Prologue to Africa 2014-2015: Why Africa?

Why Africa?

This is our fifth trip to Africa in 4 years. Each has been a discovery.

2011 for 5 weeks in Egypt—silently mourning the tiny boy that was Pharaoh Tut, putt-putting across the empty immense of Lake Nasser over the drowned lands of Nubia, discovering the black African roots of Egypt in Nubia and sinking into the beauty of the desert in the Great Sand Sea of western Egypt.

2012 for 7 weeks in Namibia (all wrenched geology, immense sand dunes, and a night with the most ancient branch of our human family, the click-speaking San people of the Kalahari), Botswana (the world’s only inland river delta, canoeing through archipelagos of hippos and lotuses), Zambia and Zimbabwe (immense marches of elephants and towers of giraffes..and the Zambezi River exploding over Victoria Falls, The Smoke that Thunders), Kenya and Tanzania ( the endless plain of the Serengeti, elegant jumping Ma’asai of physical perfection and Oldupai Gorge, called a cradle of humanity, once a fertile savannah, but now a forge of heat and rock )

2012-2013 for 9 weeks to return to Egypt, via Jordan and Turkey, and best of all, two weeks 4x4 trek across Sudan (the ancient Nubia)...and discovering the ‘Martian’ ruins of the pyramids at Meroe, and perhaps the roots of Egypt, walking to the spot where the White Nile from Uganda meets the Blue Nile from Ethiopia in the heart of Khartoum, and later, in the desert, our guides surprising us with a party on December 31st).

2013-2014 for 7 weeks in Uganda (glorious landscapes, the source of the White Nile, trekking twice to the wild mountain gorillas and being rewarded by a gentle touch on my knee) and Cameroon (a 90 year old polygamous king with a modern world view and a sense of humor, the Koma people, gracious and clothed in leaf skirts, 13 hour overnight train rides..to endless Michael Jackson videos, perfect beaches with more perfect barracuda steaks and shrimp that belie the name).

But, again, why Africa?

Is it the names... really, can you beat Zambezi, Serengeti, Zimbabwe, Sahara, Ngorongoro, Ruwenzori, Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, and Kalahari?

Is it the eye candy: exquisite women, graceful as giraffes, men, especially in Cameroon, their equal in beauty with perfect physiques, toned in the gym of life?

Is it the color: crafts with a truthfulness of substance and design, cloth rippling with impertinent design and color, skin from mocha to the deepest, richest mahogany, almost purplish in its purity? Is it the diversity of culture, language, form, landscape?

Is it the people, warm, welcoming, generous, surprising? Is it the landscape, the ‘endless plain’ of the Serengeti, the Sahara staggering in its immensity, variety, and ruthlessness under an endless sky, the Nile, sliver of life through the desert?

Or, is it animal life, rich and varied beyond anywhere else on our planet, immense gatherings and wanderings of elephants, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, lion, buffalo, hippo, many doomed by the encroachment of human need and greed, but for now communities of life in which humans are a part…and a guest, one animal among many…the way we were for hundreds of thousands of years.

Perhaps the last comes closest to answering the question: Why Africa?

One late afternoon, bumping back to camp across the Serengeti, Kilimanjaro immense over us, its glaciers throwing the sunlight back in great bursts over a world of edenic perfection, something extraordinary happened.

My body and mind seemed to ooze out into the astonishing rightness of the landscape, like droplets of mercury seeping out to seek a whole somewhere outside me. I talk about it now as my DNA reaching out to grab the landscape, returning to its roots. It felt very much like a going home. Could it be? Our ancestors walked out of Africa twice. Surely somewhere deep inside us there must be some memory of that. Perhaps that is where the notion of the Garden of Eden really has its origin...in our DNA...a memory of a time when humans and animals were part of the same world and that world was beautiful? I have no idea. I do know that Africa hold on me is solid, real, beloved.

And so I go back. Seduced. Willingly.

We leave November 4th for 9 weeks in Ethiopia and Chad.

The idea for the trip was birthed last winter in a cramped 4x4 bumping over rocks in the north of Cameroon. Our driver (the charismatic Evans) reminded us we were near to both Nigeria and Chad. Luis our buddy from Sudan, aka He Who Has Been Everywhere, erupted in a seizure of visa-lust. CHAD! And, so it was sealed. It would be Chad in winter 2014-2015. None of us had ever been, no one goes there, it is totally non-touristic, the landscape is phenomenal, we all love the desert, there are nomads and camels.

Ruth, our other Sudan buddy, delectable and unflappable, signed on from the front seat. As it turns out Luis will not join us in Chad. Ruth will; it will be our third year in a row to spend New Year’s together in Africa. Then Dennis and I will go to Ethiopia on our own.

Originally Ethiopia was just a ‘pass-through’ on our way to Chad. Most of the trip would have been in West Africa, to Mali (how could I resists going to Timbuktu), Burkina Faso (ditto Ouagadougou, my very favorite city name) or Benin (home of voodoo). Ebola put an end to the three week trip that would have included 3 days sailing on a traditional boat up (or is it down) the Niger River to Timbuktu.

Ethiopia has always been on the bucket list, just below West Africa. Fares to Chad are much cheaper via Ethiopia on the excellent Ethiopian Airlines. And we can use frequent flyer miles to get from Florida to Milan, a major airport for Ethiopian. And on the way we get a few jet-lagged days in a small town on the eastern shore of Lago Maggiore. Done.

Stay tuned.

Day 1 November 5 - Finally on the road!

Here we are in our "explorer mode" drag. Those backpacks and day packs hold everything we need for 9 weeks, including sleeping bags, sleeping sheets, quilted jackets, two additional changes of clothing each (long sleeve and tee shirts, pants...all color coordinated OF COURSE...undies, socks) batteries, chargers, water purification kit. It's all very um, er, efficient. We will be on the road for nine weeks. I recommend standing upwind.

After a night in Tampa we flapped our wings on an o-dark-early short flutter to Miami where we faced 6 hours transit time twiddling and rambling in our least favorite airport. The Frequent Flyer Fairies had a surprise up their titanium wings: two free passes to the Admirals Club dredged up by the kind concierge lady as a bennie of our last airline credit card renewal. Six hours later, plumper with made to order canadian bacon breakfast croissants, sprinkled with chocolate chip cookie crumbs, and mustachioed a la free capuccinos we squared our sagging shoulders and marched down to our date with our stratospheric silver suppository, American Airlines flight 206 to Milan.

Try we did, but you can't store up comfort and pleasure. Soft armchairs, tasty Canadian bacon breakfast croissants, and leg room were in short supply on our overnight cattle car steerage class red eye to Milan. Jet lagged brain death seemed inevitable.But first; there was the "FOOD SERVICE"

Airline food is the Disney World Epcott Center of cuisine: it so wants you to think it is the real thing. Plasticized, cello-wrapped, pre-packaged and ersatz, it does try. The tasteless slabs of wheat stuff lie flat on the plastic tray, but gamely proclaim they are ' gourmet crackers'. The poor things must be embarrassed. Not so the salad. It sits colorful, perky, wetly dressed, well meaning and hopefull but destined to be the wall flower at this high altitude banquet. Alas, high flying does not mean high class.

Then, there are the entrees. Trussed up, fitted out, gussied to the max and with improbable names, these unfortunates are the Tiffany-Arabellas, the Cody-Maries, the Pretensia-Annes of the food family, and ugly stepsisters to the real thing.

Our flight crew was deliciously honest: "pasta or chicken". Now let me see....we're flying to Italy, where there is some ability with pasta. ..oh, yes, I’ll have some pasta. Not! The chicken is, of course, Chicken a la Airline. A bird died for this, I think. But.... on second taste... perhaps not. The wine, however is no worse than the plonk we drink at home and has the good taste to be efficient.

But I have to admit I LOVE having a picnic, even a bad one, at 35,000 feet while I hurtle through space at 500 miles an hour. That at least is not ersatz...and it still knocks my socks off.

There are 7 more hours to go.

Flight 206 is not one of American's finer moments. Cattle car comes to mind. The seats are so close together I go cross-eyed trying to focus on the message embroidered on the seat back in front of me and now at nosectio. : "Fasten seat belts while seated" it says. As if I could manage that maneuver...or need to. There's no room for anything more than a shiver. On Flight 206 two bodies CAN occupy the same place at the same time. Bathroom breaks are especially challenging.

Flight 206 also has no 21st century doo-dads to entertain me, no seat back monitors with "the latest and greatest films", maps of the flight, and depressing warnings about how many days are left before we land. There are that drop down screens every 100 rows. And only for the middle row. I have forgotten my binoculars.

Four days later there are still two hours ...and "the breakfast snack" ...to go. "Nature Cranbery Medley" does have a short list of natural sounding ingredients, though "and natural flavor" is listed after cranberries, blueberries and acai berries, ingredients that my memory imbues with flavor to spare. Nothing looks too toxic.

The other package ups the ersatz hood rating of the snack, however.

The list of ingredients in "Maple and brown sugar oatmeal clusters" looks like the index in my high-school chemistry textbook. Long intimidating words ending in 'ite', 'ate', 'ene' parenthetically qualify maple, brown sugar, and oatmeal. I expect 'cluster' to be similarly encumbered, but it stands naked of chemical nuance.

Chemically enhanced, we unstrap, stand, jostle, bump and trundle down the suppository and out into the deserted terminal. 6am arrivals are not big sellers in Milan.

It's still dark. Northern weather has swooped in and trumped

southern climate . Milan is cold and just a bit nasty.

The weather may be inconvenient but it's no matter. We are in Italy. I will forgive Italy anything. It has given the world pasta, Sophia Loren at 80, Sophia Loren at 70, Sophia Loren at 60, Sophia Loren at 50, Sophia Loren at 40, 30, and 20. And I can get at least one of those any time I want.

ITALY

Day 2 November 6 - Laveno-Mombello and PIZZA!

I got my pasta. In the form of the most delectable hand-made and wood oven baked pizza crust. (Sophia, was probably busy anyway.)

The efficient train from the Milan airport carried us northward to Laveno-Mombello on the shores of Lago Maggiore . After a few hours of creative wandering, exuberant and even more creative pokes at comprehensibiliy in Italiano, and hot coffee to offset the chill we find our bus and a helpful lady also 'descending' at our stop, Via Gorizia. Number 25, 'The Red Door', is across the road. Our host, Luca , turns up a few minutes later all Italianated concern and charm. He had gone to to the station to meet us. We of course had gotten off at the other OTHER one. Emails did not work. As a last resort he called our mobile phones. They were in travel limbo between SIM cards. United at last we did what all Italians do..we shrugged, hugged, laughed and got own to the important business what and where to eat. PIZZA!

But, first we had to get to the pizza place. This involved a drive through the hills of Lombardy. You may have seen the event at the last Olympics. When we make this trip into an opera, the drive will be the cadenza- crazed finale to the first act, optional high notes provided by the passengers.

Mollified by fresh hand-made mozzarella and munching magnificence (two pizzas-- asparagus, wild mushrooms and fresh mozzarella on one, pumpkin, thinly sliced red onion and prosciutto on the other, both layered onto the thinnest most delectable crust). in a pizzeria named Mac G (go figure.) in a village no one this side of Brigadoon would ever find even assuming they survived the drive, we learned more about Luca . He is charming, smart, funny, wild about travel and animals, creative. ..and a wonderful host. He teaches sailing in Tunisia, was national rowing champion, does Tai Chi and yoga, and heads off on Sunday for a 'blessing' from a swami. I will not repeat his pithy observations about French tourists.

Much talk later, a kinship/friendship in the forming, he dropped us back at The Red Door, ran us through operating the pellet stove, reminded us about mama's homemade blackberry preserves in the reefer, made plans to pick us up at 11 the next morning and whirled off to his parents' house 100 meters away. Jet lagged though we were, the mention of home-made blackberry preserves tweaked our few aware synapses into taste-lust. Several slices of crackers slathered with the stuff later, the eyelids won and we slumped off to bed.

Visions of pizza and Sophia may have danced through my head, but I doubt it

Day 3 - November 7 - Surprises

Luca promised us 'surprises'. The photos tell part of the story.

Morning came late as we stumbled up from the low bed at close to 10, well rested and almost de-jetlagged. Dennis threw open the shutters to blue skies and sunlight of alpine purity. Alpine? Surely that means Alps...somewhere. Perhaps better viewed from outside? We walk out the red door, cross the road, turn towards Switzerland and There They Are: the snow- covered Alps....just like the map promised. But now an odd thing happens. Instead of glory, I feel intimidation. Have I lived in the flats too long....or read too much bad climatological apocalyptic sci-fi? The peaks look like jagged glacial teeth about to chomp down on the soft rolling defenseless Italian lowlands. Oh well, this is Italy...time to eat. More blackberry jam awaits.

Luca scoots up at 11. The big smile is even bigger. First, he says, we go to the Monastery of Santa Caterina...todayin this wonderful weather it will be wonderful. (Italian is a language blessed with hyperbole and superlatives. ..but then look at the country and taste the food. Natural, no?)

Fifteen Olympic-worthy careenings later he drops us off. 'Don' t spend a lot of time taking pictures when you walk down the steps...there are only 300 of them... See you at 1....for the surprise.

A more immediate surprise is the locked gate. Santa C. is apparently not "at home" to visitors on week days in winter. The 300 steps are off limits. My knees mutter thanks.

We wander down the sloping road that suggests the shores of Lago Maggiore are not far off. On the way down we pass houses that must have stunning views of the lake and Alps. They also have dogs of the 'I-will-bark-because-that's-my-job-but-my-tail-says-I-am-open-to-other-offers-and-a-nice-scratch-behind-the-ears-would-not-be-amiss-PLEASE-oh-please' variety. They give us a nice send off as we descend to the lake.

Freshly dropped and red oak leaves cover the ground, blankets for flows of pansies, and beddng for healthy palm trees, garden mates confused by the peculiar climate of the Lake District. Those toothy mountains may portend glaciers, but the lakes store and dispense warmth with sub-tropical generosity. Lago Maggiore is lovely.

Late in the afternoon we visit the lake again to take a ferry ride across to the western shore. It's past prime sunset time and we just missed the mountains in afternoon pink, but the lakeshore is coming alive with lights from the villages and towns lucky enough to cozy to it. Even at night Lago Maggiore is a maggiore experience.

Ah, but sandwiched between those two tastes of Italy's physical splendor comes Luca's "surprise"...slobberingly mouth watering tastes of Italy's true splendor: its food

We drive up the narrow road near The Red Door for maybe 100 meters, but high enough to view the Alps. They're looking friendlier. Of the friendly intentions of the dog there is no doubt. He smiles, wiggles into our hands, leans against us and sighs. The kitten, a recent foundling, rushes up a tree and stalks us at eye level. The dog eats the kitten's food. Dogs, kittens, views.This is our kind of place.

Excuse the house, Luca says, my father has decided to fix it up.

Right. It's gorgeous, glorious, gorgeous, the center piece of a small farm where the family grows fruit and vegetables that are all 'naturale'. We tour trees bearing figs, persimmons, quince, apples, nuts. Grapevines give up handfuls of sweet dark grapes. Another fruit, new to us, and a favorite of Luca's, has an armored shell hiding a custardy filling tasting of deeply caramelized apple sauce with a twist of lemon. Another, please. I lick my fingers.

Anna, Luca's lovely sister, greets us and herds us into the cucina.

Heaven awaits us there. Signora Didone has made us lunch. Of such a meal legends are born.

First to descend from heaven is pasta carbonara, the sauce of eggs, cream, pancetta so light it threatens to soar back heavenward. I've had carbonara in the US. It's usually a thick swamp of indifferent goo in which sink white tubey things: zombie food. This carbonara is angel food. A few gratings of cheese elevate it beyond the realm of angels. I know this is only the beginning of the meal---in Italy pasta is the overture, not the opera--and there is more heaven to come, but to refuse a second helping would be severely stupid. Dennis' eyes are still rolled back from his first taste when I am scouring my plate of any hint of the sauce with pieces of crusty bread. The wine is superb. ...but I don't want to lose the taste of heaven.

The second course is a pairing of two slender home-made sausages with a salad confected from slivers of red lettuce and sweet red peppers, tossed with gossamer slices of onion and gently married with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The slightly salty salad tempers the richness of the sausage. Together they succeed in wrenching our taste buds from the heavenly carbonara and create their own miracle. I succumb to worship of Signora Didone.

The third course is cheese. It matches the rest of the meal.

Much discussion, rich with the luscious vowels of Italian, seemed to involve desert. Excuses made, Signor and Signora Didone reveal their final surprise: preserves of fruit from their own trees, all 'naturale', and made on the farm. The plums are sweet, pungent, silky. Signor Didone opens his favorite, an unpromising sounding mix of grape skins left over from wine-making, hard apples, pumpkin, and dijon mustard. It's delicious. Coffee follows but grows cold as we laugh and talk and look at pictures of our past trips to Africa (Luca wants to do lion research)...and do some amateur archeology. Signora Didone is Serbian. Archeologists have found evidence of an 8000 year old farming community on her family's land. Pieces of pottery spill gently from a cotton wrap. We spend an hour trying to figure out what their purpose was. La Signora is not just a world class cook. Like her husband, she's interested, interesting and informed. We can see where Luca and Anna get their energy and light.

Farewells are hugged and double-cheek-kissed. The dog smiles and leans. We leave filled with the kind of memories travel should bring, but too does not.

The dusk crossing of Lago Maggiore softens our sense of loss, but not much. Tomorrow we leave.

Day 4 - November 8 - Leaving Laveno

But, first, a walkabout through Laveno under skies so blue and bright they almost scald. Alas, yesterday's meal has worked through and the munchies hit.The pizzeria we find is closed. We 'make do' with "naturale' apples and blackberry jam, coffee, and crunchy crackers.

Packing is easy. Retreating upwind is not yet necessary.

Anna drives us to the station.(Luca is being blessed by a guru.)We talk of her stay in Mississippi as a high school exchange student. So that's where her excellent English comes from! We listen for but do not detect a suggestion of southernisms in vowel or phrase. Most surprising to her? How immature American teenagers seemed- drinking to get drunk, little self-restraint.

Soon to graduate with a degree in political science from the University of Bologna (founded in 1200, by the way, Harvard, you Ivy come lately), she summed up our electoral system with shrugs and rolled eyes: it's like our system....no one understands it, either. Bureaucracy is her bugaboo. Her family's attempted foray into marketing their 'naturale' jams has foundered because the roof of the kitchen is 20 centimeters too low. That's 8 inches. She is looking for something she can do from home, perhaps Internet marketing.

But perhaps she and her brother will join us in Africa someday. Is it true, she asked yesterday over carbonara, that people go to Africa just once and succumb to 'Africa sickness' and keep returning? You know the answer.

At 15:08 our train rolls in. Our flight is at 20:45. We're hoping that Ethiopian 703 is an improvement over Delta 206.No matter. It is taking us back to Africa.

ETHIOPIA

Day 5 - November 9 - A not so minor wrinkle and a grand canyon

Two hours in Ethiopia and the first wrinkle in our trip appears.

Ethiopian flight 703 almost redeems American flight 206 Bulkhead row aisle seat. No neighbor. Room to stretch and spread out. Across the aisle Dennis is not quite so lucky but Ethiopian seems to remember people have legs. (Maybe because so many Ethiopians have used their legs to win so many marathons and Olympics? ) And there's enough room between his seat and the one in front of him to avoid having his lunch do a lap dance.The 'beef stew' even bore a tangy resemblance to something one might be wiling to eat 35,000 feet lower.

Slightly ahead of schedule 703 glides down through clear skies onto the plateau that is Addis Ababa, at over 8,000 feet the 3rd highest national capital in the world. (And, Number 1 is....? That will be on the test. )

Aerial over- nighters from other flights swarm into our crowd, and we all shuffle into the traffic block of the Ebola checkpoint: Stop. Turn. (Click). Thank you. Next.

The Set Up

We will be in Ethiopia for 42 days. The standard tourist visa is issued on arrival for 30 days. Ethiopia may play the numbers game with its calendar (it's the year 2007 currently) but the country is pretty good with math. 42 does not into 30 go. We will need need a 90 day visa issued when we arrive. No problem said the nice lady at the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington. I believed her. Silly me. We are also carrying a friend's old laptop as a gift to Birhanu, our tour arranger, and 2 new Samsung phone as his gifts to his wife and brother. Three cells phones each, one more than we each have ears. Customs overkill, anyone?

The Let Down

Sunday at 7 am is not the best time to arrive in a horde in a country that takes its Christian traditions seriously. Sunday is a big deal here, but not for the three harried civil servants stuck at the airport instead of in church. Deprived of their sacraments, confronted with an invasion of hundreds of sleep-deprived tourists and burdened with a non-automated, hand- written visa process they retreated into understandable indifference, non-civility, borderline rudeness, and a flurry of heads shaking, left, right, left, right. These are not good omens for a successful plea for Special Consideration.

They can be frustratingly slow, but these long airport waiting lines are seldom without some sort of reward. Mine is a charming elderly Ethiopian lady, British passport firmly in hand, worried about reaching an ailing sister "in time". Worry and fatigue does not overcome the light in her eyes and the gentle nobiliy and loveliness.of her face. The sounds of her mother tongue soften her British English. I am beguiled. Together we push her suitcase ahead of us.

Our spot in the conga line of sagging supplicants moves closer to The Moment of Truth, reaches it. Petition is made. Heads shake. That 90 day visa is left-right-left-righted firmly out of reach. We get our marching orders: go to immigration for an extension (No problem said the nice lady at the Embassy...now recognized as a scary assurance at best.) around day 24 or 25 of our trip. Of course we know if THAT doesn't work we will have to fly to Kenya, turn around and fly back to Ethiopia...and do the conga line number all over again. (I doubt the nice lady at the embassy will reimburse us.) A wrinkle in our plans? A wrinkle we can step over . This is more like trying to cross the Grand Canyon on a tight rope. Calling Evil Knievel.

The Pick Up

Visas in hand we sidle to the next window, pay our $20 each for the visas, and slump over to join another conga line to get the visa examined and our passport stamped. We shuffle in slow motion for another half hour towards passport control. No right-left-right-left here but no smiles. And no customs inspection either. The phones are safe, a minor victory. Two and a half hours after stepping out of Flight 703 we enter Ethiopia.

Red- eye, conga line, visions of tightrope and the Grand Canyon are all washed away by this smile that greeted us: Birhanu at full wattage.

We leave Addis two hours later, in the friendly hands of Mengistu, our driver for the next 40 days, way behind schedule.

Days 6 and 7 - November 10 and 11 The source of the Nile and some thoughts about Helen of Troy

We awake in Debre. Markos, a town on no tourist maps other than as a break on the long journey from Addis to Bahir Dar, Lake Tana and the source of the Nile.

A short, early walk confirms that even this blank spot on the map of Ethiopia bristles with street life. This is Africa, after all. Streets are alive with life, never wrapped, never packaged never homogenized. Ethiopia in the rawness of its life is the anti Walmart.Because of the huge distances, roller coaster topography, iffy 'services', and asphalt roads that quickly transmute into dusty exhibits of the possible varieties of potholes, most tourists fly from highlight to highlight.

