Sudan - first impressions

In the first six hours in Sudan I have already had four or five experiences which have already started defining the place for me

Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop

Sudan seems to have a schizophrenic attitude to tourists. In some Sudanese embassies it is almost impossible to get a visa, whereas in Addis Abbaba, once I had coughed up the US$100, I had mine the next day. Then when you enter the country you are subjected to varying degrees of interrogation at a collection of different inspection posts - immigration, customs, police, security police and some guy in an office who really insisted I sign a piece of paper the contents of which I had no idea. However I am an old hand at border crossings, so despite the hot sun bearing down like it wanted to tear holes through me, and the hot wind that sucked the moisture from me whilst filling the air with a sandy mist, I summoned all the patience I had left and slowly trudged from one place to the next. After receiving the appropriate permission to travel, which required me to donate another photo of myself to the Sudanese government, the minibus filled up, drove around town a couple of times, visited immigration and customs with a passenger list and then the security police again (they did a final bag search) , we motored off out of town.
About two minutes down the road, at the end of town was the first checkpoint - customs and immigration and security police all had a look inside, and requested my papers. I then had to get out, get my bag down from the roof and watch them go through it again - it wasn't just me they were doing this for all the passengers. I watched the guy who pulled up next to us in a ute, be approached by four different sets of officials in four different coloured uniforms.


We then drove another one minute and stopped at the army checkpoint - three small thatched huts, a concrete building in the middle, a radio antenna, and five or six very bored looking soldiers languorously draped over anything they could find in the shade. Behind the buildings was a four wheel drive ute with a machine gun mounted on the back. (Yep, just like you see on the news about Darfur !!)

After we passed through this checkpoint we drove another fifteen minutes before we reached the next one - out comes the passport, the same questions, the rudimentary look through what everyone's luggage and then we are on our way - until the next checkpoint. After another two or three of these stops couldn't help but think about how this is the African special - that is the idea that if enough people do a job enough times in a half arsed way eventually the combined efforts will lead to .... umm, well will lead to something. Perhaps it is law enforcement by tedium - eventually you give up and stop travelling.

Despite the extreme heat, even when I open the window when we are moving at a good speed the air being blown in is hotter than inside the van, I manage to fall asleep. I am woken by stopping at another checkpoint, and I wonder how many I have missed - the van driver now has my passport in a vain attempt to speed the process along. However this time I have to answer the where are you going ? questions myself, and then get to watch as the luggage all gets checked again. Three hundred metres down the road we get stopped again, and everyone's papers are checked.

This went on for the four hours it took to cover the one hundred and fifty kilometres or so - the road was in great condition, the driver drove like a madman and pushed the van to what felt like 150 km/h but it still took over four hours - looking at the map made me worry that I may never make it the other side of Sudan, I don't have that many years to live.

Can I help you ?

The bus from the border drives through a maze of back streets, then comes on to a main street and drops me at what looks like a market. I am flying blind, two hours in a new country, melting from the wilting dry heat, as I don't have a map, any idea of a place to stay or where I can catch a bus to head north to Eritrea, and I understand about three words of Arabic. An older guy, dressed in a white jalabaa - the long sleeved, cover all night gown that is so favoured by Muslims with a jauntily arranged white turban covering his head, standing in front of a shop behind the make shift bus stop, notices my look of complete dismay as I stand there watching the bus drive off without much idea of what I am going to do next. He calls out "Where are you going ?" and I am so surprised by his English I wander over to him. I explain I want to find a place to stay, and we end up having a conversation about how his cousin lives in Sydney.
As darkness begins to settle, and the wind whips up the sand and dust to make a technicolour sunset which obscures the otherwise very plane town, my new friend tells me to
"Take this taxi, pay 40 cents and I will tell him where to drop you." He asks me if I want a hotel or a lokanda (big dormitories for local men, where 15 or 20 beds are spread out in an open area, costing less than a dollar for the night) I choose the cheaper option, at which point others from the crowd that has now formed advise me that I want hotel. (It always strikes me how I must be seen by locals - I was out drinking late last night, I haven't had a shower in a few days, most of my clothes appear to be allergic to soap, I haven't shaved for a month, my hair does really look like rats' tails, and I arrive in some broken arse town in the middle of nowhere in a crappy old minibus, and locals still think I want to stay at the Sheraton.) A discussion ensues as I try to make it clear what I want, and when the taxi finally fills, the old man approaches me as we are about to take off and says, " We Sudanese, our problem is we talk too much"

Where are all the women ?

