Subscribe to this blog23 May 2009
Smuggling plastic bags to Kigali
One of the surprises for this trip was presented to me by Evgeny just before we left Moscow: We would visit four instead of two countries in East Africa. So I came pretty unprepared to Rwanda. Evgeny's Lonely Planet guidebook served me to have a quick glimpse at visa procedures which seemed to be no problem at all. Like most other African countries, Rwanda also grants the so-called "visa on arrival" at the airport. What the book left out though, was the fact that these procedures had changed since it went to print.Rwanda has become a very modern country and the immigration procedure has to be done through the Internet - in the form of an electronic visa application. Since we missed this news and our flight arrived just before midnight, the customs officer was quite annoyed by yet another group of stupid tourists having omitted to apply online beforehand. He finally granted us a four day visa for 60 US dollars. Which was sufficient in terms of time we had planned for Rwanda, as we wanted to visit only Kigali - the capital town - and then leave by bus for Uganda.
Despite the hefty price tag, we only got a tiny little stamp by the size of a 25 US cent coin. A bit disappointed by this poor return of investment to keep in our passports, we headed to the baggage belts to collect our rucksacks. As we were ready to leave the customs area, Tatjana got stopped by another quite angry customs officer. He was not interested in her backpack, but wanted to confiscate her duty free bag.Since she was carrying our duty free items as well, we were sure that the customs agent suspected her to have exceeded her duty free allowance. Therefore, Evgeny and I quickly gathered around her and pointed out that the three bottles of Vodka and the cigarettes were for all the three of us. But the agent wasn't interested in this unimportant fact either.
As he spoke only French, I was the only one of us understanding what he said - but I first could not believe what he was asking for: "Il est interdit d'importer des sacs en plastique au Ruanda" (It is forbidden to import plastic bags into Rwanda). Consequently, I tried to explain to him, that our one and only plastic bag could hardly be considered as an import business of plastic bags. Since it was late, we finally decided to let go and let the officials confiscate our duty free bag, after having stowed its contents into our various backpacks.
Once we left the airport and arrived downtown Kigali, we learned from the locals that plastic bags are banned in Rwanda - for environmental reasons. Although I was introduced to this odd law a bit brisk, I found it to be very good and I wonder why no-one ever tries to introduce such a ban in the "industrialized world".
Coming from Ethiopia, it was absolutely amazing to see clean and modern roads with sidewalks. There was a total absence of live stock wandering on the streets and people were using proper sidewalks. It all looked almost like in Europe - but it was midnight and we were being driven to a neighborhood known for having the cheapest crash pads for backpackers. Actually, Evgeny's guidebook suggested to "look elsewhere" instead, since our intended hostel was a bit "too basic". The term "dodgy" is quite an understatement to describe the road where our hostel was located. Just in front of the heavily locked entrance gate were gangs of glue sniffers and other people probably also high on various drugs. Obviously, as European tourists, we drew all attention while banging on the gate and then entering. Once inside in our rooms, I was telling myself that everything would look normal in daylight next morning.
However, none of us had anything to drink (except for the Vodka), due to the customer-unfriendly airtravel security rules, which disallow liquids in the baggage. Therefore, Evgeny and I decided to walk three blocks to buy some water in the 24 hour store. On the way there, we were escorted by half of the glue sniffing gang. They were insisting that we needed body-guards. Yeah, actually the only reason, we needed protection was to be protected from them, I thought. Eventually, we made it to the "Nakumatt" (the 24h store) and back without trouble and without having to pay any bribe.After our return, we were asked to pay the rooms in advance by one of the hostel staff. He was searching for a receipt pad which hadn't been used for months. A member of the gang who accompanied us joined in and he explained to me that I had to fill out the receipt myself. Slowly more people came to look and see what happened. Finally, four guys were gathering as I filled out the form and handed over the money to the clerk. Everyone made sure that I would not omit a single detail, although I seemed to be the only one being able to read and write. They also helped the clerk to count the money I just handed in. This is when I figured out, that - at least - part of the glue sniffing gang was sleeping in the same guesthouse. And that they were probably genuinely eager in wanting to help and protect us.
