Western Ethiopia - Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somaliland - page 433

Sights

1 Anuak Market B1

2 New Land (Nuer Villages) C3

3 New Land (Nuer Villages) D4

Sleeping

4 Baro Gambella Hotel B4

5 Green Hotel A2

6 Tadessech Hotel A1

Drinking

7 Coffee & Tea Stalls A3

Sights & Activities
A pleasant walk around Gambela includes the riverside where you'll find an old boat or
two and a pier (visible from the riverbank), the bridge and the markets. This walk is
marked on the Gambela map.
At sunset, locals gather at the river beneath the bridge to bathe, walk or catch up on
gossip. Once every few years (usually during the wet season), a villager is taken by a cro-
codile.
In the north of the town is the Anuak market Offline map Google map . Vendors sit in the
shade of the trees selling cereals, firewood, large Nile perch and tobacco. To pass the
time, many indulge in akowyo (water pipe) smoking. You can taste the borde (traditional
'beer'), served to thirsty marketgoers from metal buckets.
It's possible to visit both Nuer and Anuak villages. The Nuer villages on the outskirts of
town, known as New Land Offline map Google map , are the easiest to get to, but for those
with their own wheels a better excursion is to the large village of Itang and its satellite
hamlets some 51km west of Gambela along the excellent road leading to the South Sudan
border. Itang, like Gambela itself, is home to both Nuer and Anuak peoples, and most res-
idents live in traditional thatch-and-wattle huts of extraordinary complexity. The Nuer vil-
lages on the northern side of Itang tend to be the most receptive to visitors, but wherever
you go you can expect to be the subject of extreme curiosity - foreign visitors are very
rare indeed around here.