As I wander around town at twilight, I ask myself where have all the women gone - there are none in the shops, restaurants and out door spaces like Ethiopia. Every once in a while I see a few here and there, and all of those are covered up, dressed completely in black with only their eyes showing. I notice the change immediately as the country seems so much more dour, as though the life and colour has been stripped out of the place.

I keep wandering and everyone is surprised, and happy to see a stranger, calling out hello, and when I stop to speak to people I am inundated with invitations - invited to have tea, then invited to have juice, then dinner, and then invited to have a juice. And of course as I am a guest, I am not allowed to pay for anything - even though some of the people earn less than a couple of dollars a day, they insist, and go on insisting when I try to argue, that they must pay.

I can almost feel the moths starting to breed in my wallet

Don't mention the war

Having dinner outside at a table, and joined by two or three younger guys, all trying to speak to me in varying levels of English. As my plate was still hall full and I was completely full, I turned their invitation to join them around, so they poured what was left of mine in to the communal plate and we ate out of that. Joined by another guy who asked e to speak in English as he wanted to listen. He told me he wanted to leave Sudan because there was no future. When we had finished the guy who had arrived last walked away and then came back and said, Come with me, my friend here wants to talk to you, so we walked inside the restaurant and sat down. The first thing they said to me was, "you know the ICC ?" I thought I was going to be on tricky grounds, so I played dumb, "Ah no, umm, yes, umm"
"We like Ocampo, we think he is right"
Suddenly I felt the mood changing, and they were off
"There is no democracy in Sudan. The President is a criminal, we like O'Campo (the Chief Prosecutor at the ICC) The government in Sudan is not a good government, it keeps the people down. They are criminals, and we want to change them but we can't"
"But you can talk about it, like this" I asked, surprised that they were letting rip in public
"Yes, because everybody in Sudan agrees. Nobody likes him - it is just that people are afraid, and we don't know what to do to change. What should we do to change ?" I was asked earnestly
"Well, I just arrived and..." I stumbled
"Before you came to Sudan you have an idea of what the place is like, what do you think of Sudan ?"
"Well I only arrived today from Ethiopia, I have only been in the country for five hours , and all I saw was police stop, police stop, police stop, police stop" I answered
"Yes, for us it is the same. When we move around in our country we are treated like foreigners, the government tries to stop us from moving around. I tell you in Sudan there are only two classes, the rich and the poor. I want to leave Sudan because there is no future here, people are very poor and nothing will change. How can I leave Sudan ? Can you help me go to Australia?"
After all this I was a little flummoxed - particularly as the night before an Ethiopian had told me that I couldn't talk politics there, and I had only been in Sudan a matter of hours. Before I could answer, the guys thanked me and told me they were leaving. They then paid for my meal on the way out.
After thinking about it for a while, and pondering in particular how indicative of general public opinion they were, I started to think that often we in the West fret about imposing our rights on others, whereas the truth probably is that the people at the bottom of the pile want as much of that imposed as they can get. All that navel gazing and po-mo relativism worry can be thrown out the window, countries should be able to impose moral standards upon governments, and perhaps more importantly, should be able to enforce those standards - particularly when they are grossly violated.
I confess that think Al Bashir is a thug, and that whilst the ICC procedures may do very little to reign him in, they do serve as a good precedent. Now I am also starting to think that maybe the procedures are also supported by the majority of Sudanese, which can only be a good thing - for us and for them. Hopefully we can live up to the trust they place in us.

