Into a new land..

[backdated, January 24, 2009]
And so we crossed the south-eastern Sudanese border into a new land..

Ethiopia deserves for my first post about it not to be about my first impressions. And to be fair, the Sudan is a tough act to follow.

To introduce it properly, I must acknowledge what was perhaps ignorance on my part in expressing my absolute astonishment at this country's breathtaking, jaw-dropping scenic beauty. While I have not yet travelled far outside the Northern highlands, I am already amazed at the landscapes any painter would fall in love with. Winding, bumpy roads threading their way along mesa-style cliffs; wide, shallow Lake Tana blanketed with early morning mist; rolling expanses of pasture dotted with sheep and green-robed herding children. And this is at the end of the dry season !
I've always hated the word 'hut' as carrying so much of a certain type of connotation, but it probably represents exactly the word that would pop into your mind upon seeing the round, thatched-roof dwellings that are clustered around every village and tucked along cliff precipices. Ever one for precision in diction, I will not reject an apt word, but 'hut' still indicates to me a crudeness that is anything but applicable to these sturdy, complex, labor-intensive buildings.

The scenery is all the more impressive for its equally astonishing absence of litter. While trash is not wholly absent from the landscape, streets do not double as a public dump, and intercity highways are not demarkated chiefly by their twin borders of debris. I have even been able to locate trash-cans after a minimum of searching. Honestly, after al-Sudan, it's astoundingly clean. David and I have discovered the subtle treachery of clean streets, however: while in the Sudan we had to watch where we put each foot to avoid something rotting (or worse), here the clean streets have lulled us into the dangerous habit of walking normally. And with disastrous results: both of us have tripped several times on low curbs or uneven pavement, simply because we weren't looking down at the ground.

Coupled with the perpetually photo-worthy scenery (I'm a clicking wonder now that it's legal) is a spectacular panoply of endemic wildlife. Ethiopians are quick to tell you that their twice-Texas-size country boasts some eight hundred different species of birds, several dozen of which are to be found nowhere else in the world. One of the strangest of these I've already seen several times - a small black trilling thing with a fully foot-long flowing white tail that undulates in the most unusual way when it takes flight. We've also had a monkey drop in (somewhat literally) on our breakfast, though my Western background prevented me from recognizing it as anything other than an unusually large, strangely acrobatic cat (and my, what a long tail!).. until it was actually sitting right in front of me (and behind David). Upon successful (if delayed) species identification, I felt not excitement but a vague alarm and the need to immediately inform David. I can't explain it, it just seemed like a bit of a hazard to calmly eat one's omelette with a monkey in such proximity, particularly without one's knowledge. Only later did it occur to me to take a picture, but of course by then it was scampering off. (But at least I warned David.)

Ethiopia cannot, however, compete with the visual rainbow afforded by the various security forces present in even the smallest towns in the Sudan. While I noted uniforms in the carying hues of steel blue, white, khaki, grey, green camo, brown camo, khaki camo(didn't know that one existed), blue camo (in the desert?? really??), black, and the dreaded plainclothes, I've yet to see anything in Ethiopia more than plain old blue, white, and one boring shade of camo (brown). True, Ethiopia more than makes up the color vibrancy with its flowers, which are blooming everywhere, and which I hardly ever saw in a month in the Sudan - I think I might have forgotten that flowers exist, sort of like I forgot that rain exists.

For all their loveliness and photographicableness, however, flowers don't provide quite the same sort of fun potential as we've seen with Sudanese security forces... so yes. Am still missing the Sudan!