In West Ethiopia, born and raised

After finishing a trying and eventful few months in Egypt, I spent the last two weeks of February in Ethiopia with a couple of friends. Ethiopia was an interesting change of pace for me, as I've only really travelled in Arab countries in the last few years. I'll tell a few stories from the first part of the trip below, but in terms of initial impressions:

Despite hailing from the same Semitic linguistic family as Arabic, Amharic is totally different, with even fewer cognates than Arabic shares with Hebrew.

Ethiopia is very poor. Egypt is by no means a wealthy country, but its poverty pales in comparison; there were a lot of sights that were hard to see.

Being "ferenji" or white made me stick out like a sore thumb. I can pretend to be an Arab and often get away with it, but no one would confuse me for "habash," a real Ethiopian. I was a magnet for pickpockets and scam artists for the whole time there.

Finally, injera and Ethiopian food are quite good. I've had it in the states a few times, but in Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar, it's incredible. Mutton stew, barbecued goat, and vegetarian "fasting food", eaten throughout Lent, were all delicious and a great change of pace from my diet in Egypt of koshary, rice pudding, and sahleb.

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Wounded by Cairo, Blinded by Addis

Before my departure from Egypt, rush hour traffic, a bit of sand, and a brisk wind implanted in my right eye some debris. As I frantically prepared to depart, it had exploded into a massive swollen monster. (Upon his arrival in Ethiopia 24 hours after me, my friend David said I looked like Quadimodo.)

Arriving in Ethiopia was an ordeal, as it was 4am, my right eye was completely swollen shut, and the left hurt too much to blink, leaving me with an excess of tears, blurring the good eye. A kind Portugese man helped me fill out a visa application and I changed my US dollars to Ethiopian birr. I was ready to go, so I thought.

The visa office only accepted US dollars and Euros. I had foolishly changed all my dollars to birr. And of course they didn't accept their own currency. I wnt back to the money changer, who had on her desk the US dollars I had just changed. She refused to change any birr back to dollars (This was my first experience with what others have termed "Ethiopian logic"). She told me to go to the bank, which first of all was AFTER customs/entry stamp and second of all was closed, because it was 4am. After dropping a few f-bombs in the general direction of the money changer, Jesus H. Christs above, and eye-pain related tears to the floor (that's my story and I'm sticking to it), I found a group of Germans, who I offered a very good rate of exchange, but they just gave me 20€ as a gesture of goodwill, or possibly because I looked like Quasimodo and they were frightened by my eye.

Visa in hand, I got a taxi to the hostel and waited for David and Evan to arrive.

[My attempts at and final acquisition of medical care while mostly blinding Addis Ababa could fill their own post, but in large generalizations: clinics are poorly-equipped and usually closed, doctors aren't particularly well-trained, needles in sub-Saharan Africa are terrifying, and thank Allah for antibiotics.]

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Debre Libanos is for Lovers

After a few days seeing the sights and drinking the delicious coffee of Addis Ababa, before we left for Bahir Dar, we took a day trip to Debre Libanos, a monastery town 100km north of the capital. After haggling for a taxi as all the buses were gone, our taxi promptly became a bus, stopping for any passenger on the road. After a long and bumpy three hour ride, the driver told us, through a makeshift translator, that he was leaving back to Addis in thirty minutes unless we paid more, despite us negotiating a round trip with waiting. He wanted to leave even before the monastery opened. My companions left to me the task of, excuse my French, bitching out foreigners over money, due to my skills and experience in this field. Eventually, he agreed to give us an hour and a half total, of which the monastery would be open a half hour. After hiking to the cave where St. Tekla Haimanot prayed until his leg became gangrenous and fell off. Apparently, he stood and prayed another seven years on one leg.

Climbing back down and entering the monastery, we repeated a familiar pattern of becoming a spectacle wherever we went. A cathedral full of men and women in prayer turned to watch the feranji walking through the church.

After hurrying through the compound, we returned to the waiting minibus, and began the journey back to Addis Ababa, from where we would depart for Bahir Dar and Gondar in the north the next morning.

More adventures from the Ethiopian north and an Egyptian oasis to come soon.