Blogs from Awasa, Oromia Region, Ethiopia, Africa

Lake Langano is amazing day e e e night. After breakfast we went back to the beach, which was not more than 15 meters :) The water is swimmable even though it looks pretty muddy and bloody, but when you start 'here comes the shark', 'let's teach Miki swim', or 'do the fears' kind of fun, you totally forget about it. I can not describe how beautiful day we had there. I will just write some words that tries to give the impression: 40 degrees, beer, blanket, Susi, juicy fresh sweet sweet mango, sandcastle, Miki, neighbours, chill, heat, sand, Sam, pelicans, nap, Wondy, waves, peace. Packing, leaving, sunburn, strada, sunset, Addis, Kera. It was very sad to get back home, felt like a teenager who fells in love at the school camp and never wants the ... read more

Whirlwind exploration of Ethiopia, well, the Wondo Genet watershed region towards the south to be exact, with a few days of Addis Ababa and the Bale mountains thrown in. I was very confused when told that we would be going to Ethiopia for our summer tropical forestry course. Forests? in Ethiopia? I was pleasantly surprised. We visited working forests, sacred forests, public forests that are being cleared illegally for settlement and firewood, and community managed forests. The natural forests we visited were dominated by Juniper and Podocarpus - incredulous species if given the opportunity to grow. Unfortunately, the population pressure makes this quite an oddity. As for wildlife, there were colobus monkeys, baboons, some other type of monkey that was all over the campus where we stayed, warthogs, horn-bills - these were the exciting ones. We ... read more