Last bus trip in Ethiopia

If you are looking for the most genuine Ethiopian experience then you need do no more than get on a bus. I have written previously about the joys of catching a bus in Ethiopia, but the fun really begins once you finally head off. This took longer than usual when I took my last bus ride from Gonder to the border with Sudan, as two large cages of chickens had to be loaded on to the roof of the bus and the rickety cages made this a full hour task, and it looked like it was going to take even longer when one of the porters tried to put the 10ft long cage on his back then climb up the ladder at the back of the bus - for a brief moment it looked like
Finally we hit the road, and it didn't take long before the most important item in the bus was put in to use - the vomit bag. Every Ethiopian bus, probably by law, carries a plastic bag of plastic bags, usually stored near the back door. When the roads get windy the bags get handed out to everyone, but in our case we were on some of the straightest roads in Ethiopia, which means the bus boy has to dash to the back of the bus grab a bag and get it to the ailing passenger before the vomit hits the floor. What the straight roads don't mean though is a vomit free trip, that is something that just doesn't happen. Despite trying hard not to look a few times I couldn't but peep as passenger gave a bag their best, tied it up at the top and threw it out the window (or on to the floor if they were feeling a little lazy) - the suspended solids in a pale yellow liquid glittering in the sun still makes me feel a little queasy. The preponderance of vomit may have a lot to do with the fact that there are about eighty people (two rows of three and two) crammed in to an ordinary bus AND no matter how hot or stuffy it becomes, all of the windows will be closed. Ethiopians believe that air coming in a window brings illness, so if you ever dare to open a window they give you the evil eye, tell you to close the window or come over and do it themselves.
Now, after about an hour on the pass roughly half of the eighty people had vomited, and roughly seventy five percent of these people had used a plastic bag. Meanwhile a good percentage of the passengers are also having a hack or a gob now and then straight on to the floor, which is where anything that anyone no longer wants - i.e. - all of the rubbish ends up. Adding to all of this is the dust that the bus kicks up as it motors along as none of the roads are paved. The piece de resistance of this concoction is the rancid smell that emanates from the women who lather on sheep and goat fat to keep their hair looking shiny.
So as we descended out of the hills in to the heat of the desert plains, and the sun began to cook the bus, the pungent mix human sweat, vomit, rancid animal fat mixing with clouds of dust in the seemingly ever diminishing small space of a bus with no fresh air at all, made me feel quite happy that I was finally leaving Ethiopia and its smelly, get up at 4.30am to catch 'em buses - but there was one small last piece of theatre to go.

As we had driven through the mountains every time we stopped the owner of the chickens would check that his charges were doing all right. As we hit the planes that marked the beginning of the border with Sudan the bus kicked up a few notches with hysterical results. We were careering along on a dusty road when suddenly three or four chickens were spotted out of the back windows of the bus falling from the roof, bouncing off the side of the bus and disappearing in to the cloud of dust that was following us. Eventually after plenty of shouting from all the passengers the driver realised what had happened and slammed on the brakes. When we stopped about half the passengers got out - half of those started chasing the chickens and the other half coached the first half - first on the best method of rounding up the chooks in 40 degree heat in the scrub, and then secondly on how to put the chooks back in the cages and then fix the cages. It kept me in stitches for half an hour, as I enjoyed the relief of breathing some fresh air for a change.
The last hour and a half of the journey was punctuated by two more of these stops, once when a couple of birds escaped and were running around on the roof, and twice more when some felt off the back of the bus. The last time the driver had had enough and didn't even bother stopping - so by now there are probably a whole packs of chickens running around crossing the Ethiopia-Sudan border without the appropriate passports.

Food, glorious food

Somehow I managed to stumble in to Ethiopia during Coptic Lent, during which almost the entire country fasts - abstaining from eating meat for forty days, turning the country in to a vegetarian paradise. I spent the six weeks I was there living off beyenit - fasting food, and was so impressed I even took a photo !!!

The main part of the Ethiopian diet, njera, a huge pancake made from tef, a grain a bit like wheat that only grows at altitude in Ethiopia and Eritrea. The standard (and almost exclusive dish in most places) involves njera as the plate and then a selection of varying goodies - ranging from your bog standard shiro (the paste in the middle made from spiced, lentil flour) , to spicy eggplant, fancy beetroot and a few more lentil dishes.

An unwanted Australian - beyherzaff - the tree from over the sea

Sometimes when you look out over the hills of Ethiopia, and the rest of Africa south of there, you could easily make the mistake of thinking you were in Australia - the hills are covered in that very recognisable green leaves, yellow flowers and white trunks of the eucalyptus tree.

In Ethiopia they are called beyherzaff - bey meaning sea and herzaff meaning branch or tree, and when I tell many locals where I am from they immediately tell me how King Menelik, the first king of united Ethiopia (and the grandfather of the divine Emperor Haile Selassie). Like in most East and Southern African countries they were brought to Africa from Australia at the turn of the century (in the other countries by the new colonists), to replace the rapidly deforested hills. In the perfect conditions of Africa, plenty of sun, water and good soil the eucalyptus grow like wildfire, to mangle a few metaphors. In the absence of any small marsupials to pick on the saplings, the trees grow straight and tall, rushing towards the sky at break neck speed. Since their introduction they have self seeded to cover large swathes of land, crowding out any indigenous trees that have been left, and often because of the more recent high levels of deforestation, they are the only trees that can be seen in many areas.
You would think that any tree is a good tree, but the eucalyptus is not native so it creates problems in its alien environment, deep roots steal the water from other trees and cause the water table to rise. Native animals and birds haven't adapted to use the eucalyptus, so like native trees they are pushed elsewhere by the unwanted Australian interloper.

