After the cynicism and pessimism of yesterday a refreshing change this morning. We went for a walk in the hills around Gondar with some other Ferenji volunteers. A group of ten, consisting of German trainee doctors, a physiotherapist, an ophthalmologist, a TEFL teacher and an Ethiopian friend of one of the vols took a line taxi (a clapped out minibus carrying more people than it was designed to) to a spot just outside the town. We spent the morning walking through a very dry landscape, which felt like it could have been in the middle of nowhere. The many people we came across were fascinated, and the lack of hassle was striking. We gained two other Ethiopians who just walked with us out of sheer curiosity, and they both turned out to be students in one of the schools I help to support. It’s fascinating to see how rural people live their lives (and a hard life it is too) and to get a better feel for what most of Ethiopia is like. Given that Ethiopia has the highest proportion of rural to urban dwellers in the world (something like 9:1) it’s good to see what most people here have to deal with.