For the first time in ages we spent some time being tourists on Saturday. The day started with a run, picking up Debbie on the way to show her our route. Breakfast was with Marjo (Dutch VSO physiotherapist volunteer) and her night guard at the Quara Hotel (mango juice, coffee and “egg sandwich”: omelette in a white roll) and then together we spent a couple of hours wandering around the Royal Enclosure. Gondar was made the capital of Ethiopia by Emperor Fasilides in the 17^th century, and it remained the capital for two hundred years. A series of small castles were built within a walled compound over this time by different emperors. Most of the buildings are semi-ruined but the architecture and design is very interesting. The Lonely Plant book describes the design as a mixture of Indian, Moorish, Portuguese and Aksumite (the pre-Gondar Ethiopian kingdom). Sadly, there is a lot to be learned about developing and encouraging tourism here. There are no information signs or guidebooks available in the enclosure and there isn’t even a map on display. There are official guides, for a fee, but being volunteers we used the Lonely Planet book instead. Something that is a constant irritation here is that being a volunteer doesn’t make any difference to prices. Ferenji are charged 50 birr to enter the enclosure and Ethiopians are charged 5 birr. I have no problem with such differential pricing, as I believe that local people should be able to access their own cultural heritage and foreign tourists should pay more, but as volunteers here to help receiving an allowance equal to (or less than in our case) our colleagues it would be nice if we were charged a reduced rate. Anyway, the ruins were quite interesting (not being a big fan of ruins) and we enjoyed being tourists for a while.

While we were wandering around the ruins, there were two other groups of foreign tourists. The total number of tourists who come to Ethiopia each year numbers only in the tens of thousands. There is so much tourism potential here, but the country is only slowly developing the skills and knowledge to build on it. For example, there are more UNESCO World Heritage sites in Ethiopia than in Egypt and there are 11 national parks. The tourism infrastructure is poorly developed and there seems to be little awareness of the level of service that needs to be provided in order to encourage tourists to come here.

In the afternoon I spent an hour with Mekdes trying to teach her to tell the time in English. She concentrates so hard and really wants to learn that I get caught up in her enthusiasm, even if I really wanted to doze on the couch after being up since 4.45am.

Our evening movie was “The Constant Gardener”. This is another movie we saw in the UK before coming here, but watching it again here magnifies the effect of it.