In some areas, especially in Rwanda, people have wised up, and are now clearing the eucalyptus for firewood and replacing them with native species, but in most areas the antipodean import continues to spread its reach. Maybe they could send a few back to Australia.

Loiterer on a mission

Finally there is a purpose to the loitering - hmm perhaps that may be an oxymoron. Anyway, on a bus ride from Mekele to go to Debre Damo I met Teklab, an Eritrean refugee living in Ethiopia. (For those who don't know Eritrea fought a 3o year war of independence with Ethiopia that ended in 1991, and then they fought another war in 1997) Eritrea is afraid of another war and requires all its male citizens from 18 to 45 to do full time permanent military service, and requires a permit for its citizens to leave the country. Nonetheless, each month about 1000 refugees slip across the border to Ethiopia and 2500 go to Sudan.

Teklab left five years ago, and he is a lucky one, he has a residency permit to live and work in Ethiopia, most refugees end up in camps, where they are not allowed to work, and must remain in the camps, sometimes they are allowed out for a week at a time. When I met up with Teklab him in Shire where he lives, the mere mention of his sister and mother who still live in Eritrea almost killed the conversation - Teklab suddenly became very quiet and I could almost see in his eyes memories of better days flashing past. (Teklab can't return to Eritrea meaning he hasn't seen his sister or his mother since he left, it is not possible to call between the two countries because the lines have been cut, and emails are censored) Teklab became animated again when he got on to talking about freedom, the word Eritreans give for the end of the war and independence. He said "When freedom came in 1991" as if it had simply knocked on the door and had been allowed in, rather than a thirty year war in which Eritrea had no international allies. However for five or six years life was good, travel between the two countries was open to all families were reunited, and their was a post conflict economic boom in Eritrea - its economy grew faster than any other country in Africa. It seemed that the tough sacrifices the Struggle were over, and people in both countries looked forwarded to an even more promising future. Tragically it only lasted six years, before the two leaders launched another war between the two countries, ostensibly about control of some busted arse border town, but more about egos - egos which cost around 70,000 to 100,000 lives, and ruined the economies and lives of millions in both countries.

I met a few other unluckier refugees on a local bus. They had managed to get a two week pass out and had been to Addis, but they were now on their way back to the camp - a five hour bus ride, and then a ten kilometre walk. There is no real chance of escape as anybody travelling in Ethiopia, particularly around the border areas, has their papers checked so often that any refugee on the run would soon be caught. They told me about how Canada had declined to let them migrate so they were now going to try for Australia. They had been in the camp for five years, and spent most of their time doing nothing - they are not allowed to work, including even farming the land inside the camp, or study - people live off handouts from the UNHCR and aid agencies, so they have no income, and very little to do. I later rode on a bus through another camp, about a thousand or so ramshackle huts, distributed across a denuded hillside - black burnt soil and not a tree in sight. As in most places in Ethiopia, everything was covered in a thick layer of dust thrown up by passing cars, and whilst there was no fence, it looked worse than a prison.

Teklab convinced me to visit Eritrea, first by telling me the border was open, and secondly and more importantly by giving me a job - to carry a letter and photo across the border like an illicit postman.