Next morning, Evgeny, Tatjana and me did set off to explore the city of Kigali which is located in a hilly environment with lots of lookouts, trees and parks. Being very small and on the cute side, it is almost unbelievable that we were on the very spot that has seen one of the worst genocides in the last century. One million Tutsi and Hutu (names of two local tribes) were slaughtered here in the mid-1990's. Comparing this figure to the 1991 census which only shows a population of 250'000 people living in Kigali (today 850'000), it is almost unimaginable how horrible the Rwandan war must have been. One of the respective sites we visited, is the hotel "Mille Collines". It became a refugee center during the genocide and is depicted in the famous movie "Hotel Rwanda"."I lay down again among the dead bodies. It was three days after the killings, so the bodies stank. The Interahamwe would pass by without entering the room, and dogs would come to eat the bodies. I lived there for 43 days..."
Another major stop was the visit of the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center, located a bit outside of town. I have seen quite some memorials, such as Auschwitz in Poland or the Khmer Rouge prison S21 in Cambodia. No, I am not going to go into any superlatives about the Kigali memorial being even more horrible. This would not be appropriate in respect to what all these places are about. The displays in the center are very well documented, outlining the reasons that led to the genocide, the war and the effects of post-war traumas. Countless screens feature real-life stories from survivors. According to the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center's website, the reason of the memorial's existence is to provide educational facilities for the young generation of Rwandan. Some of whom may not remember the genocide, but whose lives are profoundly affected by it.
Needless to portray how different we looked at the city after our return from the memorial. Despite on what I wrote about our first night, Kigali today is very peaceful during daytime. People are very friendly and helpful. Numerous times, when we were on the streets looking into our map, we were proposed help by locals. The "Country of a Thousand Hills" - as Rwanda is being dubbed in French - has left an impact on me. We left on the third day, early in the morning, on a bus to Kampala (Uganda). As the superb green and hilly country side flew by, looking through the bus window, I knew that Evgeny and Tatjana were thinking about the same thing as I did. Haunting stories of genocide survivors.
Labels: Rwanda
posted by Reto at
15:31
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20 May 2009
More pictures from Ethiopia
This is a slideshow of our pictures from Ethiopia:
Labels: Ethiopia
posted by Reto at
09:27
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15 May 2009
Lalibela and my soul to keep
Having read the excellent sci-fi novel "My Soul To Keep" by Tananarive Due, I was familiar with the town of Lalibela which featured as "the city of priests and rock-hewn churches" in the story. As much as I had trouble to stop reading this great novel, I found it difficult to stop visiting the "holiest town of Ethiopia".Almost forgetting to feed ourselves, we pivoted between rock-hewn churches, the market and our guest house. Lalibela was planned to mark the grand finale of the Ethiopian trip. And it lived up to our expectations.
Upon arrival, we decided to sleep in the most inexpensive guest house, located spot in the center of the local market. Our guidebook claimed that the rooms came without windows, but the toilets would "come with a view". Having a courtyard a bit elevated, we could only get glimpses at a potentially scenic view over
the market and other parts of downtown Lalibela. Definitely, our rooms situated around this terrace were windowless. And the squat toilets definitely came with a fantastic view. If they would have been a bit less dirty and stinky, we might have wanted to sit there enjoying the sunset view with a drink.Known for its monolithic, rock-hewn churches, Lalibela is a favorite tourist spot for those visiting Ethiopia. There are thirteen churches, which were built during the 12th and 13th century. Today, this UNESCO World Heritage Site separated in various areas, unfortunately most of the historic buildings are covered by roofs, which require ugly, large steel poles. As much as the historic architecture is interesting, the new, protective construction is plain ugly and upsetting.
