02/03/2014
By Bernard Anderson, MD
It was April, 2008, a bleak 5 A.M. in Meskel Square, Addis Ababa that we set out for Gondar, 740 kilometers away on the Sky Bus. It was my third time to make the trip, and I was no longer glued to the vistas on the other side of the window as the bus speedily but steadily made its way through the mountains and villages of the Ethiopian northern highlands. I soon fell asleep, hypnotized by the cold and dark of an Ethiopian morning 2,200 meters above sea level, as well as by the rolling neon sign in big red characters above the driver’s head declaring to all: “Young Entrepreneur, German Engineering, Chinese Price…Young Entrepreneur, German Engineering, Chinese…”.
First stop at Dejen marked a successful passage through “The Gorge”- a deep valley cut by the Ghion of the bible, or the Abbay of the Ethiopians, themselves the children of Kis (later the Cush/Kush of the Hebrew), recorded first in the hieroglyphs of Kmt in 1970 BCE.There we got a chance to stretch our legs, use the bathroom and to have lunch in any of several small hotels. All aboard again, we set off to Gondar passing through the towns of Debre Markos, Dembecha, Finote Selam, Injibara, Dangla and finally Bahirdar, at the southern point of lake Tana, (Ethiopia’s largest lake and Africa’s 2nd largest), from where it pours it’s waters into the head of the Abbay to become the Blue Nile in the Sudan.
In Sudan it joins the White Nile at Khartoum, from where it runs for 200 hundred miles north to the city of Saba (Merowe since about 500 BCE), This Saba, was a place where many Ethiopian kings and queens ruled from. There at Saba/Merowe the Nile is joined by the fabled Atbara, “From there the Nile runs for 1700 more miles to the Mediterranean sea as the longest river on the planet Earth giving the gifts of life, high culture, and civilization from the Anu, or the Anu/Agu. The first gifts were to Kmt, meaning Black Land. Kmt, later named Egypt by the Greeks, passed them on to the world. Yes, this same Kmt made us know Osiris, Thoth, Isis, Horus and Maat; gave us Imhotep, the architect of Sacara’s Step Pyramid in 2,700 BCE and according to Breasted, was the author of the Smith papyrus. This African Imhotep, was deified posthumously as God of Medicine 2000 years before Hippocrates swore in his “Oath” to him in the name of Asclepius; the same Kmt gave us the city Akhetaten that made us know one God, the primary creative force of nature, whose emblem was the solar disc and also gave us Moses, who tamed the Apiru/Habiru, gave them the law and even the name of their God Jehovah. This generous Kmt, also gave the world the art of writing. These are just a few of the gifts of Kmt and the Nile, the child of Tana and Atbara. How sad now to see Kmt embroiled in conflict and totally disconnected from its glorious and special past. Read More Bernard-Anderson-MD-Road to Gondar