Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

A Land of no Safaris

@brittarnhild

Marta is going to Kenya in February, and during her stay she will go on a safari. It sounds like a dream, doesn´t it? Safari in Africa. I have to admit I am a bit jealous........or may be not. I did not go on a safari in Ethiopia, as far as I know it is not a safari land. But with an open eyed driver, with a deep love for his country, we were still able to get our adventures.

As soon as Ermias understood that nature fascinates me, he started to point out trees, flowers, birds.......and baboons. From somewhere under his seat he dug out an illustrated Birds of Africa. I drank the information greedily, wrote notes in my journal, shot photos.

One day we drove much longer than we had planned. Darkness fell and we started to look for pair of shining eyes along the road. May be we would, surrounded by the safety of the land rover, be able to see a real, wild animal. "Ermias, tell us if you see a wild animal" we asked, and suddenly he stopped the car. "Look over there" he cried, "can you see the hyenas?"

Oh my! We could for sure!

When we stopped I often picked a flower to press in my journal. Ermias had a poster with flowers and showed me their names. Then pointed out a bird, another tree, different types of grass and grains.

 

I loved to seek for new flowers and trees, to count the multitude of different greys, to watch birds. But when Ermias stopped the car and pointed out to us the baboon I had to laugh out load. I might never take part in a safari in Agrica, but I have seen a baboon doing gymnastics in the high voltage mast :-)

 

 

The Funeral

@brittarnhild

I had been in Ethiopia for a few hours only, and we were already driving west. I sat in the front seat of the car hired by Getts, in my lap I had my camera. I had had a short night on the flight down from Norway via Sweden, but I was wide awake. The world was open and I wanted to experience it all.

All of a sudden the road in front of us was filled with people. Our driver, Ermias, who only after a short time felt like a friend, before our days together felt like family, was used to tourist with a camera. He slowed down the car and pointed out, look there, and there, and there.....

It turned out we had met a funeral procession.
Hundreds, or thousands of people were following the coffin.

"Look over there" Ermias said, "Horses, and traditional outfits. This must be the funeral of an old, very important man. A chief."

Ermias slowed down even more. I rolled down my window and let my camera do her own work.

People, horses, colours, speed, and a man waving......

Only a few hours in Ethiopia, and already my travel tale chast started to fill up. We waved goodbye to the last horse riders, I rolled up my window, put away my camera and opened my diary. My adventure had started.

Across the Borders

@brittarnhild

In 1999 and 2001 I visited friends in Eritrea. The fightings between Ethiopia and Eritrea was a hot topic, especially during my first stay. Many of the people I met had sons and daughters down at the border, fighting for their country. Many had lost kids down there, or their kids had fled to Sudan, away from the conflict, away from the fights.

In 2001 I remember driving south in Eritrea, down to the border of Ethiopia. The fighting had ended then, and I remember looking south, seeing a country unknown to me. Wondering about its people, its traditions, its customs.

Today, more than a decade later, I am up north in Ethiopia, in Lalibela. On the other side of the border. I look north and know that I have friends up there, somewhere.

We have a guide here in Lalibela. When we passed these old traditional houses, he told us that he used to live in one as a child. I continued to ask him about his life, and he told me that during the last conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia he was a border soldier. A terrible time. A time of fights and the death of friends.

 Two countries, though many various people. Similarities and differences.

Peace is fragile. Our world is filled with conflicts.

How can it be?
Isn't life, isn't people  the most precious we have?

 

 

Hotel Constructions, and some chatting

@brittarnhild

 

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My ten days in Ethiopia are coming to an end. We have finished working on the project for this time, and these last couple of days we are tourist. A taxi picked us up at 5.30 from our hotel in Addis this morning and drove us to the domestic airport. There we had to figure out how to finds the plane to Lalibela. A little chaos, but with good help from the airport workers we made it. On time we got a "time for boarding" message, we showed our tickets, walked down the stairs and out into a waiting bus. The bus took us to the plane, or so we thought. Actually it stopped at several planes, but it seemd like none of them were ready for us, so in the end the bus drove back, we unbarked and walked back up the stairs to the waiting hall. About an hour later we were again bussed out to the plane, and this time we found the correct one and soon we were in the air.

