Travels With Maria

eretria

Legends

After breakfast, our Axum guide, Mesgana, meet us in the hotel lobby. We walked from our hotel, the same route we had taken the night before on a futile search for an ATM. Today was the basket market, with a bunch of vendors sitting under a huge sycamore tree displaying their wares. Baskets in all sizes, woven in straw with wool blended in to make colorful decorations. We left the market and started climbing a long hill. Passing in the other direction were farmers taking their products to the market in the town below. Cows, goats, donkeys carrying bags of produce, the occasional chicken. Many/most of the people, men and…
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Not Like Other Africans

Ethiopia is unique among African nations in that it has never been colonized by Europeans. The Italians occupied twice and the British invaded, but no one successfully established a colony. Ethiopia has a very strong national identity that they trace back to the Queen of Sheba who they say gave birth to King Solomon's son and brought him back from Israel and established a Jewish kingdom in Ethiopia. Many other African "nations" are based on European borders that are meaningless to the peoples that live there. They claim that Christianity came here from Egypt in the first century. Probably it was really several hundred years later, but still way earlier…
More

Legends

After breakfast, our Axum guide, Mesgana, meet us in the hotel lobby. We walked from our hotel, the same route we had taken the night before on a futile search for an ATM. Today was the basket market, with a bunch of vendors sitting under a huge sycamore tree displaying their wares. Baskets in all sizes, woven in straw with wool blended in to make colorful decorations. We left the market and started climbing a long hill. Passing in the other direction were farmers taking their products to the market in the town below. Cows, goats, donkeys carrying bags of produce, the occasional chicken. Many/most of the people, men and…
More

Not Like Other Africans

Ethiopia is unique among African nations in that it has never been colonized by Europeans. The Italians occupied twice and the British invaded, but no one successfully established a colony. Ethiopia has a very strong national identity that they trace back to the Queen of Sheba who they say gave birth to King Solomon's son and brought him back from Israel and established a Jewish kingdom in Ethiopia. Many other African "nations" are based on European borders that are meaningless to the peoples that live there. They claim that Christianity came here from Egypt in the first century. Probably it was really several hundred years later, but still way earlier…
More