Ethiopia Dansheha village – back to the year 2015.

 

A big shame on me and on my narrative. I left everything as it was in the middle of my storytelling with the phrase which appears last – ““But this part of my story from Dansha I will continue next time”“. And the “next time” is now…or never. It’s crazy to think about how irrelevant can become some things as the years have gone by. Or these things can become historical and valuable as shares on the stock exchange. Everything is a matter of luck – or you have it or you don’t. I just hope that after the long 8 years, this story is still interesting for your eyes as it is interesting to the eyes of the storyteller. After all, the last one is what matters.

A few words for the reminder. In the far 2015, I attended a small team of moviemakers on their trip to Ethiopia to finish the filming of the documentary movie “The Jerusalem Dream”. For a few nights, we stopped in the small Dansheha village, just around 60km from the border with Sudan. The “hotel” was not yet completed or already destroyed, but during the nights spent there, we felt at home, so restless was the situation around. The fact that in some places I call Dansheha “city” and in others “village” is because on the maps it is described as “a place in the region of Tigray in Ethiopia”. A PLACE – and nothing more specific.

At 6 AM on the last morning of our stay there, I climbed onto the “roof” to inspect the surrounding area and to take a few images from the top and observed this “demonstration” on the road at the entrance to the village. The number of people and the loud sound of the big Kebero were unusual for this time of day and put me in kind of shock, so I hurried to run downstairs to see what is going on outside.

The happening outside of the “hotel” was absolutely unreal and astonishing. The colorful festive umbrellas and costumes were mixed with numerous white clothes. Pedestrians, motorcyclists, Tuk-tuks, and some heavier cars. Most of the procession participants were armed. High voices singing and the low sound of drums were creating the feeling of psychedelic vibes during a nature trance party, coming to its culmination in the early morning hours. Some of the participants saw me, the only man with a European face, dancing to the sound of drums, taking photographs, and smiling like a kid, receiving a birthday gift, and smiling at me in reply, as you can see in some images below. /p>

The procession continued their march along the main road almost to the middle of the village, then they turned around and moved in the opposite direction, as I understand it, towards the new church. All this happened in less or more than 30 minutes. As I understood from the explanation, this event was a part of laying the foundation stone for a new church. It was the year 2015. I tried to find some information on the internet or the location of this church on Google Maps. My searches were futile. Google streets maps are still empty in the whole area of the country.

And now when the text is ready, I have a hard job to choose a series of images for two posts – part in black and white and part in color. Due to the early hour, the light still was dull and the colors of the big scene of the procession weren’t looking good, despite the usual look of everything being very saturate and vibrating everywhere. For the immediately publishing of this post I am grateful to Daniel Milnor and his influential vlog post “Shifter: Peru, A Miss”. “Find his video” with the link.