The rock-hewn churches of Lalibela were called the "Eight Wonder of the World", which made me smile - since a few days ago, the same labeling was applied for the stelaes of Aksum that we visited. Moreover, during my round-the-world trip, I have encountered numerous advertisements calling a certain place the "Eight Wonder". So, I went to Wikipedia and found a pretty good list about sites being dubbed as such. To my surprise, I visited many of them - whew!
Particularly impressive and beautiful is the Church of St. George. Located in the middle of a giant rock, it is very impressive to see and analyze how this structure has been hewn out of the surrounding stone. Being armed with (Russian language) Wikipedia printouts and the "Lonely Planet" guidebook, we had all the necessary gear to explore the various areas ourselves. Again, we had to fend off official guides who charge the published fee of more than 20 US dollars. Moreover, the guidebook claimed "you would be foolish to explore the sites on your own" - recommending to hire tour guides. An odd recommendation which the local guides obviously knew about and therefore we saw many backpackers shelling out this outrageous fee.
However, people reading other guidebooks - the French, for example, travel with the "Petit Futé" or the "Guide du Routard" - did not consider for a single moment to take up a tour guide for the visit. Discovering and exploring the sites was definitely more fun than following blindly a local. Sure, we may have missed smaller details - but the grand picture of the area unveiled steadily as we were walking through a maze of tunnels, caves and churches.Leaving Lalibela next day, we visited the morning mass at Nakuta La'ab, which is a monastery carved in the opening of the mountain. It is named after its founder, the King Nakuta La’ab, who succeeded King Lalibela. Evgeny and Tatjana decided to stay outside of the church since a mass was in progress.
I followed our driver, who acted as a facilitator, through the praying crowd to see the priest of the church. He did halt the mass so that I could enter the building and get some information about its features, such as paintings and artifacts.Spotting the waiting people outside the church was definitely making me feel uncomfortable. However, both the priest and my driver-translator did not show signs of wanting to speed up my visit. Eventually, we left after fifteen minutes when I was a bit reluctant to wade my way back out through the impatient crowd.
Finally, we were on our way back to Addis Ababa, where we arrived after a night stop in the town of Kombolcha to break the long journey. Organizing air-tickets to Rwanda was next on our agenda. Luckily, all the relevant airlines were located in one big complex, the Hilton Hotel in Addis Ababa. Quite a shock to stumble through this posh castle, full of "important" people and overpriced services. After one hour, we secured tickets on Kenya Airways - flying from Ethiopia to Rwanda via Kenya. This itinerary did cost less than half of what Ethiopian Airways asks for a direct flight. Weird airline tariffs...
After spending nine days eating local food, we did enjoy arriving in in the capital city where pizzas are hanging from the trees and spaghettis grow in every garden. Well, almost - but you get the picture about our dinner that night.
Make sure to come back to read about the next leg of our trip, the capital town of Kigali in Rwanda. Definitely a much different experience from Ethiopia in various ways.
Labels: Ethiopia
posted by Reto at
21:18
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13 May 2009
De-Birring tourists at the rock-hewn churches of Tigray
A visit to the Tigray region, in the northern part of Ethiopia is a must for any visitor on the historic circuit through this country. This region is bordering Eritrea and Sudan.Although the travel advisory of the Swiss government did warn about visits to this area, Evgeny and I found it to be very safe here. Maybe we were just ignorant and lucky, since we spotted numerous abandoned, rusty tanks next to the streets and a number of locals were carrying rifles.
The reason to see to this province are the amazing rock-hewn churches, which are scattered in several clusters over an area of 50'000 square kilometers. Each cluster has a name, such as Gheralta, Tkatisfi, Atsbi, Tembien and Wukro. Dating back to the 8th century, these churches sometimes feature Aksumite relics that were incorporated in the Christian structure. Looking much the same as the design of the obelisks in Aksum, the architecture of these churches is very unique.
Since the Tigray region features over 200 known churches, some of them on mountain tops and only accessible by climbing up ropes or chains, we had to focus on a small, scenic sample of sites. Actually, the exact number of churches in the Tigray region is unknown.
