Lalibela, the eighth wonder of the world
“But what have you lost in Ethiopia? There is only poverty." This is what I got used to hearing when I verbalized my plan to travel to the country. Obviously, I ignored all the warnings that, on the other hand, only increased my desire to travel to that almost cursed country. Said and done: this is how I planted myself in Addis Ababa.
Just as many predicted, I found misery, a lot of it, the kind that gets under the skin and hurts; but i also found one of the most fascinating countries on earth . For three weeks I was an insatiable spectator of ancient traditions, I admired its portentous nature, impossible to imagine in one of the poorest countries on earth, and I visited incredible monuments, silent witnesses of civilizations and magical legends.
But above all, I found a proud people like few others whose bloody history of wars and tyrants drunk with power has not managed to break the optimism of their long-suffering people. As one of our guides said: "Ethiopia is poor but it is the only one in Africa that has not been colonized, it must be for a reason..." . Well, it must be for a reason...
My Ethiopian immersion began in the north of chaotic Addis Ababa, on what the guides call the “Historical Route”, a rosary of cities in which the echoes of great empires and kings still resonate and in which the weight of Christianity remains enormous. It is impossible to describe all the magic and beauty of each of them in just a few lines, so in successive chapters I will unravel in detail the stories and characters that made up my journey through the country that fascinated Kapuścińskiy to Javier Reverte among others.
Bahir Dar region
LALIBELA, THE AFRICAN PETRA
The great Kapuściński says that Lalibela is the eighth wonder of the world , “and if it is not, it should be”. I couldn't agree more with this statement. The Polish writer visited this city in the 1970s, the time of the enormous famines that caused more than a million deaths and that would make Ethiopia sadly famous.
Lalibela, the land of buried temples
Today, Lalibela is the jewel of the incipient Ethiopian tourism , a city drawn between valleys of hypnotic beauty and small houses with a circular floor plan and thatched roof. Eleven rock-cut churches make up the unique heritage of one of the most impressive places in the world. Because no matter how many photos you've seen of these architectural wonders, how much you've read about them, nothing prepares you for the experience of attending a ceremony at dawn , when an endless procession of pilgrims dressed in their white robes, the wagi , they recite their prayers in monotone.
Underground prayers in Lalibela
For four thousand years the same songs of the priests and deacons have been repeated in the primitive language of the who's , the same succession of rites in which each object, each movement has a particular symbolism, the same mystical scenario capable of moving the most skeptical. Here, it becomes clear the great weight of religion , especially the Christian, in Ethiopian society, perhaps the only potion they have found to withstand so many centuries of calamities and violent wars.
In Lalibela I also had the opportunity to discover the coffee ceremony , that leisurely, traditional and above all aromatic ritual that Ethiopian women carry out up to five times a day. And it is that coffee is the national drink par excellence in Ethiopia , not in vain is considered one of the best in the world and according to many where the origin of it is located. From the grinding of the coffee beans, their infusion in the precious “jabenas” and the final dressing with lots of sugar, the coffee ceremony is an experience of extraordinary beauty. A lot of patience, yes, this is not a Starbucks.
coffee ceremony
BAHIR DAR AND LAKE TANA
Bahir Dar is like a big garden. A breath of fresh air after the strange (to call it somehow) Addis Ababa. Sublime vegetation, jacarandas, lemon trees, fig trees... and as a backdrop a lake, the Tana, which with its 84 km long and 66 km wide constitutes the main source of the Blue Nile, although when I saw him he had rather little blue.
Tana Lake
Distributed on the peninsula and on some of the islands scattered around the lake there are a dozen circular plan monasteries whose existence was practically unknown until 1930. These carpeted temples at whose door idle priests invariably stand guard were my first immersion in Ethiopian sacred art : scenes from the Bible, slightly naive faces, a bright color palette and a particular trick to identify the "good" and the "bad": the figures in which the two eyes are represented correspond to the pious, while the villains only see one.
In Bahir Dar I tried to learn to dance without much success" skier the quintessential national dance consisting of a frantic movement of the shoulders. And it is that as someone told me, "the faranji (as they call foreigners in Ethiopia) will never be able to move their shoulders like us." What a great truth and what a sad role mine played in that den of Bahir Dar trying to follow an impossible rhythm, only suitable for Africans.
In the streets of Bahir Dar
GONDAR, THE AFRICAN CAMELOT
It was drizzling in Gondar and I remember thinking that more than Africa, that city surrounded by green hills actually resembled to a medieval village in the middle of Europe . Flourishing capital in the 17th century, its powerful sovereign, fasilidas , had an opulent royal complex built using techniques learned from the Orient and its then allies, the Portuguese. These, whom I always find incessantly around the world, no matter what continent I am on, came to the aid of the king harassed by the Islamic onslaughts of neighboring nations. The Castle of Fasilidas it is simply something that you do not expect in the middle of Africa and that is precisely what impresses.
Fasilidas in Gondar, the Ethiopian Camelot
in Gondar, I met Taddese, a corpulent and good-natured big man whose arts are crucial in the daily life of the small town of Gondar. Taddese is a scribe , a trade so forgotten in our technological days as it is present in the Ethiopia of the 21st century where more than 50% of the population remains illiterate.
The man tells me how his clients bring him letters and official documentation and he helps them read them and, if necessary, respond to them. "Love letters too?" - I ask innocently thinking instinctively of some knight in shining armor. "Few, life here is too hard for romanticism." And with a big smile he asks me for my pen, a highly coveted object in Ethiopia as I will learn throughout my journey.
AKSUM OR 'THE LAMB'S MOTHER'
I confess, except for the wonderful church of the four apostles where our friendly guide took us and aksumite coin of the year of Methuselah that I bought from a peasant and with which I hope one day to become rich, Aksum seemed like one of many cities in Ethiopia. However, it seems almost a sin not to visit the place where the most precious relic for the Ethiopians is found, the ark of the covenant and the Church that hosts it, Saint Mary of Zion , which is attended by thousands of pilgrims every year.
The precious treasure is found in a small chapel located between what was the original church, Ezana, and the new one, built by the last emperor, Haile Selassie in the 1960s . And I wonder, if as the historians affirm here there is no trace of the Ark, what is it that the guardians guard so jealously?
Church of Saint Mary of Zion
in Aksum I ate the best shiro tegamino and the best injera (typical Ethiopian bread based on a cereal called weave ) of the entire trip. It was in the Atse Yohannes restaurant whose owners, an Ethiopian woman and her American husband, helped us understand a little more about the complex Ethiopian psyche, "sometimes we get desperate and think it would be better to return to the United States but then we always come to the conclusion that we have to help lift this country."
cooking injera