It blows my mind how people operate around here. Yet at the same time, I really like it. The drive time to Durame was just over 5 hours. We stopped about half way in Butajira for a potty break and a drink. As we left the city of Addis, the landscape was lowlands with little vegetation. As we got down the road a bit, it changed to a more rolling landscape and eventually to a lush green. The soils were a clay type of soil and I wondered how fertile they were for people that depend on them to grow crops. As we travelled the blacktop road, it seemed like every few miles was another little town. As we entered and left each town, there were many people walking along or down the middle of the road. Many donkeys, cows, and goats travelled as well. Sometimes the animals were being herded and sometimes they weren’t. Often times the animals were hearded by young children (from 3 up) or women. As we got into town, it was city meets country. Think New York City taxi cabs combined with the local country market. It was chaos as cars veered in and out, stopped where they wanted, waited for animals and people to cross and amazingly didn’t collide with anyone or anything. Town had various markets and lots of people.
In the country side we saw oxen plowing fields. On Sunday, the men plowing the field were said to be Muslim because the Orthodox Christians don’t work on Sunday. The plowed with equipment that we might see hanging in a building as antique. People here know that they can grow multiple crops but they seemingly have little to no idea about conservation. The erosion we saw was both beautiful and terribly sad at the same time. It made me want to come back to work alongside them in conservation and agriculture in general. I saw lots of plants that I recognized which was fun but so many more that I didn’t. I learned that there’s a banana tree grown for its roots. The roots are then used to make a bread which is the staple food for the diet of the people in that region. This tree does not produce fruit and is much shorter than the other type of banana tree. The fruit producing banana tree also exists and it was very cool to see them with green bananas hanging. The leaves of the tree are massive and are used as a wrap in cooking in which they protect and steam the food. Tsegaw, our driver, said that many people leave the leaves on and eat the food. We also saw coffee trees, avocado trees, mango trees, and olive trees. Of course the acacia trees were all over the place as were the eucalyptus trees.
The people were beautiful to see. From what I saw, it seems as though the women and children were doing all the labor and the men were standing around conversing. That may or may not be an accurate picture of the culture. In some villages, kids were thrilled to see our fair skin and say hello and wave to us and we saw their beautiful smiles. Others kept their stern faces and could care less. Yet others in the towns we stopped in are very aware of the white people and had no shame coming right up and asking us for money. I don’t feel inclined to give to (and by beggars I mean the kids who wouldn’t take the small bills and would try to negotiate for me).
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