On the road back to Lalibela after
deciding not to board the plane to Gondar, I knew immediately I’d made the right decision. The heavy feeling in my stomach had disappeared, the sun was out, and I had most of a week ahead of me to do as I pleased. There were some other passengers in Ephrem’s minibus who had just landed from
Addis - an Ethiopian-UAE woman with two small children, accompanied by a subdued man of undetermined purpose; perhaps a baggage handler and/or husband. When we arrived in town the woman asked Ephrem to drive us all to one hotel after another. One was too expensive, another was too far, a third was unacceptable. I did not recommend my hirsute hotel to her, and I didn’t mind the tour - she gave me the opportunity to nose around the priciest hotels in Lalibela with no pressure to purchase. After the fourth inadequate option we went to the Blue Nile guesthouse which Ephrem had picked for me. I had a belly-feeling that I needed to be sharp out of the van at this one: I jumped out and took the stairs two at a time. The receptionist showed me the room. It was very nice - spotlessly clean - and cost only 30% more than Hairsham. “We have one room left”, he said. I had somehow already known that he’d say that. My travel-luck rarely fails me. “I’ll take it”, I said at once. High-maintenance Dubai woman appeared too late, hampered by her large handbag. Waving away a faint shade of guilt, I wandered discreetly around the corner to observe the mountain view while the receptionist explained that there were no vacancies. In fairness, she took it very well, and even gave me her email address so we could meet up later.
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| Ashendye: women's festival |
The festivities, for which I had returned, were spectacular. Hundreds of people from neighbouring regions had flooded the town for days, and danced in the streets with their beautiful white traditional dress and varied ornate hairstyles, differentiating marital status. Ashendye, the women’s festival unique to the Amhara and Tigrai regions, is named after the long green reeds the women wear tucked into their belts. Held over three days at the end of August, it marks the end of a fasting period. Lalibela has been campaigning for Ashendye to be added to the UNESCO events calendar.
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| Lalibela's main square |
Although the majority of dancers were women, there were a few male groups too. These dressed in skins and buttoned-patterned shirts with a bright plastic comb stuck in the back of the hair, and great rope whips which they cracked at each other, defending with a long stick or simply running away before their bare legs were cut open. The spectators enclosed them in a circle and we all scampered from side to side as the whips came dangerously close to the onlookers. Sometimes the men joined the women’s dances and twitched shoulders and legs so much that they danced themselves literally out of their skins, and had to stop to pull them back up from around their ankles.
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| If someone comes to dance at you, you must return the favour |
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| The men prepare to whip-dance |
Lalibela's muddy lumpy streets and dingy cafes which had looked rather uninviting when I first arrived were now my temporary home, and some of the unknown faces had become my friends. By the time I left, I felt as if I knew half the town. I could hardly walk five meters without one of my new friends greeting me with a shoulder bump. Geteye and his cousin Yonas, in Year 7 at school, had stalked me for two days, at first attempted to scam me into buying them an expensive dictionary from a local shop, which they would later return in exchange for cash. They eventually gave up trying to persuade me, and we wandered the carnival streets together, visiting their friends and neighbours in the village. They shared with me their long-term plans: Geteye wanted to be a pilot when he grew up, and Yonas a water engineer.
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| Geteye and Yonas do not need a dictionary |
On the main day of the festivities I went with the boys down to the stadium, which was decorated with bunting and flags in the Ethiopian colours - red, yellow, green. We arrived early and managed to bag seats in the front row of the VIP tent under a long awning. Next to us were the priests, cumbersome in heavy robes bright with sequins and embroidery, topped with artificial gilt crowns. They had opened their decorative velvet parasols a little too prematurely, and squashed themselves with difficulty two-by-two into cramped school desks designed for small children.
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| An indiscretion of priests |
The speeches began, and lasted a long time. The crowd was restless, and, like me, was waiting for the dancing to begin. But first the priests had to be paraded around the ground. They ungracefully prised themselves out of the school desks, opened their parasols, and elbowed irreverently for the best space within the lineup. Two of them got caught in each other’s sequins back to back, and swung round struggling for freedom. A helpful bystander untangled them, and they returned to vying for the toppest parasol space. Once they had all been unceremoniously pushed into line by a flappy organiser, the High Priest, dressed in black, solemnly approached the microphone, and talked prayerfully for some time. This was followed by a lugubrious shuffle around the stadium by the umbrella priests, aided by their prayer sticks, and occasionally stepping on the hem of the man in front. After they had returned to their school desks, it was the Minister for Tourism’s turn to speak. An electric drone launched by the media circled overhead, and higher still were large birds of prey gliding on the mountain thermals. Suddenly, one of them swooped down and extended its lethal talons over the drone. There was a gasp from the crowd - the Minister was momentarily forgotten - and it seemed we were about to witness a brutal avian robot attack. But the drone whizzed neatly aside, and the bird took fright, wheeling away. And with that, at last the speeches were over. A large platter of injera was handed round the tent, the music started, and the boys and I piled into the central fray to join the dancing.
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| Traditional dress and hair |
Geteye and Yonas had very sweetly presented me with a white-and-Ethiopian scarf, and I shouted angrily at a man in the stadium who had shoved them both violently for being young and happy. I gave them each a tin of M&S fudge and chocolate eclairs when I left. They had come to see me off, and although Yonas mentioned the dictionary again, he looked appropriately shifty and guilt-ridden, and mumbled his request to his grubby feet. I gave them both a hug and some pocket money for their festival-guiding, and the dictionary was forgotten. If, in twenty year’s time, I somehow find that I’m on an Ethiopian Airlines flight piloted by a Geyete from Lalibela, I’ll send a small phrasebook up front for a laugh.
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Professional shoulder-dancing
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