Wenchi Crater Lake
Recently I was somewhat perplexed when a friend of mine who is a
I've never understood why people admire authoritarians. K., for example, is impressed with the Chinese government's ability to (in his words) "quarantine a subdivision" so quickly and efficiently, without seeming to realize that this same ability could be used to quarantine the same subdivision, only this time to send in the tanks to crush any dissenters or protestors. Unfortunately, bringing up topics like Tibet, the Uighurs of Xinjiang or the ongoing exclusion of Taiwan from the World Health Organization only generates accusations of "politics" or "racism". K. would prefer to think of the Chinese government "sacrificing" its citizens for the health, safety and general well-being of the world at large, and can't understand why anyone (like me) would even think of throwing cold water on his feel-good post.
This is for all you sheap out there!
Well, to put in succinctly, authoritarian governments remain in power because they have admirers and supporters. And K. isn't the only friend of mine who enjoys order - an admitted Russophile friend (whom we shall call Gregor Samsa) is a great admirer of Vladimir Putin, placing himself in some illustrious company (Oliver Stone, Steven Seagal, Gerard Depardieu and Fred Durst, to name a few). How one justifies the annexation of Crimea, denying any Russian interference in the 2016 election and ignoring Russian air attacks on civilians in Syria, all the while referring to RT as an "independent" source of news, escapes me. My favorite Facebook post from Gregor was a video showing a group of people throwing a man into a garbage dumpster. According to Gregor, "this was how people in Russia deal with corruption!" According to my Google search, this was how angry voters in Ukraine dealt with a politician they thought was too pro-Moscow! But in Gregor's mind, most Ukrainians long to return to the embrace of Mother Russia because he once had drinks with several ethnic Russian Ukrainians in a Japanese bar, and they told him as much! You can't argue with evidence like that!
Back to blogging. It's been a while since we returned from Egypt early last month, but for the most part our weekends and holidays since then have been ho-hum. But this past Saturday I at least managed to get out of town for a few hours...around thirteen actually. The embassy organized a day trip to Wenchi Crater Lake, 148 kilometers (92 miles) west of Addis Ababa. My daughter wanted to stay behind in order to prepare for her upcoming school band trip to Lusaka, while my wife (sensibly, as it turned out) preferred to stay indoors and relax. So it was only me representing the family on what would be a nearly four-hour bus ride (!) to the rim of the Wenchi Crater, the last hour or so of it on a very bumpy unpaved road. The local children were naturally curious and excited to see a busload of ፈረንጅ pull up into their village:
The lake is part of a massive extinct (or dormant, depending on whom you ask) volcano called Mount Wenchi, at an altitude of 3386 meters (11,109 feet) above sea level. Around 2500 people live in the caldera, most of them Orthodox Christians. At the bottom of the caldera is a 4km² crater lake:
From the parking lot to the lake is a hike of 4 kilometers (2.5 miles). Most of our party opted to go down on horseback, while I decided to walk, a decision that would leave me covered in dust from head to toe. On the way down we passed villagers headed to market; those without goods to carry opted for the steeper shortcuts to the top rather than use our dusty trail:
The weather was bright and sunny the entire time we were there, which made my forgetting to bring sunscreen a major oversight:
At the lake. The water was clear and cool, though the physician who was with us on the outing advised against going swimming in it. The scenery was almost alpine, not like the usual images of Ethiopia seen in books and other media (my own preconceptions of what Ethiopia looked like before I arrived in the country were unfortunately shaped by pictures of the terrible famine of the early-mid 1980s):
While most members of our party opted to take a longer hike back to the buses, I chose to stay behind with the others in order to take a boat to a small island not far from the shore:
Looking back at the shore after arriving on the island:
The island's focal point is the Monastery of Wenchi Chirkos, which was either founded in the 13th century by Tekle Haymanot ተክለ ሀይማኖት, or in the 15th century by Emperor Zara Yaqob ዘርአ ያዕቆብ, depending on whom you ask. Our guide preferred the latter version:
The monastery has the usual layout, with its copy of the Ark of the Covenant hidden in the circular interior. Many of the paintings within focused on demons and things getting slain:
The legend of Tekle Haymanot, who spent seven years standing on one leg praying (why?) before his other leg withered away and fell off:
Back on the shore, horses were ready to take us back uphill:
This unintended selfie taken on horseback shows my discomfort. The steed chosen for me was too small for my girth, and the ride became so uncomfortable that halfway up I asked to get down and proceeded to walk the rest of the way back:
My unfortunate horse. I'm sure h/she was relieved when I got down:
Final views on the way back. I was the last to return, but fortunately not late enough to make everyone else annoyed or angry...I hope:
