Advertisement
Published: February 6th 2012
Edit Blog Post
After too many different airports and too many different flights, and way too much wind on one of the landings and too many close connections where you wonder if your luggage could possibly have kept up with you - we finally land in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia.
It’s 4 am. The drudgery of filling out the form for an entry visa and standing in the ‘will this line ever move’ line saps the last of my patience. I get my visa. I find my bag on the conveyor belt. I trudge out to where I’m supposed to have someone meeting me to transfer me to the hotel. I blink my tired eyes trying clear my vision so I can read all the placards being waved in my face. Through squinted eyes I see my name and follow the man to a ragged old van. We make the normal small talk . . . ‘yes its my first time to Ethiopia’ . . . ‘yes, I’m American, but I don’t live there’ . . . and then my exhaustion puts out the conversation like a wet blanket on a fire.
We are flying through the dark, empty
streets. Then I see what almost seems a ghost - a tall and skinny specter wrapped in a white sheet, walking the same direction as us, down the side of the road. Then another. And another. Then clumps of them, together, walking always in the same direction as us, down the side of the street. Slowly, the clumps clump together. Until I am watching an endless stream of these apparitions. The crowd becomes quite dense as we pass a massive church. And as we pass, suddenly, none of them are walking in our direction anymore. The endless stream instead is walking towards us. Going to that same church.
Men with bibles. Women with children. All going to the church. In the pre dawn darkness. Reverently. With such a gentle air. With such a sense of dignity and awe. All wrapped in the traditional dress of Ethiopia, the gabi, a huge, beautifully hand woven white cotton cloth, some with embroidered trim, but many without trim, beautiful instead in their simplicity.
Again and again, in the first half of my trip to Ethiopia, as we traveled the highlands of the north, I was impressed with the
simple and profound sense of devotion and reverence of the Ethiopian people.
I saw evidence of their faith in the incredible paintings that adorn the monastery and church walls, reminding me of the painted Orthodox monasteries of Bucovina in Romania.
I saw it in massive stone hewn churches of Lalibella, churches cut down into the living rock of the country. With tunnels connecting them. Keeping them safe from the armies which invaded from the Arabian peninsula in the 15th and 16th centuries.
I heard it in the drumming and chanting of the priests. In the prayer music that our guides played in their vehicles every morning.
So often we were told by someone that we met and passed some time with that they would pray for us, would pray for America. Then they would ask us to pray for them, to pray for Ethiopia.
I was also touched by how individual the church experience is here. The church may be crowded with people, women and men separated, everyone standing, men often leaning on their staves. And the yard around the church may also be filled
with the devoted. And the priests may be chanting and drumming so sincerely. But there is no formal and structured service for the people who come to express their reverence. Each is in his or her own communion with their Orthodox God. Many men would be reading their bible, often out loud. Many women would be bowed on the earth. Others would stand beside the church, facing the wall, forehead bowed and touching the wall.
Faith seems to be very root of the fabric of Ethiopian culture.
The vast majority of Ethiopians are Orthodox Christian, with most Ethiopians claiming that the Church arrived in Ethiopia during the time of the apostles. By the start of the 4th century AD the Christian Church was the state religion. And King Azana minted his coins with the Christian Cross on them, the first empire in the world to do such.
But even with the strength of the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia, and even with the recent religious wars in the far north of the country that ended up giving a troubled birth to the country of Eritrea, respect for all faiths is quite evident.
There are significant Muslim, Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical Christian populations. And all seemed to be respected. It almost seemed that what is important is not what your faith is, but that you have faith!
Oh, I almost forgot, of course there are Rastafarians there too! I mean this is the land of Ras Tafari, later crowned Emperor Haile Salaisse! In the 1930‘s, Jamaican Marcus Garvey and his ‘Return to Africa’ movement hailed Salaisse as the fulfillment of the ancient biblical prophecy of kings who will come out of Africa!
So I share these pictures with you - spilling on to the following pages. All of them from the first half of our trip, to the north of Ethiopia. From a proud country, the only one in Africa that never was the colony of any European power. From an impoverished country that joyfully holds to its faith.
And I promise a second installment soon, with photos from the second half of the trip, to the south of Ethiopia, where tribal traditions and culture add further to the incredible diversity of this country.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.169s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 12; qc: 63; dbt: 0.0696s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb