travelling in Ethiopia

anyways, back home before I could find another Internet cafe w'out sloooow dialup connections, so just a retrospective roundup on Ethiopia:

- the East is really fascinating, and after the visit to Dire Dawa (above), we continued to Harar, once home of Rimbaud, with museum carefully preserved, but more established as a Muslim citadel town in a largely Christian country

Harar not as fascinating as billed in its walled inner city, although the market really has everything, from wheat flour to cell phones, and the star item for us being "khat";

pronounced "chat" by everyone, it is just everywhere; people chew on it, you are walking on it, kids run up to you with fistfuls of green leaves to offer, sheesh ;
as if in Cochabamba coca leaves were underfoot everywhere, and all perfectly legal and visible;

in any case, avoided it, following Lonely Planet advice that if you want a good local stone, get a Harar Beer, the local variant of St Georges, a good national brew; maybe next time

- Lake Tana probably has the best inland water in the country -- the lakes to the southwest of Addis are plain and overrated; saw a hippo suddenly surface (wow!) en route to the monasteries on the Tana islands there, with tremendous colurful church murals that made me wonder about several biblical stories illustrated, esp the wedding at Canaa ( water to wine very intersting for me!!)

- - Ethiopians are HUGE fans of English Premiership soccer, and we ran into their fandom everywhere, including remote-village buses with "Arsenal is Life" plastered over the backsides, and old men approaching in the market to ask: Chelsea - you like?

spent the evening of the Champions League final in the centre of Addis, where about 30,000 gathered for the big-screen treatment of Liverpool-Milan; loud groans at the misdeeds of the Italians and huge roars for the heroics of the English players

decided to leave at half-time -- an increasingly packed crowd, hemmed in by cars, plus loads of machine-gun armed cops on the perimeter suggest: get to a safer place ...
anyways, wild cheering for late Liverpool goal kept me updated of score even at the hotel several blocks away!

.

[ 21 June 2007: Message edited by: Geneva ]

oh yes, one more thing (it all keeps coming back now):

2007 is the Millennium by the Gregorian (Julian? could never figure it out) calendar and hence Ethiopia home to the Christian Copts of east Africa, is set to celebrate its year 2000 Millennium this September:
[url=http://www.ethiopia2000.com/index.php]http://www.ethiopia2000.com/index....

[i]Our Vision:
“By using this unique opportunity of the new millennium to create unforgettable memories for the people and friends of Ethiopia, to leave behind a legacy of a united and determined Ethiopia, and lay down a strong foundation for a national shared vision and common platform for the future generation and for the future prosperity of Ethiopia .” [/i]

no hotel rooms left in Addis ($600+/night at Sheraton during that period), but there are oither ways to get lodged there, I am sure

It would be great if this was an image-transfoming event, because for some reason perceptions have trailed realities re Ethiopia by a wide margin. How many people asked us before leaving:
-- [i]Hope you stay safe, watch yourself, eh?[/i]

Sheesh, compared to neighbouring Kenya, which is wracked by violent crime and carjackings these days -- even on the shuttles between hotels in Nairobi apparently --, Addis and Ethiopia are very placid.

People who had lived years in Addis told us they walk everywhere all the time (except maybe the deepest corners of the Merkato). Ethiopians very friendly, but perhaps if it became a tourist destination that would all change, as in Kenya.

As for its image, other countries that suffered great disasters in the 1970s and 1980s -- military dictatorships, famine, foreign invasion, or all of the above -- have been widely recognized for their changed society: Chile as an emerging social democracy, Vietnam for its growing economy, Uganda for a newly vigorous public sector -- while Ethiopia is stuck with the FAMINE image which dates from .... 1984, 23 years ago, and the OPPRESSION stigma, despite long-ago ouster of the Derg.

The military is back in the barracks, there are imperfect elections held irregularly, Addis is building everything everywhere, from office towers to expressways, and yet, we hesitate to take a look.

hey, maybe some ad agency will pick that up ...

[b]Ethiopia -- Worth a Look [/b] [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]

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[ 17 June 2007: Message edited by: Geneva ]

part pleasure, part business -- some material may be useful for trade publications

( I have often thought: if more travellers would just take the initiative with paid writing, they could partly subsidize a lot of their trips:
travel articles of course, but also specialized pieces about culture, trade, people, food, you name it, for niche papers and magazines ...
anyways, that is the perspective of a writer)

re Ethiopia:
Africa has come very late on to my radar, as in the 1970s Quebec, western Europe and Latin America seemed most interesting politically to me

but an unexpected trip to central Africa in the late 1990s awakened me to the continent, and now I take the initiative as often as possible, every couple of years it turns out

this time, it was an Ethiopian colleague who retired to Addis, and said: Make sure to come!! after years of : yeah sure, some day ... finally got it together this spring

Africa much closer here than in N.America, and now that it is reviving in some ways -- all the Chinese investment, some good economic news, a more vocal African Union -- it becomes a more interesting destination, esp. for the more adventurous traveller

plus of course the people, who are often fantastic, when not burdened by crime and corruption

[ 21 June 2007: Message edited by: Geneva ]

just a week now till the kickoff to the Millennium:

[url=http://www.ethiopia2000.com]http://www.ethiopia2000.com[/url]