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BUSHNOTE: NO GUNS - WHAT A TREAT

BUSHNOTE: NO GUNS - WHAT A TREAT

Author: Kingsley Holgate
Date: 2016-11-11
It's a great feeling! The successful geographic challenge of crossing Chew Bahir in land yachts, by mountain bike and Land Rover is now behind us. So now, following the 'Living Traditions' route inscribed on the colorful maps on the bonnets of the Expedition Land Rover Discos, and with the battered land yachts ratcheted onto the roof-rack of the Defender Ndhlovukazi, we weave our way through herds of livestock into the hilly stone-terraced lands of the Cushitic Konso people - famous for the carved wooden statues known as waga that are erected at the graves of important men.

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.