Ethiopia
Gonder

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    • Day 4

      Gondar

      January 9, 2020 in Ethiopia ⋅ 🌙 18 °C

      Réveil aux aurores pour prendre un minibus pour Gondar. Il y a 11 places, le nombre de passagers oscille entre 18 et 25 au fil du trajet. Faut pas regarder la route, ça fout les jetons. De manière générale, il y a peu de voitures individuelles - ça coûte trop cher. A Gondar il y a un vieil ensemble de constructions royales du 17e siècle qui ont un style mi-palais mauresque, mi-château écossais. On s'y promène en profitant du calme qui y règne, puis on se rend à l'église Debre Birhan Sélassié, où une bonne centaine de chérubins éthiopiens peints au plafond observent les visiteurs. Au restaurant on mange des tibs, sorte de viande mijotée à manger avec de l'injera, la grosse crêpe éthiopienne un peu acide. Un papy bavard raconte un tas d'histoires drôles qui font marrer tout le monde, un peu en mode patriarche déchaîné qui fait des sketchs à lui tout seul. On est bien déçus de ne pas comprendre !Read more

    • Day 6

      Fasil Ghebbi

      October 22, 2022 in Ethiopia ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

      Fasil Ghebbi is a royal compound in Gondar of about 7 hectares and containing some 20 buildings. Most are royal palaces, as each successive emperor built a new one. This fortress was the home of the Ethiopian emperors from the early 17th century until the middle of the 19th century. The buildings are heavily damaged from bombing during world war 2. I'm told that during the Italian occupation, these buildings were used for military purposes. This was during the British assisted effort to remove the occupation.
      Historically, each successive emperor built his own palace.
      The 1st picture looks up from the entrance to several of the palaces. The 2nd picture is the 1st palace built and is the largest. The 3rd picture is one of the Royal room there. The 4th picture is a cistern to retain water during the dry season.
      The 5th and 6th pictures are 2 of the later palaces. The 7th picture is a royal banqueting hall, while the 8th picture is of stables located next to the banqueting hall.
      The 9th picture is the lion house. Lions were kept at the palace in honor of the imperial title, "Lion of Judah."
      If I could have gotten a decent picture, the 10th picture would have been of the sauna. Really. There was a sauna in Ethiopia centuries ago!
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    • Day 6

      Gondar

      October 22, 2022 in Ethiopia ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C

      Gondar, in northern Ethiopia, is a former imperial capital. There is more here than Fasil Ghebbi and Trinity cathedral (see other posts).
      The 1st picture is the view from my hotel. The 2nd and 3rd pictures are in the local market.
      The last 3 pictures are in another part of the city. These were also built by Fasil. The 4th picture is the remains of the royal stables adjacent to the royal bath in the 5th picture. I'm told this is still used during Timkat, the Ethiopian Orthodox celebration of the baptism of Jesus that is held at Epiphany. The last picture is another part of the same site. In the background is the weaving factory. The small building to the left is the tomb for the emperor's horse.
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    • Day 17

      Gonder

      January 18, 2016 in Ethiopia ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C

      We had the opportunity (really we just miss calculated our time) to spend extra time here in Gonder. It’s a city you can easily do in one day if you just go from site to site, but we got 2 days to take it easy, and we’ll have another 2 days to celebrate Timkat with the locals – the epiphany.

      When walking around a town with no destination in mind, that’s when you can really appreciate everything outside the typical tourist trail. The tourist trails is full of young people yelling hello, how are you, where you go. All try to sell us Kleenex packs or gum by the stick. Some of the kids just ask straight up “give me money”. I find them entertain, screw the pleasantries just give me money.

      Side streets, now those are interesting. When you have all day to get to one church, you can let yourself get lost in streets where people are busy doing their own thing.

      We got all the way to the local market today. Jack compared it to an outdoor Walmart – you can get anything there! Clothes, animals (dead or alive), spices, tons of dried red pepper, baskets and buckets and everything!

      The last 2 days has been relaxing, it has been eye opening for local Ethiopian culture, and it’s been fun! FYI I’m really enjoying the food, so no further weight loss. Pierre – I’m on the last notch of the belt… :S

      Last night we had the chance to out to Ase Bekkafa (something like that), a local dance club. You should all YouTube traditional shoulder dancing Ethiopia – if you thought you could “pop and lock it”, you haven’t seen locals dance! Jack even got pulled onto the stage, and I think she did great! Locals loved it. As you can see from my last post, I’m having difficulty posting videos, but hopefully the one of her dancing will be posted soon!

      Oh ya, and the sites – we saw the Royal Grounds today, beautiful, old palaces, not what we’d expect to see on Ethiopia, but interesting none the less! And yesterday we visited a gorgeous church where a monk showed us around, pointing to the painting covered walls and explaining their reference to the Bible. Jack and this monk had plenty to chat about as I just stained at all the paintings. Debre Birhan Selassie, thank you.

