Category: Mekele

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Developments in Ethiopia

The crisis in Ethiopia has featured on this blog twice before (here and here), so an update is due. That’s because there have been significant and, for me at least, unexpected developments. The federal government forces have retreated from the northern province of Tigray that they

Dark Tourism & Pianos

As promised in the previous theme post, I now bring you the other one of the joint winners of our latest theme poll.

So in what ways can pianos be associated with dark tourism? A pretty unique example is this, a piano-shaped tombstone:

The Thornton grave used to have an open lid on the stone piano too, but that got destroyed by vandals. Maybe it’s

Ethiopia & new poll

The war and humanitarian crisis in northern Ethiopia (Tigray) have been a topic on this blog before (in this post). Things have hardly improved since then, if anything they’ve got even worse. It’s one of the most dire situations anywhere in the world at the moment, with hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people living in shelters that can’t cope with the numbers, sanitation is extremely poor and there’s scarcity of water and food. Moreover,

Dark Tourism & Christmas

As promised, I’ll try to do my bit to brighten up the Christmas period that for so many of us will be very different this year, much reduced in terms of gatherings with family and friends, due to the pandemic.

In previous years, when we were not visiting our respective families, my wife and I often went travelling at this time of year. Hence we saw Christmas decorations in a wide range of places, including some where you wouldn’t normally expect them at all. It goes to show how

War and Peace, More or Less

There have been significant developments elsewhere while most of the world’s eyes have been almost exclusively on the US elections and the COVID-19 pandemic. Remember my post from early last month about military conflict breaking out again over Nagorno-Karabakh? It now appears to have ended with a partial victory for Azerbaijan, who’ve retaken the second city of the region, Shushi, or ‘Şuşa’ in Azeri, some territory around it, as well as the