January 28, 2006
Parris back in Addis
Apparently Mathew Parris of the (London) Times is paying us a visit - again.
[From Government by doodle: are our elected leaders out of their tiny minds? - The Times 28/01/06]I’VE GONE TO Ethiopia. As you read this I am following camels on their annual journey down from the Highlands of Abyssinia into the Danakil Depression where the animals are led in trains to be loaded with slabs of rock-salt chiselled from the edge of the lake in the desert. Temperatures exceed 110F. Flies will torment me. Sulphur dioxide from acid-yellow vents beside the lake will irritate lungs and throat. I shall have no more than a jug of water to wash in every day. And I shall be among the ferocious Afar, the native tribe who were described by the explorer Nesbitt as wearing necklaces of the desiccated scrotums of all the men they had killed.
This I have freely chosen. It will all — the flies, the heat, the dust and even the necklaces — be paradise when compared with the alternative: to stay beneath the grim skies of Britain awaiting the next fatuous initiative from Downing Street. No sulphurous vent in the Abyssinian desert ever spouted worse.
I guess you could just about call that an endorsement of Ethiopia as a tourist destination. But I can't see them putting it on a poster any time soon.
Posted by aheavens at January 28, 2006 7:34 AM