Simien Mountains

Anyone heading to northern Ethiopia should jot the Simien Mountains into their trip. While I clearly remembered being blown away back in 2002 on a week-long trek to Ras Dashen, I'd forgotten exactly why. The Simiens are incredible. That's why; I remember now. More a dramatic volcanic escarpment than a mountain range, they still tower like gods above the village-dotted hills below, over a hundred kilometers of snaking cliffs and gorges to stare down or slip off. Just a day after arriving in dusty Debark, the trekking launch point, Sven and I had already descended part way into the Geech Abyss, about 20 km down the trail. I'm pretty sure Geech is on a Planet Earth episode, something about it being one of the highest vertical faces in the world? I don't have time to wiki it on Ethiopia's internet, but it's very big. Stepping onto a strange, seemingly man-made stone promontory jutting into the empty space of the abyss, we watched a white strip of water on the east end dropping almost 1000 meters across the shadowed face before literally falling out of sight below our feet. Woreke, our local scout, sat nearby, leaning his 1947 Russian rifle against his shoulder. He spoke no English, wore a pair of expired plastic sandals, brought along nothing but his ancient gun and a ratty blanket, and received the equivalent of about 3 dollars a day. We'd opted against the standard Simien crew: guide, cook and mules to carry the baggage. So, perhaps to Woreke's disappointment and perhaps explaining his lack of luggage, it was just us shouldering the packs (no worth bringing things you've got to carry). He didn't complain though. Didn't say more than a few words the whole trip actually, opting instead to flash his million dollar grin from time to time. I would have taken him home with me if he didn't have a wife and five kids. In getting to the abyss, we'd cheated. Geech usually takes four days to see: two each way from Debark. We had just two, as Sven would need to fly from Axum to Addis on Sunday, then Addis to Oslo the next. After a few hours of hiking along the plateau and chugging up a steep river valley we hit the dirt road connecting the villages to Debark. To our luck, an old Isuzu trailing a blizzard of dust happened by minutes later. We hailed it and jumped in the back with a dozen surprised villagers. Almost 10km down the road, the rumbling Isuzu zipping around each hairpin turn, we'd spared ourselves over five hours of hiking and gained a day. This meant Geech was now within the realm of possibility, which made me very happy. Aside from being the ultimate viewpoint, it just has a very cool name. Woreke was smiling too, maybe for the reduced walking time or maybe for reasons we'll never know. That afternoon we hiked along the North Escarpment and down the ridge to reach the vantage point over the abyss, the Geech Abyss. The sight, among the most spectacular I've ever laid eyes on, made the entire trip worthwhile. Before dark we reached Sankaber camp and downed some shiro wot and giorgis. We slept early and woke before dawn for the return journey. A few hours along, a whole troop of gelada baboons were lazing right on our path, mounting each other and grooming one other meticulously, picking deep into each other's bodily crevices, all in bright daylight. I came within a few feet of the baboons, trying to rouse enough anger or annoyance to capture the giant fangs on camera. Instead, they mostly ignored us and then started ambling away along the cliffs, getting back to business in the privacy of the pack. By afternoon we'd arrived back in Debark with sore, aching bodies and sent Woreke home with his tip and that mysterious grin. Although our trek was short, our pace had been somewhat insane and our bodies were paying. We'd get to relax the following day-- --On the roof of an enormous Fiat truck heading north. After a lengthy search for a ride from Debark, we finally arranged a deal with a Muslim truck driver carting a few tons of tef to Shire, an hour and a half from Axum. We had the entire roof to ourselves, a giant cushion of tef grain from which we watched the Simiens rise above us on our slow descent from the escarpment, then shrink away into the south at less than 20km per hour as we wound north. We stopped in nameless villages for shay, injera and chat that we then sampled on the rooftop as the truck rounded its thousandth switchback before nightfall. Soon after storm clouds rolled in, rain sent us fleeing into the truck's cab and the slippery mountain roads became a nightmare. At one point, high on a cliffside and stalled in mud, the massively overloaded truck suddenly started a free slide back towards the edge. Every muscle in my body, and perhaps Sven's, flexed into panic as I saw my death in the cab of a Fiat truck, my bones and flesh pulverized into juice between the impact of over 5 tons of tef and the solid mountain side hundreds of feet below. But before I could tear away from the shock and reach for the door, the slide's scary momentum ground to a halt thanks to Allah's intervention or an emergency break. Sven and I exhaled. The truck driver didn't seem too concerned, which put me more at ease. Still, we decided to give our best moral support from the puddles on the roadside instead of inside the cab, jumping wildly out of the truck's way a couple times as it backed up blindly, then finally chasing it up the muddy hill and hopping back in for the final stretch to Shire.

