The Asmaran

Sometime before arriving in Namibia I stopped off in Eritrea for a while - my birthday was Egypt, Christmas in Tanzania and sometime between the two was Eritrea (naturally I do know the exact dates, but I like to pretend I'm not at all anal. OK?).

Those of you who avidly read my post on Namibia may have noted my comment about being economical with my shooting prior to arriving in that country. By way of contrast, during the 8 days I spent in Eritrea I took only twenty six photos - not even a roll of film. It wasn't for lack of subject matter rather that I wanted each shot to count. Suffice to say, looking through those twenty six images now, many didn't really count at all, not in any greater way than a tourist snap, but then that's what I was. What follows is a bunch of those photos, in chronological order!!

Without wanting to consult my journal (which is packed away in the top of the wardrobe) I remember having a horrible time just prior to Eritrea. We left Dahab on the Red Sea coast, climbed Mt Sinai after nightfall, spent the night up there sleeping badly, walked down on an empty stomach, long hot boring taxi ride across Sinai Peninsula into Cairo to hit the outskirts and be told by our taxi driver that the law stops them taking us any further, find a bus to get us to Cairo centre, find a room, go in search of dinner, get accosted by touts who I'd already had enough of prior to departing Cairo a week earlier and let them get the brunt of my tiredness and hunger, another late night and an early rise to get us to the Airport in time to catch a disgustingly early flight to Eritrea.

So we arrived in Asmara reasonably early in the day which gave us plenty of time to settle in and explore a bit. This shot is the view from our hotel window. It's the St. Mary’s Catholic Cathedral (yes I kept notes of all the photos I took, what's it to you??). Eritrea was once an Italian outpost/colony/thing and there are reminders of that heritage all around Asmara - like the pizzaria where we had most dinners, the cafe where we drank coffee and people watched, and the cinema where we saw some really old war movie from memory.

These two ladies were in the market. I was wandering through with my mate MC, and we looked somewhat out of place I think, what with us being two tall white guys. Anyway the girl behind the counter nicely offered us some of the food the girl in front was eating. They had no English, we had no Tigrinia, but I tried some of her food and by crikey if was yummy. No idea what it was, a kind of mushy bread and chili paste. Mmmmmmm.

Asmara was, and presumably still is, a small city with everything in walking distance - especially if you're happy to do the miles I was happy to. This is a shot of the suburbs.

And another, from the hill on the way to the cemetery.

And a really unflattering photo of MC in the suburbs.

This has thrown me somewhat cos it's out of sequence with my memory - maybe I should consult that journal. Anyway it's somewhere along the road between Asmara and Keren, Eritrea's 3rd largest town.

This is a street in Keren. Even on a day trip, arriving late morning, and meandering around town, the place was still small enough that we could see the whole town, play with some of the local kids, upset a few adults just by being there, and not getting lost, we still had about an hour to kill before the bus back to Asmara.

By coincidence - I think - we arrived on camel market day, where the locals buy and sell um ... camels. Cool. Even though by then I'd already done a day trek on a camel and had discovered a certain dislike of them - at least as far as being a passenger on one went anyway.

I think MC decided this was bougainvillea, but he was basing that on his growing up in Papua New Guinea where bougainvillea is in plentiful supply, and he said that while it looked like bouganvillea but he didn't really know for sure. It was pretty. That was enough for me.

Back in Asmara, this is in the Medeber market. You can't really see it in this shot, but it was the first time I'd really seen such industry. They made all sorts of things from all sorts of materials, nothing was wasted, it was truly a society of recyclers.

This is the port of Massawa. The reason Ethiopia was determined not to allow Eritrea independence, as it was Ethiopia's main port - now they have none. It was an exciting trip, not least becuase Asmara is 3000m above sea level, so it's a bit of a drop down to the coast (which is at sea level give or take a tide or two).

It was also interesting because I had diarrhoea, and after trying to hold on finally had to get them to stop the bus so I could do my business. I got off, and by luck, just up the road was a railway viaduct I could squat behind so as to hide myself from the glare of nasty passengers. After I finished and was getting back on the bus, one of the locals who'd taken the opportunity to stretch his legs informed me I was lukcy to have missed the landmines which hadn't been cleared away since the civil war days. Nice. Thanks for telling me after I could've blown myself to bits ... arsehole.

This is heading south in to Ethoipia. It is the general area of the famous mid-80s Bob Geldolf drought which allowed many people to discover not only that Ethiopia existed, but to place it on the globe. Needless to say it wasn't in drought while we were there.

Somewhere out there is Ethiopia. We spent the night here before crossing the border.

And this is the border crossing. Yes I am a terror suspect after having participated in the highly illegal act of photographing border posts. But come on!! It's so cool.

And that was that. I wanna go back - of course. Spend longer. Take better photos. See the National Museum which was being refurbed after the independence.

One of the coolest things was that the day we arrived in Eritrea was the day they introduced their own national currency - the Nakfa, named after a town that was the stronghold in the border wars. They'd been using the Ethiopian money up to then. So I have a mint collection of first edition Eritrean notes - probably worth a huge 20cents, but I don't care, cos you don't have any Eritrean anything. Of course, when we crossed into Ethiopia they refused to change our Eritrean money as they had no idea what it was.

Here is a good resource on all things Eritrean.