I worked for 37 years as an educator in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I retired in 2006 and am now experiencing the world of international travel. NOTE: Clicking on any picture will allow you to view the a larger picture.

Ethiopian Adventure Oct/Nov 2011


I joined the Focus Travel Club in Denver on October 23 after getting up at 5am to get to the Flag airport for the flight to Phx and then to Denver. I arrived about 2 hours before the group started arriving. We gathered our baggage and checked in to fly to DC. We spent the night there so I got a good night’s rest. My roommate was Harvey Meyer, a retired geologist who has been traveling the world years before I started. He was a great roommate and am looking forward to our next trip, where is my roommate to the Great Migration. We didn’t have to head to the airport for the long flight until about 7pm. We arrived in Addis Abba about 8am on their time. Thanks to Hamdy and HLO tours our adventure began when we landed and met our guide, Melaku Tesfa. He has been a guide for at least four years and as a Coptic was able to share a lot about the religion's beliefs. He was with us the entire trip.

I’m not going to write a day by day experience, but will write about things that I found interesting, fascinating, unusual, or just awesome.

MUSEUMS AND MONESTARIES
In Addis Ababa (Amharic) meaning ‘new flower’ we visited the National Museum where we saw LUCY, the 3.5 million year old remains of the earliest human. So awesome.
The country is a Coptic Orthodox Tewahado Christian [የኢትዮጵያ ኦርቶዶክስ ተዋሕዶ ቤተ ክርስቲያን] nation. The monasteries are one of the centers for education. They believe Jesus Christ as the savior, celebrate mass, and believe in that Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected. Jesus is part of the trinity—but Christmas is not celebrated in the same way other Christians do. Mass is celebrated in the Monastery and locals come for the 3+hr service—where everyone stands or prays…no seating. Coptic art is a very distinctive style that fills the outer area where the chanting and mass take place The priests are standing in the ‘holiest place’ and no lay people are allowed into the ‘holiest place’. Men and women are on opposite sides of the ‘holiest place’ and pray, chant, and receive mass from their place in the church. At one monastery we arrived to the monks practice chanting. We were invited to participate. We were given a staff and a metal instrument to shake. I was surprised that many of the Coptic crosses have a Celtic look…opps many of the Celtic Crosses have a Coptic look since Coptic, I believe, is older. I have to do some more research on that issue.
Underground monasteries…yep, dug from ground level down, with the ceiling intact. These were an amazing architectural feat to say the least. We were told God helped in finding a place that could be safely dug out. They really have to be seen to be believed.

AMHARIC and CALENDAR and TIME
Amharic is a Semitic language—related to Arabic—and is the 2nd most spoken Semitic language. Addis, the capital, has a metro population of over 5 million. Amharic does not have either ‘th’ sound in their language…so Ethiopia is pronounced EE-TEA-Oh-Pee-ah with the accent on the O.
The Ethiopians operate on two calendars…one for the Western World and the a modified Julian calendar for their religious use. That explained the ’13 months of sunshine’ tourist campaign. For example: Nov.1, 2011 in my calendar was 21 Teqemt 2004 in the Ethiopian calendar.
Then there is the time on the clock thing. Their day starts at sunrise meaning that is when the calendar changes dates. So it’s Monday at 5:59a, in one minute it will be Tuesday. Our guide says it makes much more sense to have the new day start at sunrise than in the middle of the night. Ethiopia is GMT +3 for business and tourists, but is basically 6 hours different than that. So if you meet someone at 9a GMT +3, it is 3a on the Ethiopian clock. Somehow our guide made it all work—he was always on time, the drivers were always on time and so were we. Our guide does a lot of European tour groups and told me: The Swiss invented the clock, the Germans use the clock, and everyone else breaks the clock. He did say we were punctual, like the Germans.

DRIVING
All vehicles are equipped with horns and are used as frequently as in Cairo. Rather than deal with the hassles of stop lights, staying in your lane, turning, or passing one simply toots the horn a number of times and keeps on driving. All drivers in the country seem to honk, pass cars, drive into oncoming traffic, honk, and pull back into the lane.  While climbing a hill everyone simply honks, goes into the oncoming lane, pass, and somehow know that no vehicle is just over the horizon. Most drivers drive between 80-100km/hr—50mph-65mph—on all roads—paved, two lane, four lane, dirt roads, windy dirt roads, and windy mountain paved roads. Honking means survival.
Our driver, Jonas was the most experienced driver and spoke very limited English. In our four wheeling times, Jonas led the group. We even picked up an NGO vehicle who had a driver who wasn’t familiar with the area. He later told us he would have turned back hours ago, had Jonas not been a professional driver. If you asked Jonas a question he didn’t understand, he would either just say yes or no. My ESL did come in handy a couple of times when important information was really needed. On our first drive, we asked how long to get to the destination? His answer: 10 minutes. How far? 200km. At that time I knew we wouldn’t be doing a lot of conversing.Jonas did a great job of getting us through some difficult areas and we really enjoyed his driving expertise.

