Travel

Inside MojaBy Mezemir Girma (mezemir@yahoo.com)Edited by Erica Lillquist, a former US Peace Corps Volunteer in Debre Birhan

It was nine years ago that for the first time I experienced what I call ‘Adefris syndrome.’ Like Adefris, the character in Daniachew Worku’s prominent Amharic novel, I continually raise new ideas that seem strange to local people. As a college student, in this particular instance, I tried to share ideas from my modern life and education with the people of my birthplace. At that time, I was not accustomed to reading fiction during my summer break, but mostly to listening to the radio and entertaining new thoughts. One of these new thoughts of that summer was, ‘why not introduce some places of importance from my hometown, Sasit, a three-hour drive north of Debre Birhan, to the public and tourists?’I knew the first step was to visit them myself and thoroughly research them. I researched by collecting oral stories about Engidwasha, a natural cave near Sasit. Many people told me that a local patriot, Kasaye Wendaferew, had used this cave to hide the people of the cave’s surrounding area and all of their livestock from Fascist butchers in 1935. I asked my interviewees, most of whom were community elders, if they knew how big the cave was and they said it was endless. My collection of oral stories complete, I started the job of organizing some people to go into the cave.Engidwasha is a spectacular cave found in Moja, the place formerly known as Tegulet. Around a hundred people from the area organized themselves and prepared to go into its heart. On Sunday, September 17, 2006 around 6:30 am, the amateur researchers came face-to-face with the graceful cave which resembled the entrance to hell. The locals call it ‘hyena cave’ and dreaded entering it. Just as Adefris drives his people towards a plethora of thoughts, I was driving my compatriots into this fearsome living hell relying only on oral history. Before we went into the cave, we enjoyed the surrounding scenery and the horizon, which included views of Menz and Selale, that appeared before us as the sun rose behind the cave. The entrance to the cave looked like an Ethiopian girl bent forward, washing her hair. The two mountains on the cave’s sides looked like her shoulders and the river flowing in the valley between the mountains looked like her lathered hair. The vegetation around the entrance of the cave reminded me of how this country is really green at heart. Touching the waterfall, we could get an intimate sense of the seasonal gift, which made us feel we had nature in the palms of our hands.The mouth of this magnificent natural wonder of Tegulet measures 105 meters wide. Inside, its height varies from one to three meters and it is necessary to crawl along the narrow parts to reach the furthest corners of the cave. The ascending and descending roofs give the cave the

look of a big tent. Inside the cave, impenetrable darkness and stalactite and stalagmites coupled with the stories about the presence of hyenas, tigers, and snakes make the place fearsome. Two brave local men, Ashenafi Workshet and Dereje Asrate, were courageous enough to go through the narrow passageways and into the inner parts of the cave which were spread along the entire cave. Rocks, wild animal excrement, dry, red soil, and the skeletons of both animals and people are some of the things we stepped on as we went in further. The roof of the cave was dark, but when we scraped it, we saw that it twinkled with minerals. The elders of the area had told us that it had been darkened by the patriots who had used smoke from torches to prevent the Italians from seeing what they thought were precious minerals and taking them away. When I read the biography of the late Haile-Giorgis Workneh, the first Ethiopian civil engineer to receive a doctorate, I learnt that a cave near Sasit served as a shelter for more than 400 patriots and their family members who were on the run during the Italian occupation in 1937. When the Italians came to look for the patriots, the locals informed the Italians that the patriots, whom they were hunting, were in the cave. The Italian forces surrounded the cave in thousands, only a few of whom were actually Italian, trapping the people in the cave. All the men were butchered after fourteen days of hunger, thirst and confrontation and the women and children, including Haile-Giworgis, were taken to a prison in Menz and eventually to Debre Birhan. I believe Engidwasha must be the one from the story because of its size and the presence of a waterfall in front of it, which Haile mentions. I recommend an organized visit be made and research conducted. It is a fertile area for research by archeologists, geographers, historians and geologists, all of whom can be found at universities like Debre Berhan, which is the nearest to the cave. I invite all my readers to make the journey to Sasit to visit and to explore inside the magnificent Engdwasha cave and other natural and historical caves, to walk the hills and valleys that the Ethiopian patriots walked, to see their fortresses, and to sit under the same trees where the patriots sat and plotted counterattacks against the enemy and sheltered themselves from the sun.

The mouth of Engidwahsa

The view from mouth of the cave

A view from inside Engidwasha

From left to right Alex, Lemma, Teshome and Kelelaw dinging at the mouth of the cave