We, however, love the places in between and especially the

crowded democracy of the African road. Cattle, goats, sheep, donkeys, even horses, (rare elsewhere in Africa,) and mules, the inevitable by-product of such equine democracy, in herds of a kind or all jiggly piggly, meandering over the roads in great neighing, baaing, bleating, braying puddles, streams, rivers of 4-legged nonchalance.

Occasionally there is a centaur, a human lucky enough not to have to walk. People in Africa walk. In other African countries they may also ride buses,motorcycles, bikes, donkeys? In Ethiopia, buses and three wheeled 'bajajis' ply the roads, but mostly people walk. Walk. Walk Walk. They carry 20 gallon jerry cans of fuel or water, huge Rasta head dresses of straw, tree branches, sugar cane, baskets of fruit or vegetables, sometimes branches or umbrellas for shade.

The rural men are my favorite. Slender almost to wraithness, narrow of shoulder and hip, they wrap their proportioned narrowness in large shawls that almost cover their long and surprisingly undefined legs, Across their shoulders they carry a long stick for walking and leaning, a thin horizontal line over that slender verticality So slender they seem to cut through the dust with supple grace. They are human calligraphy

Remember Helen of Troy, she of 'the face that launched a thousand ships?' I don't remember which side engaged in such martime mayhem, but if Helen looked like even an average Ethiopian woman, she would have been worth ten times that hormone driver armada. I also don't remember how, or when, or for how long Helen got a gander at her horny Stud Muffin, but if he looked like most of the men of Ethiopia, not even one ship would have been necessary. She would have been quite happy, thank you, to dog paddle through the drool to get to him.

Every place has beautiful people. Africa is especially rich in eye-candy. But never have I been to a place in which beauty in both sexes is strewn with such profligacy. Every day I see faces so stunning that I stare amazed and thankful that our DNA can produce such wonders. And of course I have NO photos to back that up! People here are unfailingly gracious. They have far more right to their privacy than I have to a photograph. I'll have to remember, not click.
All that beauty might be enough to make Ethiopians memorable but these people possess grace , dignity, charm, and a fundamental sweetness, that has seduced us. And there are those solar flare smiles.

The epic landscape stretches endlessly, challenging us to guess distance, abolishing a sense of scale, seducing our eyes to the infinite. We descend into and rise out of valleys and canyons. Their layered walls have captured and frozen time. Infinity stretches outward into the haze and backwards through the rocks. Humans and our ancestors have been here for at least four million years, a dribble in the sea of time revealed in this earth.

Ancient, immense , infinite....but alive with the vigor we love in Africa. Want proof? Hop out of the car for a stretch way out beyond the beyond and people, especially kids, pop out of the landscape. It's 'Instant Spectacle: Just add foreigners and mix. Satisfaction Guaranteed'. Well, it's the least we can do, (though finding a private place to recycle all that water we drink can be a challenge).

Adults greet with a graceful nod-bow.

Kids giggle in great gaggles and launch peals of the universal hello/hallo chorus. One charmer, about ten or eleven, pops out of a field of yellow grain he is protecting from the wiles of marauding gelada baboons. He's an elf, smaller than a large baboon, with those immense Ethiopian eyes, and trots out his quite amazing English, inadvertently sending the hello/hallo chorus back to the bush leagues.

The landscape and people would be reason enough to cross the planet to Ethiopia.

There are also the traditional 'highlights', and there are many.

The road to Bahir Dar passes lovely Lake Zenenga, deeply green, a perfect round mirror fillling an ancient crater. We spend a few hours strolling through the park idea woods that ring it with the enthusiastic, 20 year old Nawazi. Like all of the local guides we meet, he is knowledgeable, informative, and totally 'unpackaged'. His is no canned spiel, but a fun conversation. We have the same experience with the 40 year old Kassa on the walk to the breath-taking place where the Nile has its first great tumble in its rush to Egypt. And with Tsefaye, our exuberant guide on a boat ride across Lake Tana to monasteries---and, Wanda, the engaging monk,, who wonders why so many 'farangi' (foreigners) want to take his picture--- and the source of the Nile.

A hippo, one of the silliest looking creatures, and forever deprived of seriousness by the ballet sequence in the original Fantasia, plays hide and seek with our boat.

Bahir Dar is lovely with tree-lined streets and a quiet, laid-back vibe. If only that were true of the dance club next to our hotel. For two nights it rocks until 3am. I am not amused, having given up 3am rocking eons ago. Dennis, 4 floors above, gets though it , eardrums intact. I rig up mostly ineffectual ear muffs out of airline ear plugs, a bandana, babushka and a pair of socks. It's not a pretty picture. I get about 3 hours sleep. The picture does not improve.

We watch the sunset from another hotel, gluttonously spooning avocado mousse.

Days 8 and 9 - November 12 and 13 - Lalibela's subterranean churches

We drive for a day long in hours and exclamations west to east crossing immense valleys and climbing steep palisades. It's harvestcseasin. The fields are rich saffron. Up here at 8 to 9 thousand feet there is no pollution other than that of rural life. The skies are searingly blue. Lalibela, appears as tin roofed houses in the distance, ugly and hot replacements for the round straw roofed tukuls.that give the countryside such character. The town of 17000 has significance far beyond its size. In the morning we will see why. Sleep comes early and easily.

Our driver, the ever resourceful Mengistu of course knows a guide and once again we luck out. Wandule is not only a guide, but a priest, raconteur, great teacher and delightful companion.
He gathers us early the next morning. As we walk through the dust he stops frequently to give blessing. The faithful bend gently to kiss the metal cross he carries. It's a gesture we remember.

The iconic picture of Ethiopia (other than the misleading one of starving children) is of the cruciform stone improbabiliy of the Church of Saint George, or, rather, its roof. The roof of the church is level with the surface of the rock outcropping that is the church's nest. Carved down from the surface out of volcanic tuff and basalt it is one piece of stone, an immense monolith, like the Ethiopian Orthodox Faith it serves.

There are eleven such churches in Lalibela, all excavated during a short period 900 years ago by the king who.gives his name to the town, Lalibela.. They all share a cave like gloom relieved by fabrics, paintings, carvings , articles of faith, messages of the Orthodox Articles of Faith. Every element is a lesson for a population that cannotvread but can see and be awed by the the omnipresent messages from their God. Like the stained glass in Gothic cathedrals, the lattice designs of these stone windows are textbooks, solid, of the very ground therefore truthful.

Our guide, the charismatic Wandule .priest and friend of our driver, is an articuate and charismatic interpreter of these lessons in stone. (But, first we remove our shoes and turn them over to Andyeman, a 'shoe guard'. He'll walk with us all day untie and retie our shoes at every ecclesiastical entry and exit. It feels odd, but it's an income for him. ) We bow slightly to the white- wrapped huddles of priests and monks, step further into darkness, pilgrims from the light. The messages contained are for the faithful. We remain in the dark. We do this in all eleven churches, scuttling through passageways and tunnels connecting the churches.

After a full day as troglodytes we respect the skill, vision, and faith that constructed these buildings and the population that fills them.every day of the crowded Ethiopian Orthodox calendar of celebrations. ..but these buildings impress us only. They' do not sing to us.

Day 10 - November 14 - Chanting and some local hooch

Ah, but the next morning!

The Ethiopian Orthodox liturgical calendar leaves little to chance. Every day is crowded with symbolism and event. Today celebrates one of the great saints.

Wandule collects us again for the blessings-rich walk up to the churches. Wrapped in white shawls the crowd moves through the tunnels and gulleys into the churches, faithful moths to the flame of their faith. In a tiny chapel embedded in a shroud of incense-rich haze, deep, deep in the rock we hear that faith sing. It sings in Geez, an ancient language, the Ethiopians call ' the language of Adam'. The fact of the chant itself pleases God. It may reach this god. For me it reaches the stone then falls back, richer, deeper, to soar up again, drum-beat driven, and back again. This is immense human music. It transforms this building of dead rock into a living church.

And we get it.

In the afternoon we leave Lalibela to climb up to a church built in a cave. UP is the operative word here. Everything in Ethiopia soars. At 8000 feet I do not soar. But, up we go. The church is oddly constructed of alternating layers of teak and stone, unusual on the country and this is why we huff and puff up the mountain. Thousands of mummies rest in the cave. A little mummy goes a long way, but I appreciate the fervor that leads people of faith to want to die

In the evening we decide to add a day in Lalibela so we can hike into the mountains. (That does not quite turn out that way for one of us.) Then we go off to The Torpedo Bar where, seated on camels saddles, we drink LARGE flasks of tej, local hooch made from honey.

Fortunately, we get 'medium' strength tej. We sleep very well.

Day 11 - November 15. The body speaks and we meet 'The Sisko Kids'

We decide to add a day in Labella and hike up to a plateau that promises phenomenal views. I should have done the math. We live at barely 10 feet above sea level in a land of quite determined flatness. Lalibela starts at 8500 and goes up from there, all flatness eschewed. About half an hour into this lapse in judgment I cannot ignore the raucous chorus from many parts of my offended body. I sit ( ah, bliss!) and listen.

This is your Right Knee speaking. After all I've done for you day in and day out, through a lifetime of ups and downs, this is the way you treat me! Do you remember nothing about your last escapade of Macho Man Mountain Madness in Uganda? Listen to your Knee. You'll miss me when I'm gone. Go back down like a good boy.

Yo, this is Charlie Horse, spokesman for the overworked Muscle Boys down here in your Left Calf. Usually we tune out all that non stop whining from the bone Head Drama Queen over at the right knee ( doesn't she know she can be replaced with a chunk of metal and a few screws if she doesn't stop the nagging?) we've taken a vote and every one of us muscles votes down, boy, down. And, PS, we cannot be replaced.

Hi, there, we're your Lungs, Lefty and Righty. We're starving and all that huffing and puffing is wearing us out. We vote Down.

Hello up there..it's us, your Feet. We're fine, thanks to these great hiking boots you got us, and we'll get you wherever you wanna go. But we're voting with the Higher Ups, Bone Head, the Muscle Boys, and the Wind Bags. And please do something about these socks. We're dying in here.

So, I bid fond farewell to Dennis and Wundule (looking mighty fine, I might add, in his leather jacket and jeans) and head back down my personal Mount Everest.

Two kids pop out of the rocks and walk with me, pointing out the easier paths.

Down is the right decision.

I have a great day sitting on the rocks overlooking the eternity of Ethiopia's landscape, watching people return from market. I bask a bit, chat in monosyllables with a Hello/Hallo Chorus of kids, doze a bit. Photography is a big hit. I snap and snap and they giggle at their two dimensional digital selves. I stage a slide show of pictures of Florida (the alligator is quite the sensation), Egypt, other parts of Africa. All are upstaged by the gorillas of Uganda.

One kid, clearly bright, occasionally gives me one of those ' I know you're putting me on' looks. Here he is, flashing that standard issue Ethiopian smile.

Best of all, I spend time with Menge. He's an amazing, courteous, safety conscious driver, negotiating the ascents and descents safely and comfortably, his 2003 Toyota firmly in control. Solicitous, helpful, caring, he is a major component of this trip....it could not be the adventure it is without him. And he is fun. His English is a potpourri of nouns and verbs, free form, linguistic anarchy of a high order. His sentences often begin 'Actually.....' then become caught up in linguistic spin the bottle...likely to land anywhere.

We've all added words to the trip's common vocabulary. We like his 'amazing technology'. I can order three Sprites in Amharic ( ' sost Sprites', hardly a major achievemnt). He likes our 'bravo'....which it turns out is also Amharic...clearly borrowed from Italian. He has no idea this is the case. Further linguistic adventures unfold on every menu where spaghetti, macaroni, cappucino, pizza, lasagne, and macchiato, now all Amharic words, appear. I'm not sure he really believes our story that these are Italian words. But he has taken to Italian hand gestures like a natural. I'm starting him with the nice ones. The kiss thrown to heaven by bunched fingers gets him giggling.

So, we pass the time in the sun, on dusty road miles from any town, high up the slope of a steep mountain in almost northern Ethiopia. I've lost nothing by my descent from a trail halfway to a place I will.never see. This is the journey I will remember.

We end this day as we have the previous two: with a meal at our favorite restaurant. 'Unique Restaurant. ..raccomnded by farngi' says the hand scrawled sign above the door. . Dennis and I , the 'farngis' of the moment, have fallen for the lady owner/chef, the exuberant Sisko. The food is delicious (especially the veggie pizzas), the coffee is free..and her delight in her guests irresistible. We ask for the bill and she shrugs 'me, mathematics zero' and let's one of her daughters do the numbers. Then Sisko adds 'me cook good'. Indeed, she does.

After 3 visits we are comfortable taking pictures of her family. Here are pictures of Sisko and 4 of the 5 Sisko Kids. She sure can make kids!

In few places on this planet would such attractive people be common. Only in Ethiopia would they be average.

Later Wundule takes us to visit village family, pioneers in a project to offer visitors contact with farmers and the farmers a chance to earn some income.

They welcome us to their world: a mud and straw round 'tukul', a goat, two dogs, a pair of working oxen yoked to a wooden plow, rocky soil that has been farmed for centuries, water carried up a steep slope, the only light that from the sun, a full moon, a cooking fire, and a gas lantern, the latter bought with money earned through the program.

We sit in the tukul and chat through Wundule. The wife brings us a platter of the spongy injera basic to all meals and a bowl of very good spicy potato and carrot stew. She has ground the grains for the injera into flour by hand on a stone, mixed it with water, and let it ferment for 3 days. Poured onto a thick clay pan, crepe-like, and covered briefly it puffs up into a tangy bread in a few minutes. The pouring and timing are crucial....otherwise you get the soggy mess of my attempt at subsistence chefdom.

Their slender 25 year old son shyly shows us how he works the soil with the oxen and wooden plow.

His 5 year old sister giggles and flashes immense eyes, curious and unafraid. Next year she will begin school...and the two hour walk each way to the schoolhouse. Older neighbor kids will look after her, her mother says.

The mother mixes hand roasted and hand ground coffee beans with boiling water in a pottery jug and pours the dark liquid into tiny white cups. We sip. Conversation isn't necessary. We sip. The family can now have coffee twice a day, she says. Then she smiles.

Days 12 and 13- November 16-and 17 Lalibela to Gondar: churches to castles

Snake road', says Mengi, adding 'medium' and underscoring that rating with one of his new acquisitions, the waist high, palm down, fingers extended, full hand wobble, 'Italian' for ' mezza mezza'. In this context it means: fasten your seat belts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride'. Indeed. Our day long 'African massage' jostles our fillings and rearranges a few vertebrae. The scenery is magnificent as we ride the snake road up, down, across the highlands. This is definitely 'the road less travelled' at least by motor. Occasionally we come across a truck. We see few of the Toyota Land Rovers that always and indisputably mean tourists. The Toyota Tourists are of the European or rare Asian ( we into sub-species: Silver-Headed, Sensibly-Shoed, Frequently-Neck-Scarred Tourist Bird.

Once or twice a long distance bus bounces by. By far the cheapest way to get your dentures adjusted, these Metal Massage Machines ply the roads with enthusiasm if a disconcerting lack of attention to the time. Departure is by capacity not the clock. The '6:30 bus' leaves when it's full. That could be noon. (Note: noon by Ethiopian time is 06:00 maybe it really is on time ? Time, like the calendar, is tricky here. ) Packed so tightly, anchored anchovies, passengers can't move get only the milder version of 'African Massage'. No thanks, claustrophobia hits me in the window seat on airplanes. I'll take the bumps. These buses are often the migration vehicles of the other subspecies of the farangi tourist: Fluffy-Headed, Flip-Flopped, Tee-Shirted Tourist Bird. They tend to have fewer dentures or dollars to shake loose.

This is only Butt-Bumping Back of Beyond to us privileged birds on the migratory bump-through. To the people we pass on the road it is the easy and familiar path from home to farm or school or market. They walk along the road, rarely alone, almost always in mixed herds, of sheep, goats, burros, and oxen. A wave from us will always get a wave and smile in return through the dust we churn up as we pass. They remember less of us---canned as we are in our Toyotas-- than we do of them.

Menge calls ahead to Gondar and we book at Fogera Hotel for $15 a night, subject to inspection (which he always insists open). Like most Ethiopian hotels that have been open a few years, Fogera looks a bit weary, but unlike many of its sisters it has considerable shabby charm. Our room is one half of a traditionally shaped round 'tukul', set amidst trees in a hillside garden. We plan to chill out on the veranda (but never get around to it. )

'Staff' is 18 year old Warko ('it means gold', he tells us.) and 19 year old Hudgu. Sweet and a bit goofy, pants dangerously low slung , they look like the sweet and a bit goofy next door neighbor kids from a US sitcom, brilliant touches from central casting. We fall into instant mutual, like sealed with photos from our travel printer, produced in 2 minutes , right there, on the spot. They want one with us, and one of them in front of the hotel sign, and single shots of each. The printers amaze them. They ask us to blue tooth the pictures from our cell phones to theirs. That amazes us. Friendship is sealed by matching amazements, signed and delivered by one more photo.

The next day is 'Charlie's Day'. Another of Menge's guide buddies, Charlie (Chalichew Bentiwalew) greets us in perfect, almost idiomatic English. His response to our amazement is that ' I am an 'auto didactic, you know from the Greek for self-taught'. I'm impressed and continue to be all day. As he leads through time and space in the immense castle and fort complex that is the heart of Gondar, his narrative links to Western and world literature, art, history, personages. He talks of the first king to reside in Gondar as 'A man ahead of his time, a friend to animals, like St. Francis'. And of another, the inevitable wastrel grandson as 'a Louis the 14th'. He greets another tourist in Japanese, then repeats the trick in Spanish and German. Charlie is 19.

One castle a day is our limit, even if they're rather small ones and are bargain bundled. We do the whole six-pack and love it. Bravo, Charlie, but it really is time for a cappuccino... and a major sit-down, bark the Muscle Boys from the left calf. Our first choice cafe is a washout: the coffee machine is broken. In coffee crazed Ethiopia, homeland of the magic bean, that could be a capital offense. Mass defections ensue....to another cafe owned by the same man. Should we have known better? We walk in. The power goes out. No power in the cafe. Down the street. Across the piazza. This has no effect on the conversation in the cafe. No defections. They HAVE their cappuccino. The sound of satisfied slurping proves it. Menge stays put. A few minutes later the lights come back on. No one notices. Slurping continues. 'Arat cappuccino' I say. Four of the divine libations arrive, frothy and perfect. We join the slurpers, grow milky mustaches. And thank whoever it was who forgot to tell Ethiopians that you never drink cappuccino after 11am.

The cafe fills, mostly with groups of men or groups of women, all Twenty-Somethings. A few couples moon and spoon, immense Ethiopian eyes messaging in faces from mocha to obsidian, no texting needed.

Ethiopia, even in the provinces, is a lot more casual about the essential man woman thing than the Islamic countries we've been to. Our guidebooks suggest that casual hook-ups are common, inside and outside of marriage.

The number of AIDS cases is 2 percent of the 90 million population....a huge number and transmitted heterosexually. No one would admit getting it any other way: the government is considering legislation to make same-sex relationships a capital offense. Ah, Christianity!

I finally agree to get some meds for my thoroughly annoying cough (enough already with these messages from the body!.) The pharmacist at St. Mary's Clinic asks the usual questions (wet? dry? pain? drip? fever?) I pass the quiz, pocket the prize( huge anti-biotic pills from Cyprus and red cough syrup from Ethiopia), agree to his terms: one pill, one swill, three times a day. His prize is $16.
Bed feels very, very good.

Day 14 - November 18 - Simien Mountains

Ethiopia has more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than any other country in Africa. One of them is the Simien Mountains, chosen because of their bio-diversity, the populations of extremely rare Ethiopian wolf and magnificently horned Ibex, and scenic beauty.

We pick up our permits, Yelo, our teen-age optional guide, and Gasho, our required security-guard-with-gun. A very long drive into the folded and pinnacled landscape takes us into high mountain country. From slopes so steep they seem vertical tiny cultivated fields hang, green and yellow pennants of optimism. This is tough country to farm.

Baboons babble about us as we pass.

We cross the tree line and climb into ice country and grey skies. In an animated discussion in Amharic (then relayed to us) the guys disciss the liklihood of rain/ice and the effect on the potholed and rocky dirt road. Mengi follows his gut and drives waaay higher ' for surprise', gambling that it won't rain and maroon us in the mud. As usual, he is right. Somewhere up around 12,000 feet we see scimitar horns arching over the icy rocks. These are 2 of the exceedingly rare Ethiopian Ibex. Perhaps they do not see us. We get about a minute to experience their wildness. ‘For surprise.’

Smiles and back pats to Mengi double as he manages to turn the car around and head down to warmth. Mud and rocks make it a slow trip, but perfectly timed for the side-lit and fiery landscape at sunset. One burnished view across and down an immensity of space and time simmers in beauty so intense we just stare...and laugh. Right- hand fingertips clustered Mengi, flings them from his lips upwards in his newly learned Italianated gesture of approval and appreciation. 'Bravo', he says.

Holding onto this day we invite Mengi, Yelo and Gas to join us for a meal. Gasho's rifle makes us a six-some. Mengi suggests our hotel. Beer comes first. As always, Mengi, responsible driver, takes a Sprite. This is our only 'tourist hotel' experience so far. There are small flocks of European Tourist Birds, fashionably plumed, and one of the Japanese variety, clustered and I-Padded.

Gosho and Gun thank us and leave us to our strangeness. Teen-aged Yelo is up for the newness. Dinner is a buffet of pungent Ethiopian tastes and mild Europeanized ones. Injera, the Ethiopian spongy bread made from fermented batter is remote cousin to sourdough bread, all crispness removed, soft and flexible and well designed for sopping up food and flavors in the right -handed, five-fingered.Ethiopian eating style. I just get messy. Finger licking is out. I am tired and my stomach has not yet gotten the hang of the anti-malarial medicine. While it rumbles rebellious possibilities, I opt for pseudo-Western and fork.

In our room we get email for the first time in a few days. My cousin Gracie, childhood playmate, mud-patty buddy, brazen, bold, raucous, funny raconteur, friend and anchor to our shared 70 years of memories, has died.

I am so glad Dennis is here. My life would be reduced to a dark pinpoint without him.

Day 17 - November 21 - Mekele: Towards Hades

This is a day of blitzkrieg driving across the top of Ethiopia, through the church and monastery landscape of the Tigray region. Beause we added a day in Lalibela (of the aborted hike) we rush to catch up with our expedition to the Danakil Depression. It leaves tomorrow.

Tigray is reddish sandstone, like the baked landscape of the US Southwest. The famous Tigray rock-hewn churches are wrested out of basalt and granite outcroppings, troglodytic, seeming to hide from the world. We pass on one requiring a 45 foot self-haul up a a sheer rock face via braided rope. My faith in the Knee and the Muscle Boys and in my theological status is not sufficient to chance hanging off a mountain just to see yet another church. We do stop at just one, a short hike from the road, no strings attached. I expect trolls or Hobbits from such an earth linked tiny space. I get a rapturously smiling priest who hands us prayer sticks and music.

