My driver in Addis Ababa picked me up at 6:30 am to take me to the airport which may have been the worst run, most inefficient airport I have ever been in. You have to go through security including taking off shoes and putting all your luggage through a machine just to enter the airport so needless to say, there is a long line outside. Then there is just one line for Ethiopian Airlines but people keep walking to the front or cutting in. Next to me was a young woman who had lived for many years in America, was furious about the line cutting, and could tell people off in Amharic. It didn't matter, and she got more and more frustrated. After you check in, you have to go through security again including taking off shoes. And I thought that TSA was stupid.
I thought I had a 45 minute flight, but we had a stop so it took two hours. Oh, well. I arrived at Lalibela and Estifanos, my new guide, was holding a sign with my name. All is well. The airport is twenty five kilometers outside of Lalibela on a mostly unpaved road. They are paving the road - by a Chinese construction company. My guide said that the Chinese are helping to develop all over Africa and that Ethiopia pays only thirty five percent of the cost. He couldn't explain to me what China gets out of funding sixty five percent of the infrastructure of Africa.
After a quick stop to check in to my hotel, we went to visit the sites I came to Lalibela to see - the rock hewn churches. Their are eleven churches, each carved from a single rock. Well, rock doesn't do it justice. More like a rock mountain. Some of the churches are monolithic - free standing - and some are semi monolithic. The churches are carved with windows of various designs. The insides of some are mini cathedrals: a central section with two side corridors, columns, and Roman arches. And each was carved down into the rock, not built up. Amazing!
How were these churches built, you ask? Well, King (or Saint) Lalibela built them over a twenty three year period in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Some people (clearly skeptics) say that hundreds of thousands of people worked on the churches. And some say that some of the churches were built long after Lalibela died and attributed to him. But the believers know that Lalibela built them all by himself.
And why did Lalibela build them? It seems that too many Africans from further south were going on pilgrimages to Jerusalem and dying en route. As an act of mercy, Lalibela decided to build a New Jerusalem for pilgrims to come to. These are active churches with mass held in some of them every day. The mass is two and a half hours long, in Ge’ez (Ge’ez is to Amharic as Latin is to Italian), and you have to stand for the whole thing. And ... you cannot enter or leave during the service. You cannot enter late and once you enter, you cannot duck out to the courtyard for a quick break. Denni, you and I would never have made it.
In the morning we went to the first group of six churches. Then my guide left me back at the hotel for two hours for lunch. That was too long to eat but long enough to get myself into trouble. With an hour to wait for him, I decided to go for a walk but I barely made it out the gate of the hotel. Across the street is a ... well, it would make a tenement look luxurious. A group of small children were playing in the street and they all said hi to me and waved. Naturally, I waved back. They approached me and I was trying to figure out how to communicate with them when the little ones started holding my hands and not letting go. How can they tell?
Then two older boys came up and started talking to me. And they spoke English. They asked about me, so I asked about them. Within five minutes they had invited me to their house so their aunt could make coffee for me. Off I went. Solomon and Gabru are twenty year old cousins and from the countryside but they want to get an education because "success comes from education." They moved in with their aunt who lives alone and is the only one in the family to support their goal of going to the university. The "house" is a small dark room, roughly ten by ten feet with a connecting smaller room. The aunt's bed was in the main room and the boys sleep in the other or on the floor. The "house" is part of a row of rooms that used to be army barracks. They said the government now gives the rooms to poor people but it was unclear to me whether they had to pay rent. I think so. The aunt used to work carrying wood from the countryside to sell in town but she is too old to do that now.
We talked while the aunt made the traditional Ethiopian coffee service as well as injera with some kind of paste. I started to ask whether this was lunch but then remembered that most Ethiopians do not eat three meals a day; they are lucky to have two. The terms breakfast, lunch, and dinner are meaningless to them. The rooms do have electricity, but they only have water for the compound on Saturdays and have to fill containers for the rest of the week. They also only have one bathroom for the compound. They couldn't believe how old I am because I do look years younger than their 45 year old aunt. I finally showed them pictures of my children and grandchildren to try to convince them. Oh, and yes, it would have been rude not to, so I had a cup of coffee, my first in decades if not ever. As a non-expert coffee drinker, I would say it was pretty weak, with a nutty, almost chocolately taste. I couldn't have managed if it had been strong.
In the afternoon we went to the other five churches. Each was more incredible than the last. One this morning had original frescoes in it, and one this afternoon had incredible carvings on the interior. We had to walk a bit to go from one church to the next. At one point the guide asked me if I could manage to walk through a forty meter tunnel. I said sure, thinking there were lights in the tunnel. Dream on. It was pitch black but at least we could stand so I held on to his shoulder. It reminded me of crawling through the Bar Kochba tunnels and grabbing Steve's ankle. |
| Gabru, aunt, me, Solomon, and assorted children |
Finally Estifanos said we were going to the one church I would recognize. I told him I didn't know anything about the churches except that they were not to be missed. (Thank you, Mike and Barbara. You were right.) But he said this is the one on all the pictures and I had to have seen it. He said people don't appreciate the other churches because all they want to see is this one, so the guides save it for last. He was right. Twice. I had seen pictures of this one and it is the most incredible.