      All for now! Timkat tomorrow. Let’s hope I manage to keep my wallet. :)
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    • Day 20

      Timkat in Gonder

      January 21, 2016 in Ethiopia ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C

      We got to celebrate Timkat! Aka the epiphany. It’s the largest religious celebration (at least I think it is) in Ethiopia, and we went to the town that had the biggest celebration of course! When in Rome!

      Basically it’s 3 days, January 20th to 22nd (leap year, it’s usually the 19th), where on the first day the many churches of the town march towards the Center of town with the arch of covenant. Then the whole town follows the arch of covenant over to Fascilades Bath (old looking building in the middle of a concrete empty structure that is filled with water only for Timkat) where it is kept overnight, guarded by priests and monks. The walk down follows these priests and monks, but they could only walk on red carpets. Which means there was a group of men who would roll up the one of 4-5 red carpets once the arch of covenant had passed it, and would run it up in front of them and unroll. Talk about an exhausting role. Because of this, the walk was at the piazza (so Center town) around 1pm, and Jack and I followed it to the baths – where it arrived around 6pm!
      Many of the people stay in the surrounding field overnight, chanting and lighting up candles.

      The second day is the recreation of the baptismal, where once the sun is up, the water is blessed by the highest priest. Once blessed, everyone one around jumps in the water and it’s a huge celebration in these waters! Chanting, singing, people from the crowd that were too far would throw bottles of water to be filled with this blessed water and they were thrown back so they could all be blessed.

      In the water were mostly boys and young men, women were mostly waiting for the bottles of water. I’m guessing it’s a modesty thing. Also, it super cold at that time of day! The water of have been freezing, it’s probably around 5-10 degrees overnight and at sunrise maybe 10-12 degrees. Locals are usually wearing the thickest jackets at this time, let alone tripping down to their boxers to jump in water.
      The afternoon of the second day and the third is the same procession walking the arch of covenant back through town and back to their respective churches they go. They fill the streets making circles, chanting, singing, honestly all looking incredibly happy to be celebrating.
      Everyone (or mostly) was dressed in traditional clothing from their respective churches, lots of white dresses and scarfs, with colourful borders. Men in white suits. All dressed to impress.

      Now for the tourist, we saw the most tourist we’ve seen yet in Ethiopia, in Gonder for Timkat. White people were everywhere, all of us being warned about the pickpocketing that would happen. We were told by our local friend Mulish (who was fantastic at organizing everything for us) to just bring enough money for water, nothing else. So we brought out cellphone for photos only.
      We had the chance to stay in a homestay for Timkat, so had a chance to chat with the family there. We borrowed white scarfs from them since we knew all the women would have one over their heads for the day. These two young girls took a liking to us, basically because we’re white, and starting chatting with us. At one point I wanted to shower, so needed to changed, and once I expressed this they’re basically just sat on the bed waiting for me to go ahead and change. I had to ask them to leave very bluntly or else they weren’t getting the hint! The also brought us special celebration bread, which we got to eat with their family, Grand father, Grand mother and aunt. No english. When we sat down they right away changed the channel to their only English channel that played old movies (the Perfect Man at this time). It was generous and welcoming. Made us feel bad for having to jump their gate the night before because we got back too late… Does lock at 9pm but we didn’t know!

      At the baths, there was a temporary stadium steatting installed for the tourists. They said it was to keep us safe from theft, but as Jack mentioned, it’s probably a great way to keep the white people out of the way of their celebration, which is understandable. Because of the chanting overnight, tourists are all told to show up at 3-4am of we want to witness the Baptismal. Thing is, no one speaks good enough English to explain why we needed to be there so early, or what would go on. We were just all told to show up at 4am if we want to see the celebration. So we did.

      We took a bajaj (like a tuktuk) because who wants to walk 30 minutes at 4am! Getting there, there was a line up to get into the stands on one side, and even people with “vip” tickets weren’t getting in (which of course we didn’t have). So we went to the other side, managed to squeeze our way threw the crowd, I passed first, Jack followed, you could see that the army guard wanted to ask for our VIP tickets but was distracted. They stopped our 2 Belgian friends behind us and asked for their tickets, to which they responded they were there with a group and the guide had the tickets. No further questions asked, they were let in, and maybe 2-3 more people behind us and that’s it! Full, no more room. We thought it was hilarious, last people let on and without tickets, luck!

      Then reality set in. A bunch of white idiots, freezing, sitting on these wooden stands, waiting for a ceremony we had no clue when it would happen. Well, 8am is when it happened! 4 hours later! I guess it was their way of getting us to see the setting in the night time, which was absolutely gorgeous. Candles everywhere. Quiet singing. Families huddled together. But since the sun rises around 630am, I will never understand why 4am was suggested, and why no one doubted it! A crowd of white people, freezing, waiting 4 hours for a celebration.

      You could really see the pride Ethiopians have of their culture and religion. It was incredibly beautiful to see.
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    You might also know this place by the following names:

    Gondar, Gonder, ጎንደር ከተማ, Гондар, Γκόνταιρ, Gondero, גונדר, GDQ, ゴンダール, 곤다르, Gonderas, Гондэр, 貢德爾

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