Home » Ethiopia » One Year Africa: Swimming in the Blue Nile, Walking Abay-avenue

There is one particular river crossing I will relish forever, not only because it is a famous river, but because I did it in the most beautiful way one can imagine: I swam.

One Year Africa: Swimming in the Blue Nile, Walking Abay-avenue

Maarten de Boeck
2006-05-01 17:28:33

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is off limits in places like Mekane Selam, except in your little room, locking door and window. Everywhere else one was followed, yelled at, stared at...
The following two days I was stuck there preparing the journey; finding a guide and a donkey, bargaining over prices, buying supplies, filtering water, etc...

The third day I was about to go. The evening before the boy of the guesthouse had negotiated two hundred birr for a guide and for a donkey to carry my luggage. I thought this deal was fair. 200 birr is a lot of money for them.
The morning after the guide indeed appeared with a donkey, but... he didn't want to go, unless he would get three hundred birr instead of two hundred. I regarded his behaviour as sheer opportunism. I said clearly we simply would not go if he didn't accept the price we agreed. The choice was his: two hundred or nothing! I was almost certain he would change his mind, and indeed, after twenty minutes he turned up at the teahouse where I was sitting. He agreed to go. We ate bread and drank tea together, and shortly after we departed.

It would become an easy day, a leisurely hike through rolling countryside. The destination was Amare's home. I met his wife and children, his mother, his brothers and their wives and children. In the afternoon I sat down with the family eating injera and drinking coffee. For the first time I experienced the Ethiopian coffee ceremony, a significant feat in the country's cultural heritage. I enjoyed watching the process: the roasting and crushing of the wild coffee beans, adding water, boiling. I was served the most delicious coffee I have ever drunk.
Later the family went outside. When I was about to take some family pictures the women and daughters suddenly disappeared, emerging again soon. They all had gone in their huts to dress up, wearing their best dresses and skirts. By the time, the men had begun drinking the local brew. Amare tried once more to raise ...