Each of the churches is dedicated to a biblical figure or saint, and this one is dedicated to Noah. You approach on a flat rock mountain and all you can see is a giant cross inset in the carved out space at roughly the level of the surface. From the outside, it looks like it is three stories high. The windows on the first floor are sealed, representing the lowest level of the ark that is underwater. The next floor is for the animals, and the top for humans.
We walked down a narrow passage to the bottom. From there, the church looks much smaller. Inside, there is only one vaulted ceiling room that is as long as it is high. Words just don't do this one justice. I had Estafanos take my one picture for the day to show that I was here.
In a small opening in the rock across from the church entrance are the bones of three people who died over two hundred years ago but you can still see the shape of their feet - skin and muscles - not just bones. How? These three people went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and were baptized in the River Jordan where Jesus was baptized. They came back to Lalibela and decided they wanted to die there, although I am unclear what the timing is on this. Did they have to wait around a long time in Lalibela to die? And because they had been baptized in the River Jordan, their flesh stayed on the bodies. Of course skeptics say something about mummification, but who believes the skeptics?
After my afternoon tour, it was still early, so I had the guide drop me off "downtown" to walk around. I had trouble finding diet coke in Addis Ababa, succeeding only at a tourist restaurant for lunch, and Lalibela didn't look promising, but it gave me a good pretext to walk around, stopping at every cafe and shop and asking for Coca Lite. I can tell you that there is not one to be had here. But I didn't get very far as I was picked up by two boys within minutes. Is there a sign on my head?
They asked about me so I asked about them. They are from the countryside but wanted to get an education so moved into Lalibela where there is a high school because "success comes from education." Does this sound familiar? Either I just met four of the poorest boys in Lalibela (and that is saying a lot) or this is a great con. I'm leaning toward the former. Tomas and Yohannes are fifteen years old and in tenth grade. If they had stayed in the countryside, there was no school after fourth grade and they were expected to be goatherds. So they moved here together six years ago!!!
Within five minutes they invited me to their room so I went. It is another double row of rooms down a steep dirt path. One of the boys held my hand going down and up. They have lived in a ten by ten foot room since they were nine years old. They quickly offered me a seat on the bed, the only place to sit down in the room, and proudly showed me their three books: a well worn Amharic/English dictionary, a book in Amharic, and Tom Sawyer. They have to pay 300 birr rent which is about $12, so they work in the mornings shining shoes or carrying luggage. Then they go to school in the afternoons.
Since my favorite thing to do in the world is to buy books (except maybe for reading books in the sun) I asked if there was any place to buy books. They were very excited and we walked back to downtown where we went to the shoe store - naturally. There they had a few books, most importantly the study guide for 11th and 12th grade exams. Of course I bought it although I was disappointed that there were no fiction books. We tried a few other shops with no luck. At the stationery shop, I bought the boys notebooks and pens for the new school year which is starting soon. If this was a scam, it was the best $32 I have ever been scammed. But I have been in Africa less than forty eight hours. Will I have any money in my pocket when I come home?
Tomas and Yohannes then insisted on walking me back to my hotel so we walked down the hill again to their room to drop off the books. Again one held my hand on the steep parts. This time Tomas pointed out the plastic basin and told me he had done laundry this morning. I took this picture of them in their room and the row of rooms they live in.
The boys thanked me profusely and kept telling me how glad they were to be ready for school. They have eleven classes and only one is in Amharic; the rest are in English. They told me they wanted to give me a present and would come back at 6:30. I stayed in the lobby of the hotel, not realizing that they would never enter it. When I finally walked outside after 7, they were there waiting for me and gave me a cross necklace - I think from their village. I might have to break down and wear it. 
Solomon from the morning was also waiting for me as he had offered to show me where the restaurant was. The electricity had just gone out and it was dark, so I was happy to have him escort me. Unlike Tomas and Yohannes, he had no trouble entering the restaurant and walking me to my table, so I invited him to join me. He had never eaten anything except Ethiopian food and obviously had never eaten in a tourist restaurant. But he was willing to try American food so I ordered him a hamburger. (Aside ... the waiter told me they only had beef burgers, not hamburgers. Finally some place that sees the illogic of the name.)
Solomon kept asking permission to eat the food they put on the table. I told him the bread was for both of us. He said he liked the hamburger (beef burger) and ate it all. I pointed out his salad dish which he had not touched and he asked if he could eat it. He tried to eat salad the way Ethiopians eat with injera: he used a piece of lettuce to wrap around the cut vegetables. But there wasn't enough lettuce and I told him we eat salad with a fork. He looked so longingly at the spoon that I told him it was okay to eat with that. He reminded me of Teddy
trying to master a spoon and get the food into his mouth successfully.
And that was my long, interesting day. Solomon walked me back to my hotel where the electricity was back on but the wifi did not work, so I wrote and read. Tomorrow we are driving out into the countryside to see some more churches.
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