Laresa's Adventures in Ethiopia as a Peace Corps Volunteer: Highlights

Hum where to begin…its been a few weeks on the rollercoaster but I will start with a high. One Monday everything came together- Frankfurt Zoological Society delivered all the materials I requested to make a composting toilet along with some extra money to buy the bamboo. In one swift moment I had everything needed to make the project happen. Yay! Then moments later a PCV friend called to say she was coming through Goba with some tourist friends from Norway headed up the Senetti plateau and did I want to join them. Heck yeah! An hour later I got picked up and we headed up into the beautiful mountains. It was great to have the freedom to stop where we wanted and see the unique landscape that I live so close to but is so hard to access. On the plateau it was really cold but fortunately not rainy and we went for a nice long stroll. The landscape is like the moon- flat and sparse. White lichen covered rocks blend in with white sagebrush plants, pock marked by shallow pools of water. A highlight was seeing the beautiful enormous endangered wattle crane. Only a few pairs fly all the way up from South Africa to breed on the cold plateau. Also by the end of the day we had spotted 6 Ethiopian wolves! One we watched stalk and finally pounce on a rodent only 30 meters away from the car! It’s amazing to see such an endangered species so easily and how they are unfazed by seeing cars. It was a much needed soul inspiring afternoon so close to Goba, only 1 hour drive. The evening was fun eating some cheese the Norwegians had brought and drinking a few beers.

Wednesday fellow PCV’s Devin and Matt and I headed up to the nature club site and started work on the compost toilet. I went to the bamboo market, a big field full of mud and freshly cut bamboo and bartered to buy 8 bundles. The day was full of working hard carrying the bamboo and playing carpenter and by the end we had a useable beautiful shint bet….ready for a group of 10 English high school students and teachers arriving on Saturday. Stay tuned to find out how that all went…