Lalibela

Despite all odds the bus eventually arrived at Lalibela, though quite late at night.

The usual hoards of hustlers, self-appointed tour guides and hotel minions swarmed around the bus, grabbing at me and trying to pull me away. As usual I settled on a guy for no other reason than that I had to pick one quickly so that the rest would back off. He promised to take me to a hotel that was “good” and only cost 80birr (AUD$5)

The room was dark and smelt like mould. The toilet had someone else’s waste inside it and the whole place just felt filthy.

“Is there a better hotel?” I asked the guy who had brought me here. I thought he was a regular guide and had no bias for any particular hotel.

“For this price it is the best” he assured me. “Better hotel across the road but is 300birr a night”.

It was late and I didn’t know if I should roam the streets in hope or just put up with it for a night. The man asked me if I needed a guide for the next day.

“I’ll think about it” I paid him the 80 birr and he left.

I cleaned the toilet as best I could with a bucket of water, it didn’t flush of course. Then I just sat on the end of the bed.

I decided to find something better.

I walked out of the room, past the tour guide who was hanging out the front with friends and strolled around Lalibela.

The town is perched on top of a hill. The streets weren’t very well lit yet the place had a buzz to it. It felt like it was full of tourists and full of energy, even though the streets weren’t that crowded and I didn’t spot any other foreigners. I could see that the town spilled down one edge of the hill, it looked heavily condensed down there and I figured that was where the majority of people lived, and that the top of the hill where there was space and a thin veneer of organised structure, was reserved for foreigners and the money they brought in. I wondered where the ancient underground monasteries lay hidden. Was I walking on top of them? Or were they protected and absorbed by the dense village down the hill which was deliberately established to covet the ancient secrets?

I asked passers by if they knew of a good, but cheap hotel. I was pointed in the direction of a large stone building that looked hundreds of years old but inside it was nicely decorated in colourful rugs and other ornaments. The staff in there were lovely and showed me a room that was nicely furnished, didn’t smell and the toilet even flushed! It was 150 birr, a fair bit more than the other room, but still only $8, and worth it compared to the mould heap I was about to sleep in.

I went back to the other hotel and asked the guide for my money back.

“It is too late, he told me. The owner already collected the money from me and now he is gone.”

I was annoyed again, as was the norm lately, until an older man came out from one of the rooms.

“What is the problem?” he asked me. Turns out he was the owner.

“I already paid for my room but found a much nicer hotel near by and now I want my money back”.

“What is wrong with the room?” he asked.

“It is dirty, and I found another room which is better and worth the  price”.

“How much did you pay for this room?” the owner asked me.

“80 birr”

“80?! This room is only 40 birr!”

He glared at the guide who had brought me here who now looked away somewhat sheepishly.

“Please stay”. He begged me. “For just one night. I will have the boys clean it for you and then in the morning you can leave if you wish. 40birr. Very cheap”.

He handed 40 back to me and I agreed to stay the night.

The boys rushed in to clean the room as I waited outside with the owner.

“These boys, they are poor, very poor. You know they are good boys but need money and they do anything to get money”.

I understood. I really did. And I couldn’t blame them cause in their shoes I’d do the same thing. I also wondered if it really was these boys trying to rip me off unbeknown to the owner, or if this guy was really the driver of the scam.

When the boys left the now clean room the original guy stopped and asked me if he could still be my tour guide for the next day.

“No thank you” I said. And I did feel bad when his hopeful face dropped.

In the middle of the night I woke a dozen times or more from the mosquitos buzzing around me, and in the morning I examined the hundreds of little pink fleabites all over my body. I packed my stuff pretty darn quick and left.

A few hours later I was following the directions of locals and winding half way down the hill to the entrance of the cathedrals. Inside I asked the tourist information for a guide. He told me that he is not meant to give the details of any particular guide but he did anyway, making me promise not get him in trouble later.

When I called the guide I asked him to meet me when the cathedrals re-open after lunch. “How much?” I asked.

“Usually 250, but for you 200” I thought ‘yeah right!’ Until he added:

“There are no tourists now, I have not had work for nearly two weeks and I can’t lose your business”.

