Ethiopia, of saints and scoundrels part 3 05/2011

michnus

15th January 2012

more…

Reaching the other side of the Blue Nile we booked into a small hotel called Selom. The going rate per room was an extravagant 5USD per night! Well I suppose you get what you pay for. The powder house were outside next to the hotel, with a long drop in a makeshift shack cladded with old corrugated iron sheets. The stench of old urine hang thick in the air and newspaper pieces to wipe the bum packed away into one corner.

That night we lay on the bed in our underwear with wet cloths to wipe away the sweat listening to the cacophony from people going their merry way and the local hotel music box bewailing local fusion at full bore.

It was quite amusing to listen to the locals loudly groaning and cheering as the electricity went off and came back on again, repeatedly. The entire town made it known that they were not at all happy with the situation.

We could not help to laugh, the people were very vocal about their lot. An hour later, the electricity came back on which elicit screams of elation and jubilation that echoed through the streets. It sounded like a new year’s party at 12h00 in Rio’s streets.

Life as we know it takes on a new meaning when something so basic can set the mood in such a drastic way for an entire town. Ethiopia is poor but the resilient people have dignity and go about their lives with ease and hope.

Situated northwest of Addis Ababa, Lake Tana is the claimed source of the Blue Nile. There are a few very old churches and monasteries on the islands just of the shores of Bhir Darr. These monasteries are cobweb covered old structures. Some monsignors still paddle to the main land on self-made Papyrus boats.

Visiting the monasteries were a disappointing affair. The monasteries have been renovated and new age paintings added depicting scenes with AK47’s. As far as I recall they were not available 500 years ago. There is a strong jumentous smell that fills your nostrils as you enter these monasteries.

Bahir Darr on the shores of Lake Tana is a picturesque little town and tourism is slowly shaping it into an oasis for travellers. The market was worth seeing and there were lots of local art on display for dirt-cheap.

The small shops are packed with everything from eggs to fresh bread rolls and espresso coffee machines that date back to the Italian invasion, or so they look, buy at own peril.

Petrol was still one of our biggest headaches, and if you do get fuel, it was dirty. All the old stories of Gadafi and the USA were to blame for the shortage. We would pull into a petrol station and start harassing the petrol attendant for petrol that they pretend not to have.

With an unconcerned malevolence attitude, they would deny having fuel, they do have, they just did not want to sell it to us, and they want us to buy it from their friends on the ‘black market’. Luckily, we filled up all the empty cans and everything else empty we could lay our hands on, in Addis. We had enough to get us back to Addis again.

more…