After treating ourselves to a relatively nice stay in Addis (we booked a super luxurious room for $24 a night!), getting my phone interview taken care of, and drinking an excessive amount of cappuccinos, we decided to head east. This was not in our original plan, but we'd heard from several people that Harar was worth a visit.
Harar is a town in the east of Ethiopia, very close to Somaliland, that has maintained a unique culture. The people are predominantly Muslim and you can definitely feel the presence of Muslim culture as you head farther east.
On our 10-hour bus ride, we saw how the landscape changed to desert and instead of large groups of cattle and goats walking along the road, we now saw huge packs of camels. It was incredible.
The Old City of Harar is actually a walled city. Within the walls, Harari culture is very much alive, with its own language, clothing and traditions. The Harari people are known for being very kind, and we noticed that right away! It was such a relief after the harassment we'd experienced in the south. (Although, we did still get yelled at and followed around the bus station. And there was still begging/demanding on the streets.)
We stayed in a guest house that had only three rooms. It was a typical Harari house with the walls covered in the traditional way.
At the guest house we met a kid named Be'emenet. He offered to give us a tour of the town, and we took him up on it. He ended up being a really great guide, providing us with lots of interesting information, and he was constantly eager to show us more special sites.
We spent the day with Be'emenet. We walked throughout the walled city, getting a feel for the pace of life, enjoying the kindness we felt from everyone, and making our way through the maze-like narrow paths.
My favorite thing in the Old City was the clothing. It was so loud and colorful and amazing. It was totally different from the clothing we'd seen elsewhere in Ethiopia.
It was also really nice to just observe life within the walls:
Be'emenet took us to a balcony where we had a great view of the Old City and the New City. Here you can see the wall separating them:
The market just outside the wall:
We also went to a coffee bean roasting company, which was a highlight of the day. Talking to the entrepreneur who started the place was awesome. He was so ambitious, but he knew how to pace himself and start small. The coffee smelled wonderful.
And we hung out with hyenas for an hour!
There's a man who feeds the hyenas around Harar every single night. They are his friends. He has named them all and knows them. Every single night at 7pm, he brings out a huge pot full of meat and bones. Then he whistles and calls to them, and they come!
It was pretty terrifying at first. It's not every day that you're a few feet away from hyenas. And we've been totally conditioned by The Lion King to believe hyenas are evil. Even knowing that these hyenas have been more or less domesticated....still it was crazy to be that close to them! At one point, maybe an hour into the feeding, we counted a total of 10 hyenas next to us at one time.
After Harar, we took a bus back to Addis, and then flew north to Lalibela. Lalibela is the most visited town in Ethiopia. Tons of Christian tourists visit Lalibela to see the famous 800-year-old rock-hewn churches. We'd been hearing about the beauty of Lalibela since the day we arrived in Ethiopia, so we were very excited.
Lalibela is a town set in the mountains and the surroundings are gorgeous. We enjoyed walking around and appreciating the pleasant setting. Although it is a relatively peaceful, quiet place, the roads were never empty. Every time we went outside for a stroll, we were accompanied by dozens of locals. There were always kids on their way to or from school. And groups of men and women covered in white shawls on their way to or from praying at church. The locals in Lalibela are very used to tourists, but this did not diminish their interest in us. Every walk down the road involved the typical, "Hello. You! Where you from?" etc. But everyone was very nice and it was a breeze after what we'd experienced earlier.
Walking through Lalibela, a view of some of the homes on the hillside, and the cemetery beside the road:
Heading toward the main road of the town, alongside the wall of the church compound:
We followed our guidebook's advice and hired an official guide to show us around the churches. There are 13 churches in all, and all of them were carved from the mountain of rock in the area. It was really amazing to see these elegant, detailed, perfect structures emerge from the "mother rock".Our guide ended up telling us a bunch of really boring stuff that was of no interest to us. He'd go on and on about these religious stories and talk about them as if they were historical fact. For example, at one church he told us that it is believed that angels constructed one portion of the church because there isn't any reliable documentation of how many humans were involved in the construction 800 years ago (the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, Ryan says). Our guide wasn't telling us a "story" about angels building the church. He said it like it was history. This was extremely annoying, especially since we would have really enjoyed an archaeological perspective on the sites.
