Yes, I made it home. I survived the wilds of Africa and didn't get robbed, mugged, raped, pillaged, killed, maimed, or any other nightmare that the folks at home wished upon me. I survived with flying colours and have just finished a day nestled in my couch and all of my laundry.
Clean clothes can only mean one thing: Next!
The next destination will likely be Bolivia and Peru to do the Inca trail and hang out with some gringos. It's a bit of a beaten track for me but with limited time (only 5 weeks) and a need to be a bit more online than Ethiopia was it seems like a good compromise. And no jet lag! There are always benefits.
But I love, like passionately love Africa. Before heading to Ethiopia I thought it was West Africa that I loved because of the people I had met but it's pretty much the entire continent (at least the north) that I am head over heels for.
I will be back there soon and I'll test my love again by trying the south or east or something a bit different. I have a feeling that my love is true.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Heaven
Heaven is a $20 massage at the Sheraton in Addis. Complete with jacuzzi and shower. I am clean, I am relaxed.... this is Africa?
The Culture of Body Modification
For someone that absolutely hates tattooing I have to say I find ritual scarification completely beautiful. Many villagers in the North cut cross scars in their foreheads as a testament to their faith, others tattoo crosses between their eyes. All in the name of religion. Many peoples across Africa make three scars just beside the eyes, like pre-age wrinkling but nicer, there is something about the commitment to cut into yourself in the name of beauty...an ancient breast enhancement I guess.
Part deux of the journey is to head South for a totally different experience than the architectural beauty and natural diversity in the North. It is in the south that ritual scarring and body modifications take on a whole new meaning. It is in the south where the Mursi lip-stretchers are, this tribe inserts clay plates into their bottom lip until it reaches unimaginable diameters as a sign of beauty. Then, once married, they let themselves go a bit and are left with a dangling lip. I just wonder what it looks like when their jaw drops.
The Hamer people are famous for their body modifications including ear stretching like the emo kids do at home. Except this actually is cultural. And the Jinka perform scarification across their faces in different patterns including rubbing ash into wounds to darken the scars.
Coming from a cultural wasteland that is North America I can't help but ask the nagging question: why? Why perform these rituals that have no basis anymore in cleansing practices or even in finding a mate. Now, those that have their lips stretched are equally at home in their mud hut and on their mobile. It is culture and it should be preserved but a lot of the 'culture' is now solely for the tourist dollar.
Is tourism preserving culture by making it profitable or bastardizing it by making those that perform their cultural practices like animals in a zoo to be stared at? I don't have an answer to this question and I don't think it can be answered, but I am determined to get some damn cool photos of it.
Part deux of the journey is to head South for a totally different experience than the architectural beauty and natural diversity in the North. It is in the south that ritual scarring and body modifications take on a whole new meaning. It is in the south where the Mursi lip-stretchers are, this tribe inserts clay plates into their bottom lip until it reaches unimaginable diameters as a sign of beauty. Then, once married, they let themselves go a bit and are left with a dangling lip. I just wonder what it looks like when their jaw drops.
The Hamer people are famous for their body modifications including ear stretching like the emo kids do at home. Except this actually is cultural. And the Jinka perform scarification across their faces in different patterns including rubbing ash into wounds to darken the scars.
Coming from a cultural wasteland that is North America I can't help but ask the nagging question: why? Why perform these rituals that have no basis anymore in cleansing practices or even in finding a mate. Now, those that have their lips stretched are equally at home in their mud hut and on their mobile. It is culture and it should be preserved but a lot of the 'culture' is now solely for the tourist dollar.
Is tourism preserving culture by making it profitable or bastardizing it by making those that perform their cultural practices like animals in a zoo to be stared at? I don't have an answer to this question and I don't think it can be answered, but I am determined to get some damn cool photos of it.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
The Road
Nothing can prepare you for the joys and sorrows of traveling in Africa. One of the most amazing sights isn't the mountains, wildlife or even the people. It's the road.
With limited access to power from poverty or just lazy governments not wanting to build power lines, everyone lives in the streets - they braid their hair, clean their clothes, walk for miles and tell stories all in birds-eye view from the bus. Sitting on the bus in Africa is absolutely hypnotic.
Or at least you have to be hypnotized to survive the screeching babies, squaking chickens, puking passengers and the purple knees you will have when you finally leave the moving oven because the seats are so close together that a sardine-can analogy is being kind.
If that wasn't enough, every time another vehicle passes the buses get completely filled with a fine dust that gets everywhere... I mean everywhere. And of course there is the inescapable heat that makes your shirt stick to your back and makes you desperately try to time drinking from your water bottle for between bumps. Usually you fail and water sprays everywhere. Which is probably a good thing because there aren't any bathroom breaks - or - when there is, the driver seems to find the only stretch of road that lacks a bush or rock or even a goat to squat behind.
The problem is that if getting around was easy then the sights wouldn't be as good. Maybe it's just bragging rights to say you are 'hardcore' but the absolute zen-like state you have to enter to survive the African roads make what you see when you finally get there that much more rewarding. It is always possible that the Danakil Depression is just some fancy colors but it's the 6 hour drive in the heat and salt and sleeping in a makeshift hut in the middle of nowhere that makes it that incredible.
