SOME PARTING WORDS

Well,

This is it. I have packed my bags for America and said good bye to the Bale Oromia people that have been such gracious hosts to me for the past two years. Jill is starting her new job in Southern Oregon about now. It is time to settle down and prepare for family life. For the next two weeks i will be in the Ethiopian Capitol to complete my paperwork and say goodbye to the other Peace Corps Volunteers.

This is big time in my life. I have reached a milestone. Time to catch my breath and let go of my Ethiopian lifestyle, to prepare for re-entry into the rush hour expressway that is the modern American society. Time to trust that the new Peace Corps volunteers and my Ethiopian coworkers will continue my exciting work with beekeeping.

It has been a long two years. I can confidently say it has been the longest two years of my adult life. I am so grateful to have experienced this adventure. To have been immersed in a drastically different culture with my wonderful wife and come out of it a better person.

The hardest part of all this may be saying the “goodbyes”. I have never been one for sentimental farewells, but this is a very sentimental farewell culture. I know that there is almost no chance I will ever see my Ethiopian friends again, but how can I look someone in the eye and tell them that? When they ask when I am coming back I struggle for answers. Some people I avoid telling at all because my body cannot handle another coffee ceremony that will keep me awake all night. In this sense I am  like the other foreigner tourists who are just passing through to collect Ethiopian stories and artifacts.

But I knew this would happen. This adventure was always destined to end. I will always have photos to look at and remember. For now I just must give thanks for this opportunity; it truly was the experience of my lifetime.

P

Well,

This is it. I have packed my bags for America and said good bye to the Bale Oromia people that have been such gracious hosts to me for the past two years. Jill is starting her new job in Southern Oregon about now. Soon we will be parents.

This is big time in my life. I have reached a milestone. Time to catch my breath and let go of my Ethiopian lifestyle, to prepare for re-entry into the rush hour expressway that is the modern American society. Time to trust that the new Peace Corps volunteers and my Ethiopian coworkers will continue my exciting work with beekeeping.

It has been a long two years. I can confidently say it has been the longest two years of my adult life. I am so grateful to have experienced this adventure. To have been immersed in a drastically different culture with my wonderful wife and come out of it a better person.

The hardest part of all this may be saying the “goodbyes”. I have never been one for sentimental farewells, but this is a very sentimental farewell culture. I know that there is almost no chance I will ever see my Ethiopians again, but how can I look someone in the eye and tell them that? When they ask when I am coming back I struggle for answers. Some people I avoid telling at all because my body cannot handle another coffee ceremony that will keep me awake all night. In this sense I am just like the other foreigner tourists who are just passing through to collect Ethiopian stories and artifacts.

But I knew this would happen. This adventure was always destined to end. I will always have photos to look at and remember.  

Ethiopian Youth Basketball Project

This project was to repair the local public basketball hoops and get the youth boys team ("The Dreamers") fitted with jerseys and basketballs. Thanks to generous support and lots of hard work by the team we got close to our goal in under one week! And everyone had fun doing it!

The only things we have left to do now is paint the rectangle on the backboard, and touch up the out-of-bounds lines. Then we can work on getting the team back into some tournament games. 

The work crew who repaired the hoops.

BEFORE: The hoops were falling apart

AFTER: Everything fixed up and with home-made chain nets

New Team Uniforms and Ball

Morocco

Freshly Tanned Leather in FEZ

Getting lost in the tourist mazes of FEZ

Rooftop cafe in the mountains

In the town of Chefchouen everything in the medina was painted blue. Medina is what they call the old part of town that is full of narrow unmarked alleys and vendors hawking goods.

Moroccan food

So many cats! Moroccans love cats and this one joined us for dinner

Above the Fez Medina

looking into the Sunset

Even cats in the Casablanca Airport

So many colorful goods for sale.

Doorway to the Medina in FEZ

Metalsmith working in a square for the tourists to see

Our first night in Morocco was in this beautiful old hostel

Ethiopian Bee-Keeping (Part 2)

This is my working colleague Atto Gossa Tafese. He has had several bee colonies living in his house with his family for many years. This colony of bees has taken over his shower room. He treats the bees very well and loves the attention he gets for them. There have been numerous reports and studies done on his unique situation, including the BBC network.

Huge colony of bees that live in Gossa's living room. The blanket is to cover the bees for warmth and too protect them from excess light.

Bees building a fresh comb on a new top bar

Gossa's yard in the middle of the day filled with foraging bees going and coming out of his windows. Look closely to see one of his daughters hiding from the bees around the right side of the photo.

This is Atto Gossa with two of his daughters who have adjusted to living daily life sharing their home and yard with hundreds of thousands of bees.  And just a few of the buckets of unprocessed honey he has sitting in his house.

This one variety of flower is responsible for most of the honey produced in my area. It local name simply translates to "the yellow flower"

Bee Combs in Gossa's house

Hanging a new top-bar hive in a forested area to try and catch a swarm. So far it has been unsuccessful.

These brood combs were accidentally pulled out of the traditional hives during honey harvest. They were mostly wasted but I was able to make some protein-rich juice by squeezing the brood comb in the honey presser.

Harvesting honey with a fire/smoker stick stuck in a hole in the back of the hive. His right arm is covered in honey from reaching in blindly to grab the honey.

Jill straining the raw honey.

Preparing to transfer bees into the new observation hive.

Transferring a honey comb into the new hive.

A broken comb from the old hive.

My observation hive I made with a glass window for watching bee behavior. At night time we can watch bees as long as we want and they will not bother us.

Front of the Observation hive filled with bees and combs

Back of the hive slowly filling up with bees.

A modern Langstroth hive brood chamber that is being very poorly managed. This is common now in Ethiopia to see these expensive modern hives sitting neglected. This one is positioned on a big pile of rocks that makes it near impossible to manage correctly. There is a big gap here in teaching bee-havers to actually actively manage their bees to improve production.

 Here is a girl's blog who we are starting to collaborate with who is doing the same kind of bee-keeping development:
http://beefreeapiaries.org

Sof Omar Caves

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sof_Omar_Caves

There are so many things about Ethiopian Tourism that are strange for foreigners. There is so much natural and historical beauty to see but so little in the way of accommodating people to easily see it. At the Sof Omar Caves no one really knows how much it should costs to enter the caves and for a guide. We were at first charged 250 Ethiopian Birr by a man who looked like con artist with no official credentials. But after much arguing the price was reduced to 90 Birr per person. 

Then we were presented with our tour guides who were simply teenage boys who brought along their nagging teenage girl friends on a three hour trek through a massive cave system. Passing through a deep water crossing proved to be a microcosm of life in Ethiopia; it was a clustered mess of shouting in different languages brought on by ill preparation. In the end we left two of our cavers behind who were not prepared to go swimming. 

But the caves are an amazing natural treasure, the kind of place that in the USA would be well protected and managed. Here there are Ethiopian school kids swimming naked, doing there laundry, and throwing trash at the cave mouth. There is not even one sign or marking of any kind we saw that designated this spot as special. And there are thousands of meters of electric wires criss-crossing every part of the caves; meant to power flood lights inside that were not functioning. 

End the end, though, it was an amazing experience of natural beauty and worth the hassles.