Alex Little

Alex March 11th, 2010

The other weekend, I had a great trip down to the Bale mountains. Fortunately we were able to borrow car (4×4) for a few days from a friends work in Addis. Bale is known for it’s trekking and horseriding, but fortunately, given that it rained almost the entire time, we hadn’t planned to do either of these activities and spent most of the time driving – our shortest days drive being about 7 hours.

The roads to and around Bale were far worse that we had expected- mainly because most them are in the process of being asphalted, so the ‘road’ that you can use is actually a track next to where the road is going to be. At one point it took us over 3 hours to do less than 100km.

Basing ourselves in Robe, we had a day up to the Sanetti Plateau (over 4000m high) to watch Ethiopian Wolves and then on to the Harenna Forest. The landscape is completely the opposite to that around Tigray – with real forest and greenery- as a result of all the rain. The next day we headed another 120km east to the Sof Omar caves. These were fantastic (see photos below), fortunately we picked up a guy from the local village who happened to be a history teacher at the local high school, so he was able to translate what the guide was telling us. Due to the rain we couldn’t get as far in to the caves as we would have liked – since crossing the river inside the cave would have been too dangerous. The teacher also had a map of the cave system (below) – 17km long – if anyone is interested I have higher quality copies of the images than I’ve uploaded below. Fortunately I’d remembered to take along my little tripod so was able to get some reasonable photos once we were inside the caves.

The next night was spent at the Dinsho lodge which the guide book describes as being like an abandoned ski lodge. It was a little tricky to find, the road builders had removed the signpost so we ended up taking someone from town to show us where to go, on arrival all was dark and locked up (living up to the guides book’s description) , so we went back into town to track down the warden.

The next morning the warden too us out for a walk to watch see Nyala (photos below again!), then back in the car for a drive to Shashemene (home of Rastafarianism apparently) for lunch and up to Lake Langano for an overnight stay by the lake, and few drinks and a swim – my camera battery had long since died by this point.

The highlight for me was certainly getting to the caves, it would have been difficult to get there without our own transport and now that I’ve seen a small part of the Bale national park, I’d certainly like to go back during a drier period for a trekking holiday.

• Tags: Bale • caves • Dinsho • ethiopia • national park • nyala • Robe • sof omar • wolf
• Posted in: Travel • VSO

• No Comments
• 22 views

Alex January 4th, 2010

Happy New Year! (Although in the Ethiopian calendar it’s still 2002, 2010 won’t be reached until Sept 2017)

We celebrated with meal out with some friends from work, letting some fireworks off in the street a little early as our friends children were getting tired and needed to go to bed. We were little concerned to start with about letting fireworks off in the street, we were quite near the military communications facility, plus all week there’s been the Ethio-Sudan Joint Border Commission Conference, so there’s been a high police and security presence in town with all the visiting ministers and Sudanese Ambassador. We didn’t think that some loud explosions late at night in the centre of town would go down very well, but we had been reassured that all would be fine and fortunately it was.

After the fireworks, we celebrated midnight at a local bar with a flaming sambuka and despite Thashika’s best efforts at burning the place down after dropping hers on the floor, we had a fun night. Not a single attempt at singing Auld Lang Syne was made.

One the way home, with the blue moon I got a few decent photos of our house and street just lit by moonlight. But the photos look a lot brighter on my camera screen than they do on my laptop screen… see how this looks on your screen:

If anyone feel like a challenge, work out when the next blue moon will be in the Ethiopian calendar. The Ethiopian calendar starts on 12 Sept with 12 months of exactly 30 days each, then a month of 5 or 6 days depending on whether it’s a leap year or not. Post your answers below.

• Tags: blue moon • mekelle • new year eve
• Posted in: Travel • VSO

• No Comments
• 171 views

Alex December 28th, 2009

A belated Happy Christmas to everyone!

Despite being quite a long way from the cold snowy weather in the UK, we still managed a reasonable attempt at a (vaguely) traditional Christmas. This year we invited people over to our house for dinner, drinks and games. A few volunteers from nearby (well, Mike had a 2 day bus trip to reach us) towns and other friends and colleagues from Mekelle joined us. Everyone contributed to the food and drink, Mike (a different one) made some great roast beef and Daan and Anita brought roast potatoes and lots more, then we had meat and veggie chillis plus veggie curry. Our drink of choice was mulled wine – it’s one of the only ways to make the local wine drinkable, and dessert was a selection of cake, panna cotta, jelly and angel delight.

After a bloated afternoon we were ready to play a few games in the evening. Pass the parcel was first, though no-one seemed too keen on the forfeits we’d put in between some of layers. Then we played the chocolate game (the one where you roll a die, if you get a 6 you put on hat, gloves and scarf then eat as much chocolate with knife and fork as you can before someone else rolls a 6), our improvised die may have accounted for the high number of sixes that came up.

So in true Christmas fashion, two days later we’re still working our way through the leftover food and drink.

