Gourds are used for all manner of storage in Southern Ethiopia, and almost everyone
carries one with them for water or local beer.
Starling, Southern Ethiopia, November 2007
A Blue-Eared Glossy Starling (?) in the rafters of an outdoor eating area.
Stilt, Lake Ziway, Ethiopia, November 2007
Hummingbird, Lalibela, Woldia, Ethiopia, October 2007
Entrance, Bete Medhane Alem, Lalibela, Woldia, Ethiopia, October 2007
Looking from the original ground level down to the walkway-level entrance to Bete Medhane Alem (‘Church of the Medicine of the World,’ a name for Christ), the largest church in Lalibela. The pillars have been partially restored with quarried stone.
Priest and Crosses, Abba Libanos Church, Lalibela, Woldia, Ethiopia, October 2007
Lalibela, envisioned as a second, African, Jerusalem, is a pilgrimage site in Ethiopia, site of churches cut out of the living rock, and home to a great multitude of priests and deacons, who manage the churches, conduct services, and give tours.
This priest is showing off processional crosses from the treasury of his church.
Sunbeam, Bete Golgotha Church, Lalibela, Woldia, Ethiopia, October 2007
A sun beam coming through a small window illuminates the interior of Bete Golgotha Church.
Sometimes lumped together with its sister church, Bete Debre Sina into the same unit, called Bete Kidus Mikael, Bete Golgotha is meant to evoke its biblical namesake. Inside, in addition to several bas-relief figures and a symbolic tomb of Christ (obscured by curtains), a narrow passageway connects to Trinity chapel, a place so sacred that it is even off-limits to most Lalibela priests.
Priest and Cross #2, Lalibela, Woldia, Ethiopia, October 2007
Another portrait of the same priest as before. Remember that you can click through to leave comments on the flickr page for any image from now on.
Update & Flickr Integration
I have updated to the latest version of WordPress, which should be essentially seamless on the user end. A more interesting update is that , starting with the last three posts, I am converting all the photos from being hosted on my site to being hosted by Flickr. What this means is that you can click on any photo to get to its Flickr page, and there you can leave a comment, favorite it, or use the sorting and search tools to look through my entire stream. I am going to try to work backwards and make all the photos behave like this, in order to better integrate the various presentations of my photos. I know that a number of people read this stream through imported notes in Facebook, and I assume it will work there with new notes, though it currently doesn’t with any note already imported.
I am still working on making my various Flickr sets appear in pages, so that I will have dynamically-generated sets on this site.
Priest and Cross, Lalibela, Woldia, Ethiopia, October 2007
Lalibela, envisioned as a second, African Jerusalem, is a pilgrimage site in Ethiopia, home to eleven churches hewn out of the living rock, and host to a great multitude of priests and deacons, who manage the churches, conduct services, and give tours. This priest is showing off a processional cross from the treasury of his church.