Saving Stripes

Sorry we have not posted in some time; we have been on vacation and haven’t been online much!
Getting back to our Ethiopia trip – we are nearly finished relating the important parts of the trip.
Day 7 saw us out the door of the Yabello Motel by 7:30. Back to the kindergarten restaurant for some breakfast [...]

Instead of patronizing the motel restaurant again, Tegegn suggested that we go into Yabello town for breakfast. We soon found ourselves at a restaurant that looked a lot like a kindergarten: we sat on miniature multi-colored plastic stools eating off miniature plastic tables in an outdoor area surrounded by colorful murals. Here, we discovered “ful” [...]

Tegegn picked us up at 6:30 and we were on our way for a long day on the road. Our destination was Yabello, in the south of the country – a good 600 plus kilometers from Awash. In the early morning light, we crossed back through the lava-crater landscape, climbing out of the hot lowlands [...]

A couple of responses to comments before we get down to Day 5… Yes, it was exciting to get the perspective of women in a community meeting! What surprised us was that the women were relatively content with the changes in their lot over the last 30 years or so. We expected them to feel [...]

Today we headed to the area west of the park (including, technically, part of the park), where the Karyu people live. The CARE staff had organized for us to meet with community members, and at 10 AM we met under a huge Acacia tortilis (umbrella thorn) tree. The community members were mostly old men, but [...]

We spent our first full day in Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, sorting out the logistics of the rest of the trip, meeting several people, and exploring the city a bit. Our official host for the trip is CARE Ethiopia, one of the key partners in the larger project (called Enhanced Livelihoods in the Mandera Triangle) [...]

We arrived in Addis Ababa airport at around 8 PM and were greeted by a sign for “Ms. Corinna Riginos” and “Ms. Savias.” We figured that must be us!
After a quick shuttle ride to the hotel, we decided to look for some dinner. The hotel dining room didn’t inspire so we set out by foot [...]

We’re back after a great trip to Ethiopia! We didn’t have any time or internet access to post updates during our trip, but over the next week or so, we’ll post a number of blog entries about our travels and work there.
The trip’s purpose was to work on our rangeland monitoring manual – expanding the [...]