“Gondar’s Angel Eyes–A Pathway to Peace”

Walking the mile and a half or so from our hotel to the Debre Berhan Selassie Church, the town of Gondar, our last stop along Ethiopia’s historic route, was living out its typical Sunday afternoon routine. Families and friends talked in the street, men sat around drinking coffee at the cafes, and goats wandered about in the warm sun.

We were on our way to see the famous little church with its angelic ceiling. Soon enough we were paying the entrance fee and crossing the road to pass through the gate into the church yard. We quickly went up the entrance and removed our shoes. Stepping in, we looked up right away.

And there they were.

Heads of angels with beaming eyes covering the entire ceiling looked down upon us. Red and blue backgrounds with light brown faces filled with big, beautiful black onyx eyes and curly hair ran side to side, row after row from one end of the church to the other. My wife decided to lay down on the floor and look up. I followed her lead.

We couldn’t help but wonder if this is what heaven may feel like, a place where angels watch over you. Watching over us, the angels of Debre Berhan were the kind of comfort we all wished for when the bogey man was outside our windows at night when we were kids.

The walls, too, were covered in paintings. The crucifixion. The devil and hell. Many of the saints and scenes from the Bible stretched from corner to corner no bigger than 50 feet long and 20 feet wide.

Sitting on a bench along the one wall, we sat back and took it all on, observing the light coming in the top window. How wonderful it is to see other lands. Paintings several centuries old.

The following morning we toured the Royal Enclosure, sometimes referred to as Africa’s Camelot. Emperor Fasilades built the first castle inside the walls back in 1640, and emperors that followed him built subsequent smaller buildings, none coming close to the size and grandeur of Fasilades home. In the grand dining room and its adjacent dance hall, we easily imagined the big dinners and decadence that surely occured centuries ago. My wife stole a dance from me, our bodies a silhouette against the large opened door.

We walked down the stone stairway, imagining the romances that may have occurred after dinner, us falling in love with the idea of love.

The falling in love dream ended quickly when a group of aging Italian tourists came onto the main lawn. Too much distraction. Up until then, we had the entire Enclosure to ourselves. Fortunately, we were finishing up our tour.

That night at a local restaurant we marveled at the crowd of a hundred or so spectators that gathered in the main dining area to watch the big soccer game on the satellite TV. It was a game out of England, and the people paid for a seat to watch the game much the way you would for a movie. Hooting, hollering and clapping reminded me of home and going to a bar in a sports
town on a Sunday afternoon. Cheer on the team.

While leaving Gondar on the way to the airport, we talked to the taxi driver about the current political situation in the country. He was angry that the students were being killed and that men and boys were being rounded up by the thousands and sent off to prison for no reason.

Other than fear.

I thought of the fear in the politicians that leads them to do such things. And I thought of the fear in the men and boys on the backs of the trucks.

I wished that all of them, the accusers and the imprisoned, could lay down together on the floor and look up at those angel eyes on the ceiling of that little church in the mountains of their homeland. I thought that maybe, just maybe, they could see through those eyes a way forward that need not be violent and deadly.

I thought maybe all would see peace.