Today I am suffering from the results of the African roads. Fourteen hours in a minibus where I got the seat with the most legroom, unfortunately that was also next to 3 other people... in a set of seats designed for three. Which means I spent fourteen hours sitting half sideways pressed up against the window, while I got a great seat to enjoy the view, my ass is killing me and my torso is now permanently twisted to the left. Thankfully, I don't have new bruises on my knees but I do have some new bumps on my head from hitting the window between potholes. Some vacation.
But maybe, just maybe, the sights are mind-blowing and getting there is half the fun.
With limited access to power from poverty or just lazy governments not wanting to build power lines, everyone lives in the streets - they braid their hair, clean their clothes, walk for miles and tell stories all in birds-eye view from the bus. Sitting on the bus in Africa is absolutely hypnotic.
Or at least you have to be hypnotized to survive the screeching babies, squaking chickens, puking passengers and the purple knees you will have when you finally leave the moving oven because the seats are so close together that a sardine-can analogy is being kind.
If that wasn't enough, every time another vehicle passes the buses get completely filled with a fine dust that gets everywhere... I mean everywhere. And of course there is the inescapable heat that makes your shirt stick to your back and makes you desperately try to time drinking from your water bottle for between bumps. Usually you fail and water sprays everywhere. Which is probably a good thing because there aren't any bathroom breaks - or - when there is, the driver seems to find the only stretch of road that lacks a bush or rock or even a goat to squat behind.
The problem is that if getting around was easy then the sights wouldn't be as good. Maybe it's just bragging rights to say you are 'hardcore' but the absolute zen-like state you have to enter to survive the African roads make what you see when you finally get there that much more rewarding. It is always possible that the Danakil Depression is just some fancy colors but it's the 6 hour drive in the heat and salt and sleeping in a makeshift hut in the middle of nowhere that makes it that incredible.
Today I am suffering from the results of the African roads. Fourteen hours in a minibus where I got the seat with the most legroom, unfortunately that was also next to 3 other people... in a set of seats designed for three. Which means I spent fourteen hours sitting half sideways pressed up against the window, while I got a great seat to enjoy the view, my ass is killing me and my torso is now permanently twisted to the left. Thankfully, I don't have new bruises on my knees but I do have some new bumps on my head from hitting the window between potholes. Some vacation.
But maybe, just maybe, the sights are mind-blowing and getting there is half the fun.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Castles, Caves and Churches
The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind. I met up with two Aussie girls that were ripping through Northern Ethiopia so I decided to join. What have I been doing that will make you incredibly jealous?
First - a four day trek in the Simien Mountains complete with baboons, sheer rock cliffs, camping in the freezing cold and a cook that would make a Michelin star chef jealous at what this guy could whip up at 4000m.
Then a visit to Aksum where some old thingys are. Those old thingys are actually obelisks and stelae from the 4th century BC when Christianity came to Ethiopia.
After that, two days walking and climbing through the Tigray region to visit some churches built into the rock. One was about a 45 minute hike up to a cliff that we rock climbed... only about 5m but I still feel hardcore... where we crossed a short ledge to find our tippy toes hanging over a 200 meter (not an exaggeration) that went straight down. But, just looking over the ledge wouldn't suffice, nope - those crazy religious zealots had to shuffle their way about 20meters on a 1 foot ledge over that precipitous drop to carve a church in a natural cave.
And finally, la piece de resistance, the Danakil Depression - the lowest point in Africa and officially the hottest point on Earth. And people live there. In fact, they mine salt and load it onto a camel caravan that takes 2 weeks to walk to market. Also, if you thought your techicolor shirt in the 80s was totally tubular and that fluorescent shorts are still in style - you have NEVER seen color like the mineral deposits in the active geyser field in Danakil. Glowing and bubbling green water full of copper, red basins of iron and the brightest yellow you could possibly ever imagine of sulfur mounds. Truly one of the most spectacular natural sights I have ever seen on this Earth.
There, you are finally caught up, now please stop sending me emails asking if I'm alive. I'm just having too much darn fun to think about all of you ;)
First - a four day trek in the Simien Mountains complete with baboons, sheer rock cliffs, camping in the freezing cold and a cook that would make a Michelin star chef jealous at what this guy could whip up at 4000m.
Then a visit to Aksum where some old thingys are. Those old thingys are actually obelisks and stelae from the 4th century BC when Christianity came to Ethiopia.
After that, two days walking and climbing through the Tigray region to visit some churches built into the rock. One was about a 45 minute hike up to a cliff that we rock climbed... only about 5m but I still feel hardcore... where we crossed a short ledge to find our tippy toes hanging over a 200 meter (not an exaggeration) that went straight down. But, just looking over the ledge wouldn't suffice, nope - those crazy religious zealots had to shuffle their way about 20meters on a 1 foot ledge over that precipitous drop to carve a church in a natural cave.
And finally, la piece de resistance, the Danakil Depression - the lowest point in Africa and officially the hottest point on Earth. And people live there. In fact, they mine salt and load it onto a camel caravan that takes 2 weeks to walk to market. Also, if you thought your techicolor shirt in the 80s was totally tubular and that fluorescent shorts are still in style - you have NEVER seen color like the mineral deposits in the active geyser field in Danakil. Glowing and bubbling green water full of copper, red basins of iron and the brightest yellow you could possibly ever imagine of sulfur mounds. Truly one of the most spectacular natural sights I have ever seen on this Earth.
There, you are finally caught up, now please stop sending me emails asking if I'm alive. I'm just having too much darn fun to think about all of you ;)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.JPG)