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Published: April 24th 2009
I have heard nothing good about Ethiopian bus journeys, and aim to be at the bus well before the departure time to ensure I get a decent seat. With the expectation of a long day's travel ahead, and covered in a layer of dried sweat from the previous night, I decide the least I can do for my sanity is to wash my hair. Thus at 4AM I am crouched in my undies next to the communal tap, lathering and rinsing by moonlight. I notice that several of the other guests have pulled their beds out into the courtyard, and hope that if any of them is woken by my ablutions then the scene meeting their eyes won't be too traumatic.
The front gate to the hotel is bolted, and it takes an agonising 20 seconds of screeching metal to open it. Anyone not yet awake soon is, courtesy of the hollow boom as the gate finally swings free. I then find that I can't close it behind me and my attempts to do so make the entire structure sway alarmingly. I give up, figuring the owner will shortly be coming to investigate anyway.
There are burning braziers at
intervals along the street and as my eyes accustom to the gloom I see bedframes and their occupants outside many of the buildings. There are several passengers already waiting by the bus but the driver is still asleep inside. We wait for ten minutes and then he wakes. I am shown to a seat.
The bus appears to be an old schoolbus, with an aisle separating a row of seats for three children from a row of seats for two. The legroom is also appropriate for human beings under the age of about six. Though my body doesn't want to admit this, I know that 60-odd adults are going to be crammed inside before we leave. And just over an hour after our expected departure time, as the bus's engine groans into life, that is indeed the case. I'm grateful that Ethiopians appear to be generally on the slight side though I doubt they're thinking the same about me. A late addition to the passengers is a Japanese guy carrying - naturally - a didgeridoo.
The journey to Gonder includes a bewildering 40 minute breakfast stop - I never fail to be staggered by the number of countries
Painting
Debre Berhan Selassiein which people seem to be happy dragging out a trip longer than necessary by constantly stopping for food in cruddy cafes. The road is only patchily paved but there is an absence of ridges and ruts so the actual ride is fairly smooth. The downers are the underpowered bus engine, which means anything vaguely slope-like heralds a quick descent into first gear, and the cramped conditions inside. Though we are gradually gaining in altitude, a strong sun ensures that the temperature inside is uncomfortable. Our other major stop is so that a teenager with a semi-automatic can pat down all the men and then go through everyone's luggage.
Normally I can zone out in such circumstances, to mentally drift off such that time passes without me really knowing. But I can't enter this state due to being constantly uncomfortable and, when we pull into Gonder in the early afternoon, I feel like the journey has taken twice as long as the 7.5 hours that my watch is telling me.
With no knowledge of Gonder's geography, I don't resist when two touts convince me to accompany them to their hotel - they say it is in the centre
of town, which will be a good place from which to start my own investigations should their offering prove unsatisfactory. The "new hotel, only opened last year" that they are touting for is nothing of the sort, and after being quoted a price roughly five times what it should be, I head off on my own. I am approached by touts from other establishments who prove annoyingly persistent. Once again, I curse the tourists who give in to this sort of behaviour and hence encourage it. Fortunately I spot a Tourist Information office, which seems like a mirage after the total lack of such places in Sudan.
The Tourist Information man is extremely helpful, furnishing me with both a map and a long list of Gonder hotels describing their amenities and prices. For about $12, in the Circle Hotel, I find myself a double room featuring a TV, hot shower (not seen since Aswan) and Western toilet. My balcony opens onto a street scene two floors below of Ethiopians going about their daily business - in particular this seems to be a major pick-up/drop-off point for the numerous blue and white minibuses that are the mainstay of local public
transport. I now have a decent base of operations. Subsequently, I see a place called the Genetics Hotel and regret choosing one with such a comparatively dull name.
Though Tourist Information tells me that the rainy season doesn't start until July, more often than not it tips it down for half an hour or so late afternoon throughout my stay.
Gonder gives me a welcome introduction to Ethiopian history and shatters a few of my preconceptions of the country. In my head, Ethiopia equates to arid famine conditions and long distance runners. In fact, most of the country is mountainous (hence the runners), and the view from my balcony shows an abundance of trees and grass. It is winter in Gonder and the climate is extremely pleasant. I later learn that the Band Aid/Live Aid-inspiring famine was more a result of government mismanagement than a "genuine" famine. There are more than three times the number of animal species in Ethiopia as there are in the UK, with many endemics.
