Lake Tana is the source of the Blue Nile and we started the day yesterday by riding out on a bus along dirt roads and past powerful mountains to see the magnificent Blue Nile falls.  A measure of the number of previous tourists to visit a place is the number, age, and pitch of the assembled salespeople that we encounter.  At the most distant monastery Norda Selassie the children didn’t have much to sell – they quickly made little boats out of reeds and old fishing line and then gave them to our children.  The less remote monasteries, Azwa Mariam and Ura k. mehiret, the children and adults sold painted pictures, colorful bead gourds, woven cloth, beads and jewelry, etc.  They have also developed a more aggressive sales pitch.  The very young have an advantage over the old – they can speak English and move quickly and are more cute.  They say the same thing everywhere, “What’s your name?  Selling ______.  I’m a student.  Can you mail me school supplies, etc.”  I explained to Micah that the children he meets here may seem like pests (it really bothers him to feel so constantly hounded – he’s so serious he attracts the children although he needs his space), but these children don’t have more than one set of clothes.  Some don’t have shoes.  They are asking for the equivalent of twenty cents for pens, exercise books, and other school supplies that our children take for granted.  We talked about the Ethiopians who built the dam here while being paid $2.00 to smash rocks all day in the hot sun.

We walked down a ravine then across an old bridge – one of the first across the Nile, then up another hill through some stalls and then around the hill to the falls.  It wasn’t a long walk we could have gone much further.  Jemon did.  I think he initially intended to go for a 7 1/2 minutes and then got caught up in the adventure.  In the end the other guide who was with him took him back by another route.

After our bus ride to Gondar we visited Debre Berhan, an ancient rectangular church with old paintings inside.  We heard two different guides describe the scenes, many of which were familiar from other churches.  The angels on the ceilings were so striking and memorable.  Every tourist book must include these images.

Then we visited the castle, King Fasil’s palace, and tried to imagine life during that extraordinary renaissance.  I remembered many of the stories from Ethiopian history book, but I need to go back and revisit them to keep everything straight in my mind.  We were there in magical light as the sun set making the immense castle walls red.  The tour guide emphasized the religious basis for the conflicts but there were also resource/ethnic reasons for those old wars.  The antiquity of these places made us imagine what horrible and wonderful things happened here.  The large rooms in the palace behind huge walls made me grateful for our simple life in Mountain View.