We have finished our first church forest, called Zhara. Today we travel about 4 hours by four-wheel drive to a small town called Debre Tabor where we will work in a second church forest called Debresena. Ambitious students can probably locate them on Google-earth. We look forward to comparing the differences between the two, and adding these points to the slowly-growing sample sizes of biodiversity in Ethiopia.
Everyone really loves the food here — injera, the local bread, is quite sour and flat, and used as a dinner-plate as well as silverware. It is at least 12 inches and round in shape, and various sauces and vegetables come on top. The trick is to tear a piece of the bread with right hand only, and then sop up some of the sauce or vegetables into a nugget that fits into your mouth.
Good luck, but it sure tastes great. Culturally speaking, Ethiopians never use their left hand for eating — it is used instead for ablutions. We saw a hippo on the edge of Lake Tana last night, just at the junction of the Blue Nile. It was taking a bath, naturally. Almost more spectacular were some of the amazing birds — black-crowned cranes, sea eagle, sacred ibis, all flying over in the sunset. More soon —
