ETHIOPIA: Africa Overland

The best part of taking the bus was seeing Ethiopia outside of Addis. What a beautiful country! It was fantastic to see the countryside and the villages and the people. Directly outside of Addis the pollution and shantytowns give way to eucalyptus forests. Acres and acres of eucalyptus trees. These trees are fast growing and have acclimated to Ethiopia very well. The eucalyptus is a lifeblood of Ethiopia providing building material and firewood, thus playing an integral part in both shelter and food for many, many people. Because it is the rainy season growing of crops was under way. The fields were either lush green or the rich, dark moisture of a newly tilled plot. All of this cultivation was peppered with the slate gray or pale brown of upturned stones, which either lined the crop rows or were collected in piles around the perimeter. In between theses large swaths of open farmland were the villages, which maintained close proximity to the roads to make transport and mobility easier.

Then we made our down into the Blue Nile Gorge and back up again. How magnificent! The land cut deep by its namesake river, even in its origins showing the greatness it will become as it winds its way out of Ethiopia and northward to become part of the mighty Nile. The deepness of the Gorge is told by the steepness of the roads and the multitude of switchbacks that forces our bus driver to heed just a bit. Objects in the road, living or inanimate, moving or fixed, couldn’t slow his bus down. But the Gorge did. Yes, the Gorge did. A new bridge, the only suspension bridge in Ethiopia, is currently being built across the Gorge. The modernity of a new suspension bridge spanning this magnificent, historic Gorge is a testament to, and, perhaps, a harbinger of, the changes occurring in present day Ethiopia.

Terrace farming dominates in the hills around the Gorge. The upturned stones, released from the earth by the agriculture it now supports, are entrapped in a different bondage, holding the soil in place rather than lying buried within it. Coming out of the Gorge, cultivated land gives way to evergreen forests and then once again it becomes cultivated. Now the soil seems more clay yet the land still fertile. It’s not this way during the dry season, I am told. The land is brown and uncaring. I begin to appreciate the life and livelihood rain provides in this part of the world. I tell myself to stop thinking of downpours as only nuisances, of the mud as only to be disdained. When that happens, before I curse the skies and damn the unpaved roads, I will tell myself to remember the land, to remember Africa.

We pass smaller rivers and streams. These flow fast and hard due to the abundance of rain. Depending on the amount and type of clay, the water is either the color of chocolate milk or burnished a deep orange as if it first flowed through the sun before entering Ethiopia. Day becomes night. The headlights of the bus search the landscape. It spots the lonely trees standing vigil in the middle of fields or the groups of trees acting as windbreaks near the side of the road. These trees now appear as apparitions, illuminated like film negatives, imprinted against the darkened background. Heavy clouds prevent the stars from speckling the sky. I am left with ghost trees and a faint trace of starlight. Onward we move, through Ethiopia, through Africa.

The next morning I wake up in a lakeside hotel. Under gray skies I walk down to the shore and stand on blackened, volcanic rocks and look out over Lake Tana. Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile River. These waters will cascade over the Blue Nile Falls on its way to deepening the Gorge before joining the Nile and spilling out of Egypt, passing through the mouths of crocodiles and the annals of time, until finally, it reaches its destination in the Mediterranean Sea. With this thought enveloping me, I view the expanse of the lake. I observe the fisherman casting their nets from their papyrus canoes and watch the pelicans conduct their morning rituals. I stand privileged on the lakeshore and I breathe in more of the beauty of Ethiopia.