Recently, travellers Anna Quarendon and Richard Draper joined us on the Ethiopia Timkat Festival tour and in place of providing us feedback, Anna wrote us a lovely poem of their journey, accompanied by some beautiful images taken by Richard. Together, we feel they've perfectly summed up one of our most beautiful, culturally enriching tours. With thanks to Anna, Richard and tour leader Dario for making such an impression!
With half a day in Addis
We’ve little time to waste
So off we go to see some sights
To give us all a taste
First, we visit Lucy
In a special glass-built case
Her tiny prehistoric bones
And forward thrusting face
And then to the Cathedral
With sistrum and with drum
The stained glass is amazing
We’re already glad we’ve come
And home through the merkato
With its many thousand stalls
From “cameras to Kalashnikovs”
And dealers making calls
And women selling spices
Garlic, rosemary and rue
Alongside parked up motorbikes
Checked in white and blue.
And next day, rising early
We take another plane
But just a few hours later
We’re on the road again
We stop to do some threshing
The cows are circling round
Carmela lends a hand as well
Forks hay piled on the ground
The villagers are generous
And share Discussion bread
As we stand and glimpse a moment
In a rural life long led
Our home that night, Gheralta Lodge
Where skies are blue and wide
A small bird calls as sunset falls
So fabulous, I cried.
The next day on our mountain walk
Our guide says “take your time”
So, under olive trees we stop
To break the uphill climb
Right at the back comes Anna
Who’s feeling rather sick
But Aaron comes and holds her hand
Which quite soon does the trick
Before we’ve even started
There’s a massage for Carmela
When her calves are checked out
By our senior guiding fella
A bell hangs in the cemetery
Which tolls for mass and war
And also rings for those who’ve died-
And, by the open door,
We leave our shoes and go inside
Where on the chiselled walls
We see the ancient paintings
As the honeyed shadow falls
And down below a family waits
The wedding of their son
To toast with coke and roasted goat
As it has long been done
We’re offered popcorn freshly made
Slightly salted, hot
We scoop it up in handfuls
And between us eat a lot
Then on to Dugum market
Where, lying all around,
Are piles of dark red chillies
Spice and garlic on the ground
Where chicken sit in baskets
And women ply their trade
Shawled beneath umbrellas
As they try to make some shade
At the church at Wokecherkos
We go through the wooden door
Inside are painted frescoes
And carpets on the floor
And George who slayed the dragon
Is pictured on the wall
And, in the street below the church,
Small boys are playing ball
And little girls with school books
In colourful apparel
Are to be found all hanging round
To show their work to Carol
We see quarried stones at Yeha
With channels for the rain
And gullies dug to catch the blood
From sacrificed remains
And from there, round the many bends
Lekun drives with care
Til he brings us safe to Aksum
And, once we’re finally there,
We see a ruined palace
For Kaleb and his son
Where Kaleb lived until
He thought his days as king were done
And tho his family’d prepared
A lavish regal tomb
He died on Pantelion
So, he didn’t need the room
I’m not sure that my facts are straight
But, for more factual quotes
You’d better speak to Wendy
Who’s taken lots of notes
She’s hung on Dario’s every word
And now can take the lead on
Sistrum, stelae, monkey heads
Ge’ez or boustrophedon
We saw this form of writing
On a carved Rosetta Stone
And we saw it at the stelae fields
Where one of them lay prone
The emperor was insistent
That his was super tall
So, one thing that we learned
Was that pride comes before a fall
And here, and at the many sites,
Frank is not caught napping
His camera’s always poised
To do another bit of snapping
So, we head on out of Aksum
Toward the National Park
With Lekun at the wheel
Until it’s well and truly dark
We pass a refugee camp
Where thousands who have fled
Their homes across the border
Sought asylum here instead
They changed one life for another
And have no choice but remain
Checkpoints on the nearby roads
So, they can’t leave again
Lekun stops at all the checkpoints
And for cows along the way
Avoids the potholes and the bumps
And more than earns his pay
And on our longer road trips
While we’re travelling in the van
George compares his lens size
With Richard man to man
And Wendy’s got the Werthers
And Stuart shares his treats
Providing Aldi humbugs
And bags of liquorice sweets
And should we need to get some more
And need a bit of cash
Then Jeff’s the man to go to
As he’s got quite a stash
A pile of pristine 5 birr notes
He handed out like candy
For you simply never know
When change might come in handy
From Debark we drove off
Along with two scouts and their guns
To walk into the National Park
And sit amongst baboons
They sat there in their hundreds
A fantastic sight to see
And certainly a highlight
Both for Richard and for me
And George is our recorder
Frames memories that we’ll keep
Of people in the landscape
Tending cattle, goats and sheep
Of sorghum fields and threshing
And donkeys plodding by
And goatherds standing with their crooks
And camels reaching high
And the widely smiling faces
Of the children who come running
With their cries of “money!”, “pen!”
