Further South Through Sidama, November 16

So the first two days of our trip south were really just sight-seeing in the purest tourist sense.  It reminded me quite a bit of our seven month trip around Southeast Asia five years ago, although we seemed to make more genuine connections with Ethiopians over those two days than we did most of our trip through Southeast Asia - again an example of Ethiopian openess and hospitality.

While we definitely managed to see some sights on our third day south as well, this day was probably my favorite day of our entire trip other than those spent with our kids because we were traveling through the region of Ethiopia that Ashagre was born in.  It was beautiful!  Lush green hillsides contrasted with red dirt planted with enset, or false banana, which is used to make a local bread, and, in the shade of the enset, coffee.  We did a lot of driving this third day south, and while I sat quietly in the backseat, my mind was jumping with delight - this gorgeous stretch of countryside was the birthplace of our son.  Little did we know how close we would get to his first home.

The road south - in much better condition than the Lonely Planet
would lead you to believe.

Traditional home.  Note the large leaves of the enset trees in the background.

Lots of colorful towns and homes in Sidama.

Most Ethiopian homes in the country-side feature 2 buildings, a traditional round hut and a newer rectangular building.  Both are framed with poles and then packed with cobb (earth and straw or grasses). The rectangular housing is now favored over the round housing because of ease of maintenance, especially the roof.  Ethiopia may look quite different in the future as the round houses slowly become replaced by the rectangles.

Local well with families, mostly women and children, waiting
to fill up their jerry cans with water.

Poles for sale used to frame buildings before the mud is added.

Grave stones for sale.

Baskets for sale.

Our first destination of the day was the town of Dila.  We headed to Dila because it housed the Gedeo Tourism Office where we intended to hire a mandatory local guide to take us to two of the region's stelea sites, Tututi and Tutu Fella.  There are stelea sites throughout Ethiopia, and these two were supposed to be some of the best in the southern half of the country.  Stelea are large carved stone statues used to mark graves.  They originate from pre-Christian times and are thought to have also been used ceremoniously to ask the gods to meet a community's needs - fertility, good crops, etc.  The stelea were transported many miles by human power alone to get them to their selected sites.  

Apparently the tourism office was closed when we arrived because it was a Muslim holiday, but Dila wasn't a large town, and within minutes, the Program Director, Yosef arrived, opened the office, collected our money, and hopped in our car to show us the sites.  Our first stop was Tututi, a gorgeous hillside covered with many phallic stelea.

Our guide, Yosef.

Carving found on the stelea above.

This site is being further developed to promote tourism, and the hut on the left
was recently finished and will eventually house information on the local people.
It may also be used to sleep tourists if they so choose.

Those of you that know Brent can probably imagine the
comments he was making as he was taking this picture.

Coffee growing wild on the site.  Ready for harvest.

The drive to Tututi passed through several traditional villages and Brent was able to get a couple of good pictures on the way out.

Our next stop was the Tutu Fella stelea site.  This site features more anthropomorpic stelea.  It is also pretty far down a pretty rough road, so it was slow going to get there.  I could tell Ayele was nervous.  He had never been to the stelea fields before, and I think he would have preferred not to take his car down this road.  It didn't help that it was a holiday and all the local children weren't in school so we had a pack of fans following us on foot the entire time.  Our entire trip there featured the soundtrack, "You, you, you, farangi!"  Kids would hear their friends yelling and they would all come running and calling.  Some of the kids would run along side our car for miles, usually barefoot, uphill, in the sun, and barely break a sweat.  While most of them were likely 6 - 10 years old, on the way out there was a little girl running for quite a while that couldn't have been more than 3.  We could see how Ethiopia has produced many world-class runners.  Some kids took a different approach, much to Ayele's dismay.

We finally made it to Tutu Fella without getting a flat tire, running over any children, or loosing any major pieces of Ayele's car (although I am pretty sure that we did scrape up the undercarriage a bit, especially when there were "hitchhikers" on the back of the car).  The stelea were much more intricately carved than those at Tututi, but we had the most fun with the local village children.  The girls were very excited to braid my hair and found it pretty funny that my hair wouldn't hold a braid like theirs.  We didn't get very good pictures of their hair, but some of the girls had gorgeous, intricate braids that they were very proud of.

After visiting Tutu Fella, we returned to Dila and dropped Yosef off.  Next we headed to Yirga Alem to get some lunch at the ecolodge that I mentioned was full in an earlier post.  We didn't get any pictures of the lodge, but it was a very peaceful spot and the lunch was probably one of the best we had over our entire trip.  Besides perfectly prepared traditional Ethiopian dishes, we were given a huge fresh green salad with tomatoes and carrots and marinated avocados on the side.  Fresh veggies are a little hard to come by in your day-to-day restaurant dining in Ethiopia so we were ecstatic to eat such fresh produce.  On the way to Yirga Alem, Brent snapped a couple of more pictures, including one of the local car wash.

By the time we left the lodge it was early evening and we were all pretty tired, so we started to head back to Awasa for the night.  On the drive down I had asked Ayele if he knew where Dale was.  From what I could tell from Ashagre's paperwork, Dale is the closest town to where he is from.  Just as dusk was setting in, Ayele pulled the car over on the side of the road and said, this is Dale.  It was hard to see much, as the light was becoming limited, but we were able to snap a few pictures, including a couple of the local high school.  We are hoping that we will learn more about both our kids' past when we return to Ethiopia, but it was pretty important to me that we were able to be able to get a glimpse of Dale.

Dale High School.

Entrance to the high school.

When Brent and I traveled in Southeast Asia we had the time of our lives.  In fact, some of the experiences we had on that trip laid the foundation for our eventual adoption from Ethiopia.  However, once we got home and reflected the trip a bit, we decided that if we ever had the opportunity to take a trip like that again, we would do it a bit differently.  We wanted to give back more than we were able to in Southeast Asia.  On that trip we ended up feeling kind of like voyeurs, paying a decent chunk of money to just see how others lived in different parts of the world - it felt pretty one-sided at times.  Our trip to Ethiopia, obviously, was a different sort of trip.  I went to Ethiopia to meet and learn more about my kids.  On this day, I felt like I was given a great gift of insight into Ashagre's life.  It was a very special day.  Other parts of the trip, for me, bordered on Southeast Asia again - there were times I definitely asked myself why I was doing what I was doing as I really didn't feel like I was gaining much insight related specifically to our kids.  It was a short trip though, and I think just the fact that we took a few weeks to venture out beyond Addis provided a perspective on Ethiopia that we wouldn't otherwise be able to get.