Timkat in Gonder

By Monday morning, Sven and I had crossed the Blue Nile and were speeding north. Past parched fields of tef, eroded peaks and ancient canyons we made it to Debre Markos for an early lunch. Before sunset we rolled into Ethiopia's one-time capital and Africa's own Camelot: Gonder. The streets were packed with white-robes waving cross-shaped canes and gyrating in a snake-like procession that only disappeared with the road into the forested hills. The white mass of cotton was speckled with colorful woven umbrellas, bright brown faces and painted crosses raised high. Timkat, a celebration of Christ's baptism, was just getting started... We wandered north of the bus station in our hotel search, hoping to somehow find a bed without a reservation during Gonder's peak holiday season. After several rejections and extortion attempts we managed a bed in a brothel whose sign read simply, "hotel." As the pimp showed me to the room, a middle aged patron was just stepping out behind a young girl buttoning up her shirt. I tried to decipher the AIDS bulletin posted to the door while Sven spotted contraceptive wrappers on the black floor. The bed was still nice and warm. For 50 birr, Sven and I decided to split the grimy little cell (two dollars each) after confirming the rate was per night and not per hour. We enjoyed a night out on the lively little town, ending up on the rooftop of Circle Hotel. We reminisced about the good old days back in the real 2002, when I'd spent a night on the same exact spot, looking down on puny Gonder with old friends, most of us brimming with energy and big plans that never quite happened. The city finally asleep and our sensory perception sufficiently lowered, we stumbled back into our hole. We woke up well before sunrise for about the tenth time that night. The brothel's walls might as well have been made of paper. Just down the street we packed into a minibus then followed the mass of white robes to reach Fasiladas' bath, the site of Timkat's prime event. Somewhere at the center of the giant old complex, choked in banyan roots nearly swallowing the walls, was the pool. Filled just once a year on TImkat to represent the Jordan River, it had certainly drawn a crowd. Thousands of worshippers had staked their positions in the grass, along and on top of the walls, crammed in the crudely erected bleachers and even perched in the trees, waiting hours just to glimpse the Orthodox priest blessing the pool and the ensuing mad rush to the water. Unable to glimpse the ceremony itself, Sven and I waited for the flimsy scaffolding/bleachers to collapse, partly hoping they would so we didn't completely miss the show. We sifted through the crowd until the sun came up, drawing hundreds of long stares and completely disrupting the reverence everywhere we went. Outside the pool complex, naked boys were splashing devotees with water, beggars were having a field day and I was considering whether a Timkat 2002 t-shirt was in my budget. We escaped the throng by mid-morning, returning to town to check out the old Debre Berhan Selassie Church and it's famous, centuries-old paintings. The entire wooden roof is dotted with baby-faced Ethiopian cherubs staring into the floor without expression, paintings that are somehow considered the pinnacle of Orthodox art in Ethiopia. But here quantity trumps quality: there happen to be over a hundred expressionless cherubs floating on the ceiling, a bit eerie when you stare straight up for a while. Some quality was to be found as well: good old Muhammad features on one dim-lit wall, riding a camel, a camel that's being led into a vast desert, by Satan. That same morning we waved a sad goodbye to our lovely room, grabbed our bags and headed to the northern outskirts of town. We hoped to catch a ride to Debark. We were both ready to escape the Timkat crowds by setting out on a trek through Ethiopia's highest mountains, the Simiens.

