Arba Minch is a breathtakingly
beautiful place. The flight in drops low over Lake Abaya, the reddish waters
hiding its monstrous crocodiles of legendary size. In the near distance is
shimmering-clear Lake Chamo (imagine a “ch” with an umlaut), separated from
Abaya by “God’s bridge,” a ridge-like, thickly forested hill that seals off the
two bodies of water from one another. Chamo reflects the escarpment
that rises up to meet the mountains behind it. The city spreads out along the
two lakes, divided also into two—the downtown Sikela and its sister Secha,
which sits a couple miles up the hill. Behind the town the Guge Mountains ascend
again into the clouds, saluting their cousins across the lakes.
It was up these mountains that we
climbed, the Land Rover making light work of the rocky dirt road. Mules trotted
down the road laden with cabbages, many of their tenders staring curiously
while the animals frantically avoided the truck. As we drove, I felt
breathless—the view of the lakes, the twin towns, and their mountain backdrop
were too much to take in. And at the same time, the air felt so clean and fresh
I couldn’t breathe it in fast enough.
I immediately fell in love with this
place. I didn’t know how eager I’d been to escape Addis Ababa until I stepped
off the plane in the teeny tiny Arba Minch airport, and I was accosted—as if by
an old friend—by the bright humidity and luscious greenery. It is everything
that Addis is not—clean, fresh, green, and wide open. The splendor of the
landscape is almost too much to absorb. I am so much reminded of Nakuru; the
vastness of the lakes, the neighboring escarpments, the town that’s just big
enough—these parts of the Rift Valley are remarkably similar.
I spent the afternoon with Yisehak,
the logistics and administrative guru of the Mercy Corps field office here. He
showed me the town—the university with its model farm and irrigation system;
the condominiums under construction; the banana and mango trees that carpet the
landscape near the lakes; the rivers where auto-rickshaw drivers were bathing
themselves and their vehicles; the Mercy
Corps office and its goat-neighbor
that greeted me with enthusiastic bleats. Yisehak is from Arba Minch, and
completed his education here; he says he loves this part of the country more
than any other. At 7 or 8 pm, he told me, he loves to walk the hills and hear
such peaceful silence—only the wind is audible. I asked how people get up into
the mountains. There’s a road, he said—let me show you. That was when we
climbed, passing the mules and their men coming down from the mountain’s
homesteads. From the top, you could hear the laughter of people in town,
shrieks of children playing in the valley. We stood for a long time.
We had dinner at the Paradise Lodge.
It’s the nicest hotel in town, but out of budget for an NGO to put up its
visiting staff. Half of the hotel has been closed off to the public, and it’s
from that side that American men in fatigues saunter over to the restaurant.
The US military has an air base here, tucked conveniently along side the
airport that’s used once a day for flight to and from Addis. The military has
bought out half the hotel for the duration of its time here. Ethiopia is
solidly part of the Horn of Africa; use your imagination to figure out what the
base is doing here. Anyway, dinner was wonderful. The rice and vegetables were
probably once frozen, but I hardly noticed—the fish was fresh out of the lake,
and it came to me still sizzling.
I’m under the mosquito net now; this
part of the country has malarial tendencies. This net, perhaps, feels more like
home than anything else. I’m tricking myself, like I did when I was 12, into
believing the net is my princess bed—a canopy to keep me feeling safe and regal.
This
place feels like Africa as I knew it. And it’s making me feel more homesick than ever.
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