Wednesday February 8th - The Day to Drive South

I can honestly say I have never awakened to a call to prayer. The local mosque starts the call anywhere between 4 and 5:30 AM. It’s an interesting way to wake up. We could all use some reminders to pray… though could they wait until maybe 6 AM???

It’s a drive day. And drive, and drive. Nine of us total, in two vehicles, left Addis and headed south towards the small town of Mojo, then on to Koka – next to Lake Koka, then onto Zuway with Lake Zuway in the near distance, on past Lake Langanno and Lake Abijatta via Shashemene with the ultimate destination Lake Awasa where the reforestation nurseries are located. It’s more of the same from the day before; an endless sea of humanity. Sure, there is much open space, but along the highway there is small town after small town of huts lining the road, goats, cattle and donkeys in motion – grazing anywhere possible, on the road or in the fields, eating any morsel of food they can find. Each town we pass has a main market place where the locals gather for both social and practical purposes.

There’s poverty all along the roads we travel, but not the squalor of Addis with its evident depravity. The land is barren, mostly, with statistics showing that within 15 years, total deforestation will have taken place. Even within the last few years, deforestation within the national preserves leaves them at 10% of “normal.” We stopped to visit three different schools. One project for Carol is in a small town (they’re all small outside of Addis!) called Shashemene where there is an old hotel that has been converted into a church, school and small pastor retreat center. She’ll be looking at a fairly simple drawing for another addition similar to those already in existence.

We finally arrived at the main growing ground on the east shore of Lake Awasa. The government actually gave the 14 fenced (to keep out people, livestock & HIPPOS) acres for the project, with stipulations that all work would be done by the local people – all very labor intensive – and with a successful outcome to the reforestation on the Udu Escarpment (part of the Great Rift Valley). It is a wonderful spot for a growing ground being near the shoreline of the lake. For biodiversity, 19 varieties of trees will be available; from the mainstay tree of Ethiopia - the Acacia - to mangos, papayas, and guavas to start with. Part of the nursery project will be designing a pumping system to bring water up from the lake to areas throughout the growing grounds to 1) make water easy access for the workers and 2) increase the area that can be utilized for seedling production. As of now, workers walk up to the length of a football field back to the water’s edge at the fence line where a small trench has been dug out to hold water deep enough to fill all the watering cans the workers continuously fill and empty out on the seedlings. It is very labor intensive as it stands. Each person working works for $1 per day and works nearly sun up to sun down. So far, nearly 1 million seedlings have been produced with a goal set at 4 million seedlings. It’s a task that can be accomplished with only some very small changes.

We head back to the little hotel for the evening, the South Spring Hotel. It’s a decent place to spend the evening with a nice restaurant on the second floor of the reception area. More Italian food choices… I do find that avocado and papaya makes an interesting smoothy. The Ethiopian drink, Ambo, a bubbly mineral water, has become our drink of choice - a nice change from bottled water.

The highlight of the evening is a short walk to Lake Awasa through a small patch of old-growth native trees and shrubs, what this area used to look like. In the trees are pretty black and white Colobus Monkeys and Olive Baboons. They are a shy bunch, but fun to watch, especially as the young ones frolic through the branches. We walk on to the water’s edge to see if the local group of hippos are nearby – but not too near in my opinion! The running joke is that we’re going “hippo tipping,” a knock-off of the American tradition of “cow tipping.” Fortunately, the hippos are so far off shore that there’s a question that the floating logs in the distance are really hippos. The hippos have been saved from humiliation...