Mikaela in Ethiopia

Lalibela is truly a wondrous place, the guide books are not fooling you.

Last Friday, after a difficult week at work, I made an ex-tempore solution: to go to Lalibela this weekend. I was already one third on the way, doing field work in Debre Tabor, so we drove through on Friday night with Wondosen. The road (the old China Road) is beautiful, passing along the watershed divide between the Takazze and the Blue Nile watersheds, with the road balancing on top of the ridge with deep river valleys at both sides, with undulating hills with forest-surrounded churches dotting the hilltops, the fields criss-crossed by gorges and ravines, ending up in dry river channels meandering through the bottom of the valleys as far as the eye can see.

At Gashena, the home town of my little Lalibela cat, one turns onto a winding dirt road, for the last 65 amazingly scenic kilometers. The sun was setting by the time we reached here, and I had to stop in the middle of the Spaghetti Western landscape to sit on a stone and just gaze at the sienna yellow – orange-red mountains surrounding me, turning through various shades of burgundy and violet to grayish blue in the distance, and listen to the absolute silence (or rather: the buzz in my ears). The total quiet after a hot day in the desert is something quite indescribable.

Lalibela itself lies nestled at the top of some hills, and is a rather large town these days (one can fly in to Lalibela everyday from Addis Abeba, the arrival of the airstrip must have given a boost to the growth of the town). The monolithic churches, for which it is known, would not be visible at all (obviously, being carved below ground level) would it not be for the large sheltering constructions that have been quite recently erected, to protect the historical sites from rain and erosion. The weeks around Timkat is high season, so most of the hotels (of which there is a number) were full, but we found rooms in a basic but clean guesthouse, just a short walk from St Georgis– the cross formed monolithic Church which decorates most Lalibela-related posters and pamphlets in tourist agencies. “If we had not found rooms”, Wondosen was cheerfully suggesting, “we could always overnight in the hermit cells that have been carved into the trenches surrounding the Churches”. Apparently this is quite common during the holiday festivities, when the number of visiting pilgrims greatly exceeds the availability of beds in the town. I suppose that would be the true and ultimate Lalibela experience, but having difficulty distinguishing between graves and hermit cells (often situated just next to each other), I was a little hesitant. Not to mention the mummies that still rest in some of them.

I had been apprehensive about going to Lalibela in the high season, imagining crowds of tourists, buses spitting out camera-touting Japanese groups, endless queues, and walking in line past these 900-hundred-year-old wonders-of-the-world. Instead, it was just us, our guide, and a few old priests chanting old Ge’ez (the old Orthodox Ethiopian language, now only used by the Church – a little like Latin I suppose) scriptures. Ethiopia is simply quite unspoilt by tourism – yet.

Lalibela is a true living centre of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, central during religions festivities, the Christmas and Timkat ceremonies being routinely televised from Bet Medhane Alem, the largest of the churches.

The churches, which are numerous, are intricately connected by tunnels and narrow passages, that reminded me a little of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Inside the churches and in the subterranean villages created by the maze of passages, courtyards and various religions edifices it was pleasantly cool, and the whole experience was truly unique.

At late afternoon we decided to stop at the cliff edge above St Giorgis, and sat there watching the rapidly changing light as the sun set behind the cragged mountains, and the last small flocks of tourists were being shooed down to the Church before closing. Olive and Juniper trees line the grounds around the Churches. Passing priests clad in white robes and dark yellow shawls blowing in the wind, carrying heavy Lalibela crosses, stopped at the edge to cross themselves toward the Church beneath them. It did have an uncanny feeling of an ancient centre of Christianity.