Noise,blackouts and some castles in Africa

It is not that often that you find yourself in the middle of a blackout hoping that it continues but in Ethiopia things a a little unusual that way. For some reason hotels are normally always situated above, behind or in the worst cases, inside bars/restaurant/nightclubs. The action will usually start around nine in the evening, which means when you arrive at the hotel before that time you have no idea how busy, and loud, it will get.
The music is cranked up, and failing that, English football, or just any sound at all, and this is Africa, so when any music is played on electronic equipment the volume must be turned up to eleven, so that almost everything is distorted beyond comprehension. There are many good things about Ethiopia, and I know the culture police may try to arrest me for saying this, but Ethiopian music is terrible, there appears to be no actual instruments - just badly synthesised approximations thereof, and most of the lyrics are screeched rather than sung. There also seems to be a limited range of choice, so that the same songs will be played five or six times each night. The racket makes conversation in the bar pointless and sleep nigh on impossible, even with ear plugs firmly fastened. So I hear you say, find a hotel that isn't a bar, well that doesn't work either, because inevitably somewhere within hearing range there will be a bar playing music at full volume. Contributing to this is also the way that Ethiopians tend to speak at the top of their voice, whatever the subject, location or time of day. As all buildings are made from cement and then lathered with tiles the booming voices echo throughout the building, so even when the music stops at 3am, there are still plenty of noises keeping you awake.
The one thing that offsets all of this is the tendency for the power to go out in most cities. In some places it is regular, from around 11 in the morning to 8 or 9 in the evening, in other places it is random, everything shuts off and there will be no power for a couple of hours. Travelling around to different cities it was difficult to say with any certainty when the power would go off or come on as locals tended to treat the question with disdain. So when the power went out or was out around bedtime, I found myself secretly hoping that it would stay that way until the morning time. No power meant no music which usually meant no customers, which meant no noise. Unfortunately a couple of times power returned at around 11 or midnight, the music would be cranked up, whether or not there were any customers, and I would go back to counting sheep in Amharic.


Oh yeah, there is also some old castle from the 14th and 15th century in Gonder too.

Arguing with God

Many Africans ask me why I visiting their country, or why I am travelling and the best answer I have is how I felt yesterday as I set out on a twenty two kilometre walk through some incredibly beautiful countryside to the monastery of Debre Damo. After coming down the wondrous engineering feat that is the road from Mekele to Axum, where the road serpentines down the hill, almost on top of itself and looking down I could see five or six passes of the road below me. We finally reached the bottom of the plateau after a nerve racking hour of descent, and then a couple of kilometres along I was dropped off at the turn off to the monastery - a small dirt road. To the horizon there were peaks everywhere, with a few ridge lines joining some peaks here and there. The sun was beating down, but with the breeze on my face my muscles started twinging and I was ready to go - ready to escape all the hassle that comes along with being stationery and embracing the freedom and the joy of movement.The walk proved to be as rewarding as I imagined. After a couple of kilometres on the track a few locals suggested I join them on a short cut, so we clambered up and over a hill, whereupon they left me to head out to the fields and pointed me in the direction I was to go. I dropped back down the side of the hill towards the river, spotting the road continuing on the top of the ridge line a couple of hundred metres up the side of the hill I had just come down. I reached the river bed, covered in rocks and about 150 metres across, but the water was not much more than a trickle a couple of metres wide. As I hopped across the rocks I met a few nuns who greeted me and pointed to the towering mountain in front of me and chuckled to themselves. Following their pointing figures I saw the monolith I was to climb rearing up in front of me, a circular hill that straight up for a couple of hundred of metres topped by a vertical rock face of at least a hundred metres, a natural fortress. I followed the river bank for a while and then followed the track as it headed up the hill. It was hard going with rocks strewn across the steep path and the mid day sun seemed to take particular pleasure scorching anything that was foolish enough to be out of the shade, leaving me covered in a damp layer of sweat. As I was going up I passed a number of locals coming down, all older men, dressed in their white robes. They all greeted me with a smile on their face and pointed up towards the monastery.
After about an hour of heavy going, I made it to the foot of the sheer rock face, and then skirted around the bottom looking for the only way up. After walking what seemed halfway around the cliff I stumbled across the way up and stood transfixed as I watched forty to fifty men, some who would have been well in to their sixties and seventies making their way down the fifty metre sheer cliff. Some of the men flew down, using only the thin rope made from goat skins, they did any modern day abseiler proud, leaning back so their body was perpendicular with the cliff and walking and leaping backwards down to the bottom. A few of the less game ones tied themselves in to a harness (made of course from goatskin) and using the rope they were lowered down more slowly.

