Our Ethiopian odyssey (6): slices of life and a treacherous road
Our evening at the Gheralta Lodge – which is owned by an Italian but named after the nearby mountains – was rather special. First, we were given complimentary cocktails: Vee & Roger had the house cocktail which was honey wine with campari and a hint of something local like mint. Then we all had a four-course set meal: onion soup, spaghetti with pesto sauce, chicken in ginger sauce with salad, and fruit crepe. On the way back to our chalet, Vee & Roger marvelled at the night sky. In London, we hardly see any stars because of the light pollution. Here we could see myriads of stars with the constellation of Orion directly above us and we could even make out faintly the Milky Way arching over our heads.
Day 4 (Tuesday) began with some interesting news. Dawit told Roger & Vee that their chalet (number 2) had been occupied by former US President George W Bush during a visit to the region last year to promote an aid project. Indeed, according to Dawit, Roger looks just like the younger Bush.
It was a day of extensive travel which got off to an unfortunate start. One of our party was feeling so ill that, just minutes away from the lodge, we had to return and leave her. She subsequently hired a four by four and drove direct to our next hotel in Axum, but then was still so unwell that she went to the local hospital.
At 9.15 am, the rest of us set off again, passing first through the nearby town of Hawzien. The town has a 3,000 year history: it was originally an old trading centre but today the area is exclusively agricultural. In 1988, the dictator Mengistu punished the local rebels by dropping napalm bombs which killed around 2,500 people.
In the morning, as we preceded north, we had three looks at slices of local life, one of which was totally unexpected.
First, at the town of Frewine, we stopped to visit a small milling operation.. The milling machinery is privately owned and locals travel into town from miles around to pay to use the machine to grind the cereals that they have grown. A moderately sized room was crowded with a couple of dozen people with their local produce – teff, wheat, barley, chilli pepper – waiting to use a noisy machine that created incredible volumes of dust. The chilli strung our eyes and we could not stay long.
Next, just outside the town of Edagamus, we were able to visit a rural family that Dawit had come to know. It was the home of a widower with three children who was helped with her land and animals by other members of the family. As we approached the building, we passed cow pats drying in the hot sun – they will be used for fuel in the wet season. There were goats in the fields and cows in the outhouse.
We were invited into the family living room which is where everyone eats and sleeps. It had no windows – just an open door and a ventilation hole – so we could see nothing at first but then our eyes adjusted to the dim light. The widower took her time heating coffee beans and making coffee for us which was offered with flat bread called ‘ambasha’. Her 11 year old son was keen to practice some English with us but the youngest child in the extended cried because of the strange white faces. We felt very privileged to receive such hospitality from a family so poor.
A bit further, on the outskirts of a town called Adigrat, our guide was surprised when our minibus was halted by streams of men, women and children in separate columns heading for a huge field. We were thrilled that he stopped and let us our to wander among the crowds. It turned out that it was a celebration of an anniversary of the Tygrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the main force that overthrew the Derg dictatorship and the principal member of the Ethiopian People Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) which has since governed the country.
It was a fabulous occasion. Line after line of people descending in the low field, some of them shuffling in a kind of dance as they chanted in unison, women ululating, clapping and dancing to the beat of large drums, young children shouting out slogans in unison while raising little fists, older men – some in tattered uniforms – shouldering AK-47 rifles and trying to march.
At this point, we stopped just on the other side of Adigrat at a place called the Agoro Lodge – a very new establishment which is community owned and provided us with a very satisfactory lunch.
After this meal, our journey became a lot tougher. we turned west and headed up what our Cox & Kings notes called “one of the most winding roads in Ethiopia”. They were not exaggerating. As we climbed higher and higher and higher, the twists and turns were amazing, sometimes 180 degree switchbacks. The good news is that the views of the huge gorge below were simply spectacular – like a local version on Grand Canyon with red and brown rocks leavened with green vegetation. The bad news was that this road ran right next to utterly precipitous drops and we came to understand why our driver had a small crucifix attached to the middle of his windscreen.
Having crested the top of this long difficult road – built by the Italians during their brief occupation – we had a similar challenge going down. There were virtually no cars, but a succession of trucks, some hauling trailers. As we rounded one sharp bed, we found that a lorry and trailer had overturned and left the road, crashing into a low gulley. The driver’s cab was crushed but we could not see the driver. At this point, several of our group decided that perhaps it might be a good idea to use the seat belts in our mini bus, even though some of them did not work and those that did were only across the waist and not the shoulder.
Our last destination of the day was a place called Yeha which could only be accessed by leaving the tarred road of the Italians and juddering along an unmade road of the Ethiopians. Some of us found the sights of Yeha rather underwhelming visually but what is impressive is the history of the place. It contains the rather plain limestone ruin – covered in scaffolding on our visit – of the 2,500 year old Temple of Yeha, the oldest standing structure in Ethiopia. Nobody knows what religion was originally practised in the temple, but appearances suggest links with the pagan faith of South Arabia’s Sabaean civilisation.
In a local outhouse and up some old wooden stairs, we called into what the local guide called “the oldest and smallest museum in the world”. Some of the artefacts were indeed very old (they came from the temple) and the place was indeed tiny (about the size of a single bed room). We were shown a three century old biblical text which featured an illustration of the Three Kings, one of which was Ethiopian (Balthazar), and a bearded priest with white turban chanted one of the texts from another old book.
Back on the main road, we went through the town of Adwa. The Adwa mountains were the site of the famous battle where the Ethiopians defeated the Italians in 1896 and so managed to keep Ethiopia as the only independent country in Africa.
At last, just after 5.30 pm, we rolled into the historic town of Axum where we are going to stay for two nights in the Sabean International Hotel. It was over eight hours since we had left our previous accommodation and, though we had seen some fascinating sights, we had covered some very challenging terrain on roads which simply do not have service stations or cafes for drinks and toilets. After all, this is still very much a developing country.