The first image is a photo I took of two child shepherds in the Bale Mountains in Ethiopia. The second and third images are just edits of the first one, which I cropped and decided to change to black and white.
Brother and Sister, side by side. Two beautiful subjects. 
Phil emailed me today. Bad news. He made in from Uganda to Kenya but missed the only bus to Ethiopia. He is now planning on hitching a ride with some Somali truckers he met at a camp in Nairobi…sounds seriously dodgy! So I guess I will have to wait here in Addis Ababa until he at least makes it over the border, then I can make my way South.
I got all my money changed in one of the big banks and was a little nervous by the 4 AK7 clad guards who demanded I give them my big backpack to “mind” as I went into the bank. Guess guys with guns is a sight you get used to in Africa, but it still makes me feel quite nervous at times.I got a taxi to Hotel Wutma which seems like a nice little place run by 2 cool rastas, dropped off my bags and decided to check out the Addis Ababa Merkato- The biggest market in AFRICA!!
Attempting to get to the Merkato is nearly as impossible as maneuvering your way around it. I sat inside the cramped mini bus taxi, with an old grandmother sitting next to me and a child sitting on top of me praying they would soon stop letting more people into the cramped taxi, and that we would soon be on your way. Beggars would come to the door of the taxi in a constant stream banging on the window, staring, pleading. It was a pretty devastating feeling not been able to help them all, but if you start handing out money or food hundreds more people will arrive on the scene.
In Ethiopia beggars can be everyone and anyone; the women, tribal men, the homeless, the shoeless, infants selling packets of tissues or sticks of chewing gum. There is no escaping their pleas -just being there is emotionally shattering as you feel their pain, and wish you could do more to smiles on their faces.
I eventually made it to what I could only guess was the infamous Merkato, with its boundaries as shady as some of its people. The place was hectic. Lorries unloading hundreds of oversized bags of maize as young boys carried it away on their backs resembling struggling ants. A man walks past me with his head bowed due to the weight of the 50 perfectly balanced pillows on his back.
You can walk around for hours weaving your way in and out of all the temporary stalls made of polythene sheets and with aluminium roofs. You need to be careful to avoid the big potholes full of goat shit and dirty water that runs from the mini streams that divide the stalls.
I moved on to the various spice stalls, tasting vanilla and cinnamon before I was pestered by all the flies hanging around. The place was repugnant; piles of flour, peppers, maize, apples, coffee pots and fake flowers lay side by side. Moving on I came across stall after stall of bad quality imported clothes from Indian scarves to Man United jerseys. You can come across stalls with lines of knives, machetes and guns as goats and mules wander by eating whatever waste food they can find amongst the rubbish.
When the sellers spot you they smile, they shout “You, you, you!” as others begin to turn and stare, pointing and laughing. You can block it out and feel rude or you can greet them back and be drawn into a conversation which inevitably ends in them trying to persuade you to by a Sofa or 20 metres of woven carpet! There is no escaping!
Mini Buses fly. Men sit around chewing chat that gets them high as their wives sit around cooking Injera (a flat tangy pancake part of their staple diet). It starts raining and you realise you hungry and lost. Your jeans are wet and brown from the mud and you’re sweating from the humidity. You are now broke from buying useless memorabilia or a quick handed kid has slipped his hand in and out of your pocket faster than you can say “Theif!”
It’s a once in a life time experience, let that be said. But once in a lifetime is enough for me!
So I have been in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, two days now and I’m happy to say I’m alive and well! It is the 12th August 2007 Western Time, but the 1st of December 1999 Ethiopian time. Confused? Yea, me too! Ethiopia uses the older Coptic Calendar which is 7-8 years behind the Gregorian calendar used by most of the Western World. They also have 13 months, 12 months of 30 days each and a 13th month with 5/6 days depending on whether it’s a leap year or not.
To make thing even MORE confusing they also use a different time. Not just a different time zone, but a different way of telling the time! Unlike the convention in most countries, the start of the day is dawn, rather than midnight. Thus, 7:00 AM in East Africa Time corresponds to 1:00 in daylight hours in local Ethiopian time. This makes thing SERIOUSLY complicated when trying to figure out opening/closing times and trying to book a bus!