We are in Lalibela now, a pilgrimage town up north in Ethiopia. The day has been amazing, and I need some digesting time before I can tell you about it. Now I am sitting out on the terracce of my hotel room, and I have just watched the most beautiful sunset. 

The hotel were we stay is extending, and all day the area has been like an ant hill. Terje, you should have been here. You would have loved to watch! (and you should have been here......cause I miss you.....)

Give us this day our daily bread

@brittarnhild

I have not yet told you the reason why I am here in Ethiopia, have I? Short story: the diocese of Nidaros and the Western Synod of the Mekane Yesu church in Ethiopia have a friendship link. As part of this, we have just started a four year project where we will look at food security, both in Norway and in Eritrea. The name of this project is Give Us Today Our Daily Bread.

We were supposed to be a group of 4-5 people travelling from Nidaros down here, but plans are sometimes hard to make, and in the end there were only two of us, pluss Hans Birger, or kez Hans as he is called down here. A Norwegian pastor, now senior, having spent half of his adult life in the area of the Western Synod.

 

We have a long list of things to do while we are here, one of them is to look at food traditions. And when you talk about Eritrea and food, except for coffee, injera is the first thing people will mention.

 

Injera is a kind of huge pancake, made of taf, water and yeast, or rather a kind of sour dough. As you know I have been to Eritrea twice and got used to injera there. I love it, though it tend to be hard on my delicate stomach.

Since we are here collecting food tales, we have been taken into kitchen, we have helped making the injeras, and we have of course eaten them, again and again.

 

One thing which has stuck me along our way is the darkness of the many kitchens we have visited. And not only the darkness, but also the heavy smoke where the girls and women have to spend long parts of their days.

I have asked about this several times, but there seem to be no answer to why. Though personal I wonder if the answer is that the kitchen huts are all built by men and men never spend long hours inside them, cooking.

 

I am reading a very interesting book these days; The Lure of the Honey Bird, The Story Tellers of Ethiopia, by Elisabeth Laird. I have written more about this book over in Books on the Menu. Today I discovered that Laird has seen the same as I have seen:
Abebe pushed me through the matting screen, behind which the girl had disappeared, to show me her cooking area. This was so surrounded by walls that not a chink of light could penetrate from the outside

  

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We are in Addis Ababa now, and last night a Norwegian here took us to a restaurant we would not in a million years have found by ourselves. On the menu: injera of course.

 

 

And with the injera came traditional music and dances.

 

 

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Lucy in the Sky

@brittarnhild

The National Museum in Addis Ababa has a very special woman living inside its walls, Denkenesh  or Birkinesh which means You Are Lovely. Beloved child has many names, and the name Birkinesh is known under around the world is Lucy, or rather Lucy in the Sky.

Lucy, a woman with the amazing age of 3.2million years, was found north east in Ethiopia in November 1974. But why Lucy in the Sky? I love that story. As it happend, the archeologists were playing the Beatles song in the camp at the moment she was found :-)

 

I posted the first picture here on facebook yesterday, with a text telling that I had had a very nice meeting with Lucy, whereupon Torgeir, my oldest son, asks; who is who of the two ladies on the picture? Of course I could tell him the answer. Since Ingrid Elise once accused me of being so old fashioned I must have been born before God, well, I am of course the one to the right.

 

Lucy (or is it me?), continue to cast her spell on people of all ages. And most of all on young men of course.

 

By the way, I have the Lonely Planet  Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti which I bought for a travel to Eritrea in 2001. In it I read that the bones of Lucy are copies, the originals are preserverd in the archives of the museum. But coming heard I learned that we now see the real bones. But not all of them were found of course. I guess the white parts are plaster copies, the more darker ones are real.

