Crossing the front line

by Alan Court

By mid-1983, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, rebelling against the Mengistu government, had fought its way much further south from Tigray into Amhara territory and had cut off Lalibela, the town of the famous churches hewn out of rock. In early 1984, I joined a team of government and UNICEF water engineers traveling from Addis Ababa to the Wollo region of central Amhara for a meeting. The group included Kalidas Ray, UNICEF’s Water Chief in the country, and Vlado Zakula, a UNICEF master driller who had been in the country for a quarter of a century and seemed to be well-known wherever he traveled. We arrived in Kombolcha, at the foot of the high plateau, in the evening and we sat down for supper in a restaurant. The conversation turned to Lalibela and the fact that no foreigners had access for the last eight months. Then one of the government engineers said he had been there three weeks previously. The airport was under rebel control but the road from Kobo to Lalibela had been open then and the government garrison based in Lalibela, that had been cut off, was being provisioned. After a while, and further into the bira (beer) someone said “we’ll see the Governor of Wollo in Dessie tomorrow and ask if we can go.” 

Next morning we drove up the escarpment to Dessie. It was eight kilometers as the crow flies; over 20 kilometers by road and at an elevation of 2,500 meters. The Governor wasn’t there but the Deputy was; he knew UNICEF well and was a big supporter of our work. A debate in Amharic ensued amongst the Ethiopians which culminated in the Deputy Governor calling the Military Chief of the region in the headquarters at Teesta (now Tita) just outside the town, and telling him there was a government group of eight engineers wanting to go to Lalibela. Were there any foreigners? Yes, three. What nationalities? Indian, Yugoslav and British. Can they be trusted? They are all with UNICEF. Ok. They can go but should take the Chinese road, going in from Weldiya, because the Kobo road has been cut off. However, they need to check in with the Administrator at Weldiya on the way. The Chinese had been building an extraordinary road from Weldiya to Gondar across the plateau and mountains. They had brought in their own labour for much of the work and many (at least fifty) of the labourers had died through falls, landslides, and other accidents during the course of construction. At the time we went, the surface was still earth and gravel and being levelled. 

We arrived in Weldiya in two vehicles several hours later and one of the engineers told the drivers to slow down. We foreigners had no idea why and the Ethiopians weren’t saying. We eventually drove into the small town and stopped at the Administrator’s office. The guard came over and told us the Administrator had gone home for lunch, should he fetch him? Oh no! said the head of the government group, just tell him we have passed by and reported, as we were asked. So on we went and we discovered from our companions that this administrator never missed his lunch at a particular time and we didn’t want to risk being told we couldn’t continue. Hence, the slowing down to get there. 

The next stage of the journey was up very steep earthen hairpin bends to the road itself, along the road for about 20 minutes and then one of the engineers took over navigating. Turn right. There’s no road, said the driver. Turn right and go over the edge, one will appear! We went over the edge, and there was no sudden drop, thankfully. It took driving another kilometer or so until we could recognize that it was indeed a path. We drove for over two hours, over a distance of just 28 kilometers to join the Kobo road at the foot of the next escarpment up to Lalibela. A very bumpy and uncomfortable ride. We passed many men and boys with guns on the way. 

When we reached the hotel which was up a steep hill at the entrance to Lalibela, government soldiers stopped us and asked how we had reached there. They were amazed. Apparently we had crossed the “front lines'' three times. The UNICEF decals on the cars seemed to be the saving grace. Then we drove into the town and soon there were children, boys and girls, running towards us happily shouting “Zakula, Zakula” and Vlado obligingly descended from the front vehicle and started distributing sweets and pens, as he apparently always did. We stayed the night and although the rebels and government troops occasionally exchanged rounds of fire, the next day at the crack of dawn we were down in no-man’s land inspecting subsurface dams and pumps and the two massive Lister booster pumps half way up the cliff as well as the Southern Cross water storage tanks that fed the town. There was absolutely no firing from either side. It was also noticeable that none of the water supply equipment had been damaged. There seems to have been an agreement not to. Then the town officials said we had to stay. The next day was Timket, the Orthodox Epiphany celebration, when the priests of each church take out the Tabot, a replica of the Holy Ark of the Covenant, march in procession with it to a body of water and celebrate the Divine Liturgy, then march back in procession, everyone dressed in their finest traditional clothes, with colourful umbrellas, singing and dancing. When the arks have been returned to their churches everyone goes home to feast. A day of freedom and joy! 

We stayed one more night and returned to Dessie the next day and then on to Addis. I remember very little of the return journey after the adventure of the trip there, and the extraordinary experience of a traditional Timket celebration.


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