On leaving Lalibela

Viv’s thoughts

Leaving the hillside town of Lalibela, and dropping down to the airport 25K away, I was suddenly struck by the starkness of the landscape.  Mountains upon mountains, lined up against the horizon, everything brown or dusty.  Misty or dusty: not sure which.  The small fields have been harvested and some stand bare of any vegetation, some with short stalks of maize or wheat, but mostly grazed short, by the multi coloured, skinny goats, brown fat-tailed sheep, horned cattle and Zebu. Some thistle and sparse bushes line the edges of the fields, and some stumpy trees still standing, with small dust covered leaves.  There are a few really big trees – sycamore or fig – and the black and white boubou birds take advantage of the shade and perches they offer.  A dribble of water can be seen in the otherwise dry river bed and either side of the water are beautiful irrigated and green fields.

Up in the plane you can make out the round compounds each with their straw-roofed tukul and their stick surrounds to hold the animals in the evenings.  On the extensive plateaux there are rectangular fields right to the edge and then terraces down the sides of the mountains.  During the fight of the TPLF against the DERG one of the sayings was ‘Guns against the DERG, stones against soil erosion’.  That stone terracing is still doing its job really well.