Abba Yohanni rock church (just visible halfway up the rock face)

This weekend, Martin, Jaime, Stefan (French engineer from the wind farm project) and I went over to stay at the new lodge in Abi Adi, the Maylomin Botanical Garden Lodge. It’s still in the process of opening – they only have 9 beds so far in 5 separate lodges, built in a traditional south Ethiopian style. They’ve got big plans for the rest of the lodge, new lodge buildings in other Ethiopian building styles, plus plans for a swimming pool and even an airport – but I suspect this is a little way off yet.

Maylomin Botanical Garden Lodge

On Saturday early evening, Welday, the lodge manager, took us for a walk though the mountains to see the sunset, then arrive at the Maylomin cafe (other side of town where Andy and Crissy had a barbecue and party for the college staff back in November 2008).

Sunset over Abi Adi

On Sunday morning, with the two new VSO volunteers at the teacher training college, we took a trip out to visit Abba Yohanni rock church. Set midway up a rock face, it’s just about accessible by a step climb on the western side, followed by walk through tunnels carved into the rock, ending with a tiptoe along a narrow ledge with a steep drop, to access the church.

Drinking tilla

End of tunnel and ledge to access church

Despite 2 flat tyres and camel trains blocking the road on the way back, it was great to get out and about for the weekend – especially to visit some places I’ve either not been before or haven’t been for a long time.

Camel traffic jam

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:

Debre Damo from a distance

View out over to Eritrea

Tsega, our driver

With no safety rope

Everything for the rest of the week was rather stressful as we were chasing up where equipment was and arranging to get it moved into the right place. The bureaucracy of getting all the items logged into the store, plus the lack of communication or any sense of urgency has been quite astounding. To get the items into the labs, they first must be moved into the main store, I then write a letter confirming that the items match the specification, then they are registered with the main university store manager, only then can the equipment be signed out and transferred to the college, which then has the responsibility of moving the items from the main store into the lab. With many different items, arriving at different times, to different university sites, then being distributed to two different labs, for different colleges creates rather a huge scope for mistakes, inaction and buck passing.

One reason we were given that the monitors hadn’t been moved into the labs was that the terminals hadn’t been moved and there was no point moving the monitors until the terminals were in place. Sure, the monitors are quite useless without terminals, but vice versa is also true, leading to a ridiculous catch-22 situation.

On Saturday, we went up to Wukro for a bit of what should have been relaxation. The tables for the labs are being built by the agricultural and we’ve been waiting a little while for these to be completed and delivered. When we called in the morning to ask about the tables, we were told, rather ominously, ‘you’d better come and see them’. We arrived at about 6pm to be told that the tables had just left on a truck bound for Mekelle Uni. As it was highly unlikely that any of the University store managers would at work at 7pm on Saturday evening, Father Angelo set off in his truck to catch up with them to stop them but they’d had too much of a head start. I’m unsure where the tables spent the night, but I was then called at 7am Sunday morning to say they were at the University, is someone around to receive them? I was still in Wukro and again, unlikely that anyone else would be available at the Uni at that time on a Sunday. after a few phone calls back and forth, the guards at the Uni allowed the tables to let left there for us to collect, check and sign for on Monday. The tables were actually finally located on Wednesday morning.

On top of all this we also had the training course and associated arrangements to finish off ready for the 5 day training course to start tomorrow (Monday). The following Tuesday the Spanish Ambassador is due to visit the project. As the Spanish Cooperation (AECID) organisation is funding the project, it’s important we have something to show in terms of labs/servers etc – so keeping many fingers crossed that next week is less stressful than the last, though I have major doubts about this!

We did manage to fit in a little relaxation by visiting a rock church near Wurko on the Sunday morning. We were accompanied by two researchers who have already written a couple of books about Tigrayan rock churches, who were also allowed to take photos of every page of the churches old prayer book.

Sycamore tree used as basis for logo of Digital Campus project

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!