Gondar's epiphany:its touristic value

 The Ethiopian Herald Tuesday, Sep.24 2012

By Zemene Yohannes (Gondar)

One of the most breathtaking street festivals of Ethiopia, Teamket (Ethiopian Epiphany) falls every January 19, just in the post harvest season. The festivity is among the most celebrated and colorful ones, people commonly say 'le Teamket Yealhone Kemis Yeabetats'  this is to  mean every faithful  would be expected to dressed up with neat clothes on  this day. The majority of Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido church followers plan their occasions in this month, wedding, family gatherings and so on are common as January is not fasting period.

The celebration outsets on Teamket's eve  called Kettra, meaning to make dam as people in the earlier times used to make small dams to get enough water for the festivity. In the afternoon of same day, the arches of covenant found in each church carried on head to a nearby barn to stay the night there. Sunday school choirs in their uniform make queue in front of the covenant roaring their drums and singing various songs that praises Jesus, his baptism from the hand of John the Baptist at the river Jordan. The festivity goes in every place across the country but the grand ones occur at North Addis Ababa, Janmeda and in the historic town Gonder, North Ethiopia. 

In spite of its religious value Teamket looks like it has become a mass festivity almost to everyone. The ritual system and the ceremony are one of the oldest in the world.  The celebration that goes in Gondar- has a great magnetic effect in attracting a profound number of tourists to the nation.  As a result of that, handfuls of tourists from various countries across the globe, pilgrim to be part of this colorful festivity in Gondar. The town also makes every sort of preparations in advance.  Youngsters campaign to clean the town’s roads that take to the old castles and decorates the town with flags. Residents  in their traditional costumes accompany the Tabotes, arks of covenant,  singing religious songs  and walk to the grand swimming pool built in the 16^th century, where all the arks of covenant spent the night.

This year during the day of  Ketera, the arches march to their barns, Artistic works of youngsters graced the events.  Decorated cartridges depicting the religious value of the ceremony grabbed the attention of many in the procession. Many of the arks of covenant in the city gathered near the gate of the grand castle of   Fasiledes. The arcs hes march through many places including a square where the stature of emperor Tewodros is seen erected. Not too far from the Fasiledes castle, there lies a big compound. Inside this castle with the grand swimming pool, as the writer of this story can found out the pool needs two months to be filled with enough water from the nearest river. Three big wooden made stages are standing circling the palace at opposite corners where lots of audiences sit on them so that they can have the clear view  of all the events. The ketera mainly last till mid night in Gondar with different religious activities.

The epiphany,Teamket, surprisingly begins at 10 pm at night time so if you are a new guest  to the city, you should come to the castle earlier or you will miss the better sight since many of the church followers reach there before ten. The prayers continue till morning. The main event begins early in the morning after honorable guests, bishops and many others arrived at the castle. The baptizing process started after the bishop said the prayer: It is amazing and very entertaining to see young men waiting in line to be the first to jump into the pool as soon as the bishop finish the prayer.

Accompanying the ark of covenants people sing, chant religious and cultural songs and make different cultural plays while on their way back to church. The celebration  continues until 11 pm (after mid day) local time with different programs and events even after the ark of covenants go back to their respective churches. 

Cultural or religious ceremonies mostly have their own unique colors, ways of celebration or clothing styles. Gondar’s epiphany is one of those with the oldest way of cultural celebration and clothing styles. For instance, one can see the different costumes; adults prefer the cultural ones while young men and women the fashionable ones. For instance, the oldest clothing style known as Tenefanef or Bolale originally wore by men had now became modified and it is the number one  preference among youngesters. Generally speaking, Gondar’s way of celebrating epiphany worth more attention than it is now given. And it has a great capacity to attract a significant number of tourists.

Of course it is up to the town's  tourism bureau to consider ways of promoting this grand tourism attraction. But every of us can promote it through social networking sites to the rest of the world. As far as the writer of this story has observed most tourists  had no enough information and they set out to travel early to Bahir Dar.