Moving on…on arrival all the hotels seemed to be booked out. Dragging my huge, over sized backpack through the narrow, busy streets wasn’t helped by the occasional thunder storms and torrential rains. So much for a warm, hot climate! I flicked through my guidebook trying to locate the address of the various hostels and cheap motels listed but was shit out of luck. There were no street names to be found anywhere so I kept getting lost and walking in circles.
Sick and tired of walking I hailed a taxi. All the taxis are old Ladas and they totally live up to their name. I remember my Dad telling me a joke when I was younger, “What do you call a Lada with 2 exhaust pipes? A SKIP!” Well Dad wasn’t too far off. It took the taximan 15 minutes of revving and jerking the gear stick just to get the car started and when I put my bag in the boot I noticed there was a HUGE hole and also no wind mirrors! Madness!
When I eventually found a place that had a spare room…I discovered it was far from a ‘Hotel’ room I would be getting. I really didn’t care though as long as I could take off my backpack, lie down on my bed and think why on earth I left my awesome summer job teaching English in Ireland for THIS?!
After a well deserved nap, I felt calmer and a little more optimistic so ventured out of my ‘hotel room’ in search of food. I asked the guys sitting outside reception (they were all sitting around on plastic chairs sipping beers and smoking who knows what) if I could get food anywhere near and the conversation went like this;
Me- “Can I get food anywhere near here?”
Guy- “Fish…no food…FISH!”
Me -”You have food, yes?”
Guy – Fish fish, no food..fish!”
Me, “Umm okay fish. Great, do you know where I can get some?”
Guy- “No.”
And he sits down and starts chatting to his friends. Well, that was weird! I went in search again and ended up buying a bag of peanuts off some cute kids on the street corner, went back to my room to hibernate! I ended up watching TV as the countdown to the millenium is on…only 30 days to go! Can’t believe I will get to celebrate the millennium AGAIN! So totally cool. Tomorrow I will be brave and venture a little further in this crazy city, as I need to change all my money, sort out Malaria tablets (I decided to take a risk and buy them here instead of at home- way cheaper!) and book my bus to Shashemene. Oh and ring my parents…better let them know I made it here!
Some photos I took of the ever-interesting people I saw or met while in Kenya and Ethiopia. Sometimes by just looking at a single photo of a person I believe you can tell what type of life they’ve had, hardships they have encountered, joy they have celebrated.
What do you think?
A man sits in the shade of the city wall on a hot day in Harar, Ethiopia
A young boy gaurds his hut in the Bale Mountains, Southern Ethiopia
Young Shepherd Boy
Young Shepherd Girl in the Bale Mountains
A young girl inspecting a dead bee inside the walls of Harar
A local man sitting on the beach in Malindi, Kenya
Women of the Dorze Tribe in Southern Ethiopia
A woman in the market in Harar, Eastern Ethiopia
A natural medicine doctor in the Bale Mountains, Ethiopia
Some happy kids from Kitale, Kenya
While watching a short clip today about the Two Koreas (North and South), it got me thinking about the huge differences that exist in the world. How life in one place, South Korea, can differ so greatly from it’s northern neighbors. They are quite simply worlds apart.
In fact only today in college, we had a lecturer talking about Nutrition and Food security in Africa and the class really made us realize the huge inequalities that exist not only around the world, but within one country.
We talked about the disparities within different regions of one country, how the capital city may have plenty of food whilst people in the countryside may be suffering from hunger and severe malnutrition.How people in Nairobi, for example, may get a lot of attention while tribal nomads dealing with a drought up in the Turkana desert may get little to no help at all from their own government.
I still find it so hard to comprehend that two images that look worlds apart may in reality have a closer link than one could ever imagine. When people think of drought or famine they think of land that resembles a dry, arid desert. Take Ethiopia for example.
When you look at the two images below, which one do you think is from Ethiopia?
Believe it or not, both these images come from southern Ethiopia. One from the south East and one from the Bale Mountains in the South West. It’s mind boggling how these places appear worlds apart, yet are in fact only a few 100 km’s from each other. Often a famine doesn’t necessarily mean there is no available food in the country; it may simply mean that the “available food” is not accessible (economically or geographically) to much of the population, a clear example of inequality within a nation.