Orthdox rituals last hours; no sitting allowed. Prayer sticks are 5 foot tall with a flat crook at the top. Arm crossed over the crook, chin on arm, eyes closed 'in rapturous devotion' to God or Morpheus, the faithful endure. The chanting is hypnotic and familiar. All the songs were written in the 6th century. There are no surprises. Does stone have memory? 800 years of repetition surely must-have left some imprint.

One our way out an elfin child of exquisitely delicate features takes Dennis' hand and walks with him a short way. He turns frequently to see if Menge and I are following. He smiles and waves as we all leave.

We also stop at Yeha. There has been a religious structure here for at least 2500 years. The guide is a rip off and badgers us for a tip on top of the guide charge. We ignore him. Guides so far have been superb teachers and companions. We do not encourage this scammer. 'Hard people here', says Menge

Tigray seems more prosperous than the south. Purple and orange is a popular pairing in house colors. Some houses are bright sky blue, especially vivid in the reddish landscape. More people wear.the chartreuse or pink 'crocs' I've been admiring for days. They are footed jewels in the dusty roads. There are more bicycles, though not many. They share the road with the unusual moving barnyard, now punctuated with the 7 foot high head and humps of camels.
It's a saint's day, as most are. A jolly priest waves us down and offers us injera. and a bessing. We take both. We are, after all, headed for Hades.

The road leaves straightness in the dust and begins the switch-backed descent to eastern Ethiopia. 'Snake road', says Menge, and it is. We drop. Two days ago we were in the ice above the trees at 12,000 plus feet. Now we are.dropping, snaking, dropping, down off the highlands. Our goal in two days is the Danakil Depression, at 200 feet below sea level, Africa's basement ' the lowest spot on the continent and the hottest place on Earth.

Mekele is a thriving city, pretty, the Yohannes Hotel a roomy bargain at $15. Some of the ATMS even work. We hit pay dirt on our third try. Some well dressed teenagers stumble by, clearly stoned, perhaps on marijuana, but more likely on chat, the euphoria leaf of choice on the Horn of Africa. Dinner is spaghetti for us, and fasting food for Menge--veggies, no meat. Hoping for cappuccino, his favorite, we settle for macchiato. The cappuccino machine is broken.

Day 18 - November 22 - Salt and the Million Star Hotel

We're Number 3, says Menge, holding up an 8x10 sheet with that number printed on it. He sticks it on the back window of the 4x4., our order in the expedition caravan sorted out: two in front of us 4 or 5 behind. Menge and the other drivers load equipment: sleeping pads, food, extra gas or diesel, spare tires, water...lots of water, in plastic bottles, many, many per person. Across the back of each roof rack is a shovel. The route is only partially asphalt. The rest is sand and jumbles of lava rock, road in name only. We might have to dig out.

And, most importantly, our cook, the articulate food magician, Danil.

Big, big smile announces a Menge 'surprise': sky blue tee shirts embroidered with the multi-colored announcement that 'I've Done Danakil'. 'Wear, wear' he chuckles and we strip, and primp in our new gear. The others won't get their shirts until after the trip. Menge always has a way.

The other vehicles fill up, four passengers each, a tight fit. Number Three has just us. We follow Number Two out of the city and begin the descent into Danakil.

At a photo op, apertures and overrtures connect us with the 4 in Number Two: bubbly 20-ish Dutch Girls 1, 2, and 3 (no surprise there; there are always Dutch girls traveling in Africa.) and 30-ish tall, handsome Indian Guy ( big surprise there; I've never found an Indian roughing it before.) We become '2 plus 3' immediately and, with the later addition of 60-ish Austrian Doctor and 50-ish German Guy, easy laughers all, have buddies for the trip.

A twenty-something Israeli-American is on track for a career change and is being seduced by anthropology. We spend time together off and on. The 3 deadly serious young Israelis from her 4x4. blend with the dust.

We descend further into the Rift Valley .The cataclysmic volcanic activity that is ripping Africa apart here punches cones into the dusty sky and blackens the landscape. We stop at Barahale, a collection of lava rock and stick shelters baking in the sun. It's market day. The few hundred permanent prisoners of the heat are joined by pastoralists.and their herds of camels. Men here wear beautiful green batik sarongs. Made in Indonesia say the labels. Six hundred

Birr ($30) says the smiling extortionist. Not on your life smiles the affable farang . The sarongs are not cotton but some synthetic reformulation of dead dinosaurs, tubes of steamy heat.

Lunch call saves me from further excursions into the heat of the market. We all ooze into the one shady spot, find a seat. Danil delivers a tasty lunch of rice with a veggie stew overlay. There are cold drinks, the last we will have for 3 days. From here on we're promised room temperature water....straight from Satan's sauna. One hundred degree water may be a solution for the body's need for liquid but it does not satisfy the tongue's craving. I spend the next three days in unslaked liquid-lust.

Hours later the land flattens out and bleaches an off white. We have reached the edge of the great salt flats and the one structure 'village' of Ahmed Ela. Cardboard, reed and tin sheet create walls and roof. One side is open to the air and the goats. It is our hotel for the night.

But before bedding down we head out into the flats and onto the salt lakes, inches deep. They fool us. Water plus salt. ..sure ingredients for softness on bare feet. Wrong! Sharply, cuttingly, hoppingly, yelpingly, laughingly wrong. Then, silence. Across the flats comes our first caravan of salt camels. Then another and another. Long strings of camels looped tail to head, led by a solitary walker, headed for salt markets days away. They come closer, loom over us, pass, are snapped, clicked, memorialized, an adventure within this adventure. They ignore us.

The sun sinks. Our shadows lengthen, stretched long across the ripples of the lake. Indian Guy has a magic DickTracy/Google/Sci-fi watch with displays for altitude and temperature. We are slightly below sea level on the first and just under 100 degrees on the second. On both we have dropped a long way since noon.

We return to the cardboard and the goats, who wait, curious, to taste any throw aways from Danil's supper. He's batting a thousand but we're all still dust-mouthed and tongue-dry. We claim our string cots, add mattress pads and sleeping bags, stretch out. Below us is two kilometers of ancient salt, above us, stars in the millions, billions, trillions, constellations askew, shooting stars and silence. The goats settle down around the cots. Some belch.

I think camels instead of count sheep.. A camel in repose all at ground level resembles a collapsed bag pipe. With a face. The camel face is a bitbif a mish-mash. The upper half has the haughty arrogance of a yellow-haired waiter in a mediocre Parisian bistro with pretensions. The half, jaw sliding back and forth, suits a gum-chewing wise cracking New York pizza waitress ( ya want crispy, get a cracker). The lips are those of an over age starlet recently released from the Joan Rivers School of Facial Art. Below that is the drool. But the eyelashes are magnificent, over the top . You could ski down them. Fleas probably do.

Then the bloated bag pipe stands up, immense back end grunts up seven feet. The front end groans and spits. and follows. The bag's pipes hang down, awkward, skinny, knobby-kneed, pie plate hoofed,. I admire the long, curved neck as elegant. All in all I adore camels, ugly, ungainly, mismatched parts.

Then, the camel moves. Camels don't walk so much as ripple forward in one of the animal world's most beautiful locomotions. Perhaps only giraffes on land and seals in the sea come close. The camel ripples forward at a steady pace and will do so for hours, days, weeks, rhythmically on those long metronome legs. Linked tail to nose half a length of space between them long caravans seem one organism, heads and humps and motion merging into an mmense Sand Serpent rippling across the horizon.

Stay tuned for reality.

Day 19 November 23 Hades and Castro Convertible, Cement Version

I sleep very well, wake before sunrise and watch the stars fade as the sky pinks. It's cool and intensely quiet except for the snuffle of goats. They are long up and have cleaned away last night's orange peels. These omnivorous Hoovers of the hooved world know more goodies are afoot. Eggs well scrambled, toast and Nescafe make a satisfactory camp breakfast, and get us on the road early. The goats scramble as we break camp.

Today we go to the hottest place on planet Earth. Hours of flatness follow. The sun rises higher. We cook. We see nothing living, not a bird, not a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass, no soil. We've left the realm of biology, of suppleness and succor. Aliens, we descend into the world of harsh sharp-edged geology: just salt and heat. We cast no shadows.

There is more to come.

At Dallol. we are at Africa's nadir, can go no further towards the center of the earth. The realm of sharp geology gives way to the realm of liquid chemistry. Lurid pools of sulfuric acid bubble, inimical to life, of a flesh-dissolving hostility, yet beautiful. This is an inorganic soup perhaps like Mother Earth's first attempts, billions of years ago, to create order out of her elements, gifts of the stars. We walk a few hundred million years further. Mother's cooking has improved. Inorganic gives way to organic. Methane gas , carrying carbon atoms basic to all life, bubbles through a potassium soup, Mother Earth on a right track, witb billions of years yet to go. There is nothing here of this Earth as we now know it.

American, Dutch, Indian, Israeli, German, Austrian, Japanese pose for their pictures from another planet or another time, space and time travelers. I bring a other proof of this travel to the realm ofchemistry: my copper bracelets have changed color.

Aliens, we humans cannot live here and none do. But some work a few kilometers from here, away from the toxic pools but in heat that sears the eyes, no shade for miles. These are: the Afar salt miners, humans living at the very limits of endurance. extremophiles.
They sit for hours chopping blocks of hard salt into the standard currency of Hell. They earn 1.5 cents a block and can make about 100 a day.That's $1.50. Some earn up to $3.00 a day. Food is cheap, families large.. No one thrives.

Packed by the hundreds of pounds onto camels. the salt is caravaned out of Dana kill and Transshipped all over the country. At each step the current middle man takes his share and ups the price. The Afar salt miner sits in 100 degree shade less heat and earns his 1.5cents. Salt caravans no longer seem romantic to me.
Hot, thirsty, sobered we drive back to Bee Ale for another Danil. Lunch. Coolish. Soft drinks cost 20 Birr, fifty centa. Thirty three or so salt blocks ought to just about do it. We huddle in the tiny bit of shade.

This afternoon, outside the town where we spend the night, there is a treat: a cool waterfall. Ambling through the dust we drop behind our group. We're adopted by a gaggle of kids. Mohamed (we're well into Moslem territory here) takes charge, shows us where to cross a stream, picks some wild peas and shows us how to pop them out of their pods . They are tiny, crunchy and very sweet. 'Good?' he asks through a radiant smile. 'Good', we reply. The smile grow broader, connects his Obama ears.

The group has climbed the rock wall to the upper waterfall. Lower is fine for us: no rock climbing. Knee and Calf thank.me. I have no idea what the dress code is for public bathing on Sunday in a waterfall in predominantly Moslem rural eastern Ethiopia. Something

significantly this side of bare-assed would be my best guess.

There are three young guys doing their universal young guy thing----washing a car---in the pool that runs off the falls. They've stripped to shorts, a clue. We opt for conservative, strip only our feet and plunge in fully clothed. This entertains rather than offends.

Pounded by the deliciously cool fall of water, our clothes are so embedded with dust they release a miasma of brown sludge, enough to fertilize a small field downstream. The car washers don't seem to mind but one does offer soap. I detect a small grin.

Meanwhile we get another lesson in the dress code. A guy strips to his jockeys---I swear they say Calvin Klein. Slender, muscled, finely defined, natural, he is unselfconsciously beautiful. Not even in my mini-Speedoed and moderately hunky prime did I ever look THAT good. Chalk up another major win for the human gene pool.

He slams his clothes on the water-smoothed rocks.Taking our cue we strip to non-Calvins and slam away, releasing yet more delta forming effluvium. Tightly wrung, they go on easily.

We wave goodbye to the Car Guys and the Obsidian Godling, now totally starkers, and join our descended group for the walk back to the guesthouse. Mohamed is ready with more peas, hand and smile at the ready.

We all opt to lay our mattresses down across the cement courtyard cheek to jowl and in the cool air. Water falled and de-dusted damp clothes hang everywhere. They dry by morning.

Dinner is another camp fire veggie marvel. Yonas, driver- factotum, takes orders and does a drink run. We soak our tongues in cool liquids, satisfied at least for now.

Tomorrow will be the toughest day: the three hour ascent--- in the dark--- of a volcano to the roiling lava lake of Erte. Ale. Dennis will walk. I have ordered a camel. Stay tuned.

Days 20 and 21 - November 24 and 25 - Erta Ale : Up and down a volcano on Ethel the Indignant, Bitch Camel from Hell

Up early off our Cement Castros, well breakfasted on another Danil Special, we say goodbye to Mohamed and the throng, load up and head for Hell.

It's a six hour drive then a three hour climb. The first three hours are speedy asphalted kilometers. The asphalt ends...and so does the road. For three more hours the Toyotas heave and lurch across 20 kilometers (12 miles) of lava field.

It's late afternoon when we reach base camp, a couple of lava rock shelters, black, throwing captured heat back at us. It's stifling. The Israeli kids are bright red. Even the camels wilt into brown heaps on the sand. Yanked up by cords tied to their jaws, they roar and bawl and protest. The strings win for the time being. but grudges have taken shape. The crew loads sleeping mattresses and water onto the camels and runs us through the rules: two big bottles of water each for the trip up, and individual headlights with good batteries. Dutch Girl Number Three, weakened by dysentery, also opts for a camel. Our names are called. Our camels are ready.

Steed unseen, I have named mine Ethel. Ethel turns out to be an immense pile of mattresses with a face and four spindly legs. And she is not pleased. She doesn't like the mattresses, she doesn't like the crowd and she definitely does not do evening work. She bucks, she roars, she swings her legs, bares her teeth, slobbers, and refuses to drop to her knees.

My first camel is clearly a maniac.

Mouth-dragged into submission she folds down into a five foot heap of mattresses. It takes two people to get my legs over the pile of mattresses, so wide it splays my legs into immediate paralysis. The rest of me follows. Joints scream. Ethel's hind end suddenly launches skyward. I launch forwards and earthwards. I'm saved by the wooden saddle handles and the indignation-propelled elevation of Ethel's. front end. I am now seven feet above the ground, semi-paralyzed, on top of a crazed camel.

Only 3 more hours to go.

Ethel starts up the volcano. That graceful ripple I have so admired from the ground is an illusion when experienced topside. Ethel is a torture machine. I lurch, teeter, sway, bounce, jiggle, and jerk, up, down, left, right, back, front, side, hip joints screaming 'uncle' for three excruciating hours. In the dark.

When we reach the place we'll sleep (after climbing to view the lava lake), the walkers are only a few minutes behind us camel riding masochists. My descent from Ethel will go undescribed.

On the ground, knees now permanently two feet apart, my legs rebel. I contemplate a lifetime of shuffling around, a camel casualty. Ethel chews her cud.

A few minutes of walking re-arranges my offended joints. Dennis appears out of the dark and out of water. He's walked for three hours uphill. I'm impressed.

Above us the sky is red, reflection from the lava wiping out the stars. We walk 20 more minutes, first climbing down the steep wall of the primary caldera, then across a lava field and finally up to the rim of the crater itself.

And stop. Dead.

Stunned by the heat, stunned by the boiling mass of melted rock. Melted ROCK! The very stuff of our planet rendered liquid, flowing, rolling, leaping. This is where Gaia, Mother Earth gives birth to more of herself. We've gone beneath biology, geology, chemistry and are in the world of incandescent, superheated creative, reproductive energy. Our trip becomes gynecology.

The lake explodes upwards into a fountain of molten rock 20 or 30 feet high. Gleaming droplets shower down into the black surface where the lava has cooled, but is not solid. A wave passes over the surface and sucks the black down into the red, recycled.

This is the only permanent lava lake on our planet. It has been recycling itself at least since the first European reported it 130 years ago. Nothing in the Ring of Fire that wraps around the Pacific or in Hawai'i comes close.

By the time we climb back up to camp, Ibrahim, Yonas, and Solomon have laid out the mattresses. The night is short, the world still pitch when we wake. Again, we chase the red to the crater rim, then watch the sun rise over Hell.

My private 4 footed hell awaits.

So does breakfast after a three hour trek by foot or camel back down the volcano. There are 3 of us aboard the torture machines. Dutch Girl Number One has a mild ankle twist and opts for camel.

We start down the volcano. Doing it a la camel is much worse in daytime than it was at night. My muscles know what to expect now cringe, rebel, and are screaming protest. Ethel, clearly not a night camel, demonstrates that she does not do mornings either.

The trip seems cursed. Twice the saddle comes loose, pitching me forward...and more to the point...downward and almost over her head. On the way I muse that my last image will be of tiny fuzzy camel ears (cute, really) whizzing by. I am saved from camelid catastrophe by the quick arms of Menge and Soli. (I wonder if my obituary would have gotten it wrong and offered that I was humped to death.)

Several foot-stomping, jaw snapping, drool spraying hissy fits (one of them with me in situ, not a pretty experience) into the descent, the Knee, Muscle Guys in the calf, the Hip Muscles, the Butt Bone work out a useful compromise: I'll ride a while, and walk a while.

I abandon the maniacal beast to her demons. She seems quite smug trotting behind me for the last few flattish miles.

Breakfast inhaled, Menge, Dennis and I, say our goodbyes to the group. We're continuing southward overland. The others will drive back to Mekele, catch the afternoon flight and be in Addis for cocktail time. Wimps.

Retracing that 3 hour, bone breaking, ass punishing, lava rock roller coaster after six hours of hiking, and very little sleep, even upbeat Menge seems to fade a bit. Three more hours of asphalt road and he's ready for some serious coffee...'for refresh'. He drives on; we doze.

By nightfall we're near an ugly town with a famously over priced hotel. 'Expensive', he says and drives on to the next town. There's a big soccer match on. The hotel is full. We drive back to the expensive hotel. They have room. Two, please. Menge usually finds his room in a 'local' hotel. Not tonight. He will stay here. Protests ensue, but we prevail. He gives in with a massive grin: ' tonight I big sleep, but first wash'.

Day 22 - November 26 - Awash. National Park is not just for the birds.

Big Sleep happens. By 8, Menge is ready to go. There's a minor glitch over the bill, extortionate to start with, our first experience of 'fool, fiddle and fleece the farangi' in this quite honest country. I can deal with prices that start out inflated for foreigners. Post facto 'readjustments' are just messy and leave a bad impression. We shrug, work out a compromise, smile and make believe we are all happy. (We are still under budget. Most of our hotels have been under $20 and comfortable.)

In Semera the Erte. Ale Motel is the only game in town. ..at least for travelers who want non- squat and non-odiferous toilets, water at least luke warm, or any water at all, some version of electricity, and a roof. My Trip Advisor review will suggest skipping Semera altogether. There's nothing here not available in other more interesting or attractive towns.

I doze as we pass endless lave fields. I wake up in the savannah, 'big flat', say Menge. Yellow grass and acacia trees, sibilant in the breeze, have replaced harsh, silent lava. There are ostriches. In the far distance a solitary volcanic peak rises from the grass in a gentle curve thousands of feet towards the clouds, then slips down again on the other side disappearing into the savannah. It is alone above the big flat so high above us we can't tell if those are clouds or smoke at the summit.

The asphalt roads are empty through this serene landscape. There must be villages nearby. Someone must sell or buy the piles of firewood and bags of charcoal plopped along the road. A town appears, snaking along the road. It's all collage houses of straw, tin, saplings, mud, tarps, plastic sheets, fabric food bags, cardboard, plastered and painted. This is a major truck route catering to trucker appetites. Shops sell fuel, food, coffee, and sex. Orange jerry cans are everywhere. So is AIDS. In Africa a hetersexual diaease, it spreads along the truck routes, seeps back home with the truckers.

A story above the shacks is the minaret of a small mosque, the first sign we have seen of eastern Ethiopia's large Moslem population. It's painted bright blue, a color sacred to Muhammed, beautiful anywhere, startling in drab Collage Town.

The sky greys and sprinkles, cooling the air and washing it clean of dust. We pass through the oddly named small towns of Awash 40 and Awash 7 and drive on.

Along the road, troops of baboons spill through the grass in furry masses of kindergarten-in-recess hyperactivity.

Other wild animals? Herds of large savannah animals have long disappeared from Ethiopia, replaced by the 99 million cows (an actual and published figure), countless goats, sheep, and donkeys. In the far south there are some elephants. The great cats are exceedingly rare, their place at the top of the food chain ceded to the hyenas. Hippos thrive, however, safe in the many lakes and rivers, no competition for the hooved domesticates. In the air, birds reign. Ethiopia is world-famously rich in bird life. The hundreds of endemic species share space with the wanderers, interlopers, migrants on way to favored territories and accidentals, blown in by wind or perhaps avian curiosity. Birds are pretty close up. Birding seems to involve eyestrain over tiny specks in the sky or convincing oneself that the fluttering branch means I have just spotted an avian celebrity. Give me a good elephant any day.

The landscape greens and folds and spreads into endless vistas once again. Awash National Park sits in this green, child of the Awash River, Ethiopia's second longest, its gorge and waterfalls. 'Close' to Addis 200 kilometers away, it's far from any convenient lodging. We stay in the Lodge of the park. Rocky and flowered oaths connect small lava rock, bamboo, wood, and reed huts to a restaurant overlooking the gorge. We find ours and join Menge for liquids around a campfire. We choose deliciously cold Ethiopian beer, St. George galloping around the label on his steed. A group of travelers (Portuguese? Greek?) on our left sort out who ordered what and in what condition. We sip and settle into our favorite daily ritual: printing out pictures for Menge. Our 'amazing technology' at the ready, we go through the day's two dimensional hostages, looking for Menge in action. Via cable (from the cameras) or Bluetooth (from the phones) we cajole the images from disk to paper. Menge at the lava lake is today's hit.

To our right a woman in white robes trimmed in red prepares the 'coffee ceremony'. She's beautiful. With tiny tongs she places small chunks of frankincense (remember that from the Three Magi at Bethlehem?) to smolder on a tiny charcoal brazier. She roasts coffee beans to mahogany in a thick metal pan over another charcoal brazier. The night air cools and thickens, perfumed. She comes close with the pan of hot fragrant Ethiopian arabica beans, the best in the world, white robes brushing the air, skin the color of the coffee. We're too tired to swoon.

Day 23- November 27 - Awash National Park is not for the birds

Birders flock to Ethiopia, and especially Awash, checklists and binoculars at the ready. The British species is called ' twitchers'. I don't know why. They seem to tweet, coo, ooh, and ahh more than twitch. Our sighting is a flock of a dozen or so feeding at Awash Lodge. Next-tabled to us on the veranda and over hearing if not exactly overlooking the beautiful Awash Falls they are in full view for a half hour or so. All mature, khaki-shirted and sensibly shoed, and in migration plumage, binocs bouncing on significant bosoms or narrow chests, they compare notes of tail feathers possibly spotted or a call partially heard. Guidebooks are consulted and lists are checked. Barbara comes late for her porridge, confused about the time and quite put out. Clive calls a meeting. Some prefer to continue hovering over orange juice or pecking at corn flakes. Dorcas, along for the ride, not the birds, and perhaps more, is in full mating plumage. The almost dishy (within the British scheme of things) and tanned Evans seems to prefer his birds feathered and not coiffed, or perhaps of another color or variety. I suspect the latter.

