December 1, 2014

Well, I’m 6 weeks into my time here in Ethiopia and things are going well.

This weekend I went for a jaunt up to Washa-Mikael, the only rock hewn church in the Addis region. While some priests and early scholars of the Orthodox church date the ruins to 380 A.D. recent scholars suggest the church was built in the 12^th or 13^th century. The church is nevertheless the oldest structure of its type in Sub-Saharan Africa.

I met up with Anja, another UN intern, and took a taxi out to the British Embassy where we started our 1.5 hr hike up to the church. While there were no signs or directions to be found anywhere online or near the church, we relied on locals for help. Luckily after our first 15 minutes we met a lovely women hiking up to her home, perhaps 400 meters above the city limit.

She gladly took us along and showed us the way until we came up to a small collection of houses in the mountains where she lived. The journey up took us through eucalyptus forests, first planted around the turn of the 20^th century with the help of the Australians. The trees ‘saved’ the relatively new city (Addis) since their fast growth supplied the capital with ample firewood. In fact Menelik II, the emperor of Ethiopia from 1889-1913 started building a new capital city to replace Addis due to the fuel shortage, though this project was abandoned thanks to the eucalyptus.

From there we continued towards the church, passing next to a small village that combined livestock rearing and crop production. About 2/3 of the houses in this village had sheet metal roofs, while the remaining were the traditional round thatch roof huts.

Continuing on our trek we passed by cattle on the outskirts of the village and soon arrived at the church entrance. One thing that’s frustrating here is foreigners (ferenji) have to pay 100 birr ($5) to enter this, or any other church in the city for that matter. Granted, I’m happy to support the churches and the communities they reside in, but my understanding is that the church administration receives all the money, providing no funds for either the priests or local communities.

 When approaching from the back, you can’t tell anything is there.

Walk about 40 feet away however and you’re blown away by the ruins of a church that provided services for 1,500 years!

To enter, you walk into this long narrow tunnel, taking off your shoes beforehand.

We then spent the next half hour or so exploring the ruins, and appreciating this beautiful piece of history. Sadly the ruins are in great disrepair and are in dire need of funds to ensure no further damage ensues. Scholars are currently working to get UNESCO to denote the church a world heritage site, which would provided a great deal of financial support, however this is still in the works.