Including this week we have three weeks left of training. I can't seem to decide if that is really soon or so far away. It seems like we have lived in Butajira for a year already. But, I know that soon we will be swearing in at the US embassy, leaving our new friends, and in my case going to a city with no other PC within two hours. When they asked, I told PC that I didn't care if there was another volunteer at my site. Now I am wondering if it would have helped. Regardless, there is always the call (and by always I mean almost never) and other means of communicating. I am really excited though, I am ready to get out of Butajira and start my service. I already have plans on what I want to get started as soon as I get to site. I know I am supposed to take it slow the first few months but that is going to be hard. I have started list of things that I want to pick up on Addis day (where we get the day to go shopping for things in Addis that we can not find at site or our hub towns). But between now and then we have a presentation in a school, a day and a half camp we have to run, and the language practicum. This week especially we have language for six hours nearly every day. It is going to be nearly impossible to stay focused for all of that and I am sure it is going to be difficult on the volunteers as well as the LCFs. But life goes on, there are a couple people who have birthdays in between now and then so there will be opportunity to celebrate; plus the end of Fasicca is nearly here. This Sunday marks the end of the two month fast the orthodox have been observing. That means there will be celebrating, and people will start eating meat again. For me as a vegetarian and animal lover though this marks a hard day. Most orthodox housholds will slaughter an animal to cook for the celebration, this is done AT THEIR HOUSES. I asked my father and from what I could understand they are planning on slaughtering a sheep, a goat, and a chicken, along with purchasing beef. I have been trying to decide if I should see if PC will let me hide at the office, or if I should just lock myself in my room. Unfortunately I think that leaving the house would be culturally rude and I think PC office is out of the question. That means I will be wearing headphones, blaring music, and trying not to think about what is happening outdoors. Hopefully my family will only make me come out when the mess has been cleaned up. For other volunteers this is an exciting time. For the last two months it has been difficult to get meat, and they are ready to go crazy for a protein fix.
But now to the fun stuff. This week was out trips. The healthies went to Ambo where the Ambo soda factory is; I have not gotten many details yet, but I believe they visited a hospital, and then went on a horse back ride down to a crater lake. I know they had a pool at the hotel, as well as Pizza. The Ag/Enviro group went to Awash national park. The first day was really annoying, we got there, saw the amazing water falls, and the beautiful scenery! Then PC put us in a hot room, with next to no ventilation, direct sun in some spots, and told us to sit for four hours and listen to talks about park conservation, and management. Now normally these would be topics I would be very interested in, but when I know that there is a world wide known national park outside the room, along with it being 85+ degrees in the room we are sitting you can imagine I was less than willing to be there. During the short break we had we looked out the window to the river below and saw a crocodile sun bathing, but as we had another lesson planned we could not go see it. So after dinner we went back to the tens, that were surrounded by baboons, and monkeys, and spent the night around a campfire having fun and watching some cultural demonstrations. That night it rained, hard, and when we tried to go to the hot springs the next morning the road to it was impassible so we could not get there. It was a major disappointment. We proceeded with the game drive though, and saw some awesome wildlife, sadly though we did not see any of the big cats, lions, leopards, or cheetahs; still the Onyx were beautiful, we saw two very endangered bat eared fox, wart hogs, monitor lizards, monkeys, and more birds then I could count. After we went on a short hike to a local community, there were maybe three house holds, the whole compound was surrounded by Acacia branches with their thick thorns to prevent the carnivore from getting in to eat the goats and chickens. It was the picture of what most people think of as Africa. Mud huts, animals running around, and a very difficult existence. After lunch we finally had an hour of free time, the first (and only) free time we had there, and I got to go on a small half hour hike. I went along the waterfall trail and got to appreciate the beauty of the park. When I got back to the falls I met up with some other volunteers and we sat on a rock near the falls, and enjoyed the spray of the water and watched a crocodile surf the current coming from the waterfall. It was an amazing picture of nature in Africa, but also a reminder of what we have to protect. We learned in the lesson the day before that the park due to politics and agricultural pressure has shrunk nearly by half in the last 6 years or so. The river feeding the falls is the most exploited river in Africa for water and agriculture. There are several species of wildlife in the park that are nearly extinct. Even in Orynx has gone from several thousand, to about six hundred in the last ten or so years. Without aggressive conservation measures the park could very well loose it's battle to preserve Africa's wildlife and habitat. After language class (yes they made us take two hours of language there) we went on a thirty minute drive to another area of the park (that is having a massive highway built in it) to a hyena den. As we made our way to the entrance we looked down into the crevices where Africa is separating due to tectonic activity and saw bats using the cracks as home. As sun set about fifteen hyenas including babies made their way out of the den to wake up in the cool night air. We left as it started to get too dark but soon they would have left to start the hunt. After one more night in the tents we made our way back to Butajira.
The experience was a memory of Africa that I will always appreciate, though I still want to go see some other wildlife preserves in Africa; it wet my appetite for what I can see and be a part of during my two year stay. I can't wait to see what it's other natural parks have in store for me.
