Ethiopia – Land of Beauty Filled with People of Faith
Ethiopia is not a destination for newcomers to the impoverished world. It would break you in two very quickly. This is the poorest country and the most broken country I have visited so far. Now I know the image in your head is starving people and featureless desert, but you need to remove these images burnt into your memory by too much television and move forward with me. First, the last big famine in Ethiopia – the one that was brought into your livingroom each evening and has you thinking everyone in Ethiopia is starving – was in 1985 – twenty-two years ago! Second, I’m not sure where the desert image comes from other than maybe the same video showing dead, emaciated people. Most of Ethiopia is not desert. It is mountain highlands with forest and farms and rivers and lakes. The desert areas are located near Somalia and Eritrea and not many Ethiopians live in these areas and those that do live there are probably quite capable people like the people of the Sahara. I have seen no one starving and malnourishment may be less of an issue here than other places I have visited. Understand that Ethiopia lives a bit on the edge, but doesn’t fall off it unless there is prolonged drought.
The drought of the 1980s was devastating, but it took a worthless government to turn it into a million deaths. I don’t think Ethiopia has a great government now, but they are much better off and it is easy to see that this country is getting better. First, the infrastructure is being built. I landed at a nice airport with a brand new terminal. I have been on some of the worst roads in Africa, but I also have been on a lot of newly paved roads and many of the worst roads are being rebuilt now (more on roads to come). My friend, Randy, who traveled with me to Brazil was amazed how large quantities of manpower are used to build what we do with a machine. Randy, you would never believe what they are doing in Ethiopia with people power. They knock down a mountain of rock (if you need an image of Ethiopia, replace sand with rock because there is more here than I have ever seen before) and then use sledgehammers to turn it into rocks for bridge construction. When they have enough rocks, they beat it more to make gravel for the roads. My back hurts just seeing them pounding the rocks and then moving them into place with wood and leather stretchers.
This is by far the most backwards country I have visited. It is by far the poorest. The seventy-five million people, especially the vast majority living in the countryside, for the most part have nothing. They live in stone or mud and stick homes. They harvest grain on their hands and knees with small knives. They separate the grain from the stalks using oxen and sticks. Their farm implements consist of pitchforks made from tree branches. They are the dustiest, dirtiest people I have seen so far. There are more beggars here from one year old to eighty than any other country I have visited. There are more physical and probably mental disabilities here than any other people I have visited as well. Today I was in Addis Ababa and I saw a guy begging at a stoplight whose left hand had four fingers plus a small thumb plus another four fingers making it look like two hands in one. And I saw many more creepy deformities like this one and I would not be surprised if they have their own eight limbed person like the girl in India who just had four of them removed successfully. A very common physical deformity in Ethiopia is people that have to walk on feet and hands much like chimpanzees with their legs straight (not on knees), butts in the air, backs bent forward and hands on the ground. This is a very difficult deformity to look at. Ethiopia and India or more likely Bangladesh probably have a lot in common. Actually, while here I have had my mind on Bolivia a lot. Ethiopians do a lot of things in their own weird way like Bolivians. They also build a lot of terraced farms with rocks on the mountainsides like in Bolivia and Peru. In the past they did some cut stonework building that was nearly as good as the Incans and Egyptians as well.
Yet this is a land of beautiful, interesting, smiling people totally different than any I have met. This is a people of faith. A faith much deeper than any other Christians I have seen and as deep as the most devote Muslims in Kairouan, Tunisia for instance. I see a thousand smiles per day and hear “faranji, faranji” (foreigner or the Ethiopian equivalent to mzungu or gringo) or “you-you-you” from the kids constantly. I like their form of religion because it is so traditional and so widespread yet it is not totalitarian. Their Christianity (Ethiopian Orthodox Church – not to be confused with the totally different Coptic church) is more traditional than any of the other Christian sects owing to being formed within four centuries of Christ, being heavily influenced by ancient Jewish peoples and being in a country very separate from the rest of the world. I thought Ethiopia would be much more Muslim. I have seen a lot of Muslims and I know more are in the desert regions, but this country is very Christian. I was in Axum and I saw the temple where the Ark of the Covenant is said to reside. Like with many of the historical and religious stories about Ethiopia, this claim may be totally false (there is enough historical hearsay to make it plausible – I say if you can actually believe in the Ark ever existing then that is less a leap of faith than accepting it is in Ethiopia), but I can tell you that most Ethiopians believe in it with no doubts. Their faith being so overwhelming is very fascinating.
Axum is the center of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and has been the center of the Ethiopian culture since before Christ. The Axumites were considered one of the great civilizations. Ethiopia has tales like I have never heard before. Aside from the Ark, they claim Queen of Sheba and a line of 256 generations of leaders descending from King Solomon until the 20th Century’s Emperor Haile Selassie. None of which seems challenged by the regular Ethiopian even though the stories are quite a stretch of accepted history. They even claim the three wise men and maybe it is true since they have a lot incense trees from which frankincense is derived. I have visited churches hewn into rock that are the strangest and most spectacular I have ever seen. They may have more priests and monks than the rest of the world combined and there does not seem to be an issue with not finding new candidates amongst the new generations. I was very lucky to be in Axum for the annual celebration of Mary of Zion (they claim Mary came to Ethiopia). We started seeing pilgrims headed to Axum three days before we arrived traveling from all over the country in caravans. Thirty thousand people descended on the tiny town all dressed in their white blankets or monk/priest garb. They chanted all night long and camped on the church grounds. It was all very strange to see, but I did appreciate that they come together and have been doing so for so many centuries.
Their faith also drives me nuts. In a country where things are so screwed up I have to wonder what their church and their faith is really doing for them. They have 37,000 churches and are still building more including some monsters near Addis Ababa yet many people are in dire straits. Their church stays out of politics and has remained silent over the years of much turmoil including civil war and famine. I’m not sure I like the politicized Catholic and Baptist churches (to name just two), but these Orthodox guys take it a bit far in the other, silent direction.
We visited the Falasha area near Gondar where the Ethiopian Jews lived until Israel finally admitted them in the 1990s. Israel finally relented when the heads of the Jewish faith admitted that the Falasha folks practiced a more ancient and maybe “pure” form of Judaism than is practiced anywhere else. Supposedly the Jews came to Ethiopia when King Solomon sent them centuries before Christ in order to protect the Ark of the Covenant which had been stolen by Solomon and Sheba’s son and first emperor of Ethiopia – Menelik I. They were isolated from the rest of Judaism and the Falasha of the 1990s still had many of the practices that existed in Solomon’s time. Just another very strange story for Ethiopia. Understand that Ethiopia is the only country that was Jewish, Christian and Islamic (before returning to Christian rule) so that should tell you that this place is quite unusual. I basically spent my two weeks in northern Ethiopia gawking at the wonder of their primitive living with extreme faith within the context of 3000 years of history in a land of absolute stunning landscapes. Northern Ethiopia exceeded all my expectations for a strange land and people unlike anything I have ever known before.
Tags: Africa, ethiopia, Travel
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