For a good chunk of the last couple of days, I've felt like a sailor in harbour waiting for the wind to change. I arrived in Gonder hoping to find a group to share the cost of a trek into the Simien Mountains. I arrived optimistically, having easily hooked up with five people in Bahir Dar, and a quick scope around the recommended agencies on the afternoon of my arrival told me about two groups leaving the next day, including a pair of Swedish women working at the local hospital. I figured I'd give myself a bit of time to explore Gonder, and see if I could find a better deal than the ones I was being offered (I turned down a chance to spend three days trekking in the mountains with a pair of virtuous Swedish women?!). So yesterday I did a half-day of sightseeing and then did the rounds of the trekking agencies to see if there were any new bookings. To my dismay, there wasn't a single trek on offer. I went to bed last night seriously worried that I'd made a major miscalculation. In my two days here, I'd seen maybe a dozen tourists, and all of them were either too old to be doing serious trekking or had recently returned from a trip. Both yesterday and today, I've been making a point of taking things slowly in Gonder so that I wouldn't run out of things to do and settle for a bad deal on the Simiens out of desperation.
I became a bit of a familiar face to the trekking outfits in Gonder, dropping in to check with them each day. That aside, the streets are full of young men keen to insert themselves as high-priced middlemen, or worse, scam artists, for prospective trekkers (sample opening: "You are from Holland?" "Canada." "Toronto?" "Vancouver." "I have a friend in Vancouver, that is why I say Vancouver.") I spent this morning taking it easy in a sidewalk cafe, trying to do some writing (I've got started on the "working" part of my "working holiday," although I'll admit that, at least for now, it's hard to focus on the things I was thinking about last month when I'm so emphatically somewhere else), and was found by Yalew, one of the trekking guys, who said he might be able to arrange something with an English guy and I could share a 3-day trek with him for $300 (which, by the way, is actually a fair price for what he was offering--the Tourist Information Centre is full of helpful and unbiased advice). I told him I'd look around and get back to him later that afternoon. After a futile look around the closed-on-Sundays trekking agencies, and finding no replies to my call for help on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree Forum, I spent about an hour walking around town looking for white people. Very much like the other young men who fill the streets, I suppose, except that I expect I'm met with friendlier responses on the whole (my opening lines are better). Having almost given up, I sat down at another sidewalk cafe to read and nurse a Coke while I waited for my appointment with Yalew.
When I saw three white people crossing the street across the square, I jumped up from my seat and sprinted over to intercept them. They were two Germans and an Australian and they were indeed planning to start a Simien trek tomorrow. Rather than go through an agency, though, they were planning to take a bus to Debark tomorrow morning and sort everything out there. Debark is the village at the entrance to the Simien Mountains National Park and Gonder is the nearest city to Debark. As a solo traveller, I didn't want to risk going on my own to Debark, as finding trekking partners there seemed even less likely, but it seems I may be all sorted now,and have every reason to hope this will be my last time on the internet for a few days.
There were worse places I could have waited around than Gonder. It was Ethiopia's capital from the 17th to the 19th centuries, and has the goods to show for it. Most notable is the Fasil Ghebbi, or the royal enclosure of Kimg Fasilidas, who first consolidated the capital here. Smack in the middle of town, it's a 70,000 square metre walled fortress containing castles built by six different kings, as well as the remains of baths, the royal archive, and lion cages that housed live cats until the end of Haile Selassie's reign forty years ago. A lot of the buildings are now in ruins because the Italians set up shop here during the Second World War (it still looks impressively impregnable) and the British bombed it. A good one-two punch for European destructiveness.
I was shown around the enclosure by a friendly and puckish guide called Abebe, and we followed the visit with a trip out to King Fasilidas's Pool, abot a kilometre out of town. The pool stands empty most of the year (it's filled for the Ethiopian celebration of Epiphany, which falls in mid-late January and is apparently quite a sight) but is worth visiting just for the atmosphere. A stately house on stilts stands in the middle of the empty pool, and the surrounding walls are propped up and overgrown by thick-trunked trees whose massive roots straddle the walls. And, unlike the bustle of downtown Gonder, everything is quiet and serene.
As for today, once I'd settled my trekking plans, I walked about fifteen minutes out of town to Debre Birhan Selassie, which has a well-earned reputation as one of Ethiopia's finest churches. The church itself is handsome enough, and stands in a leafy courtyard, but it's the interior that draws in the punters. Like Ure Kidane Mihret, it's floor to ceiling with vigorous paintings, and the faces of eighty cherubs look down from the ceiling.
This being a Sunday, four or five wedding processions passed through during the two hours I spent at the church. The first procession arrived at the portico (is that the right word for the entrance area to a church?) while I was inside, so that I couldn't leave without disrupting the party. Fortunately, the church didn't exactly make me eager to leave. (None of the processions actually entered the church.)
A middle-aged priest inside the church engaged me in a bit of broken English theological debate. When he asked my religion I told him I was a Buddhist (more fun than simply being an atheist) to which he replied "oh, i'm so sorry." He was unimpressed that one couldn't petition the Buddha with prayer and downright shocked to learn that i'd been baptized a Christian and had since lost my way. Just as the conversation risked turning tedious his cell phone rang, the wedding processiom cleared off, and I crept out of the church.
From the outside I saw a few more weddings cycle through. If I hadn't sensed it before, these celebrations confirmed for me how different Orthodox Ethiopian Christianity is from other forms of Christianity I've encountered. With only occasional contact with the Coptic church in Egypt, Ethiopian Christianity has evolved almost entirely independently for a millennium and a half. The bride and groom were head to toe in silky white and both wore puffy white crowns on their heads. They were followed by a white-clad and turbaned entourage with drumming, clapping, chanting, and ululation. The couple themselves were a model of solemnity while the rest of the gathering couldn't have been merrier. Besides the entourage, family and friends joined in the fun in their Sunday best, all of it seemingly worlds away from the destitution that's all over the streets of Gonder.
