My office had a small ceremony for me to thank me for coming to Gassera. They all wished me well and told me to come back one day.

As you probably know already we have been having problems with water. To be more precise we have not had water coming out of the faucet in a year. So to supplement the bottled water some of the government offices have started having, water tankers bring in water and each person working for the office can bring three Jerry cans a week to get water. This was actually a slow day, on busy days the line will wrap out of the gate. 

The bus is transporting people, probably to Ghinir, the town I got arrested in.  But if you look on top of the bus you can see it is carrying chat.  In America it is an illegal substance, but in Ethiopia it is completely legal and considered a cash crop. It is mostly chewed exclusively by men, and it can lead to people in your town having a bad opinion of you. While some people choose to chew only in secret, it is still common to see  drivers, and people in similar lines of work chewing. It is supposed to give a euphoric high, with the added benefit of being a stimulant, hense why drivers chew. 
The second picture is a horse gari (cart) commonly used to get around moderate distances. The number seen working varies but is largest during market days when people are being in supplies to sell, or carting away large bags of grains.  There is also a version of gari pulled by donkey, see my previous posts for a donkey gari with a tie.

This is my office, the office of Agriculture and Environment. The “developments” (what I basically was) work to train farmers on the best techniques and practices to improve the livelihood of the farmers and minimize the environmental impacts of the practices. The second picture shows some of my co-workers who accepted me without question, helped me to figure out how to live in Ethiopia, and made sure I knew when it was our turn to get water (very important I promise).  

In Ethiopia the animals all run free. Most of them are just considered an annoyance. But on a rare occasion you will find someone who actually likes them.

What happens when you have one day of rain and the roads are made of dirt?  You get a muddy bus trap.  On the way home and the roads are nearly impassible.  It still remains to be seen if I can get home or not.

This is our bus situation from site into Robe. Sorry the picture is blurry but the road doesn’t cooperate well with pictures. What you can’t see is that we are crammed into the back of the bus with six people on the bench instead of the logical number of five. But hey, why pass up a chance to make people uncomfortable and making thirty extra birr.

I was asked to take a picture of my town. This is one of the main roads with buildings holding shops, and a donkey cart on the left side.  On the right there are foosball table for the kids to play on, and sugar cane for a sweet treat. Straight ahead the bamboo baskets hold bananas and other fruit brought up from the gorge to be sold at the intersection of the two main roads.

This is the reverse view from the door of my house. The middle building is the shint bet(bathroom).

This is my compound. My house is in the back of the picture mostly blocked. The house directly in front is a food prep/storage room. The one on the left is my land ladiy’s kotched. The water tank on the right is part of my land lady’s brother’s construction projects as are the piles of rocks and sand. On the near left is my chicken coup.