{"id":1534,"date":"2016-05-24T13:20:39","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T18:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=1534"},"modified":"2025-03-01T09:17:07","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T15:17:07","slug":"the-second-biggest-country-no-one-knows-much-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2016\/05\/24\/the-second-biggest-country-no-one-knows-much-about\/","title":{"rendered":"The second biggest country no one knows much about"},"content":{"rendered":"

The second biggest country most Americans know nothing about may well be Ethiopia. (In case you\u2019re wondering, I think Indonesia is first). It has almost 100 million citizens, with an average income of $500, or so I was told.\u00a0 The country resisted colonization (the only country in Africa to do so, defeating an Italian army in the 1890s at Sadowa which prompted Mussolini\u2019s conquest in the 1930s). Admiration for its independence has made its red, green, and yellow flag colors repeated in other African countries, said my guide. It has had a long series of dynasties, some lasting 8 centuries; the most recent was under Haile Selassie, the Lion of Judah, who was deposed in a communist coup in 1971, and the communist rule lasted until 1989.\u00a0 As in South Africa, the triumphant rebels continue to rule, with less and less justification.\u00a0 There are 500 delegates to Parliament\u2014and only one opposition party member was elected.\u00a0 My guide, who proudly associates with the opposition, said he was \u201cjailed\u201d during the election for his political activities! I\u2019m sure it\u2019s ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world\u2014which may well explain why there are one million Chinese in the country, enlarging the airport (much needed) and building infrastructure.<\/p>\n

I was briefly in Addis (over 2500 miles from Johannesburg, and 7500 or so miles from you), and what I saw was a reminder that I\u2019m in the third world again.\u00a0 The city of about 5 million (a pretty small percentage of the population, which means there are a lot of small towns and farmers) seems unfinished, like a Chinese city in the late 80s or early 90s.\u00a0 Lots of small, temporary type stores selling all manner of goods, from produce to clothing.\u00a0 Lots of dust and construction.\u00a0 Building cranes everywhere. As the headquarters of the African union, however, Ethiopian nationalists like to claim it is the \u201ccapital of Africa.\u201d I\u2019m hoping I\u2019ll have some time next week on my last day in Ethiopia to visit the national museum and the ethnology museum (which is Haile Selassie\u2019s ex-palace).<\/p>\n

When I got to Lalibela, at 8000 feet, I realized why Ethiopians do well in marathons, but it\u2019s not just the altitude that\u2019s left me breathless.\u00a0 It\u2019s a city \"\"<\/a>of under 40,000 people, with donkeys and tuk-tuks (3 wheeled covered taxis) the predominant form of transportation. There\u2019s lots of thatched houses in the countryside, with the main distinction between animal and people residences being size. There\u2019s a \u201cChinatown\u201d housing the Chinese workers who are replacing the mostly dirt roads with concrete; they live in a gated compound in the city\u2014the forbidden city?\u00a0 I\u2019m staying at the well-named Mountain View hotel, where the left-behind book shelf offers only German and Chinese copies.\u00a0 I think most of the other guests are German, and I\u2019m happy to say that I was the only one who ordered the flat pancake covered with a variety of vegetables that I remember as \u201cEthiopian food\u201d in the states.<\/p>\n

I came to Lalibela for an understanding of Ethiopian culture, particularly of its 60% Christians, who follow (for reasons I\u2019ve been told I\u2019ll understand better when I go to Askum, which was the capital when Christianity came to this country), the Orthodox faith. In the 16th<\/sup> century, one king invited European help to combat the Muslims; Portuguese came, and he converted to Catholicism as a result.\u00a0 His successor threw the Portuguese out, and resumed Orthodoxy.\u00a0 Lalibela was the seat of power of one of the dynasties looking for respite from the Muslim drive in the north, which pushed the Christians farther inland.\u00a0 Muslims are still numerous (35% or so, more in the east), and either co-exist peacefully, or are getting Middle Eastern money to agitate for separation or superiority, depending on whom you talk with. Lalibela was the most powerful king of the dynasty; he refused to support the Crusaders, for which Saladin reputedly granted the right to guard sacred Christian relics in Jerusalem (to this day, the various sites are guarded by various Churches). \u00a0But he did leave 13 churches and chapels and monasteries that are still active today in this heavily Christian town. When I asked my guide about AIDS, he replied, \u201cNot in Lalibela; we\u2019re Christian.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ethiopian<\/a>
Ethiopian priest<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I spent about 6 hours touring with my guide, a 28 year old young man who wants to go back to school to study criminal justice and then pursue a political career.\u00a0 As I mentioned, he\u2019s thrown his lot with the opposition party, and paid for it with jail time.\u00a0 He\u2019s well connected locally, with a grandfather who was the priest in charge of St. George, the last of the rock-hewn churches; his dad, he admitted, was an official under the communists who did a lot of \u201cbad things,\u201d and died in prison after the overthrow of the communist party.<\/p>\n

He had a lot of information about the 7 churches\/monasteries we saw today, and what fascinated me were the connections I was able to draw with the Byzantine world I\u2019ve been exploring the past four or five years.\u00a0 In fact, until the 1950s, the Church was under the Patriarch(?) of Alexandria.\u00a0 Haile Selassie declared its independence. I could see what was borrowed.\u00a0 Much of the historical interpretation is hindered by the lack of documentation.\u00a0 Apparently, the major document was looted by the Italian army and has either disappeared or is in the Vatican library.\u00a0 The tradition states that King \"\"<\/a>Lalibela had a vision of Jerusalem, and tried to construct similar buildings in two sets of churches chiseled out of rock. The architectural work is fantastic, and it probably drew on stone masons from much of the Christian world, since there are Maltese crosses and other non-orthodox symbols, \"\"<\/a>including a Buddhist \u201cswastika\u201d (it\u2019s not the Nazi variety), and a Star of David, not to mention a Jordan River, and symbolic graves for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.\u00a0 These were carved out of one piece of rock!\u00a0 St. George, probably the best known one, or at least the most photogenic from above (it\u2019s in the shape of a cross, with no inside pillars), is fashioned from basalt, a much harder rock, making it smaller, but a beneficiary of all that went before. Lalibela is deservedly a world class UNESCO site, and part of the reason that I think Ethiopia ought to be more well known.\u00a0 As one of the early Portuguese explorers wrote, and I\u2019m paraphrasing, \u201cPeople would not believe me if I told them more.\u201d\u00a0 He\u2019s right.\u00a0 I\u2019ll see if I can upload some pictures to share with you why I\u2019m breathless here\u2014and it\u2019s more than the altitude. As an ex Committee Chair noted, \u201cThis is Fred Heaven.\u201d Or at least one variant of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The second biggest country most Americans know nothing about may well be Ethiopia. (In case you\u2019re wondering, I think Indonesia is first). It has almost 100 million citizens, with an average income of $500, or so I was told.\u00a0 The country resisted colonization (the only country in Africa to do so, defeating an Italian army … Continue reading “The second biggest country no one knows much about”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa-2016"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1534"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8423,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534\/revisions\/8423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}