28/2/08

Salaam
Well, we are currently sitting sipping macchiatos surrounded by Jacarandas and Olive trees in the Seven Olives Hotel in the famous village of Lalibela on the Historial Circuit in Northern Ethiopia… And Man… today I did one of the most sacreligious things EVER!!!
Now firstly, I’ll have to paint a picture of how religious it is up here since the northern part of Ethiopia is COMPLETELY different to the tribal south and there is a well defined pilgrimage trail based around the wealth of cultural and religious treasures that trace the area’s history through the ages spanning back to biblical times.
In fact, Ethiopia is probably the only country in Africa with such an abundance of religious history as it lies at the crossroads of the Coptic Church, Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
In researching our trip here, we were absolutely stunned to find how much popular history actually originates from this area, especially since before we came, the only things that we knew about Ethiopia were the famine and that they have great long distance runners.
Firstly, Lucy, our oldest known ancestor at 3.5 millions years of age was discovered just north of here in the Danakil area, so that in itself is really cool.
But even cooler is that this area is known throughout biblical times as being the home of the Abyssinians and Axumite peoples.
In fact, the Ark Of The Covenant which contains the 10 Commandments is meant to be stored in a small church in Axum a town just north of here, after it was moved here from Jerusalem in about 700BC. Continue reading