We leave the twitchers to their lists and head off with the mandatory rifle guy cum. guide. He knows his stuff. We see a lone Oryx, splendidly taupe, black and white and carrying massive horns. Tiny dik-diks, at a comfortable armful the smallest of all antelopes, stare at us in matched pairs. They mate for life and remain solitary if widowed. Occasionally a widow or widower will be adopted by an intact pair and the three manage a trois.

Warthogs, bigger than I remember, do their funny Bette Midler walk through the bush in family clusters. Female Kudos are hornless and striped but graceful like most members of the antelope family. We never see the male. A herd of camels clutters the road. A newborn, still dark and damp from birth fluids, wobbles on just unfolded legs. It's five feet tall.

We walk to a hot spring, guided through a quicksand strewn heath by a quite handsome Afar man. It's a beautiful place, hidden in a grove of palm trees, the water clear as air. I guess the bottom to be whitish limestone and not mud because the water is the most startling color of clear blue-green.

A woman and three small kids lounge in the grassy shade. Husband and father, purplish black, slender, and sculpted, splashes nude in the clear water, washing himself and a sarong. Lazy palm trees lean out over the water, their trunks bent into hammock curves and inviting. We accept the invitation.

The family watches us obliquely until we start taking pictures of each of us, laughing and lounging across the curving palm trunks against the clear tourmaline water. Menge sees the signs of interest. His open face and gentle invitation in their language are accepted for what they are: genuine. Mama and kiddies are soon sitting in our photos, serious. This is a major event. Sculpted Daddy smiles, points to his well worn sarong, shakes his head, demurs. They do not expect the prints. The kids almost smile , but our photos miss that. In our photos we see suspicion, not pleasure. I wonder what they see. And what story they will tell. And to whom.

Sucky quicksand successfully hop scotched, we load up and bounce back to the lodge along the same road. Baby camel has wobbled off, herded by mama to join his kind.

Though we usually don't eat mid day, the view--and sound-- of the falls from the thatched coolness of the lodge restaurant suggests otherwise. There are burgers on the menu. I remember Menge telling us he likes burgers. Burgers all around? Yes, indeed, says that megawatt smile. It's burgers, all around, our first anywhere in Africa. We all also order 'cheeps'. In for a penny......

Huge burgers arrive sharing their plate with a fistful of 'cheeps'...and then our orders of 'cheeps' arrive: three huge dinner plates heaped with more hot fries hand cut from a whole fieldful of real potatoes.

The burgers are delicious, more like a combo meat and veggie burger than a "hamburger'. They taste like the chopped onion filled burgers my mother used to make. The ketchup is spicier and richer....and much tastier....than the US domestic variety. The 'cheeps' on the burger platter fill and inflate us. Embarrassed by the bushels of 'cheeps' piled uneaten on our table, we offer a plate to an Evans-less Dorcas at the next table, but she has made the same mistake and has her own mountain of starch to conquer. The waiter stops by and asks if anything is wrong with the 'cheeps'. We explain that we misunderstood the menu and did not realize that a lifetime supply came with the burgers, too. No problem, we'll share them in the kitchen. Aha, thinks I, is there method in this menu opaqueness? Have we been taken in by a 'cheep' trick? No matter.

Mid-day, most animals rest out of the sun and sight. As do we. Much later we walk in the shade along the river , its water brown with runoff from yesterday's in seasonal rains, and spot some crocodiles.

Beautiful black and white colobus monkeys watch us. The air is cool. We weave through falling petal showers of innumerable butterflies. We spot a bird or two, hear and forget its song and name so have nothing to report to the twitchers.

Skipping dinner after the 'cheep' gorgy at mid-day, we settle for cold drinks at sunset and into the dark. Tomorrow we have a long (but asphalted) drive back east to the ancient walled city of Harar. 7 o'clock leave? Can do. If we place our breakfast order tonight. I go for porridge. The sound of the falls follows us back through the trees to our hut and accompanies us for the few minutes it takes before we sleep.

Day 24-November 28 - Roadside Diva of Bunna

There has been a city at Harar for millenia. An ancient walled city is now the core of a modern town and is one of the highlights of Ethiopia. Fourth holiest city of Islam, it has such a reputation for inter-tribal and inter-religious tolerance that it received a special Nobel Peace Prize a few years ago. It has the highest concentration of mosques of any city on earth. It's also famous for its beer and the brewery that makes it, has the best euphoria-delivering chat, an active bar scene, and a friendly easy-going population. When I ask Menge about the apparent conflict between a strong Moslem identity and Harar Beer, he laughs his wonderful laugh, shrugs and says: 'No problem. Drink.' He re-affirms that the Harari are funny and friendly, especially in the afternoon and evening when chat-euphoria sinks in. 'In afternoon', he giggles, 'all people say good morning, good evening, everybody happy'. I look forward to the beer.

In Harar we will also hand feed wild hyenas.

The road eastward from Awash Is long, varied, and sometimes shared with unusually great herds of goats. Ethiopia's goats trot about in the most amazingly varied coats. Blacks, browns, greys, whites, rarely in isolation, usually all jumbled, these colors erupt in spots, blotches, zigzags, saddles. I look for polka dot, checkerboard, or zebra, sure they are hiding somewhere in the gene pool. We'll retrace this road in reverse in a few days, maybe then.

As all over the country, the rural men carry walking sticks across their shoulders , but in this region subtlely colored sarongs swirl in currents around their legs, softening their outline against the landscape.. They are human calligraphy still, but now with the sensual rhythm and flow of Arabic script.

Lovely, but they disappear in the glory of the women.

Shawls, scarves, skirts, and full body Moslem robes billow in saffron, paprika, curry, tomato, lemon, carrot, paprika, all the grapes and berries, eggplant, beet, avocado, olive, licorice, mango, sulfur, copper, cadmium, gold, the colors of the garden, of the sky, of the sea indigo to silver . The colors are luscious, lickable, edibles for which I have no words. Alone, or in combinations of mouth-watering sophistication, they make me thankful for color vision.

We drive on, through a village where the rule seems to be tie dyed body length and head covering shawls in immense sunbursts sensationally wrapping skin colored deeper than earth.

In another, a woman all in black and white clearly knows how to make an entrance in a Kodachrome world.

These colors seem to have a life of their own. That they satisfy our eyes is immaterial. The women walk in these colors with supple grace, their cloth flowing, captured breeze made visible.

A few of the older men drape rich scarves over their shoulders, but it is the young guys who have captured the colors of their mothers and sisters. One slender swain has the style all together: cadmium orange stove pipe, anatomically impossibly low-slung hip huggers, wide belted in a color 180 degrees across the color wheel, are stacked between lime green crocs and a torso hugging long sleeve shirt in a sweet watermelon pink. He's 3 scoop sherbert on the hoof.

There are many like him, flaunting other stacked flavors. Loping hand in hand through the gliding, fluttering glories of the women, these young peacocks punctuate the women's softness with 'Notice Me' exclamation points.

We stop for freah-brewed bunna, picking a place at random. Or maybe not. With what we now recognize as Menge's gift to fall in with the right people, he leads us across the road, under an awning to....Disco Diva Donna Sommers! Same face, same strobe light energy as she who 'works hard for her money', this lady has 'IT' in spades, not beautuful, just unforgettable, a diva through and through. Selling coffee. On a dusty road . In Ethiopia.

We're bowled over. We snap, she flirts with the camera, self-possessed, unfazed by two foreigners who have just materialized out of the dust, accepting their homage. We give it gladly. She laughs, pours her coffee. Menge makes the clenched-fingers-pressed-into-his-cheek Italian gesture of sincere approval. I'm not sure if it's only for the coffee. She gets it. Of course she does. We print out her photos. She receives the prints with a great laugh, waves them around for all to appreciate, and thanks us. Cleopatra and Helen of Troy must have had such a laugh.

Revived and refreshed, we drive on.

Hours later we enter modern Harar. It turns out to be a tree- rich, bustling city with wide avenues and the feel of a place with something to offer other than the best beer, chat, and coffee in the country. Tomorrow we will find out if that's true. Now, we sleep.

Day 25 - November 29. ..Harar and Hyenas

Our room on the back side of the Rewda Hotel is quiet. For the first time in a long time we hear the haunting Muslim call to prayer, then its echo and another and another across this 4th holiest city in Islam.

Water is a problem in Harar but there's enough drip--- lukewarm---to wash off sleep. Down on the street, we breakfast on fine Harar coffee and a tasty plain pastry. 'Fresh', says the young, fuzzy-chinned, waiter, eager to use his English, and himself still fresh only 2 hours into his 15 hour shift. Out front, a two.foot by two foot ersatz burger advertises the house specialty. When Menge, now with the well-earned nickname of 'burger king', rolls up we pose and snap him with his favorite munchy. He loves it, wants a copy right away for his wife, ‘Mamma’.

Menge's usual 'guy' is booked today but he knows a guy who knows a guy and so we meet Beniyam, our guide for the day. Like all our guides, he's superb at unwrapping his town for us, and great company. He suggests a long morning in the Old City, a break midday, a return to the City for the afternoon markets, a break for dinner and then...hand feeding the wild hyenas at night. We go for it.

Born and raised in the Old City, long rasta coils braided down his back, he looks---and turns out to be--very much of this place. We visit his auntie, who sells the scents of heaven in the spice market. A buddy repairs my ailing hat on his old peddle-powered Singer machine, one of many on the street of male sewers, Makina Girgir. The street name combines the Italian word for machine (machina) with 'girgir', the sound the machines make. For a dollar my hat (once borrowed by a gorilla, and special) is 'girgir-ed' into a new life.

In the old days the 5 gates were locked between 6pm and 6am. There were rest spaces outside the gates for late arrivals. Small holes in the wall let excess water out....and hyenas in to clean up the streets of offal. The hyenas do the same job today but come in through the gates, now never closed. The Italians ran a main street straight through the walled city, opening it permanently. The gates still stand. The big pizzas on the inner sides of the gates are major markets. There are 350 named streets, most of them wide enough---just---for a donkey+load. We squeeze down the narrowest, barely wide enough for a person...and thus too narrow for two people + grudge: Reconciliation Street.

The streets start out like stone and plaster canyons, solid, high walls broken by wooden or metal doors. Walls painted in vibrant colors---pinks and aqua are in style this year--- alone or in combination, striped, chevroned, piebald, the cobble-stone canyons become corridors in a wobbly Fun House. Beniyam.opens a door. We pass into a large courtyard, common space for the several traditional Harari houses that open onto it, gauzy curtains fluttering in the doorways.

In many places we've been this would be a family compound shared by branches or generations of one extended family. Not so in Harar, where the people who share the space and the lives around it come from different tribes, languages, and, surprisingly, religions. Moslems and Christians live intertwined here. It's this tradition of cultural, linguistic, and religious tolerance that UNESCO awarded the City of Peace Prize to Harar in 2003.

Internally, the houses are similar to the one we are welcomed into: a few rooms surround a central space of built in rug-covered platforms. This is the public space where the householders greet guests. We lounge on the thick rugs and munch fresh popcorn as Beniyam unpacks facts of the Harari house. Old baskets and platters polka-dot the walls in the soft tones of natural dyes, or, semi-sniffs Beniyam, the harsher colors of the chemical ones that replace them. Aluminum pots and pans fill shelves. In a special niche sit 5 tall, black, woven baskets, the family 'safe' for money, jewelry, precious things. Right above them are the spears to defend them. Newly married sons and their brides spend their first week of marriage sequestered in a private room. Food is passed to them. They have complete isolation and time to 'get tonknow one another' ....immersion into married life. Later they will move to their own house, independent.

The spice market wraps us tightly in aromas and colors. Beniyam's Auntie giggles at her photo, yells over to Spice Girls One and Two and waves her photo. All the ladies seem to sell the same stuff; banter not competition seems to be the life of spice here.

Beniyam waits for us outside a long festoon of fairy lights, his hang out, he says, pops into the car, rasta braids swinging. We head to name spot just outside the walls. A few minutes later I am on my knees and a wild hyena crawls onto my back to take a strip of raw meat from the Hyena Man.

Up close hyenas are rather cute. Their jaws are the strongest in the mammalian world. They can shear clear through the thigh bone of an adult human. My hyena has more refined tastes---and on Day Whatever of this trip who can blame her?-'-- turns down Hambone of Bob and nibbles on a strip of offal over my shoulder. Knee Guy and the Muscle Guys from the left calf applaud. More details will follow in person, ditto photos of the two of us before and after the hyenas.

Day 26 - November 30 - Harar. to Adama/Nazret

Big drive says Menge. 450 kilometers. That's 270 miles for us metrically challenged...a 5 hour trip in Florida. This is Africa. The road is asphalt, a plus. It does not snake but it does wind and dip. Ten hours should be about right. Coffee (alas no cappuccino today) at 7:30 from the charming waiter (just beginning his 15 hour shift) washes down fresh pound cake.We launch a few minutes after 8, detour back to the hotel to retrieve my forgotten cell phone, still hanging from its recharge cable, startagain The air is cool. It's a beautiful day.

This is Africa. The road belongs to people and meandering barnyards. It connects villages strung alongside it. Shops slip into it. It's a soccer field for kids. Dogs sleep in it. Ping pong tables eat away at the edges. It's Sunday. Churchgoers and comers amble along, it. There are markets. For them there is no road, just space needing yet another stall to be useful.

It's a slow drive but a wonderful journey. That will include breaks for coffee and Sprite and breaks to process them. Over half of the trip covers road already traveled between Awash and Harar. But it seems different in reverse, at a different time of day, on a Sunday, sacred and special in Orthodox Ethiopia.

The women and their colors float by, combined and layered and swirled into confections of color demanding attention then rewarding it with the shock of beauty newly discovered.

On our way east on this road a few days ago we stopped for bunna, hand-roasted and hand-ground coffee prepared in traditional style and with a popcorn chaser. We took and printed photos of the vivacious proprietor, our own Bunna Queen, and some of the other caffeine junkies. Today we stop again. The car is recognized and mobbed. We have become legend!

Remember her? As if anyone could forget her.

Bunna Queen waves us onto her roadside stools.. There is no mistaking her tone or authority, delivered with a ravishing smile, as she waves the friendly crowd off.

She asks us to photo her mother, a slender lady with a composed face, the beauty of her younger self still a template across her soft skin. We snap. She surprises us when she chooses a photo of herself sipping a cup of her daughter's brew.

It is one if my favorite photos.

We succumb to another pair of faces, too, too lovely and handsome. It’s Ethiopia. These faces are standard issue.

Pigged out on sugared popcorn, caffeine-loaded for the 'big road' ahead, we thank the Bunna Queen...who looks a lot like the Disco Queen, Donna Sommers...wave to the crowd and drive off leaving behind another chapter in 'The Legend of The Farangis and The Photos'.

The road unfurls endlessly, crossing tilled fields of tef, coffee, and chat. Children sell it by the bundle along the.road. Grassy savannah, then bleaker water-poor desolation follow. Later, familiar birds crowd a lakeshore: herons, storks, ibis. On a mid-day drink stop (alas, no success in today's search for the elusive cappuccino), an oasis called Agape Lodge, we see familiar flowers in its shady garden: hibiscus, lantana, bougainvillea.

We stop for photos of the landscape and the instant crowd of kids materializes, poof! Two are a couple. I'm 14 says the boy. Shyer, the girl says she is 24., clearly getting her decades confused. Their photos shine. They bury us in thank yous and smiles, and wave us off as we leave.

By 3pm we're sailing straight west along an empty highway through uncultivated land. Low shrubbery, bumpy and green, turns the landscape into a chlorophyll chenille bedspread. Goats bolt across the road, early returns from pasture, but it's clear sailing straight into a lowering sun. A confusion of a hundred or more camels ripples out of the glare. Saddleless, the tops of their faces imperiously befuddled, the lower half chewing cud, they mill. I hear no wisecracks. We wait, then thread through the forest of their legs. Nowhere do I see a tantrum or foot stomping. That maniac is still on the volcano torturing farangis.

The landscape flattens into savannah again. Acacia trees flare in silhouette against the sun. By 4 we have passed Awash and have 100 kilometers, 60 miles and two hours to go. Really? Two hours? On a ramrod straight road through nothingness, flat out lead foot territory for sure?. Yes, two hours. There are speed bumps every few hundred yards for miles.

Menge puts in his favorite country and western CD....of the "Ah'll love you forever here in Tennesse until I meet someone else from down a country road in Texas with a Ford pickup and a room at the top of the stairs.. I swear Forever and Amen" variety. (Note to travelers:Lindas seem to be readily amenable in the Lone Star State, though they usually rate many more stars and get their name mumbled in sleep..) This as we roll and bump on a road trip... across the savannah in southern Ethiopia. We have a lot to answer for!

The land tilts and begins the gentle ascent to the Addis plateau still 200 kilometers ahead and a mile and a half above us. Volcanic peaks crowd the horizon. From the CD. Dolly Parton is using her considerable Dolly parts to beg Jolene Not To Steal My Man Just Because You Can.(Jolene? Was Linda not available? Oh, right. Busy lady.) Any resemblance between Miss Parton and this landscape is purely coincidental.

It's pushing 5:30, nine and a half hours in, and we're stuck behind a convoy of double length tankers and long distance haulers belching black smog.This is the main road connecting Addis with Red Sea ports in Djibouti and Somaliland. These drivers have probably been on the road for 12 or 15 hours. Chat is the drug of choice. The other lane, against us, spews even more behemoths down the slope, heading into their marathon all-nighter to the birder. Passing is suicidal. Truck corpses litter the shoulders.

Menge, unflappable, good-natured, responsible Menge is a magnificent driver. We feel and are safe. He pulls over to call ahead to our hotel. We'll be late. I am tempted to call CAMELS R.US.

The sun resolves into a ball, begins its fiery goodbyes. Our eyes burn and our skin is slick from the black truck farts. We round a particularly and flagrantly flatulent flatbed and roll into a fart- free zone. For a few minutes we breathe purity.

Three wheeled green tuk-tuks, universal African short-distance people carriers, motors sputtering the 'tuk-tuk' sound that has

baptized them weave among the behemoths, sure signs of a town. At 6:32, ten hours and 14 minutes after leaving the Rewda. Hotel in Harar. We pull into the Safari Lodge in Adama.
The grounds are lush, the staff attentive. They lead us through a garden, past a swimming and into a two room suite with an immense emperor sized bed. Oops. Two men cannot share a bed, even this mattressed soccer field. Another bed is brought in, head boarded, fussed over and mosquite-netted. There is a large and beautifully equipped bathroom. The water works and is hot. This cost $30 a night.

It's too bad this is a utility bivouac. We have to leave by 7 to be at Addis for our Visa Extension when the Immigration Office opens. Our Moment of Truth approaches.

Trusty guidebook enthuses. about the food. We drag Menge to join us at a table in the garden. Cold beers and soft drinks, softer breezes, defuse the road tension. Our three various pastas are serviceable, verging on delicious. Menge declines a cappuccino, sure sign of exhaustion and heads off. We sip our 'caps'. The meal costs $20, at least twice what we usually pay for the three of us. (We're still below our daily budget.) Call it a high road trip tax and worth it.

Day 27 - December 1 - Addis, Moment of Truth... and a new found family

Number 1 is Immigration, says Menge.

Two...hotel.

Three...laundry...and grins. (Laundry is waaaaaay overdue.) That's the plan for the day once we get to Addis.

Lift off is 7:30. The only guests in the lovely second floor buffet under avocado trees, we down fresh lemon juice and eggs, inhale the coffee and are on the road by the appointed hour.

Immigration awaits.

We leave the oxen, goats, sheep, and donkeys to trot on their roads . Addis is.$2 and an hour away on the new Expressway, devoted to cars and much lacking because of it. A wind farm spins energy on the hillside. It's a landscape of abundance. 25% of all African volcanoes are in Ethiopia. There are volcanos, both youngish and retired, on the horizon, older energy sources and ultimate source of the fertile soil.

As we near the city black, oily, funky air dulls the view. It greys the beautiful Ethiopian skin, robs it of lustre. People look dimmer, less fit, like city dwellers everywhere. As have most cities in Africa, Addis has grown quickly and is over-crowded and under-equipped. Everywhere there is construction and traffic.

And, like most cities in Africa, Addis is vibrant. The traffic is not. Ancient Peugeots. seem to be the car of choice. Toyota and Isuzu have the market on trucks. A Lifan sedan, hybrid of Chinese parts and Ethiopian assembly, passes. Half a million says Menge. That's $25,000, 20 times the annual per capita income of the whole population, or 100 times the guesstimated annual per capita income of rural Ethiopians, the vast majority of the population.

By 9 we're catching up in the office and planning the day over coffee. A quick trip to.the.bank nets us a stack of 5 Birr notes, preparatrion for our trip to the South. Tribal people in the South charge by the photo: 5.Birr for an adult, 3 per kid. Some travelers rant and rave over this. Too bad! We have no guaranteed right to take pictures. There are few ways for the Southern tribes to earn income. Being photographed is their business.

By 11 we're at Immigration. Menge waves one of his favorite new aquisitions---the fingers-crossed wish for good luck---and Birhanu is prevented from following us through the gate and up the steep stairs marked Foreigners' into the crowd stampeding the first stop on our immigration migration. Monday is crowd day at Immigration...and we're on our own.

The officials are friendly, but signs would help. A lot. We mill around to get the application form, fill it out, guessing at how to answer the questions.

Back at Mill Central we are nudged towards the line under the arrow pointing to 'photo copy', line up and watch the Photo Copy Ladies collect documents, insert same into copiers, lift and drop the lids of the machines, press buttons, extract copies, deliver same, collect 1 Birr per page, toss same over shoulder into a big box and start all over again. It's smooth, fast, bureaucratic choreography at its best.

And they smile and even flirt a bit.

There are three people in front of us...we're almost there....and then the lights flicker, go out. No one but us seems to notice. They go back on. Ditto. Copy Ladies resume their ballet.

We pay our 5 cents each for copies of the visa and passport pages, follow the crowd back to Mill Central again, paperwork in hand, are ushered through the door and take our seats at the end of a long wooden bench, joining fellow sliders. We slide slowly towards the desk, are beckoned, checked, pass muster. (Our answers must make enough sense, or are irrelevant).

Next stop is Room 77 . It's in another building , back down the steps, through the new comers just beginning the process, through a security check, and into befuddlement. Signs would help. A lot. We find the right building ... eventually. Room 77 is clearly signed. We join sliders, some now familiar (Pretty Young Mother With Semi-Adorable Hyperactive Toddler, Cool Dudes In Sunglasses, Large Egyptian Lady) , almost nod, slide along the bench closer and closer to our Moment of Truth.

Up to now it has all been paperwork, slow but immune to power outages. Computers get involved now, not a good sign: there was just a power outage. We slide. We're next. Dennis goes first. Dennis' Visa Lady hesitates when she notes he still has 8 days before the visa expires. Going south, I chip in. A nod and clicking fingers lead to sober Instructions of sit, photo, natural (as in 'no eyeglasses'). Another Visa Lady beckons me over, smiles, asks no questions, clicks fingers and camera (and takes a great photo).