On our way back toward Bahar Dar we stopped for some biscuits and water at a scenic spot overlooking the Takazze Gorge, and were joined by two young boys. I asked what they were doing there, far from any village, on their own on a Sunday afternoon, and they answered “we are building a church into the mountain”. We asked to see the site, and the boys guided us up a steep sandstone cliff. And indeed, there they were chiseling out four large rooms with three thick pillars in the middle, and three entrances. The oldest boy was the son of a priest, and he told us how his father had seen the church in a dream: vividly, guiding him to the exact place, and with detailed images of the doors and the layout of the interior. What a perfect way to round off a trip to the 900 hundred year old Lalibela Churches – Ethiopian Orthodox history is still being made!

Happy New Year everyone! And today, Happy Timkat! Today is one of the greatest Ethiopian holidays (apart from Easter and Meskel), Timkat . The Arc of the Covenant (or rather a copy thereof) has been taken out from the Holy of the Holies at the back of the Church, and is being transported, carefully veiled, by Priests to a body of water, symbolising the Jordan River. Myriads of white clad people are following the Arc-carrying Priests, clapping, chanting, playing drums and dancing. The processions are filling the streets, and this year I have decided to stay home and enjoy the tranquility of the neighbourhood – all my neighbors assumingly being part of afore mentioned processions.

I have enjoyed a lovely day with Lalibela. She is now on the pill, to avoid any more heat nightmares, and she has proven to be the most amazing pill-eater cat ever. This is due to her rather annoying habit of chewing (audibly and with relish) on the fingers of anyone stupid enough to dangle them in front of her. This of course presents a prime opportunity for the evil owner to slip a pill down her throat, and she almost doesn’t notice it. She seems to think she just got my finger too far down her throat (again), swallows a few times, and promptly resumes the chewing activity.

Apart from feeding pills to Lalibela, I have picked another plentiful harvest of red, juicy coffee berries from my coffee bushes, now on a small table that I realized must be the original coffee table – a slightly concave metal plate on a weaved foot – on which one can spread the coffee berries to dry in the sun. The Christmas Flower three (this is a free translation from the Finnish common name) is in full bloom, and frequented by sunbirds and lovely light orange-pink butterflies. The garden is like a dark green jungle now, the absolute opposite of the scenery outside of town – all brown in the midst of the dry season.

After the wonderfully diverse nourishment that I enjoyed during my Christmas vacation in Finland, two weeks of exclusively Injeera based meals have driven me to crave for western food. So for breakfast I baked scones and for lunch pizza napoletana. Also I discovered a tree in my garden, which looks suspiciously like the Mulberry trees in South Africa, albeit larger. It has similar berries, allegedly edible, so I cooked a berry soup for dessert. Turned out very nice and now I can face another few weeks of Injeera again. Bon Apetit!

On Friday Lalibela started acting very odd. I got worried – knowing how common rabies is, I feared the worst. She was meowing unusually much, and loud, and with a coarse voice. She seemed to have no control over the meows. She kept coming to me, and pushed against my legs and wriggled around on the floor with her paws pointing in the air, and her back toes mysteriously curled. When back on all four, it looked like her hind legs were paralysed, in an odd low position and her back legs treading. I rushed to the phone and tried to call the vet, but the network was down. Later I managed to get to the internet, and soon cracked it. Any guesses?

Every day there are new red berries in my coffee bushes in the garden. Last weekend I picked a whole tray, and dried it in the sun. Cannot wait to try it during my next coffee ceremony – home grown, picked, roasted and ground! Beat that!

And not only coffee, also the cucumber plants have been successful (and the monkeys don’t seem to bother with vegetables, only the mangoes and papayas) – giving a harvest of eight beautiful cucumbers! Any good recipes for nice, pickled cucumbers, anyone?

