Ethiopian Travel News
AUGUST 4, 2010 | WASHINGTON POST
The image most of us retain of Ethiopia is one of mass starvation and a glittery rock concert intended to ease the suffering. That famine and concert was 25 years ago, and Ethiopia has tried to move on. But just as the world at first overlooked the famine, it is now not aware of progress in the country. Economic and political strides have been made, but still many Ethiopians struggle just a bad drought or flood away from disaster. Peter Gill, who covered the famine and wrote “A Year in the Death of Africa,” now looks at Ethiopia over the past 25 years in “Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid,” out this month from Oxford University Press.
By Peter Gill
Ethiopia is desperate to live down its past – but not the story of an ancient empire founded in a union between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba; nor the tale of a Christian culture established before the conversion of much of Europe; nor the country’s crushing defeat of European colonizers. Rather Ethiopia is trying to get past its more recent history of famine and suffering.
National Geographic Traveler Magazine Names Africa Adventure Consultants’
Ethiopian Epic Top Tour of a Lifetime
Safari Expert Offers Five Little-Known and Curious Facts About Ethiopia
DENVER, CO (I-NewsWire)– Africa Adventure Consultants’ 12-day cultural adventure, The Ethiopian Epic (http://www.adventuresinafrica.com/adventures.trips.aspx?trip_id=176), is one of the world’s “50 Tours of a Lifetime” according to National Geographic Traveler magazine. With departures year-round, cost for the value-priced safari to Northern Ethiopia and the Lower Omo Valley starts at $2,712 per person, double occupancy, exclusive of air.
They say first impressions are lasting impressions, and while that's a cliché, strong first impressions of a country can tell you a lot.
I've been in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, for four days now. My wife has just joined me and I'm treating her to a two-week road trip around the historic northern part of the country to celebrate our tenth anniversary. Memories make the best presents, after all.
This is our first time in sub-Saharan Africa and we've both been taken by surprise, summed up by my wife's assessment of the Ethiopians: "They're like us."
(She's Spanish, so when she says "us" she means Mediterranean people.)
We started this trip in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a place most Americans associate with war and hunger due to the famines of the mid 1980s and 1990s. Even today, more than 6 million people in Ethiopia are at risk for starvation so we had mentally prepared ourselves to see very desperate people.
Instead, we found farmers and NGO workers full of hope for the future of agriculture in their country. That’s been our greatest surprise about the continent in general — how vibrant, entrepreneurial, friendly, positive, and alive people are here.
March 18, 2010 | Georgia Bulletin
CHICAGO—Desmond Drummer, a seminarian for the Atlanta Archdiocese, recently returned from a trip to Ethiopia. He answered a few questions about the trip.
What prompted your trip to Ethiopia?
The Pre-Theology Program at Mundelein Seminary has a partnership with Catholic Relief Services — the international relief and development arm of the Catholic Church in the U.S. Seminarians are given the opportunity to become CRS Global Fellows and have an immersion experience in the countries served by the group. The participants commit to become advocates for CRS. I was one of 11 CRS fellows to travel to Ethiopia—three priests and eight seminarians.
Read more: Seminarian Travels To Ethiopia As CRS Global Fellow
By Barry Malone - March 17, 2010
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia hopes to exploit growing business ties with China, India and Turkey to attract middle class visitors from those countries and boost its largely untapped tourism sector.
China and India have displaced many western countries as the major investors in Africa, including Ethiopia, where they have invested billions of dollars in recent years.
Turkey, with a burgeoning middle class, is negotiating a plan with Ethiopia to set up an industrial zone for Turkish companies near Addis Ababa to export agricultural commodities and leather goods.
Read more: Ethiopia wants to attract tourists from China, India
For a moment, as I ponder the mystery of Amda Berhan, the Pillar of Light, and resist the monumental urge to scratch my feet, I feel every bit the pilgrim, at home among the shawl-clad women who cross themselves and file past.
“The history of the world is written here: the past, the present, even the future,” whispers my guide, Nega. He says this with conviction, having never seen the inscriptions for himself. Few people have: Only Lalibela's wisest priests are allowed to lift the cloth shroud that covers them.
More Articles...
- A leap of faith to Ethiopia's ancient holy sites
- Ethiopia, Destination For The Bold
- Ethiopia - Famine eclipses Ethiopia’s beauty and rich history (Video)
- Tourists grant Ethiopian guides' $1 million wish
- Living history in Ethiopia
- Ethiopia: lifting the mystery on rock churches 'built by angels'
- Traveling back in time to ancient Ethiopia
- Inside the hottest place on Earth
- Ethiopian Airlines cuts intl flights as crisis bites
- Ethiopian Airlines buys eight Bombardier planes
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