Simien Mountains
Ethiopia’s Simien Mountains and National Park beat the lot. The Grand Canyon suddenly isn’t quite so grand or Monument Valley so monumental. Mounts Kenya and Kilimanjaro are more famous, not least because they’re on the tourist/backpacker Africa trail while, right now, Ethiopia is not. Just as the country is the only part of Africa to be ignored or to remain unvanquished in the 19th century colonial ‘scramble’ by European powers, when it comes to an African destination of choice, Ethiopia has yet to get on the radar of most first-worlders, who are either desperate to live the toff White Mischief dream peddled by upmarket tour operators – tents, wicker, Landrovers, leopards and linen suits – or just desperately seeking cheap thrills, sex and booze along the Kenyan and Gambian coasts.
Instead of colonising Ethiopia, the West has recently busied itself being patronising, unable to forget civil war, famine and Geldof’s haranguing to ‘give them the fucking money’ during the Live Aid smug fest. And we haven’t stopped giving, while never starting to ask if aid not trade is such a good thing. The Ethiopians are a proud, stately and dignified people: while self-important western do-gooders on a permanant gap yah and British politicians sign up to ‘Africa – Scar on the Conscience of Humanity‘ worldview, they overlook that the country’s annual growth 2005-10 was 6.5 per cent, while infant mortality plummeted. While some in the West tut tut over sluggish mobile phone take up in Africa’s second most populous country (85 million and the numbers predicted to rocket before they crash), Ethio Telecom doesn’t seem to be doing too badly: reception was stronger in the rural mountain town of Lalibela than in 0208-land along the A3, with the priest in the remote 12th century cave church of St Nakutolab breaking off from his talk on processional crosses to answer a call.
The dead-end of so much recent Western policy in Ethiopia is best symbolised by the highway between the ancient capital Gondar and the Simien National Park, more than 100 clicks of paved, pothole-free perfection. Still under construction in parts, the road building is being supervised by Chinese engineers, recognisable, somewhat ironically, by their bamboo coolie hats. Along with their fleet of Sinotruks, they’re stationed in a huge compound of pale blue Portakabins outside the town of Debark.
Children walking alongside typical road outside Lalibela
Although a cruising speed of 60mph is achievable between the villages of eucalyptus-wood clad mud shacks, the road’s main users are pedestrians, mostly aged under ten, sometimes in gangs but often on their own, many shepherding humpbacked cattle, sheep, goats and donkeys. Not so much Home Alone, as Miles Away From Anywhere Alone, these sturdy, exuberant youngsters are the most disconcerting sight for affluent Westerners, brainwashed into living in a permanent state of near hysteria about child safety.
Road-building outside Gondar
Sinotruk, Ethiopia
Of all the tangible dangers to the children living and working and playing alongside the highway, traffic doesn’t seem to be one of them. There isn’t much, if any. In an hour there’s one minibus (level 3, the cheapest), a handful of 4x4s and the construction teams of diggers and Sinotruks, whose drivers are far too busy to enjoy some of the most spectacular views of anywhere. Outside Addis Ababa, few own cars. But give it a decade or two, those children – for whom a mobile phone and the Internet are starting to become as much of a fact of life as TV is already – could be driving their own cars, their new-found prosperity delivered by the highway.
Thank you Beijing: A completed section of the Gondar-Simien mountains highway, Ethiopia
UrbanHunterLondon 