Trip Log Day 02

Day 02 in country:
In the Morning:
Today we ride into Dureme, a short 5 hours away in a Land Cruiser with two benches facing each along the side windows. There are 10 of us heading out from the SIM camp including the team, Desta, the KHSM ministry leader, and our driver. Its gunna be a little squishy.

I feel so well rested and clean this morning, L and I got left behind at SIM while the men of the team went to get the survey equipment at the airport. We took hot showers and slept in till fairly late (did I mention SIM is wonderful??).

In the Evening:
I’m a bit more tired now. The country side was beautiful and sad at the same time. The hills remind me of home, the trees different though. The local ones are these large canopied trees that are synonymous with Africa, but only the really large ones are still here because some many get torn down for firewood, leaving the country deforested with large cracks running through the earth every few thousand yards. This brings us to our second type of tree, the eucalyptus tree. Now you should be saying, “But those are not indigenous to Africa!”, and you would be correct. They have been transplanted here by well meaning people because they grow quickly, providing wood and the oil from the tree is a natural insecticide. However, these tall trees also suck large amounts of water out of the surrounding area and sour the soil for other crops meaning once you plant them that is all you can plant there for quite some time. So you see, beautiful and sad at the same time.

The people along the road are also captivating. They are very colorful in their clothes, so you get bright pops of pink and orange and green along a brown stretch of road. As soon as we stopped for a break in one of the little towns all the children rush the van windows, tapping on them for money and to buy gum or CDs or whatever else they are promoting. Of course you are not supposed to give them any money straight out, which is an odd thing to remember. Handing out money perpetuates a culture of begging for the children and there are so many children there you would run out of bills before hands. Also you have to remember that we are not the only white faces traveling though this country and one hand out can lead to a stream of continued tapping for organizations that are trying to establish a better income source for the countries poor. A short-term hand out will not solve the long-term problem. Hand outs are not why EMI has come, so I resisted. It is very hard to turn away from a sad 5-year-old with her hand out.

The round mud huts along the road are right out of National Geographic. It’s so crazy to actually be seeing them. They are constructed with a circle of wood dowel rods (really eucalyptus branches and trunks) that has been mudded over, first on the inside then out. Many times the outside is not fully finished or just finished along the sides of the door. They paint large stripes all the way around the hut in white and orange-brown, some times the stripes have zigzagged accents of colors on top. The roofs are thatched with an upside-down clay pot shoved over the middle post to keep the rain from dripping through the center. Some times there is a door, most times there isn’t. The entire families (with an average of five children) live in this one circular room with the live stock as well. It doesn’t look that large, at least from the outside.

The livestock rule the road. Some times there are troops of young children tending them. The van got ‘stuck’ for a minute in one herd of cattle with children yelling at them. Mules are the same, deciding in their stubbornness when it is best to move off the road. The mules can carry comically large loads, and less comically their tenders (women) can as well, right along side them. Mostly they carry the wheat used to make injera, which is cheap and quick to grow. Injera is the much soured sponge-y pancake-like bread everyone eats with every meal. It lines your plate, is used as a utensil and it is eaten plain. It’s not bad.

Most of the 5 hour drive was paved. The last 1 hour wasn’t. We had been told that there was a “bad” stretch of road so we assumed that this was it. It wasn’t. The last fifteen minutes were. This dirt road leading up to the church property had pot holes the size of cows every three feet. The craziest part was that our well equipped Land Cruiser was not the only thing on the pitch black road (no streetlights here). Ethiopians were walking along in the dark miles away from any town. Now how in the world do you suppose they walk along without losing an ankle?

We had a traditional Ethiopian dinner at the church when we arrived. Leana and Tammie and I silly-ly went to use the toilet right when we got out of the van. Desta took us around behind the main building to a little room off the back with a nice little squatty potty. L and I both thought “oh no, this means SP’s for the rest of the week… that should be interesting…” Of course, I missed and finished out one pair of pants for the week. So you can imagine our joy when we got to our logging house and discovering real western-style toilets, and two, at that, for just us three women!

And now I am exhausted. Good Night!

Lots of love,
Cindy

P.S. Check out more images here.