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It’s not what you’re thinking. Although Part 1’s ending made for a great cliffhanger the gunman turned out to be nothing more than a security guard, however intimidating that might be. It did get me thinking though, as he escorted me up the rest of the trail towards the top of the mesa, about why an armed … Continue reading »

The night before my flight I said farewell to my new friend Simen. If you have been following my blog then you already know him as the sparker of many stories. His final advice for me was to keep my guard up in Axum. “Over there it is a much bigger city. Not everyone knows … Continue reading »

What Simen Says As Simen and I made our way out of the village, I took a good look around. Out of all the mud huts, his aunt’s was far from the finest on the block. The fanciest among them had holes punched in the walls of about the thickness of a broomstick. They looked … Continue reading »

A Higher Calling As it so happens, Simen’s aunt lives practically around the corner from the school. We dropped in, and yet again I got the feeling that they weren’t expecting us. It didn’t seem to matter much as Simen’s aunt stopped what she was doing the moment we arrived and came over to give … Continue reading »

Self Imposed Exile Simen didn’t particularly like trails. What he did like, I discovered, was springing things on me. With the high noon sun threatening to cook us as thoroughly as the treeless, sunbaked landscape all around us, Simen made an impatient dash downhill by the most direct route possible that wouldn’t involve any tumbling. This … Continue reading »

By the second day in Lalibela, my manic dash to visit every major historic site that the city had to offer was complete. With such limited time remaining and the creeping sensation that I might never see anything like Lalibela again in my lifetime, I was loathe to even pause for breath. As soon as the tour … Continue reading »

To pick up where my last story left off; I was wandering the dusty, time resistant passages of what I’d come to accept as the eighth wonder of the world.  As I walked I was deep in thought. I contemplated the complexities of Lalibela’s wondrous churches like a child seeing a big city skyline for the … Continue reading »

I arrived in Lalibela in high spirits, yet sick from the past few days. I had just spent a frigid night’s sleep in a tent high in the Simien Mountains without a proper sleeping bag, but that’s another story. I was a little tired, but more than anything, weary of the lies and tricks that … Continue reading »

I careened through the narrow streets; zipping between cars, pedestrians, and animals. We passed through clouds of diesel smoke streaming from truck engines like chimney stacks, billowing up all around us. I could smell the pungent scent of hot pavement and dust as it mixed with the auto emissions, a smell I had become all too familiar with. … Continue reading »