Awassa Trip update from Porter

The drive down to Awassa from Addis is quite scenic. We left Addis in the morning after a quick visit to see Miss Elsa.

After only about a half an hour, dropped down into the Rift Valley. The scenery changed almost immediately, and I could feel the difference in the air. Vast expanses of dry grasses and acacia trees, and then the Rift Valley Lakes appear, one after another in a string.

After a few hours we got to a town called Mojo(!) and turned off the main road for the road heading South-west toward Awassa. The other road continues on East to Djibouti.
We stopped for lunch at beautiful Lake Ziway and had a yummy lunch of fish (tilapia) and soup.
This is a photo of the shores of Lake Ziway. Check out the massive Maribou storks, which are about half the size of the horse!

Then, back on the road to Awassa, where we arrived about 2.5 hours later.

We checked in to the Pinna Hotel, which has a decent recommendation in my Lonely Planet book, but which I thought was a hole. The first room they tried to give us was hot and loud (right on the street) and the second room was slightly better. We had asked for two beds and this one had a big bed and a cot-like thing, but we were tired enough to just accept that. Only the big bed had a mosquito net, and it took quite an effort to get a second net, which was not exactly clean.

Speaking of clean, the room was not. The bathroom was moldy and smelled pretty rank. We sprayed the room with pesticide at dusk to kill any mosquitoes that may have been hiding away and when we came back in, there were dead cockroaches on the floor. Charming.

So, we had to sleep in a hot closed room that still smelled slightly like the pesticide spray. It was too hot to sleep for some time, so I lay awake thinking about how much I didn’t want to get malaria.

Anyway, enough of the bad news. The good news is that Awassa is lovely, and the best part is that I got to meet up with Mary Anne L-G, the person who works for the Yale-Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative. She is an amazing person - former successful fine artist who went into hospital management and then wanted to do something meaningful with it and ended up here. She is making a huge difference in Ethiopia, and now manages the entire Southern region for the Initiative.

Not only that, but she’s a very cool chick! We got along fabulously, and it was so fun to meet her. We went to a great restaurant in the Lakeside hotel called La Dolce. Had gorgeous grilled aubergine (eggplant) and fish with a really nice balsamic sauce. And a glass of Sangiovese - the real deal. Very very good. Like me, she has a soft spot for Ethiopian orphans and has adopted an orphanage in Hosanna (southern Ethiopia) and is trying to help them out. It was a wonderful evening, and I’m thrilled to have connected with her. (thank you Si!!)

I got up earlyish on Saturday to go see the Awassa fish market before heading off to Aleta Wondo.

The morning fish market is on the shores of Lake Awassa, and is a pretty amazing sight. Hundreds of people, of course, but also masses of birds - Egyptian geese, Sacred Ibis, and massive Maribou storks - and also Vervet monkeys and of course the standard Ethiopian fare of goats, dogs, donkeys, sheep and cows.

It was all really interesting and I was digging it until a stepped on an acacia thorn which went right through the sole of my shoe and into my foot. I took off my shoe and forced the blood out to (I hope) keep any creepy-crawlies from getting into my bloodstream. And I wiped it off as much as I could with one of my antibiotic wipes, so I don’t think it’ll get infected (but if my leg suddenly falls off, you’ll know what happened). Man, that hurt! I was slightly gimpy for the rest of the day.

We next went to find the SOS Awassa children’s home – this is the local branch of the SOS Enfants Ethiopie (the orphanage system that I am adopting Elsa from), and the place where she was first brought. It is a lovely spot with super-nice people. There is a much bigger facility for the older kids, but this building was just for the little babies. Right now there are only two kiddoes there – one who is about 6 months old and one who is just two weeks old!

The people who work there were very nice, and really appreciated the gifts I brought them (candies and pencils for the kids), and the pictures of Elsa Aden.

I also brought them a letter and a photo book from Paige, with tons of photos of the beautiful Meklit, which brought exclamations of joy. It is so sweet to see how much they really care about the kids and how happy they are to see them growing up healthy and well cared-for.

After spending a bit of time there, we hit the road for Aleta Wondo.