Ah the joys of a quiet home after 3 days of travel on hot
cramped noisy buses! I just got back from fun holiday adventure to visit my
friend Sally in her town of Bonga- home of the “mother” coffee tree. Bonga is
in the tropical forest region where a large majority of coffee is grown and it’s
beautiful! Steep hills and mountains covered with lush jungle vegetation. My
good friends Jill and Devin (who live in the town next to me) accompanied me on
this adventure and on the way there we decided to take the “scenic” route-
adding an extra day to our travels to bypass going to Addis Ababa. One thing I
am learning about Ethiopia- it certainly isn't flat desert. Up, down, twist,
turn go the roads in various conditions to brand new pavement to dirt.
Christmas was a fun “ferengi” gathering of 8 PCV’s, and 3
Japanese volunteers (in a program very similar to Peace Corps). I made a roast and we ate cookies and drank
egg nog while looking out at the jungle below from a lovely view at the
Catholic Church (where one of the Japanese volunteers was renting a nice house
from). The rest of the days were spent exploring the jungle and lounging around
a beautiful waterfall that we even got to swim in!
In total we were on buses for 6 days, and spent 4 days in
Bonga. Along those many miles (kilometers) of travel I wrote little glimpses of
what I was seeing (and experiencing) so imagine you are looking out a window
seeing little bits of the following from Ethiopia:
-Red blooming Koso trees
-Low rock walls around grass thatched roofs. How old are
they?
-Colorful stream coated in freshly washed fabrics drying in
the sun
-Hand pressed cow patties drying to be used for cooking fuel
- Huge piles of hay, hand cut after a good harvest. Food for
the cows, donkeys, horses and sheep.
-Tiny barefoot kids herding cattle into dry open fields
-Sunrise hitting tin roofs and old tires, the day awakes
from darkness
-Mud homes hidden in banana leaf thickets
-Getting hit in the head with a banana stem by a rude street
vendor wanting attention (this was at the bus station).
- Greeting an old woman selling veggies; her kissing my hand
in respect.
-Hiding from the sun behind a curtain, waiting, waiting for
the bus to leave. (it took 3 hours before full of people)
-Small circular burial plots marked with stone pillars
-Different mud homes (Gojo bets)- very large and tall with straw thatched roofs
and circular bamboo base. Little wood doors and decorative paint lining the
entrance.
-Breakfast of fried dough balls dunked in little cups of
buna at the bus station, perched on a bench around a little charcoal stove.
-Closing my eyes to do yoga in the morning sun at the bus
stations (to ignore the stares), then teaching some young guys so yoga poses.
- Peeing in a water bottle in my cheap no bathroom hotel
room.
-Reverse ghost town homes; new and partially finished mud
homes with no people around. One of the many mysteries.
- A river lined with green in a sea of dry brown fields,
naked men and boys swimming and bathing.
- Muslim girls in a colorful array of headscarf’s walking to
school.
- Red bushes of poinsettia, white blooms of plumeria, purple
bogenvilla; bursts of color among fields of dry corn stalks and straw.
-Green acacia trees dripping with dangling grass weaver bird
nests.
-(Upon arriving in Addis Ababa) Girls wearing traditional
Orthodox Christian white headscarf’s with tight jeans and high heels.
-Driving through the Great Rift Valley with endless towers
of termite mounds and acacia trees with young boys sitting in their shade.
-A posse of young boys playing soccer; all barefoot and pant
less
-The bus stopping by a river so all the Muslim men could
wash and pray, facing Mecca.
- Near the end of a four hour ride seeing everyone perk up
and look out the windows in hopes of seeing Mountain Nayala and other wildlife
as we pass through the grassland part of Bale Mountain National Park.
Ah the joys of getting back to Goba and being greeted by the
neighborhood kids and women, and sleeping in my own quiet bed.