• Tags: christmas
• Posted in: Travel • VSO

• No Comments
• 157 views

Alex December 7th, 2009

For the weekend after the training week the university lent us a driver and car to head over to Axum, so I could show Mike and Jaime some of the tourist attractions in Tigray. On Saturday morning we drove over to Axum and spent the afternoon seeing a few of the sights there – although I’ve now been several times, I’m still not a very good guide and have to make up most of the history (though I’m sure this is what most of the local guides do too!)

On Sunday morning we set off relatively early to go to the Debre Damo monastery, famous for being only accessible by climbing up a 20 metre rope and for only allowing male visitors, women (and female animals) are banned from the monastery and neighbouring village.

We arrived shortly after 2 coaches had arrived from Addis for a funeral. One of their relatives had asked to be buried at Debre Damo, but as the ceremony was at the monastery all the women who had come had to sit around at the base to wait to be driven back to Addis. Everything needed by the village (of around 400 people), including food, is hauled up by rope, so we can only assume this was also the way the body had been taken up. Though fortunately we’d arrived too late to see this.

When it came to our turn for climbing up, we were given the option of having a safety rope, although many of the locals just climb straight up. The impression given by the safety rope is that several people are a the top pulling you up, or a winch. However actually arriving at the top, you find it’s an old priest and couple of small children using a leather rope, thin and stitched together in places, which is preventing a fall. This doesn’t exactly inspire confidence for the return trip, which must be done by the same route.

There is a video of my descent, I’ll post the YouTube link soon, in the meantime, here are a few pictures:

• Tags: debre damo • monastery • rock church • tigray
• Posted in: Travel • VSO

• No Comments
• 210 views

Alex November 2nd, 2009

With being based in the Computer Science dept, it’s quite rare for me to have to travel for work, other than just across to the other side of town to visit a different campus. This week however I was invited to attend a training workshop over at Axum University to find out about some English language training software that has been donated to the University there, and has also been made freely available for Mekelle Uni to install too. The training had been arranged by the previous VSO English Language Improvement Coordinator (ELIC) at Axum, and has been taken over by the new VSO volunteers who arrived a few weeks ago, so was also a good opportunity to get to meet the new volunteers.

Four of us from the Uni (plus driver) set off on Sunday morning. What I thought was a very optimistic start time (7:15am) for a Sunday, turned out to be only 15 mins short of our actual departure – very unusual for such good timekeeping here.

The ELIC centre at Axum looked very well organised, with a computer lab set up and a very clean (dust free) room. The software used for the training was from a company based in Hong Kong, Clarity English and one of their directors, Andrew, had come over to do the training and has donated the software to both Axum and Mekelle Universities. There are a range of different programs for different aspects of learning English and all seem very easy to use, though staff and students would need little introduction in how they can use the software and get the most out of it.

Out of the 8 programs (CDs), two were of particular interest to me. Firstly was a training for the IELTS certification. I’ve been asked by the Computer Science department here to help set up an IELTS certification centre, as an income generation scheme for the department. So will be good to be able to offer students facilities to train and test themselves before taking the exam. Secondly, there was some test/quiz authoring software. Although this had fewer options than the quiz module in Moodle, it had a much clearer and cleaner interface in terms of authoring, so would be much easier to get teachers trained up in how to create their own quizzes than it would be with Moodle.

The software looks good and will be great if we can find some computer labs where it can be installed for students access, all need to ensure is that the labs have headphones with mics available to get the most out of the software.

Whilst in Axum we also had chance to visit a few of the historical sites too, though most I had visited on my previous visit last year. Our route back to Mekelle took us via Adigrat – I’ve never taken this route back before, having always gone through Abi Adi. The Axum – Adigrat – Mekelle road is well paved almost the entire way, so although further than via Abi Adi, it’s quicker and more comfortable.

We stopped off at the Yeha Temple, which, according to our guide, at 2500 years old is the oldest building in Africa, and was the centre of the Yeha empire (before the Axumite empire). We were told that ibexes were then common in the area and can now only be found in the Simien mountains. I’m sure this will be related to that fact that as they held some religious significance, ibexes were sacrificed in the temple (although obviously I could be wrong!) – we were shown the area in the temple where it’s believed the sacrifices took place.

In a small museum next to the temple we were shown some carved rocks and pottery that had been found in the surrounding area by farmers, although a problem is that when farmers find historical items, they are often sold on to collectors.

• Tags: axum • axum university • english • yeha
• Posted in: Travel • VSO

• No Comments
• 244 views

Alex September 29th, 2009

Last weekend was Meskel – a celebration of the finding of the true cross. Last year I’d arrived in Mekelle just in time to celebrate Meskel so this year we were going to head up to Adigrat as there is a bigger celebration there. Unfortunately all the hotels there were booked up, so we didn’t go in the evening. Instead we stayed in Mekelle and headed up the mountain overlooking town to watch the bonfire being lit and the torchlit procession down into town – much as we had done last year.

Early on Sunday morning, we drove up to Adigrat just for the day to see the daytime Meskel celebrations there, held in the football stadium, a bonfire ready to be lit on the centre spot and the whole town out in their traditional clothes. First a few speeches by some of the chief priests from the region, then the fire was lit and people used the ashes from the fire to draw crosses on their foreheads.

