Getting to Awra Amba was part of the appeal, given that its location is best described as ‘off the beaten track’. After the usual arguments at the bus station, negotiating prices and reclaiming our luggage from over-eager teenagers, we were able to secure a bus from Bahir Dar heading east. Without hesitation, our bags were tied to the roof, and we folded ourselves into a minibus ready for the mercifully short journey.
We approached Mr Pink Shirt's desk with trepidation as he went grumpily about his business - with a wave of his despotic hand, we were summoned to his desk, and we implemented our horribly under-rehearsed game plan, which we had prepared in the last 2 minutes: firm handshake, explanation, and definitely don’t sound too desperate...
Although I'm not often short of ideas, there is only so much you can do whilst waiting for the bureaucracy machine to do its thing, so what better way to pass the time in the Ethiopian capital than to partake in something so ingrained in Ethiopian culture that one is often synonimous with the other - a cup of coffee.
They say a picture paints a thousand words, well not this one; after looking at the familiar picture on my grandparents sitting room wall, I was struggling to get into double figures; I had ‘man’ and ‘moustache’ which I had quickly followed up with ‘bicycle’, ‘train’, and ‘silly hat’ (which I was definitely counting as two) but beyond that I was finding it hard to find any words to describe this unremarkable sepia image of a man in a hat – that was until I was told that the silly hatted man in question, was in fact my great grandfather.
explore v. (ɛkˈsplɔː) 1. The action of travelling through an unfamiliar area in order to learn more about it
