Street Scenes

People ask me all the time what Africa is like. Before I came, I wondered as well. Where would I stay? What will day-to-day be like? What will we eat? With my ideas shaped by countless documentaries, I had a distorted view of living in Africa. While pictures can only begin to tell the story. Here are a few street scenes of everyday living. Riding the bus in southwestern Ethiopia Dealing with street traffic Main street in rural Kenya Going to market in Jimma, Ethiopia

Celebrating coffee

After days of training it was time to celebrate... and in Jimma, coffee becomes a part of the celebration. We arrive to the office arranged in a traditional coffee setting (note the round pot) and a customary snack of chollo (toasted barley). The floor is strewn with long blades of a special grass and incense burns. The smell of incense mingles with roasted coffee. It makes for a mix of tradition without ceremony. Outside they are roasting lamb, two to be exact. Rather than on a spit as I imagined, the lamb is already butchered and various parts are cooked according to a preferred method. Here, a large wok-like fry pan is used for large pieces of meat. In the background you can see a pot used for a mix of organ meats (none for me, thanks). Rather than a spit-fired roasting method, a spit-like serving method carries meat to each diner. As the server comes by, you point at the piece(s) you want and they cut it to order. As you sink your teeth into the meat you taste a spiced oil (perhaps ghee) used to season the meat before cooking.

Addis Mercado

The Addis Mercado is reported to be the largest open air marketplace in Africa. A prime spot for a firsthand Addis experience. A sprawling bustle of activity, smells, noise and shops. Much more than a destination for tourist trinkets, this place has everything... food, mops, clothes, plumbing, you name it. Most of which we did not need to see. While taking in the experience was the main attraction. We also had a few destinations in mind. We ask our taxi driver where the spices are sold. He dutifully warns us of dangerous elements lurking in the market. It's best not to wander unescorted. Thanking him for the tip, at the same time we felt fine traveling in two's with few valuables. Soon, his "friend" appears telling us of the dangers of the marketplace. We should be escorted to points of interest. So our self-appointed "guide" helped us navigate. Somehow it felt like the more likely danger is the marketplace guide scam. In the end, we never would have found the spices, green coffee or requisite trinkets.

Good, Good News

Ken found out he has a card reader... and he figured out how to use it. So yes, there will be pictures with the blog entries after all.

Time is on my mind

It is 1:15, Tuesday morning, 26-Meskrem-2002. Everything is different in Ethiopia, especially time... Local Ethiopian time starts when the sun rises, making for some interesting differences as the sun rises across the country with a difference of 45 minutes. The calendar, the Ge'ez calendar, has 12 months of 30 days each, with one short month of five or six days depending on leap year. New Year falls sometime in September (about three weeks ago). Their year started counting seven years after the conventional western calendar as it took a cleric that long to reach this part of Africa to spread the news of Christ's death. So they started when he got here.

Good News and Bad News

So I've got some good news and some bad news. First the good news... I am getting some amazing pictures as we move through the coffee growing countryside of Kenya and Ethiopia. Experiencing the sights, sounds and food of this journey is truly a unique and gratifying opportunity. Now, the bad news... I never downloaded my camera utility. Doh! So for now, I will be using images from my last trip or those I can grab along the way. There still great pictures that I hardly had a chance to share. So, just as in Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, these images, whether actual or created (substituted), depict authenticated facts. Apologies if you might have seen an image or two from a slide show. Don't despair, when I return in a few weeks I will create links to the appropriate blogs with new highlights.

Kenyan Coffee

We spent a week in Nairobi observing training, touring coffee farms and watching the processing of coffee cherry. It is the beginning of the harvest. Farmers are just beginning to bring cherry to the mills. During the height of the season, farmers can make daily trips to the mill. At this point, it may only be several trips per week. Kenya has a strong reputation for high-quality, specialty coffee. Much of their coffee undergoes a washing process, that produces the high-grade arabica coffees highly prized in today's specialty market. Large coffee plantations operated in Kenya since early in the 20th century. Due to coffee prices, corruption and political struggles over the past few decades, coffee farming has fallen on hard times in Kenya. Many farmers neglected their trees or worse, pulled them out as the prices did not justify the cost. While coffee prices have recovered from the lows of the late 90's, yields have not. The collapse of the coffee market started a downward spiral. Farmers who couldn't cover their costs went out of business. Many who grew up during those hard times saw no future in coffee. We drove through towns of abandoned shops. The agronomist I rode with told me how many moved to the city and now struggle in Nairobi to make their living. To break the cycle, farmers need to see a future of increased incomes that come from higher yields and a quality coffee that commands premium prices.