Hail Ethiopia

This is what most people see when they think of Ethiopia. It's the picture I had in my mind when I boarded a plane to Addis Abbaba and read in my guidebook that Ethiopia is the 3rd poorest country in the world. Yet in our few days here, the images that I keep seeing are of smiling kids wearing wool shawls while they herd sheep, Orthodox Christian priests walking solemnly down the street with wooden staffs in their hands, and mossy green mountains filled with barley and potato farms. Life is far from perfect here, but the people we meet are polite and shy and, as a Belgian professor we met said admiringly, "are proud and determined to be treated as equals."

Zanj and I just got back from a couple days hiking in Ethiopia's Simien Mountains. It was, in a word, unprecedented. Here are some of the firsts:

• First time I've ever had to hire a guy carrying a semi-automatic weapon to protect us during a hike
• First time Zanja's ever been hugged by a guy carrying a semi-automatic weapon (when we celebrated reaching the big peak of our climb and his enthusiasm boiled over)
• First time I've actually enjoyed hanging out with French people (Dmitri and Julie, our other hiking partners)
• First time I've ever been pelted by hailstones the size of golf balls, as I thought to myself, "It's the middle of summer, I'm in Africa, and it's freakin' hailing"
• First time I've ever tried to re-stake a tent in the middle of a hailstorm, totally naked (all my clothes were drenched, I was trying to stay warm in the sleeping bag, and the tent was caving in).

It was a great trip. We got to see some "bleeding-heart" gelada baboons, so named because they have a big patch of skin on their chest that actually changes color (like a mood ring) depending on their, how do I say this, level of sexual excitement. Seeing these beautiful animals while hearing that global warming is wiping out their habitat and they'll probably be extinct in 50 years was an emotional moment for me, since I've loved monkeys ever since I was a kid and I've been getting angrier and angrier about my President's severely flawed environmental policy over the last few months. After having read a couple days earlier that Karl Rove had finally been outed as the person who sold-out a CIA agent in order to punish the one person in the Bush administration willing to speak the truth about Iraq's lack of weapons of mass destruction, I started having fantasies about putting George and Karl in a room with 20 bleeding-heart baboons, locking the door, and letting them "negotiate" the next Kyoto Protocol.

Then I realized that after being away from Meg for 6 days the main fantasy I was having involved a fat Republican and the word "protocol." The conclusion: I have issues.

Anyways, we made it up to 4000m, saw some jackals and ibex and all kinds of birds who's names I've already forgotten. The views were spectacular, and the people we met kept saying to us, "Tell people in America that this is what Ethopia really looks like." So there you are. Ethiopia, or at least the part we're in right now, is lush and full of rolling green hills, potato farms, and remarkably friendly people. It looks like Ireland, but with more black people.

--rahul