Ehtiopia: Erar, Shimbrity, Maryam Buzuhan & Korkor, Abuna Yemata Goh, Hawzen
Impressions from a walk across the highlands
This is my fourth and final post in a month-long remembrance of a journey that traversed the Agame Mountains in the Gheralta region of northern Tigray, Ethiopia. We crossed the highland communities of Lalibela, Abune Yousef National Park, Bete Korkos, Chehat, Debre Damo, Enaf, Seheta, Gohgot, Erar, Shimbrity, Hawzen and Mekele–a trek of approximately 180km that began and ended in Addis Ababa in June of 2019.
The war that began in the year after our visit, precisely in the Tigray region where we walked, makes sharing these images today seem evermore important five years later. Each day we relied on local communities to care for us: to guide seven women who came together as strangers from all corners of the world from one mountain dwelling to the next.
We followed behind the guides each day, trusting the path they drew in footsteps before us, up and down steep rocky cliffs, dwelling-to-dwelling with stops at nearly every rock-hewn church within our radius. Excerpts from a pocket log I kept during the twelve-day adventure, one that radically expanded my heart and mind, follow alongside analogue and digital images I made each day.
June 6, 2019
Five-hour walk from Gohgot to Erar through fields and past numerous farms. In one village young girls stood under what appeared to be a mesquite tree next to their timber and clay home. They watched closely as we passed with curious smiles. An elderly man dressed in a suit walked methodically with the assistance of a bamboo cane in front of our group. As we grew closer to him he stopped to allow our passing; the red soil contrasted beautifully with the black of his skin. A white shawl wrapped his shoulders. “Welcome” he said softly as we made our way, one hand raised in a gesture of peace.
His eyes were bright and kind, his smile grounding. His skin evidenced the labor of this land and the passing of time; an excerpt from Ezra Pound’s Cantos has surfaced throughout the day as we passed women and men tending their fields and shepherding their livestock, loosely remembered: I learn dignity from the plow and endurance from the weeding hoe. From where I write now, high on the plateau above the valley where we began our walk this morning, westward views of the mountains of Adwa and the Nebulet pillars, sky chapels and sacred places surround–vast earth carries my gaze far in all directions.
June 7, 2019
Gelada baboons surround the Erar Lodge on the plateau above the Senafsi Valley. We have anticipated this encounter since we began our journey. Finally, here they are in the form of a large family surrounding the enclosed dwelling where we sit and observe them from the rooftop. They are creatures of curious behavior, and even more curious vocals; a noise that resembles squawking birds, which makes it hard to differentiate if the cacophony is coming from the ravens flying overhead or baboons below.
They are rather large and intimidating. I ask our guide Peter what we should do if they chase after us; we were told the males can be aggressive. “Throw a rock”, said Peter. To which Daniella replied in her sharp witted, Austrian-Slovenian accent: will they throw one back?
The cliff ledge drops 500 meters to the valley floor; rust red and deep purple rocks merge with the green branches of old growth juniper and wild lavender. Terraced farms constructed using stacked stones contour the farmland below. Sounds of live music from a wedding reverberate from deep within the canyon. Combined with barking dogs and a cow's occasional moo makes for a warm ambiance as the sky changes quickly at dusk. The silhouetted mountains become shadowed as the moonlight brightens. My eyes jump between the discernible foreground and the infinite sky above, star laden and distinctively African.
Astronomical twilight submerges me in a world far from familiar. I am challenged by the idea of home–the opportunity to be here, witness to an extraordinary existence; the paradoxes of visible hardship and simplicity–a way of life radically different from my own–the felt contradictions.
I reflect on the previous days, distant from the privilege and access that defines the world I was born into–the American domestication that permeates many aspects of my being. Seeing women carrying five gallon water jugs up steep accents to provide for themselves and their families, and for our group these past days–their burden, their haul–is heavy on my heart and mind.
I look up to see ravens catch wind drifts so near I can hear their wings cut through the cool evening air like blades, their sky dance precise as it punctuates the formless space above me–unknowing of the grace in their defiance of gravity.
June 7-8, 2019
Smiling men and women dance jubilantly in song as we enter the Shimbrity lodge–the warmest welcome to their community dwelling located high on a cliff's ledge. Farms surround the earthen structure on all sides. Vermillion, ocher and violet colored boulders balance precariously on the loamy earth–Shimbrity appropriately meaning painted rock (the stone church of Maryam Buzuhan).
Chants are heard from a distant chapel. The sound of a dove's coo is layered among other bird songs as the sun softly rises over the Eastern ridge; a gentle breeze cools and welcomes the day. Of all the lodges we have stayed, I am most fond of this one. The kindness of our host family, smiling and laughing, visibly enjoying the life they live moment-to-moment.
I can only speculate in my observations, of course, but there’s an undercurrent of faith and hope here that fills the air with positive vibration. The land and sky provides, soon the seasonal rains will give way to a bountiful harvest. Tended fields will yield essential, life-giving and life-affirming vitality. The homemade bread and wild honey I’ve had here is by far some of the best I’ve ever tasted.
Ethiopia has come to embody many things for me thus far on this journey, mostly nascency–the earliest evidence of a human ancestor discovered among this fertile soil over three million years ago. Reinforced each day as a witness to the pure and primal characteristics that weave together a tapestry of humanity and the natural world–our true nature–into one multidimensional quilt, alive and present to the enduring mystery.
July 9-11, 2016
We scaled the cliffside to reach Abuna Yemata Goh (2,580 meters). Painted frescos astounded, their vibrancy and iconography combined with the isolated nature of the chapel location leaves me in awe. Two overnight stays at Gheralta Lodge with visits to Mariam Papasaty and Giorgis Maykado before we made our way from Hawzen to Mekele. An afternoon flight back to Addis Ababa landed us where we began our journey twelve days earlier. An entirely different existence awaited us from the agrarian way of life defining of the days prior. The abrupt density and chaos of the city disquiets. I long for the countryside–for clean air, space and silence.
A favorite Ethiopian tune, The Homeless Wanderer, by Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou played on the airport shuttle bus that transported us from the plane to baggage claim. Days earlier, I talked with our guide Peter about my lifetime love of African music–my first exposure as a child to Ladysmith Black Mambazo through Paul Simon’s collaboration on his album Graceland. Peter shared with me that Emahoy was an Ethiopian Orthodox nun who played nine instruments, classically trained in violin as well as piano.
The irony of the song title resounds in me as I begin to mentally prepare for my return to Iceland–to a reality the antithesis of Ethiopia, and far from my birth home in Texas. Depths of myself long shelved away have been revitalized here. The generous people and places I have encountered–the unparalleled hospitality I have experienced–has made home feel relative to where I am. I realize it is in my wanderings that I have always felt most at home in myself.
The possibility gleaned here is as layered as the mountains traversed on this journey. Stratifications of deep time collide with this present moment, with coming and going. Ethiopia will forever embody the essential, what truly matters most in life: faith, the family of man, and reverence for Mother Nature.