MARKET
We visited the largest market in the country in Addis. As our guide told us, if you can’t find something at this market, it doesn’t exist. There were blocks and blocks of market. Each area sold specific things—spices, coffee, clothing, fresh food, auto parts, and on and on. Everything is laid out on the ground and available for bargaining. The market is not a tourist buying place, more like Sam’s, Costco, and supermarkets all out in the open. Strangely the young kids recognized us as tourists. They would come up to us, practice their English, and after a few minutes of chit chat tell us they needed books or pencils for their schooling. It soon became easy to spot the real students from the scam artists. Two kids in the market asked us to name European countries and they would instantly tell us the capital. I had no problem giving them a few birr for their efforts. At one market we somehow attracted three street urchins who just ran around us and laughed and begged. Even the guide couldn’t deter their game. They followed us until we got back to the bus, then sat in wait for the next bus. Every town we visited had market a couple of days a week. Locals would walk for miles to and from the market. They come to market with their items, and then carry home what is left over and what new things were purchased. Some had donkeys, some had one wheeled wagons, some had four wheeled wagons, and some just carried things on their backs or heads. Most of the rural markets had no pick pockets, but we were warned in Addis to be alert. No one in our group lost anything. Some of the markets were a little muddy but each one was worth the experience.

ON THE ROAD
The country side in the south is very hilly. On all the rural roads there were always people walking with cattle, goats, firewood, big plastic water bottles, or carrying something. This walking traveling was an everyday experience for them. Up in the morning, walk to town, at the end of the day walk back home. Next day, same thing. There were always kids on the side of the road trying various ways to stop tourists. Some would stand in the road holding up something to sell. Some would just stand on the side of the road and wave. More enterprising youth would dance to get our attention. The really innovative would do back flips. Very cute. While there were usually one or two kids dancing, once we stopped to give them pencils and sharpeners, or blown up beach balls suddenly there would be six or more kids around our vehicle. Many would ask if we were from America and then say ‘I like Obama.’ I’m sure they had a similar line for every tourist. Many of the tourists we saw were Germanic or South African. Not a lot of Americans. Many women carried bundles of firewood on their lower back, walking to town to sell it. At one stop, a woman had stopped and placed the bundle on a cement abutment. Hamdy tried to lift it..no luck. A lady in our group offered assistance and the two of them couldn’t lift it. How these women carried the wood day after day is beyond my comprehension.
Our road trip included seeing a small pack of African Wild Dogs which our guide said he had never seen before. We also saw a leopard in the brush beside the road. At several other times we saw monkeys playing around. Several times we saw a family of baboons.

TRIBES
After my pre-adolescent years with my paternal grandmother’s National Geographic, I had some idea of what to expect. Each tribe we visited…Mursi, Dorze, Konso, Tsemay,Karo, Hamer, Bena, had their own language, culture, and traditions. We were greeted at each village and many residents posed for photos…at 2-3birr per person in the picture. I’m convinced that National Geographic started this practice by paying tribal members when they visited these areas in the mid 20th century. The Mursi tribe, the women have clay plates in their lips, were the most aggressive about photo taking. They would stand in front of you and not move till you took a picture. The time in the villages was exciting and exhausting. At one village we tasted a homemade wine that was very strong. Another village had a dance show with singing. Another village offered us traditional bread, which was very good. While we had been warned that touching us was to be expected, it didn’t really bother me. It kinda reminded me of my early days on the rez, with my hairy arms. I would have gladly spent more time with each tribe except the Muris. Their village was just to hectic. Their only goal seemed to be having their picture taken.  Thanks to Hamdy, who is great with kids..he would help out at every stop by diverting the kids from us with a game or something so we could enjoy the sites and not have too many kids hanging on.

CLOSING COMMENTS
Our trip showed us many sides of Ethiopian culture. I was struck by the amount of mountain walking that takes place every day. Families get up early in the morning, load up their goods for trade or sale, and walk from their small villages to larger towns on dirt roads. They spend most of the day in town then take everything back to their small villages. In the rural areas, there is almost no motorized transportation.
The Ethiopian Coptic Church was present in most of the villages. The churches and monasteries were magnificent. Those that were carved out of the earth were amazing. All the monks and priests we met were friendly and knew how to work with tourists. The art work in the monasteries was easily identified and usually told the story of something from the Bible. I appreciated the different take of stories I learned as a child.
I am not a coffee drinker That sort of changed while I was in Ethiopia. At our first hotel, I sat down to a coffee ceremony in the lobby. The coffee was not bitter, had no after taste, and was very good. I did drink coffee whenever it was offered. A great memory.
It is hard to understand Ethiopia in the short time we were there. Another visit is needed. I had a great trip that was made possible by HLO Tours and Hamdy, Focus Travel and Ellie, the great people in our group, our guide and our drivers, and the many, many people who opened up their lives to us.

I have posted some videos at my YouTube website. I hope everyone enjoys them as much as I do.  Click here to go to my channel.

About Me

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I retired in '06--at the ripe old age of 57. I enjoy blogging, photography, traveling, and living life to it's fullest.