Qualla: Nakfa https://qualla.com/nakfa en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/g/q/nakfa-wk/hero-small.webp Qualla: Nakfa https://qualla.com/nakfa Nakfa: Introduction https://qualla.com/nakfa/ Photo credit David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada, CC BY 2.0. Eritrea named its money after this place. Before the currency came the struggle. For nearly thirty years, through the 1970s and 1980s, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front held out in the hills around Nakfa, digging trenches into the soft sandstone of the Sahel range, running a shadow state from caves and hidden clinics, training fighters in the shade of low hills while Ethiopian armies tried to dislodge them. When Eritrea won its independence in 1991 and finally minted its own notes and coins in 1997, it named the currency the nakfa. That is what this place means to Eritreans. To outsiders, it is almost impossible to reach. Travel permits are routinely denied. Taxis refuse to go. For tourists, Nakfa is out of bounds, and that inaccessibility is part of what makes it mythic.

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Image: David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada | CC BY 2.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/g/q/nakfa-wk/sfgq-nakfa-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Nakfa: The Long War in the Hills https://qualla.com/nakfa/ Photo credit Prof tpms, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Eritrean People's Liberation Front was not supposed to win. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and operating against a Soviet-backed Ethiopian military that in the 1980s was the largest army in Africa. But the EPLF understood their terrain. The Sahel range around Nakfa is a ju...

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Image: Prof tpms | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/g/q/nakfa-wk/sfgq-nakfa-the-long-war-in-the-hills.mp3 0:06 2 full Nakfa: Getting There, If You Can https://qualla.com/nakfa/ Photo credit Prof tpms, CC BY-SA 3.0. Nakfa is almost ten hours by taxi from the Eritrean capital of Asmara, but only if you can get a travel permit, which at present you generally cannot. The route if it were open would go from Asmara to Keren, then by village van to Afabet on the next day, then from Afabet to Nakfa...

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Image: Prof tpms | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/g/q/nakfa-wk/sfgq-nakfa-getting-there-if-you-can.mp3 0:06 3 full Nakfa: A Village in Stone https://qualla.com/nakfa/ Photo credit Prof tpms, CC BY-SA 3.0. The people of Nakfa live in small single-room stone huts without plaster, with corrugated iron roofs. Each house sits on its own hillock. There is a small enclosure outside each building that serves as a bathhouse. Domestic chores happen in the open air. In the evening the cattle...

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Image: Prof tpms | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/g/q/nakfa-wk/sfgq-nakfa-a-village-in-stone.mp3 0:06 4 full Nakfa: Shifting Cultivation and What Comes Once a Month https://qualla.com/nakfa/ Photo credit Prof tpms, CC BY-SA 3.0. Nakfa is one of the few villages in Africa where shifting cultivation and nomadic herding are still in practice. The tribal population moves from one hilltop to another in search of better pastures, abandoning a settlement when the soils exhaust or the grazing thins. The people h...

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Image: Prof tpms | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/g/q/nakfa-wk/sfgq-nakfa-shifting-cultivation-and-what-comes-once-a-month.mp3 0:06 5 full Nakfa: Food, Rest, and a View of Hills https://qualla.com/nakfa/ Photo credit Prof tpms, CC BY-SA 3.0. The food at Nakfa is sumptuous for the price. Ten nakfa buys you injira and zigni, the traditional sourdough flatbread and spiced meat stew that Eritreans and Ethiopians share across the border. The hills in every direction, the hundreds of small mounds rolling away to the horizo...

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Image: Prof tpms | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/g/q/nakfa-wk/sfgq-nakfa-food-rest-and-a-view-of-hills.mp3 0:06 6 full