Thank you, water, and donkey: My first 3 Amharic words. Discuss!

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Addis Ababa:

Nothing to write home about really. Pretty much a building site as they are building a metro. Reminds me of a cleaner, less developed combination of Calcutta and Delhi with the following differences:

-Churches instead of temples

- Fewer cows. More donkeys

- The Chinese instead of the Russians have designed the metro

- Less spitting in the streets

- Blue taxis instead of black and yellow ones

So quite different then I suppose!



Trek near Lalibela:

After a couple of days in Addis, we flew to Lalibela and started a 4 day, 3 night trek. Unfortunately we had to cut it short by a day and a night as Dad decided to spend the entire 2^nd night throwing up! Oh dear. He’s better now thankfully.

It was a fantastic experience. We met a lot of friendly people, ate local food, heard local music and saw numerous coffee ceremonies. The children always ran up to us shouting, “hello” and “photo camera”. They loved me taking photos of them and then showing them the pictures. The views were spectacular (see photos). We hiked through fields of teff, lentils, barley, peas, wheat, cows, goats…. After the first day, Mum gave up on hiking and rode a horse!

It was good to hear that thanks to generous overseas donations and input, there are now local schools enabling apparently 95%!o(MISSING)f children to study up to year 8. The classes have 2 sittings, morning and afternoon so that half the children from a family can study while the other half tend to the animals and then they swap.

We visited the home of a villager on the 2^nd day, which was a humbling experience. They invited us in, made us coffee and offered us yoghurt even though they hardly had any food to feed themselves. The parents, 2 children, cows, goats and chickens all slept in one room.

We stayed in local community lodges – basic, clean rooms but no electricity or running water (thank you for all the wet wipes)!!! The toilets were drop holes (ugh)!!!! They had good views though!




Lalibela

Visited the famous rock churches. Impressive.



We are off to Gondar tomorrow and I start teaching on Wednesday.

Hope you like the photos (yes, there are 51 here and I have many, many more)!

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Photos

Addis Ababa, Tomoca cafe
Great coffee

Day 1 trek: Werkhaye Mariam community lunch spot
Coffee ceremony

Day 1 trek: Werkhaye Mariam community lunch spot
Traditional lunch of injera with various curries.

Day 1 trek: Werkhaye to Mequat
"hello"
"photo camera"

Day 1 trek: Mequat community guest house
View from the "guest house"

Comments

[Tanya Holzmann]

Thank you for the water and the donkey
Wow. What a start to your adventure. I\'m v jealous.. Fantastic pics, you have a great eye! Good luck in Gondar, I\'m sure you\'ll have a fabulous time. Xxx

[Cliona]

Fab photos Tam :) thanks for sharing, great to see you! xxx