A view from part way up the hill


A tukul, a dwelling common in rural areas, near our college (the hill we climbed today is in the background). Tukuls are made from wood and dried mud, and because there is no chimney often have smoke pouring through the roof when a fire is lit inside.


One of the tukuls on the hillside and the outskirts of an ever-expanding Awassa


Awassa and the lake, with the western edge of the Rift Valley on the horizon.

After a day of intense sunshine I feel irradiated and slightly overcooked. As we are so close to the equator the sunlight can be very intense and, compared to recent days, it’s been particularly hot today. Not a good day to go for a walk then, but like crazy Ferenji that’s what we did. Actually the plan was to get up early (5.30am) and go for a run, but at 5.30am I just couldn’t motivate myself enough. Plan B swung into action, which was to walk up a much bigger hill that overlooks Awassa than our usual Tabor Hill. I’ve eyed up this hill for a while and, from the top of Tabor Hill, picked out a route through the suburbs of Awassa and the surrounding agricultural land. After seven months here we’ve acquired enough experience, confidence and Amharic to wander through new areas without being too intimidated by hassle. So, at 7am we set of. We walked past lots of houses under construction, which highlighted just how rapidly Awassa is expanding. All the people we met were smiling and friendly, especially the children, partly because the area we walked through would never normally be visited by ferenjis. After only half an hour we could have been in a remote countryside area. The poverty became more noticeable but the people were as friendly and cheerful as ever, with a lot of the children greeting us in Sidamingna instead of Amharic (Sidamingna is the local language of this area which is populated mostly by ethnic Sidama, Amharic is a second language for most people in the south). I loved the exercise, which is the closest we’ve had to proper hill-walking in a while, and the peacefulness of being high up with no people around. The big surprise then, was the appearance of tukuls (the traditional round dried-mud houses) near the top. At the top of this hill, at least 300 m above the surrounding land, were several families with grazing animals and slightly surprised looks on their faces as two sweaty Ferenji walked on to the 80 m high transmitter mast for the local radio station at the summit. What a place to live, especially as it’s a long walk to get water! A group of men we met on the way down the hill were surprised and impressed that we didn’t have a vehicle waiting to collect us and that we preferred to walk. I suppose to many local people, ferenjis are aloof white people who are driven around in comfortable 4x4s. After three hours of being irradiated by an increasingly hot sun, we arrived home tired and with slight sunburn. That’s my first dose of sunburn since I arrived in Africa. We don’t normally spend so much time in the sun so today has been a reminder of how fierce the sunshine can be, but the walk and the views were worth it.