Hey sports fans, last week I went back out to the field. I have fewer entertaining pictures to show this time because I spent most of my time in rooms like this...
doing interviews in four different woredas (think US county). In each woreda, we wanted to interview several different sets of stakeholders to get an idea of how the input credit system had worked for everyone this year. In general, let's just say...it could use some work. While I found this interesting, pictures of conference rooms and interviewees probably isn't going to do it for the reading audience.
Random thoughts from the field:
1. Guess what they yell out at white people in rural Ethiopia? "China, China." Seriously, they think all white people are Chinese. This is what happens when the Chinese build your roads and you don't see other white people very often.
2. In micro-finance branches, bank branches, and government offices, I saw a lot of random, generic trophies without any writing on them. I guess different organizations give these out fairly regularly for different things.
This brings me to my new slogan for Ethiopia - "Ethiopia: Everyone's a winner!"
3. Check out this crazy cool sign from a woreda agriculture bureau office.
Yes, He is!
4. People in Ethiopia love Meles (the late Prime Minister who died last August). He was part of the revolutionary movement that got rid of the Derg (the communists) in the early '90s. He served as the Prime Minister for a long time and was seen as a brilliant visionary. When I first got to Ethiopia in February, there were pictures of him all over the city. There are still quite a few. Turns out this is also true in offices around Ethiopia.
5. Not all the interviews were done inside. Not a bad spot, huh?
6. On the way to Gassera, you go through a Bale Mountains National Park. There you can usually (at least judging by the two times I've gone there) see Nyala (like antelope), some kind of warthog, and baboons.
Keep up the good work! And who doesn't like pictures of conference rooms?!
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