Faranji

On the 31st of January 2012 I was a 26 year old boy, composing my first blog post on a stuttering old computer in an internet café in Addis Ababa. They called it an internet café, but there wasn't any coffee and there was barely any internet. At that stage there were almost no internet cafés left in Ireland, and for all I know there might not be any left in Ethiopia today. Today too, I wouldn't still call myself a boy. I was sitting down to write after just a few days in the city, Ethiopia’s highland capital. I think by then I was starting to find my feet, but no doubt I was still more than a bit bewildered. In the months leading up to the trip I'd felt few qualms about my big idea, taking a one way flight as far away as my curiosity extended. But then I was in it, touching and smelling and tasting it, and trying to put all of that into words. It was a real, physical shock, but in that first foray into blogging I put a braver face on it. I described how a taxi carried me under a strange sun from the airport, and how as we came into the city centre we passed a man herding goats through traffic lights. I didn't mention how once I'd reached my overpriced hotel I limply checked in, ate something intended for western tourists, and then felt inclined to do nothing more than close the door of my single room and digest my decisions.

The next morning I pulled myself together and went out for a walk to get some sense of where I'd landed myself. I'd come to Ethiopia with the vague notion of beginning a year or so of round the world travel - not what happened in the end, but let me get into that later. Without any urgency or itinerary to speak of I meandered for blocks along dusty streets, flanked by sleepy businesses and far away from anything you'd call touristic. I quickly became dehydrated under the powerful sun and retreated into a little restaurant, where I got my first taste of injera, the spongey bread-like staple food of the country. It did grow on me over the month I spent in the country and I even sort of liked it then, but part of me noted with mixed emotions that I might not be eating "normal" food for some time. Everywhere I was met with kind faces, though it was clear from the start that for the locals I was a real oddity. A group of children were the first to shout "faranji!" - a not unfriendly term for a foreigner but for a foreigner nonetheless, and that was something I'd hear again and again in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia is not a typical African country. You could well argue that there's no such thing as a typical African country at all, it being such a huge and diverse continent, but let's say Ethiopia would be a particularly bad fit for any such label. Its historically dominant ethnic group, the Amhara, are Orthodox Christians - a religion you'd normally associate more with Greece or Russia. What first brought this to my attention were the little icons sitting on taxi drivers' dashboards - the Virgin Mary and child, watching serenely over driver and passenger. Ethiopia is also unique in Africa as the only country on the continent to have evaded European colonisation, that is until a brutal invasion by Fascist Italy shortly before the Second World War. Ethiopia's last emperor, Haile Selassie, claimed descent from the Biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. As a great African leader with that kind of a pedigree, he was the inspiration for the Rastafarian religion an ocean away in Jamaica. The green, yellow and red hats favoured by reggae fans sport the same colours that fly on the flag of Ethiopia.

Going further back, the Horn of Africa has always been connected to (rather than separated from) the Middle East by the narrow stretch of water called the Red Sea. I think this history is actually physically visible in the look of the people, who seem to represent a meeting of continents in blood as well as culture. This intersection is reflected in the name Ethiopians usually give themselves - "Habisha", from an Arabic word meaning "mixed". It's this thread in my old notes that I struggle to reprocess now - the impression I got of the people in different countries, including their physical appearance and cultural character. In hindsight, what I wrote on the former was frequently a bit on-the-nose, and on the latter quite superficial and simplistic. I think I have a greater awareness today of how easy it can be to fall into generalisations - one, two anecdotes about any given group, and you have a rule. Sometimes it seems to me that to talk about anything you make it more simple than it really is, and to write about it is probably even worse. But still, here I am typing. Reader beware?

With that said, what did I note down at the time? "Everywhere I’m amazed by impossibly straight, pure white teeth smiling at me that put my Irish set of choppers to shame." Now I both laugh and cringe at that one, but what can I say, I met a lot of people with great teeth in the first few days. It might also be that subconsciously I wasn't expecting to see beautiful people - only a year before I was born there was a famine in Ethiopia, and growing up, one of the most persistent images of Africa that I was exposed to was sadly that of the starving black baby. Most Irish people of my generation will recall the Trócaire boxes we were encouraged to collect donations with as children, not to mention being chastised by our Catholic parents for not finishing dinner "and there people starving in Africa".