Last week we started in earnest with the Hunt for the Outlets. That means, we shall be planning hydrological monitoring stations at the outlets of our clusters of microwatersheds. What is a little tricky is that these outlets are pretty remote, and not accessible on any motorable tracks. So a lot of walking is required. On Monday we set off to find the junction of the Fogeda and the southern Gumara rivers. This one was one of the easier access outlets, just a few kilometers walk from the road. We parked the car under some trees on the yard of the Health Post in Arb Gebeya, and started our walk along a community road, which soon turned into a community foot path, and later to a stony track. The route was easy going, following the Fogeda River meandering northward toward the Gumara. The stony fields are now being harvested and ploughed, the rains have stopped and the dry season is upon us. The scenery has turned brown – yellow- black, soon to become the barren landscape we encountered when we first arrived in June. The path was following the contour of the small hills on the western side of the Fogeda, and we were walking briskly. Suddenly I saw only rocks and dust – having stumbled on some stones I hit the ground in relatively high speed. Ouch!!! Wondosen was walking behind me and got a big fright, and before I knew it had pulled me up on my very shaky legs. I had hit my right knee pretty badly, and my left shoulder got a bump. Soon five people were inspecting the mobility of my arm, pulling it and turning it. Fortunately it was not dislocated, and we could continue – me limping and groaning at every step. Well, it had to happen sometime. But how embarrassing that it does in such easy terrain… On the other hand, perhaps better so. If it had happened in the Sekela mountains, I might have fallen off the path and smashed my head and died – as we heard had happened to an acquaintance of our site manager there last week. I shall be paying more attention in future… The rest of the week has been painful, but the knee is getting better every day and light walks help.

Lalibela had fleas. I found them in my bed one morning, and decided something needed to be done. Dr Elias, who has been taking care of her until now (the ONLY person she is still afraid of) was out of town, so I tried surfing on the internet. Most sites either recommended expensive sprays and gimmicks available only in selected supermarkets (and assumingly those selected ones might not be on this continent) or offered utterly absurd ideas, like submerging the cat upto her neck into lukewarm water with some Fairy dishwashing liquid in it. Yeah sure.

Fortunately along came Bernard, my lovely German neighbor, who owns quite a few dogs and cats. He had some spare flea powder, which he said worked wonders on the dog the other day. While he was fixing our communal washing machine which is placed on my porch, his son fetched a small pack of white powder, which he told me to “gently rub into her fur”.

I am sure everyone can guess how it all ended. I fought with Lalibela for an hour, resulting in flea powder on the sofa, on the floor, on the towel in which I tried to contain her, and especially all over me. A small amount was finally “gently rubbed” into her fur, which she fiercely licked off and promptly threw up. I took a shower and tended to my wounds for most of that evening. However, Lalibela soon forgave me and returned to my lap while I was working on the computer, and I had the somewhat disturbing joy of seeing the fleas starting to crawl out of her fur. So it worked, after all.

If anyone has any good advice for less hazardous ways of de-fleeing a cat, I would warmly welcome them…

I have been enjoying a long-awaited visit by the hydrology short term consultant, who turned out to be a seasoned hydrologist from Britain called Peter. Together with Peter and Wondosen we have been touring all my monitoring sites in all the five Woredas, and doing current meter measurements at all sites. It has been great to be able to have a colleague to talk with about the work – since I am the only one dealing with the hydrology issues in this project, and they are many and difficult to solve.

Peter tends to do things very thoroughly, which has led to that we are continuously behind schedule and had to resort to working through weekends. It also led to that we, on our visit to the beautiful control site in Sekela, ended up not getting out of the deep river valley before dark, and had to seek refuge with the local farmers.

Situations like these cause no concern with the hospitable highlanders, and after some discussions about the best place to lodge us, we were led through the ripening teff fields to a large, relatively wealthy looking farm. It was beautifully located, high above the meandering river, at safe distance of flash floods, facing the patchwork of farming fields on the opposite bank, continuing up the steep slopes of the mountain behind.

As the moon was rising we entered the tukkul with houses at three sides, and were offered a plank to sit on in the middle of the yard, to rest after a very sweaty and intensive day of hiking and work. Injeera with potatoes was soon brought to us, as well as maize cobs. I must admit that I am rejoicing that the main potato harvesting time is now over, and instead maize cobs are offered to us at every farm house – somewhat easier to digest than large numbers of boiled potatoes.