We're sent to Room 78, slide, pay $20, get a receipt that clearly says 'visa', surrender our passports and get instructions to go to Room 90. Tomorrow. At eleven am.

It has taken only 2 hours. And has been a lot more pleasant than ANY process I have been through at a typical Motor Vehicle Bureau, for instance, in the northern US. There were certainly more smiles and more interesting sliders.

We follow the exit signs (getting out is a lot easier than getting in) down, out, along a narrow path, around a few buildings, through an unmarked gate, into a side street, and down onto the main drag where Menge and Birhanu had left us 2 hours earlier. We throw our arms up in triumph. We will be visa-ed.....tomorrow. We hope.

That's Number One out of the way. Two (hotel-very nice, quiet) and Three ( laundry everything but what we are wearing...and not a moment too soon, ecologically speaking) follow. We plan the rest of the day. We'll visit Merkato, Africa's biggest market later, but first Menge invites us to lunch at his house.

It's heaven. The sweet, kind, good Menge has a sweet, kind, good...and beautiful...family. The 3 daughters, ages 10, 5 and 6 months adore him. Kisses abound. He smiles at his wife with beaming affection. And it's returned. Mrs. Menge and her 2 sisters have prepared a delicious vegetarian meal, the best food we have had in Ethiopia. Leave it to Menge to remember we love veggies and especially eggplant and beets. Perfectly spiced and grilled with other vegetables, the eggplant is succulent and memorable. A stir fry of zucchini and beets is as good. Both are wonderful with rice and injera, Ethiopia's spongy bread. We stuff ourselves.

Traditionally prepared coffee, jerbena bunna, follows, prepared on charcoal right in the house. Joining us are his wife's two sisters. One is studying software engineering but would prefer to setup her own marketing firm.

The 10 and 5 year old daughters will be forces to reckon with. Smart and beautiful, they have their father's way with people and their mother's presence. Middle daughter leaves and returns with a passle of friends to introduce to us. She's five years old.
Pictures and prints are inevitable and accomplished, delivered, and appreciated. This Is a house of affection and love and it shows in the photos. Hugs all around end a truly wonderful visit. We're family, beams Menge, and we feel it. He passes each of us a small envelope. There's a card and photos of him and his wife and each of the kids, even the baby. It is a wonderfully affectionate and thoughtful gift and precious to us.

A half hour later we're in Merkato, Addis' immense market. The shift to its immensity and crowds and noise is jarring. I remember most the immense loads carried, bent backed, through the din: a stack of foam rubber matters pads eight feet high, a mountain of brilliantly colored plastic chairs heaped on top of, in front of, behind, and all around a bent torso and a pair of legs, a restaurant to be, and on the move.

Divided into sections or 'terras' (another borrowing from Italian, like Merkato's name?), each with a specialty (kitchen ware, new and secondhand clothes, caskets, electronics......the Merkato is one-stop shopping for anything anyone needs or wants. Don't want to wander the warren of streets? Head for Somalia Terra where in a few streets, hundreds of small shops offer a taste of what the other terras have in offer, a sort of Ethiopian Walmart Super Store, without the sweat-panted, super-sized rumps. I never do find out why it's called Somalia Terra.

We pass the bus station. Long, long lines of hopeful passengers stretch from signs in Amharic out into and down the streets. I can't read those wonderfully athletic, voguing Tube Dude, characters of Amharic. Menge assures me that 'buses go everywhere, but transportation is problem in Addis'.

Menge leads us through and around, his internal map infallible, us trusting him as we have learned to over these 3 weeks. We're sure we're miles from where we started, but of course Menge has led us round his Merkato and right back to the car. Uniformed kids pass by, wave. A few, usually with nudges at their back, try out their surprisingly good fledgling English. One future leader, all of 7 or 8, marches over to say hello, how are you, what is your name. We answer. She stares, amazed that those funny sounds actually work. Mama beams a few yards away.

Our day ends as all our days have ended in Ethiopia....charmed by its people.

Day 28 -December 2- License, Lazing, and Laundry

At 11 we turn up at Room 90. Minimal sliding is required. In 10 minutes Dennis has his newly visa-ed passport. Mine has been misplaced but turns up eventually. The picture taken by my Visa Lady compensates for a lifetime of horrendous official photos. In this one I actually look like someone you might let into your country. It's immaterial of course. All that matters is that we are legal and licensed to stay another 30 days, until December 31...and can leave for the South. Happiness abounds in the faces of Birhanu and Menge. We pay them for the next 17 days.

A much needed lazy afternoon follows, down time for catching up with the blog and emails and for processing the last 3 weeks. Birhanu stops by to plan tomorrow, our departure for the tribes in the South. Day 1 is a 500 kilometer drive to Arba Minch.

At 5 we head for the laundry, detour, have supper (the menus look familiar now), look for, but can't find, toothpaste in the super market. The laundry is fresh smelling, folded, or ironed and on hangers. These are mundane things, low-key adventures, new textures that massage our memories. New and very different ones are a long day's drive south.

Day 29 - December 3 - Off to the South, but, first, a time machine

The southern part of Ethiopia is another country. Almost 20 tribal groups of different cultures, languages, histories, political power, long-standing animosities and rivalries, and demands on the environment uneasily share a dry and unpromising landscape. Whatever traditional adjustments existed to manage rival demands are complicated by encroaching national parks, central government development schemes, growing tourism, the impact of modernity, the conflict between traditional methods of conflict resolution that attempt to restore order according to an understandable and livable code and a national legal system that tries to impose it... and the easy availability of AK-47s and other assault weaponry.

Little of that is obvious to us travelers who come to the South. We don't see their complicated world. We will see people who are among the most colorful, charismatic, and diverse in Africa.

They are 850 kilometers to the south. We'll take.3 days to get there.

On the road at 8, we have 500 kilometers to go to our first stop, the lakeside town of Arba. Minch, but first we have to get through the 'big traffic', the immense Gordian knot parking lot that is Addis. The are no traffic lights, just traffic rights. And everybody has 'em. Drivers are, however, supremely skilled and polite. What seems chaotic to us is an order of sorts to these drivers.

Menge laughs at my imitation of Italian drivers semaphoring aspersions on parenthood and yelling descriptions almost as poisonous. 'Cretino stupido.' is my favorite. (Translation not provided.). A panini may also be involved and perhaps a conversation (more likely two), head turned over the shoulder, with the back seat. None of this requires any hands on the steering wheel. Menge shakes his head, hands firmly on the wheel.

An hour later we are still only a few kilometers from the hotel..then break free, 495 more kilometers to go.

Yellow fields roll away from the roads to the hazier horizon. The tef has been harvested, the seeds, smallest of all grains and among the most nutritious, threshed by cattle walking in great circles over the grain on the threshing floor, then stored whole, or ground. The hay piles in neat stacks, yellow but otherwise the same size and shape as the round and thatched houses, or, it moves in great rastafarian and donkey- legged heaps down the roads, abundance on the hoof

Along one stretch of asphalt road, pumpkins and squash and gourds, golden, striped, piebald, round and oblong pile in great variety in the dusty shoulder. Further along, the endless roadside stand offers chat in neat green bundles, or firewood in tangled heaps, or charcoal, stuffed into yard-tall white plastic bags, or rolled reed mats (not for the floor but to make walls), or wide conical and colorful baskets for carrying injera bread.. No one is in sight. Their purveyors have other things to do besides babysit a possible sale. but take no chances that abundance be mistaken for largesse. Stop, and immediately a custodian child or woman appears, ready to deal. Kids, especially little kids, have great responsibilities. They watch over roadside produce, herd goats, cattle, sheep, haul water.....Rural Ethiopia has no place for couch potatoes. The kids are active, lithe, adults in training.

I am in anthropologist heaven at Melka Kunture Here there is an exposed living floor..a place where our ancestors sat, chipped stone into simple tools and hacked up animal bones....800,000 years ago. That's 2, 000 times further back in time than our USA First Thansgiving.. I reach down and touch a sharp edge chipped from stone by an an ancestor 40,000 generations ago. My DNA shivers. I ride the time machine. Later, the World Heritage Site site of Tiya, with oddly carved stone grave markers maybe 700 years old, is interesting in its own right, but compared to 40,000 generations....

By mid day, color disappears from the clothing of the walkers whose road we share, except for a thin border on white shawls. Subtle moths have replaced flagrant butterflies. In the hazy dust the views become sepia. Then, a school lets out and hordes of kids in bright blue pants, lemon shirts and cherry sweaters wrenches color back into the landscape.

It's lunchtime, way after, in fact, when we stop in Butajira at the Rediet Hotel to eat. Dennis orders the Special Burger. Think triple burger with all the fixings, plus egg sandwich, plus club sandwich, all heaped into several stacked buns and floating in a Pacific Ocean of 'cheeps' and you're getting close to the gastronomic excess of the Rediet Special Burger. Dennis can't make a dent. Birhanu tastes a bit and isn't impressed. Menge, for whom no burger is too big a challenge, is off doing Menge things. I am happy with my veggie soup. The extravaganza, probably more food than a rural family sees in several days, goes mostly uneaten. Where did this hotel ever get the idea for this thing?

We have many hours yet before Arba Minch. In the backseat, Dennis and Burhanu play with.their phones and figure out the setting for taking a whole mess of photos soundlessly with one press of the button. This is not a trivial exercise. The tribes charge for photos, 5 Birr per adult, 3 per kid. We're hoping to get more bang per click, photographically speaking, for our Birr. I'm not sure how I feel about this subterfuge. Selling their images is their business. Would we try to sneak three or four meals at a restaurant if we paid for only one?

I notice for the first time some social issue signs:

Without gender equality there is no development and growth.
A child not attending school is subject to abuse and sex trafficking

We've been riding for hours through luscious parkland, rolling and green. South of Sodo, the land flattens and dries. Flat never lasts long in Ethiopia, a country insistently vertical. To the east are lakes, all silver. To the west are layers of mountains faded by the scrim of dust and dwindling sunlight.

All light is gone when we pull into our hotel in Arba Minch. 'Nice view' says Room Key Guy as he let's us into Room 37, at the end of the long balcony. My only view is the ceiling above the bed, and that for just a few minutes.....

Day 30 - December 4 - The African Queen Was Never Like This, Horses in Drag, Two Hits of Local Hooch

Three foot white caps wash over the gunnels of our small boat, our own Road Company African Queen, spraying us and drenching Birhanu. The tiny boat rolls in protest. Tedros, another driver, and his passenger, have joined us for this expedition crossing Lake Chamo. Green is not their best color. She is definitely not Hepburn. But, like Bogart, he may wish she had not signed on for this trip.

Our Road Company African Queen bounces on across the white caps. The far shore, entrance to Nechisar National Park has been retreating, is never any closer, and then suddenly we bump into it. The park is famous for its grasslands and zebras. We're here to walk through the former and mingle with the latter. On foot.

And we do.

An hour later, we (without faux Hepburn, green faced still) crest the isthmus, the views across the golden grass to the lakes and mountains more than worth the sweat of the easy hike...flies and lava rock strewn path notwithstanding.

Our armed guide has found us our zebras. A whole mess of them stand and stare at us staring at them. It's a Stare Off. They get bored and most go back to grass munching, clumped into a confusion of stripes. A few keep watch.

I love zebras, especially their brush cut Mohawk haircuts, but I have a hard time taking them seriously. To me, they're horses in drag. It's great drag, though. They've aced that whole cuddly prison striped thing, but.... still, horses in drag. They belong on the stage. I imagine one stopping the show with his first act finale 'I Am What I Am (And What I Am Is An Illusion) from the East African Equine Theater production of 'La Cage Aux Foals'.

The lake is calm on the way back. Green faces revert to normal. We troll for hippos and crocodiles. It's a slow day for river horses but we see many scaly meters of sun bathing and swimming croc.

Late in the afternoon we snake upwards into the cool highlands to visit the Dorze people and their tall conical/beehive bamboo and straw houses. Alex, our articulate and rasta-haired guide tells us they are designed to resemble the elephants that lived here when the ancestral Dorze first arrived ages ago. It’s a good story.

Inside, Alex's family house is roomy, has separate sleeping areas, room for some cattle (they add heat during cold nights) and beautifully constructed bamboo walls that lead my eyes upwards, upwards, upwards, back-bendingly upwards, thirty or forty feet, until they bend inwards, unite and create the pointed summit of this graceful creation.

The Dorze have been managing tourists for a long time and are good at providing photo ops. Dancers dance, a performance for outsiders, with no passion or excitement, but colorful. The local weavers, all men, are adept, the results lovely. And for sale. Menge surprises us all with gifts of narrow, hand-woven scarves. We love them.
Women spin the cotton thread that the men weave...and do most of the rest of the work.

We eat yummy flat bread made from paste scraped off the trunks of the 'false banana' (the looks but not the goods of the real thing ), kneaded into dough, then buried, fermented, and finally kneaded again, pounded flat, and grilled. It's delicious. I wonder how anyone ever figured out such complex a process, especially the burial step.

Away from the dancers we sit with Alex and his age-mates. The photo printer is a big hit. Out comes a bottle of home-made araki, made from grain, fermented, clear as ice....and lethal. Fire water, say we, empty glass in hand. Lion milk says Alex, bottle in hand and at the ready. Cheers! The second glass burns down my esophagus. It's not bad, actually. It probably kills quickly. I've had worse vodka, and in far less interesting places, and with worse company.

On the way back down to Arba Minch, Birhanu tries to teach me how to take a 'selfie'. I'm not sure two hits of araki help.

Day 31 - December 5 - The Far South and The Kilt Question

We're looking at 350 kilometers, 7 hours to Turmi, in the faaaaaar South, not far from the border with Kenya.

The road is straight. To the east the sky and landscape are more brilliant, lit by reflected silver from the lake we crossed yesterday. As we drop in latitude and altitude, the climate and landscape change. Banana fields sprout their green pennant leaves. The road menageries seem bigger, stretching across and down the roads into the fields.

We see a lot of cows up close. Bovine befuddlement leaves cows muddled mid-road and staring at the cars rather than scooting away from it with their caretakers, the clearly more-with-it goats. Canons of bovine beauty are generous. Cattle come in many colors, though not nearly so many as their goat fellow-travelers. It's the horns. They come in all shapes and angles. Straight up and out is the most common, but some curve downward and inward into keratin pageboys.

The herders, kids really, are shorter than the cows, but hold their own with the goats. Most carry machetes half their height. One stops to sharpen his on a cement road post. His goats trot on, knowing well the route to the day's munchies, leading their plodding charges. The herders, and most everyone else, carries lunch, a gruel of grains and water, in discarded plastic water bottles. This solves the mystery of roadside kids running up to the car and sing-songing the word for plastic, meaning plastic water bottles. They want their lunch boxes. Rich people add some milk, says Birhanu. In this heat I wonder if it ferments.

A rickety bridge slows us down. Women and kids offer mangos and bananas through the windows. Banana fields yield to sunflowers and corn. Now we know where the popcorn chasers for traditional coffee sprout. Road side offerings move from strings of incense, slingshots, and carved animals to large size wooden copies of guns. We desist.

Our trajectory is due south, out of 'historical' Orthodox and Moslem Ethiopia and into the tribal areas overlapping into Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda.

We round a bend and the world drops away. Below us is the Omo Valley. Now dry, hot and planted with cotton, in a scheme that displaced a huge population, it was cooler, wetter, treed, savannah-like 6 million years ago. Somewhere down there, back then, the line that led to our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, split from the line that led to human beings.

It is our birthplace, at least 300,000 generations ago.

We've come a long way, Baby! I feel the pull of this place. I am a divining rod for my origins, it seems. We cross the river and head up the escarpment on the other side. The pull loses focus, subsides.

I see our first tribal people walking along the road. Both genders eschew the glorious colored cloths of the north for the equally glorious eggplant/ebony/obsidian of the darkest skin I have ever seen.

And we see a lot of it, especially on the men. The women smear their hair with red ochre, and wear free-form goat skins as skirts, an unmistakable look. While some are topless, most cover more above and below the waist than the men do.

The men we first see are bare-torsoed above, beaded and necklaced with great hairdos... and mini-saronged below. Their sarongs start low on their hips and descend just far enough to tightly cup their butt cheeks. It's not a look everyone can pull off. If this were our culture we'd expect such lithe, accessorized, and skimpily-clad young guys to flutter off to an outlier like Fire Island, Greenwich Village or South Beach.

Later, we discover that the butt short sarong style is a local young guy affectation. (Most men's sarongs go mid-thigh or to the knees, sort of like tight kilts. Which brings up The Kilt Question: Do They Or Don't They? More on that later. ).

These guys may be extra-leggy birds of paradise but they are very main stream in a world of peacocks. Here, the Hamer men are famous for their self-decorating, aka accessorizing. Stylish and stunning accessorizing is not only mainstream, but manly, and both expected and required of the men.

Sarongs are carefully chosen for pattern and color. They're tied at various lengths, usually above the knee, with knots and loops and flounces, and always tightly bun-wrapped. These guys really know how to accessorize. Their local branch of Accessories R U us is the whole world. A current touch is adding linked metal flexible watch bands as pendants to elaborate beaded necklaces and chest pectorals. Copper arm, wrist and ankle bracelets are standard accents, tightly circling deeply black skin. Between neck and sarong? Bare chests with decorative scarring...or soccer shirts. Hair styles, shaved, twisted, plastered, picked out are cultural messages lost on us but great to look at.

The big ceremonial draw in the South is the spectacularly athletic Bull Jumping Ceremony, a cultural rite of passage marking a youth's transition to manhood. Definitely not scheduled or performed for tourists, they occur when a young man ' is ready'. If lucky, a traveler will be there at the right time. Culture trumps tourist calendar for this one. The day after a successful jumping (he gets one chance a year to prove his stuff) there's a big village celebration, also on their schedule, not ours.

We miss the jumping but hear of a post-jump celebration. By 4 we've checked into the lodge, had our mid-day meal, gotten a guide and crashed a Hamer tribal village party. Dennis also gets locked into the bathroom., but is extricated in time.

The party is crashed by other camera wielding farangis. Yes, we pay a fee to enter the village, and yes, this is how the villages make money from the unavoidable tourist industry. But we are party crashers in an event of crucial cultural importance, peeping Toms, Michikos, Alfredos, Pamelas, and Ling-Lings. Why should we be welcomed, feted, applauded? At best we are tolerated and ignored. At worst we are waved away and mugged at.

We are incidental, as we should be.

The men form a giant circle open at one end. Alone or in groups, often holding hands, sometimes not, they walk into the space and from stock still, flex their legs and jump straight up into the air. It's sheer athleticism, an announcement and reminder of their maleness.

The other men hum/chant a soft totally harmonic song.

Young women, also linked, advance sinuously towards the men through the opening in the circle, singing. It's sheer female sensuality. Then they back off, tease completed.

None of this requires translation. The body language is eloquence itself. There are subtleties, carefully observed: if a young woman slyly scuffs her foot towards a young man, he is her chosen one. As in the rest of the natural world, the males may preen and strut, but the females do the choosing.

Goats are slaughtered, butchered, the meat strung on poles and barbecued. In the shade of a bamboo and thatch wall-less shelter the elder men sit on branches, drink and deal with the important matter of choosing a wife for yesterday's successful newly minted man. This is important business, and big business. Cattle are involved, the measure of wealth and status, the currency of life.

We leave the Hamer to celebrate without us, leave the young men to their jumping, the women to their choosing, and the elders to guaranteeing a future for the man of the hour.

As for The Kilt Question, I do know the answer. Jumping and dancing disarranges sarongs. They must be adjusted. They are. Case proven. I feel that life needs some mystery. So my answer to The Kilt Question will be left dangling.

Day 32- December 6 - Nude is not naked, and we see a lot of bull

The young Desanech man emerges from the brown waters of the Omo River and stretches. He is nude, and like his people, and many in the South, unselfconsciously so. He has swum across the river alongside our wooden canoe, his shorts carefully stowed aboard. He steps into them and helps up us the steep bank.

The Desenach men are off with their cattle. The women, unselfconsciously bare breasted, gather round and offer us group discounts for photos. Deals closed, Dennis and Birhanu snap away. I take one of an older woman, duty paid. We'll share our photos later.

I have boned up on the words for three (photo price for a child), five (ditto for adults), and four because it was there on the page. How hard is it to remember 3 two syllable words? I trot them out.

The effect is sheer electricity. Our guide whips around, stares at me, erupts into a mega-smile, and grabs me in that charming right shoulder to right shoulder Ethiopian hug. And then does it again. 'He speaks Moorgate, he speaks Omorate'. I am labeled forever, fed words for the rest of the morning. Six syllables and I have made someone very, very happy.

Our guide tells us that capture marriage has become a problem. A traditional marriage, arranged between families, is a complex negotiation sealed by an exchange of cattle and woman. Brides are expensive, and a bride’s standing in the community is closely tied to the number of cattle she brings to her birth family on marriage. If a boy can muster some friends and steal a bride, even an unwilling one, the marriage is recognized and fewer cattle are involved. The woman's status in the community suffers, however.

Houses are straightforward, straw and branch, with dirt floors, a few animal skins and gourds. 'Reduced to utter simplicity' says the guidebook. Reduced from what? Such material simplicity might enhance life not reduce it.

So far the Desanech, at least in their villages, have resisted the pressure to change their dress loaded onto them from the religions prevalent up north, and from the foreign-spawned evangelical 'Christian' groups spilling their prejudices all over Africa. Spiritual exploiters, they force-feed these people and clothe them in their odd notions of sin and guilt so they can sell them salvation. They cheapen even their bizarrely truncated view of their god.

Kids and adolescents strip and jump into the Omo to swim alongside our serpentine canoe. Carved from one immense squiggly tree trunk, it's wide enough to sit in, and must be a challenge to row on a straight course. One kid, 15, follows us, skin dripping brown water. He can chat well in English and entertains us with odd phrases in Japanese (good afternoon), Spanish (good day), Mandarin (hello), German (good day), and Korean (hello). He has a larger repertoire in Italian.

We lunch at the lodge then head for a famous local market. We never make it. Birhanu. gets a phone call that unleashes his fluorescent smile. He hears from our yesterday's guide that there will be a bull jumping today in a village not far off.

This is the jackpot.

The women blow horns, sing, dance, run, mill, and chase after young men....who whip them with switches. The women chase the men, who refuse the switches, seem reluctant. The women taunt and drag the men until they give in. The switch cracks like a whip, once. Welts and blood open on the women's bodies. And they laugh, sing and dance on, seemingly happy to have proven their support for their clan's boy who will jump the bulls and become a man today

There seem to be limits. One woman, clearly drunk, and bleeding, is grabbed and dragged out of the fray. She gets very angry and threatens with a switch the man holding her.

One young man is very much in demand as a switcher. He is chased, taunted, dragged, handed switches relentlessly by crowds of women. Even to these western eyes we can see one level of explanation: the guy is a hunk, perfectly coiffed, accessorized, saronged, lithe, muscled, handsome in face and body. I look for a deeper (and possibly unnecessary) explanation and ask our guide: why this guy? 'Because he's good at it', is the answer. I leave it at that. I think my first explanation gets to the 'It' quite well.

