How to run like an Ethiopian

Here's some convincing evidence that Nike or Adidas do not want you to hear. It's no secret that Ethiopians can run, and, along with Kenya, it's one of the only countries where running is the top national sport. The main square in Addis Ababa (Meskel) has a running track where you can see hundreds of locals training at speeds as fast as you can sprint 100m on a good day.

On our last morning in Gondar, we were lucky enough to stumble into an elite 10km race. Even better, it was 4 x 2.5 km loops that ran right past the balcony of our hotel. All of the 40 or so runners finished under 32 minutes, with the winners around 28 minutes! The world record (held by an Ethiopian) is only a minute quicker.

Now, here's what they were wearing:



And a closer look at those fancy shoes:


Most have on a pair of sandals (20 Ethiopian Birr, a bit less than US$3), which are readily available from most Ethiopian markets. They're a bit like Crocs, but with slightly harder plastic. A few were even barefoot for a race run on tarmac and cobblestones.

I think an Olympic marathon was won by a barefood Ethiopian 40 to 50 years ago, but they still run mostly barefoot in this age of high-tech shoe design. Faster than I'll ever run in fancy shoes. Maybe a lifestyle of walking 50+km a day (at altitude) has more to contribute to the 28 minute 10K than the shoes. Sorry, Nike and Adidas.

The perpetuity of the Ethiopian Fairytale

The history of Ethiopia is full of colourful tales, perhaps a bit embellished over the centuries. A massive church hewn from a single rock in little more than 24 hours by an impressively strong woman (with a little help from some Angels). The location of the original Ark of the Covenant – that nobody is allowed to see – and how Ethiopia was chosen by God to guard it. Promises of great armies sent to help Europeans fight the Crusades. Some, like this latter one, are clearly fairytales in hindsight, but centuries of religious homogeny (in northern Ethiopia), have left a very rich and colourful history.

Our first stop was Bahir Dar, a small city on the edge of Lake Tana (source of the White Nile river). About 300-400 years ago, nearby Gondar was the capital of the Ethiopian kings, and Bahir Dar became known for its monastaries dotted around the lake. Not to mention thousands of pelicans and other interesting birds.



Ethiopian christianity is considered one of the “oldest” versions of extant christianity, perhaps because Ethiopians are very persistant when it comes to resisting change. Since about the 4th century AD, when followers of Jesus Christ first arrived in Ethiopia, little seems to have changed. Even the old calendar is still in use – it was the month of Megabit and the year 2002 while I was there. The rest of the world has gradually abandoned this old calendar in favour of how the Roman Catholic popes frequently re-interpreted the calendar – last changing it about 500 years ago. Even the time of day is different. A day is 24 hours long, but switches at 6:00am (western time), so sunrise falls at 'midnight' and sunset at 'noon'. Hence there's no need for AM and PM – there's 2:00 in the daytime (=8am), and 2:00 at night (=8pm). Once you get used to it, and it doesn't take much more than setting your watch to be 6 hours slow, this actually makes a lot more sense than the time that we're used to.

Even the Ethiopian Fairytale is alive and well, although in a slightly more sinister modern form. In Bahir Dar, this manifested itself in the blatant lying we constantly encountered when trying to organise just about anything. It's a bit sad that whereever we went, almost every tour operator, hotel manager, or “friendly” local resorted to fairytales just to get our custom. Boat operators in Bahir Dar had fancy tour programmes that included hippo-watching en-route to a monastary (the driver didn't even bother looking) and visits to the best old monastaries (one was still in the process of being built!). On leaving Bahir Dar, we were promised a minibus full of faranjis (foreigners) who hired a bus that would go direct to Gondar (as expected, we never saw a single faranji and stopped in just about every small town in-between). Unfortunately, unless one can speak/read Amharic (a devilishly difficult language from an English-speaking viewpoint) or pay for a local “guide”, living these fairytales is unavoidable.