It takes time to learn to love a country

@brittarnhild

I have to be taught the lesson again and again - it takes time to fall in love with a new country.
Before leaving I had been reading Dervla Murphy's In Ethiopiwith a Mule. On the plane I had been reading Dervla Murphy's In Ethiopia with a Mule. After arriving I continued to read Dervla Murphy's In Ethiopia with a Mule. Murphy shares a deep love of the beauty of thie African country in her book, but for some time, especially after a long night on the plane with almost no sleep, all I could see was the dust, the hardship of travelling in an unknown place, the precautions to avaid stomach bug.....well, all the shadows so to say.

 

I got the stomach bug already the second day, and I got it hard. It was a day of driving and while I laied down in the car I could far away hear the driver and the guide of our group  discussing weather to take me to hospital. But, fast as I got it thrown over me, fast it went away, well, at least the more dramatic part of it. I am still struggling with an Africa stomach. But I manage. I manage very well.

The next day though, after a good night's sleep, we had reached the goal of our travel, and we were taken out to visit projects run by the Western Synod of the Mekane Jesus Church in Ethiopia (we are working with food security, the name of our project is "Give us this day our daily bread"), love came as a revelation. It is the end of the rain season, the rain has been quite good this year and Ethiopia is lush and green. The variety of greens hit me like a flood from Eden, I could only marvel and I felt like standing there, in ave, together with Dervla Murphy.

I am no Dervla Murphy. I have none of her stubbornness, none of her availability to endure hardship. On the countrary. I am a girl who loves luxury. I want my daily shower, my every third day hair wash, my bed with clean sheets, pure water.

But like Dervla I know to appreciate beauty.

And believe me. This third day of my visit, I fell in love with Ethiopia.

 

 

My old tricks

@brittarnhild

Of course I have not forgotten my old tricks. Not even deep into the countryside of Ethiopia. I grew up with table tennis in our basement, and love to play it. So after we had passed tables along the road many times, with young boys playing, I asked our driver Eremias to stop. I wanted to play.

I think they let the best boy in the village play with me, or at kleast I like to think so, and after the match we agreed: we were a perfect match, we were equals.

I had so much fun, but believe me, one of the village kids laughed even more than I did :-)

 

Here I come…….

@brittarnhild

Ethiopia, I am ready.
Are you?

 

I am almost ready to start packing

@brittarnhild

I am almost ready to start packing. And I am in no hurry, the plane is not leaving untill around noon tomorrow. From Trondheim to Sweden, a long wait there and then to Addis Abeba in Ethiopia via Cairo in Egypt. Wow, seeing these names on print makes it quite exotic.

Yes, I am soon ready to pack. But first I will have coffee and dessert with Terje. We have just eaten dinner, Marta, Terje and I, and my fingers are stained deep red from cutting beetroots from the garden. For coffee I have bought a piece of a marzipan cake. We will celebrate the everyday. They are too precious not to.

But then, after dessert, I MUST start packing. Though in a way I have already started. The diningroom table is filled with items I will bring. Passport, medicines, tickets, maps, books, fleabag, travel diary, bandaid, compede, saltwater spray from my quarrelsome sinuses, books, more books, flashlight..........
....and before leaving work today I scooped up a few hugs from colleages which I will make sure to bring with my in my hand luggage.....Terje´s love is already rooted in my heart, has been for about 35 years! Can you imagine! 35 years, a looooong time.

 

After work I stopped at the drugstore where I am a regular, and asked for diapers from adults. I will bring them to Ethiopia and there they will be used when they bring fistula patients to hospital. You don´t know about fistula? Then I advise you to read Abraham Verghese´s book Cutting for Stone. I plan to write about it in Books on the Menu later today, if I get time after dessert and packing........ At the drugstore I was given a huge bag for free. How will I find room in the suitcase?

I am almost ready to start packing. I can´t understand while I am still here, blogging........or, sure I can understand. I want to share the beauty of autumn in Trondheim with you, autumn in Trondheim as I captured it on my Samsung cell phone on my way to work this morning.

Starbuck´s, I don´t need your coffee. I am on my way to Ethiopia and I will drink coffee there, Ethiopia, the  coffee´s cradle.