{"id":273588,"date":"2019-04-20T02:52:30","date_gmt":"2019-04-20T06:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/?guid=509a0119413d4ffb0333193ad475a808"},"modified":"2026-09-13T11:22:03","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T15:22:03","slug":"ben-abeba-a-scottish-pensioners-cliffside-restaurant-above-lalibela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/273588","title":{"rendered":"Ben Abeba: a Scottish pensioner\u2019s cliffside restaurant above Lalibela"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not many Scottish pensioners move to the Ethiopian highlands to build a restaurant that looks like a concrete spaceship. Susan Alitto did, opening <strong>Ben Abeba<\/strong> on a cliff outside Lalibela after leaving a small-town life in Scotland.<\/p>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" height=\"780\" width=\"780\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-357178\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Lalibela.jpg?fit=780%2C780&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Ben Abeba: a Scottish pensioner\u2019s cliffside restaurant above Lalibela\" \/>\n<p>The National\u2019s 2019 feature followed her unlikely second act: learning local supply chains, hiring nearby staff, and serving travelers who came for the rock-hewn churches and stayed for injera with a view. The building\u2019s spiral decks made it a postcard, but the harder story was cross-cultural enterprise in a tourism town.<\/p>\n<p>Lalibela\u2019s visitor economy has always been fragile, tied to pilgrimage seasons, conflict, and air links. A foreign-owned landmark can mean jobs and skills transfer. It can also sit awkwardly beside heritage politics and who profits from holy ground.<\/p>\n<p>As lifestyle reference for Horn readers, Ben Abeba is more than quirky architecture. It is a case study in how Ethiopia\u2019s tourism dreams depend on peace, roads, and trust between outsiders and the communities that keep the churches standing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenational.ae\/lifestyle\/travel\/ben-abeba-meet-the-scottish-pensioner-who-opened-a-futuristic-restaurant-in-the-mountains-of-ethiopia-1.851341\">The National<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Abeba: Meet the Scottish pensioner who opened a futuristic restaurant in the mountains of Ethiopia&nbsp;&nbsp;The NationalNot many pensioners would move from a small town in Scotland to the mountains of East Africa to find their life&#8217;s calling. But&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":357178,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Lalibela.jpg?fit=263%2C192&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-19aI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273588"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":601041,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273588\/revisions\/601041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}