Jafar’s Palace

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On Saturday one of the students organized a trip to Jafar’s Palace, which as it turned out was not very old. I am not sure how far away the palace was from our hotel, it probably wasn’t that far, but the roads made the trip lengthier than it could have been. We flew down the paved part of the streets, but we took a turn down a side street and things got a little bumpy. The roads in Jimma are kind of like Los Angeles, there are the main highways bisecting and travelling through the city, main streets, and everyday surface streets. Instead of the 405, Jimma has a paved, sometimes obstructed road, Sepulvada is replaced by a dirt/cobblestone road, and the surface streets are occasionally impassable. You know when you are on a rollercoaster and you start your climb to the top, just as you start to crest you shift your body back in anticipation of the drop? The “potholes” on the most rural roads made me do that motion every 25 yards or so. I would be watching the road and think “Holy shit. How the hell are we going to cross that?”

The Palace itself was pretty lackluster. It was a wooden/plaster structure whose support beams took away any semblance of beauty. The view, as the palace was on top of a hill, was outstanding. An attendant informed us that it was 25 Birr to go into the palace and everyone balked. We kind of broke into groups and wandered a little. I went over to one group who was talking to a local. She was a university student, very nice girl. We decided to wander off the property and back onto the road. There was forest on either side of the road with occasional archways cut out of the forest that led to people’s homes and the less frequent dirt paths. Our companion said that a river was down one of the paths and we decided to check it out. After maybe 100 yards of dirt path the forest gave way to an open green field with a small stream running through it. There was a large concrete headstone with a tap coming out of it on the other side of the stream. An adult and a couple children were filling up their plastic containers with the well water coming from the tap.

We were walking back on the trail and three elderly ladies passed by us. One lady was very old, skinny, wrinkled, and wrapped in white cloth. She was so incredibly stoked to see us. Way super stoked. She was saying stuff in omharic non-stop and lifting her hands to the sky, motioning upwards. When we left, she shook all of our hands and kissed them. Just really super stoked to see us, I have never seen anything like it.

We got back to our van. It was parked and stuck on the side of the road. The neighbor kids pushed us out.

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