Great Rift Valley

Once Dave joined our family adventure, we headed south and out of the city.  We followed the main road down the Great Rift Valley to a resort on Lake Langano. The resort was posh and totally fun: a mini-two-day vacation of luxury (it also happened to be our wedding anniversary). Not that we were exactly roughing it elsewhere, but this place had a spa!  

Though I am unclear why, the water in Lake Langano is full of brown flouride. Presumably this has something to do with the lake's volcanic origins(?), but the really good part is that it makes the lake uninhabitable for certain parasites, so you can swim worry-free.  The water was definitely a bit salty, and just look at that milk chocolate color against the distant bluish walls of the volcanic caldera!  There was a constant breeze and the water was not exactly warm, so you may notice my hesitance to fully submerge -- the boys got the better of me in the end, of course.

The beach was covered in pumice and various versions of "lava rock" (as Zenebe liked to call the basalt, etc.), so a fun game was to throw rocks into the water to see which would float.

The next day we took a short drive to a different set of crater lakes in the Abiata-Shala National Park.  We spent a lot of time collecting rocks on the lakeshore; the boys were after as much obsidian as they could carry!

The variety in rock colors captivated me; all those little cinder cone eruptions spewing rocks different mineral content.  Amazing!

One side of the lake had active hot springs.  The mud was actually boiling!  Folks came to bathe or cook potatoes (and stare at the tourists).

The microbiologist among us was (understandably) very excited by the biofilms in the steaming water.  Pretty tough microbes making pretty colors!

Chillaxin'

This post is just about lounging around.  Even growing boys chill out sometimes!

I hauled a ton of good books for me to read, too, but spent pretty much all my time reading the Bradt travel guide to Ethiopia.  The boys had lots and lots of questions about Ethiopian history, so I had to keep re-reading the various historical sections to keep the stories straight.  I also wound up doing a lot of reading on my phone (not my favorite), since we shared a room most of the time and my book light was too bright for the boys to sleep, and then too dim for me to make out words.

Yup, it was cold enough to snuggle up with a fire!  We wore our fleece and sweatshirts into a grungy heap that required multiple washings and applications of stain remover to make them presentable upon our return.

The boys and I kept daily journals, which predictably started off with a great deal of effort and enthusiasm and then... 

Also, check all the amazing Ethiopian antiques in the background at Abbaba's Villa!

Our one and only phone call to Dave, just as he was packing to join us in a few hours. 

The boys missed him so much we decided that frequent communication would make it worse (just look at Z's miserable face!).

Did I mention that Zenebe missed his Daddy?
This is at our giant mud and bamboo house at Common River.

Mommy and Daddy are desperately trying to get as much sleep as possible before the loooooooooong flight home. 

Not everyone was so keen on getting extra rest before the airplane ride.

Common River love

At any given moment, Common River has a group of nice kids entertaining themselves with chores, games or just hanging out.  The boys that live there help out the staff, but are also full of laughs and jokes.  Their community is built on care and trust, so the love just overflows from everybody.  It was a joy for all of us to make new friends there, but particularly terrific to see Amare and Zenebe get comfortable enough to form their own relationships and feel a part of a Sidama neighborhood.

One of our last evenings there I brought out the crayons and coloring books to relax with some of the girls that help in the kitchen, and before we knew it all the teenage boys were coloring in trucks, spaceships and penguins!  I wish I could have captured the looks on the kids' faces as Tsegaye explained the differences between space shuttles and satellites, just as the stars started to appear in the sky.  You could see all of outer space opening up as a place of adventure and imagined worlds right before their eyes!  

Amare and Zenebe had been asking for sugarcane for weeks --
finally, a friend bought a whole cane and
chopped it up to share among the gang of sweet Common River boys.

Amare tagging along with the big boys,
 supposedly to help wash some laundry,
but really just to join in harassing the poor donkey.

Amare and Zenebe became fast friends with the nice boys below; notice the Bloomington basketball jerseys sported by Abukah (green) and Tesfay (gray).  Smiley Abukah is the son of the head cook at Common River, so he was often hanging out as his mom made us lunch or dinner.  He was always up for a game of cards or soccer or basketball or throwing clumps of grass at the horse.  