The bus ride back to Addis would end up taking over five hours, thanks to Saturday afternoon traffic. At least there were some things to take pictures of:
We passed through the spa town of Ambo አምቦ, noted for its mineral water, of which Shu-E is a devoted drinker:
A selfie taken during a roadside piss stop:
It was a long, grueling day, but still worth getting out of the capital:
Probably the biggest event in our household since returning from Egypt was our daughter reaching the age of fourteen:
These days she's interested in anime アニメ and manga 漫画, and is looking forward to visiting Japan with her Japanophile father this summer:
Amber has also been keeping herself busy with school activities. At the end of January, she traveled with the swimming team to take part in a meet in Maputo, Mozambique, which necessitated a very early morning departure from her school to the airport:
The team struggled in Maputo, finishing in seventh place (out of eight
teams), and Amber didn't win any medals, but she still enjoyed the
experience:
Later this month she'll travel with the school's band and choir (Amber plays the flute) for some performances in Lusaka, Zambia. By this point, she will have visited almost as many countries as me. By age fourteen, the only country I'd been to was the United Kingdom, not counting Germany (where I was born but have no memories of), and a day trip made to Tijuana, Mexico during a family vacation in San Diego. Not only haven't I been to Mozambique and Zambia, I also don't have Slovakia on my travel resume, whereas my daughter took part in a swim meet in Bratislava while we were living in Vilnius, Lithuania.
This blog post will end with a few random images taken over the past few weeks, like these sunrise scenes from our third-floor balcony:
How on earth did a Japanese dry cleaner's van end up as a minibus on the streets of Addis Ababa?:
Shopping for flowers and soil at a local nursery:
We may be living in the Horn of Africa, but that doesn't mean we didn't observe the Lunar New Year 春節:
My wife shared this video with me in the spirit of the holiday, though it's unclear where she found it:
In observation of the Lantern Festival 元宵節, we had lunch at Ari Rang, which is rapidly becoming our favorite local restaurant. We had wanted to go to a Chinese joint, but traffic restrictions put in place as a result of the African Union summit convinced us that somewhere that was still Asian but much closer to home was a wiser choice:
And afterward there was homemade 奶茶, complete with environmentally-unfriendly disposable plastic cups from Taiwan:
A lunch of spicy scrambled eggs and toast at Galani Coffee:
Goats on Addis' streets are an almost daily occurrence, along with occasional sightings of cattle and donkeys, but this was the first time to encounter a horse:
Always on the lookout for new beers to try:
And not just beers. All over town are billboards promoting an enticing made-in-Ethiopia line of carbonated drinks called Aby Splash. And yet no matter how many shops I've visited, I couldn't find any examples...until one Sunday, when I came across a single flavor, Pineapple Malt, on the shelves of a small grocery store in the Laptho Mall ላፍቶ ማል. The verdict? It tastes better than Pineapple Fanta, but it remains at the bottom of my preference list of the six flavors that make up Aby Splash:
An interesting front gate design:
Addis Ababa is the capital of Ethiopia and the headquarters of the African Union, which means there a lot of embassies around. I like to think I'm pretty good when it comes to geography and geopolitics, but this one had me going to Wikipedia after getting home. The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic has been locked in a bitter struggle with Morocco since 1976 over control of the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara. At present the SADR controls 20-25% of the country's territory, with Morocco claiming the rest. The SADR has diplomatic relations with 40 members of the United Nations (more than the Republic of China 中華民國, aka Taiwan, which maintains relations with only 14 UN members), and is a full member of the AU, much to Morocco's consternation:
Another embassy in Addis that I'd like to see (and photograph) is that of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The South Korean embassy is only a ten-minute drive from our home, but North Korea's diplomatic outpost in Ethiopia የኮሪያ ዴሞክራሲያዊ ህዝቦች ሪፐብሊክ ኤምባሲ is twice as far away in the opposite direction. I've always been fascinated with the DPRK - when we were living in Vilnius, my daughter had a South Korean friend/classmate over for dinner, who asked Amber why her father had so many books on North Korea on the bookshelf behind the dining room table. Back when I was living in Tōkyō 東京 in the late 1990's, I saw a flyer from Koryo Tours advertising group trips to the reclusive North, only to find out to my great disappointment that American visitors weren't welcome at that time. Should my government open a liaison office in Pyongyang, I would seriously consider bidding on a position there. But until that day comes, I'll heed my daughter's advice and avoid any diplomatic incidents by steering clear of the DPRK embassy here.
In the meantime, I'll follow that beer truck...:
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