Friday, January 20. More of the Timkat Festival.

Our first night in Lalibela, four of us had to share a room, as every hotel was overbooked in the town for the Timkat celebration. (Cindy, kind of like Club Getaway :-) Some of the hotels, including ours, had set up tents to handle the overflow.

The next morning, we got up and went out to the baptismal site at 5:30am to await the next phase of the festival (the cross in the middle of the field is full of water). As you can see beyond the cross, there are stands made out of bamboo for the observers of the event (I.e., the tourists :-). I am taking this photo from the stands on the opposite side of the field.





At about 6:15am, the procession was proceeding from the white tents of the previous day, where they had housed the tablets overnight, to the baptismal area. The deacons, in red/white robes...





...and the priests in ceremonial robes...





...gradually filled in the entire field...





...You can even see how the visitor stands have filled up, 4 or 5 deep...











Even the deacons wanted to catch this Kodak moment...





... And even the priest, who was leading the ceremony, snapped a few...





There was a ceremony with sermons, the priest welcomed the visitors through a translator, there was chanting, and a performance by the cantor priests in their black robes...





Then it was time for the high priest to bless the baptismal water, which he did at each of the four corners of the cross...





And then.......total chaos!!





Everyone ran towards the baptismal to make sure they were blessed with some of the water.





People willingly stood as close as they could and the people up front threw buckets of water into the crowd to try to "baptize" as many people as they could reach (including people in the stands!)





It reminded me of the water festival in Myanmar last year! This time I managed to only barely get wet.

[Btw, for my Baltimore followers, there was an article in the Baltimore Sun about the Timkat festival in Lalibela!]

After the ceremony (although there is more of the festival to come), we went to check out the southeast cluster of the rock churches, which has five of the 12 rock churches which we didn't get to see yesterday. (hmm, must be my money belt pooching out like that :-)...





One of the churches had these wonderful 15th century wall paintings....











From one of the churches to another, there is an underground tunnel that you take (for those of you who know me, yes, I went through the tunnel!!).





It is said that when you emerge from the tunnel, from the total darkness, you "see the light" and will go to heaven.

We then walked down to the last church (I caught a photo of Janet when she wasn't watching)...





....which is the smallest church, and "legend" is that it was built in one day by Lalibela's wife, with the help of a group of angels.....





Then it was on to watch the last part of the Timkat festival, which is a procession of the tablets back to the individual churches...and we had a prime view from the top of the hill as the procession rounded the corner and started up towards the churches...





...the deacons stopped in several places and formed a circle to do some of their chanting.....





...and then along came the umbrellas, under which the tablets were being protected...





From here, they continued up the hill to deliver the tablets back to their respective churches. By the way, for the time that the tablets are out of the church, the priest for that church must fast until the tablets are returned.

What an experience seeing this two day festival!

But our day was not yet over. We proceeded to the Seven Olives restaurant for lunch where several in our group got the traditional Ethiopian food platter...





...and each person who ordered one, got enough for 3 or 4 people! The injera is the crepe-like thing underneath, and you tear bits of it off and scoop up the various foods with each torn off bit.





Then after an afternoon rest, and a very light dinner, we went off to a coffee bar where they do a traditional coffee ceremony, plus have music and dancing.





For the coffee ceremony, they burn incense, roast the coffee beans, then grind them with a pestle, then brew and serve coffee. Then the dancing began...





The dancers came into the audience to get people to dance with them. I was disappointed that Will from San Francisco was the only person from our group who got up to dance...





...except for me, of course :-). I actually got up twice!





There were specific steps to follow, and I called this one the monkey dance, as that was what it seemed you were doing. What fun! Then!!! -- the day came to an end.

Tomorrow, off to the historical city of Axum.

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Location:Lalibela, Ethiopia

January 19 in Lalibela

We flew up to Lalibela in the VERY early morning (3:30am wake up!!).

This town was the capital from the 10th century to the mid-13th century. King Lalibela reigned during the 12th century. Legend is that he had a dream to build many rock churches to make another "heavenly" Jerusalem.

There are 12 churches in this town that have been carved out of rock, the most impressive being St. George's...


...carved 45 feet down into the granite rock...


Some of the churches are modest inside, while others are quite ornate, such as St. Maryam's...


There were several musical groups playing throughout the various churches....


After seeing several of the churches and having lunch, we positioned ourselves for the Timkat procession which was about to start. As I mentioned previously, Timkat is the celebration of Christ's baptism, which the Ethiopian Christians believe was when Christ became a part of the divine trinity, rather than when he was born. It wasn't long before the procession came down the hill, with groups of these boys chanting (the guide told us later that they are not really a part of the Timkat celebration, but just join the festival to dance and chant)....they sometimes broke out in dance, just like 42nd street subway station....


