Saw A Few Things . . .

Families. Women and children walking hand in hand with husbands.

Plastic chairs and tables in a myriad of colors

Smiling, shrieking children waving with huge smiles. 

Others stare with narrowed eyes and unfriendly glares. 

Quite probably my imagination. Or not. I shall never know.

I see a boy hop on a donkey like a pro. Rodeo Ethiopia.

Hay cylinders with pointed tops 

Skinny stick piles tied neatly together 

Houses in all stages of the mud plaster process

Piles of cows lounging on the sides of roads with spacious fields behind them as far as they eye can see. 

Deep green vegetation and the darkest black soil tilled by yoked oxen. 

Yards with laundry, chickens, and goats, porches, fires, fences, and numerous buildings connected together.

Corn. Is that corn? 

Trees super spaced out among large boulders

Crowded town sidewalks with fruit stacked in neat pyramids. 

Bustling dirt and cement sidewalks. 

Storefronts lined up all selling the same things.

Where are the gas stations? 

Cemeteries?

Crazy traffic patterns and huge potholes.

Bright blue Lada taxis stuffed to the brim with humans on the way to a million destinations. 

Mosques with minarets pointing to Paradise. 

Fabrics and babies in slings

Waves of people an friendly smiles all around

Shoe shiners with yellow buckets that remind me of lemonade containers

Tin fences, gray, silver, black, blue, yellow, and green

Walkers remote and urban

Chatting colleagues fighting jet lag

Sun, rain, sun, rain

I saw a donkey who looked like he was mediataing under a tree

Colorful arches indicate schools or government offices

Umbrellas. Hundreds of them. 

Bars and coffee houses full of socialization, mostly men

Skinny jeans, suit coats, hats and sunglasses 

Hijab

Teens that remind me of my students and make me miss my friend Jill.

White prayer caps 

Ping pong and pool tables 

TV satellites on top of rusty and clean tin roofs

Electric lines on skinny poles

Crowded buses and vendors. Teen and child entrepreneurs selling technology accessories

I saw a SIM card entered into the back of my new Nokia phone. 

300 Birr no haggling. 

Banana leaves reaching straight up for the sky. Vince tells me they are the tallest grass species.

I saw a 25-30 year old foreign service communications director at the US Embassy. The guy in Kazakhstan looked and sounded the same. 

Policy, culture, economic development, education, modernization of technology are topics of discussion.

Granite, marble, clean glass and impeccably mowed lawns of the US Embassy. 

Jenny would feel quite warm and cozy here. 

The Japanese lost this embassy land when Ethiopia gave it to the USA.

Japan cooperated with the Italians. Ethiopia didn't like that much.

Ethiopian Unity through diversity.

Dirt piles in places that surprise me

Tall mountains dotted with houses and winding steep paths straight up up up up up

This 6 hour bus ride has turned into 10. 

A white dirty land roving jeep with huge wheels and a USAID sticker on the door.

The no machine gun sticker in the back window leads me to pause and wonder. 

I awake with a really sore neck and body. 
That pothole shook my bones really hard. 

It is pitch black outside. 

I wonder if animals are out there that will eat my face off. Probs.

We drive through cities with storefronts lit with flashing twinkle lights in purple, reds, and greens. 

Two people pass us on a motorbike. Where is that freaking town??? 

I am bangry, bus angry. 

The stars make the sky look absolutely massive. It takes my breath away.

Does the constant squeaking mean those shocks are gone on the front of this bus? 

I want to drive a motor bike. 

I am fairly certain we shall never arrive. 

I wonder what Gavin and Sean are doing and I question my job.  

I think of Billy gently running his hands through my hair on my comfy couch.  

I close my eyes overwhelmed.