Driving Adventures

Today (Saturday) we drove to the south to see the area where Blen was born. We went to the lake city of Awassa (on awassa lake incidently). It's about a 5-6 hour drive, but I don't know how long it took us. The drive is surreal. It is difficult to understand and absorb all that you see along the road, but these are the few that jump out at me.

First, the drive itself with negotiating traffic is insane. I (fortunately?) got to ride in the front so I had front row seats. There are really no rules that I could discern. Almost no traffic lights in a city of 2 million people. (I remember seeing 2 or 3). Instead, when you come to an intersection, you stick your nose into traffic and then go. Oh, and no one really bothers with lanes, it's a free-for-all. On top of that, the vast majority (75%?) walk or bike everywhere so you have pedestrians and bikes all over the place. Everywhere there are people walking around. Everywhere.

The city is such a contrast, there are new buildings surrounded by shacks made of corrugated metal. The butcher shops are open air (obviously) not air-conditioned with goat carcasses hanging in the back of the shop. The flies love it. There are also cars and trucks of all makes and model, many I've never seen before, but also horse-drawn buggies or donkey drawn carts right in the capitol city. Goats and chickens and cattle in the heart of the city. Right outside our hotel window this morning, before we left, there was a goat drive - probably 20-30 goats going from somewhere to somewhere.

Sorry if this gets a little long-winded, as I write, more memories come back and I'm stream of consciousness writing this. Oh, and the smoke from the million diesel trucks and busses that we followed directly behind with our windows open was oppressive.

Then we got out of the city and it was classic African countryside. Mud huts with thatched roofs. Cows and goats and donkeys grazing in parched, yellow fields. Donkeys pulling carts with hay stacked to 8 feet high to the market. But even out of the city there were always hundreds of people on the side of the road walking to or from some town. It didn't matter if the town was 10 miles away, there were people walking to get there (or taking their donkey-pulled carts).

The rules of the road are pretty loose in the country as well. Just pull around someone and pass even going up hills and around corners. On the ride I counted 3 vehicles being towed following head-on collions and 3 trucks overturned in on the side of the road and one bus with front crushed. All had happened recently as there was still people milling around the crash sites. I was glad to read our destination safely.

We finally got to Awassa and were able to visit the orphanage Blen was at originally. We met the workers and played with the kids, it was great to see and we got a little emotional (well Wendy a lot emotional).

I gotta get off the computer, will post later.
John