Gonder was Ethiopia's capital after first Aksum and then Lalibela. Founded nearly four centuries ago by Emperor Fasilides, its location was chosen for various reasons including its defensibility
and its malaria-free altitude. Fasilides and his son and grandsons each built castles within the grounds of the Royal Enclosure, leading to the nickname of the "Camelot of Africa", though I find the similarity to Tolkien's Gondor to be a more evocative one - crumbling ramparts overflown by shrieking kites soaring on the wind. The castles are made of stone, though one was faced in plaster by the Italians during their occupation in the early years of WWII, and are in varying states of repair courtesy of the passing years and British wartime bombing.
These facts I learn from my guide as we walk through the Royal Enclosure, which fortunately doesn't have the same T-shirt ban as its Ascot counterpart. He tells me about the enlightened times during which the Enclosure was built, including the recognition of women's rights. He is one of several people I have spoken to whose voicing of agreement sounds more like someone gasping for oxygen. He is a Christian and has no love of Muslims, muttering darkly about the hold that Al-Qaeda is gaining on the minds of impressionable youths. As we walk, I see birds of prey and other exotica such as hornbills,
Coffee
Ethiopia Hotel all using the buildings and trees as nesting spots and vantage points.
I also visit the Bath of Fasilides, a pleasant, shaded site. Some of the trees are interwined with the stones, giving me flashbacks to Ta Prohm in Cambodia. The bath is a now-empty swimming pool, larger than Olympic size though anyone in lanes 3 to 6 would have cause to complain at the stone structure blocking their path. Around its edges sit a pair of Italians and an American tourist, all reading in the quiet. I sit down too, and the only interruption comes from a local man in a Texas cowboy hat, selling postcards depicting an annual ceremony at the bath.
My third site - and the most interesting - is Debre Berhan Selassie, a church on a rise to the east of the town. Inside, its ceiling and walls are covered in paintings that are alive with colour and detail. In particular, the myriad angels on the ceiling appear to have wings made from the Stars and Stripes. The paintings include depictions of various martyrdoms, and the watchman points out the figure of Mohammed in one shadowy corner.
Ethiopia is mentioned more than
50 times in the Bible and has a long history of Orthodox Christianity, dating from the 4th century AD. It also flirted briefly with Catholicism in a bid to curry favour with the Portuguese in the 16th century in order to procure their assistance to repel the Ottoman invasion, though the people's distaste for this flavour of Christianity soon forced the emperor to revert to Orthodoxy (at which time he also banned foreigners from the country, a bar which remained in force for well over a century). Ethiopia's existence for much of the Middle Ages as the only non-European outpost of Christianity spawned the legend of Prester John, a fabled Christian monarch of great wealth.
There is still a community of Jews in the north-west dating from over a thousand years before Christ, whose origin is the subject of much speculation, but most of them have since departed for Israel under the Law of Return.
Though the population as a whole isn't conclusively more Christian than Muslim (60% vs 33% - the rest mainly follow traditional religions), this part of the country seems decidedly Christian - I see many people wearing crosses and crucifixes on necklaces, as well
as the occasional cruciform tattoo on a woman's forehead.
Interestingly, there is also the appearance of PDAs between men and women, and in fact Ethiopians seem rather tactile. Greetings are accomplished via handshakes, hugs, kisses, bows and shoulder bumps in varying numbers. It's quite common to see men holding hands or with their arms around each others' shoulders. Appearancewise, features are more Arabic than African, and in general the population tends towards the good-looking end of the spectrum. In particular I'm surprised there aren't more Ethiopian women in the pages of Vogue, not that I've read it for a while (I've always been more of an Elle man). Long braids seem to be the most popular female hairstyle, but I also see a few Macy Gray 'fros bouncing along the street.
The country is unique in Africa for several reasons, the main one being that it not only avoided the European "Scramble for Africa" but also inflicted a rare defeat on would-be European colonisers - in this case the Italians at the Battle of Adwa in 1896. This is why many other African countries chose to include Ethiopia's colours in their own flags when they achieved their own
independence. The Amharic language and script are used nowhere else in the world. The Ethiopian calendar is 7.5 years behind the Gregorian one due to not suffering the tweaking inflicted on the latter by various popes, as well as having other differences such as leap years every four years without exception. Hence the new millenium actually started on 11th September 2007 as a Westerner would know it.