-We’re sure they’ll all be stunning
And Richard has a gallery too
With many stylish shots
There’ll be thousands we can choose from
As between us there’ll be lots
At the church of Debre Bihar
Priests chant in ancient tongue
Stories from the bible
Which for centuries have been sung
And darkly haloed angels
Look down from painted beam
As white robes men shake sistra
And boys beat time with drum
And we see the Emperor’s palaces
With hammam and with halls
For banqueting and concerts
Where, carved into the walls
Are niches for the instruments
Musicians played outside
And dining rooms where walls
Were hung with jewels and lion hide
And we fly to Lalibela
And see a church or two
In fact we see eleven
Which is really quite a few
And Carol’s not so very keen
To walk about in socks
As it can be quite slippery
When climbing well-worn rocks
But it’s quite alright for Anna
With a help mate in these places
For Taweke guides her down the slopes
(and also ties her laces)
And we climb up to a cave church
Where, in a hall of stone,
Lie several thousand people
Who now are skin and bone
We’ve stayed in huts with stunning views
(At least, we had from ours)
We’ve stayed in rooms where
Richard did his best to fix the showers
(He never travels anywhere
Without a handy pin
He thinks that not maintaining showers
In hotels is a sin)
We’ve tried out Ethiopian food
And shared a fasting dish
And one night, Stuart also tried
Some “lovely” sizzling fish
And some have tried out Shurro
And some have tried out tej
And some have tried the beef and goat
While others stuck to veg
And when we went to Wubit’s house
We ate injera there
Sitting round a dish
It took her four hours to prepare
And more injera on our walk
Which we began next day
And some cups of hot, strong, coffee
To help us on our way
With our overnight belongings
Bundled into sacks
And loaded up on donkeys
We followed in their tracks
We walked across the grassland
Thro fields of chick-pea stubble
We walked thro open farmland
And on paths of dust and rubble
Where golden haystacks clustered
And old men stopped to talk
And children ran to shake our hands
As we began our walk
And at night we heard the dogs bark
But no sound of any cars
As we turned our faces upwards
To the thousand thousand stars
And on the second day
We walked with Adisu and heard
The mocking cliff chat calling
Saw the white-tailed starling bird
And by two tents beneath the trees
Epiphany draws near
Men stir drums of chic- pea sauce
And some drink barley beer
And soon we’re drinking beer as well
At the rock bar where we rest
The sun sets on another day
When we’ve literally been blessed
And blessed again by several priests
Among the crowd next day
To celebrate Epiphany
The highlight of our stay
We follow to the waterside
After mass is said
And, after the baptising,
The crowd wait to be fed
Umbrellas bright in sunlight
In glittering brocade
Protect the priests and faithful
As they start on their parade
With beating drum and sistra
The tabots lifted high
While girls in white are singing
As the vast crowd surges by
And Timkat’s not the end
For we have still to see the Falls
Where the Blue Nile tumbles
White down vast rock walls
And later, on Lake Tana,
Pale Pelicans fly high
On our boat trip to the island
Before we say goodbye
There’s so much more that could be said
But really, to be frank,
There’s only one important thing
And that’s the man to thank
For Dario’s fixed our problems
And sorted out the glitches
And made sure our stay has been
Without too many hitches
His biggest test was probably
When Frank’s bag went astray
But Dario worked his magic
And he had it back next day
And all the while, mile after mile,
Driving through this land
Dario has helped us all
To try and understand
A little of the culture
The politics, economy
The way that local people live
And something of agronomy
A little bit of geography
A little bit of history
A little of topography
And something of the mystery
Of ancient times and rituals
Of palaces and kings
And emperors and despots
Of so very many things
That, though we’d read the guide-books,
We now know so much more
About his Ethiopia
Than we ever did before
And this is down to Dario
Our quite fantastic guide
So, to our Super Dario
We say thank you for the ride
Poem by Anna Quarendon.
