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Published: December 24th 2008
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"Here, give me your hand."
No, I know what you're going to do.
"Just gimme it, please?"
No.
Jos draws me in closer to his body and puts his arm around me as we walk together through the streets of Lalibela. I sigh and resign myself to my fate. He turns around to the local boys following us blatantly staring at me or my boobs, we don't know which. Jos's mouth turns up at the corners into a lopsided grin of victory.
"Sexy China girl! She's my girlfriend, yeah. Sexy China! Sexy China!"
The boys blush and squeal in laughter, jumping and running towards us now, eyes alight in anticipation of juicy details to come. Jos has won once again.
For the first couple days of us traveling together, I was the sole beneficiary. Jos killed my insects, Jos handled check-ins, Jos fought us to the front of lines. When we were walking more than 3 feet apart and some local scumbag started advancing, Jos stepped in, swooped up my hand and played Protective Boyfriend. It was very pleasant traveling. I'm not sure when but somewhere along the way the tables turned. Little did I know, Jos
is that exact kind of guy that loves having a "girlfriend" that gets attention. One thing leads to another, and before I know it Jos is doing some heavy male bonding with locals when I am looking the other way - using me as bait. The problem is that I still quite like having my insects killed and having a savior from every unsavory suitor, so in a way I kind of need Jos. Thus to appease him and cajole him into continuing services, I let him do this to me. This is probably why I will never want to get hitched.
One strange thing you notice when you come to Ethiopia is that you are likely one of the youngest foreigners walking around. I rarely see more than one or two other
faranjis under the age of 50 every day. Ethiopia is not heavily touristed in any way, but it is very touristed by elder travelers (who knew?) and scantily touristed by younger people. The other tourists tend to be really old, (not even 40's old, but like, 60's-70's old) traveling around in old people tourist buses. They also tend to be heavily European. Isn't that weird? One
of the roughest countries I've been to yet, and the only people I see here should be playing shuffleboard and bingo in Florida (or the European equivalent.) I would want to be out here in these villages and pop a hip. Nevertheless because of what they are used to seeing, I suppose it isn't surprising the locals find a foreign couple in their early 20's unwrinkled to be very interesting.
Some kid in Axum a few days ago upon seeing me shouted out "Sexy China!" Now I will be walking about doing my own thing and suddenly I hear Jos yelling behind me, pointing and grinning at all the attention we receive. He loves it. He likes to joke with kids that we make "jiggy-jiggy." He likes to negotiate trading me for said kids' sisters. Sometimes he makes them quote my value in any of USD, birrs, or donkey. Some kids follow us around all day, we've had a few camp outside our hotel window (seriously) well into the night. We'd stick our heads around the curtains and see them sitting on the curb opposite, suddenly seeing our faces jump up with joy and wave hysterically. People we don't
Bete Giyorgis
the last church built, and the most famous. known as the "8th wonder of the world" know approach us by name, usually passed on by friends from Gondar or Axum. "The tall van Nistelrooy and Asian wife." We're like celebrities in Ethiopian villages, it's bizarre. Sometimes it's fun and these exchanges lead to an afternoon of playing with the kids, sometimes it's awkward and gets creepy. Jos isn't an idiot though and when the latter situation arises, standing a head taller than the guys here, he knows when to
really start acting like a Protective Boyfriend and drag me away.
So our arrival in Lalibela at 2,500 meters above sea level was rather climactic, not because we're dying to whore me out in hopes of funding another week on the road, but rightly so considering it took three days of solid local bus travel to reach the destination. Most people have likely never heard the name "Lalibela." It is famous and a UNESCO site though, because it houses an absolutely magnificent array of 11 rock-hewn churches, dug straight into the ground - monolithic, meaning dug from one solid rock alone.
Petra was impressive, that is true. But Petra was carved out of mountainsides and stone walls above ground level. What would you think of a Petra
dug INTO the ground?? Into the ground to form the walls, into the ground to hollow out the insides of the churches, into the ground to carve the designs and columns, the windows around the churches? Populated by 500+ priests, the churches are connected by pitch-black tunnels underneath and overpasses above your head. Chanting seems to come from all directions, incense and exotic smells waft about. This, my friends, is something really special. This alone should warrant a trip to Ethiopia. (If you come, I highly recommend you get a guide for the churches. Even if he were totally mute and didn't explain a thing, you will likely get lost wandering the tunnels and passageways by yourself, and never uncover all 11 churches.) This is unlike anything else you have seen before.
Lalibela is the second holiest city in Ethiopia after
Axum, a very important site for pilgrimages. Meaning "honey-eater," it's named after King Lalibela, the ruler that commissioned the creation of these churches. History has it that Lalibela spent much of his youth visiting the Jerusalem and the Holy Land. When the Muslims took Jerusalem, Lalibela returned to Ethiopia to build another "New Jerusalem" away from Arab influence.
Many of the religious buildings around Lalibela are named after streets and structures in and around
Jerusalem, Lalibela even has its own River Jordan. Lalibela itself is a very beautiful, quaint (the way Africa can be quaint) village. The cobblestone streets roll in a SanFran-esque way, and the locals go about their lives without being too affected by the huge tourist draw in their backyard. It is busy, busy, busy. Ethiopia is quite set on protecting tourists in the country and in Lalibela there is a strict rule that children and non-guides cannot approach a foreigner. Still though, between Jos very publicly trying to pimp me out in the streets and him claiming to be friends with van Nistelrooy, the kids end up running around with us anyways. This, we saw, created a very strangely hilarious phenomenon. In attempts to "protect" the children from getting in trouble with cops, elder Ethiopians will stone and kick, whack the kids with their canes, when they see them following us.
When we first saw this, we were beyond baffled. We'd go play around with the kids in the street, high-fives all around, piggy-back rides, kicking the soccer ball, and suddenly an old,
hunched over man comes in muttering and shouting under his breath and at the kids, hurling (like winding, overhead, hand ending down by the ankles) large rocks that definitely must hurt. Serious abuse-style. The kids scatter and run off, laughing and dodging the oldies. We kind of wonder if glue-sniffing has made its way to Ethiopia. It is so bizarre, so wrong but so strangely funny at the same time, Jos and I end up in fits of laughter on the ground when it happens. The oldies run feebly after small children, throwing stones, hitting them on the head, shoving them violently, yelling and cursing at the top of their lungs, while the kids run around and tease them behind their backs. Does this make us bad people? I really wish I had a video of this, but I must have been too deep in hysterics every time it happened to pull out the camera.
Verdict is, you need to come to Lalibela. Come see the churches that trump Petra, come see kids laugh when being stoned, come be famous for just being under 35 years old and relatively easy on the eyes. In fact, you need to come
to Ethiopia anyways. This place is beautiful, and you'll have it all to yourself. This country rocks beyond words.
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shahid hasan
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