Donkeys, Toyotas & Tuk-tuks

The drive down to & from Mizan Tafari was absolutely stunning. This part of the country is absolutely  beautiful and so far removed from the Live Aid images of famine. It is lush, green and verdant, with teff, sorghum, maize, coffee & tea, plus bananas, mangos, papayas & avocados all growing in abundance.  Snacks were easy to come by – we just bought fruit from stalls along the road. We drove through the Kaffa region, from where coffee originates and gets its name – mainly it is farmed (there is some wild) but within the natural forest, as are a number of the other crops grown. The community really value the forest and are keen to preserve it for future generations.

It’s easy to believe that Ethiopia has the highest donkey population in the world with the exception of China – they are everywhere, in the countryside and in towns, often carrying or pulling ridiculous burdens.  The border of a town is defined by the first sighting of a tuk-tuk, probably garishly decorated with fake velvet curtains painted in the back window and either Arsenal or Manchester United on the front.  Jemima counted over 100 as we drove through one small town.  The other ubiquitous vehicle is the Toyota (split evenly between Landcruiser and Hilux) – I’m so glad we’re in one and have on one or two occasions reassured myself by remembering the Top Gear team’s failed attempts to destroy one.

Not surprisingly we’ve been staying in the towns – one thing that I find bewildering is how hard it seems to be (other than in THE most expensive hotel in the particular town) to find a room with a working loo! On our night in Mizan Tafari we’d gone against our guide’s device and pushed on to find Millie’s village before securing a room. When we got back, the recommended hotel was booked up – we then went to 3 more hotels and I must have looked at 10 bedrooms and failed to find one with a working loo. In the end I opted for clean, cockroach & odour free, accepting that we’d have to use water from a bucket. Furthermore, They all seem to have bought their hotel room door handles from the same dodgy manufacturer, as the locks were all practically impossible to unlock – at the hotel in Mizan Tafari I had to take the phone number of the hotel manager in case I needed to call him in the morning to let us out of our room!

We stopped off on the way in our guide Bek’s home town Bonga for lunch. This is the capital of Kaffa and a lovely town – while Bek went off to visit his mum, we had time to wander around. We came across a tiny shop selling honey from a huge barrel – the shop was full of bees that were swarming around the honey and many were in the honey itself! The owner even had a small fire in the stall to subdue the bees with the smoke. Unfortunately they weren’t quite subdued enough and Jemima was stung 😦

The next day brought a long drive from Jimma to Sodo – bumpy roads all the way but one of the most beautiful drives of the trip so far, with every valley bringing a different view. This feels seriously off the beaten path – it’s clearly an area that rarely sees feranji tourists.  At one point we stopped to visit a local market; we naively thought we’d be able to stroll around, peruse what was for sale and maybe even buy something. The reality was that we were immediately mobbed by locals – mainly children but also adults – who had clearly never seen fair skinned children before. It was so ridiculous that the local policeman had to disperse the throng using a whip made of some old banana leaf – I certainly wouldn’t want to have been on the receiving end but the children were clearly used to it and very adept at avoiding its sting! This was a typical example of when the first thing we did when we got back to the safety of our car was break out the antibacterial hand gel!