The festival begins with the removal of the "tablets" (replicas of the ark of the covenant) from each church. Then the Christians, mostly in white gowns proceed to lead the procession though the town...








The tablets follow, protected by these silk and velvet umbrellas....


Each umbrella protects a tablet, or sometimes a high level priest from each church...


With the twelve rock churches in Lalibela, in such close proximity to each other, it makes this town's festival that much more colorful.....


....then more townspeople follow.


This was a good time for everyone to join the procession, so I joined this group of women...


...this was the leader of the group....


...and this was the woman I walked beside...


Before long, I had picked up on the dance and chant, and was having a good time participating in the festival. One person from my tour group, Margaret from Queens, was sitting on the balcony of the hotel, and she picked me out in the crowd, singing and dancing with my new Ethiopian friends. What a blast! The women were quite surprised when I joined in the chant, as it was quite high pitched. Mom, you'd have been proud.

The crowd then proceeded to gather around several white tents....I could not even get close enough to capture that, but the priests chant and pray and bless people who are sick throughout the night.....and I mean the whole night!! (our hotel was right next door to the staging area!!!).

The remainder of the festival will continue tomorrow....

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Location:Lalibela, Ethiopia

January 18 in Addis Ababa

The next day, we started out by taking a drive through the mercato, the largest open air market in Africa. Unlike the souks of Morocco, which offer a lot of tourist appeal, this market is geared more towards local commerce. 40% of the country's GDP is related to the activity within this marketplace. The market goes on and on, and like-goods are all in the same area (like the shoe street, the carpet area, the dresses, etc.). Here are some representative photos....


















The Ethiopians are great recyclers, and there was a whole area where you could buy empty containers, such as these (stored on the roof!)....





The market was very crowded, even though that doesn't really show up in the above photos....the most crowded area of the market was where they were selling "chat"...a plant that is chewed, which is a mild narcotic...the street was wall to wall in that area...





....one of our group purchased some through the car window to see what it was like....(he later said he did not feel any effects from it :-).





We didn't get out to walk through the market as it would be too difficult to do so in a group, without someone getting lost...it did go on forever and ever, and Ethiopia does not have good road signage...plus they seem to arbitrarily change street names often (so you can't just say meet me on the corner of such and such). We would have also been subjected to jostling and apparently would have had trouble hanging onto cameras. Janet and I still wanted to do it, but understood the group dynamic. We did figure though that the best way to visit is with a local guide with just one to two people.

We then headed on to look at some historical sites, the first of which was the Trinity Chapel, the largest church in Addis Ababa.





The cornerstone for this church was laid by Haile Selassie (birth name: Ras Tafari), the final member of the Solomonic dynasty to rule in Ethiopia. His reign was from 1930 to 1974, with a five year interruption from 1936 to 1941, when he was in exile, while once again the Italians were attempting to colonize Ethiopia. But they once again failed, making Ethiopia the only African country that was not colonized.

Selassie did very little to move the country forward during his reign, especially with regard to the ordinary Ethiopian. Opposition started almost immediately after his return from exile, with many attempted coups during the remainder of his reign. He was finally arrested in 1974, and died in 1975, officially by heart attack, although he may have been murdered. His body was first buried next to a latrine, and then was moved to Menelik's mausoleum, but then in 2001 his body was moved to the site of the Trinity Cathedral, above.

From 1974 to 1991, the country was under socialist rule, which proved to be worse than the preceding government When socialism collapsed in Europe in 1990, support went away for the socialist government in Ethiopia, and a transitional government ended up being put in place, with the first democratic elections held in 1995. The people are very proud that they are now a democracy. Everywhere we went, people chanted Obama. When I asked one of them why he liked Obama, he said that his being our president represented democracy to him, and that he wanted Ethiopia to be a true democracy.

We also went to the national museum, which houses an exhibit regarding archaeological finds within Ethiopia, including the bones of a hominid woman, "Lucy," which have been dated back to 3.5 million years. (the bones here were replicas as the actual bones are housed in Houston, Texas). From the bones they collected, they have put together a replica of what the skeleton structure of this woman could have been. This raises the possibility that our ancestors have been on earth much longer than originally assumed. There are of course many skeptics.





After lunch at the museum cafe, we continued on to see Menelik's mausoleum and one of Selassie's palaces which houses a museum with many interesting ethnic artifacts.

Phew, jam packed historical/cultural day. Tomorrow, we are off to Lalibela for the Timkat Festival.

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Location:Addis Ababa