But, as was the Ethiopian theme, the modern fairytales are easily offset by their historical counterparts. On the Zege peninsula near Bahir Dar, we visited a 16th century monastary (Ura Kidane Mihret) that has withstood time (and constant use). Old religious manuscripts from the 8th century were still being read by white-robed priests. Similar to Borobudur (in Indonesia), which featured stone murals relating the life of Buddha and tales from the Buddha's past lives, this monastary featured colourful painted murals relating the life of Jesus and other key biblical stories on every square metre of the central shrine. Most of these were painted about 250 years ago, but some fragments of the original paintings still existed thanks to the dry environment.



Up the road in Gondar, the former capital, the old royal enclosure rivals any castle in Europe. Built over about 100 years by successive kings, the tales of succession (fratricide seems to be the quickest route to the throne) add the necessary royal scandal.



The highlight of this area, however, was a small 18th century timber church (Debre Berhan Selassie) up on the hill above Gondar. Not only was the local priest a genuinely friendly man, with an unassailable pride towards his church, but the paintings inside covered more than just the central shrine and had a handcrafted quality that made it seem like the Sistene Chapel of Ethiopia. Hundreds of angels peered down from the ceiling rafters, each one slightly different in complexion and size. According to the historical fairytale, this church would have been destroyed by invading Sudanese dervishes in the mid 19th century, were it not for a swarm of bees that greeted them at the gate. And as we saw later in Lalibela, this wasn't the first time that bees sent by God have featured in an Ethiopian Fairytale.



Pictures (from top)
1 - Pelican on Lake Tana
2 - Original murals from Ura Kidane Mihret
3 - Current 19th century murals on the shrine of Ura Kidane Mihret
4 - Gondar Royal Enclosure (Fasillias' Palace on the right). Much of the destruction was actually caused by British bombing of the enclosure during World War II (the Italians used part of it as a base).
5 - The ceiling rafters in Debre Berhan Selassie Church, Gondar

How the world was before globalisation

Without any prior experiences in sub-Saharan Africa, it is difficult to put a visit to Ethiopia in its proper context. But, without doubt, it was the least developed place I've ever been, which made three and a half weeks there feel a bit like a roller coaster ride. The highlights of the trip were extremely high, but these were balanced out by the hassle of being of European descent in Ethiopia (the locals seem to feel an entitlement towards your money, so genuine friendliness – commonplace in Indonesia – was rare in Ethiopia).

Asia and South America both feel a bit more developed thanks to cheap labour, which has drawn firms by the thousands to set up shop and indirectly provided a reasonably complete infrastructure (power, transport, water, etc.). Ethiopia seems to be a land that globalisation skipped, despite a similar supply of cheap labour. USAID (the international aid arm of the US Government) seems to be a main supplier of foodstuffs – one day in Lalibela, we watched a parade of locals march by, alongside their donkeys laden with USAID 100kg sorghum sacks and vegetable oil. The Chinese government is just beginning to build paved roads (with imported Chinese labour!) – though, the dominant form of transport, by a long shot, is still walking (up to 50km/day in rural areas). Main streets are chock full of locals walking up and down, going about their daily buisness – in scenes probably not too distant from what it was like 100 years ago in the US and NZ. The internet doesn't really function yet – mostly because the two necessary infrastructures (telephone and power) are extremely unreliable. There were only four days out of 24 where both were functioning at the same time, and even then, most Ethiopian runners could run 10km barefoot in the time it took to download an e-mail (just to have the power go out before completing a reply).





So travel is tough, but a lack of power, internet, phones, and, somethimes, water, is a great way to experience a more simple life. In the next few posts, I'll be quickly summarising the more interesting bits of Ethiopia from my experience. As a fiercly anti-colonial state – Ethiopia was not taken under the wing of a European state (only a brief takeover by Mussolini) – it retains a culture and history to rival any European country. The natural scenery is equally astounding; most of populated Ethiopia are fertile ex-volcanic highlands, with landscapes that seem to combine New Zealand, the Grand Canyon and Utah's Monument Valley all in the same spot. And the simple life itself can also be extremely interesting – where else could you have a chat with someone who had no concept of what the USA was or ask if women in our culture also had a 9-month gestation period?

Photos:
Top - Aid distribution in Lalibela
Bottom - An Ethiopian highway - the main "road" to rural settlements north of Lalibela