Back in Addis

On Thursday I woke up in Addis Ababa. After a late flight from Cairo, I slept well into the morning. By the time I woke up, the sun had almost completely flooded the room. I stepped out into the blinding light and immediately felt as though I'd traveled back in time.

Sven Kiplesund, an old Norwegian friend from high school days, had offered both a ride from the airport and a place to stay for a few days. In another life, Sven had played music in my basement, traveled with me to Harare and made out with my little sister. Now in between his masters and an impending career, Sven's been back in Addis visiting family.

Before doing anything else in Addis, the two of us headed for some tibs, chunks of spicy meat spilled across a beautiful carpet of injera. Ethiopian food had been extremely hard to come by since leaving Addis. I'd only managed two injera meals in nearly eight years since saying goodbye, at a couple restaurants in Phoenix and Jerusalem. It tastes better here of course, partly because it's about ten times cheaper.

With Sven, I circled the city the next few days to see what's become of Addis. Much has changed. We hit our old school first, taking an alumni walking tour that made us both feel old and made our former teachers feel ancient. Mr. Grant, my favorite English teacher, was long gone, Lenio had been "let go," Mr. Wills had been fired and the band room had been bulldozed. Mrs. Kidane, my old art teacher, was the only one still around that was happy to see me. Behind the school was Samet, the old hangout spot where we wasted hundreds of hours: it's since lost both its pool table and its popularity. Finally, around the corner was my old house, mostly hidden from view behind its giant gate, barring by just a few meters all the good old days of jamming in the basement, climbing the roof tower and squeezing through the tv room window. Despite the smooth new network of roads lined with glassy blue high-rises, the ride back to the Norwegian compound was pure nostalgia.

Of course, some things haven't changed. We checked out the old Merkato district, still bustling with as much chaos as ever. We caught a glimpse of 4 million-year-old Lucy's bones, still perched in their place at the Ethiopian Museum, right across from Blue Tops. Eating at a small cafe next door, I noticed an upcoming show date on a Teddy Afro poster and it made me feel young: eight years have passed, but according to the Ethiopian calendar, it's still 2002.

Birqash Camel Market

It was hours earlier than I'd ever been awake in Cairo as I waited on the Sakanat metro platform. It was still dark when I met Nacia, Aden and Jahi at the next stop, Maadi. We kept each other awake until Mubarak. The sun finally came out about when we'd boarded a bus to Imbaba.

We crossed the Nile in a thick haze and wound through the canals to the northeast until we'd reached a messy little town called Nigla, where we hopped out of the last minibus, crossed an old iron bridge into the fog and hopped onto the back of a truck that took us off into the desert. After two hours, four legs, and about 10 pounds we'd made it to Birqash, site of one of the world's largest camel markets.

Immediately through the gates we glimpsed hundreds of abused dromedaries while thousands more were hidden behind the burning fog. Marched from as far off as Sudan and Somaliland, each camel had survived a long and painful ordeal, at least 40 days along the infamous 40 Day Road through the desert. One large beast had collapsed from exhaustion just minutes before our arrival. Worthless to its owner, its neck had been slit wide open, the gangly corpse left sprawling in the sun. On our way out we watched it awkwardly maneuvered onto the back of a truck, gobs of blood spurting all over the sand and spilling across the bed of the truck.

The owners and camel boys seemed to be having a bit more fun than their beasts, almost as relievedat having reached the end of the road, glad to be making some serious cash: camels run from 2,000 to 15,000 pounds each. In case anyone's looking, it seemed the Somali camels were the top of the line.

We wandered the giant complex for a couple hours to take it all in. From one end of the market to the other were tight clusters of shouting auctioneers, skeptical buyers, terrified camels, and swirls of dust. Each camel was paraded one at a time, smacked, prodded and poked with sticks, marked with bright paint along its side, and finally led off to be loaded into trucks. The auction went on for hours and the fog had burned out when we took our leave.

We shared a truck bed along the dusty road back to Nigla with the driver's prize purchase, the enormous camel strapped within biting range of my head. After a quick stop at a local koshari joint we all headed back to our beds in Cairo.