Lake Tana, Ethiopia. It took the plane three attempts to get off the runway. Not a nice way to travel, but rewarding, once you actually make it from Axum to Lalibela to Bahir Dar in Northern Ethiopia. These places are age-old cultural sites, but our understanding of heritage, conservation, and musealization does not grip here.
In Axum, for example, it is not only the grand, and mysterious obelisk that is to be visited. The guide took us down a shabby road and around the corner from a shack, and pointed at a rusty corrugated iron roof. Beneath it was a whole hewn into the rock. And after some attempts of further communication and sign language, we understood, that we were shown the tomb of Bathazar, the one wise man from Africa who came to Bethlehem as one of the three kings to honor the infant Jesus. In other places, take Cologne for example, a whole cult of heritage and monument is built over the relicts of the bones of the three kings. In Axum, it is just part of history.
In Bahir Dar, or rather on the islands within nearby Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, the ascend to the monasteries leads through a forest of coffee trees, and half way up there is a tukul, a round mud house with a thatched roof worth stopping by. Here, someone has collected the household items used since centuries in this place, and put them up for display. A valuable and authentic collection, that in other contexts would be a full scale Museum of Applied Arts.
Further up the way in the monastery, the monks are proud of showing their treasures. A manuscript of the bible with coloured illustrations, handed down since generations, page-by-page folded over many times. Heritage still in use, and thus protected. In other places such a collection of old books would be worth a museum of its own.
Once the visitor shows interest, the monks bring out more. They opened a shelve, and brought out a crown, that was fully decorated with precious stones, and fabrics. From one of the old kings, they said. And then they brought out another crown. From the old kings father, they said. And on and on it went, generation by generation back in time. In other contexts this would be The Crown Jewels.
At any of these places in Northern Ethiopia, the past is still present, and history is so continuous that there is no need to bend it into definitions of heritage. At first sight, these places and items look so unprotected, on second thoughts, they are fantastically safe, because they are in use. This might be the most important aspect, and the one that is often the point where our modern attempts for conservation fail.