Road out of Addis
Olympic runners and Africa’s Grand Canyon
WORDS: ALEX RAYNER
PHOTOGRAPHY: TIM WHITE
I MIGHT BE WEARY AFTER FOUR DAYS ON THE ROAD, BUT I COULD HAVE SWORN WE JUST PASSED AN ABANDONED TANK BACK THERE. After lunch, I roll off to sleep in the Landcruiser. Yet before I close my eyes, I’m certain we passed a spotted hyena’s corpse.
Later, we slow down to photograph some rural children and they shout back “Highland! Highland!” What’s that about? And, while we’re on that subject, could a fellow diner at this afternoon’s restaurant have topped the poll for worst T-shirt malapropism? His shirt’s slogan, surrounded by shamrocks was: “Keith me, I’m Irish.” Say it out loud if it doesn’t make sense on paper.
Then there’s the Café Obamas and the Hotel 2Pacs on the main streets of these tiny villages that we buzz through; buses with ‘Westlife’, ‘Wow Love’, ‘Rooney’ or ‘Manchester United’ painted on to the top of their windscreens. Everyone here seems just as enthralled to the vagaries of the football league tables, the swing states, the singles charts and old battle lines. Only, drifting through the charcoal smoke, past the wild beasts, mud and livestock, under those cryptic, ancient crosses, all this modernity takes on a new gloss of strangeness.
WE’RE ON THE ROAD IN ETHIOPIA, TRAVELLING FROM THE CAPITAL, Addis Ababa, towards the cultural centres of the north. It’s a route that most travellers tend to make via connecting flights from Addis’s Bole airport. Yet we’re going overland, on a two-day jaunt that will prove getting there is as important as arriving.
Voyager’s photographer, Tim, and I set off at an hour we think early, around 7.30am, but the rest of the city seems to have risen well before us. Our driver, Lemo from Memories Tours, meets us at Hotel Ararat in the west of the city. We load up and almost immediately hit traffic. Most Ethiopians work long hours, and though it’s only just after day break, the streets are packed with cars, carts and minibus taxis. Road manners aren’t as challenging as in Italy, but progress is slow.
The jams clear around the Entoto National Park, the steep, lush foothills that surround the city. Though it’s early, we’ve already missed Haile Gebrselassie. The Olympic athlete trains on these routes from 5am to 7am each morning. However, as we drive uphill and out of the city, we pass a few runners, training on the same steep roads.
Once we’re out of Entoto, the horizon drops down. Gone are the eucalyptus trees; we’re surrounded by the kind of low grassland you might see in the Yorkshire moors. Plenty of it is under cultivation, though there aren’t any tractors in these fields. Most are tilled with wooden ploughs, tipped with metal shares and harnessed to oxen. The cereal they sow is called teff, a small, nutritious grain that goes into the injera pancakes served with almost all local dishes.
This road north, tarmacked with the assistance of the Japanese government, runs straight through a few minor villages and, in passing, we catch glimpses of rural life as it is lived outside the big cities: Coca-Cola logos stencilled on to adobe huts, carts fashioned from car wheels and axles, kids vending everything from roast corn through to moonshine and charcoal.
Within an hour we pass our first armoured vehicle. Or at least what’s left of it. An abandoned tank has been stripped of almost every portable piece of metal. War remnants are a common sight. Ethiopia fought its neighbour Somalia in 1977-78; there were civil wars throughout the 1980s, and in the early 1990s Eritrea ceded from Ethiopia following a bloody conflict. Some insurgency still takes place in the eastern Ogaden region and most Ethiopian adults have war stories to share. The tank probably dates from the 1970s: Cyrillic type stamped to some components indicate that this is an old Soviet model, shipped to Ethiopia back when Moscow was keen to aid the country’s Communist regime.
We take a closer look at the vehicle, and are soon met by a group of local children. Sometimes they shout at the cars as they pass, hoping to stop them. On this occasion they’ve waited for us to pull over before they leave their chores in the fields. Ethiopia is still mostly a poor country and child labour isn’t rare. Plenty of young children tend to the herds, scaring off hyenas and keeping cattle off the roads. Their pay is minimal, so you can’t blame them for trying to cadge what they can from passing tourists.
These boys are asking us for ‘Highland’, referring to the brand of bottled water. They don’t want a drink, but empty bottles, which they can put to a variety of uses. Other kids ask for pens, a habit that appears to have arisen from well-meaning travellers giving gifts with some perceived educational value.
Whether these are put to good use is unclear; plenty of guidebooks council against the giving of any gifts without some kind of service provided, arguing that even small presents encourage begging and disrupt local societies (see boxout).
Though we bid this lot goodbye, we run into another group at a more obvious tourist site: the Blue Nile Gorge. This deep valley cuts through Ethiopia’s highlands, from the river’s source, Lake Tana, out towards the border with Sudan. Over a kilometre deep and at points 20km wide, the gorge compares favourably with North America’s Grand Canyon, though it attracts only a fraction of the sightseers.
There’s no formal viewing platform, just a bare patch by the side of the road. We take in the view and chat with the children sitting about on the rocks. One sells us some small fossils, while another is keen to exchange phone numbers. Only when pulls out his phone do I realise that his handset is significantly more advanced than mine. I really need an upgrade.
