After a week in Awassa, we have established a few routines. We start our day with breakfast around 7 am at the Pinna hotel restaurant. Due to irritated stomaches from the malaria pills, nearly all of us have oatmeal for breakfast - we can also share the large portions. Although our walk to the university has almost become routine, there's a series of interesting sites along the three blocks. It is pretty commonplace to see beggars (usually really old, really young, or crippled) along side well dressed people on cell phones. There are numerous fruit stands selling fresh bananas, pineapples, avocados, apples, mangoes and papaya. Every hundred meter or so there are school age boys shining boots and washing shoes. People sleep under the tree in the shade just off the road. It never ceases to amaze us what a temperature difference there is between the sun and the shade. All kinds of shops and restaurants lined the streets selling clothes, baskets, souvenirs, food, photo developing and stationary. People often approach you selling scoops made from horns or wooden rattles.
One thing that sticks out as particularly different is the boy standing on the sidewalk with a noise maker that attracts attention to their weigh scale. Here is a luxuary to find out your weight and it's a service you pay for, can you image that in Canada?!? There aren't too many signs, but our favorite is the no honking sign, meanwhile all you can hear on the street are rickshaws beeping their horns. Another obvious difference between Ethiopia and Canada are the donkey carts and rickshaws buzzing along the road and the herds of goats and sheep cruising down the sidewalk along side the people.
Amanda, Dani, Melissa, Jenn, Michelle and Alexis
No comments:
Post a Comment