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I was relistening to Arcade Fire’s album, Funeral, while working today. I listened to this album almost continuously a few years ago while I was doing field work in Ethiopia. It’s odd how listening to it now can still bring back that feeling of being in another place very different from my own. Smelling wood-smoke while I’m walking around Town does the same thing as well.
Listening to Funeral reminds me of laying in my hotel room in the mornings, before getting up to start the day. You can hear the (small) town waking up around you: many roosters, and an occasional donkey, and people walking around. You can smell burning wood. Our rooms shared a balcony that overlooked the mountain-side, and the morning and evening views of the green (just after the rainy season) or dry slopes, with all the little patches of cultivated fields, and birds circling overhead, was breath taking.
Sitting on that balcony was good times. Especially with a beer.
Ethiopia and Lalibela have been really great so far. I’ve missed travelling, missed both Ethiopia and Lalibela, and so it’s good to be back.
We’ve worked continuesly since we’ve arrived. It’s mostly going well, although we’ve had a few hiccups. For instance, we can’t get inside some areas of each church, even though we were given “permission” to do so, and have a priest (who technically can enter any room of each church, even if we can’t) helping us out.
We’ve also had a bit of time in the evenings to just chill out — last night Steve and I went to a tej house (tej being a kind of mead) where we drank and danced, although tej, it seems, doesn’t agree with Steve’s stomach 
Over the next few days we’ll be finishing off our work. Hopefully we’ll have no problems getting out of Lalibela — when we reconfirmed our flights earlier in the week we found that we weren’t even on the flight! That’s now been fixed, but the Air Ethiopian flights to Lalibela seem to break down regularly, and they haven’t added extra flights to make up for the short-fall. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that no flights break down on Wednesday, when we return to Addis. Otherwise the quickest way out might be to rent cars and drive. That’d be fun, and the landscape is gorgeous, but it’s a two day trip that I hope we don’t have to make.
And now I’m off to the shower. Ciao!
It’s been a while since I’ve gone traveling. In fact, I haven’t really gone anywhere since I quite my job last year. Which is why I was happy when my ex-boss asked if I’d like to come along to help with their field work in Ethiopia.
Later today I’m off in a Jet-Plane to Addis Ababa, and then Lalibela, to continue on the field work that the group started a few years ago (while I was working for them). I’m looking forward to traveling again, and I’ve missed Ethiopia — it’s a beautiful country with friendly people.
I’ve started to upload my Ethiopia pictures to Flickr. It’s taken me a while to get around to doing that, and it’s going to take me even longer to finish putting them all up. But I’ll get there.
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