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Lake Tana is the country’s largest body of water and the source of the Blue Nile River, this city of about half a million features broad, palm-lined avenues and bona fide beach resorts and waterside restaurants serving fresh fish.
Trinket sellers, coffee merchants and painters set up their shops along the winding road to the church on the Zegie Peninsula. (Tim Johnson)
By Tim JohnsonSpecial to the Star
Fri., Aug. 25, 2017
BAHIR DAR, ETHIOPIA—We have travelled just a few kilometres outside of town, but it feels like we’ve driven back in time — all the way back to the Old Testament. At first I think we’re looking at some sort of circus or carnival, with people hanging out by a sort of big-top tent under colourfully embroidered umbrellas, but then Tesfaw Girmay, my guide, mentions the Ark of the Covenant.
Once a year, he says, they move it, a hallowed replica of the actual artifact, out from the church across the road and set it inside a white tent emblazoned with a red cross, in this field, where people come to be baptized and pray. Walking closer, I see that a few have white ash on their foreheads.
“It’s a cross,” Girmay says. “People believe it will protect them from evil.”
I’m near Bahir Dar, Ethiopia’s coolest beach town. Set on Lake Tana, the landlocked country’s largest body of water and the source of the Blue Nile River, this city of about half a million features broad, palm-lined avenues and bona fide beach resorts and waterside restaurants serving fresh fish. It’s all part of a weeklong, individual tour organized and tailor-made by local tour operator FKLM Ethiopia, a trip that takes me to some of the country’s most compelling sites.
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A priest stands near a monastery on the Zegie Peninsula.
And while good times are found on the lake, like much in this deeply religious country, Tana is also considered sacred, once a place of refuge from Islamic raids and, according to legend, a way station for Mary, Joseph and Jesus as they made their way back to Israel after having fled Herod’s murderous intentions.
Ethiopia was one of the earliest countries to adopt Christianity — a nation actually mentioned in the Bible, people here started following this upstart religion in the first century and it became the state’s official creed in the fourth.
This is a place that’s steadfast in its beliefs. Ethiopian priests and nuns in their flowing robes are a common sight in cities and towns, and the country lives in a sort of time warp — while the rest of the world long ago followed Pope Gregory XIII and moved to his Gregorian calendar, the Ethiopians stuck with its predecessor, the Julian, meaning, according to their official calendar, it’s still 2009 here.
I chat about these things with Getaneh Benay, a friend of Girmay’s and another guide, who takes me out in a jelba, a small, covered boat.
As we motor toward a watery horizon, rolling directly into Tana’s murky chop, Benay explains that the lake contains 37 islands, each of which hosts a church (and some have a monastery, too). On one of these, Tana Qirqos, people believe the holy family rested for three months. Ethiopians also believe that the (actual) Ark of the Covenant spent eight centuries on one of these islands before making its way to Axum, where — some serious scholars say — it rests to this day.
In a few significant ways, it doesn’t feel like things have changed so much, once we’ve left the multi-storied resorts in our wake. Fishermen paddle leaky little papyrus boats, pulling in a catch of tilapia, catfish and Nile perch.
Merchants sell souvenirs along the road leading to the church on the Zegie Peninsula. (Tim Johnson)
All of these churches — each of them still in operation — were founded centuries ago, when Christianity and Islam sparred for supremacy in this part of the world, and the faithful of the former sought refuge offshore. The Zegie Peninsula — our destination today — looms ahead, its green flanks home to some 10,000 people, most of whom make their living by farming coffee.
But many, it seems, also sell curios to curious tourists. After landing at a small dock, I huff and puff behind Benay, making our way up a twisting path lined with little open-air shops, these small-time merchants pushing everything from bags of coffee beans to Christian trinkets (crosses and icons) to rather remarkable paintings (my favourite, which I eventually buy, mimics an ancient style found in local frescoes and features several Ethiopians paddling a papyrus boat like the one I had just seen out on the lake).
Reaching the top of the rise, Benay takes me inside a 14th century church, showing me its cross outside adorned with seven actual ostrich eggs (symbols of the seven days of creation, and a reminder that we should be watchful, as ostriches are with their eggs), then moving inside the building, which is made of mud, straw and rock, with a ceiling made of bamboo tied together with animal skins.
We move past the outer court, a place for chanting, to an inner circle adorned with paintings that Benay tells me were created with natural pigments and depict religious martyrs from the second and third centuries. There’s Balthazar, one of the three kings in the Bible who visited the Christ child and was, according to legend, from Ethiopia, as well as St. George, Ethiopia’s ubiquitous patron saint, slaying a dragon.
“Hundreds of years ago, people couldn’t read,” he explains. “So people understood through the paintings.”
Our access to the innermost court — the holy of holies — is blocked by two massive angels, guarding the doors to this church’s replica of the ark, and we turn back, winding our way back to the jelba, and Bahir Dar, where we’re rejoined by Girmay and enjoy some of this beach town’s less-sacred pleasures.
Priests and common people alike worship at a replica of the Ark of the Covenant. (Tim Johnson)
We sip some St. George, the country’s national beer, at a restaurant on the banks of the lake, slicing into some super-fresh tilapia. I swim in the pool at my resort, sitting on a lounger, reading a book and soaking up the tropical sun.
And that night, Girmay invites me to a place he describes as a “traditional nightclub.” I picture a dreadful folkloric show, the kind of endless night where costumed stereotypes perform, finishing with an awkward spectacle where tourists are brought on stage to embarrass themselves by publicly learning a local dance. I try to back out, but eventually agree to go for just an hour.
I end up staying for four.
We arrive to find the place packed, just a few tourist faces in the crowd, and make our way up to a balcony that wraps around the upper two-thirds of the large building. We order a couple drinks and carve out some space and watch a series of singers and dance acts take the stage.
At one point, I think my phone is vibrating, but realize it’s actually the balcony that’s shaking, as more locals arrive and pop up spontaneously in couples and groups across the club, joyfully engaging in evermore-fervent versions of the eskista, a local shoulder-shaking dance that, when properly performed, looks like perfectly choreographed convulsions.
Everyone is friendly. Nobody makes me feel like an outsider. Yes, at one point, they do try and get me on stage, but I cling to my stool like a lifeboat in a storm. As the night wears on, I look around and realize I’m the only foreigner left in a club so full, you can barely move. I sip a little more St. George, and pop up, just for a second, steering clear of the stage, but trying the eskista, my shoulders awkward and slow but somehow, perfectly in rhythm with everyone around me.
Tim Johnson was a guest of FKLM Tours and Peregrine Adventures, which didn’t review or approve this story.
When you go:
Get there: Ethiopian Airlines (ethiopianairlines.ca) provides the only direct air service between Canada and Africa. About 13 hours (flying east, from Toronto to Addis Ababa), the trip is undertaken in a Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, whose Cloud Nine business class cabin includes spacious seats that fold into fully flat beds.
Do this trip: A boutique firm based in Addis Ababa, FKLM Tours (fklm-tours.com) provides tailor-made itineraries all over Ethiopia. Using local guides who know the lay of the land, as well as top-notch equipment including luxury Land Cruisers, many of their itineraries include at least two days in Lalibela.
Source – the star.com