IT’S LUNCHTIME WHEN WE REACH DEBRE MARKOS, A SMALLISH TOWN SETTLED ON THE SITE OF AN IMPORTANT ETHIOPIAN VICTORY. Here in April 1941 a handful of local troops fought off 1,400 Italian soldiers, helping bring the European occupation to an end. There’s little to commemorate the battle, but it’s still a pleasant, sleepy town. We take a walk in the grounds of the local church, Kidus Markos. Most Ethiopian Orthodox churches are round, with low conical roofs topped with an ornate cross. Inside there are a couple of concentric chambers, each increasingly holy and secretive; inside the innermost sanctum, the ‘maqdas’, lies a reproduction of the Ark of the Covenant, which only the priests themselves can access. This reverence for the box in which the Ten Commandments were first held stems from the belief that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church have the real Ark itself in their possession, in a chapel in Ethiopia’s former capital, Aksum. But most archaeologists doubt the church’s claims. Certainly, the box can’t be carbon dated, since only a churchappointed guardian may see it.
The sun is approaching the horizon as we enter Bahir Dar, a humid city on the shores of Lake Tana. At 1,800 metres above sea level, Bahir Dar is relatively low-lying for a northern Ethiopian settlement. Its modest elevation coupled with its position, on the edge of the country’s largest lake, gives Bahir Dar a sub-tropical air. Streets are lined with palm trees and heavy breezes waft in from the lake.
These conditions make the Hotel Ghion both the best and the worst place to stay in the world. There are monkeys in the trees, fine food served in the hotel’s restaurant and rooms start at around 150 birr (about £8) a night. That’s the upbeat interpretation. A more pessimistic critique of the hotel might take into account its woeful dilapidation, its regular power outages, or that the en-suite bathrooms appear to have been plumbed by a psychopath.
Then there’s the mosquitoes. Malarial insects rarely thrive above 2,000 metres, which covers almost all of northern Ethiopia, except for Bahir Dar. While the Ghion does furnish most of its rooms with mosquito nets, its staff denied the existence of any life-threatening bugs, or simply said it was the “wrong time of year” for them. Regardless, we checked in, covered ourselves in bug spray, crossed our fingers and made for the lake, as some of Bahir Dar’s greatest treasures lie offshore.
Not only is Lake Tana the source of the Blue Nile, it also has a number of monasteries dotted about the islands in the lake. They date from the 14th century and contain a trove of valuable ecclesiastical artefacts. From the Ghion a round trip to the most accessible monastery, Debre Maryam, takes half an hour and costs 200 birr. The boys piloting our boat throw in a brief sojourn to the mouth of the Blue Nile, too. It’s only once we’re out on the lake that we realise that our launch hasn’t any life jackets.
Though it is still and pretty, the opening is hardly a striking start for the world’s longest river. We watch fishermen in papyrus canoes and a young hippo wallowing in the green waters, before motoring over to Debre Maryam’s wharf. Mango and coffee plants grow beside the compound’s low gate. Inside are monks’ quarters, a rough hut, and the low cylindrical building itself. Slipping off our shoes and paying a modest entry fee, we view the church’s highly decorated inner walls, while the monk leaves through a hidebound 14th century text, holding an equally antique Coptic cross. The artefacts might seem modest, but the setting evokes a cultural connection that few museum cases could muster.
No mosquitoes strike in the night and we leave Bahir Dar malaria-free (I hope). Within an hour or so the beginnings of the Simien Mountains come into view; we reach the city of Gonder in time for lunch.
Founded in the 17th century, Gonder served as the capital for around 200 years. Its outskirts are picturesque and functional, though hardly noteworthy. It’s not until you enter the city’s ruined Royal Enclosure that you get a taste of its old self. A Unesco World Heritage Site, it houses the kind of castles more at home on the plains of Iberia. A marked Portuguese influence led to Gonder’s distinctly European domes and turrets.
From these ancient walls we could reach the equally venerable sites of Axum and Lalibela, as well as the zoological delights of the Simien National Park. Yet, during this brief road trip, it already feels as if we’ve seen a side of Ethiopia many miss. Memories Tour Plc on the Bole Road in Addis can arrange a car and driver for €120 per day. For more on their tours go to www.memoriestour.com
ALMS & ASSISTANCE
If you want to help the poor during a trip to Ethiopia, but don’t want to give cash to beggars, consider donating to the following charities
Hope Enterprises
This charity has been helping the needy in Ethiopia since 1971. Visitors to Addis Ababa can buy meal tickets at their office on Churchill Road from 8am to 5pm Monday to Friday, and on Saturdays up to noon. A book of eight tickets cost eight birr (around 50p). Locals can redeem the tickets for food at local shops.
www.hopeenterprises.org
The Fred Hollows Foundation
Registered in the UK, the Hollows Foundation seeks to eradicate avoidable blindness in developing countries. With donors’ help, they plan to build an eye clinic in Ethiopia.
www.hollows.org.uk
Oxfam
Active in over 30 countries in Africa, including Ethiopia, Oxfam provide humanitarian and development aid such as water, sanitation and education. They also support local partner groups with programs to promote economic and social justice.
www.oxfam.org
