Bahir Dar

We flew out to Bahir Dar the day after the Ethiopian New Year (Sept. 12th). Right at the airport next to the parking lot there was a sizeable tree with a lot of activity going on in its branches. I walked over and sure enough, these appeared to be Weaver Bird nests, and Wow, I had no idea Weaver Birds were so looney! They were squaking, flying from here to there, hanging upside down from their nests and spinning around and just generally carrying on. I'm not sure if we caught them during mating season or what, but they were a riot.

That day we found a guide and hiked to the Blue Nile Falls. It is located a short distance to the south of Bahir Dar. One of the first things I noticed was the men were generally bare legged and carried a staff and a shawl over their shoulders. This was very common for this region. This, I was told later by our guide, is because people walk for long distances while herding their flocks. By putting their arms up over their staff, it sends more blood to the legs and helps them walk farther. Anyway, we arrived at the trail for the falls and shortly into the hike we come upon this very cool old stone bridge. It was built by the Portuguese in the early 1600's.

Shortly up the trail there was a gauntlet of young children pulling at my arm trying to sell me their wares as they gave me their speech in English so fluidly it seemed as though they had used it hundreds of times before. I would try to politely tell them I am not buying anything now, but perhaps on my way back. Their speech would end with, "I am (insert name), you remember my name mister, you remember I am (insert name again). You promise me you will buy from me. Promise me mister." This scenario happened at least twenty times through this short stretch of small village on the trail to the falls. Eventually we (or rather I, since our guide and Alemu weren't bothered a bit) made it through the gauntlet. Up near a hill I noticed a young shepherd boy playing a flute. I took his picture. He noticed I took it so asked for money. I obliged. He offered to sell me the flute, which looked interesting, so on my way back I paid him what he asked (10 Birr, or about 1$ US). He was quite happy about that (The average Ethiopian makes, I have read, about the equivalent of $1 US/day).

As we approached the falls you can hear the water crashing as a constant roar. You see the mist rising about the foilage as you descend into the small canyon. You walk along the hillside with a great view of the falls on the opposite side. Closer to the falls you can feel the mist from across the small canyon and see the rainbows in the air. It was quite impressive. The soil on the opposite side of the falls is all mud, which made it quite fun for me to watch Alemu try to keep his footing as his tennis shoes got bulkier and more slippery. Fortunately I had good traction.

On the way back from the falls I decided to inject some capital into the small village through these children who accosted me along the trail. Once I reached them I asked what they were asking for their hand made scarves. Before I knew it I had created a small riot of children throwing their scarves on me saying, "Buy mine, buy mine" each time I would negotiate and buy from one of them. It attracted a soldier, at least one of which is always present as tourist sites, who showed up just as the children knocked me over into someone's pottery-- some of which broke. I offered to pay for it but the soldier motioned me on with a grimace as though to say, "You've caused enough damage here".

Later that day Alemu negotiated a price to get a boat tour on Lake Tana to see many of the island monasteries.[A little history: Ethiopia is a very religious country with a long history in Christianity going back to the 4th century AD. It is believed the Arc of the Covenant still resides in Ethiopia (In Axum, which I'll blog about later), and used to reside on one of the many islands on lake Tana. It was, apparently, brought to Ethiopia by the son of the Queen of Sheba (aka Menelik I) after his visit to see his father (aka King Solomon) in Jerusalem.] Many of the monasteries on the many islands on Lake Tana date back many hundreds of years and are still occupied by monks who live out their ascetic lifestyle studying and worshipping.

Anyway, so after setting up a time to go see the island monasteries for the following morning, Alemu and I went and ate at Obama restaurant. It was Friday, so Alemu was fasting (He's Ethiopian Orthodox Christian), by which fasting means he doesn't eat meat. So we shared a vegetarian dish together on injera. It was excellent. I even had some leafy stuff with tomatoes, which Alemu suggested-- after he noticed I had taken several bites-- that I might not want to eat that. Sure enough, that evening I had dysentery BAD. Fortunately I brought some antibiotics and Immodium, but the following morning I was so weak I could barely get out of bed. We therefore cancelled our trip to the island monasteries and I went back to bed while Alemu did some running around town. After sleeping another eight hours I was feeling much better. Alemu and I rescheduled with our guides and we hopped a boat to go see some island monasteries. We didn't have the time to visit as many as initially planned, but we saw a couple very cool places. The first was called Kibran Gebriel, which houses a couple hundred old books written on goat skin dating back to the 13th century as well as gifts from the kings of ancient Ethiopia, like many old crowns and crosses made from gold and silver. It was odd seeing these precious relics housed in what looked like an old mud and stone barn. Everything on the island looked and felt old making me feel like I was traveling back in time. This was accentuated when I was walking up one of the trails on the island and heard some leaves rustling behind me. I turned around and saw about ten feet away a huge, probably 7 foot, Comodo dragon. It promptly scurried away into the brush. That was pretty weird for me, but the monks don't seem too bothered by them. I have a picture of the island below. It's not a big island as you can see and many of these monks rarely leave to go to shore and live out the majority of their lives on these small islands.