[2019]
[2019]
OUR FAMILY HOLIDAYS
9101 OU41 - Ethiopia – Gondar
The final stop on our Ethiopian holiday was Gondar. This was the city built by the Ethiopian emperors in the 15th and 16th centuries, the same time as Henry VIII. It was remarkably well preserved, and the buildings which remained showed that it had been very sophisticated for that time.
Our bad service from the tour company continued. There was no one there to meet us off the plane. So we had to hire a taxi ourselves. When I got back to Addis I complained bitterly to the tour operator -- to be treated by them with disdain. I ultimately insisted that the manager came to see me in my office. When he realised it was in the Prime Minister's office building, and he saw the size of my office (which indicated I was of minister status) his face went white. He had good reason to worry. One of my students was soon appointed to replace him.
The hotel, when we got to it, was on top of a hill just outside Gondar. It was a modern Ghion hotel and quite luxurious -- except for the usual problem only having water for two hours a day.
We started our tour, with a circuit of the buildings in the royal compound. These were -- as I have said -- in very good condition and we were able to go through the various royal chambers. Of course they had lost their decorations, but you were able to see just how palatial the place had been. We, in the west, forget that quite sophisticated levels of civilisation existed outside of Europe, in earlier times, before we colonised them, and that we actually went on to destroy many of these civilisations.
The other main tourist attraction was a lake, or at least a reservoir which was filled once a year for a religious ceremony which attracted tens of thousands. It was quite a large reservoir, surrounded by a protective wall. It also had a small palace on the side where the emperors could watch what was going on. The emperors have long since gone from Gondar, but the religious occasion when the waters are allowed back into the lake and people jump into it, with literally tens of thousands attending the ceremony, is recreated every year. At the time of the emperors, a special elevated walkway had been carved through Gondar town from the royal compound to the lake; so that the emperors could be kept away from their subjects. It was still miraculously complete.
Just after the end of the civil war there had been a big rescue effort by the Israelis who airlifted a large number of Ethiopian Jews from Gondar. We were taken to see where these Jews had lived, albeit it looked like almost anywhere else in Ethiopia. The problem for these poor Ethiopian Jews was that they were badly treated even when they got to Israel.
The problem we found, when we tried to fly back to Addis Ababa, was that the plane was out of action. Accordingly -- delayed by two to three hours -- another plane was diverted to take us via Bahir Dar to Addis Ababa; so we eventually got back to the capital.
We were due to have dinner with the ambassador the following night, when we discovered to our horror that our visas had expired. Even though we were guests of the government it made no difference, and we had to catch the first plane out the following morning -- missing our dinner with the ambassador. Never mind, I already had enough stories about Ethiopia to last a lifetime.
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