May 17, 2024 Friday

Farewell to Gondar

We left early for our four-hour drive from Gondar to Bahir Dar, which took us from the mountains to the lakeside. As mentioned earlier, Bahir Dar was the reason we took anti-malarial drugs.

Melaku requested that we place our luggage outside our room doors by 7:45 so the staff could transport it to the registration area. Given the steep walkways between the rooms and the front desk, I was happy to comply.

We left at 8:30, earlier than our usual 9:30. Becky was bleary-eyed because she had not gone to bed until after her class ended at 2 a.m. However, she made it for breakfast at 7, and had their bags out as requested.

Becky sat with me during the trip to curl up and nap. John sat in a single seat next to the door, across the aisle from us. I enjoyed sitting with Becky because she told me a little about her class before she fell asleep. The class had guest speakers who shared their mental trauma stories, and she told me some of those stories.

Water well visit

On our way through Gondar, we passed the school we had visited a few days earlier. On the other side of Gondar, we stopped at a water pumping station and exited the van for a Learning and Discovering moment. Melaku said the government had drilled the well and installed a pump in a concrete slab surrounded by a dirt field. The well and pump were in the middle of a fenced field, with a diet road leading to the well from the gate at the main road. Melaku pointed out the hospital in the next field and told us they also used the well water.

At the gate, a woman sat in a chair collecting payment for water. The cost of the water was low. Women brought their 40-liter jugs to the pump and manually filled them. Once the jugs were full, they had to get them home, usually by carrying them. Tuk-tuks were parked outside the gate and available for hire to take the women and their water home, but most could not afford the cost.

Although tuk-tuk rides were inexpensive, these women needed to get water at least once a day to meet their household needs, and the small expenses accumulated. Additionally, the water was pumped directly from the ground without any purification.

We exited the van and walked through the gate to the pump. Some of us took turns pumping water. The pump was easy to operate as the women moved one jug after another in front of the spout. They had lines of jugs waiting to be filled. As one woman’s jug filled, the next person placed her jug in front of the spout. The woman whose jug was full, picked it up, carried it in her hands, or slung it on her back to walk home. I appreciated having purified water piped into my home.

Controversial topics

Once again, we were on the road. As we traveled, Melaku explained some controversial topics, such as the schism between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church in 451 AD. Ethiopia now has its own Orthodox Church.

Further down the road, he also told us about Ethiopia’s neighboring countries, Sudan and Somalia. He mentioned that Eritrea and Djibouti, along with the Tigray region, were once parts of Ethiopia that had broken away. This has left Ethiopia a landlocked country with no access to the sea. Although it still has the large Lake Tana in Bahir Dar and the Blue Nile, it lacks sea access.

Many agricultural products are shipped by truck to Sudan for broader distribution. While in Gondar, we saw numerous trucks transporting their products to Sudan. John noted that the highway between Gondar and Bahir Dar was a nice blacktop, but there were no personal vehicles; it was primarily shipping trucks and military vehicles. People were walking on foot.

Becky slept for most of the drive to Bahir Dar. Whenever Melaku pointed out something along the way, she would awaken and say, “That was adequate time spent learning and discovering,” and then she would go back to sleep.

Tuk-tuks

I could tell we were approaching the end of our trip when the traffic started to get heavier. Our van began to share the road with trucks loaded with grain and the ubiquitous tuk-tuks. At some point during the journey, Melaku mentioned that he was glad tuk-tuks weren’t allowed in Addis because they clog up the roads.

That had been our experience with them in all the other towns outside Addis. I hadn’t realized they weren’t in Addis until Melaku mentioned it. I agreed with him that they would significantly worsen traffic in Addis. Part of the problem was that they were so small that they would double and triple park along the side of the road while dropping off and picking up passengers, preventing larger vehicles from getting past.

Someone asked Melaku how much a tuk-tuk costs, and he said about $6,000, much less than a full-sized car. The owner drives the tuk-tuk around town and earns money by transporting people and goods. I enjoyed seeing the different decorations that various tuk-tuks put in their back windows, such as pictures of chubby babies or rock stars.

