Africa is fascinating... we haven't been to many places yet, but Ethiopia is definitely one of the more interesting ones. We went there in December 2013, and loved it!
First impression...
December, 2013
A person who is used to civilization finds Ethiopia a bit problematic. The phone rarely works. The power will go out at least once in the evening and almost always in the morning. Wi-Fi is only rarely available. Everything is cash based and the machines that are supposed to dispense money usually don’t work. Hot water is usually only available one hour a day (and no one knows what time). The roads are mostly potholed, lots of people, donkeys and sheep walk around on them. I can go on forever… but…
There is something about people who are no longer found in places where there is electricity, running water and communication available all the time. The people here are very calm, kind and want to help, but also want your money and you feel like a walking wallet.
The most common bill is 5 birr, but a tank of fuel costs 1500 birr, that means you need 300 rather thick bills to pay at the station (all in cash as mentioned), so you walk around with pockets full of money because you don’t know when the next time the ATM will be ready to give you some bills.
Ethiopians love to touch. Every person you meet will shake your hand and hug you as if you were his brother, every child will give you a hand and walk a long way with you, and everyone touches your pockets as a sign that they want some of what’s in them. Don’t think that they are not vocal about it, every child, no matter their gender or age, knows at least one word in English and that is Money. At first you are nice but after a while you realize that if you are not firm they will not stop bugging you. They are nice people so they do it gently, but in any case it doesn’t let go.
Hamer tribe
December, 2013
Ira says that it is impossible for all the basic services to work at the same time – when there is Wi-Fi the phone does not work and vice versa, when there is electricity there is no water, etc., but yesterday for the first time there was none – no electricity, no water, no telephone and no computer.
In the Hamer tribe (like the vehicle), the hair and body are dyed copper red, and all their belongings are the same colors, so that their market looks like a piece of land. The women’s faces look strange (with all that red) but the men dress up like peacocks, full of plastic, strings and colors.
There was a rumor that there was an initiation ceremony for matriculation in the nearby tribe. It’s a pretty rare event that you don’t know about in advance, and when it happens all the tourists within a kilometers radius come over. So on one side the members of the tribe are sitting, on the other side there are dozens of tourists with cameras and in the middle are the girls standing and dancing ecstatically (they drink a lot of homemade beer and therefore most of them are drunk). The ceremony has two stages – one, the girls beg to be beaten with branches on the back, a lot of blood comes out and they have scars which they proudly display. More scares means that she is more wanted because the men are not ready to hit just anyone, she has to be worthy in his eyes, the stronger the hit, the more he likes her. The other half is bull jumping – the teenage boy (about 18 years old), has to run on the back of about twenty bulls standing in a line, and he has to do it several times. The whole ceremony takes a whole day and although it was interesting, I have a problem with the fact that all the tourists (including me) stand and take pictures (most of the time I took pictures of tourists photographing the locals). There is a feeling of a zoo, but since we spent a whole day there, after a few hours an interaction starts with the members of the tribe (you can talk to them through the drivers) and suddenly we were not in a zoo anymore.
Just in the middle of the road we passed by an almost dry stream and stopped to look at the cowherds. A year of drought, the streams are almost dry, so the shepherds use gourds to transport water from places the cows can’t reach, hard work (despite the drought, the cows still need to drink). We took one of the shepherds (who knew a little Amharic) for a ride and an interesting conversation developed (from Urdu to Amharic to English to Hebrew and back). It turned out that he lived an hour’s walk from the road and we decided to take him home. His house is a shed and a mat and about 20 other members of his family live there. Just when we arrived they slaughtered a goat and when they heard that Ira was a vegetarian they went to the nearest field (2 minutes walk) and picked a corn. It turns out that the children go to school every day (an hour’s walk away), and we were declared cousins.
We are celebrity…?
December, 2013
We stopped in a small town to eat and decided to take a tour of the town. Within seconds there was a trail of people following us who wanted to talk (they don’t speak English), touch, take pictures. Everyone laughs, speaks Amharic quickly, and offers us to buy whatever is available. The most common is to be weighed in the street or to shine your shoes. Since our weight is not interesting and we are wearing sandals, we have nothing to buy, so we bought a textbook of gymnastics. Everywhere we go people take pictures of us (everyone has phones), point at us and want our company.
Guides
December, 2013
In Africa you are never left alone, the driver does not let us out of his sight unless we are in bed or accompanied by a guide. Almost everywhere in nature parks a guide is mandatory (employment for locals), and when a guide is not mandatory, it is mandatory to take a soldier in uniform and with a rifle from 1943, to accompany you on the way. The difference between a guide and a soldier is that a guide speaks some English and a soldier does not, apart from that they are from the same village and cost the same. Of course there are cases that require both a soldier and a guide.
School
December, 2013
On the way we stopped at a school and went in for a visit. The Ethiopians are really nice people and don’t really know how to say no, so if you go in and say “I want to see” they welcome you with open arms. We were there for a few hours accompanied by the vice principal who is very proud of his school. The system in Ethiopia starts in elementary school for 8 years (from the age of 6), taught in the local language – there are 82 languages in Ethiopia, 13 of which are recognized as languages of study, so most of the students at this age do not even speak Amharic, which is the language that unites everyone. At the age of 12-13 the children who pass a national exam, move for two years to another school (today we visited one), where the language of teaching is English – indeed the teachers spoke good English, everything was written on the blackboard in English, the programs on television (of which they were very proud) were in English, even the textbooks were in English, but all the students we tried to talk to didn’t speak English (which, by the way, is the general impression here – with the exception of instructors and very educated people, most people don’t speak English – that’s why we were so surprised that in all schools in Ethiopia in years 9-10 everything was done in English). Then, those who pass a national exam go to two years of university preparation, for example last year at a school we visited 24 students out of 250 passed the exams. The school looks good – playgrounds, garden lawns of which the deputy principal was most proud especially that there is a water tap in the garden – in all Ethiopia there is almost no running water in the houses.
There are 50 students in the class so it is very crowded. In the computer lab (where they learn ‘Office’ because no one has a computer at home) there are five computers (each of a different type), so around each computer there are a lot of people. They were most proud of the library – a huge room without even a single book. It is interesting that even though the area is Muslim, there are no religious studies in the school. In general, the most notable thing is that the issue of religion is not a problem in a country where there are countless religions, they live together, marry each other, and we have not seen any tension on this ground.
HE 
