Ethiopia.For years, the name Addis Ababa has intrigued me and we expected great things of it. It's only on arrival to some places that you start to pick up bits of information that you never before bothered to find out, the name Addis Ababa (in Amharic, the main language) means New Flower, the city is only about 130 years old and during the wet season (which is right about now) most roads turn into a slippery, muddy mess which cakes your shoes in a chocolate-like mud. Atleast there are hundreds of shoe shine boys willing to clean your soggy footwear/annoy you. There is something about arriving in new city when it's constantly raining that makes it hard to love and enjoy, especially when most of your clothes require washing and it takes days for them to dry. Atleast this young, new flower was getting plenty of nourishing rainfall.
There are a few 'rules of thumb' when you are travelling: don't drink the tap water, never take
photos at border crossings, never take a seat behind the rear axle on a big bus, never, ever presume there is going to be toiletpaper in the toilets. Then there is the ' rule of goat', which states, the poorer the country the more goats you will see. We have seen thousands of goats in Ethiopia, and they are everywhere. It's not uncommon to see them being herded right through the center of Addis, causing many of the blue and white Lada taxis to swerve into the roadside puddles of mud to avoid a collision. I think the price of a goat may actually be greater than the cost of one of these 40 year old Ladas.The goats are even more prolific out in the rural areas, which is anywhere outside of Addis. Everywhere there are shepards and herders with their goats, sheep and cows, farmers (their rope whips twirling) with their cows ploughing the fields and families walking along the road side with their heavily ladened donkeys. There is more of a peaceful, pleasant, peasant fairytale feel to the place than other rural areas we have seen on this trip. It almost feels like you have actually gone back in time.
Which is funny because in Ethiopia it's actually 2003! Its calender is 7 years behind ours. One of the advertisements here reads, "Visit Ethiopia and feel 7 years younger!" Infact, the whole timing thing is a little different here, they have 13 months, hence the "13 months of sunshine" tourist promotion and the even the daily time is different; what should be noon here is actually called 6 o'clock. So it takes a little time to adjust to situations like walking around a museum at 4:55 and being told we have to leave because the museum closes at 11 o'clock!
We spent more days than we really should have in Addis what with getting used to the time
thing, stepping over puddles and goats and of course waiting for our clothes to dry. Our loitering did allow us to appreciate the wonderful fresh fruit juices (which doesn't sound like much but they are amazing) and the amazingly great, strong, cheap coffee. The real coffee was quite a shock to the (digestive) system, after the months of instant powdered 'coffee' on this trip. Coffee is very important in culture here and most cafes and restaurants provide what's called a "coffee ceremony", where usually sitting in a corner of the room is a lady who roasts the beans in front of you, grinds the beans, prepares the drink over some hot coles and brings over the coffee in a cool looking vessel. Also brought to your table is a little pot of burning charcoal onto which some real churchy smelling incense is added which creates a wonderful aroma. It beats Starbucks hands down.We also wanted to get a little bit of a heads up regarding the unique local food, especially the famous injera, the ever-present large flat fermented 'bread' made of a local grain called tef. For those unfamiliar to the sour tasting injera, it looks like a cross between a very thin
crumpet and carpet underlay. It's either served flat, (it's about 2 foot wide) with the meals arranged on it, like a big plate, or sometimes the edges are folded over to make a big injera pie. But most often squarely cut portions of injera are served rolled-up looking like a facecloth you'd find in a fancy hotel's bathroom. Not that we'd know much about that. As far as we could tell, the hotels here were either cheap(ish) and heavily going in for the grott-chic look, or massively overpriced.Of course we checked out some the touristic treasures of the city, the famous fossilised remains of the hominid ' Lucy', our long lost ancestor. A stark reminder of how we'd possibly look in a few weeks if we didn't get used to enduring injera. And being a reggae fan I couldn't pass up the opportunity of paying my respects to the resting place of Emperor Haile Selassie (Ras Tarfari), the most revered contemporary ruler, the so called conquering lion of Judah. We found his massive sarcophagus (once we'd brided the unscrupulous 'priest') in the huge Holy Trinity Cathedral. This was to be the first of many 'back handers' given to these greedy, unholy key holders.
We decided to miss the south of the country and only see the sights of the northern historical circuit as the lure of our next destination Greece was too great, although we'd still have to cover the 2500km loop around the
country back to Addis. Due to the necessary early buses, long distances, overcrowding, poor road conditions and, to be quite honest about it, the main reason, a general overwhelming feeling of apathy ( a well known symptom of road weariness), we to looked into taking some flights to cut down on the travel time inbetween the main sights. We some how managed to get hugely discounted rates and tried to quickly pay for them before anyone realised the mistake. A bit of a long story, but we (only just) got the cheap flights (maybe resident rates or something) which would dramatically cut down on the potentially arse jarring, spine shortening sessions on the buses. Hurrah! So off we flew!
No comments:
Post a Comment