After having seen the physical state of many of these men as they waited at the bottom I gave up any idea I had of wussing out and ambled over to where the ropes came down. Looking up I noticed that behind the small gate through which you entered there stood a gatekeeper dressed in his fancy robes. A kid on the ground befriended me, he told me to take my bag off, and to do the climb in bare feet. He then mentioned that it would cost me 100 Ethiopian Birr to get in and another 40 to be pulled up. (140 EB = $ 14) Now that doesn't sound like much money, except my daily budget for the six weeks spent in Ethiopia was $10, and the average Ethiopian earns about 500 Birr a month – yes per month. So 140 was quite a large sum. I checked my pockets to find that I had about 90Birr on me – I had been told it would cost me 50 to get in. I explained to the kid on the ground that was all I had, and he had a conversation with the gatekeeper, who then suddenly spouted some broken English - “Must pay 100, if not go away”. So I went and sat with the guys who had come down and ate my lunch whilst weighing up what I would do. Surely, I thought to myself if I impress upon him this is all the money I have he will let me in, it is a monastery after all.
So I return to the bottom of the ropes. Immediately he yells out,
“Give me 100 Birr.”
I explain that I only have 87 Birr
“Go away, you must pay”
At this point, probably due to the combination of having woken at 5am that morning, having spent 4 hours on a hot bus with Ethiopians refusing to open any windows whilst engaging in synchronised vomiting, then having walked around 11 kilometres and the rather irritating practice of Ethiopian Orthodox churches charging every time you even want to go near them, I confess to flying off the handle. I looked at the robed gatekeeper, and it made me wonder whether this was what it was like when we arrive at the pearly gates.
“Are you a church or a back ?” I yelled at him, but received no reply.
“What will you do if when you get to heaven it is like this – if you don't have enough money they won't let you in ? “
“No, give me 100” was his only reply, before he slipped behind the wall so I couldn't see him.
“Are you afraid ? Why are you hiding ?” I yelled up at the heavens, wondering whether even St Peter would be this tough.
“No”
I stood there and glared at him as sternly as possible but I think the distance and the superior position which he was in severely undermined the effectiveness of my stare. Eventually I walked away, sat down and had a twenty minute discussion with myself about whether I should give in and whether I really wanted to see the monastery anyway. Finally I decided that after all the effort to get there it would be a waste not to invest the extra dollar – I hunted around in my bag and found some extra money, I put everything I needed in my pockets, took off my shoes and headed over to the ropes. I decided that if sixty year olds could do it, so could I – and to save the extra four dollars I started climbing up the cliff without a harness. About 10 metres in the gatekeeper noticed and called out
“Give me 100 Birr”
Rather peeved by this point I found a resting place on the wall, and yelled back at him “I will give you your money, but how can I, there is no one here. Do you have any angels to send down to collect it ?”
After he appeared to recognise the practicality of the situation he stopped yelling and I got back to climbing. About halfway up my forearms were pounding, my hands were covered in sweat and my fingers were stuck in a grip refusing to straighten. I couldn't stop my hands from shaking. I kept going until I was about three quarters of the way up, but things were only getting worse. My hands were now shaking almost uncontrollably, my fingers and forearms were too tired to get a good grip on the rope, and I made the almost fatal mistake of looking down. I started thinking to myself, hmm you have put yourself at the risk of falling to a near certain death in order to save four bucks – nice work.
At this point the gatekeeper sensing perhaps that he could get the better of me started yelling at me to stop, and that he would get the harness. This was enough to give me the impetus to pull myself together, look up, ignore the soft voice in the back of my head telling me I couldn't do it, ignore the pain in my pain in my arms, and heave myself up the last part to the gate, and then scramble through to safety. And when I took my first step through the gate what was I greeted with – the gatekeeper demanding his 100Birr !!!
The place was in fact most impressive, like a little island oasis it was covered in green grass, with cows and goats wandering around. There were quite a number of houses, some very deep dams hewn out of the rock, and a couple of churches – one in the impressive monkey head style – made from a combination of stone and wood in alternating layers, with the stumps of the wooden beams sticking out like monkey heads. I wandered around for a while, admiring the incredible views, looking north I could see over the border in to Eritrea. I could see how this was the perfect place to hold out against the invading Arabs as they swept across Ethiopia from the coastal plains, through the mountains and towards the southern cities – destroying all of the churches and monasteries on the way. Debre Damo was one of the few to hold out until the invaders were repelled.

I managed to wander in to the main church just as the chanting was drawing to a close, and the five or six priests wandered out of the secret part of the church and then did four or five laps of the church before heading back in to the part hidden by the curtain. I headed back towards the gate and the gatekeeper kept badgering me to give him more money – first for the climb up, then for having a camera, then for going down, and then in the end just for being.Unable to resist, I went and collected a few rocks and came back and made out to be paying him in rocks. Fortunately the way down was a lot easier than the way up, and I managed to make it without stopping.