Whilst I waited for my guide and the monasteries to re-open I perused the small gift shops selling what I was told, and actually believe were real antiques. Not hundreds of years old as they made out to be, but perhaps a hundred or so. At each shop I struggled with the keeper, they kept showing me things I would never consider buying like massive silver crosses and bright bling-bling jewellery that I would never wear. When I told them I didn’t want it they kept lowering the prices. I was interested in some slim wooden hand-carved boxes. You opened the door of each face to reveal a hand-panted replica of some biblical scene or other, depicted like a quirky comic strip. They weren’t cheap, and I was seriously considering buying one, but I wasn’t ready yet.

I was sitting in the gutter on the side of the road talking to my girlfriend back home in Australia. It had been months since we had seen each other. And she was a world away, not just literally but it really felt like we didn’t share the same life anymore. I wanted to go home. I only had about two weeks of the trip left but I wanted to cut it short. I craved everything I had and knew back. I wanted anonymity, I wanted to walk down the street and not be stared at, or begged from. I was sick of getting lost and being aimless and eating bad food and stressing over water supplies. I wanted a hot shower, a toilet that I could sit on and not a hole in the floor. I craved speaking fluent English again, not broken English. I was sick of pretending to be confident, fearless, heterosexual. I missed my relationship, my family, my own bed.

I was wanting to tell her all this on the phone when this beautiful young girl bounced over to me beaming. She was small and delightful and had hair like Crusty The Clown in the Simpsons which made her even more utterly adorable. She grabbed both my hands in hers and swung them side to side. She was jumping up and down on the spot giggling. She had a snotty nose and was covered in dust and dirt but her giant smile and wide innocent eyes made my heart melt. I put the phone to her ear and said “Salamno. Say salamno” For a while she was too busy smiling to say anything into the phone. But eventually her tiny little voice broke and she gently said “salamno” without her smile dropping to form the words. She lifted my hands to her mouth and kissed them.

I never got to tell my partner all the things that were burning up inside me.

As it turns out my guide was the closest to a professional that I had found in Ethiopia. He seemed to really know his stuff. He knew history, dates and names. He led down a deep flight of stairs. Dusty and manky and smelling of centuries of history, I instantly felt awed.

He led me past and through 11 churches in total, all cut from the living ground. Apparently they were carved out, by hand, in the 12^th century after Muslims put a halt to Christian pilgrimages, and so a new Holy Land was created. One of the churches is the largest monolithic church in the world (when he told me this it didn’t actually mean much though he said it in such a way I felt like I had to respond with “oooh”, and so I pass this bit of information on to you to do the same).

The whole time I was there I only came across two other groups of tourists, no more than ten foreigners in total. The space felt practically empty, though there were innumerable numbers of priests and religious men slinking around corners and leaning against pillars. Slow, silent men tip-toeing in long white robes. They had the presence of powerful men, men with secrets, who live a life of confidence, the kind of confidence that only men who believe they have all divine powers on their side have.. Like an Orthodox Christian illuminate or something.

Inside one tomb was a racket of men chanting, singing, beating drums and banging cymbals. I left my shoes at the door and crept in as inconspicuously as possible.

It was dank and dark inside. It felt wet. Shoe boxed size crosses had been carved out of the thick stone walls to allow some light in. Just enough to make out all the shapes, but it was dim enough to feel like I had walked into a secret.

There was a flurry of movement. A large group of men in a small space all swishing around in white robes and white cloth caps that in the grey/blue light looked like thick floating fog, I tried to focus on their dark faces scattered amongst the whirl of white. I wasn’t sure if they didn’t know I was there or they were just very good at ignoring my presence. I had the distinct feeling that I shouldn’t be there. But I wasn’t going anywhere. I was dying to know what happened next. I had only witnessed scenes like this in movies and I expected them to start divulging the plot of a crime or spilling the kind of secrets Dan Brown wrote about… actually, that was exactly what it felt like: I was in a chapter from Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. I was acutely aware that there was not a single Ethiopian woman in sight. And of course that made me angry.

Back outside and on the earth’s surface, in the glaring bright sunlight I stood on a hill and stared down at the secret underground city from above. It really is one of human kinds greatest achievements. I wondered why this place was not as famous (and crowded) as the pyramids of Giza. Out of the solid ground an entire temple had been carved out in the shape of a crucifix. From a thousand years ago when technology was not even dreamed of yet an unknown number of men carved and chiselled this cross shaped church, free standing from solid ground, with their bare hands, sweat and blood.

Looking down on it I still didn’t believe in God but I was sure glad that all those people did all those years ago so that something as incredible as that could been in existence still today.