  

Tesfay came one day to show the director, Tsegaye, his dance routine for.... "Billie Jean"!  Amare nearly jumped out of his skin in excitement to discover an equally devoted Michael Jackson fan. An instant friendship was born and the moonwalking dance-offs began immediately. They called each other "MJ" and made Zenebe their official iPod DJ.  

One of the many throngs of children we accumulated on our ventures beyond the school grounds.

Common River's beautiful school grounds and lodging, all made using traditional woven bamboo construction

First grade classroom

Our house! 

Friends saying farewell!  We hope to see them again someday...

Emily attempts to make coffee

After I had sampled quite a bit of coffee and observed many coffee preparations, I figured it was time to learn the traditional ceremony.  As with most things, it looks much easier than it is!  Not that making coffee is that hard, but doing it well certainly takes some practice.  The coffee ceremony is traditionally done by women and served to guests.  Visitors sit around and talk while the coffee roasts, the water boils, the popcorn pops and the incense wafts. It's a social event that can last hours -- which by some reckoning is a really long time to wait for a teeny, tiny cup of coffee! But it's the most delicious coffee IN THE WORLD.  And so thick and rich.  And... don't even get me started.

The wonderful women at Common River took me under their wings to show me how to do the coffee 

ceremony.  Galatemo-ne Tsege  Asho!  They were not willing, however, to let the inept farengi burn herself, so some of the tasks were, um, modified on my behalf, and they tended the fire the entire time.  You will notice that Zenebe appears in a bunch of these photos.  After I had tried the process once, he got excited and wanted to learn, too.  How awesome is that?  Perhaps he'll become the first male master of coffee ceremonies?



Before you can start a coffee ceremony, you need to spruce up the serving area.  Fresh green grass at the very minimum, but flowers really look good, don't they?  This is probably my favorite part of the whole ceremony (other than drinking the coffee, of course).  Also, you need to remember to start the fire and not get distracted by arranging all those pretty flowers.

Raw green coffee beans still have silvery skins on them, so the first step is to wash off the skins by rubbing the beans in a dish of water, and then straining off the water and skins -- without losing any beans. Yeah, right.  Let's just say there was a bit of chaff in the coffee I made, but nobody seemed to mind... (or dared complain?)

Now for the fun part: roasting!  Zenebe found it a bit tricky to keep all the beans on the metal pan, so he kept having tiny little explosions from popping beans that had fallen into the fire!  As you roast, the beans will start to smoke --

aaahhh!  They are not going to turn all the same even brown like the beans you buy in an American store.  They will vary from light brown to black -- but don't wait till they all darken, because they'll keep cooking after you take them off the fire.  

Next you ceremoniously carry the smoking beans around to all the people waiting patiently for their coffee, and they sniff in anticipation.  

Amare and Zenebe obligingly waft the beans I roasted.

Then you fill the clay coffee pot (jebena) with water and put it over the fire to boil, while you do the hardest part: grinding the beans.  Fortunately, pounding the giant mortar and pestle is Zenebe's favorite part, so we made a great team.  (He didn't smash my fingers even once!)  When I ground the beans without his help, my arm was sore for days.  The aroma from crushing freshly roasted beans right under your nose does help take your mind off the ache in your shoulder, however.  

Once the beans are a fine powder (nope, you can't quit when there are still recognizable bean bits in there -- keep pounding!!!), you carefully pour them into the narrow neck of the jebena and give it a swirl.  I still need to work on this skill!  However, if you spill a bunch of grounds, just discretely pick a bit of grass out of your lovely flower arrangement and use it to brush away the evidence!  A real pro will do this step over the flames, but, well, they made me do this away from the fire.

Now you can wait and talk with the visitors while the coffee comes to a boil.  You need to keep the coals hot, because once the coffee pot comes off, there is popcorn to pop!    

You know when the pot is ready when steam is pushing out of both spouts on the jebena.  After it comes off the fire, it needs to sit and allow the grounds to settle while you pop corn!  Once it's popped, sprinkle on a little sugar (NOT salt, that would just be weird, you crazy American).


