The Ride Home From Awassa

We spent 6 hours in the van today back to Awassa, I spent most of it looking out the window. It is amazing what you see on the road. I saw three dead dogs and a dying donkey. There are many small wooden carts piled high with straw going down the road. They are mostly children driving the carts and pushing them from behind. Some are standing on the back clinging for dear life. Others are sleeping on top of the straw. If the cart is empty, the driver is standing on top of it driving the donkey. We saw a cart full of straw tipped over on the side of the road, still attached to the donkey. It was horrible.

Also on the side of the road in the country there are people selling random things: stools, onions, watermelon, “firewood” (piles of sticks and straw). Our driver stopped twice to buy this to bring home. He just climbed on top of the van and the seller would throw it up there and off we would go. He would not even tie it down!

Children are always wandering alone, sometimes in groups, but always children without adults. They just walk down the road with no pants on and no one is at all concerned about this. Men are sitting and crouching along the road, in front of their houses, under trees, just doing nothing. Some are just lying there asleep. This could be in a small town or in the country along the highway. The men also just pee, doesn’t matter where they are or what is going on around them, they just stop and pee. We even saw a man doing a “#2” by a tree on the side of the road. Of course none of this is o.k. for women.


We often had to stop for donkeys, goats and cows crossing the road. We also had to stop for a policeman who randomly checks drivers license. There are many hitchhikers who are looking for rides back to Addis Ababa on Sunday. Instead of a thumbs up, they hold both palms up in the air. We saw only one person smoking. ONLY ONE! In fact I have been here for over a week and this is the 2nd person I have seen smoking with the exception of a few Western People. Amazing.

The country has many Orthodox people. Anytime they walk past a church they stop and bow and cross themselves three times out of respect. We saw people doing this a lot on the road. Orthodox people also drape themselves in white cloth. We saw Muslims praying in their fields and on the side of the road. We could hear the Orthodox and Muslim prayers through loud speakers in the little towns. The great thing is, they all live peacefully and respectfully.

I still can not get over how often I see men walking hand in hand. I see this more often than I do not. I am so touched by this and dread going back to our homophobic culture where it is horrible for men to touch beyond a hearty hand shake.

It seemed to be laundry day so any time we passed a river I saw women and children doing laundry in the river and laying it out to dry on the rocks. Others were carrying bags of wet laundry back to their “homes.” It also seemed to be water day. Children would be carrying large jugs of water to the river to fill up and bring back home. The lucky ones had donkeys to help haul the water.

As we drove, I just kept thinking, “I am in Africa.” I started thinking about what I wanted to write and looked at my pictures and realized there are no words for this experience. It is just too big. My mind can not make sense of what I am seeing and feeling. There is NOTHING like this in the States, NOTHING. There is nothing like this anywhere I have ever been. I wish you all could smell the smells, hear the words, see the people, feel the breeze…everything because there really is no way to make it real unless you are here.