THE CAMELOT OF AFRICA
IT MADE NO SENSE. Why on earth should a hotel in Northern Ethiopia be called Florida? “It’s an acronym for the owner’s family members—Fatima, Lola, Omar, Redwan, Iyman, Dawit, and Apabu, the owner,” the manager explained conspiratorially. Florida International would serve as our base to explore Gondar, and its name would prove to be the smallest of the surprises the historic city would throw at us.
It was May 2019—before the pandemic changed the world as we knew it—and after an eventful trip to Zambia, we were making a stopover in Ethiopia on the way back to India. Our articulate guide Charlie, an MA in Social Anthropology from the University of Gondar, met us outside the town’s centrepiece Fasil Ghebbi, inscribed as a UNESCO World century, Ethiopia’s Solomonic emperors had no fixed capital but lived in royal tented camps. They spent the rainy season near Lake Tana, and the encampments at Emfraz, Ayba, and Gorgora flourished into towns.
