Posted June 2015
30 December 2011– 5
January 2012
DIRE DAWA and HARAR
Fly back to Addis in the morning with a couple of hours to
kill before a flight east to Dire Dawa so I make a trip into town to visit the
wonderful Ethnological Museum at Addis Ababa University. Back to the airport
for a thirty minute flight to Dire Dawa where on the flight, I chat with a
couple of tourists who are heading onto Somaliland – aren’t they intrepid! Upon
landing, I find my pack didn’t make the connection from Addis, so when I make a
report I’m get assured that it will probably come on the next flight in a
couple of hours. When it does they will telephone me and also deliver it to
where I am staying. Feeling reassured, I head into town and make a few circuits
of the city in tuk tuks to find nearly all hotels are full with visitors for St
Gabriels day who are still staying on in town. In the end I plump for the very
flash Samrat Hotel, for the grand cost of $30 with all the mod cons including a
promised buffet breaky. Ahh now this is the life, if only I had my pack. No
call by 6pm so I head back out to the airport where they direct me to ‘wait
there’ as a flight is landing. Luggage goes around and round and still no pack
– bugger. I am calculating what is the least I can get away with buying for
tonight – thongs, detergent, toothbrush and toothpaste when the staff are
surprised my luggage hasn’t turned up and direct me to the office. As soon as I
walk into the office, there is my pack on the floor – obviously arrived on an
earlier flight & being ignored by all! I am so overjoyed to be reunited
with my pack that I just about skip out of that airport and hug it all the way
back to my 4 star digs. Now life is very grand for me, but after getting about
town so much the last couple of hours, I can’t help but notice that life is not
so good for a considerable number of people here. Many children begging, many
men lying about on cardboard sipping clear liquids & others just raving in
the streets, chewing away on chaat. Ring Tez in Australia for New Years Eve and
I am really wishing I was home now… But very soon I will be so time to enjoy
the last of what Ethiopia has to offer. Great markets here in Dire Dawa – There
is The Ashawa Market, where you can buy the usual required household items
along with the Dire Dawa market for cheap electronic stuff. Then there is the
Kafira market, where Somali pastoralists, Oromo farmers and Afar herders from
roundabouts come to sell their produce making my people watching visit so
interesting. And there is the Chattar Market, one of the many places to buy
your chaat – explaining a lot of lay about menfolk here. I have heard about Yabesha Qibay – a hair butter treatment
and I head to the markets to find a salon who offered it. After much
questioning at various salons, I find one and they are very happy to ‘butter’
my hair and much like a an oil treatment, my hair feels so lovely afterwards.
HURRAY for HARAR
Quick 1 hr bus trip up a mountain to Harar and I am
immediately charmed by this ancient walled city. Only 1 sq km, it has laneways,
mosques and shrines all contained within thick 5m high walls, constructed in
the 16th century. A long history as trade crossroad, with a unique
language and ethnic culture, Harar is considered the fourth most sacred centre
of the Islamic world. And it is just so
lovely –walking through to try one guesthouse, I fluke a fab ‘room just vacated
at the Rewda Guesthouse. It is a gegar,
a traditional Adare residence) set in the heart of the old town and my room is
entered via a ladder to the top storey. Relaxing the next day, on the central
raised platform - traditional lounging area – a private tour calls past!
Chatting to Toshi (Japan), I ask if I can join his tour and spend a great morning
looking about town & learning about the 4 original gates of the wall (16th
century), the Medhane Alem Cathedral which was originally an Egyptian mosque
but was converted by Haille Selassie in 1940s. We visit the lovely Arthur
Rimbaud house (they say he loved there, but no one is really sure) with lovely
painted panels inside. Ras Tafari’s house which is so lovely that Haille
Selassie spent his honeymoon there so it now bears his pre-coronation name.
There are Grand mosques, a lovely St Mary Catholic churchrches and even a
palace converted into a handicraft museum with great views over the old city.
Tombs and shrines are dotted about and some of the laneways are so named by the
occupation of the residents – Mekina Girgir (Machine Rd) is occupied by tailors
and visit this area quite a few times to get here & there over my time
staying in Harar. That afternoon Toshi & I head out to the Harar Brewery,
one of the Ethiopia’s seven breweries. We make the group up to 4 people on the
tour and dressed up in white coats & hair nets spend a pleasant couple of
hours admiring their brewing efforts before a pleasant early evening sampling
the wares onsite. I ask Toshi if he is interested in heading out to the camel
market at ***** tomorrow and we make
plans to meet up early morning. Another easy bus ride, we fin d the town and
follow people out to a large plain filled with camels! And camel sellers. And camel shoppers. Many
men are interested in my religion, as my necklace has an islam motif, jic they
could shop for me too. And then there was the great coffee in the large tents
onsite.
I spend whole days wandering about Hara, inside and outside
the walls. One evening I go looking for the Hyena Men, who have made a trade of
feeding hyenas just outside the city walls. Just as the sunsets, the Hyena man
‘calls’ the hyenas – a little like ringing the dinner bell. And then they
slowly appear, skulking as only a hyena can! I am not too keen on hyenas having
seen them in action on the plains of Kenya and I am shocked at just how fat
these hyenas are! But I guess with an easy meal every night and no work to get
fed you could even describe them as obese, when compared to their cousins
further south. Still, the Hyena men claim they are continuing a tradition that
discouraged them from attacking residents when food was scarce! They dart
forward to grab at the proffered meat and as they relax, the hyena man invites
tourists to offer the hyena the food. And no, I didn’t take up the offer – are
they tame? Should they be tamed like this, to ‘beg food’ for tourist’s
amusement? I am not too sure.
On my last day in Harar, I meet Rikki, who has been
volunteering in Kenya – we chat about the difficulties we have both
encountered here as tourists in Ethiopia… And she is an ‘old hand’ at Africa –
so it is not just me going silly!! She is also going back to Addis tomorrow
although on Sky – I think I should have booked with them…. But never the less,
it was a very easy bus ride back to Addis, with enough time left to stock up on
some gorgeous netalo scarves that are hand woven with an amazing array of
colours & simple designs on white cloth.
PS The Samrat hotel offered cheap Whiskey Shower cocktails
for New Years Eve. I think that might be a Whiskey Sour??
My initial impression of Ethiopia was like the Land of the
mummy – 80% of people walking about are swathed from the head down in a white
cloth, scarf, robe or blanket. Their total immersion in their Orthodox religion
was, in the end such a privilege to witness. And to end my trip in Hara, with
such an Islamic influence was great.
Loved Ethiopia and a month was certainly not enough.
Finally an easy taxi to Addis Airport, an easy flight to Kuala
Lumpur and then off to Melbourne overnight. Long haul but I arrive ok. After 13
months in Africa I didn’t die, as someone predicted before I left and I think I
am a different person, in that I have grown somewhat, feel confident that I
could travel anywhere now and have certainly learnt oh so much about a distant
continent filled with some of the most wonderful, amazing people. My
frustrations were only my own trite issues, trying to achieve what only I
wanted, when compared to their problems, challenges and national traditions of
patrimony, misogyny & corruptions. A truly amazing continent!!
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