Blogs from Jimma, Oromia Region, Ethiopia, Africa - page 5

Have you ever been helped by an Ethiopian and said “thank you” to them in their native language, and then they laugh? What’s the deal with that? With the help of the other group we have picked up some of the native language Omharic, not Amharic which is spoken in Addis and is, I guess, the National language. Whenever I or anyone in the group says anything in Omharic, the response is always a laugh, followed by a response if needed. It’s a polite laugh, not a condescending “hahaha, you’re a stupid foreigner” laugh. They just seriously get a kick out of us speaking the language; it never fails. I’m just a funny rock star, people love me. It does get tiring though. You begin to understand how celebrities feel. Every day you have to be ... read more

Ethiopia is really unique. They are mostly Orthodox Christian which is a very old sect of Christianity, hence the non-Gregorian calendar. Last Tuesday they celebrated Timkat, which we think is the celebration of when Mary was told she would carry the son of god. The group of 7 from Assendabo stayed for a long weekend and we got our preceptors to take us to the celebration. We met them at 11am, 5 in the morning, and they took us to the festivities. The roads quickly turned to cobblestones and mud, and a small trickle of people coming towards us quickly turned into a flood of people. We were in two groups, and the group I was in was ahead of the second. There was a hill towards our left and the road curved sharply down to ... read more

The city’s landscape can change pretty quickly. All of the streets are fairly dusty. Some of the streets have store fronts on the road, others have ditches that fill up with water. You need to walk over five foot-long make shift wooden bridges to get to the store fronts. There is corrugated aluminum siding along most of the roads. There are sections of the aluminum that actually serve as doors to people’s houses. You move them away and before you is a small courtyard that usually has a small vegetable, fruit, and coffee garden and a modest home. It is sort of like the Labyrinth starring Jennifer Connely and David Bowie, where the worm shows Jennifer how to actually get into the Labyrinth.... read more

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 ... read more

One day it rained a little, no big deal. The next day it was a bit overcast, nothing too foreboding, then BAM! The loudest thunder I had ever heard. A second later, there was a torrential downpour. The hotel has a section of ceiling that is corrugated metal and the hallway leading up to that section was deafening due to all the rain hitting the metal. Roads and pathways are pretty muddy. I was told Jimma University had to close for the day. Evidently it’s not even close to the rainy season. As one of the city folk said “the weather is fucked you know? I think it is all the America, Europe, an’ China,” to which I interpreted, “rain is highly unusual for this time of year. I believe that the weather patterns we are ... read more