While munching on my maize I and gazing over the mountains, taking on spectacular hues of various blues and greens, the cows were being herded in by the youngsters of the household. An ornithological drama was taking place in a nearby tree, full of weaver nests: A small falcon entered, caused panic among the weavers, sat at the top of the tree for some moments in a majestical posture, and then proceeded to raid the weaver nests for eggs. When noticing this, our travel companions chased the falcon away by throwing stones toward the tree, while expressing their astonishment for this behavior. “He is a bird, so WHY he eats birds???”

With the dusk came the chill, and together with the cows, it seemed, we were herded into one of the houses, consisting of one large room. It was dark inside, and while looking for a place on the customary inbuilt bench, covered in cowskin, I nearly fell over a real one – a small calf tethered at the back end of the room. At the other end was a section for the larger cattle, containing between four and five big cows with mighty horns. On top of the cattle section was a sleeping space, built out of bamboo.

We spent the evening in candle light, looking at photos I had printed for our site manager who had joined us for the evening, and enjoying some nice warm curd milk. In the darkness I tried to carry out some calculations of current velocities, but soon gave up and rested, listening to the soft murmur of the family collecting in the house for the night, smelling the sweet burps of the ruminating calf next to me, and sipping my curd milk.

For the night Wondosen, a colleague from the Woreda headquarters, Ato Taddele, and myself climbed up to the bamboo sleeping quarters, while Peter opted to stay at ground level. Several stacks of hey were brought in to make a mattress, on top of which cow skins were laid down, and Peter was tucked in, each family member participating in the effort of making him comfortable. The three of us in the “second floor”- comfortably in our sleeping bags on top of cow skins and straw mattresses – were watching all this with amusement and giggling like teenagers.

When Peter had finally been satisfactorily organized for the night, the rest of the family laid down all around him: in the morning he reported at least three children, three adults and one baby to have spent the night on the floor with him. In comparison, we had ample space upstairs, but instead had rats running over our feet and once also a tad too close to my hair, which would have made me flee the scene would it have been easier. But clambering down from the bamboo edifice in complete darkness was too risky, and the probability to land on a sleeping household member too high – so I persisted and finally slept very well until the early hours of morning when I woke up sweating, the air being heated up from all the sleeping bodies and the ruminating cattle beneath us. At least one goat had joined us, and was coughing badly. During the night the cattle peed quite copious amounts, making the air musty and me hoping that Peter would stay dry on the floor. The dog outside was barking and growling fiercely, removing any thoughts of trying to go out for a pee myself. A number of chicken were rustling under an overturned basket, and the cattle beneath us occasionally rubbed their horns against a pole supporting the construction, making the bamboo structure shake and grass fall down from the ceiling. Finally the roosters started to welcome the sunrise, waking the rest of the assembly.

Peter seemed to have had a good rest and cheerily reported how he had slept like a log, despite various bodyparts of adjacent children occasionally punching him during the night . He has now definitively proved to be a good sport and Highland-worthy!

As a result of the unfortunate and sudden visit to the Swedish clinic during Roberts visit, I ended up taking vaccinations against rabies. This involves three vaccinations, on days one, seven and 28.

Last Friday I was going for my day-28 vaccination to Addis Abeba, but unfortunately my flight was cancelled. Like often, bad things lead to good things, and the lucky-toast-story (below) unfolded as a result of the delay and later cancellation of my flight. The trickier issue, however, remained – how to get this last inoculation jabbed into a suitable muscle within a few days?

The personnel at the Swedish Clinic are just fantastic. After a lot of pondering about it on the phone, they packed the vaccine into a solid cold pack and sent it up with Veli, who drove alone back from Addis Abeba, after a brief holiday in Finland. So on Saturday he turned up at my house, just in time for fish soup and korvapuustis (see below), brining the package.

