Ethiopia V: On the Road to Axum

We spent most of August 28, 2019, driving from the Simien Mountains to Axum, and it was a thrilling experience, with beautiful countryside and winding, Italian-constructed roads through the mountains.  Camille asked if we could stop in a village, and Bayau complied.  He arranged for us to enter the home of a town “supervisor." His wife was the woman pictured above, with her Christian tattoos.   The home, with its front door virtually on the road, had a wood floor, but it was amazingly well-organized and clean.  Yellow plastic jugs were stacked neatly along one wall and patterned fabric “wallpaper” was pinned along two other walls of the home.  We stood inside the woman’s living room.  Bayau explained that a sleeping area was in the curtained-off area at the back of the house.  I thought of the tiny log cabins some of my pioneer ancestors lived in 150 years ago, and of their spending three months crossing the plains with virtually no baths.  I am probably too squeamish about the living conditions in developing countries.

The children of the town were beautiful.

Little Ethiopian children often have a tuft of hair left just above their foreheads, so that, if they die, the angels will have something to hold onto as they pull them up to Heaven!  The children, as well as the adults, wear crosses.

The weather was bright as we left the Simien Mountains in the morning, and we got another glimpse at lush Simien Mountain scenery.

We passed another family of baboons, including this baby.

 Michael captured this antelope and bird with his telephoto lens.

As we traveled north into Tigray, the landscape became dryer.  It was in Tigray, in the 1980s, that a horrible famine, caused by both nature and an inept Communist government, captured the world's attention.  Our guide said that people still don't think of Ethiopia as a vacation spot, because of its association with the famine.

Bayau minimizes the Italian influence on Ethiopia, but I often sensed it.  Pizza and pasta are on virtually every menu at our hotels, the large squares in towns are called piazzas, and many sites reflect Italian presence.  Gondar was an Italian military base during the 1936-41 occupation, Axum was the site of the Ethiopians beating back the Italians in 1896, and today we traveled over a mountain pass along a road built by the Italians to transport their troops.  Ethiopians often greeted each other or said goodby with "Ciao."  "That's Italian," I accused Bayau.  "'Ciao' is an Ethiopian word now," he said.

As we neared Axum, we passed a refugee camp for refugees from Eritrea.  The long border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea has finally been resolved and the border is expected to open soon, but these refugees may never go back.  Around the world, the average time spent by refugees in UN-administered camps in up to 18 years.  We saw signs indicating that this camp was administered by the Norwegian Refugee Commission.