Sinkata to Hawzien

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My friend Hannah and I spent a night in Sinkata to visit a friend of hers, check out a cluster of rock-hewn churches nearby, and then in the morning run to Hawzien to check out another church there.

The town itself looks more like a pueblo in an arid region in Mexico than a settlement in northern Ethiopia. The Peace Corp volunteer there said that they have no water eight months of the year. Most of the way to Mekele (2 hours by minibus) and to Hawzien (40 minutes by minibus) is paved now, but the main road in town seems to be the last step in this process. Once it is done (a year or two?), Sinkata might grow some decent restaurants and places to stay. For the time being, it looks like a war zone.

After a long tea ceremony with a local family, the four of us (including a local girl) hitched a ride in a dump truck. The driver took us most of the way before turning around and driving back to town to pick up someone else in the bed, and then repeated the ten minute journey to a path leading to the churches.

We woke up at dawn and ran the 22-23KM (14 miles-ish) from Sinkata to Hawzien.

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Photos

Farmer and Cliffs
I took this photo toward the end of our half marathon.

Sin Kata
It looks like a bomb has gone off in this town. Really, it's just the paving of the main road. Instead of tearing down houses completely, they just cut them in half.

ladder
This ladder to the church guaranteed I would not be visiting.