June 21, 2009

Last night was not a good night. Sol had gone to bed with an upset stomach. (Probably the fish he had for supper which seemed a trifle undercooked.) Now here at the Lodge, the generator is turned off between midnight and 6 am and it is absolutely dark during those hours. It’s the kind of darkness where you hold your hand right up to your face and you can’t see it. Well Sol started waking up at 1 am with the runs. Of course, whenever I heard him stirring I needed to get up and turn on the flashlight and make sure he made it to the bathroom OK. He did this several times until about 2 am where he was sitting on the toilet with the flashlight and suddenly I heard the sound of massive amounts of a wet substance splashing all over the bathroom floor as he vomited repeatedly. Since it was impossible to clean up the mess in the pitch dark we just had to leave it until morning. The rest of the night I sat vigil with our one little flashlight and whenever I heard someone stirring and heading for the bathroom I needed to intercept them before they waded right into the filthy, stinking mess on the bathroom floor. I think everyone in the family woke up and tried to use the bathroom at least once that night so it was a busy night for me. I was very relieved when at 6 am the sun finally came up and the generator turned on!

Despite the awful night, we had a wonderful morning heading up to visit a Dorze village close to Chenchen. The drive up was absolutely stunning. As we got higher up the mountain, it got more and more green, lush and beautiful. Some parts felt like we were back in BC with the dense forest of evergreens. (Very unusual for Ethiopia.) Then we came to mountainous hills of terraced fields, green with crops with little huts tucked away in the hillside. Incredibly beautiful! Our visit to the Dorze village was a real highlight. We had a Dorze guide who showed us the unique “bee hive” dwellings of the Dorze people, and demonstrated for us the food they make out of a plant they call the false banana. Then we got to be part of a traditional Dorze dance which was lots of fun for the kids. Isaac and Sol especially enjoyed getting out there and dancing with them dressed in all sorts of animal skins. The Dorze people are expert weavers and they have beautiful scarves for sale from a weaving cooperative that they have formed. The visit to the Dorze village was a real highlight.

From there we went to the Crocodile Ranch which was the definite low point of our time in Arbamich. Basically we saw a bunch of crocodiles in captivity. There was no guide to provide information or a commentary so we stared at some cages of crocodiles and left. A rather useless time and a waste of our money.