When I visited, Ethiopia had not been at that level of absolute crisis for over two decades, but I did not have to probe very deep to get a sense of the country's ongoing struggles. A man working as a driver for my hotel offered to show me around the city in his spare time, and as we drove around I was rude enough to ask him what he earned in a month. He told me it was 1,200 Ethiopian Birr, working two jobs. At the time it was 22.7 Birr to the Euro; I later convinced myself I'd misunderstood him and friends at home chuckled with polite disbelief, but writing now six years on, a quick search seems to confirm that I heard him well enough.

With such an obscene disparity in the power of my currency versus the local one, I was amazed at how I could leave extravagant tips for meals or taxi rides at little cost to myself. Certain museums and touristic sites asked for entrance fees that at home would be spare change. A few service providers had become conscious of this, and my hotel for example charged something more in line with European prices. This was much more the exception than the rule however. I met many Ethiopians who complained about the immorality of charging foreigners extra for the same services, and I nodded along in agreement. Looking back now though, some of my sympathy shifts to those petty traders who were in a way redressing the absurd imbalance between us, made blatant by the chunky camera slung from my shoulder. If you visit what is optimistically called the developing world, that contrast is going to hit if you have eyes at all to see it. Don't let that discourage you from travelling though, tourism is on balance a very good thing for poorer countries. By your presence alone you make an economic contribution, and channels for communication and understanding are opened. Beyond that bit of good-natured price gouging, in terms of actual crime I remember hearing a lot of warnings about pickpockets. These always came with the addendum that I wouldn't encounter the violent crime that parts of Kenya and South Africa unfortunately have a reputation for. Armed robbery is apparently very rare in Ethiopia. Closer to the Eritrean and Somali borders though, there were and likely still are risks for travellers. Shortly before I arrived in the country a group of five Europeans were killed in the Afar region, something I brushed off at the time, but now with greater hindsight would encourage any potential visitor to take very seriously.

I also got some hints of a new Africa. Addis Ababa had islands of proper paving, shopping malls and modern offices and other infrastructure, competing for the visitor's eye with a few surviving examples of European architecture left by the Italian occupation. I'm sure things have progressed massively even in the short time since I visited, when there was a lot of talk of construction and foreign (Chinese) investment. As the host of the African Union's headquarters and several UN agencies, the fortunes of the city seem likely to improve in the longer term. For all the problems the country still has to address, the city at its heart visibly throbs with energy - just look up "traffic on Meskel Square". It's a big city intersection that somehow functions well enough without traffic lights, or any discernible lanes - one of the more interesting road crossings of my life!

I didn't linger long in Addis though. With its central location in the country it can serve well as a base to venture out to Ethiopia's different regions, each of them distinct in landscape and people. Alternatively some travellers opt to orbit it, taking a circular path around the country. I travelled first to Amhara to visit Lake Tana, Gondar and Lalibela; then on to Axum in Tigray, before spiralling back to the capital and then making one further journey out to Harar in the east; all over the course of a month. In the following posts I'll recount those few extraordinary weeks.

The Gist: Addis Ababa (2012)

• TRAVEL WARNING: Civil war struck Ethiopia beginning in 2018. Irish government travel advice can be found here.

• ARRIVED: I flew to Addis Ababa from Dublin via London Heathrow with British Midland. Ethiopian Airlines now offer a good selection of direct routes from Europe. To help you find the cheapest connection, I recommend Skyscanner.

• SLEPT: I booked a hotel through Hostelworld and got there by taxi from the airport.

• DID: I didn't actually do much touristic sightseeing in the city itself, Addis Ababa was more just my base for exploring the rest of the country. For good free information on things to do, I suggest Wikitravel.

• LEFT: I took a bus to Bahir Dar, booked in person at the station. At the end of my time in Ethiopia, I flew from Addis Ababa to Cairo.