Against all advice of the Lonely Planet guidebook, we established our base in the center of the region - in the town of Wukro. Most tourists choose instead the towns of Adigrat or Mekele, which involve a two hour drive to most of the rock-hewn churches.Our choice of staying in Wukro meant that we did not plan to encounter a lot of infrastructure and that we would need to cope with what was on offer in town. This was good enough for us, since we liked local food and had no problems sleeping in very basic hostels. As it later turned out, the hostel in Wukro would become the cheapest one during our entire trip (at less than a US dollar a night) - featuring a spotless shared bathroom and a beautiful, small little courtyard.
We had dinner in another brand-new tourist hotel. In fact, it was so new, that the kitchen wasn't fully equipped and therefore not operating. We were offered local food which the waiter would get for us from a stall across the street. Since the bar was well equipped and the terrace quite inviting, we accepted the offer and spent a great evening in this small town.Next morning, we visited the churches, which involves handing out a small sum of Birr, the local currency, to a kid who will guard the parked car, handing out a small sum of Birr to the guard with the key to the church - and handing over a small donation to the priest sitting next to the entrance.
Moreover, Evgeny and Tatjana were busy taking pictures with some kids, which involved yet more "de-Birring". Throw in a few random kids here and there, who do casually jump around in front of tourists by asking for pens (and money) and you'll get the picture how strenuous a day at the churches can be.
Our road trip through the Tigray region was quite smooth, mainly due to the extensive road work in this part of Ethiopia. In some places, expanding the narrow roads meant to tear down parts of buildings, exposing rooms to the public.
Leaving to our next destination, we made a quick stopover in Mekele - which is the capital of Tigray. Oddly enough, the impressive Derg monument, which monopolizes the scenic view of the city, was off-limits to us tourists at the time we visited. In recent history, Mekele is associated closely with the catastrophic famine in Ethiopia during the mid-1980's. There were hunger camps around the city, sheltering more than 70'000 refugees and tens of thousands waiting to be allowed in the area. During that time, around 50 people died each day in these camps.
Today, Mekele shows little sign of this part of its difficult past, however - there are monuments as a reminder of the other dark past of the town: The war with Eritrea.A particularly gripping story we were told, was the one about a bomb which was dropped by the Eritrean Air Force during a 1998 air raid. It did hit the Ayder elementary school, killing eleven children, one teacher and a woman with a baby on her back. We left Mekele, after hearing similar gripping stories, with a bit of emotional feelings. Planning to fly next to Rwanda in a couple of days from now, we better had to get used to the gruesome reality of recent history.
Luckily, we got distracted by the beautiful scenery and landscape while we drove along the road to visit the highlight of our Ethiopian trip: The awesome and historic village of Lalibela.
Labels: Ethiopia
posted by Reto at
21:04
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11 May 2009
Dawn at high noon in Aksum
Still confused about the last posting about traveling back in time using the Ethiopian calendar? Well, then let me stir a bit more the possum: Ethiopia uses a 12-hour clock system. The first cycle is from dawn to dusk, the second one dusk to dawn. This means, that the start of the day is dawn (not midnight). Consequently, 7:00am on a tourists' watch corresponds to 1:00 in daylight hours in local Ethiopian time. Noon becomes 6:00 in daylight hours, and 7:00pm becomes 1:00 in evening/night hours.Obviously, this creates sometimes discussions when negotiating with Ethiopians. It seemed to us that they run purposely tourists through the calculation exercise, since most official timetables are used to the Western Standard time calculation (starting at midnight). Nevertheless, locals among themselves definitely use the Ethiopian time descriptions.
Another confusing point is the language. Besides of Amharic - the prevalent modern language used in Ethiopia - Ge'ez is the de-facto language used in the catholic orthodox churches. The letters of both languages are the same - they are like beautiful paintings, unreadable to an unskilled traveler like me.
