Friday/Saturday, February 4/5. The singing well and farewell.

Our last two days were spent heading back to the capital city, Addis Ababa...making a few stops along the way. Including a stop at the singing well. Three men bale water out of the well, pouring it into a reservoir which leads into a trough where people can bring their livestock to drink. But why "singing" well? Because the men sing in order to set the cadence so that they work in unison to get the water up out of the well. They work in one hour shifts, to spread the work across the surrounding farms, so that they can then go take care of their own livestock or fields.





This woman arrived early to get her water for the day....





We then proceeded north, again encountering all forms of transportation used to get to market...





...including these local "buses" where the passengers tie their water and other containers to the top.


We saw coffee being dried in yards By the way, Ethiopia was the birthplace of coffee!


We stopped at more 14th century cemeteries...


The next morning, we stopped to watch the fishermen bring in their catch for sale...


While the storks and pelicans waited for the scraps....





Our wonderful drivers took advantage of this stop to have some fish for breakfast!


Our trip came to an end that evening in an authentic Ethiopian restaurant (tourist style!) where we were entertained by local musicians and dancers, as we bid farewell to this wonderful, culturally rich African country!





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Location:Last two days in Southern Ethiopia

Thursday, February 2. King of the Konzo tribe.

The first thing that we did this morning was to stop at a school. Some of us had brought some pens with us and wanted to donate them to the school The school was not in session as it was a time for their holiday, but we were able to see all of the paintings that have been done to the outside walls of the school to assist the teachers with the children's studies....here are some of them...








We also got to talk to the school administrator who told us it was hard to keep the students in school as their families want them to help out in the fields (seemed to be a theme there) They also have trouble obtaining supplies...so members of our group made some donations to him for supplies...


They even had a drawing showing how liquor is distilled....


This one was "almost" right...


Next we stopped to talk to a veterinarian...


He said that it is hard for the people to sometimes get their animals to him in time to save them, as they are too far away or don't have the money...


We then stopped at a medical clinic...the nurse there said that the biggest problem in this area is malaria (yikes, reminded all of us to keep taking our malaria pills!!), with Aids being second . He sometimes doesn't have enough supplies to take care of the people in this region. It is also hard to get doctors to work in the area, which is why this clinic is staffed with a nurse...


We next stopped at the local market to see members of several tribes exchanging goods...








This camel just walked right into the market....didn't seem to be tended by anyone. Even the locals were taken aback by his presence...


This was the first time I had seen them wearing these wooden skull hats....cool...


Our next stop at a Konzo village was to be the highlight of our day...





Our guide, Solomon...


...had arranged for us to meet with the king of the entire Konzo tribe...


This tribe was one of the larger tribes we visited in this region, with one source saying they have a total of about 250,000 people. This king was extremely progressive, as he attended university in the city, and worked for the civil engineering department within the government for a while. But his dad died prematurely, and he was required, as the eldest son, to come back and take over his duties as king He even said he preferred the city life, but if he had not come back, he would have been cursed....as progressive as he was, he believed in that curse!

He explained how they deal with disputes (or crimes such as murder) within his tribe. The case comes before a council of chiefs from each village, which works like an arbitration committee. If they find someone guilty of murdering his wife, e.g., they don't give him the death penalty, but ostracize him from his village, and he can no longer have any contact with members of the village, including other family members. Another village would probably take him in, but they would keep a close eye on him. While their dad was meeting with us, the king's kids had fun playing peekaboo with us...


Then, his cell phone rang :-)...and our meeting with the king came to an end...


...after he posed for one final photo...other signs of his time in the city were his jacket and his expensive watch...


He was quite an interesting king!!

Our trip is close to coming to an end, with only one more full day in Southern Ethiopia before we head back to Addis Ababa!

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Location:On the way to Yabelo....Ethiopia

Wednesday, February 1. Mursi Tribe.

We ran into some Mursi boys before we got to the village...


Body painting is done by many of them, and, yes, clothes are optional...


The Mursi are most known for their lip plates, which requires the lip to be cut away from the face and pulled looser and looser by larger and larger plates. There are many different speculations as to why the Mursi women do this. One of them is that they started doing this when the Europeans were kidnapping them for the slave trade, and that they did this to disfigure themselves so that the Europeans would not want to take them (but this is only a speculation...not a confirmed fact). It is now considered a thing of beauty by members of the tribe. After photographing this woman, she sold me her lip plate...


Another ritual that the Mursi are known for is scarification, which you can see down this man's chest and on his arm. Scarification is accomplished by cutting and letting it form a scar...it may require cutting over and over again to get the scar to look as one would want it to look. This ritual is also done by the women and is considered as a thing of "beauty" (like body piercing? or tattoos? by some in our culture?)...


A boy in the village next to one of their very short huts...


Another thing that they do is train their ear lobes to stretch to accommodate bigger and bigger discs, such as seen on this woman (I see young people in our culture also starting to do something similar to this called "tunneling").


...this little girl was precious with all of her decorative paraphenalia she had accumulated...


...and this old man had his own version of a lip plate (bowl?)....and sported a headdress of what looked liked lemons...


There were babies and children everywhere you turned in Ethiopia (someone in the geoup reported that over 50% of the population here is under 17 years old)...


After photographing members of the Mursi tribe (and again, they badgered us for money, and apparently the money goes to the men to buy liquor....this part of the touring was quite disheartening...you wouldn't mind so much if the money was going into a fund to build a new well or something like that)...anyway, we then headed to an Ari village which was close-in to the town in which we were staying, compared to the Mursi village which was quite a distance from the town. The construction of their houses was also much more advanced...


This is the distilling contraption which is used to make the local liquor (which they then sell to the Mursi men when they come into town)...


Then this woman demonstrated the making of clay pottery platters. Starting with a ball of clay...


...she then starts to flatten it with her hand...


...and within minutes, she has made a perfectly round platter with rounded edges.


Then we watched the blacksmith at work...


...the kids appeared to be mesmerized by the blacksmith, but I think it was probably more of an interest in the American people who had arrived to visit them...














One of the little girls was jumping rope with a vine she had made. She couldn't believe me when I said I knew how to do it. So I offered to show her..


...they were especially impressed when I went into boxing training speed mode...


Here are some more village views as we departed...








...to return to the Jinka Lodge for our second night there. It was rare on this trip to spend more than one night anywhere, so two nights in the same place was a nice respite.

Our trip is quickly coming to an end..just a couple of more days left before we're back in Addis Ababa.

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Location:Omo Valley, Ethiopia