Still, it was a nice stroll from one church to another. The architecture was impressive.
Below was my favorite church. It was very tiny, and I loved how the ceiling was still a part of the mother rock. In this structure you could really see how something intricate and special was carved out of the mountainside.
Our guide saved the most famous church for last. The Church of Saint George (below) has become an internationally recognized symbol of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity. The story on this structure is that Saint George visited King Lalibela in a dream and asked him, "How come all the other saints have churches in Lalibela and I don't???"
Overall, the churches were most interesting from the outside, because that's where you could appreciate the architecture. Inside, they were all really dark and gloomy. There was religious artwork everywhere, and that was also very dark. Really the only thing of interest within the churches was the occasional chanting of the priests who all sang together.
We also saw a group of priests gathered outside a church that was too small to accommodate all of them. They read and sang together.
It was interesting to see people working within the church compound. There is a whole world of production there...people who work to serve the priests.
Another last-minute decision we made was to fly to Gonder, another town in the mountains in the north. We were planning on spending a full week in Lalibela, but we quickly saw that Lalibela was too small to deserve that much time. Plus, we met a really cool American couple that we clicked with right away. They'd been to Gonder and they recommended a visit. We managed to squeeze it in right before leaving the country, and it was a great final adjustment to our itinerary.
There was something just very cool and chilled out about Gonder. We were able to wander around the city, without being followed or hassled. It was a pleasant surprise. It was cool to just be there and see Gonder life for a couple days.
Upon seeing this gym advertisement, Ryan said, "We have to take a picture for Alex."
We went to this really incredible old church which looks pretty ordinary from the outside.
The interior is what is remarkable! Every inch of wall and ceiling was covered in traditional Ethiopian religious art, hundreds of years old.
The ceiling was my favorite:
We also visited the Royal Enclosure, which is a group of castles where the ruling royal family lived hundreds of years ago when Gonder was the capital. It was a wonderful visit. There were only two other people in the entire place, and the space was huge. It was like we had an enormous, peaceful park full of castles all to ourselves.
It was just so pleasant to be in a quiet place. Ethiopia really made us miss trees, flowers, green space. To be in this park was a great treat, such a respite from the constant noise and mess on the streets.
Gonder is the city closest to the rural area where the Ethiopian Jews once lived. Although there aren't many left in Ethiopia (except for some who are maybe half-Jewish, or whose ancestors were Jews who converted under pressure hundreds of years ago and now want to be Jewish again and get a free pass to Israel)--even though the Jews are mostly all gone, I wanted to see the area where they once lived. As stated in a previous entry, I spent several months researching the Ethiopian Jews. To be able to see where they came from was important to me.So, we took a tuc-tuc from Gonder to a village called Wolleka, which was once the heart of the Jewish community. The village is basically empty now. But the old synagogue is still standing:
And the people who do live there have kept up the tradition of pottery, which the Jews in that area were famous for. The pottery is now sold mainly to tourists.
We also met a guy, David, in his early 20s who is half-Jewish. We spent the day talking with him, asking him lots of questions. One of his best friends lives in Israel now and is in the army. He was telling us stories his friend had told him about Tel Aviv. He also told us all the Hebrew words he's learned so far. David is planning on moving to Israel next year. We showed him our pictures of Tel Aviv and his eyes got so wide! That could be his world in just a few months. It's just unbelievable how different the two places are.
Gonder and Wolleka finished up our month in Ethiopia. At that point, we were very, very ready to leave the country. It had been a very difficult month...by far the most challenging experience of our trip, and the country where we had the most negative moments. We were dreaming of the developed world: internet that works, tap water that won't give you cholera, salads full of fresh vegetables, and more than anything the ability to walk down the street without standing out as a tourist and a target for begging.
There is only one other thing in Ethiopia that was very significant that isn't yet in this blog. It was by far the most wonderful experience we had. It will be in our next entry, the final one about our Ethiopian adventure.
Why didn't D'Arcy comment on this one?
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