Children of the land…

NOTE: Facebook people: please go to http://www.haonavy.com/fledglingphotographer for the real thing. Facebook is just promotional.

It has become a fairly common practice during this sojourn for one of the members of my group to refer to the Sodoma Valley children in some way. It was an extraordinary experience.

The south central regions of Ethiopia is a bit lower than the rest of the country. Still quite far above sea-level, but it collects water into large lakes.

Anyway, the area is quite fertile and doesn’t really rely too much on the rainy season for crops – they have multiple harvests a year. THIS is where the heart of the coffee world resides.

But this is the kind of place that I come, I visit, I spend time… and I realize: no matter how long I spend here. No matter if it was a week or a month or a year, I would always be an outsider.

Its not because I would not be welcomed… in fact, quite the opposite! Everywhere in Ethiopia that I have traveled so far, I have been welcomed in to the most unlikely of places. Of course, we’ve had fixers get our stuff lined up ahead of time, but still…

But I would not even know where to begin to connect with the people of this land on a truly intimate level. It is unfathomable to me to see a person of a different race and want to touch them to see if their skin color would “rub off.”

Even the bravest of the children were reluctant.

In all these travels, I don’t think I’ve seen something like the people of the Sodoma Valley.

Very welcoming and kind people. Hard workers. And oh-so inquisitive. People visit the tribes of the Omo Valley farther south quite frequently because of their extremely exotic rituals and culture. These people in the mid-south are left to do their thing: producing some of the highest quality coffees in the world.

Outsiders. I will always be.

But five minutes with the children on a rainy afternoon in the middle of nowhere… you won’t feel so bad about it anymore.

Regardless of the inability to understand what it would be like to grow up without shoes until I was 8 years old or living half my life not knowing what it was like to have a paved road…

…still, there are a few blatantly obvious things I came away with in this experience in the Sodoma Valley: regardless of the difference in the color of our skin, these people do not shun nor hold anything against us. In fact, Asu (our guide) said that most people have no concept of what “racism” would even mean – many wouldn’t know what the word meant. Their hesitation is at the newness of the people – just like some alien descended from a spacecraft in ours.

But quickly, they – even the smallest of the children – realize that we are exactly like them.

People are just people no matter where you go.

Just a few things to think about.

There’s nothing in the world that could make you an outsider everywhere.

Oh, yeah, and all this news about the Ethiopian elections? Its quite a thing…

…we’re here for all that. All the “intimidation” that they’ve been saying in the international media? I don’t know if I’d call it that. But I definitely would call it extraordinarily heavy propaganda.

Oh, and there’s a monkey living on the roof of our hotel:

Stay tuned,
-Noah D.