I Entered Ethiopia’s War-Torn Rebel Zone 🇪🇹

Part one of a journey north through Ethiopia to bring a gift to a priest at a remote church. The gift takes most of the video: a cross bought in Addis Ababa, and then a live goat, which requires a three-hour hunt round a livestock market in Dessie on the wrong day of the week.

Underneath the comedy is the reason the trip is difficult. The 2020 civil war in the north killed over 600,000 people, which Harry points out barely registered internationally, and the peace signed in late 2022 has not held evenly. Tigray has fragmented into factions, some leaders remain armed, and Ethiopian troops are still in the area. He is straightforward that the war could restart and that civilians are stuck in the middle.

Key moments

• [00:00] The war: over 600,000 dead in northern Ethiopia, and almost no global coverage.
• [00:33] The mission — a gift for a priest at what he calls the world’s most dangerous church.
• [00:33] Mercato in Addis, and the first man who objects to being filmed.
• [01:04] His method for it: don’t delete, smile, explain you’re filming yourself, and keep walking. His phrase is kill them with kindness.
• [02:11] Ethiopia has over 80 tribes and correspondingly over 80 languages.
• [02:47] Addis at around 6 million, much of it people who came in from the regions looking for work and are portering goods because they didn’t find it.
• [03:50] Khat.
• [04:21] What it is: a stimulant leaf, which he has also chewed in Yemen and Somalia.
• [05:00] How it’s used — chewed and held in the cheek, with an effect after twenty or thirty minutes that he describes as ten coffees.
• [05:31] It’s legal here and grown locally.
• [06:04] A seller switches to dollars and pushes the price. Harry pays and makes the point he keeps making: there are good and bad people everywhere, and most are in the middle, and you don’t know what someone has been through.
• [07:04] A 25-year-old who owns his own electronics shop, which Harry contrasts with what he was doing at 25.
• [07:37] Asked for one good and one bad thing about Ethiopia: the weather, and that everything is expensive and inflation is high.
• [08:44] Street coffee, which he rates the best in the world.
• [09:47] 30 birr. He pays 100.
• [10:18] A cross necklace for the priest, 2,500.
• [11:50] And a goat, because he’s told people here like goats.
• [14:35] Dessie, where he has no idea where to buy one.
• [15:07] He asks ChatGPT, which tells him there’s a livestock market on specific days and roughly what a goat costs.
• [15:37] A shared taxi to it, 500.
• [17:17] It’s the wrong market day, and everything there is full-grown.
• [19:07] Three hours into the hunt, over coffee.
• [20:43] 10,000 asked for an oversized kid.
• [21:53] The choice: take the big goat now, or lose a day waiting for a small one.
• [22:28] 5,000, and the goat acquires a name.
• [24:34] Monkeys and camels on the road north.
• [25:10] Heavy military presence — uniforms and weapons — which he deliberately doesn’t film and says why.
• [26:51] A man beside him on the road turns out to watch his videos, from Eritrea, and briefs him on the checkpoints ahead and where bribes are expected. Harry says he’d have been stuck without it.
• [28:34] The checkpoint passes without a bribe after all.
• [29:05] A hotel owner recognises him and offers a room for nothing.
• [30:46] Woldiya, halfway to Mekelle.
• [31:18] The background: civil war broke out in 2020 between the federal government and the TPLF, thousands were killed and many displaced, and a peace deal was signed in late 2022 — which some leaders reject and remain armed against. Tigray has since split into factions.
• [31:53] Ethiopian troops remain in the area checking for clashes. He calls the situation fragile and says the war could restart at any time.

Extracted pages

• Place: Addis Ababa
• Country: Ethiopia