Bahir Dar and Kurifu Lodge

We finally arrived at the Kurifu Lodge, where we stayed for two nights. These were the final two nights of our trip, not counting the 47 hours it took to get home. At the entrance to the lodge, I was reminded once again that OSHA regulations do not apply here. The roof overhang from the parking lot to the registration desk was only four and a half feet above the floor, and there were steps to reach the lobby floor. Even I had to duck to get under it. I suppose if you bumped your head on the roof overhang, it’s your fault.

We gathered in the open-air lobby of the registration area while the luggage was unloaded. We pointed out our luggage and followed an employee who carried our bags to our room. The lodge was lovely, with various rock-covered buildings scattered across the foliage-covered grounds. Our room was up some steep stairs without a handrail, so it was good that we were steady on our feet.

Our room

The room was fascinating. The interior walls were covered with rocks. On each side of the bed, the rocks opened up to a space that featured paintings.

The bed was a king-size bed with curtains on all sides.

Being in Bahir Dar required curtains because the hotel was next to the lake, a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. The bed had lovely decorations made from flowers and leaves. I felt bad about disturbing the art when we went to bed, so I took pictures of it to preserve the memory.

At the end of the bed, there was a lovely, heavy wooden chest with four metal bands. I sat on the chest and felt a sharp pain from a piece of metal that looked like it had been wrenched up and never hammered down. Ouch! Don’t sit there. I placed a bag on top to avoid accidentally sitting on it again.

And the door lock. Oh, my, the door lock. It was simply a wooden bar that you put across the door to keep it closed and locked. The door did not stay closed if the bar was not on it. Wow. When you left the room, you would padlock the door shut with a hasp and latch.

Lunch and a nap

We ordered lunch while on the road, and Melaku relayed our orders to the restaurant at the lodge. The restaurant featured a large room open to the lake with big glass-paned doors. The furniture was heavy and brown with carvings. We had a table for twelve near the doors. Lunch was as good as it had been anywhere else. John and I split an entrée, as had become our custom.

After lunch, we had a couple of hours off. John and I napped. The boys played in the swimming pool. I had a massage. The lodge offered one complimentary massage per person per room. I’ll take that. Well, it wasn’t entirely free. I did tip the masseuse. She was a lovely person who spoke English, but mostly, I just let her do her job. It was an oily massage. After the massage, she dried my skin with a hot towel before I dressed and left. I enjoyed it, but not enough to have another the next day.

Coffee beans from the market

At 4, we joined our group in the front lobby for a ride in a tuk-tuk to the local market. Becky wanted to buy raw coffee to take to the States for her husband to roast. Melaku suggested she wait until the Bahir Dar marketplace.

John and I rode in a tuk-tuk together.

Melaku took us to a space in the marketplace. I assumed he knew the proprietor because she weighed out four kilograms of raw coffee beans and put it into plastic bags for us.

Becky was going to pay Melaku, and he was going to pay for it. The lady must have trusted Melaku because we walked off with the coffee without paying for it.

Ice cream?

At dinner, a staff member asked who wanted ice cream for dessert. Eleven out of twelve hands went up. We’d had soft-serve ice cream at Gondar and were eager for more. A wait staff person brought the “ice cream” in small, fluted parfait dishes on a tray. I put “ice cream” in quotes because it was not. I don’t know what it was, but not ice cream. The white substance looked like it might have been vanilla ice cream, but one spoonful on a gelato flat-bladed spoon was enough to convince me otherwise. The glass was cold, but the substance in it wasn’t. It had the texture of butter with sugar yet had no taste. It was awful, and I didn’t take a second bite. I didn’t see anyone enjoying it either.

While we were at dinner, the hotel staff sprayed our room for mosquitos and closed the curtains around the bed. When we arrived at the room, we locked our door with the bar, messed up the lovely bed art, pushed through the curtains, and went to sleep.

Next day: Our last day of the tour included a Lake Tana boat trip from the hotel to one more church/monastery. Afterward, we traveled to the head of the White Nile and saw hippos in the water. We had a farewell dinner and discussed the highlights of the trip.