On our way back into town we stopped at a friends family’s cafe for a couple of drinks, where a TV crew from Ethiopian TV (ETV) interviewed us. So if you’re able to receive ETV, we may be on sometime this Sunday. In case you miss us on TV here are a few photos:

• Tags: adigrat • etv • mekelle • meskel
• Posted in: Travel

• 1 Comment
• 392 views

Alex September 16th, 2009

Last weekend I had a fantastic trip down to Lalibela (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lalibela). It’s one of the main tourist attractions in Ethiopia and, in my opinion, was far more worthwhile visiting than Axum. Although a small city, it feels like a small village, with very few large concrete building common elsewhere. I guess this has a lot to do with it’s UNESCO World Heritage site status – only slight ruined by the huge covers that have been erected over some of the churches to stop them decaying further – I’m sure there are ways this could have been done to fit in better with the local surroundings.

If was only a flying visit for us, 6 of us drove down via Samre and Sekota, this is the cross country short cut, around 300km on unpaved roads against over 500km if you go the paved route. In the entire 7 hour journey we only saw one other vehicle on the road.

On Saturday morning we visited, with our excellent guide, the amazing 11 rock churches in the two main church complexes in the centre of Lalibela. Around 800 or 900 years old, the churches have been carved down into the rock, some consisting of only one solid piece of rock:

The priests here seemed much amiable to tourists, especially compared to some priests at the rock churches around Tigray and Mekelle.

In the afternoon, we took a trip on mules up to another church, Asheton Mariam, around 7km from town. Unfortunately they’d doubled the entrance fee a couple of days before (for the Ethiopian New Year), and we were all a little reluctant to pay 100 birr (approx 10USD) to get in, so actually we didn’t go inside. It may seem a little odd not spending this money but it soon mounts up when you’re visiting many churches, plus all of us had residence IDs, but no discount for that.

Then on Sunday we drove back – stopping off at Yemrehanna Kristos – around 45 km form Lalibela. It’s a church and palace built inside the mouth of a cave, further back in the cave are 1000’s of skeletons of pilgrims who came to the church to die and be buried – over the course of the last several hundred years. A little gruesome, with all the skeletons are just piled up at the back, only one or two having coffins.

The traffic was rather heavy on the trip home, must have been at least 10 other vehicles on the road. It gave me chance to really try out my GPS, so now I have the entire route from Mekelle to Lalibela to upload to OpenStreetMap, plus many villages and towns on the way – few of which we found the name for.

It was a great trip and I’d recommend anyone to go and visit. Being more of a tourist town than Other places, it is more expensive to eat, drink, sleep, but certainly worth the extra money

• Tags: ethiopia • lalibela • rock churches
• Posted in: Travel

• No Comments
• 241 views

Alex June 10th, 2009

I’ve put up a selection of the photos I’ve taken so far in Ethiopia – in case you have a spare 5 (or so!) minutes. I’ve not yet had chance to get them all labelled up, but will do when I get the time.

• Tags: ethiopia • photo album • photos
• Posted in: Travel • VSO

• No Comments
• 270 views

Alex December 16th, 2008

It’s not every Sunday evening you spend in a bar eating goat and drinking neat gin with the local chief of police whilst watching “ultimate fighting” on satellite TV.

So basically another normal weekend in Ethiopia. The rest of the weekend was only slightly less eventful. Had an early Christmas meal up at the Gheralta Lodge, near where I went up to the rock churches a few weeks ago. We climbed up to another rock church and this time we actually managed to get in, though this might have been to do with the fact that we went to pick up the priest from home and gave him a lift home.

Corinna and Tina, who’d arranged the weekend, wouldn’t let us get away with just visiting another rock church despite Guh church requiring scrambling and free climbing up a few hundred metres – certainly not one for anyone suffering vertigo. To make the weekend more fun we had a checklist to complete…

1. Find the local village chairman and take a little film with a short intervew
2. Take photo of one team member on a donkey
3. Take photos of all team members drinking tilla
4. Rebuild and Ethiopian symbol with human bodies (build in local people)
5. Dress 2 team members in local clothes and take pictures
6. Find the local water well and bring a sample
7. Bring something personal from the priest of the church
8. Take photo of the team with an many animals as possible
9. Sing a simple song with groups of locals and film it

Despite only setting off at 4pm, and it gets dark at 6pm we managed to complete the entire list as well as visiting the church, although we weren’t back to the lodge until well after dark – Prem and Corinna had driven out to find us, thinking that we’d broken down or got lost. We arrived back in time for dinner at the lodge, four courses followed a sheep bbq, a few bottles of wine and carrot cake.

Monday evening has been relatively quiet – a few drinks with a colleague from work, whose friend wanted me to find him a wife in the UK!

• Tags: ethiopia • gheralta • rock church • tigray
• Posted in: Travel • VSO

• 1 Comment
• 423 views

Alex December 9th, 2008

Here’s a Google map with my house and office in Mekelle marked

• Tags: ethiopia • maps • mekelle
• Posted in: Maps & Geolocation • Travel • VSO

• 1 Comment
• 288 views