Gondar: Ethiopia’s Camelot

by Sean McLachlan on

The road north from Lake Tana, Ethiopia, gradually ascends into the mountains. The landscape grows greener and the farms look richer here.

The combination of rough mountains and good farmland made it an obvious place for a capital city, and for many years it was. Gondar is nestled in a mountain-ringed valley at 2133 meters (6,998 ft.) altitude and is free from the malaria that plagues the Lake Tana region. It appeared so attractive that the Emperor Fasilidas moved from Lake Tana and made Gondar his capital in 1635. He built the impressive castle pictured to the right and gathered his court and supporters around him.

If the castle looks a bit European, that’s because Fasilidas took his inspiration from the Portuguese. A group of Portuguese adventurers had helped his father, Susneyos, defeat the Muslim conqueror Ahmed Gragn. Susneyos converted to Catholicism and tried to convert his subjects too, but the Ethiopian Orthodox faith was too strong for such a change. When Fasilidas came to the throne he quickly reconverted everyone back to the traditional church and ejected the Portuguese. This didn’t stop him from learning a thing or two from the Europeans, however, castle architecture being one of them.

Gondar makes a good rest stop after a few days of driving. The mountain breeze is cool and refreshing. The Italians liked it too, and during their brief occupation of the country from 1936-1941 they built an attractive European-style downtown that still retains some faded glory.

%Gallery-87470%Gondar is a place of song. The town’s many churches broadcast prayers and hymns over loudspeakers from the early morning until late at night. While this is common practice across Ethiopia, here the prayers bounce off the slopes and echo across the valley. They are especially audible at the palace complex, where Fasilidas built his castle and his successors vied with each other to make their own mark on history. There are a total of six castles by six different kings, built during Gondar’s 280 year run as the empire’s capital. The entire complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

While that of Fasilidas is the most imposing, each castle has its own distinctive style. A walk around the grounds is best done in a leisurely manner, and some castles offer fine views from the upper windows and battlements, although it takes some convincing to get the guards to let you up there!

Two related sights nearby should not be missed. One is the “Bath” of Fasilidas, actually a giant baptismal font for his famous mass reconversion. Usually it’s left empty, but for Timkat, the celebration of Epiphany, it’s filled with water and the faithful gather around, dressed in white and carrying candles.

The other sight is the Trinity Church built by the Emperor Iyasu in 1674. Of the 44 churches in Gondar, this is the only one to survive the attack of the Mahdi’s forces from the Sudan in 1888. It is said that the bees kept in the orchard on the church grounds swarmed against the Muslim looters and stung them so badly that they fled. The soldiers tried several times to burn the church, but each time they were driven off by angry bees.

However the church was saved, every visitor is grateful that it was. The interior is filled with elegant paintings of miracles and Bible scenes. Even the ceiling is covered in art. Winged angel heads are painted in neat rows along and between the roof beams. They look in every direction, a symbol of God being able to see everything at once.

If he has an eye for beauty, he must be looking at Gondar a lot.

Coming up next: Ethiopia’s wonderful children!

You can read the rest of the Ethiopia series here.

Medieval monasteries on Lake Tana, Ethiopia

by Sean McLachlan on

The Christian communities of Ethiopia have an eye for dramatic settings. From the sweeping views of Debre Libanos to the many monasteries perched atop sheer cliffs, the surroundings of a holy place are often as beautiful as the place itself.

It makes sense from a religious point of view. If you’re going to spend your life celebrating Creation, where better to do it than a place where Creation is at its most awesome or serene?

This is certainly true of the monasteries and nunneries on the islands of Lake Tana. These religious communities are set in a placid lake surrounded by green hills and fields. At 65 km (40 miles) in diameter it’s the largest lake in Ethiopia and has been a center of worship for more than 500 years.

Hiring a boat is pretty straightforward at the lakeside town of Bahir Dar, and our first stop is a peninsula a few miles along the coast where stands the 16th century church of Ura Kidane Mihret. The boat docks at a little pier and my wife and I take a narrow path through a dense forest. Coffee grows everywhere under the shade of the forest canopy. I’ve never seen coffee growing before. Splitting open one of the red berries I find the bean inside, a pale yellow, sticky thing that bears little resemblance to the roasted beans I’m used to. We drink Ethiopian coffee every morning at home so it’s nice to see where it comes from.

We climb a hill and pass though a simple stone gate. In the yard the monks are busy laying the foundation for a new building. All the monks have to work hard, either at farms on the mainland or helping out around the church and monastery. The church itself is deceptively simple on the outside–a large, round building topped by an elaborate cross–but when we pass through the tall wooden doors we’re stopped short by brilliantly colorful paintings reaching from floor to ceiling.

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The outer wall of the church shelters an inner wall that encloses the worship area and holy of holies. Every inch of this wall is covered in paintings. Some scenes are familiar, like the Crucifixion and St. George defeating the dragon. Others are strange to us, coming from holy books that have been discarded by or lost to the Western tradition, like the Miracle of Mary and the Kebre Negast. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church includes many such books in their canon. The books of Enoch and Jubilees were translated into Ge’ez, the ancient Ethiopian language still used in church services, but were lost to the West and survive in the New Testament only in a few quotations. If it wasn’t for ancient Ethiopian translators, these books would be almost entirely unknown.

