Haleka Woldegabriel, Axum, Tigray, Ethiopia, April 2009

Haleka Woldegabriel, Axum, Tigray, Ethiopia, April 2009

Haleka Woldegabriel is a artisan in Axum, primarily producing fairly low-quality woodcrafts for the tourist shop market, but in the past, he produced books and magic scrolls. Like many other scribes, he says that he has had to give it up because the economic situation of the scribe is no longer tenable, and other crafts are significantly more profitable. Haleka Woldegabriel is interesting for being the first scribe I have met so far to use steel pen-nibs in his writing, rather than bamboo pens.

He’s holding an incomplete magic scroll–he sends them to others for painting when the writing is done.

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