For two or three more hours the women---all relatives of the would be bull jumper---dance, sing, initiate and accept switching. By late afternoon they and many of the villagers are drunk. But not Our Boy, the Man to Be of the Hour. This is a big deal. He gets one chance a year to become a man.

A goat is sacrificed in front of him and he is fussed over by a crowd of his age mates and elders. It is time.

24 cattle, an unusually large number for a jumping, are lined up side by side, held still, one man per beast. Numbers 25 is a calf, stepping stone to those tall bovine backs on this side. On the other end there is no calf. He will leap the four feet up onto the first bull's back on the other side.

The din from singing women and their metal leg bells is shattering.
Our Boy emerges nude from the crowd. He has stripped off his clothing and all accessories. He has left boyhood in a heap somewhere. Only a thin leather strap criss crossed his shoulders and his 'about to be a man' hairstyle remain. With any luck he'll shear it off forever. So, it's the bare him, just him, boy ready to face the challenge that will define him for the rest of his life.

He runs, bolts onto the calf then sails onto the back of the first oxen then runs and leaps across all 24 to the other side, descends. He turns, gets a false start, runs again, leaps up four feet onto the line of oxen, returns to our side, descends, eschewing the calf in a great deeply black blur of arms and leg, turns, judges again, then runs, leaps and repeats the journey: two round trips, returning to 'our' side.

He stands proud and panting .We applaud. The women dance and sing rapturously. The village roars. There is a new man among them.

He may be their man, but he's also Our Guy. We're moved by him and for him. His flight will stay with us a long time.

Then I think: this bull jumping in the nude has a built in contradiction. Nudity has its drawbacks. Even if he's successful, he's sure to flop. Our Guy has a very big success. Etcetera.

On the other hand, unlike his counterparts in a familiar rite of passage in the West, he will never outgrow his Bare Mitzvah suit.

As an outsider I can see powerful symbolism in bull jumping. The Hamer are cattle herding pastoralists. Cattle are the basis of their life, underlying it as they underlie and support the jumper. They are also controlled and dominated, as by the villagers who keep them still for the jumper, and of course by the jumper who trots on them. That may not be the way the Hamer see it at all, of course.

Now recognized as a man (something about which any on lookers have no doubt), Our Guy takes on the responsibilities of adulthood. First, he goes into isolation off in the wilderness and waits while the elders select a suitable first wife for him. Later, he may select two more wives of his own choosing. For now, he goes into seclusion and his family prepares for a celebration, which he'll miss. It is that kind of celebration we saw yesterday in another village for another newly minted, but absent , man. But that is not for us.

It's getting dark. We leave Our Guy to his success and his village to celebrate its future, now in one more set of capable hands.

Day 33- December 7 - Once More, With Feeling

We have traveled as far south as we can in Ethiopia.

Today we turn north and west, out of the golden savannah and into higher and greener and cooler highlands. Other descents into dryness, dust and heat are ahead, but not for a day or two.

As the landscape changes so does the clothing. Men's sarongs have continued their journey upwards and become wide belts wrapped around shorts. Maybe this is an intermediate step to the shoulder scarves some men drape even here.

We pass four guys. One is in mini sarong, his three buddies in a longer sarong, pedal pushers and full length trousers, a walking Reader's Digest version of local sartorial history.

Ochre haired women are less common. Most have traded goatskin skirts for pleated and ruffled fabric ones. Goat skins make sense: last night's dinner provided the goatskin. It's free. Only cash will provide the skirts. (NOTE: I wrote the last sentence before seeing the frank film at the museum in Jinka. In it an old woman asks why she should wear the cloth people want to sell her: it rips, lasts only a year, gets dirty...and where is she going to get soap, or the money to buy it? A goatskin lasts ten years, is free and never rips, doesn't need soap.)

We drive on. A few beaded headbands spark the roadside, then all are gone. We're in mainstream Ethiopia, colorful in a different way.

The town of Jinka has a laid-back, end of the road, semi-tropical charm. Our lodge is brightly painted and set in a garden of avocado, papaya, mango and tree-sized poinsettias and hibiscus (both the red and lipstick varieties), giant cousins of our more demure Florida garden denizens. Cannas are their usual 5 foot torchy selves, but lantana and vinca are luxuriant and explosively big bushes.

Cold drinks quaffed, we set off to visit the Aari tribe. The largest of the southern tribes, they have more political clout ( and are resented for it) and deliver clout of another kind, received more appreciatively. They are local brewers...and providers. .. of araki, the potent local drink of choice.

Agriculturalists living in sedentary villages, they live a very different life from the Hamer and Dessanech we have visited and the Mursi yet to come. Their life does not revolve around cattle and the need to move and provide pasturage. They have numbers, political power and a bigger voice in a government not necessarily sympathetic to the needs of the nomadic cattle tribes.

Antagonism is inevitable. Aari araki and Mursi AK-47s do not a happy cocktail make.

Our local guide, Aki, walks with us through village of the Aari people. It is quiet, immersed in green. Some of the houses are painted. One is covered with drawings of animals, one labeled 'dog' in English. An outdoor blackboard, suggests Dennis. Carefully laid out clumps of spider plants, arrowhead vine, and flowering plants fringe many houses.

Festivities attract us to one compound. They're celebrating the graduation of a daughter from Arba Minch University. This is a very different world from the one on the banks of the Omo River, and a very different rite of passage than the one among the Hamer.

Aki takes us to meet our Aari Araki Lady. Already fermented, her latest batch heats over a wood fire in a large pottery ewer. A cooled batch pours into small glasses, and it's 'araki away'. She's good, this Aari Araki Lady! Her hooch is smooth and tasty, even better on both counts than our initiation araki in the Dorze village a few days ago. She can tell we like it and she beams.

As always happens, kids follow us. They all know the words for pen, you, give. Many can carry on a simple conversation in English. At least one charmer will take a finger and walk with us. Dennis is fingered, adopted.

Local 'anthropological' museums are often repositories of stuffed animals and odd pieces of paraphernalia without explanation. Not so the small Jinka Museum. It is out and out wonderful. One section displays conversations with tribal woman about the customs that get most attention from the western visitors: pierced lips and lip plates, scarification, teeth removal, female circumcision.

A first film by an articulate Mursi man tells the story of how the tribe dealt with the killing of an Aari man by 'someone' (everyone knew who) from the Mursi village. The national legal system was side-stepped, cattle were given, and the young man directly responsible...and all his age-mates, who should have known better and controlled him... were whipped by the elders.

Aside from the young man who controls the videos, collects the entrance fee and manages the keys to this treasure we're the only people here. Pity. The museum is built of lovely local stone and sits on a hill top in cool highland air overlooking yet another jaw droopingly stunning landscape.

We've learned something inside and have been revived outside. We head back to our lodge.

Day 34 - December 8 - The AK-47 as Accessory

'Let's go, Bob', says Birhanu. His eyes say 'Now!'.

It's time to leave the Mursi village. I don't know if it's all the time we get with our entrance fee to the village...or all the time we've got before the renowned Mursi aggressiveness kicks up a notch and AK-47s drop off the shoulders.

Earlier this morning we drop down out of the Jinka highlands onto the savanna that stretches off over the horizon to Kenya. Mago National Park is not rich in the large animals that attract people to that country. Its creation displaced the pastoral Mursi peoples and reduced the area they wander in to feed their cattle. It's the engine of their resentment still.

We head for the Mursi early in the morning because by afternoon the araki they get from the Aari villages has percolated a little too close to the trigger fingers resting on the AK -47s.

On the way we pick up the mandatory guide, a delightfully fluent kid, really, named Sfye. We also give a ride to Aluduru, a chief in the Mursi village we're to visit.

Why visit the Mursi and their AK-47s? They are perhaps the most famous of the Omo tribes because of the clay lip plates that the Mursi women wear in their pierced and distended lower lips.

My own interests lie more in cultural events ....like the bull-jumping in the Hamer village...that take place in a real context than in an isolated cultural feature trotted out and perhaps perverted for tourists.

Mursi lip plates have deep cultural significance. Women wear them only when serving their husband within the house or for special public occasions. The rest of the time the lower lips hang plateless and slack. What the Mursi trot out for visitors is tourist fantasy. One old woman has a large plate painted with a white pattern to attract attention. Some of the kids and younger folk have concocted elaborate headpieces and accessories that may or may not have any cultural reality. They know what sells: lip plates, bare breasts, boar's teeth. It's 25 cents per shot for adults; kids are discounted to 15 cents.

The men accessorize with AK-47s.

Fully loaded AK -47s. Birhanu checked.

The women are nude above the waist and leather-skirted. Traditionally the men eschew any cover except for a length of material over one shoulder and down across their body. Many still do in the fields. We saw them. Tall, linear, they are like ebony pen strokes in this chromatic landscape. In the village we visit they wrap the cloth around their chests, covered from chest to calf. Birhanu says that is normal village dress.

The AK-47s are on every shoulder.

We negotiate, take some photos. I pick one guy who has made steely eye contact , snap and give him a print. The steely eyes don't change.

When it becomes clear that no more photo money is forthcoming, kids, especially, get a bit grabby and aggressive.

It's time to go.

The Mursi live a difficult life. Tourists are their only source of income. The Mursi provide a hint of their culture, service a B movie inspired fantasy, and add a dash of potential danger. The product sells. Its undeniably colorful and interesting, but it tells me more about tourist fantasies than Mursi cultural realities.

In the afternoon we drive to the market in Qaqo. It's real, filled with Benna, Aari, and Tsamay peoples, produce, clothing; the stuff of life. I spot two young blades, birds of paradise for sure and wonderfully accessorized, debating the purchase of a radio. It's a great shot. Only later when I review my photos do I notice they are in mini-sarongs, one a half a millimeter (max) this side of Full Disclosure. And that's while standing. Still.

We four males appreciate the logistical problems involved in any other activity. Menge and Birhanu just laugh and shake their heads.

The day ends, as our days usually do, over soft drinks, a review of the day and a plan for tomorrow. We'll meet a king.

Day 35 - December 9 - We meet a king

We're snake roading north, up and down across the corrugated landscape, dipping down into, crossing and then climbing out of landscapes of different colors and vegetation. Too steep for farming or cattle, the valleys are rustling green canyons. Coming out of one we drop into a fertile trough between corrugations and onto farmland. Oxen and goats join us on the road, then a slow moving patience of donkeys, sad eyes cast down onto the road.

We pass a village of see-through stick houses casting stark and striped shadows on a flat savanna plain. Piles of sticks are for sale along the road. House kits or firewood? Just beyond the village, a guy in red shorts runs down the hillside towards us. On six foot stilts. We're used to kids dancing on the roadside to get our attention (one did the most painful looking jump splits), perhaps a photo and a tip or plastic bottle, but the stilts are a new and inventive wrinkle.

Walkers respond to our waves with one of their own, a smile, an up tilt of the jaw or eyebrows or all four.

In this sere landscape desert roses bloom in solitary pink bouquets, robust versions of their potted cousins in Florida. Roadside sellers hold up strings of balled incense, fragrances for church or coffee shop. A lone meerkat, perhaps the most colony-minded of small mammals, skitters frantically across the road, dangerously exposed to birds of prey, safety close by under the bushes by the road side.

Ethiopian roads don't permit boredom!

The road rises into a cooler more gentle agricultural landscape. Sorghum terraces stripe the slopes. Round straw-roofed tukuls, for living or storage, ride the ridges. Different flowers, yellow or pink/purple this time, line the road. The women's blouses and skirts are voluminous, ruffled, layered, flouncy. The men opt for soccer shirts, usually the yellow and green of the national team, and shorts, blue and white horizontal stripes the favorite. Today's trip is a gazette of Ethiopia's landscapes and cultures.

Just as we're discussing why the Southern tribal women wear goat skins and the men fabric sarongs (and other clothing changes), we pass several men wearing just a shoulder scarf and very mini bikini briefs. Five years ago they did wear leather, says Birhanu.. A few years before that they wore nothing. (I don't know where the bikini briefs fit in this sequence). I wonder whether pressure from tourists, the government, the evangelical bigots, or simply exposure to other values figure into the changes.

The Kanta Lodge is perhaps the most beautiful we have ever stayed in. Anywhere. High on a mountain overlooking deep and distant valleys, it is upholstered with flowers. Bougainvillea in crimson, white, yellow, orange, and shade in between, red firecracker plant , blue plumbago, pink geraniums, yellow and orange honeysuckle, coleus, vinca, lantana tumble over and around the rock walls and walkways. The individual lodges are spacious round straw and bamboo tukuls updated with stone, plaster and tile.
We sit in the shade of a huge tree and sip swirled orange and green papaya/ avocado drinks. Our breezes are cool. Out over the valleys there must be warm thermals rising because wide winged eagles spiral slowly upwards without a wing beat to our level, seemingly miles above the valleys below.

If a restaurant has a menu in English....and, like this one, most do...the menus look the same (and I suspect are mass produced) and offer much the same list of dishes: pasta or rice with veggies, tomato, tuna, or Bolognese ( spelling open for variation), some Ethiopian dishes, labeled 'national' or 'traditional', with or without meat (for fasting days), soups (tomato, vegetable, potato, minestrone), and various pizzas. There may be sandwiches (egg, tuna, burgers), salads (tomato, chicken, tuna). On the menu, yes. Available from the kitchen? Frequently not. Vegetable soup ( always good) is usually on tap, as are egg sandwiches, tomato salad, veggie spaghetti or rice, all good choices. 'Traditional' food is also always available and good.

Clearly, eating is not a problem.

Neither are the libations. The several brands of Ethiopian beer are very fine. Soft drinks (Sprite, the two Colas, Fanta, sometimes the overly sweet orange colored Mirinda, and, occasionally, Schweppes quinine water) and not-to-be-missed fruit juices (papaya and banana always available this season, avocado and mango sometimes) are cool alternatives to the faaaaabulous Ethiopian coffee, always served hot, in small cups, and with or without milk.

Today the only soup is one not on the menu: pumpkin. I opt for a 'national' dish: red ground garbanzo beans, a spicier version of the shiroo, vegetarian food for the 2 fasting days a week when Orthodox avoid meat. It's delicious.

The waiter is straight from Central Casting. Tall? Check. Dark? Check. Handsome? Check. Check. Check...and chalk up another win...a BIG win.. .for the human gene pool. I do keep on about how beautiful the women are, but the truth is the men are their match. I should have a picture for the ladies, but I have not had much luck photographing the glorious skin tones and faces of either gender. My photos seem harsh. Only kids put up with my rearrangings to find the even lighting that is fair to skin tones and facial planes.

Ombore, our guide for the Kamole village of the Konso people, hops into the car and we're off to visit a hilltop village. High in the cool mountains, the Konso build stone walled terraces for their crops on slopes that would seem at best unpromising locations for agriculture, at worst hostile. They have succeeded for roughly a thousand years. The terraces are unique in Africa. They, the walled villages of the Konso and still intact culture have collectively been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Konsu villages and living compounds reveal a more violent past. Two or three concentric walls, with only a few gates, surround each village. A single wall surrounds each living compound. The family animals live in the compound and share it with a variety of staple crops. Under siege, the village can survive a long time. Sieges are in the past. The patterns remain.

That's also true of their artistic and complex governmental and religious systems, additional reasons for the UNESCO designation.

The Konso practice of carving and erecting figurative wooden memorial poles over the graves of kings, chiefs, community heroes (and their wives) is the reason Konso cultural artifacts have been raided and stolen by dealers and collectors. The carvings are evocative and powerful images of deep religious significance to Konso. They are not objects d'art for the delectation of outsiders who see only the surface beauty and not the ritual power. The Konso believe that once removed from the burial site the poles lose significance and power. More significantly they can't be replaced. The burial site remains unmarked and lost, so removal is an act of grave violence.

Stolen poles have been recovered by the government but can no longer be placed back on the graves. To the Konso, the connection to the memorialized person has been irretrievably broken and lost.

Retrieved poles are now the centerpiece of the excellent Konso cultural museum (which we see the next day).

Stones polished by generations of sitters ring one of the several meeting houses in the village. Two stories tall, wall less on the first and tightly sealed on the second, it's a shaded place to hang out during the day. At night it's where the unmarried men and boys sleep. Married men should spend part of the night at least. In a more unpredictable age a way to have defensive forces at the ready in case of attack, now it may be a way to have a good party.

Our guide, himself a converted Protestant, tells us that half the population still practices the traditional religion. The evangelical Protestants came from Iceland and Norway 50 years ago. The best thing about this? Medical care and schools. The worst? 'They burn our jewelry and clothes because they are from Satan'...but they only do that if we invite them to do it. The behavior of the evangelicals makes a good case for the existence of evil.

Cultural and ecological protection and conservation are our biggest challenges, says the King.

We're sitting in one of the village meeting houses where the King has joined us. Eldest son of the previous ruler, he has been King for a decade. University educated, articulate and fluent in sophisticated and nuanced English, he worked as a civil engineer in Addis before returning to Konsu to reign.

But', he adds, 'I can't please everyone'.

'Everyone' is several hundred thousand Konso, belonging to nine clans living in nine villages.

Under the King are chiefs for each village. They serve for 18 years and are then replaced. On selection, each chief erects a tall pole in the village ceremonial plaza. Count the poles, multiply by 18, and that's how old the village is....but old poles decay and disappear. We count. There are 22 poles still standing in Kabole. Do the math. The village is at least 396 years old.

It's a cool and green place. Huge trees arc over the narrow rock- walled paths from inside the family compounds. A goat bleats. We peek through the narrow gateway and see the goat, several round huts, clothes hung to dry, a jumble of farming equipment. Nearby a weaver is creating bright stripes in wool. His picture...or rather the loom's picture... costs me 25 cents. His wife, spinning thread behind him, is a bonus.

Day 36 - December 10- New York, New York

At 3 or 3:30 we are awakened by chanting broadcast through the night's silence by loud speaker. It goes on for hours. Sleep is fitful from then until we finally get up about 6.

'It's the Protestants', says Movie Star Waiter at breakfast. 'We like it when the electricity goes out. We sleep better'.

Today we go to New York....and maybe 'Obama's house'. The fabled city turns out to be a deep gorge with spectacular pinnacles eroded out of the red ochre earth, skyscrapers indeed. I can't quite make out 'Obama's house', but am content to enjoy the view.

It's a quite beautiful and evocative place, quiet for a few seconds before the Hello/Hallo Chorus arrives. Some of the chorus members have things in offer: pieces of clear or green quartz, a demonstration of how to scrape fiber from the sisal plant and twist it into rope, or a dance. They persist, we desist. They target Birhanu, who keeps them entertained while we contemplate this abyss and its geology lesson in silence. I walk out on a narrow peninsula, depths cascading on both sides. New York is at my feet. Liza Minnelli, eat your heart out.

We move from natural landscape to a cultural one at the lovely stone Konso Museum. This is where the kidnapped wooden grave images are safely stored. Ripped from the graves by the original thieves, they have lost their deep spiritual power for the Konso, but we can appreciate the surface power of the images. We walk through once, then again, returning to a few of the images for another dose of their potency. Excellent and anthropologically sophisticated explanations of these objects, and of a carefully displayed and limited collection of Konso daily use items, provide just enough scale and depth to keep us interested...but not overwhelmed. This museum is a winner.

It also solves a mini-mystery. I've noticed a lot of guys wearing blue tee shirts that shout Samsung or Emirate Airlines, and knee length blue striped shorts...the same shorts on display in the.museum...and on Ombore. Blue, he says, is an important color to us. It is the color of peace.

We stop for good bunna at the Edget Hotel, very budget at $10 a night, cold (bucket?) shower included.

'Here starts gravel road', grins the eternally cheerful Menge. Gravel it is, but smooth and comfortable, providing only a 'medium African massage.' A troop of adolescent girl herders seem unusually assertive about not moving their charges from the road until Birhanu moves to exit the car. The girls scatter, pushing and pummeling the herd out of the way.

'This is Oromo Region' , says Birhanu as we turn onto another road. Sure enough we see women in brilliant colors. It has been a while since we left the South, world of birds of paradise and peacocks and we miss the color. Peacocks behind us, we enter the world of female butterflies.

It's a straight dusty road across a flat, hot, and dusty savanna. Flat topped acacia trees and tall red termite mounds anthills stretch endlessly. Thus is quintessential Africa.

We take a break to stretch in the shade of an acacia. It is quiet except for the beat of traditional music from the car radio, an even better road trip companion than the country and western odes about weak- willed men and easy women named Linda. In the distance I see what I think is a dust devil churning up the dust. Then four legs stick up out of the whirl of dust, a donkey having a good roll and dust bath.

Soon the landscape changes again and we return to fields mowed by grazers into garden like smoothness until they bump into hills, again soft green chenille bedspreads.

Menge asks for some more 'Italian language'. I trade him 'andiamo' for Amharic 'needt'. It's a 'go' for both of us. And go we do.

By mid afternoon, a short travel day, we are in Yabello. It's a pretty town with palms down center of the road, lots of flowers, and an open feel. We'll be here two nights, maybe three.

The Yabelo Motel is nice enough, but it charges $65. Birhanu bargains down to $60, still outrageous for anywhere in Ethiopia. Breakfast is not included. We all feel thoroughly fleeced. The only game in town plays with high stakes.

There is, however, the courtyard. Its shade trees, fuchsia hollyhocks (years since I last saw them along the Maine coast), pink and white vincas, here substantial bushes, orange thingamajigs, yellow whatsits, red geraniums invite a long sit. The breeze is cool, with a hint, I think, of plumeria, so faint and only now and then, I may be imagining it. The plonk plonk of successful side pocketed billiard balls underlies the beat of Amharic popular songs oozing out of the big garden speakers. It's a great place to hang out, and we do for the rest of the day.

First comes lunch. Wise now in the ways of the Ethiopian menu, we ask what the kitchen is willing to provide before getting our salivary glands all atwitter from the list on that semi-fictional document. Equally wise in what one serving means, Dennis and I share a veggie pizza. 'Vegetable pizza' here is a creatively constructed flat cornucopia of whatever is in season. Ours has cabbage, potatoes, onion, peppers, tomatoes, all fresh, all delicious, all at home and comfortable on a pizza, thank you very much. It fills us, with a bonus piece leftover. Menge and Birhanu have fasting food, injera for Menge, bread for Birhanu, soft drinks all around.

A very pregnant and low-slung ginger cat waddles by and makes her plea for scraps. (I'm no expert on feline fecundity, but I guess she's due for quite a pile of mewing little fur balls...and soon.)
Dennis showers and naps. I hang out under the tree and work on long neglected daily entries to upload for the blog. It will be days before we have any Internet access. My overstuffed brain cells need serious unpacking. Now. I'm grateful for the breeze and time.
A bunna break for all four of us costs 80 cents.
We sit past dusk into the dark. A cold St. George beer subs for dinner as we plan tomorrow's schedule. We leave the option open for the long and steep hike down (and back up) a volcanic crater to Chew Bet, a lake of black salt, but doubt we'll do it. The Singing Wells will follow, then, if we nix the hike, the Wildlife Preserve. Tomorrow signed, sealed, but yet to be delivered, we end a very fine day.