The paintings are vivid, showing scenes of miracles and worship. Mary is a popular figure and every phase of her flight to Egypt is shown in detail. There’s also a brilliant painting of all the souls in Hell being freed after the Crucifixion.

The paintings sometimes take interesting twists to familiar themes. For example, the common image of St. George killing the dragon has a unique legend attached to it in Ethiopia. There once was a village that worshiped the dragon and made human sacrifices to it every day. A maiden named Brutawit was going to be sacrificed and St. George told her that if she believed in God that she would be saved. She was, thanks to George’s skill with a lance, and she took the dead beast back to the village to show that God was more powerful than the dragon. The entire village then converted to Christianity.

A short boat ride away is the island monastery of Kibran Gabrael. Like many monasteries, it’s off-limits to women so my wife hung out in a shady grove while I went to see the monastery’s famous library of medieval manuscripts. The monastery is quiet, most of the monks being on the mainland tending crops, but the librarian is in and he leads me to a little building stuffed with books. As a dedicated bibliophile I’ve been to some of the great libraries of the world and looked through many rare illuminated manuscripts, but I was very impressed with what I saw on this peaceful little island. The level of artistry in the books is equal to any of the great works of medieval France or Italy, yet completely different in style. The librarian opens up book after book of sturdy goatskin, showing me richly colored paintings of Bible scenes. Each of the Gospels has its own book, and there’s a hefty New and Old Testament that weighs in at 17 kilos (38 pounds)! Also in the library are a selection of icons. When a monk goes off on his own to pray in solitude for a few days, the abbot gives him a book to read and an icon to meditate on. Thus the monks get some fine art to admire and think about while they are cut off from the rest of humanity.

Lake Tana has several other monasteries and churches other than the ones I mention here. Some take an entire day trip by boat to visit. Someone seriously interested in seeing them all would need about a week to do it properly. Hopefully some day I’ll go back and write about them all here.

Next stop: Gondar–Ethiopia’s Camelot!

You can read the rest of the Ethiopia series here.

Road trip: Ethiopia

by Sean McLachlan on

Ethiopia is like the United States–it’s best seen on a long road trip. The easiest way to see Ethiopia’s beautiful landscape and ancient monuments is to hire a driver and vehicle in the capital Addis Ababa.

My wife and I picked Abey Roads based on a personal recommendation and decided to celebrate our tenth anniversary by doing the popular two-week “northern loop” encompassing the provinces of Amhara and Tigray and the most famous of Ethiopia’s ancient sites. Our driver Sntayehu Mekonen turned out to be a handy translator/guide/fixer, not to mention a fun travel companion. Many independent travelers prefer going it alone on public transport and while that is certainly cheaper, hiring a vehicle gives you more freedom of movement plus someone who is able to tell you about the country and show you out-of-the-way spots. So after some good first impressions of Ethiopia, we headed out.

The ride north out of Addis Ababa climbs up the steep slopes of the Entonto Hills through eucalyptus forest. This fast-growing Australian import was first planted by the Emperor Menelik more than a century ago. It provides a ready supply of construction material and the leaves are used for fuel. Women carry huge bundles of the leaves on their heads several miles downhill to sell in the market. Trucks speed past them with mountains of the stuff. Coming uphill we see one of Ethiopia’s famous runners, sprinting up a steep incline at 3,000 meters (9,000+ feet). Runners train in these hills so that when they race at lower elevations they can easily outpace the competition.

Up and over the hills and we’re speeding along the Oromo and Amhara uplands, a green and fertile region that looks nothing like the image most people have of Ethiopia. Acacia and eucalyptus dot the countryside and thatched roof huts are everywhere, their walls made of the thin trunks of eucalyptus. Children herding cows and goats wave at our car as their fathers thresh teff, a popular grain in Ethiopia. Teff is used to make injeera, the sour bread typical of Ethiopian cuisine, and it fetches a higher price than any other cereal crop. The tiny grains (the word derives from the Amharic term for “lost”) are separated from their husks by having cattle walk in circles over a heap of it until all the husks are crushed.

The first stop for most travelers on the northern historic loop is the monastery of Debre Libanos, 100 km north of Addis Ababa. A rough dirt road winds down a sheer 700 meter canyon to one of the holiest spots for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. It was here in a cave in the cliff that the holy man Tekle Heymonot lived for many years praying and fasting. Deciding this wasn’t enough, he stood on one leg until the other one fell off. Some paintings of the saint show him ascending to heaven, his detached leg equipped with its own set of wings.

%Gallery-87468%Like holy places the world over, Debre Libanos is permeated with a sense of transcendent calm. The verdant cliffs overlooking it to one side and the sweeping views on the other make are beautiful, and the church’s bright dome shines in the sun, appearing smaller than it is in the imposing landscape.

