Abyssinian Abysses
A common folk etymology of the term Abyssinia (the archaic term used for Ethiopia and sometimes the rest of the Horn or Africa) is that it comes from the many deep gorges in the region. It's an urban legend, as it's actually related to the term Habesha, nowadays used by Ethiopians and Eritreans as a term of cultural unity, and probably comes from a Mehri word meaning "incense gatherer". That said, Ethiopia is indeed dissected by many, many spectacular river valleys and escarpments cutting through the highly-uplifted Ethiopian Highlands. One of these abysses, the Jemma River valley, was the primary destination of my third weekend outside of Addis Ababa in early June. I'd been on the edge of it when I visited the Debre Libanos monastery my first weekend in the country, but this time the goal was to descend all the way to the bottom, as the Jemma valley is the site of many hard-to-find Ethiopian endemics and specialties. I set out in that direction early ...