On the 17th of September we welcomed our speaker Pat Alkern from Denby Dale. Her talk was titled ‘Ethiopia – The Historic Route’ and described two trips to the country taken by Pat, one as a member of a group from the Huddersfield Geographic Society and one accompanied only by her husband Philip.
They are members of a charity supporting a school in the town of Dukem 25 miles from the capital Addis Ababa and from Pat’s pictures we saw the difference the support has made. However the bulk of the talk described the locations on the Historic Route which is a pilgrim’s trail in Tigre province in the north of the country. Ethiopia is a Christian society, one of the oldest in the world, and Pat described the very different rituals and customs in the churches there. We also gained an insight into the day-to-day life of the villages of the region such as what constitutes a home and how the population survives. We learnt of the courting rituals of the young men and girls (who may marry as young as ten years of age). Robin Jarrett proposed a vote of thanks for an amazing talk about such a different culture.