Last blog post from Ethiopia. I am flying out. In about two hours I will be in the air on to my next adventure. It has been an intense two years and I won’t go into it all again now but I am thankful that I got the opportunity to live and work among such amazing people both Ethiopian and foreigners. While I’m not going to miss the lack of water/power/cell network, I am going to miss the people. Thank you for the last two years and all the well wishes as I leave.
Goodbye for now
Trey
P.S. keep following if you want to see my exploits in India!

Visiting the host family for the last time. The kids are finished with school and getting things ready for tomorrow. On the left they are cleaning the icicle molds, and on the left preparing the food for the restaurant tomorrow. Prep is a long job requiring a lot of chopping, cleaning, and pre-cooking. They get off school, and immediately start serving food, tending the shop, cooking, and cleaning.

Making coffee is a pretty intense process. First you sort it, then you wash it, then sort again, then roast it, then you grind it (shown here) and finally you have to make the coffee. Having a buna ceremony is really a common thing here. People invite you to come have coffee, but what you learn quickly is only accept if you have time.

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.