world’) where the outside influence of nations such as China, Italy and the USA is going to be an essential factor for progress because education here is yet to produce the necessary skill level to support these infrastructural developments. Above all else, education for every child is the only hope for Ethiopia and yet this seems a world away in a country where child labour is not only used unashamedly but is expected such that young boys mostly are drawn out of school (if they ever commenced) at an early age to tend to farm animals and to fetch water and fuel for cooking.

Agriculturally the nation faces the dilemma of development sponsored by external financial influences such as companies keen to utilise cheap labour for cultivating cotton and cane sugar and who place a huge demand on the severely limited fresh water supply. At the other end of the agricultural spectrum, the burgeoning goat population is destroying the limited vegetation. The number of goats and cattle owned by farmers is a key indicator of wealth and plays a key role in determining dowries for marriage; hence the desire by everyone to increase the size of their herds. However the destructive nature of goats particularly, has left its mark on much of the fragile environment. It is hard to reconcile the fact that this country is to a large extent just one vast collection of tiny subsistence farms and when drought hits, as it did in recent years, tens of thousands die!

Our holiday in Ethiopia has been quite extraordinary and many of the events and sights we’ve encountered are not adequately described by words and photographs alone. The many different tribal villages we visited with their own particular dwellings, customs and languages gave us an insight to true self-sufficiency where life is balanced on a knife edge and serious illness inevitably means death. That said, we could learn a great deal from these people about family support as the communal spirit evident in these villages is totally encompassing.

A key factor that has made this trip so memorable has been our ever present guide, Binni. He has made travel possible in areas where language and cultural differences would surely made things unbelievably difficult for us.

Binni’s knowledge of Ethiopian history and his undeniable love for his country added to the pleasure we experienced during our travels. We are all deeply indebted to him for the effort he went to in so many ways to give us every opportunity to see as much as possible in the short three week period we had. During this time his close contact with the group forged a friendship that was of such strength that tears were shed when the inevitable ‘goodbyes’ were said at Addis in the mid-afternoon.

As we stepped onto the plane and headed for Dubai we all took a deep breath and tried to reconcile the fact that so much had happened in this three week period and that we had numerous memories that will last forever and to describe them all would take forever!

For those who were unsure what to expect about Ethiopia, the outcome was an unequivocal “unbelievably extraordinary”!!

Quotes:

Ethiopia is a land:

“of friendly people, proud of their country.”

“not ravaged by drought and starving masses.”

“where the roads are used by animals, people and sometimes cars.”

“where women are the ones carrying the heavy loads on their backs or heads.”

“wherever you go you’ll see people.”

“where religion is more important than anything else.”

“of living history.”

“the world’s best marathon runners.”

“where in the middle of nowhere you’ll suddenly be surrounded by children wanting to sell you souvenirs or asking for money, pens, plastic, candy,…    .”

“offering the earliest evidence of the evolution of humans.”

“where water is so precious and often carried in four yellow 20L plastic containers per donkey.”

“of extreme contrasts and surprises.”

“of rough and dusty roads.”

“of fascinating tribal groups in the south and incredible history and monolithic churches in the north.”

“where major infrastructure developments (particularly roads and electricity) are beginning, compliments of the Chinese.”

“of ubiquitous green and often broken plastic sandals.”

“where history and mythology are intertwined.”

“of well worn little blue bajajs (tuk-tuks) weaving in and out between trucks and donkeys.”

The afternoon flight had us arriving in Dubai at just after 9.00 pm and here we had to say farewell to Gill who was not continuing on to Jordan but heading home to her family in Adelaide.   The night in Dubai was spent in a nearby airport hotel.

We’re not sure what to expect in Jordan but we’re all looking forward to the next part of this amazing adventure.