Once inside the scene changes completely. The interior is dim, lit only by candles and colored light filtering through a row of stained glass windows. Men and women worship on separate sides, their prayers mingling with the chants of priests intoning ancient hymns in front of Tekla Heymonot’s tomb. The liturgical language is Ge’ez, an ancient tongue that uses the same alphabet as Amharic but is unintelligible to modern speakers, a bit like Latin.

Our guide is a former engineer who speaks flawless English. Many years ago he got sick and his parents brought him here to be healed. Miraculously he was, and he gave up his job to become a monk. He takes us to every corner of the compound, from the cellar where monks stand in a circle chanting for hours as they lean wearily on staffs, up to the cave of Tekla Heymonot, where holy water drips from the ceiling into blue plastic buckets. He takes us to every place but one–the holy of holies found in every Ethiopian Orthodox Church, where the tabot, a replica of the Ark of the Covenant, is hidden from the sight of all but the priests and monks. The true Ark is said to be in a special building in the northern city of Axum. Only a single caretaker is allowed to gaze upon it.

The best thing about travel by car is seeing the in-between places. Many visitors to Ethiopia bypass the country’s long and often rough roads by flying from city to city. That’s no way to learn about a country. After Debre Libanos the next popular stop on the overland route is the source of the Blue Nile. To be honest it’s nothing more than a geographical curiosity–a muddy little spring that’s considered so holy that visitors can’t photograph it. But getting there proved that the journey is not the destination. Bumping along a rocky back road we spot a horse race in a nearby field. Local farmers, decked out in red and gold costumes, are racing in pairs across a long stretch of pasture marked out with poles as a small crowd cheers them on. We randomly pick our favorites and cheer too.

This of, course, attracts everybody’s attention, and soon we’re encircled by curious kids practicing their schoolbook English. After we decide we’ve stolen enough of the horsemen’s thunder, we say goodbye and go to the source of the Blue Nile. The same thing happens again. Soon the Nile is forgotten and we’re trading English words for Amharic. “Butterfly,” we say, pointing at one flying past. “Birabiro!” shout a dozen kids. “Acacia?” “Graal!” “Pen?” “Esceribto!”

Some of the kids are in high school and have good enough English to carry on a conversation. My wife explains what her work as an astronomer is like and encourages the girls to study science. As I watch her surrounded by these girls, telling them can be anything they want in life, I’m reminded of one of the reasons I married her.

And that’s what a tenth anniversary trip is all about, isn’t it?

First impressions of Ethiopia

by Sean McLachlan on

They say first impressions are lasting impressions, and while that’s a cliché, strong first impressions of a country can tell you a lot.

I’ve been in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, for four days now. My wife has just joined me and I’m treating her to a two-week road trip around the historic northern part of the country to celebrate our tenth anniversary. Memories make the best presents, after all.

This is our first time in sub-Saharan Africa and we’ve both been taken by surprise, summed up by my wife’s assessment of the Ethiopians: “They’re like us.”

(She’s Spanish, so when she says “us” she means Mediterranean people.)

To a great extent they are–in attitudes, priorities, even many mannerisms. With 1500 years of Christianity and an even longer period of nationhood, along with several centuries of Islamic learning and contact with the Mediterranean, Middle East, and South Asia, they’ve developed a culture similar enough to Southern Europe to be recognizable while different enough to be intriguing.

Take social life, for instance. Ethiopians have a great cafe culture and love to while away the hours sipping coffee, chatting with friends, and reading the paper at their favorite cafe. Addis Ababa has a wealth of cafes, both traditional and modern, to suit every mood. The Ethiopians discovered coffee, and it’s equally excellent everywhere, so you pick your place by location and decor.

Their attitude to education is similar to ours too. Private schools abound, the capital has plenty of good bookshops, and every city of any size has at least one university. I’ll be taking a closer look at the schools in a later post in the series.

There’s a relaxed relationship between the sexes here that’s much like our own. While many people frown on premarital sex, that doesn’t stop them from having dating. This has a beneficial effect for female Western travelers in that they won’t be constantly harassed by chronically lonely men like often happens in northern India and parts of the Middle East. Both male and female travelers will receive a fair amount of innocent flirting, though. Considering how good looking the Ethiopians are, this isn’t a bad thing.

%Gallery-85449%I’m ashamed to admit that I thought Addis Ababa was going to be dirty. While it’s a poor city, a small army of street sweepers keeps it pretty tidy. They can’t stop the dust that blows everywhere, though, and the pollution is as bad as a Western city during rush hour. One stark difference is the poverty. There are countless beggars. Many of them are farmers whose crops have failed and they’ve been forced to come to the city to find food. Others are handicapped or have suffered injuries that keep them from working. More prosperous Ethiopians readily give to beggars and don’t judge them simply because they’re poor. This is a pleasant difference from our own culture.

So in the first four days we haven’t had any real culture shock. Expats living in Addis Ababa say it’s easy to slip into daily life here. The Ethiopians we know in Madrid say the same thing about Spain!

Of course we’ve only seen the capital city so far and talked to members of only three of Ethiopia’s many ethnic groups, so as we travel around Ethiopia for the next two months I suspect we’ll discover many differences.

But I bet we’ll find some more similarities too.