are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?
Helloooo. It's fast receding into the mists of time, but I feel a bit guilty that I didn't manage to say anything very cheerful about Ethiopia. It's rather a bugbear of pretty much everyone who ever goes to Ethiopia that all people tend to know about is the 1987 famine and TV coverage and Bob Fucking Geldof, and they get a bit shrill about how IT'S NOT JUST A LAND OF STARVING PEOPLE! REALLY, IT'S NOT! IT'S GREAT! THERE IS [insert awesome thing here]! AND CRAZY UNIQUE ANCIENT CULTURE OF AMAZINGNESS! AND THERE IS FOOD AND IT IS AWESOME AND MOST PEOPLE AREN'T STARVING, REALLY! YOU SHOULD GO THERE AND SPEND YOUR TURISTA DOLLARS! It's perfectly true. So, here, holiday snaps!
NOTA BENE BABY: I took 1200 pictures, and have been finding it very veeeery difficult to prune them down, there are approximately FIVE THOUSAND here and that is still leaving out ALMOST EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED. I also keep wanting to explain things but my words make everything seem flat, FLAT AND DEAD. Ethiopian history and culture and everything about it is far too interesting and spooky and I can't possibly do it justice. DID YOU KNOW it's been an independent country for about 2000 years? It's the ONLY self-formed sub-Saharan African state and the ONLY indigenous literate sub-Saharan civilisation and the only African country apart from Liberia that was never colonised? DID YOU KNOW that Rastafarianism is based on worshipping Haile Selassie??? (Ras is a title, it roughly means "prince", his given name before his ascension to the throne was Tefari: Ras Tefari) Apparently he didn't like them much though, being the good Orthodox Christian boy he was he thought they were BASICALLY CREEPY. Ethiopia is so different from other places it's a bit like a joke. It seems much much further away than the Horn of Africa.
This is the first picture I took, it is people cleaning the skylights at Addis Ababa airport. Note: beautiful modern state-of-the-art building, poorly paid people cleaning it without safety equipment.
This is injera:
You eat it with everything, it is basically instead of the plate. It is made of an alloy of two parts MADNESS to one part INSANITY and one part GREY SQUIDGINESS. It is big and flat and thin and grey and a lot like carpet inlay, but when you look into it it is like looking into a FAR-OFF GALAXY where SPACESHIP-SIZED BEES have spun TENDRILS OF INTERGALACTIC RUBBER from star to star. It tastes of sour milk and LUNACY and after three weeks of horror you get Stockholm Syndrom and LOVE IT BEYOND REASON. Oh god, I miss injera.
People at church. I really, I keep trying to find words for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and I can't, so I won't, except to say that it is old and deeply alien in a way that, that, I don't know. Everyone looks like a refugee from the Bible, like they've walked there straight from Judea. There are forty-four churches in Gondar, and people gather for morning services, and noon services, and evening services, and there are always always lots of people hanging out at the church, and everyone wears the white shawls which break your heart because WHAT WHAT WHAT? Okay, I really am going to stop trying to explain things now. But I've got hardly any pictures of it because it felt weird taking them. This one looks a bit like it but it doesn't really convey it, there were usually loads more people, I don't think this was service time.
I was in someone's house when all their relatives turned up from the country. All her relatives were PRIESTS, apart from the one who'd just got out of prison for punching someone over a land dispute ♥. It makes me sad that the quality's not great because the light in this picture is like a Vermeer or something, it is one of those happy monkeys-and-typewriters accidents.
Market! Ladies shading their onions with umbrellas.
Childcam! Many, many of our pictures turned out like this:
More child:
BABIES IN BASINS!
My beautiful translator:
I think this dude is a priest. This was taken in Axum, once the SITE OF EVERYTHING, now it is all gone apart from the stelae and the museum and tombs in the hills full of bats. If you climb up to the tombs you can see the mountains going on hundreds of miles on the trading routes they used to take to the sea.
Stelae. Third and fourth centuries AD. They built them for kings when they died:
Jacaranda tree:
People selling salt. SALT!
STONE CHURCHES. The stone churches of Lalibela are often described as the Eighth Wonder of the World. People get a bit tetchy on this subject, and tend to say in sniffy tones that of course IF they weren't in Ethiopia they would be recognised as such AT ONCE, HMPH. They built them in the twelfth century, they just DUG THEM OUT OF ROCK, it took twenty-three years, the rumour is that angels helped them which seems fair enough. There are about a dozen of them, plus other ones scattered in the hills around, and they make everyone shake, even cynics and locals and rugby boys. Unfortunately they're really hard to take pictures of because they're too big to fit in the frame.
This picture is probably the one I'd choose if someone asked me to choose just one picture from Ethiopia:
More:
And more. I basically went into a slight fugue state, I have over a hundred pictures that are basically just different angles on walls, IT IS THE MASONRY CURSE.
More:
Moooore:
This photo would be perfect if it wasn't for THAT GUY'S HEAD. Look, look, PERFECT. EXCEPT FOR THAT GUY:
St Giorgious's church. It is the easiest to get all in a picture. It is about ten metres deep.
This is looking down into it:
These are some bodies in the walls. Pilgrims!
Inside one of the churches. See what I mean about it being Biblical?
No-one understands why I LOVE this picture and think it is ARTY. I took it in a cave church with five thousand mummified bodies piled at the back. I feel very deeply that THIS IS ART.