My introduction to Ethiopian cuisine comes via a portion of
bozena shiro, plucked at random from the "Fasting Food" section of the menu, which I assume (incorrectly) means that it's vegetarian. It is presented on a large serving plate whose size is necessary to accommodate the
injera, a sour-tasting pancake with a slightly rubbery texture that underpins many Ethiopian meals and, even when doubled, barely fits on the plate. I tear off pieces and use them to scoop up the sauce and gristly meat that have been poured over the top, leaving the menacing green chilli pepper to one side. Subsequent selections from the menu reveal that "Assorted vegetables" translates to cabbage and carrots in a buttery sauce, though I am never there in the mornings to sample the "Coren flex". It
seems to be acceptable to summon the waitstaff by either clapping one's hands or clicking one's fingers, a habit that I hope Ethiopian visitors to Europe or the US don't take with them.
On the drinks front, Ethiopia is the original home of the coffee plant. I'm not a big coffee drinker myself but I sample a cup and fail to notice much difference from any other coffee I've ever drunk, other than the low price. I am faced with a large selection of beers that I make inroads into.
Gonder also shows me that Ethiopia is cheap (it's a struggle to exceed $3 at one of the best hotel restaurants in town) and poor. There are many more beggars around than in Sudan, as well as tissue-sellers and shoe-shiners. I see T-shirts advertising Walmart, Midwest restaurants, and German schools, the product of a level of charitable assistance that is also apparent in a large, rather sinister-looking advert for USAid. One clothes store has pictures of Barack Obama and his election slogans as advertising. Though many of the kids are friendly, I get little but stares from the adults. I had been expecting to find many tourists here
Flag atop the ramparts
Fasilides' castle, Royal Enclosure but hardly see any.
Apart from the bars, everywhere is closed by 10PM. Having felt something of a target in the town, I give the bar scene a miss and spend my evenings in my room. One of the two available channels on the TV turns out to be the same one being shown in the bar/TV room two floors below mine, a connection I make while watching the Arsenal-Hull game and hearing much shouting and screaming from below at moments of high drama in the match. The support would appear to be pro-Arsenal.
There is a mafia of young men in the town who all have a decent level of English, which they use to target tourists in order to try to sell them tours/foreign exchange/hotel rooms/whatever. I can guarantee that within fifteen seconds of leaving my hotel, I will be approached by one of them offering me some service or other. At night, women are added to the list of options - sadly, prostitution seems to be a major industry here, but that's hardly surprising with wages for most jobs so low.
The infrastructure is in poor condition. During my 4.5 days in the town,
there is no water or electricity for one entire day, and a water outage for several hours on another. The electricity cuts out two or three times per day. Internet access is up there with the worst I've ever encountered, being slow and unreliable. While waiting for a page to load, I idly browse a document on the Desktop that turns out to contain salaries for the employees at a local hotel. Several are earning just B150 ($14) per month. I also find that the one ATM in Gonder that might possibly accept foreign cards is down for maintenance. In all my travels so far, I've rarely had to change money as ATMs have been ubiquitous, so to have back-to-back essentially ATM-less countries is both a novel experience as well as leaving me slightly on edge that I've had to carry hundreds of dollars around with me for weeks on end. I calculate that I should have enough to make it through to Addis, but I still feel uneasy at not having ready access to my accounts.
On the money front, it seems as though everyone is a moneychanger. The black market rate for dollars is several percent better
than at the banks, and even the Tourist Information office is a player.
A bonus is the presence of a Post Office that not only exists but even opens when it's supposed to. Yes, that's a shot at Sudan. Though I am initially refused entrance because I have my camera in my bag, once inside I find no queues and dirt cheap postal rates.
From Gonder, it is possible to head either clockwise or anticlockwise around the so-called "northern historical circuit". I elect to go clockwise, meaning a bus journey north to the town of Aksum. This journey has cropped up several times in my research as an endurance test best avoided, but I figure that as it's supposedly only slightly longer than the ride from the border to Gonder, how bad can it be?
Dull but possibly useful info i. The bus from Merema to Gonder left at 6AM - not sure if I'd been told it left at 5AM because that was the time it was best to get there in order to get a "decent" seat, or because it did actually leave an hour late. It cost B31 and took 7.5 hours.
ii. I
Church
As seen from the Royal Enclosure stayed at the Circle Hotel in a good central location, paying B130 for a room with double bed, TV (2 channels!), balcony, and en suite bathroom with oodles of hot water. You could probably get this for somewhere closer to B100.
iii. Unless I got ripped off, entrance to the Royal Enclosure (plus the Bath of Fasilides if you visit both on the same day) is B50 but does NOT include a guide. Guides are B50 for just the Royal Enclosure plus whatever tip you may deem appropriate.
iv. Entrance to Debre Berhan Selassie costs B25.
v. I was told that tuk tuks are only B1 for short journeys within the town but I never took one.
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