Whatshot
BUSHNOTE: NO GUNS - WHAT A TREAT
BUSHNOTE: NO GUNS - WHAT A TREAT
Date: 2016-11-11
The 'Living Traditions' and humanitarian aspects of this expedition give the journey immense purpose, now improved by stumbling across a colorful Ethiopian Orthodox Christian ceremony at a small roadside church.
'Peaceful and no guns-what a change,' whispers Anna Holgate into my ear... She's so right: in place of livestock wars and the wild gun-toting ceremonies we've become so used to in the south, we now have embroidered umbrellas, priests in robes swinging censors of smoking incense, women dressed in beautiful hand-woven headscarves and shawls and the crowd swaying peacefully to the drumbeats and ancient chants that date back thousands of years to the time of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
Standing here, my mind drifts back to earlier visits to the highlands, to Llalibela and the ancient underground churches chiseled out of stone. To our past Simian Mountain Land Rover adventures to the Timkat ceremony, the castles of Gondar and closer to Eritrea, the ancient obelisks of Axum, where the Ark of the Covenant is said to reside. Ethiopia is certainly a land of contrasts.