This is a skull. It is a little bit out of focus:
Here is a small section of the heap of five thousand mummified bodies:
Village on the mountain behind Lalibela.
Also in the hills behind Lalibela. This is almost my favourite picture.
Addis Ababa:
London from the air. I know it's blurry but as far as I am concerned NOTHING is complete without a plane shot:
Yeah baby.
NOTA BENE BABY: I took 1200 pictures, and have been finding it very veeeery difficult to prune them down, there are approximately FIVE THOUSAND here and that is still leaving out ALMOST EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED. I also keep wanting to explain things but my words make everything seem flat, FLAT AND DEAD. Ethiopian history and culture and everything about it is far too interesting and spooky and I can't possibly do it justice. DID YOU KNOW it's been an independent country for about 2000 years? It's the ONLY self-formed sub-Saharan African state and the ONLY indigenous literate sub-Saharan civilisation and the only African country apart from Liberia that was never colonised? DID YOU KNOW that Rastafarianism is based on worshipping Haile Selassie??? (Ras is a title, it roughly means "prince", his given name before his ascension to the throne was Tefari: Ras Tefari) Apparently he didn't like them much though, being the good Orthodox Christian boy he was he thought they were BASICALLY CREEPY. Ethiopia is so different from other places it's a bit like a joke. It seems much much further away than the Horn of Africa.
This is the first picture I took, it is people cleaning the skylights at Addis Ababa airport. Note: beautiful modern state-of-the-art building, poorly paid people cleaning it without safety equipment.
This is injera:
You eat it with everything, it is basically instead of the plate. It is made of an alloy of two parts MADNESS to one part INSANITY and one part GREY SQUIDGINESS. It is big and flat and thin and grey and a lot like carpet inlay, but when you look into it it is like looking into a FAR-OFF GALAXY where SPACESHIP-SIZED BEES have spun TENDRILS OF INTERGALACTIC RUBBER from star to star. It tastes of sour milk and LUNACY and after three weeks of horror you get Stockholm Syndrom and LOVE IT BEYOND REASON. Oh god, I miss injera.
People at church. I really, I keep trying to find words for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and I can't, so I won't, except to say that it is old and deeply alien in a way that, that, I don't know. Everyone looks like a refugee from the Bible, like they've walked there straight from Judea. There are forty-four churches in Gondar, and people gather for morning services, and noon services, and evening services, and there are always always lots of people hanging out at the church, and everyone wears the white shawls which break your heart because WHAT WHAT WHAT? Okay, I really am going to stop trying to explain things now. But I've got hardly any pictures of it because it felt weird taking them. This one looks a bit like it but it doesn't really convey it, there were usually loads more people, I don't think this was service time.
I was in someone's house when all their relatives turned up from the country. All her relatives were PRIESTS, apart from the one who'd just got out of prison for punching someone over a land dispute ♥. It makes me sad that the quality's not great because the light in this picture is like a Vermeer or something, it is one of those happy monkeys-and-typewriters accidents.
Market! Ladies shading their onions with umbrellas.
Childcam! Many, many of our pictures turned out like this:
More child:
BABIES IN BASINS!
My beautiful translator:
I think this dude is a priest. This was taken in Axum, once the SITE OF EVERYTHING, now it is all gone apart from the stelae and the museum and tombs in the hills full of bats. If you climb up to the tombs you can see the mountains going on hundreds of miles on the trading routes they used to take to the sea.
Stelae. Third and fourth centuries AD. They built them for kings when they died:
Jacaranda tree:
People selling salt. SALT!
STONE CHURCHES. The stone churches of Lalibela are often described as the Eighth Wonder of the World. People get a bit tetchy on this subject, and tend to say in sniffy tones that of course IF they weren't in Ethiopia they would be recognised as such AT ONCE, HMPH. They built them in the twelfth century, they just DUG THEM OUT OF ROCK, it took twenty-three years, the rumour is that angels helped them which seems fair enough. There are about a dozen of them, plus other ones scattered in the hills around, and they make everyone shake, even cynics and locals and rugby boys. Unfortunately they're really hard to take pictures of because they're too big to fit in the frame.
This picture is probably the one I'd choose if someone asked me to choose just one picture from Ethiopia:
More:
And more. I basically went into a slight fugue state, I have over a hundred pictures that are basically just different angles on walls, IT IS THE MASONRY CURSE.
More:
Moooore:
This photo would be perfect if it wasn't for THAT GUY'S HEAD. Look, look, PERFECT. EXCEPT FOR THAT GUY:
St Giorgious's church. It is the easiest to get all in a picture. It is about ten metres deep.
This is looking down into it:
These are some bodies in the walls. Pilgrims!
Inside one of the churches. See what I mean about it being Biblical?
No-one understands why I LOVE this picture and think it is ARTY. I took it in a cave church with five thousand mummified bodies piled at the back. I feel very deeply that THIS IS ART.
This is a skull. It is a little bit out of focus:
Here is a small section of the heap of five thousand mummified bodies:
Village on the mountain behind Lalibela.
Also in the hills behind Lalibela. This is almost my favourite picture.
Addis Ababa:
London from the air. I know it's blurry but as far as I am concerned NOTHING is complete without a plane shot:
Yeah baby.