I'm alive despite a monkey attack

So I recently spent our long weekend (we had one to celebrate the victory of the Battle of Adwa) in the nearby town of Bahir Dar after being invited by some Dutch volunteers who seem lonely to meet other ex-pats. It was a lot of fun and the town is a little bit more touristy than Gondor. It was neat to see a different city.

In Bahir Dar we proceeded to see some of the monasteries on Lake Tana which are incredibly old. We got there by boat because they are located on a number of small islands in the middle of the big brownish lake. The lake is populated with flocks of pelicans which drove home how different the lake was.

The monasteries themselves sat on top of the islands and were small round buildings, with no shoes allowed. The best monastery (the one with the government funded museum) I saw was in fact no girls allowed so the girls in the group had to stick around in the garden outside and eat papayas from the passing papaya salesman who had picked them on the island that morning. I saw some really ancient artifacts crowns from old kings who had donated them to the monastery in their time, ancient crosses in a variety of Ethiopian styles, and 13th century bibles written on goat skin. What was a little shocking was that they weren't kept under glass and were pulled out by the priests who tended them to flip through them. They even asked if I wanted to touch these really old pieces which if they were in Canada (or anywhere in the Western world) would be under glass alarmed and likely under guard. I guess they don't think of things the same way here.

When we got back we went out for juice and I saw a monkey. It was overtop of the bathroom when I left the table on my way there. By the time I got there it had moved down in front of the doors. We stared at each other as I didn't want to provoke it and it didn't want to move so we were at a sort of Mexican standoff until it decided to take matters into it's own hands and rush me. I lifted my foot up to fend it off and it backed off before getting close and took off (I guess it saw my karate skills). So I survived a monkey attack although not a serious one. One of the Dutch volunteers got a picture of the monkey in question so I'll upload it when I get the chance. The next day we went to the Blue Nile Falls which I'll write about later.

Jordie out