Day 37- December 11 - Birhanu turns 30 and A Walk on The Wild Side

We leave at 7. The air is cool, the distant mountains blue in the haze, bare stone outcroppings side lit and tinted orange by the low sun. The asphalt road is flat and straight across the wooded savanna. Acacia trees stretch upwards out of the grass and into the sunlight casting long shadows. A herd of camels, immense legs doubled by shadow ripple through the grass. There are already walkers along the road, carrying the loads of a rural life through a landscape as big as the sky. Morning in Africa.

As the day unfolds in this compelling place I think: in Africa people live in the land, and with the land, partners, the land free. In Asia people live on top of the land subduing it, the land held captive.

We drive across what I see as flat savanna and stop in the oddest place. The houses are sprouting grass. I have never seen sod roofs before, but they're an obvious insulating solution in a climate with such a cruel sun.

Birhanu leads us across the road. The world drops away into a great gaping volcanic maw. My 'flat' savanna is the gentle slope of an immense extinct volcano. Ancient and weathered, green covered and fertile, the walls narrow and drop, drop, drop to one of Africa's oddest sights: the black salt lake of Chew Bet. Ringed with green grass, the circular lake is an immense pupil staring up past us and into the sky.

The black salt is a wet ooze harvested by men and hauled in suppurating bags up the steep walls by donkeys. It's used for animals, for cattle here in Ethiopia, for camels in Kenya a 100 kilometers away. In the dry season the salt turns white. The geology/chemistry of this eludes me. I wet a finger, dip, and taste the white version. It's certainly salty. And so caustic that the men who mine it have about 10 years before their eyes, ears, nose, mouth develop problems.

The path down to the lake is walkable but steep and long. Right Knee, always a nag, pipes up: Forget it! Not a chance... if you want me around for the rest of the trip. We listen. The salt workers make 4 or 5 round trips a day. Every day. For years. Ten years, anyway.

There are fees for everything, including just staring over the edge. Birhanu pays. Kids offer to sell us the same brass bracelets we've seen everywhere (and which I bought in Konso), prefaced with the usual What's your name-where you come from-Obama chorus.

Adult men spread a blanket covered with clay vessels and other daily use items, mostly interesting and attractive, of the surrounding Borena people. They are a little more insistent than most. We don't mind. It's their business and they surely don't get many potential customers.

But , they should. Nearby is another Ethiopian wonder, again made so by the extraordinary human effort and time involved: the singing wells of the Borena people.

Abushiro is our guide.

In a country with distinct wet and dry seasons and a dependence on herds of cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys, mules some way to store water is central to survival. The singing wells are a backbreaking solution. The wells are 30 meters deep...about 100 feet. Hand dug. The top of the well is about 50 feet below the surface dust. A long sloping channel hundreds of feet long...hand dug... leads down to a pond. Also hand dug. Animals walk down the channel to drink at the pond. A dozen men climb down into the well and, bucket by bucket, lift the water up over their heads and pass an empty bucket down the chain, a human vertical water wheel a hundred feet tall . The last link pours his bucket into the pond . The animals drink.

Such is the description. The reality is extraordinary.

We come soon after the wet season. The pond is adequate. The water in the well is only about ten feet below the top edge of the well. Two men will do. One is a boy. With the ease about nudity common here, the man strips, changes into his work clothes, dusty shorts. The boy climbs down into the well, fills his bucket passes it over his head to the man who passes his empty bucket back down. They do this quickly, with twisting and swirling grace. And rhythmically. Even with just two, the rhythm is important. And, deep in the earth the men chant their rhythm. The chant rises up into the dust. The wells sing.

We don't understand the words but lay on to them a meaning the chant creates for us, deeper than words.

Goats walk down the channel and drink.

On the way back to Yabello we see men along the road waving their arms in a sort of dusty Tai Chi. 'Contraband', says Birhanu, , available in the bushes, straight from Kenya, 60 miles south. These semaphoring sellers offer one stop shopping in the bush... at a real country store! And under Bush 3 we're offerings computer chips and cotton shorts. And maybe a Samsung 32 inch Flat screen TV, all freshly fallen off the back of a camel. It's too much to hope for cappuccino, now Our Great Quest. We drive on.

Later in the afternoon we stroll through acacia saplings in the wildlife sanctuary. Birders flock here, binoculars all atwitter, to check off an endemic Bush Crow that exists only here. Nattily done up in white and black, with ecumenical 3 level black and white skull caps/yarmulkes/tonsures it neither resembles nor sounds like any member of that noisy crowd I have ever seen. It does strut like a crow though, making it easy to spot. I prefer the Splendid Starlings, red breasted Robins in coats of iridescent peacock blue silk, among the loveliest of all African birds and widespread and common as flies, though vastly more appreciated.

The scrub savanna is yellowed and side lit by the late afternoon sun, the shadows flipped from this morning. Some may contain zebras. Three zebras cooperate, briefly, staring in that frozen face-off pose, stripes broadside in full black and white flame, Mohawk bristling, tail swishing. Then, whoosh, they disappear.

Okotu, our park guide, apologizes, disappointed we haven't spotted kudu or oryx. We've been walking freely in the savanna, blue-ringed by misty mountains, sepia washed by late sunlight on a perfect late afternoon. In Ethiopia. Disappointment has no place here.

As we drive back, Ethiopians women reveal yet another surprise from their closet. They all wrap in rich, dark stripes of red, blue, and magenta shot through with silvery threads that bubble light from all that rich darkness.

We arrange carryout box lunches for tomorrow's long and restaurant-less drive. After a few meals here we know the routine: 1) we order what we want, 2) the unsmiling waiter hears what he wants, 3) the kitchen prepares what it wants.

This makes mealtime a bit of a roulette game, with the waiter as culinary croupier. The results are always tasty, so we always win. We can deal with those odds. Tomorrow will tell how we do with the lunch box orders. Birhanu finds some bananas to go with whatever tasty surprises turn up when we unpack them.

It's Birhanu's 30th birthday and we want to do something special.

Birthday bunna or birthday macchiato? Dinner and drinks are on us, we say. Not so easy, it turns out. We order. The waiter wanders off, returns. Much discussion follows in Amharic. I catch 'yellem' (not, do not have, does not exist, dream on) and a glance and chin point across the courtyard to a horde of German and French tourists. I get the message, confirmed by Birhanu. They have beaten us to the menu. The kitchen has been stripped, even of my soup, of all soup. I am not hungry anyway. Dennis switches orders to the always available pasta with the always available veggies. The guys share injera. with meat. Cold beer for us and cold Miranda and Cola sub for congratulatory birthday champagne. Short on candles we put our head lights on blink--- and on the table --- and sing a verse of the universal song.

We gift the birthday boy with our multi-colored luggage strap and instructions how he can use it to tie up difficult clients.

Then he drops his little bomb: his girlfriend has called to wish him happy birthday…and just told him he is going to be a father.

(Note: son was born in July, 2015:

Day 38 - December 12 - African Massage and Nogele-Borena

The morning is cold. Newly 30, still looking half a decade younger, Birhanu. shivers as he drinks his ' shai', hot tea. Today is a long 400 kilometer drive, first in a short loop southward on asphalt, then on gravel northward, African Massage included free of charge. Box lunches and 'muz', bananas are on the menu.
We go back past the salt lake and its village of sod roof houses, and then we are in are in new territory for 8 hours. We see 3 other cars the whole time.
This is Africa. There is always something. A flurry of ostriches come first, then a whoosh and disappearing bounce of dik-diks. The sandy coats of an arrogance of camels catches the low morning light. Guinea Fowl run, confused, back and forth across the road. It's what they do best. There is so little traffic on this road that termites have claimed part of it and erected skyscrapers. The termite hills are taller here, way over our height, pushing ten feet, orange-red pinnacles against the blue sky.
The road is an ochre compass needle through the flat green, straight, but rough. Five hours in, we stop, seek shade in a grove of acacias, and open our lunch boxes, ready for the latest surprise from our culinary croupier. And we are surprised: egg sandwiches---just as ordered last night---sit there in abundant tastiness. 'Hah', they smirk. The rice and veggie side dish goes down messily. Someday soon we'll get the hang of eating gracefully with our fingers. It's all delicious with a warm water chaser and sweet banana for dessert.
We bounce on, pass a few Borena sod roof villages where people stare instead of wave. 7 hours in and the road rises in altitude and drops in quality. There isn't enough traffic to create potholes. The rainy season creates run-off rivulets that become gullies, ditches almost. Menge navigates this dusty corduroy with great twists of his shoulders. My fillings survive. I doubt even a 4x4 will during the rainy season when the dry creek and river beds we safely cross now are muddy torrents.
Though they seem far on the map, Kenya and the pieces of defunct Somalia are 'close' on the immense scale of Africa. From Kenya come contraband goods. From Somalia come refugees or people for whom national borders are someone else's imaginings. A town like Hudet is the result. Orono women are layered in multi-colored shawls and wraps. The Somalis, only their faces visible, sail alongside in the great swirls of the solid color glory---lilac, aqua, saffron, terracotta---of their robes. A dog yawns in the shade. A pile of black faced sheep hold a meeting mid road, blank-eyed and oblivious.
Later, a lone cycle, stirring and eating dust, bounces by, a bucking Yamaha bronco on this road. Along the road power lines appear. Thin wooden poles, vertical in intent, angled in fact, explain the wobbly electrical supply. More hints appear that we're approaching Nogele Borena and the end of this long day. The first bajajis wheeze by. Horse-drawn carts clip-clop. more slowly. The town has a nice friendly laid back vibe. Cobblestone streets connect the pretty main drag with dusty lanes and our hotel. There is only a double-bedded room available. The hotel relaxes the law that bans two people of the same gender from sharing a bed. The hot shower feels good after our 9 hour African massage.
We use the time before we meet the guys for dinner to wander out and down the dusty road. Two guys stop, ask us where we're from and give us the Ethiopian hello shoulder bump. Women in stunning solid color robes glide through the dust.
On the way to the Nile Hotel for dinner we drive up to a bajaji stalled mid road. Menge beeps. Out flow 2 women swirling in their robes and laughing as they start to push the recalcitrant vehicle down the road. There is always something to watch.
In the courtyard of the Nile Hotel, beer for us, Sprite for the guys, and loudspeaker music for everyone softens the end of the day.

Day 39- December 13 - To The Roof of Africa -Senneti and Bale-Goba.

'20 kilometers asphalt then African Massage' says Menge at 7:30. Nine or ten hours of African massage follow.

Much of the road is as sinuous and rolling as yesterday's was compass needle straight and flat. The landscape looks familiar to transplanted New Englanders. The ten foot termite mounds, thatched tukuls and color wrench us back to this road Back of Beyond in Ethiopia. Below us in the Genale River (second biggest and tributary to the Nile) women wash clothes.

The land tilts upwards, its surface all crests and troughs, ripples from the great tsunami of the Bale Mountains many miles and hours ahead. As we move northward and higher, riding the crests and sinking into the troughs, the bottoms of the troughs are higher than the crests we climbed earlier today, now far to the south.

We go for hours and see no 4 wheeled vehicles. Buses are intermittent, or wishful thinking here, Back of Beyond. Rare motorcycle owners spin into the gap, selling space to 2 passengers, all three of them sardined and bouncing through the dust.
I wonder how they negotiate the muddy river bed we cross only after Menge gets out to check the tire pressure. He gets back in, pats the dashboard and says: I sorry, my car.

After hours of riding, absorbed in the distant landscape, we get to the village/almost town of Dola Mena and are sucked instantly into the churning life around us. We skirt goats and donkeys. A woman on a ladder is smearing wet red earth on her house; where dry it turns a rich terracotta. Other houses sprout out of the dust in aqua, brilliant pink (and the purple that is its frequent partner), olive, sometimes as solids but often in stripes, chevrons, scallops, and occasionally a free-form 'what the hell, why not' playfulness. Like every village we pass through, Dola Mena bustles.
Then, it hits me. There are crowds of kids everywhere. In Florida we never see crowds of young people or kids just doing young people or kid things.(Maybe in the malls? Not our environment!) Here there are young people and kids everywhere, herding goats, hauling water, slamming the net on road side ping-pong tables, kicking real or make-shift soccer balls, chasing the foreigners' car asking for plastic, or just waving and smiling, omnipresent. Cattle, goats, sheep, and camels here are less corralled than our kids back there. Without grandkids, our world is kidless. I'm luckier than most. 'Supering' at the opera I have met the cream of our young crop. The two Alexes and Isabella alone make me feel a lot better about our future. (Alex K., if you're reading this, stand up and take a bow!)
Birhanu finds a hotel with electricity and a refrigerator, unpacks our box lunch, and introduces us to the friendly, English speaking owner. Cold cola goes down so sweetly with the inevitable and tasty egg sandwiches. We sit in the shade, the only farangis for many, many kilometers. People wave. There is no hello/hullo chorus, but one kid, the hotel gofer, sidles closer and closer, propelled by the standard issue Ethiopian megawatt smile. In a few minutes he's hanging over my shoulder imitating my taps on this screen. He whispers the magic word: 'money'. I shake my head, he fake pouts, smiles (wattage reduced), and goes back to gofering. The expectation that foreigners will give money has been created by tourists who do hand out money to kids, and, perhaps, by aid agencies that seem to have unlimited supplies of the stuff.
The driver and passengers of a large truck have been friendly table neighbors for a while. Now they unpack several huge plastic bags of chat, the weed that satisfies. Dealers? Probably. Users? Definitely. As they chomp, I consider that their afternoon drive may be more fun for them than for any other vehicles on the road.

We have a long lunch break to give Menge a chance for a 'small sleep' and a wash. We climb back into the car, refreshed. The real and beaming smiles of Menge and Birhanu, energy enough for the rest of the trip.

Suddenly, we are in a leafy canyon with walls of immense trees and vines, a landscape familiar to anyone who has seen Jurassic Park, the road the only break in the green: the Harenna Forest, an ecological wonder home, to 1600 species of plants, and even the black-maned lions. Miles ahead and thousands of feet above looms the massive escarpment of the Senneti Plateau. We snake up the face of the wall of rock, passing out of tropical Jurassic Park. From an aerie we look back on the rumpled land we've just crossed and see walled village compounds, brown circles in the green, far below.
We continue to climb, pass cedar forests, and briefly half a dozen more climate and ecological zones, their reign truncated by altitude. Then we are flat again and way above the trees in Africa's only 'alpine' zone. There are higher mountain tops in Ethiopia and Africa, but at 4000 meters (13,200 feet) Senneti is the highest expanse of flat land on the continent. And we are getting our African Massage on the highest all weather road in Africa.
It looks and feels like the tundra. There is plant life here. And maybe snow? No, just low spherical bushes of white Everlasting Plant. Lichen cling to grey rocks with large red freckles, but otherwise this is a negative of the color-rich world below, and stunted. We're giants in a black and white Lilliputian world. Then, in the cold at the very top of Africa's Roof, we're dwarfed by the Giant Lobelias. These are ten foot tall stalks that rise out of clusters of sharp spike leaves, totems of cold tolerance.
Migratory birds land here.

There are many endemics, unique to the plateau. We leave the feathered folk to the birders. Four legs and red fur are what we hope to see. The Ethiopian Wolf is the rarest of all canines, and it lives only in the very high altitudes of Ethiopia. 13,200 feet qualify.

It's almost dusk, the landscape turning grey, and a wolfling, grey itself in its immature coat, coasts out of the rocks and trots/runs down the road in front of us. More fox like and smaller than its pictures, it lopes along with the purposeful gait anyone with a dog 'on the scent' will recognize. Then, he evaporates among the rocks, absorbed by a greater and dimming grayness. Dennis has a video. We ooh and ahh. And drop down off the plateau to the 'lowlands' ..still hanging 10,000 feet into the star filled sky.
Our hotel looks luxurious, promises Internet, and has a lobby filled with soccer fans, and a big TV to serve them. It's a big disconnect from the previous 10 hours. We walk to our room, time travelers.

Day 40- December 14 - Bale National Park, Mountain Nyalas Romp, Some Thoughts on Writing Systems

The huge male Olive Baboon, leaps onto the hood on Menge's side and reaches through the open window. Menge. snaps his head back and just as quickly Mr. Baboon scoots over to my side, eyes focused inside and hands ready. No dice. I swear he 'harrumphs' as he leaps from this dead end back into the dust. Another possible lunch wagon is approaching from the other direction. We drive on.
At almost 10 thousand feet, the air and light are crystalline, edges and outlines razor sharp. Today, we have another walk on the wild side. The baboon caper got us an early start.

Bale Mountain National Park drapes over many ecological zones. We're concentrating 'down' here at 10,000 feet where the most diverse communities co-exist. Our guide is the laconic, laid-back, Teruhan. (More on that vastly erroneous description tomorrow.) He's a former soldier with the Communist DERG party that ruled Ethiopia in the past, now a naturalist with an encyclopedic involvement with Bale's fauna and flora. Horse? (No way, say The Hips and Butt, not after The Crazy Camel Catastrophe. Walk? Car? How about a combo of our legs and the car's wheels?

Dropped off in the open savanna, within minutes of leaving the car we stop a magnificent male Mountain Nyala antelope in his tracks. He watches us...and his flock of females and young...as we watch him. We have the much better deal. A handsome roan color with distinctive white and black markings over their deer-sized, muscled bodies, and with curving horns that match their sleekness, male Nyalas are the movie stars of the antelope clan. The females are less lavishly gifted, but still lovely.

We move on passing smaller Red Buck antelopes, Warthogs, and the ubiquitous baboons. The latter ignore us. The Warthogs are on their front knees, eating. The Red Bucks watch, wait, wander. We move through the grass, one group of animals among many.

Fauna gives way to flora on our afternoon walk through a forest mostly dominated by juniper trees. Good for gin says Teruhan. A massive wooden column soars up many stories to a canopy of red flowers, pendant like huge two foot long lilacs. Good for tapeworm. Another tree is good for blood pressure. Every village has a few people who know the forest and its bounty. There's no need for pills when you have potions. At least the sick have access to the potions.

The late afternoon road has a double surprise: lots of horses, rare in most other places in Africa, and their riders: women on horseback, their robes fully inflated and in full sail, only faces revealed.
We notice signs in the Roman alphabet, medium for Oromo, the major language of this part of Ethiopia. The words are rich with doubled vowels and consonants: Faashinii. ( fashion) Meeshaalee. (Material), kaaffee. (Cafe), and our favorites: Giiroossaarrii (grocery), and Yuunivarsitii. Kolleejjii Paaradaayiz. Vaalii.( Paradise Valley University College). Bookkeeping must be a popular subject.
Searching these clusters of orthographic Siamese twins, strung like beads, a necklace of yet another linguistic adventure, entertains us, like those car games we played as kids on long drives. I don't see any 'J'. Perhaps, like Italian, they've dropped that specialized soft baby for the more useful and adaptable 'G', hard or soft as needed. Then I see some, theory destroyed by fact.
Writing systems, ways to make sounds visible, fascinate me. They have such distinctive looks. Amharic is all masculine and energetic tube dudes, voguing in long lines. Chinese characters are individual dancers, self-contained, each a semantic world in itself. Arabic, the most sinuously feminine of scripts, flows across the page in intertwined ribbons of meaning.
Tomorrow is a big day, a highlight in more ways than one. We will go up into the sky to look for the Ethiopian Wolf.

Day 41 - December 15 - Tea at Four.....thousand meters

Speaking and arm semaphoring at twice the speed of a hysterical Italian, our guide, yesterday's quiet and lethargic Teruhan, gives us an up close and personal lesson in the effects of chat, Ethiopia's leafy chew of choice. It would be an impressive performance anywhere. Inside the car it's explosive, but very, very funny. Menge looks over at me and laughs. We learn a new meaning for 'chatty'. Our day has been jump started.

We drive through Bale Goba and Bale. Robe, twin towns near the Park. Both are airy and friendly. A guy stops at the car to ask how we like Ethiopia, beams at our answers.
At 3700 meters ( 12,300 feet) we leave the last big trees below us. White balls of Everlasting Flower take over, soft companions to lichen freckled grey rocks. At 3750 meters, Giant Lobelia appear. Improbable substitutes for trees, they live successfully in a narrow niche, theirs alone. Above their narrow swath is the 4000-plus meter afro-alpine flatness, Africa's roof.
Teruhan's monologue takes a focused turn when he spots the corpse of a large hare mid-road. He calls down to the gate asking them to check wheels of all vehicles for traces of the hare. He is upset and angry at a pointless death.
We drive slowly. Then, Menge spots it right near the road: a spectacular adult Ethiopian Wolf. It's digging at the ground, probably after a Mole Rat, its usual munchy. Unlike the grey immature wolf we saw yesterday this one is a rich russet color, a handsome, graceful animal that looks more jackal or fox than wolf. Discovered in 1959, its superficial resemblance to those canines confused science. DNA proved it a wolf. Its closest relative is the huge European Grey Wolf, both probably descendants of a more widespread, but now extinct, ancestor.
There are only 600 left in the world, spread over 10 populations in the mountains of Ethiopia. Most of those clusters may be too small to be successful breeding populations. Here at Bale there are 200, endangered, rare, but accessible.
We watch this lovely animal scrape unsuccessfully for its dinner. It ignores us, then trots off to do wolf things. We stare after it a long time, holding on to this glimpse of wildness.

At the research station, we squat on a tarp or sit on rocks and have our afternoon tea at 4....thousand meters. One guy can't believe we can survive at 3 meters in Florida. He's sure the air would be too heavy.

Teruhan has slipped into his afternoon chat lethargy. The trip downwards into the trees is much more quiet than the trip upwards as we review our photos of the wolf. Dennis discovers he has deleted the earlier video of the grey immature wolf teenager. Today's is much better, a memory jogger, but only that.

Back at the hotel I sit outside in the sun catching up on the blogs. Over the loudspeaker is the classic rendition of that great song, 'Darling, You Send Me.'
Yes, Ethiopia, you send me.

