Now time for Timket (also called Timkat)...the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage festival and one reason I was attracted to Ethiopia.
Those who have read any of my previous blogs from Papua New Guinea and Mongolia, or have heard me describe Carnival in Rio, know I’m kinda keen on festivals. They are wonderfully enlightening and entertaining ways to watch people demonstrating pride in their country and their culture. Always colorful celebrations ...and usually kinda noisy...they bring out the old and the young. Everyone is happy and eager to share their celebration with visitors, be it music, food, dancing or smiles.
While the multi-day Timket is a public holiday celebrated throughout the country, Gondar is the historical origin, so that’s where I’ll be.The morning drive from the Semien Mountains to Gondar took us past, what in Ethiopia is called, a Fellasha Village.
Fellasha Village sign
I will do my best to explain what I was told from the perspective of our guide plus the little research I was able to do. Like much of Ethiopian history and its relations with neighboring countries, the story is complicated.
The village is one of a few that belongs to the roughly 9,000 “Black Jews” (as they are called here) who remain in Ethiopia. I briefly described their history in the second blog from Axum. When Ethiopia adopted Christianity in the 4th century, many Jews resisted conversion. “Fellasha” means “displaced person,” according to our guide. However its origins also can mean “someone who changes their faith.” It can also be rather derogatory, meaning “landless, wanderer.”
These Jews who were left behind in the 1991weekendairlift to Israel, now, supposedly, must prove seven generations of Jewish ancestry before being accepted for immigration by Israel. After just 10 days in this country in both urban and rural settings and learning the numerous regime/government changes that have occurred in only the past 100 years, I cannot fathom any possible documentation that could exist - privately or publicly - going back seven generations. Apparently, sincere efforts over the past several years by Israel and Netanyahu to allow these people to settle in Israel have been on again/off again. Funding has been presented as one obstacle.
It should be noted that the 150,000 Ethiopians who arrived in Israel in 1991 came with few skills, little education and unable to speak Hebrew. As such, they are significantly un/under employed, living in below standard living conditions and are poorly integrated into the Israeli community.
Historically, the Black Jews of Ethiopia were weavers, made pottery and were considered lower class. Ironically, woven cotton and pottery are sold in all the little tourist stalls today. I can’t speak for any other communities of Ethiopian Jews, but, in a country where living conditions are very difficult, much housing is basic and day-to-day living is a challenge, this small village was the saddest and harshest I’ve seen.
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Front of synagogue
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Front of synagogue
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Village hut
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Village Hut
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Synagogue interior
The road continued to Gondar and Timket. Timket (immersion in water) is an Orthodox celebration of Christ’s baptism. Beginning in the early 1600s, after a couple hundred years when the Portuguese were busy converting everyone in Ethiopia to Catholicism, King Fasilides of Gondar expelled or killed all the Jesuits and restored the official status of the Ethiopian Orthodox faith. He had a large pool built in Gondar and urged people to be (re)baptized as a way of recommitting themselves to their Orthodox faith. Today, in Gondar, a month before Timket, a local river is diverted to fill the Fasilides Bath, essentially a huge stone-walled swimming pool.
As you will see, describing my experience at the Timket festival is difficult and was not what, as a tourist, I hoped to experience. For Gondar, a time of joy and celebration turned tragic.Timket begins with a joyful day when each church’s replica of the Arc of the Covenant (remember: usually hidden behind a curtain in the “ Holy of Holy”) is brought out (draped in colorful cloths) and paraded in a procession led by the highest priests and bishops for all to (almost) see. On the parade route, as the priests and covenants approach, they are preceded by people rolling out giant rugs for the priests to walk on so they and the covenant don’t touch the ground. After they pass, the rugs are rolled up and - leap frog style - are hustled further down the parade route.
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Procession with priests in front of Ark replicas
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Rug being carried for priests to walk on
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Rug being re-rolled
As the covenant replicas pass by, the crowd gets quite jubilant and frenzied, with woman practicing ululation, that high pitched trilling we typically associate with women in the Middle East but which is actually quite widespread around the world. It is, in fact, part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church service.The parade includes a couple of floats and even a very large incense burner filled with frankincense... so thick and pungent I had to cover my nose and mouth with my scarf. Frankincense was brought by one of the Three Wis Men, Balthazar, supposedly an Ethiopian. Note that to be respectful, all women at Timket are encourage to keep their head covered in recognition of its religious importance. Even donkeys are decked out!
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Float
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Frankincense
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Donkey
People gather on rooftops to get a better view. The procession ...a verrrrry slow procession... includes priests of various churches, people playing the drum from a church, choirs, and everyone in the white cotton scarves and robes.
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Rooftops during procession
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Drummer
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Priests in procession
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Procession garments
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Procession crosses
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Procession
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Procession
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Procession
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Procession
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Crowd at Timket
The procession continues until each covenant replica arrives at the Fasiladas Baths where they are kept until the next morning...the apex of the celebration.
But Timket is much more than a religious festival. And everyone participates. Worshipers, old and young, tourists, Ethiopians who have walked days to be a part of this all march along...beside and amongst the actual marchers. There is much music and singing and clapping. It is easy to get swept up in the happy throng, as I did while trying to take a picture. It is a big crowd, with hundreds of thousands or perhaps a million, converging on this little town.This is a happy day! And very special for women. It is the one day where they can go out dressed in their most beautiful clothes, where they can have their hair beautifully styled and never worry that, in this conservative country, they will be accused of acting or looking inappropriately.