Another thing we learned in class today was the different types of malnutrition people can suffer from, especially children. Again I was fascinated. There are two main types of malnutrition;Kwashiorkor and Marasmus. Despite fear of over simplifying these two types, Kwashiorkor makes children look fat or swollen in places, especially legs and feet, while with Marasmus children develop thinness.
These variations of acute malnutrition can appear to be look very different. You would be forgiven for thinking the child on the left looks much worse off and is in much greater need of immediate feeding. You would be forgiven, but you would be very, very wrong. In reality both these conditions mean the same; that these precious children are at an extremely high risk of dying if they are not immediately treated by sophisticated feeding programmes.
I guess I have a lot more to learn about the world.
Some Kimchi with your Turkey, Ajamma? Another cocktail or an Ice-cream Miss Clause? Some more fish stew with that Injera, Miss? With Christmas just around the corner, I am suddenly left reminiscing about all the other Christmas’ spent abroad in distant lands, far removed from the traditional Irish Christmas day.
This year, as many of you know, I will be spending my favourite holiday of the year in South Korea, a country that I have grown to love. Despite this fact, the sad reality is that Koreans don’t really celebrate Christmas in the traditional sense so I will have to compromise, settling for a roast Chicken from a street vendor rather than the traditional Turkey, time spent with friends instead of family and rocking around a Karaoke room rather than the Christmas tree!
South Korean Christmas;all about the kids
Christmas entertainment in Korea, mainly aimed and Children and Lovers
All my years of travelling have taught me that just because something is different to what you have been brought up with does not make it worse. As the saying goes “Diversity os the Spice of life”. This goes for everything; from people, to countries, to food, to how people celebrate holidays around the world.
Last year I spent Christmas day on Bondi Beach. clichéd? Yes. But also an absolutely unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Tens of 1000′s of bikini clad backpackers, chilling out with newly made friends, sipping cheap wine out of a box and breaking it down at Bondi Pavillion at Sunburnt Christmas Djs, renowned worldwide. There may not be Turkey, or presents or family, but there will be wet t-shirt competitions, beautiful sunshine, beer for breakfast and friends you will have forever. Also, the sight of a sea of red and white on one of the most famous beaches on earth is truly something special.
Nice View, Christmas Day on Bondi Beach, Australia
Fun in the Sun on Bondi beach
Three years ago, I spent a summer backpacking across Ethiopia. It was not planned, (my flights were booked 3 days before leaving) but it was one of the most eye-opening experiences in my life thus far. Not many people go on holidays to Ethiopia. It’s not exactly the “in” place to spend your summer vacation. In fact, truth be told, I don’t know ANYONE else that has ever randomly decided to go backpacking through one of the poorest countries on Earth, but that’s the exact reason I wanted to go.
What I didn’t realise was that Ethiopia uses a completely different calendar to most of the western world. They still use the Julian calender, and so, are exactly 7 1/2 year behind our Gregorian calender. Confused yet? I was! So as I was trekking up through the Bale mountains in rural Southern Ethiopia, with an awful stomach ache and fever (which later turned out to be a mild case of Dengue Fever) I noticed the date on my bus ticket. 25/12/1999.
There I was puking my guts out in some adorable little mountain hut, while two child shepherds looked on in bewilderment, as I was treated my a local medicine man who insisted I rub some sort of red flower all over my face then eat it, whilst on the inside thinking “I can’t believe this is where I am on Christmas Day.” And also feeling slightly disoriented at the fact that I had somehow travelled back in time to the Nineties!!
So my friends, family and readers, wherever you ar this Christmas, whether you are celebrating in a traditional way or not, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year. Thanks for reading! x
My Saviour, local medicine man
A beautiful child Shepherd, looking at me cautiously, Christmas day 1999
My Travelling companion
The journey begins... Taking a break at Wabe Shabelle Falls
The beautiful wild flowers we came across on the mountain
More flower power
Wild mushrooms
View from my tent at top of the mountain
Camping above the clouds
Local man who cured my Dengue fever with herbal medicine
Spectacular Morning View
Little boy who peed on my lap.
Homeward Bound
Camoflauge
Nature at its best
Young Shepherd Boy
Young Shepherd Girl
