a strange reason to fear rainbows and a dead computer aren’t the only things i got out of this weekend.
i also got a raging flu.
it’s gone… for now, after 36 straight hours of sweating profusely while i shivered with chills under every blanket i own.
36 consecutive hours of sautéing.
i woke up wondering if i smelled more like cheap raisins or expensive cheese.
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stay tuned for our next episode:
fu man chops.
a weekend getaway in 3 days and 3 nights.
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the supe(r) BBQ
well, it was bound to happen.
when 15 ferenji descend upon the same tiny village to eat and drink themselves into oblivion, we were bound to punch some shint bet bingo cards. and punch them we did, when the entire jima loop braved the two hour pothole… err… bus ride to the quaint hilltop village of supe for scott’s supe(r) BBQ.
lucky for me, scott likes to show off his culinary prowess, so there was enough food that i didn’t have to show anymore cuddly animals who’s boss via digestion, namely one pierre the goat. yes, scott named him, which is the number one cardinal “don’t” when one plans on killing and eating another living being.
aside from pierre, and a huge cauldron of offal chili (yes offal… it’s not a typo, it’s tripe…oh), we had baked beans, corn bread, avocado salad, cole slaw, deviled eggs, guavas, and papaya cobbler (i list the menu only to re-emphasize that if you want peace corps cuisine done right, the loop is where it’s at. to further drive home this point, we had a fajita fiesta in metu the night before).
before we could chow down, however, the first order of business was of course business. after all, we were here under the guise of “sustainable gardening training”. so our host gestured toward his garden and said “this is a garden. there is a fence around it to keep pests out. any questions?”
just one…
“anyone want to go on a beer run?”
and run we did, through a few cases of bedele special, a few bottles of home brew, some tela, some t’ej, and the loop’s own version of lynchburg lemonade with arake and ginger syrup.
what?
we had a lot of food to wash down.
with full stomachs, happy hearts, and droopy eyes we moseyed off to the hotel to see if we couldn’t punch a few bingo cards.
the hotel offered two shint bet options: left, or normal, and right, wherein could be found a noose hanging ominously over the hole, presumably in case things got so bad in there that you decided to just end it all. as i pulled the door closed my hand squished into something slimy and doughy, presumably because there was a big wad of pizza dough slung over the door. this would be slightly less disturbing had there been any place in supe to get a slice of pizza.
we all checked off our suicidal shint bet square and it was off to bed where i got to say to john, “nice to meet you, man. now let’s hop into bed together.”
ahh, the hotel discount spouse.
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stay tuned for our next episode:
supe hangover cure #1:a long walk and a nice cold shower.
the fearless rainbow watchers.
there’s a superstition in ethiopia.
every time a rainbow appears, a hyena is being born.
you hear this, then you come out to the jima loop, where it rains at least once a day everywhere in the loop. now we’ve got baboons, and civets, and some even say lions, but hyenas we haven’t got. thus the residents of the northern loop go by the name of the fearless rainbow watchers. we of the southern loop call ourselves the whistlin’ buffalo, which is just random enough that i’ve never asked for an explanation.
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the jimma loopers fearlessly watching a rainbow.
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while even a one bus town like masha has about a half acre set aside as a “bus station” and is centered by a roundabout, supe’s bus station is the corner (and yes, supe is small enough to have the corner, because it only has the one) and is centered by a large tree, around which is built a circular grass roofed shai bet. it’s quite bucolic actually (thank you very much GRE vocabulary flash cards!), like it’s straight out of rudyard kipling. so when steve got up at 5AM to catch a bus out of town he stood, hopefully, on the corner near central perk (do i owe royalties for that reference?), and that’s exactly where we found him two hours later when the rest of us were heading down to scott’s for breakfast…
and that’s exactly where we found him two more hours later, when we headed down the road for some jungle hiking.
oh steve. stuck in supe, again (steve would eventually make it home. an hour or so later he would pass us on the road whilst [activity withheld until steve can no longer be fired from peace corps]. it was no bus, but it got the job done).
but before we braved the jungle, joanna and i had to check “waiting in line behind livestock” off of our bingo cards (yes, there was a cow in the shint bet, and one waiting in line outside).
the hike was part off-piste machete trailblazing, part vine assisted climb to an outcropping halfway up a roaring waterfall adorned with an ever present rainbow.
somewhere in ethiopia there’s either a mama hyena giving birth to a never ending litter of pups, or one massive baby hyena being born.
i’m looking at you boru.
standing under that rainbow it wasn’t just water that cascaded over me, but the realization that nature was taking no special efforts to make this incredibly beautiful sight, and that’s what was so special about the whole thing. this was simply nature being nature.
given the chance, water will flow, rock will smash that water to smithereens, and those smithereens will tear white light apart into well ordered ribbons of color.
standing under that rainbow i had to wonder how an entire country could be afraid of this.
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stay tuned for our next episode:
ethiopian penguin beanie, and other words that don’t belong together.
some sort of disconnect.
there’s a saying in the southwest. whenever something changes in coincidence with a person’s comings and goings, it is attributed to that person’s luggage. for example, if i left town and the power went out they would say i took the power with me. if i came home and the rain stopped, they would say i brought the sun back with me.
this weekend, the masha girls brought the busses home with them.
the trip back to masha was hardly as painful as the return from metu was the week before. in fact, aside from one porter attempting to pack us so tight that toes were stood upon and laps sat upon (that plan was foiled by the arrival of a second bus) we were able to get busses and make connections seemingly at will, even allowing for a perfectly timed breakfast stop in metu for some fatira be mar, and the gore-masha bus allowed us each to have a bench all to ourselves. unheard of.
what a difference a week makes.
but fortune is cyclical, and i returned home to find my computer doa.
all of a sudden i was out of the loop.
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stay tuned for our next episode:
the day i weighed 1,000lbs.