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Women at procession
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Women at procession
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Women at procession
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Women at procession
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Women at procession
In fact, traditionally, Timket has been a time for young men to get an opportunity to really check out the women. In the old days, if a man found you attractive, he’d throw a lemon at you!!! Now it is a big party scene with women proud of strutting their stuff, so to speak. And in a country where I have found people rather reluctant to be photographed, parents would proudly push their children - all dressed up in their prettiest outfits - in front of the camera!
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Families at procession
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Families at procession
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Families at procession
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Families at procession
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Man at procession
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Procession
On the side streets, you see signs of families preparing for the big feast which will follow the next day’s baptismal ceremony - what the holiday is really all about. Live chickens are purchased for $20 a piece for the traditional stew. Live goats are being tied to carts or the top of the tuktuks to be taken home and butchered. It is a time of family gatherings and feasting!
The baptismal ceremony takes place on the second morning. I was picked up at my hotel at 3:30 AM (yes, that’s right!) and driven to the bath. As we got close, in the pitch black cold night, there were people, dressed in their white robes -like ghosts in the dark - streaming down side streets and alleys toward the bath.After a security check (even here!), we entered a large walled off field with a stone tower at one end. Beyond that, there were two stands of bamboo bleachers along the left side of the pool and two along the right. Guesstimate: each held a couple hundred people.There were some colored lights strung overhead. But my first impression was of thousands of people, in their white, standing, praying, chanting...three hours before dawn. My guide said many had been here all night, arriving immediately after the previous day’s parade.
We made our way to a section apparently reserved for tourists and guides and climbed up into the stands overlooking the pool....shimmering in the reflection of the lights. The stands were essentially bleachers built out of bamboo poles. The steps, the seats, the railings (where they existed) were all bamboo. We settled in to watch and look, listen to the prayers...and wait. Try sitting on bamboo for four hours!! (Sorry for photo quality. I was behind a tree, taking photos in the dark, and using the maximum zoom I had!)
The prayers and chanting, led by a priest in the stone tower, continued for hours. Many lit candles. Over time, groups of priests filed in...and still the praying continued. The sound of the priest’s voice became almost hypnotic. Occasionally, the worshipers would respond. Occasionally, they would bow deeply. The praying continued as more priests began to surround the pool.
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Worshippers in the stands at 4am
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Worshippers in the stands at 4am
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Worshippers with candles
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priests at water’s edge
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priests at water’s edge
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priests at water’s edge
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priests at water’s edge
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priests with prayer sticks
Then the high priests and bishops entered in glittering brocade robes. Several held large carved wooden crosses and one held what was a large religious book (not the Bible).
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High priests
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High priests
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High priests
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High priests
Light began to show in the sky as dawn approached...And still the praying and chanting continued. The pool was now surrounded by priests. At dawn, in time to the rhythm of the chanting prayer, the priests began to gesture with their prayer sticks: up and down representing Christ having gone to heaven and returned to earth. They played a small metal musical instrument which represents Jacob’s ladder.
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Priests by the pool
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Priests Playing Jacobs ladder
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Priests by the pool
The worshippers standing out beyond the stone building and the hundreds in the bamboo stands across from me were also chanting. There was a tension...an excitement building in the crowd ...as the moment approached when the bishop would bless the water in the pool. That holy water would then be sprinkled on the crowd; young boys would dive into the holy water...all seeking a recommitment to Christ through a recreation of baptism.This was the crescendo that the days of the Timket celebration build toward. The sun was now up.
As I waited to see the exhilaration and sudden unbounded joy from the worshippers that I’d heard would accompany the blessing of the water, I saw a slow blur of white in one of the stands of worshippers across from me. A few seconds of confusion...just far enough away that I couldn’t see clearly. And then I realized.
One of the bamboo stands, filled with worshippers in their white robes who had been praying all night, had collapsed. All I could see was sticks. All those people had been buried and crushed under the weight of the bamboo and the crowd.
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Worshippers at dawn
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After the bamboo stands collapsed
There was no screaming. Most, including priests, were confused, not fully comprehending what had happened. In my section, Ethiopian guides began to tell guests we should leave. Suddenly, the bamboo under our feet now felt fragile. The crowd was pressed tightly getting down the stairs, but all was orderly. On the street, we searched for our van as, inevitably, we began to hear sirens. Ambulances began to arrive. Worshippers streamed past us, walking toward their homes, looking somber, dazed, frozen. Parents walked, holding firmly to their children’s hand.
The reverence of this very holy day in the Orthodox religion, the joy of the festivities, the tradition of centuries was suddenly all gone. It was tragic, horrible.
The press reports I’ve seen said 10 were killed, 250 injured, 80 hospitalized. I’ve been told that the blessing of the water and the baptism reenactment proceeded later in the day. I don’t know.
The next day, the last day of Timket, back in Addis Ababa - the capital, people were somber and talking about what had happened in Gondar, the historical hometown of Timket.
I am happy that I was able to see the fun, happy side of Timket. The beautiful laughing women. The feast preparations. I was mesmerized and awed by the devotion of so many; almost hypnotized by the hours of chanting. The priests’ robes, the music, the anticipation were all part of a special unique look at another culture, different beliefs. I am just so very very sad for the way it ended for the thousands who came for a moving religious ceremony. I wonder how Timket will feel next year? What will change?
Yes. UNESCO was correct. Timket was an Intangible Cultural Heritage experience. And, I’m sure, it will continue to be. They have had to adopt and adapt to search/frisk at the entrance. Now, maybe modern steel bleachers. Maybe different approaches to crowd control. I am hopeful the joy and devotion returns, unshaken.
