Ethiopia

Ethiopia rises to a high plateau in the Horn of Africa, split down the middle by the Great Rift Valley. The northern highlands climb to the Simien Mountains, and their summer rains fill Lake Tana, source of the Blue Nile. Eastwards the land falls into the Danakil Depression, one of the hottest and lowest places on earth, where salt is cut by hand and carried out on camels. The south and west are greener, with wild coffee forests and a chain of rift lakes.

Fossils such as Lucy, found in the Afar region in 1974, place this land near the start of the human story. The kingdom of Aksum traded across the Red Sea and adopted Christianity in the fourth century; the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela came some eight hundred years later. In 1896 Menelik II defeated an Italian army at Adwa, and apart from the Italian occupation of 1936–41 the country was never colonised. The last emperor, Haile Selassie, was deposed in 1974.

Ethiopia keeps its own calendar, roughly seven years behind the Gregorian one, and counts the hours of the day from dawn. Coffee is said to have been discovered here, and the coffee ceremony, with beans roasted and brewed in front of the guests, is a daily ritual. Injera, a spongy flatbread made from teff, carries most meals. Abebe Bikila won the 1960 Olympic marathon barefoot, the first of many champions from the highlands. Most families farm coffee, teff, sesame and pulses.