I was chatted up by one of the guests at the last celebration I saw. He, like the groom, was a deacon of the church. And the bride, he told me with evident relish, was a virgin.
And now it's home to bed and off to the mountains tomorrow. Goodbye weddings, hello baboons!
I became a bit of a familiar face to the trekking outfits in Gonder, dropping in to check with them each day. That aside, the streets are full of young men keen to insert themselves as high-priced middlemen, or worse, scam artists, for prospective trekkers (sample opening: "You are from Holland?" "Canada." "Toronto?" "Vancouver." "I have a friend in Vancouver, that is why I say Vancouver.") I spent this morning taking it easy in a sidewalk cafe, trying to do some writing (I've got started on the "working" part of my "working holiday," although I'll admit that, at least for now, it's hard to focus on the things I was thinking about last month when I'm so emphatically somewhere else), and was found by Yalew, one of the trekking guys, who said he might be able to arrange something with an English guy and I could share a 3-day trek with him for $300 (which, by the way, is actually a fair price for what he was offering--the Tourist Information Centre is full of helpful and unbiased advice). I told him I'd look around and get back to him later that afternoon. After a futile look around the closed-on-Sundays trekking agencies, and finding no replies to my call for help on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree Forum, I spent about an hour walking around town looking for white people. Very much like the other young men who fill the streets, I suppose, except that I expect I'm met with friendlier responses on the whole (my opening lines are better). Having almost given up, I sat down at another sidewalk cafe to read and nurse a Coke while I waited for my appointment with Yalew.
When I saw three white people crossing the street across the square, I jumped up from my seat and sprinted over to intercept them. They were two Germans and an Australian and they were indeed planning to start a Simien trek tomorrow. Rather than go through an agency, though, they were planning to take a bus to Debark tomorrow morning and sort everything out there. Debark is the village at the entrance to the Simien Mountains National Park and Gonder is the nearest city to Debark. As a solo traveller, I didn't want to risk going on my own to Debark, as finding trekking partners there seemed even less likely, but it seems I may be all sorted now,and have every reason to hope this will be my last time on the internet for a few days.
There were worse places I could have waited around than Gonder. It was Ethiopia's capital from the 17th to the 19th centuries, and has the goods to show for it. Most notable is the Fasil Ghebbi, or the royal enclosure of Kimg Fasilidas, who first consolidated the capital here. Smack in the middle of town, it's a 70,000 square metre walled fortress containing castles built by six different kings, as well as the remains of baths, the royal archive, and lion cages that housed live cats until the end of Haile Selassie's reign forty years ago. A lot of the buildings are now in ruins because the Italians set up shop here during the Second World War (it still looks impressively impregnable) and the British bombed it. A good one-two punch for European destructiveness.
I was shown around the enclosure by a friendly and puckish guide called Abebe, and we followed the visit with a trip out to King Fasilidas's Pool, abot a kilometre out of town. The pool stands empty most of the year (it's filled for the Ethiopian celebration of Epiphany, which falls in mid-late January and is apparently quite a sight) but is worth visiting just for the atmosphere. A stately house on stilts stands in the middle of the empty pool, and the surrounding walls are propped up and overgrown by thick-trunked trees whose massive roots straddle the walls. And, unlike the bustle of downtown Gonder, everything is quiet and serene.
As for today, once I'd settled my trekking plans, I walked about fifteen minutes out of town to Debre Birhan Selassie, which has a well-earned reputation as one of Ethiopia's finest churches. The church itself is handsome enough, and stands in a leafy courtyard, but it's the interior that draws in the punters. Like Ure Kidane Mihret, it's floor to ceiling with vigorous paintings, and the faces of eighty cherubs look down from the ceiling.
This being a Sunday, four or five wedding processions passed through during the two hours I spent at the church. The first procession arrived at the portico (is that the right word for the entrance area to a church?) while I was inside, so that I couldn't leave without disrupting the party. Fortunately, the church didn't exactly make me eager to leave. (None of the processions actually entered the church.)
A middle-aged priest inside the church engaged me in a bit of broken English theological debate. When he asked my religion I told him I was a Buddhist (more fun than simply being an atheist) to which he replied "oh, i'm so sorry." He was unimpressed that one couldn't petition the Buddha with prayer and downright shocked to learn that i'd been baptized a Christian and had since lost my way. Just as the conversation risked turning tedious his cell phone rang, the wedding processiom cleared off, and I crept out of the church.
From the outside I saw a few more weddings cycle through. If I hadn't sensed it before, these celebrations confirmed for me how different Orthodox Ethiopian Christianity is from other forms of Christianity I've encountered. With only occasional contact with the Coptic church in Egypt, Ethiopian Christianity has evolved almost entirely independently for a millennium and a half. The bride and groom were head to toe in silky white and both wore puffy white crowns on their heads. They were followed by a white-clad and turbaned entourage with drumming, clapping, chanting, and ululation. The couple themselves were a model of solemnity while the rest of the gathering couldn't have been merrier. Besides the entourage, family and friends joined in the fun in their Sunday best, all of it seemingly worlds away from the destitution that's all over the streets of Gonder.
I was chatted up by one of the guests at the last celebration I saw. He, like the groom, was a deacon of the church. And the bride, he told me with evident relish, was a virgin.
And now it's home to bed and off to the mountains tomorrow. Goodbye weddings, hello baboons!
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