Category Archives: Gallery

New galleries

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I have not been very happy with the galleries on WordPress. The combination of text and image, which I love, puts high-quality images at a disadvantage. I grant that I may haven’t found the right styles yet. Anyways, since I put a lot of work into editing my photos properly now that I’m back home and have all my equipment again, I decided to create galleries on 500px. I’m quite happy with the display, though not the functionality of their content management (notably the random order in which the images are uploaded). So if you want to see high quality images, go to my profile there.

Note: the Omo-Valley gallery contains semi-nudes that will only display for registered users who allow NSFW-content to be displayed.

Omorate and the Daasanach

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The Daasanach live on both sides of the Ethiopian-Kenyan border. If they want to cross into Kenya, the removed lower front teeth are their passport. I crossed the Omo at Omorate with my guide Gabriel and his friend to reach the nearest village just before sunset, and it was a very enjoyable visit. No other tourists, the kids enjoyed my mbira again, and since I handed my camera to Gabriel’s friend I could freely move about and people cared less about me. Less posing as well. Things must have been similar to the Mursi situation until a while ago, but now the arrangement is such that visitors pay a flatrate of 200 Birr (ca $7.50) to take pics. The German lawyer who gave me a lift the next day had been to the very same village in the morning, in a crowd of tourists. He said that as much as he loves photography, he found the village arranged in such a way that half-naked women were sat outside their huts staring into the distance apathetically, and he refrained from taking any pictures at all. My experience was totally different. I was able to interact with the people to a degree, and I am very grateful to Gabriel’s friend for the pics he took – he’s a natural photographer, I must say. And I find the Dassenach are amongst the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen.

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Turmi and the Hamer

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Turmi is primarily a crossroad. A big, dusty roundabout connects Ethiopia’s south-western corner with the rest of the country. While the roads coming in from the north, east and west are dust tracks, the one leading further south to Omorate becomes a perfect tarmac road some five kilometres out of town.

the Turmi roundabout
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Jinka and the Mursi

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Circa 7,500 strong, the Mursi are amongst the most iconic African tribes, and famous especially for the ceramic plates (some) women wear in their lower lips. To this day they live in fairly remote areas some two hours across dust track from Jinka, the southernmost town that has an ATM in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region.

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Omo Valley

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Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region along with the area around Lake Turkana in northern Kenya is one of the candidates for being the cradle of humankind, as some major discoveries that have been made here suggest. Since it is also a region with an incredible diversity in tribal cultures, it has been referred to as a (live) museum of human cultures. I found traveling here truly exciting, though not free from major challenges. I don’t mean the usual challenges of logistics, food and health or such like, even though they are more pronounced here. Rather, traveling here has exposed me to significant questions concerning the role of tourism, and tourist-tribe members interaction in a region where ritual infanticide and the ritual whipping of women is practiced. I have written about this in a separate post. So here’s a first glance only.

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Addis Ababa

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Addis Ababa and I may have started off on the wrong foot, but let me exercise some control over my thinking, and not be too negative. My experience is tainted through the one and only really negative encounter I’ve had on this journey with a local person. Unfortunately, Addis does not seem to have the charm that comes with age-old historical sites (it’s a rather young creation in this very old country) or such architectural attractions that could have made up for my frustration. Having said that, Addis Ababa’s orthodox churches and their communities of worshippers are something else, and truly stunning, and the spirit of one of the oldest Christian communities on earth makes itself felt. The churches, although rather new, are impressive enough, yet much of the town’s architecture reminded me of rather bleak socialist housing projects. Indeed, I recalled how back in my school days we collected money for socialist Ethiopia, under Mengistu it must have been. Except for some encounters with kids and some drunkards, people didn’t really compensate the absence of charm and joy which I had experienced elsewhere, notably in Dar es-Salaam. It actually started with a rather unfriendly immigration procedure (well, that’s not unheard of elsewhere), and then there was this guy …

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Nairobi National Park

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Nairobi is the only metropolis with a national park right off its doorsteps, and with 117 sq. km its quite big. You get some of the big five (lion, buffalo, rhino, hippo) and cheetahs and leopards, though come early in the morning. I was lucky at last on my afternoon game drive when eventually we, my driver Sam and I, found two rhinos, a large group of giraffes and finally some six lions with “a view to a kill“. As a large crowd of visitors turned up, it seemed to become a big spectacle. Unfortunately, the lions seemed too unexperienced, or the antelopes and zebras too bush-wise, for the prospective prey played it really cool and kept a healthy distance to the approaching pride.

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Nairobi busses

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Addmitedly, my experience with Nairobi is purely visual. I haven’t had much occasion to use one during my two-day visit, yet their dominance in traffic is the same as elsewhere on the continent. What makes them special is their flashy design. A lot of them come with the craziest themes and motifs. Unfortunately my photoshoots were somewhat limited as my neighbourhood (around River Road) is considered rather unsafe, and occasionally I had to be wise and put my camera away when some guys were showing just a little too much interest in me (or my camera). Here are some impressions though:

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Tanga to Diani Beach, Mombasa

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My last stop in Tanzania was to be Tanga, some 7 hours by bus from Dar es-Salaam. Getting closer to the equator, I still want to enjoy some tropical beach settings, I therefore decided to skip Mombasa for some of its nearby beaches. Unfortunately, my camera stopped working when I got to Diani Beach, hence there are only some mediocre pics from my smartphone (which doesn’t have a good camera).

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