Meanwhile, I had figured out that two houses down my road in Kebele 13, a ferenji doctor lives with his family, and he agreed to “read up and check how to do this vaccination”. Hmm? The options were:

1.       visiting the regional hospital (dealt with in the chapter dealing with Roberts visit), or

2.       having the thing jabbed into my arm by a doctor specializing in Trachoma.

Not a hard choice. So in the evening I left my house at ten to seven, clutching the valuable cold-pack under my arm, sat in the backyard office of the doctors house chatting about this and that, got my injection and strolled back home in the light of a beautiful full moon, arriving five past seven. Now THAT I can call a painless visit to the Doctors Office!

I have had a day of domestic capacity building. My flight cancellation to Addis Abeba led to a bonus day at home on a Saturday, and I have spent it in the company of Salam, the housekeeper, and Wondosen, the driver.

With Salam we have baked Korvapuusti, the traditional Finnish bun that all Finns know since childhood, and the lucky ones, like me, enjoyed testing out various design with mother and sisters during big baking days at home. I had managed to gather all the necessary ingredients for this even over the last three months, and now we had a lovely baking day in the kitchen with Salam. The kneading of the dough presented no problems whatsoever, since traditional Ethiopian bread is apparently prepared in the same way. Bt the final design of the korvapuustis was more challenging, and we both had sore tummy muscles after all the laughing, when we finally had three oven plates full of resulting baked goods of various design.

Later on, Wondosen came around with a new set of empty water bottles for our Village Based Sediment Monitoring Programme, and stayed for fish soup, another creation of the morning in the kitchen. He spent some hours rehearsing the use of a computer, organizing photos from one folder to the other, and started preparing a CV, the very first of his life.

All these capacity building activities were naturally interrupted , disturbed or sabotaged by Lalibela the cat, whose name has lately been revised to Luci as in Lucifer.

On our way back to Amhara from the trip to Tigray, we stopped at Gashena, the cross roads to Lalibela, for lunch. The restaurant hosted also numerous cats, and as we were departing, I caught site of some kittens, playing on top of a pile of old car tires. Wondosen, remembering my talk about getting pets, asked if I wanted a kitten, and I laughingly said, yeesss, bu…. – but the but was too late. A wild chase had already been organized, and most of the restaurant staff, together with Wondosen, were now chasing the poor kittens, dismounting the stack of tires. The one we had taken an interest in had escaped into a shed, where sacks of flour were kept, and the chase was continued in the haze of flour dust. Finally one of the local hunters had managed to capture the tiny kitten into an empty sack, and emerged from the shed with a victorious smile on his dusty face, holding the shaking sack at an arm’s length as if a dangerous, bloodthirsty, aggressive and wild animal was inside.

Robert calmly took the sack, got into the car and opened it – to see a very frightened little cat face looking up at him with big eyes. The locals were watching in amazement as he took her out and took her in his lap, where she stayed, shivering, but not wild and aggressive at all.

The remaining trip Robert sat in the car, nursing the little cat in its box. We had some dramatic moments, when she once got out of the box and climed into the back, and squeezed through a tiny ventilation opening into the space between the hull and the indoor panels of the car. While Lakew and I were collecting samples from one of our stations, Robert and Wondosen dissembled half the car, unscrewing the seats and removing the panels in the back. She had been found as one little ball of mud, shivering on top of the rear lights. The night she spent in the bathroom of the hotelroom, hiding inside the foot of the wash basin. Despite all traumatising moments during the trip to Bahar Dar, once at home, she quickly got used to the house, and Robert. Since he left, she has developed a liking to all males coming into the house, except of the Vet.

Since her arrival she has doubled in size in one month, and is giving promise of becoming the lap cat I wished for, and she has also took up her duties as the mouse guard in the kitchen. By own choice, she spends the nights on the bottom self of the very cupboard that used to be frequented by rodents of various size, and ever since none have been seen.

And above all, she is wonderful company and entertainment in my life in the foreign country. As we speak, she is doing mad rushes around me, attacking my typing fingers, smacking some extra letters in between my words with her paw, and chewing my toes.