Ge'ez has its roots in the Askumite Empire (400 BC to around 900 AD) and was widely spoken in the area of the African Horn, which are today Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Northern Sudan. The town of Aksum was the trading center of this Empire - and it shows everywhere.
Being full of historic sites, this was one of our major point of interest during our trip through Ethiopia. Tatiana, Evgeny and I did settle in a small hotel
after our arrival from a very scenic road trip next to the Simien mountains. Although Aksum was very beautiful, having a lot of small markets and narrow streets, we quickly did figure out that one half day was more than enough to visit most of the places. However, the itinerary we worked out with the car rental organization before setting off, was stating one full day (two nights) in Aksum. Although travelling independently, adapting the schedule to our need was a bit of a problem, since car rentals in Ethiopia usually do come with a driver. And they obviously try to sell longer trips. We soon discovered that renting a car, wanting to go where we wanted and when we wanted, would be a tough business.Next morning, during breakfast, we did confront our driver with the new plan. He first went into big blurbs that the distances on our proposed schedule were too big, once we clarified this one, the road conditions would not allow to drive that far.
Clearly, since we wanted to leave around noon to our next destination, he did figure out that we were aiming to finish our trip faster - which means also a shorter hire period. Once running out of arguments, our driver called his boss in Addis Ababa and we exchanged arguments over the mobile phone. Oddly, car rental company owner seemed to worry solely about us wearing down his rental car and the driver by "using it too much". Hiring a car to move every day from site to site was an alien concept for these guys. But renting a car to stay several days in one place was an alien concept to us as well. Eventually common sense (we) succeeded in getting the itinerary changed according to our wish.Although we lost a bit of time in arguing, we were ready and on the the major site, the Northern Stelae Park, by around nine in the morning. The impressive structures at this park are in perfect condition - in fact they look as if they were new. But they are hundreds of years old. The tallest standing stelae are around 25 meters high. There would be another one, taller at 33 meters length, but it is lying broken on the ground.
Back in 1937, Italian soldiers shipped a 1700 year old obelisk to Rome. In 1947, a United Nations agreement specified this stelae to be shipped back to Ethiopia, but it took another couple of dozen years before this happened. In April 2005, this obelisk finally was shipped back to Aksum, where it was re-erected in 2008. (Picture of the Stelae in Rome)
The Northern Stelae Park is only a small sample of the Aksumite Empire's skills and technology. In fact, everywhere throughout town, we did spot smaller stelaes, which are markers of underground burial chambers.Numerous were the other sites that we visited that morning. The Ezana Inscription, which is a relatively small site, contains a memorial inscription which belongs to an Aksumite king of the 4th century AD, known as Ezana. This stone reminded me a lot of the Rosetta Stone, sice it is inscribed in Greek, Sabean and Ge'ez translations. In this inscription, King Ezana announces the victories over his enemies.
The Queen of Sheba's Bath (actually a reservoir) was a bit of a pointless visit - imagine a plain, square pool filled with water - but the Dungur ruins outside of town were quite interesting from a historical point of view. Measuring 52 meters by 55 meters, the Dungur complex' central building is 18m square, dating back to the 6th century AD. It was probably the residence of Aksumite nobles. Next to these ruins is located yet another stelae field.
The tombs of Kings Kaleb & Gebre Meskel were reminding us of visits to Egypt, although the Askumite tombs are dating to the 6th century AD. Set on a hill outside of town, this site also did offer beautiful landscape views. The architecture is quite intruiging, since the irregular shapes of the stones do lock without requiring iron clamps.Happy, but groggy from an overdose of history, names, dates and places, we were setting off for our next destination around noon time (I think this is 6:00 daytime in Ethiopian standard). And we were eagerly looking forward to see another site (Wukro and the rock-hewn churches of Tigray) next day - not having to stagnate around Aksum, which paid us a beautiful farewell landscape as panorama on our road out.
Labels: Ethiopia
posted by Reto at
22:09
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