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In “Submerge” on Maxwell’s Embrya CD there is a line where he says “Words are demeaning…” I think this applies to the Entoto healing springs experience, so I will not describe the details of the experience. When you emerge though you are changed, the extent to which depends on the seriousness of your intention or purpose for going and faith you have in the process. I have no doubt that people who seriously seek healing receive it there. The experience fits with Some’s description of a radical ritual, your body is definitely pushed to its extreme.

For healing, they recommend going there at least 3 days, or 7 days or 21 days straight, every morning. I only went one day as there was no ailment that I needed healing from. it is a very intense atmosphere and sometimes when people are being healed that are not aware of what it is they are doing. Sometimes they can physically harm the people around them. Also there are many people who go to be healed of psychological problems, I had an encounter which one such person who must have been in the middle of her 21 days.

As e sat on the rocks drying ourselves in the sun, cleaning our feet, waiting for our containers to be filled with the tsabl and reflecting on what had just happened, the gatekeeper went around with an open upside down umbrella collecting donations. I heard a woman talking and I picked up the word “camera” several times. I quickly looked and to my dismay my camera was dangling on my side from underneath my nutella. I quickly adjusted the camera so that the nutella was covering it again, but the damage was already done. One of my hosts was talking to the person, reassuring her that I had not taken any pictures. But you know how get sometimes, loud talking. Thankfully, someone else drew the attention of the people on the rocks.

But first let me say this. It was never my intention to take any pictures of the goings –on at Entoto. That to me would be very disrespectful of people’s private experience. The only reason I brought the camera was because i was too lazy to go back to the vehicle for it when we went to the rock-hewn church. Well, the Nsamanfo would let me know that we can pay dire consequences for laziness. On top of this, after the Entoto experience you don’t want to see any rock-hewn church or anything else for that matter.

Recall if you will the gatekeeper who was collecting money. There was one woman who was talking back to him and ever so often would start beating the ground and saying “Woi!” (like we do in Jamaica when something terrible has happened). She began to hit the man and he backed up on the rocks to avoid her blows. This was not a young man either, he was probably upwards of 70 years old. The shook his finger at her scoldingly and said something to her. She picked up some rocks and threw them, some of which hit him. They didn’t faze him at all and everyone was watching. Now to me the woman didn’t look all together crazy because she would have what seemed to be sensible conversation with him, in the middle of her Woi-ing. Oh these weren’t pebbles either. She could not enclose in her hand completely any of the rocks she threw. I told my hosts that I thought this was our cue to exit stage left. They agreed. We had our containers, we had washed our feet, we had got about as dry as we were going to get and we could do the rest of our reflecting on the way home. She stopped and sat down as if nothing had happened. I looked back at her, wondering if she was really crazy or just rude and she looked back. I then decided it didn’t matter and turned around and we began our climb back up the mountain. One of the men who accompanied us down the mountain had filled our containers and was carrying them for us. We got to the stone cross when I heard a commotion behind us. Some people were walking very quickly and I heard the word that I really didn’t want to hear for a very long time yet again.

camera.

I spun around to see the same rock-throwing lady not 5 feet away from me, rock in hand, talking about camera. She had a smirk on her face as she looked directly at me. The containers fell as the man ran over to stop her. Whomever had accompanied her also held her back and one my hosts rushed over and started saying “no problem” in Amharic and saying something about farenji. The woman dropped the rock and they took her back. Half of me wanted her to throw the rock at me so I could throw it back at her.

When climbed the mountain at not so leisurely a pace as what we had gone down the mountain with. I had planned to take pictures of the forest on the way back but, as I am sure you’ve guessed, decided against it. The man who carried our containers for us refused to take any money for his kindness, which is a rare thing. We hoped in the vehicle and left in Entoto.

I really enjoyed the experience overall and it really made me think about channels like National Geographic that show sacred rituals on the television and defile them really. A camera does not really tell you what’s happening, because you can’t feel the presence of Spirit through your television. It’s like taking what’s a multi-layered Photoshop document and flattening the image. You get only the surface, you don’t see the different layers. They take the experience out of context and there’s a coldness to standing on the outside taking pictures. I think radical rituals cannot be fully explained because it is very personal and the way it is for one person is not the way it is for someone else. I encourage everyone to take part at least one radical ritual in their life. Also even though this is a supposedly Christian setting, this is a clear example of the survival of African culture. Okay that’s my spiel.