Africa

Africa--my trip was powerful. I came home without words for it.  I mean, I saw kids in open sewers, horrible disparity between my possessions and those of the people who I encountered, unrealistic expectations, attitudes and assumptions based on the color of my skin, unexpected kindness and generosity, and the sweet human desire to reach the person who is the "other."

I traveled from the US to Dubai, and then to Addis Ababba, Ethiopia.  I met up with Ben Sota from the Zany Umbrella Circus (I was in Africa to document his adventures.)  The two of us along with John Mckay from the Awassa Youth Campus stuffed ourselves and our gear into a mini van with a bunch of random people and headed on the bumpy, but paved, road to Awassa.  We left amidst a downpour, passing hundreds of homeless people huddled under eaves and underpasses. It was sadly familiar, except that the number of people living without a roof was exponentially greater than I see in the States.  

Outside the city limits things changed dramatically.  Ethiopia is still rural-- villages, farmland, open space. People don’t have much, but the quality of life does not ring with the same desperation as it does in the streets of Addis. 

On the 250 km ride I hung my head out the window, cranked up my shutter speed and shot.  I had come during the two months of the rainy season that turns the land to a lush green guarded by endless mountains.  I saw what the rain, cattle, increasing population and farming was doing to the land in the bare tree roots clinging to hillsides.  Erosion is washing away livelihoods and creating huge environmental problems.

We got to Awassa and I dropped my things at the Central Hotel ($10/night).  Hours turned to minutes that day –it seemed like I had just put down my bag and some one said “LET’S DANCE.” I squeezed into a three-wheeled motorcycle taxi with a bunch of European kids who were volunteering at an orphanage’s summer camp. We ended up at the local disco “The Inferno.”  In Ethiopia if you want to make friends, DANCE!