Timkat Times in Gondar

What is a Timkat exactly? I’m probably not the best person to explain this colorful religious holiday that Ethiopian Orthodox Christians celebrate every January 19^th; I’m ever so tempted to let the photos speak for themselves. All I know is that Timkat means baptism in Amharic and celebrates the Epiphany. I’ll try, however, to produce a small nugget a truth to satisfy your insatiable desire for knowledge based on what I could muster up from my cross-cultural manual and some Google action.

Churches remove their Tabots (What’s that you say? A Tabot? Yeah, I had to Google it—Tabot is a Ge’ez word that refers to the “Tablets of the Law” onto which the Ten Commandments were inscribed—or so wiki tells me… yes, clearly I have NO idea what I am talking about! I do however happen to know that Ge’ez is an ancient language that Ethiopian Orthodox sermons are delivered in!). And this all has something to do with the Ark of the Covenant… hmmm… should I give up yet? Anyways, these “Tabots” are taken from the inner sanctums of churches and paraded to a nearby body of water to commemorate Christ’s baptism. The next morning, the pool is blessed and everyone dives in to the holy water.

We were up at 3am, peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwiches in hand, marching to the church to claim our seats on the rickety wooden bleachers among hundreds of other foreigners. We waited and waited in a sleepy candle-lit daze for what seemed like forever, but what we waited for was worth the wait. Commotion began sometime after 6am. We heard the typical mesmur or singing for about an hour or two. But we didn’t come for the ceremony necessarily; we came for what happens next. As fellow PCV Sarah Crozier said: “You come for the chaos.” There were people stripping down to their skivvies and climbing the walls to the Fasilides’ bath in Gondar as well as the surrounding trees, preparing to jump into the blessed water minutes before the cross was dipped. In fact, one hooligan almost disrupted the whole affair by jumping too soon, but the faithful priest thankfully knocked him upside the head and shoved him out of the way. Once the cross was dipped, there were splashes galore. Hoards of Habesha flocked to the center of the pool. Ten of us crazy ferenjis waited for the initial rush to subside and took the plunge together. It was scary, exhilarating, refreshing, and possibly the best experience I have had thus far in Peace Corps Ethiopia. Life-changing.