Ruins within ruins
In amongst a big pile of paper that lives under my desk, I found some notes that I made during a visit to the Eritrean town of Senafe in 2001. I’ve dug out some photographs as well.
29/11/01
These boots have been gnawing at my ankles ever since I arrived here. The leather along the back has split, curled over at the edges and then hardened into jagged points. I’ve lost most of the skin on the ridge of my right ankle where it keeps rubbing. I bought a bandage and some medical tape in Asmara but I can’t get it to stay in place.
This morning I caught the minibus to Senafe. It took ¾ of an hour to get there. On the way we passed through three checkpoints. The first two were the usual Eritrean army roadblocks that you find all over the country: A rope stretched across the road in between a pair of oil drums. The soldiers on guard duty shelter from the sun inside tumbledown stone huts with a blue tarpaulins stretched over the top.
The Sinhgarh checkpoint marks the Eritrean side of the UN buffer zone with Ethiopia. Here there were rolls of razor wire, a pair of enormous generators and a white Armoured Personnel Carrier with a machinegun mounted on the roof next to a small round hatch. A UN soldier in a light blue helmet made a cursory inspection of the bus but didn’t interfere with any of the passengers. In the rocky hills beyond the checkpoint, three figures wearing plastic visors and the Red Cross emblem were working their way across a fenced-off area, clearing mines.
I came to Senafe to see what remains of the Aksumite ruins at Metera, which predate the Christian era. I did not expect to find the entire town in ruins. The Ethiopian army really did a number on this place when they rolled through in 2000. Before coming here I had heard a few stories of looting and mass rape but no-one really talks about it in any detail.
On the outskirts there was a large, well organised refugee camp. The building opposite the bus station was a pile of rubble surrounded by broken walls. Further along the road the telecommunications building and what might have once been the police station were in a state of partial collapse. The roof sagged, the concrete pillars had buckled and were only standing thanks to the rusted metal cables that run through their middle. At the front, propped up by a line of small rocks, there was a battered metal sign bearing a painting of a building against a backdrop of blue sky. It was difficult to tell whether it was the old building in better times or an image of its replacement.
As I was surveying the wreckage, a local doctor called Abraham introduced himself to me. He pointed out his home and invited me to have tea with him if I had the time.
I followed the road towards Metera, passing the temporary Médecins Sans Frontières encampment, occasionally asking for directions. Pretty soon I realised that I was being pointed towards the mountain Amba Metera, rather than the ancient settlement. At the checkpoint at the far end of the town I asked a pair of soldiers for directions. They called over another man who spoke a little English. I showed him my archaeology permit and tried, with little success, to explain where I wanted to go. Eventually a woman in a nearby kiosk recognised the word “Aksum”. She pointed along a dirt track winding towards a small conical hill in the distance.
“You go there to that hill,” said the man. “There is a police station.”
On the way to Metera, a young girl - probably 8 or 9 - driving a cow and a calf ahead of her, fell in step alongside me. We talked to each other in our respective languages. A convoy of UN trucks came crawling along the track towards us, scattering herds of goats. The startled cows ran back and forth across the road in front of the vehicles while the girl shouted and threw rocks at them.
On the way back to the bus station a group of children tagged along behind me. I felt like the pied piper until their leader - an older boy dressed in a Nike Jacket said:
“You, give me money!”
Then I felt like the golden goose.
“Give me plastic,” demanded one of the other children.
I looked for Abraham’s house but I could remember which one it was. The bus back to Adi Keyh cost 25c more than the journey to Senafe. I suppose people are more desperate to leave.
* * * * *
This afternoon I am sitting in the courtyard outside the Adi Keih hotel, spreading the contents of my precious jar of marmalade onto the bread rolls that I managed to buy in town, despite there not really being any shops. The children outside keep climbing onto the walls and shouting at me in Triginya, with the occasional word of English thrown in. It wears thin after a while. One of the bar staff has just thrown a rock at them.
* * * * *
30/11/01
Dear Chloe,
I am back in the capital (Asmara) with very sore and blistered feet. Yesterday I went to Senafe, near the Ethiopian border. It’s in the U.N. buffer zone. The Red Cross were clearing mines in the hills. Most of the town is in ruins. People are living in tents on the outskirts, but it seems quite organised.
I saw some older ruins at Metera, one mile outside the town - a temple and the beginnings of a shaft blocked with rubble (possibly the entrance to a tomb). Also a Stelae (a tablet-shaped obelisk) broken in two and lying on it’s back. The locals only showed me the carving on the very top - a circle over a crescent moon - but didn’t reveal the rest of the inscription which was covered over with dead thistles and sackcloth.
I am thinking of you.
P.S. The morning the buckle on my belt snapped. I am keeping up my trousers with string!