To serve the coffee, first dump a huge spoonful of sugar in each tiny cup.  Pour the coffee up to the rim of the cup, and then try to stir in the sugar crystals on the bottom without overflowing.  You'd better put that cup on a saucer, because unless you have the superpowers of an Ethiopian woman, you are going to slosh half of the coffee out of the little cup when you try to stand up from that itsy-bitsy stool.



Once everyone has had their first cup, you pour more water back into the jebena and re-brew for the second round, huletenya. Since I was an overly-excited farengi coffee-addict, I used the opportunity to drink a cup of the oily first brew myself, but the polite and respectful Ethiopian ladies always waited till everyone else had at least two cups (if they even had any at all).  I do not have that kind of restraint.   Any of you that have seen that heavenly shimmer on the surface that only comes from the first pour of fresh, fresh coffee know what I am talking about.  It is impossible to resist. Did I mention that Ethiopian women are superheroes of self-sacrifice?

Once the huletenya is served and the popcorn has pretty much all disappeared, it's time for people to move on.  The third round of coffee is euphemistically known as the "blessing" (bereka) but really means "time to go now."  Kindly, you do give a blessing with the third cup, but it is implied that you have worn out your welcome.  Of course the sweet staff at Common River preemptively gave ME the blessing before the awkward third round (maybe also because I took a lot longer to make the coffee than the pros, and nobody wanted to wait for a third batch)!  We all shared wishes for each others' health and happy children and safe travels and future good work, and skipped the sostenya (third round).

Thanks to Dave for photo-documenting!  

The last piece of this project is for me to do the coffee ceremony myself here in Indiana.... but, it's 95 degrees outside right now, people!  There is no freakin' way I'm sitting over a brazier of hot coals, not even for that sweet elixir.  Not till the weather outside approaches anything resembling the Ethiopian highlands.  We also had some glitches in acquiring all the materials needed (a.k.a. the boys exhibited some serious agoraphobia when their blue-eyed, white-skinned mama tried to shop at the rural market and drew almost as big a crowd as the prize roosters. Thus it did not seem worth sacrificing their mental security for that roasting pan.  Of course, now they are fine and I find myself pining over that beautiful big jebena).  Anyway, there will be some Hoosier improvisation for my next coffee ceremony....  I'll keep you posted.

Children at Play

Because we were there for a whole month, there was plenty of time to hang out and play (in between soccer games, of course).  This may seem surprising to those of you have traveled with me, since I am notorious for over-scheduled agendas.  Admittedly, I did have a suitcase full of activity books, games and crafts for the boys; of which we used only a fraction, of course.    

Z-Guesthouse, Addis Ababa.

The most redeeming things about our first guest house were the large living space and its proximity to lots of city sights.  The lack of outdoor space to run around was a bit problematic for these energetic boys, who could barely sit still long enough to play a game of Battleship (thanks to jet-lag) -- though we did play plenty of Uno!

Fortunately the boys found plenty to play with around town, including playgound equipment no longer seen in the US since it's too "dangerous."  We ate in restaurants a lot -- since food was so cheap, it just didn't make sense to grocery shop and borrow kitchen space -- but it did mean lots of tic-tac-toe and connect-the-dots games while waiting for food.  

One source of entertainment for the boys was to catch flies and try to keep them as long as possible as pets.  This was a fine game that lasted days (and multiple stupid pet flies)  until a elderly woman came up to them and lectured them (in Amharic) about how disgusting and dirty flies were!

Skater dudes at an empty mini-bus station in Addis let Amare try out their boards.

Marbles, marbles, marbles!
These are a great thing to bring and give away to kids.
They love them and they are always -- wait for it -- losing theirs.

Stork feathers!  from the Hawassa fish market.  Sadly(?!) the boys left their feather collection in a hotel room -- I didn't exactly remind them to check!

During the planning of our trip, Amare heard me mention "mini-golf" when I was talking on the phone to a family that had recently been to Sidama.  This became a destination for him and the boys played multiple games at Lewi Resort (since the pool was too darn cold!).

Dave has just knocked Em's ball out of the hardest hole in the course.  Jerk!

The monkey wants to play mini-golf?!?

AHOPE for Children