Day 42- December 16 - Wabi Gorge, a lovely gesture, and a really big bird

Teruhan has promised us landscape today. He arrives in a whirlwind of greetings, delivered double-speed, a flurry of guidebooks and flapping arms. The car can barely contain this energy.
We pass small holdings separated from one another and the road by living fences of cactuses. Behind the prickly barrier we see people tossing grain into the air, winnowing by wind power. Then we see huge expanses of golden crops with no dividers, no small fields interspersed in other colors . Agribusiness has arrived in Ethiopia. The fields are Kansan in size, flatness and fertility.
Mono-minareted and square mosques, brightly painted, define the area as predominantly Moslem, but we see few women who are completely covered. We're not in Kansas.
Teruhan leads Menge and the car down a side road, bounces out, leading us through a field of ripening wheat. Yellow flowers intermix with the wheat for a while then yield to the bright blue of flax flowers and tiny orange butterflies. The surface of the wheat ripples in waves. It is totally silent. We crest a hill and wheat yields to an immense space, the Wabi Gorge of the Shebele River. Teruhan tells us the drop to the tinsel thin river below us is only 500 meters (1650 feet), but it looks like miles.
On our way back to the car and Menge, we walk through green fields of pod beans, picking as we go, squeezing the fat and sweet beans out of their smooth pods. In the distance we see two figures harvesting the same beans. Teruhan greets them and offers Birr for our purloined pods. Shaking his head, the young man roots up an armful of plants and gives them to us. We appreciate the gesture, one that remains with us. His young wife....I guess her to be a teenager...joins him. We offer to take their picture. He poses, putting his arm around his wife, drawing her close, an unforgettable image far richer in our memories than in the flat photograph we leave with them.
As we walk away they go back to their harvest, two bent specks in the vastness of their fields.
There is more to the gorge. We drive to yet another eye-stretching vista. Here two kids remind Birhanu of the sad story of these precipices. A girl and her lover elope with the help of friends, running from her father's wrath. Three of them make a wrong turn in the dark and plunge into the valley. Of such stuff legends are made. This one Is only 8 years old. Embellishments are yet to come and inevitable.
Bunna calls. While we recall the Donna Summers look alike Bunna Queen from a few weeks ago, we pull up the squat stools of our Bunna Lady, turn, and there she is, Oprah Winfrey, younger by a few years, dishing coffee in the dust of Gasara, Ethiopia for 20 cents a cup. Then we hear a distinctly American accented 'Hi', turn again and are greeted by a clean cut, blond, early 20 something, right out of Kansas. Not quite, says Trey, Peace Corps Volunteer having a 'real Peace Corps' experience' in very rural Ethiopia. Seven months into a two year solitary assignment he might be joined by another PCV sometime. Right now he is on his own, and encouraged by the villagers' receptiveness to his work. Teaching English is only a small part of it. His bunna is on us.
As we walk to the car, a little boy no more than 3 or 4 walks up to us and shakes hands. Ethiopia can be completely disarming.
We're about to drive off. A kid runs up to us, laughing, and says 'where's the cow?' The what? Then Teruhan unleashes a double- speed explanation. The kid had seen him chewing chat and told him he looked like a cow chewing. Then he couldn't pass up the chance to try out his English on us, thus: where's the cow? Trey and the Peace Corps can be proud.
As we drive back through herds of cattle, goats, sheep, something clicks: trailing many of the individual herders is a dog. Most dogs I have seen in Africa are not pets or attached to anyone. They shy away from people, are ignored (even by the other animals), neither expecting nor given attention or affection. Mostly they lie in the dust. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone pet one of these village dogs. The dogs I see today are clearly with someone, following close behind, tails upright, canine body language for 'I'm fine, thanks, and this is MY territory.' I admit a weakness for all the canine family. I'm glad to see some dogs finding a spot in the human scheme of things.
Teruhan has ratcheted down from his a.m. double speed to his p.m. half speed. His eyes remain sharp. He spots birds when all we see is fields and trees. Even we can't miss the lammergeyer, a kind of vulture. This is a big beast, close to the maximum weight that wings can support, even its 10 foot wing span. It has a specialty: carrying bones high into the air, the lammergeyer drops them, and eats the fragments. Now, this is a bird worth watching.
Back at the hotel we say goodbye to Teruhan and Dennis slips him a tip. He palms it, too well-mannered to look at it, thanks us, waves goodbye at half speed and walks away. Then we hear him laugh. Stay tuned.

Day 43- December 17 - To Awassa - No more African Massage, Rastas, and A Laugh Explained

This Is the beginning of the end of our trip, 40 days and 10,000 kilometers (6,600 miles) long. From here, its clear sailing on asphalt to Awassa, a day there, laid back by its lake, another day on the asphalt to Addis, a final day there in the museums and then...goodbyes. We are already feeling sad. We will miss our guys, Menge. and Birhanu. They are the best of the best, unforgettable travel companions, and have become friends and family.
With no African Massage on gravel roads to slow us down we leave at 9:30, late for us. I hang onto Ethiopia, trying to embed what I see. Colors and textures of the landscape seep into my memory today. Grey green hedges of eucalyptus drop away as we enter Bale National Park for the last time. On the left, a steep slope of dark green juniper trees, all round and smooth, cluster into a forest then thin out as the slope reaches for The Roof of Africa. On the right are flat fields gold with ripe crops, or shorn into immense tawny lawns . Above, blue reigns. In front and behind are the moving colors of the African road.
It's asphalt, but slow going. Speed bumps slow us in the Park. We don't mind. Olive Baboons and warthogs cross the road. The big male baboons are all puffed up and sold on their importance, like guys leaving a familiar bar after one drink too many on Saturday night.
The warthogs are always a puzzlement. Broad shouldered and narrow hipped they look like four-legged weight lifters...but then, the Bette Midler mincing walk shoots that image to hell. Short of leg, tusked faces already close to the ground, they kneel to eat. Yes: a puzzlement.
The dusty roads move people slowly, at a walker's or plodder's pace. This sleek asphalt is a major artery for moving goods. The intent is speed, the reality quite something else. Toyota 4 by 4s may have cornered the people mover market, but Isuzu provides the big boys that move freight . We're stuck behind one big boy slowly hogging the road and with a bad digestion problem, spewing black, oily fumes. Menge seizes the right moment, passes it, but there's another up ahead, then another and another, snail-paced up the slope and belching...no, farting...oily blackness. I prefer the dust from gravel roads.
The road climbs, slowing the trucks even more and we pass them all. It's clear sailing and clear air as we reach the tree line again, and, briefly, hang off the edge of The Roof.

We stop and walk up a short hill. Menge knows every spot on these roads. The view is endless, blurring into the haze on the horizon. Below is yet another wrecked truck, a common sight all over the country. 'Sixty oxen died in that one', says a man who suddenly appears, poof, like magic. 'Three drivers, too'. The spot doesn't look dangerous. The road climbs and curves, but gently. Chat? Could be. A truck cab filled with 3 Teruhans in full 'chatty' mode would not be a place of good decisions or careful attentions.
We start our descent, dropping through a narrow gorge. Smugglers used to hang out here, but it's safe now. We don't stop, dropping fast to the not so low lowlands.
The towns string out along the flat road. Adaba Town has the unmistakable whirr of a market-soon-to-be. Dodola does not, but has its walkers and herders so the road is busy.

With departure in front of us, everything we see becomes new again. We try to capture, hold it all. I tell myself I'll settle for a wash of impressions, a setting for a few vivid images, but, greedy, I want it all: the colors, the landscape, the smiles...all of it.
The towns unroll. Near Shashamene. is the town of Jamaica . Jamaica?
Birhanu gives us the outline of the story. The land for the town was given to the people of Jamaica by an Ethiopian ruler titled and named Ras Tafaria, better known to the world as Emperor Haile Selassie. Ras Tafaria happened to visit Jamaica during a long drought. Why? Birhanu doesn't know. It rained and the rain was attributed to Ras Tafaria. A cult developed around this belief, the Rastafarians. Eventually Emperor Haile Selassie offered land to the 'Rastas' here in Ethiopia: the town of Jamaica. Bob Marley's family visits every year.
We drive on. But I wonder about that title 'Ras', or 'King'. Could it be related to the Latin 'rex', also 'king', a hitchhiker into Amharic with Christianity? Or, maybe it's just an accidental and false cognate. There are many between and across unrelated languages, accidentally similar sounding solutions to expressing similar meanings.
We see our first traffic light in 40 days. Awassa, now officially Hawassa, but always Awassa, is a beautiful city, much of it cobble-stoned and filled with trees, huge trees that shade the streets. The soft curves of cobbles soften the harsh flatness of paved streets and fit a lake side town.
Lake Awassa, smallest of the Rift Valley lakes that slowly fill the gap created as this part of Africa continues its slow sidle away from the rest of the continent, has created here an excuse for a quiet, restful respite from the crowds and frantic pace of Addis. And provides delicious fresh tilapia.
A resort town caters to many tastes, some obvious, some not so. 'What A Burger', announces one sign. Menge, our very own Burger King perks up. 'Cafe' signs flood the car with visions of chocolate sprinkled cappuccinos. These we get, but what does 'Moroccan sauna' offer? 'Massage', another sign, brightly colored and hard to miss, offers. Menge double perks, grins, wide, wide, wide, and says 'Tomorrow, I massage Mama'. It has been a long trip!

Awassa is also a university town. Backpacks and clothing choices recognizable on any college town in the US is the standard: hoodies, impossibly low slung jeans on the hipless guys, skirts or tight slacks on the curvaceous women. Some women in more traditional garb add yards of color and a gliding elegance.
We see none of the slouching balls of blubber and erupted complexions so common on US campuses. Figures are trim. They undulate, not jiggle. Beautiful skin, from cafe au lait to deepest obsidian, is smooth and flawless.

Dinner is at a lovely resort by the lake with monkeys, Ethiopian geese, ugly voices counterpoint to their feathered beauty, cormorants, cats, and Little Snowy Egrets for companions. Menge is Medium King as he downs his immense burger. Birhanu and I are still processing those free beans from yesterday. Our dinner is veggies, with a big dash of wishful thinking.
A large, pot-bellied, pink, and sloppy Westerner struts in, grabs a chair and spreads out, legs splayed, with an unmistakable message: Look at ME. Unfortunately, we do. We have little choice. He's blocking our view. A lot of it. Unattractive in any setting, he is more so next to his companion, a beautiful Ethiopian woman half his age and girth. And with a lot more class.
If monkeys can whistle this one does as he casually saunters by, one eye on the table top and its bounty of monkey munchies. The waiter is wise to the ways of watchful whistling monkeys and shoos him away. The toothy response is not a smile. The monkey sound needs no translation for a fellow primate. I look for an up-raised middle digit.
Two tables over a young couple takes turns cell phone clicking images of one another in this lovely place. They have the look of honeymooners, and are, they say, when Dennis offers to get both of them in the same picture, a better souvenir.

Early evening breezes roughen the lake into little peaks that catch and hold the pale mauve of the sunset. As we always do, we review the day, Bluetooth photos around our phone camera circle and print our favorite Menge photos 'for Mama'. Fifty...and counting, ...he says. Then, we all go back to the morning and the solution to the mystery of Teruhan's laugh of the night before. Dennis had slipped him a tip, three new and crisp bills, not realizing they were only 5 Birr notes, a total of 75 cents tip for two and a half day's work....and chatty entertainment. His laugh was part semi-amused disbelief and part shrugged acceptance of yet another farangi mystery. Of course, he tells Birhanu, who tells Dennis. The vehicle of this correction is laughter. Dennis hands over three bills of the appropriate denominations. More laughter sets things right. Teruhan earns 100 Birr... $5... a day as a guide. Our tip, well earned, greatly improves his take.
We end the day as we began it, together, laughing.

Day 44 - December 18 - Fishy Doings and Monkey Business

Today is an easy day as befits one that starts with Italy's luscious gift to morning coffee drinkers. Menge is all big grins as we sip our cappuccinos, finally, at Time Cafe in leafy downtown Awassa.
Later, he waits ashore as we search for hippos in Lake Awassa. Glossy ibis, Jesus birds (because they walk on water), kingfishers, Egyptian and Ethiopian Geese, the most obvious of the 72 species of birds flitting over, around and in Lake Awassa, don't distract us from hippo hustling. One erupts from its reedy home and heads up the shore in a great 'attention Walmart shoppers' sprint. We play Hide and Seek and Peek-a-boo for half an hour until we all tire of the games.

Hippos are an anomaly in their group of 'biggest land animals', which they share with rhinos and elephants. One, they're aquatic, preferring to soak in the local spa rather than simmer pool side. Two, they are really dangerous, responsible for more human deaths than any other animal in Africa. Three, they have a much better tailor. Rhinos and elephants, huge to be sure, always look like they're wearing a suit made for something even bigger, a 747 perhaps. They bag and sag and flop around. Not so our hippos. Their skin fits, revealing a sleek voluminous voluptuousness, Plus Sized for sure, but smartly tailored.
Day 44 - December 18 - Fishy Doings and Monkey Business.
We never see any pythons or iguanas.
The lake delivered only one hippo, but compensates with an abundance of tilapia. The 'fish market' is a string of restaurants along the lake serving up fish soup and whole deep fried tilapia. The fish is freshly caught, brought ashore, cleaned, and walked a few dozen meters to the hot oil, then delivered hot to my waiting fingers and taste buds.. Firm and sweet, it's delicious and an altogether other food than the frozen and flaccid fillets we get in Florida. Danil, owner and manager, sits with us. He buys a fish for 16 Birr and sells it for 25..but has staff, oil, wood for the fires to pay for. (He doesn't worry about cleanup. That's handled by the cats, dogs, and storks, grounds keepers supreme, and kids who clean up any bits left in the serving baskets.) 'I'd be better off getting one of your cameras and taking pictures of the people eating', he says.
Along the shore piles of freshly gutted fish grow. Storks take care of the rest. For a few Birr a kid will let us photograph him tossing fish guts to 'his' stork. l forego.
The fish market may be a tourist attraction, but we saw no other farangis, just locals, clustered in families, having a day by the lake.
Like everyone else, we eat, wipe our fingers, watch the storks, stroll about in the nearby park. We read, then forget, the scientific names of the huge trees, most giant (or just older?) relatives of our puny ficus trees in Florida. Habituated Colobus monkeys, gorgeous in their flowing Cruella Deville black and white fur capes, trade on their looks for handfuls of peanuts.
On the lake shore there are kids diving into the water. The oldest, a man, really, pseudo dives/belly flops with a splat then flails around with only a vague approximation of what swimming is about. The real kids laugh: zero points out of ten.
It has been a wonderfully restful day, really our last. The next two are about getting back to Addis and leaving.
We invite the guys for another dinner with us at lakeside. Fishermen appear, rowing against wind and current, then return to shore. Tomorrow, very, very early they'll try again. The fish market is insatiable for their fish.
Tomorrow brings the beginning of the end for us. 55....and counting, says Menge, and we print out one more picture from our adventure.

Day 45- December 19 - We make a date with Lucy

It's 285 kilometers to Addis. We'll be there by 3. There will be time to hear more from Aster Awaka, our new found Ethiopian songstress idol. There will not ever be enough time to say goodbye to Ethiopia.

I capture images: bags of potatoes on cairns of black rock, savanna acacia shading round topped tukuls, paddle cactus fences, mountains a low blue smudge far away.

We don't expect any more surprises, and take comfort in the familiarity. Then Ethiopia surprises us again. In Abijata - shalla. Lakes National Park we walk across a desolate salt pan, mud mixed with soda ash into a brittle crust. It crunches like snow on a super cold night. The salt pan isn't the surprise. The thousands of flamingos in the shallow lake provide that very nicely, thank you. An old man follows us across the crackling crust, less impressed by the flamingos than we are. We politely refuse to purchase his clearly ersatz fishing spear or pose holding it and walk back to the car

Asphalt roads are still roads. Traffic may be faster but the roads still belong to the walkers and the herds. Some of the befuddled bovines have figured that speed kills. The goats, of course, are way ahead of them on this and all counts. They skitter and maneuver in the traffic with the ease and purpose of hockey players on ice. Humans may need to pay attention to the goats. A guy spurts in front of us. Ever alert, Menge swerves around him. 'Medium crazy' is the verdict.

We shop on the way. In Zawai town we stop at a store under a luxuriantly double lettered sign: Dhaabbata. Omishaa. Gabbaa. Qurxummii - 'Fish Shop'.'My daughters very, very like fish'. Menge buys bags of frozen qurxummii, tiny fish fillets for his kids. At 79 Birr for a kilo, less than.$2 a pound, it's a bargain.
East of Koka we stop at a huge carpet of tomatoes, onions, potatoes, and watermelons. Birhanu buys Onions 17 pounds for $3.50, 20 cents a pound, half the price in Addis.

Bigger tilapia than at the fish market in Awassa..up to two feet long... freshly caught and filleted on the spot have attracted a convention of dogs. They're working out who gets what and when in the complex dog language of growls, whines, raised and lowered ears, tails and lips. Some dogs have clipped tails. How and why? I doubt anyone cares enough to make it an aesthetic decision.
I wonder how taillessness affects doggy conversations. Do they compensate with more eloquent ear speak?
There's much less open road. One town thins, leaves a gap, fields butt in briefly, then another town slowly thickens. Mosques have long disappeared. Roadside churches, some as small as our car, take their place.

I see a new sign: Solar Lanterns For Sale Or Rent. Ahead, I know there are wind farms. We've come a long way from the villages of the rest of the country.

We break for lunch in Mojo. It's one of the two weekly meatless fast days. I forget and order a burger while our Burger King eats injera. and veggies. I sample his. It's delicious, better than the burger.

Dennis and I are storing up for Chad. We have cold cokes, an avocado/papaya juice, and cappuccino. It won't do much good, but it's a good excuse to over indulge one last time.

About an hour out of Addis, the guys do the math. On the trip up through the North, Menge drove 6,200 kilometers, 3,875 miles. On the southern leg, he drove 3,581 kilometers, 2,240 miles. That's 9,781 kilometers, 6,113 miles in all. 'Amazing', says the driver. 'Thank you', say the passengers.

The new 6 lane expressway leading into Addis is impressive but it has no signs defining the on and off ramps. The possibilities for driver chaos are limitless, but Menge works it out and we sail towards Addis.
Once off the expressway we are in the permanent traffic jam that is Addis, breathing black, oily fumes. I'd trade this 'snail road' for one of the gravel 'snake roads' in a flash. On those roads we ate dust, but it was clean dust.
At the hotel we make our last plans for a next day. 9 o'clock pick-up, then Addis' two world class museums. We have a date with 'Lucy', our many thousands times great-grandmother. One more day, then......

Day 46- December 20 - A Date With Lucy

'Lucy, you got some splainin to do', said poor Ricky Ricardo. It's a sentiment echoed by paleontologists ever since fossil Lucy made her unexpected appearance on the stage here in Ethiopia in 1974. She was a hit....right in the solar plexus of most theories of human evolution. While the dust has settled and her 3.5 million year self is a venerable Grand Old Lady in our family tree, Grandma (with 175,000 Greats in front of it) to at least two lines of evolution, only one of which led to us....she's still a bit of a puzzlement. What was she doing way back then standing up and running around on two legs? And why?

I love this stuff. It's my field. My best taught and most popular course when I was teaching for the University of Maryland was my Human Evolution course. Visiting Lucy here in Addis excites me perhaps more than most, but I guarantee that even the most die-hard anti-museum science-phobic traveler will find the superb exhibit that surrounds Lucy a zippy and fascinating trip. It IS the human story, and it's a good one.

This is our last day here. We can't quite bring ourselves to say goodbye to the guys, so we stretch it out. First there's Lucy, then another excellent museum with a display of lovely daily use artifacts that walks us through important stages in the life cycle as experienced by the different ethnic groups. We've stumbled into a three dimensional review of our 40 days on the road.

On another floor we get to see up close the world's greatest collection of Ethiopian Orthodox icons. Impressive as ritual objects in their natural setting of belief, incense and chant, they are stunning here as art objects, brilliantly colored images with huge eyes and handsome/beautiful faces.

The building was once the imperial palace. Of course we opt for a voyeuristic peek into the bedrooms of the last Emperor, Haile Selassie, and his Empress. They had separate bedrooms, and western style bathrooms with double sinks, sit down commodes, and European style bidets. His bed has a suitably Imperial canopy and looks more like a lie-in throne than a place for a cozy snooze, or a quick snog with his Empress. The closet has a walk in safe. Crown jewels? Possibly. Money? Probably not. Rumor has it he kept the not so petty cash safely tucked into banks abroad.
High on a hill overlooking Addis we look down on the view that led an earlier empress (Haile. Selassie's mother, I think) to decide it should be called 'new flower' (Addis Ababa in Amharic) and be the site of her new palace and the new capital of the country. Urban smog and dust hide that view from us. Her original palace on the hill is a traditional round Ethiopian tukul rendered large and commodious with several rooms, all empty. I don't know about bathrooms; we didn't see any.
We are all subdued. Menge runs into yet someone else he knows, and then another. That always launches that Menge smile and personality. The man could teach the Internet something about social networking. He knows people everywhere we have traveled....even someone working on a road gang way down south.
Burgers perk us up. There are errands to run but we collapse them into one foray into a supermarket. Ten minutes, a package of chocolate crackers, and two pounds of roasted peanuts (survival snacks for Chad) later, we can't avoid the inevitable goodbye to Birhanu. The guys have given us (and Roger, source of Birhanu old/new computer) wonderful gifts. Nothing we can give them can possibly convey how we feel about them and how much we appreciate what they have done for us...and how much we will genuinely miss them. For us they are Ethiopia.
We settle accounts with Birhanu at the hotel for today's and tomorrow morning's use of the car and confirm that Menge will deliver us to the airport tomorrow by 07:15. (That's 1:15 on Ethiopian clocks.) We give Birhanu our gift, cash. It's a lot for us, but no amount would ever be enough to express our appreciation. (Dennis and I have something additional and quite special in mind---for both guys---but that will wait until we get back home. There will be no further hints here.)
There are hugs. He says a very soft thank you, but can't quite manage that most radiant smile and walks out of the hotel. A sadness settles on us.
Menge drives us to the office then on to the house of his boss for dinner off on the edge of the city. Menge knows the way over roads that give us a 'medium African massage' and takes so long that we call it our third trip in Ethiopia: The North, The South, and The Trip To Wende's.
Wende is a self-made man, truck driver turned tour company owner. He and his family live in a multi-story house with multiple bathrooms, 2 kitchens and a balcony. Relative to the standard of living in Ethiopia he is clearly more well off than we are in the US.
His wife has prepared a lovely meal. It includes meat, for us, I guess, since today is a fasting day, meatless for the family and Menge. One dish is new to us and especially delicious: large leaves of a spinach-like green partially covered with an omelet-like coating.
Dennis and I toast Menge as 'Driver Of The Year' for his 40 day, 10,000 kilometer 'amazing trip', to quote the man himself. He is the very best and we want his boss to know it. We suggest a big photo with 'Driver Of The Year' in great big letters for the office wall
Mrs. Wende is brewing bunna from beans she roasts on a charcoal brazier as we eat, and we are so very ready for that nectar of the gods. I double dose, by now well into 'stocking up for Chad' mode.
As we drink, the large screen TV is silent but playing a Hispanic soap opera, which, along with Arabic versions of the same and mindless MTV videos, are universal in Africa. This one has something to do with doctors kissing nurses, letters eliciting clutched maternal chests and eyes skewed heavenward, the mandatory hospital bed scene, abundant and heaving bosoms, flaring nostrils, and long stares straight into the camera. Cowboys hats and unbuttoned shirts are somehow also relevant. Since the sound is off and there are no subtitles we're free to make up our own story to fit the above clues. Perhaps another time.
We offer a photo, printed on the spot, and Wende hugs his wife into the frame. Then it's an invitation to 'tour my palace', duly accepted and enjoyed, genuine thanks, and farewells.

In the car as we drive back to the hotel, Menge tell us again he will miss us, his fathers. Earlier he had told us his delectable five-year old 'medium daughter' did not want us to leave. We feel the same way and need the laughter we find as we replay bits of our 40 day journey. It will be hard to say goodbye tomorrow.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Pictures of Ethiopia

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

ETHIOPIA-2014