May 16, 2924 Thursday

Farewell to the Simien Mountains

We left the Limolima Lodge this morning with great appreciation for the location and the staff. I enjoyed hiking in the Simien Mountains and spending a couple of nights in a rammed earth room.

Becky needed to be back at the hotel by 2 to start her class, and she wanted to be ready by 1:30. When I first read O.A.T.’s description of the day, I knew we wouldn’t be back at the hotel in time for her class. However, Melaku made it happen. He was the best. Another thing that I like about O.A.T. is that they give their tour leaders the autonomy to change things as needed for the group.

After the drive from the Simien Mountains and before we went to lunch, the van took us back to the Gondar Hills Resort, the same hotel we’d stayed at before in Gondar.

Yay, the best shower. I don’t know how long we stayed there, but it was long enough to get our luggage to the rooms and get Becky set up for her class. The group went out to lunch, so she must have had lunch from her snack stash.

Becky and her class

We stayed with her in the lobby while Melaku ensured that there were people to help her get and stay connected on the internet. Becky later told me that the manager and the IT guy’s eyes glazed over when she said she’d be on this call until 2 AM their time.

John and I went to the lobby after she’d connected to her class. She was dressed in her scrubs, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her computer was hooked up to the hotel registration internet, not the guests’, which helped reduce interference from heavy bandwidth loads.

When I stopped to talk to her, she was behind the registration desk with her computer. She stood up to chat and said there were over 200 students on this Zoom call. The instructors were doing a person-by-person alphabetical roll call. Seriously? I don’t know if her name had already been called or if she knew it wouldn’t be called for a while and she had time to chat. She later told us that the roll call took over an hour.

We didn’t stay long, as we were off to lunch. When we left her, I told John I felt like I was abandoning her. I wanted to stay even though it wouldn’t have been me who fixed anything that went wrong; I could have been there for moral support. I also knew she wouldn’t want me to not do things on the tour because of her class, so I reluctantly left with the group.

Lunch

We went to the Four Sisters Restaurant for lunch.

They served typical Ethiopian food, which I didn’t like. I appreciated that they had a buffet for us, and we could pick and choose what we wanted to eat. I put some food on my plate that I thought I could eat, but I don’t remember any of it.

After going through the serving line, we carried it to our table on a covered patio. I found it delightful. A server offered us served honey wine, which I chose not to try.

After lunch, one of the four sisters who owned the restaurant showed us how to make honey wine at home. I found it interesting that they smoked the container before adding the liquid. I’ve seen this done on cooking shows, where the chef or drink maker fills the container with smoke to leave a residual taste. Finally, she combined many ingredients and left the mixture to ferment.

After the honey wine-making demonstration, the servers and the owner performed shoulder dances similar to those we had seen a few days before. A man played a stringed instrument to accompany the dancers.

It was all very festive and gay. When the dancing was over, we said our goodbyes and left.

On our way out, we saw a beautiful bird sitting in the restaurant’s garden. Melaku told us the bird was called a white-cheeked Turaco.

Debre Birhan Selassie Church

We went to the Debre Birhan Selassie Church, which, according to the Internet, means Trinity and Mountain of Light. It was built in the 17th century and rebuilt in the 1880s. I like the name “Mountain of Light.”

Honestly, all the churches run together for me. On this visit, I brought Becky’s lighter scarf, so I wasn’t quite as hot as I was previously with the black cashmere wool scarf. The ceiling was quite interesting, with all the angels painted on it.

Gondar market and market

After the church, Melaku took us on a walking tour of a Gondar market. As we stepped out of the van, he paid for anyone who wanted to have their shoes washed. I was game; I’d been wearing these white and blue ON shoes since Disney World a year ago, so they could use a wash.

The young man who washed my shoes was diligent and masterful at his craft. I liked the results. My socks got slightly damp through the mesh in the shoes, but not too badly.

We entered a building reminiscent of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, with its corridors of merchandise. A few children followed us, but not many. Melaku later told us that in the market, he overheard one older woman saying to another, “They are coming back.” This meant that seeing us made them think the tourists were returning, which would benefit the economy. With the pandemic and the war with Tigray, they’ve been hurting for tourist money.

Gondar Central Square

We left the market and walked toward the city’s central square. While there, Melaku called our attention to the people’s behavior toward us. Most of the citizens ignored us in the market, where few tourists go. However, in the central square, where there used to be more tourists, the people were more likely to ask for money, with or without something to exchange for it.

We saw many lovely plantings in the square, including this giant sycamore tree called the Jan Tekel warka.

I asked Melaku what Jan Tekel meant. He told me that Jan stands for “janhoy,” an Amharic word for the emperor, and “tekel” means planted. Basically, it means that the tree was planted at King Fasil’s direction. King Fasil (1632-1667) founded Gondar and made it his capital city during his reign.

Religious school

Melaku led our group to a previously agreed-upon spot to meet the van. The driver took us back to the hotel. On the switchback road to the hotel, Melaku had the van stop, and we got off to visit a religious training camp for boys and men. Let me start by saying I was not a fan of the place.

It appeared there were boys there from the age of 12 up to 25. They were learning to be priests. They cook their food, and they share huts, tiny, very cramped-looking huts. I tried hard not to pass judgment based on my lifestyle, but I kept feeling like these boys had been thrown away and exploited. Melaku assured us that the boys wanted to be there and that he would surely know better than I did.

Melaku explained that teachers come to them and sit in the seat he showed us, teaching the students about their religion. The young men study the rest of the day and prepare to answer questions about the teachings the next day. They work in the village for food, or food is given to them by the people in the area surrounding the Lodge.

To support Melaku’s contention that they wanted to be there, we met young men working on various things. Several were sitting under trees reading books. One young man recited a poem, and the group sang a song for us. I was so uncomfortable. I know that was me, not them.

Dinner

We waved at Becky as we passed the registration desk, heading for dinner. Melaku arranged to have Becky’s dinner delivered to her at the registration desk. Then, we went back to our rooms.

Many on the tour had complained about how hot the rooms were the last time we were there. Melaku contacted the hotel’s owner, and her staff found and purchased five fans for the rooms. He asked me if we needed one, and I told him we were good with the little travel fan we had. He also suggested that we open the sliding glass doors at the back of the room and keep the drapes closed to keep the bugs out, which might help to bring in some cooler air. I did that, and it did help. Still, I closed the doors when we went to bed. There’s no telling what kind of creepy crawlers were out there, even with the netting on the bed.

Power outage

We did use the fan, and at midnight, I woke up to the fan having gone off. We’d heard a thunderstorm in the distance, which probably shut down the power. I worried about Becky and her internet connection, but I knew Melaku had made plans in preparation for this possibility.

The following day, I found out that the hotel staff had started the generator for her and ran it for two hours until her call was finished. She paid them for the diesel they’d used. How much was it? A whopping $35. This was a much smaller price than flying to Addis and back and renting a hotel room for three days. We were thrilled and relieved that we’d successfully passed that hurdle.

The next day, we were leaving Gondar again and heading for the lake town of Bahir Dar. This is really where the possibilities of malaria were. That is not a prediction that anyone got malaria, but it was why we started taking the pills when we first got to Gondar.