The young men and women are very solicitous of the elderly here. As everyone is so young I’m definitely in the elder class especially with the gimp leg, deafness and right hand tremor. I’m rather pleased that my back doesn’t hurt and that so many parts are working well.
Here I am blessed to be sitting in a roof top cafe looking out over the most beautiful countryside. I asked the driver what the principle agriculture was and he said “sorghum, wheat.” I asked him if they grew grapes or figs and he didn’t think so. It’s so reminiscent of Northern California, southern France and the Okanagan.
They build houses out of sticks they layer with mud around the sticks. Once the mud sets it lasts for decades. The monastery I visited yesterday had walls made the same way I saw people on the way here doing. No change in thousands of years. A working design. Igloos require the right selection of snow. I wonder if the mud is a particular mud or is it mixed in someway. Yesterday’s monastery had a grass hut. The monk told me they didn’t leak. Here I saw grass roofs and also corrugated iron.
My hotel is one of several finer establishments. This building has flat roof construction but looking over at new buildings on an adjacent hill I see standard roofing. Modern construction is much more involved but there’s a whole lot to be said for the traditional construction like the Canadian log cabin. The design and materials stand the test of time.
I loved driving along the gravel roads and passing all the farm animals along the way. Grandad Hay being a rancher and farmer has left me with a true appreciation of rural communities. Having been a country family physician in Morris, Manitoba increased my appreciation. Here I saw a lot of people walking about. Few cars, one four by four Jeep passed us. A couple of buses. Mostly these three wheel two seater one driver covered trikes. They look with their frills and personalization something I’d expect more in India.
All these walkers. I’ve seen no fat people. Like I saw in Russia, exercise makes the people slim. Our cars have made us too sedentary. I like the motorcycles here though. I recognize the Yamahas 250’s and 600’s. The girls are all the heavy carryiers with children on their backs or wood or bags of all manner of things. The men were commonly walking in groups of two or three carrying tools the most common being picks and shovels. There was so much construction going on and work in the farming fields. It seemed if a man could use a shovel or a pick he’d have work and a place in society. Not so in Canada so much where even construction needs increasingly advanced training. It was obvious looking at the mud huts and corrugated iron homes that there was not a lot of insistence on codes and no building inspectors. I fancied the less regulated society, a certain simplicity. It’s lost in the modern world.
I felt a bit like I feel I might feel in Nepal. People have returned saying the people were spiritual and the communities were organized around religious buildings and monasteries like here. There they are Buddhist whereas here they’re Coptic Orthodox Christian. The land dictates the mood to some extent. A couple of months of the year they have torrential rain. That’s why the river beds are dry right now. Later they will be full.
The driver said that though it was dry now drought wasn’t common in his memory and the land had sufficient rain in those two months to grow sufficient food.
Lalibela is a little town. A market place with a few buildings. Definitely no high rises, the highest building I’ve seen so far is 3 stories hotel. There was a garage. There’s a bit of the Whistler tourist feel to the collections of hotels and restaurants catering to the tourists and pilgrims who come to see the churches.
That’s why I’m here. Andy , the tour guide attached to the hotel, is going to take me to my first one this after noon. Right now I’m waiting for the Visa connection for the hotel as they’ve been unable to connect to the German bank to process my Visa. They asked me for cash but I’ve not got a few hundred dollars three nights would cost. I’ve been having problems with bank machines. Several haven’t worked and when I’ve been able to get money out it’s been restricted as per my request. The rooms here are roughly $65 US a night. My guide is $50 a day and the Churches require $50 for the week. The three night stay is $5000 brrr and my 10,000 brr is roughly $450 dollars. I can draw $4000 brr out at a time. Were I to come again I’d just bring American cash which everyone likes here and use little denomination brr for tips and such. I really always have had difficulty translating amounts. Waiters and waitresses seem happy with 10 or 20 br tips whereas the guides who are more canny seem to work the system. If I say or look like I am happy the price goes up. I don’t like that because it makes a society of paranoid dour people concealing their wealth. Ethiopia is a poor country so there’s a lot of reductionism.
When I say I have a motorcycle it’s translated into ‘rich’ and ‘expensive’ and it’s not something discussed in terms of enduro versus road bike, size of engine. I talk about cars and get the feeling most people I’ve talked to are at the “I’ve got a car or I don’t have a car “ place. We take it for granted that we can choose from a dozen cars because we have the $5000 to $10,000 for a new one, less for used or for the down payment to get into the car ownership game. Certainly Addis Ababa was a rich city with wide variety but Lake Tana and here it’s more rural basic.
Leaving Lake Tana I saw they were building a new road with guys breaking up the rocks which girls were carrying on stretchers to be used as foundation. There simply weren’t any machines. I suspect machines are used sometimes and somewhere but with lots of labor and people liking work it’s a different approach. Burro’s were pull carts at the road building too. I love the burps and mules. Such great little workers.
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