2012 Ethiopia Mission Trip - Day 6a

[Originally written on Monday, February 6, 2012]

I am happy to report back in after a weekend in Awash National Park where my little team hosted 18 of our Habasha (Ethiopian native) friends. There were seven MDEC staff, 8 MDEC teenage boys, our tour director, my Ethiopian Compassion graduate boys, and we Ferengis (white foreigners).

Our trip to the park was long...more than four hours with a stop for lunch in Nazareth.  When we finally drove off of the main road to head into the park, it was another 15 kilometers or so to our lodge.  As the leader of this little excursion, I was provided the place of honor among the various traditional style buildings.  Our lodge (Jo's and mine) was two story with a balcony and a parlor of sorts, in a very rustic style.  Most of the lodges were, in a manner of speaking, duplexes.  Though this new lodge just opened in 2009, it was intentionally designed in a style similar to Ethiopian country homes with a few more modern conveniences than some country homes might have (electricity and indoor bathrooms with running water).

Our lodge that sat on the edge of the Awash River gorge.  It overlooked the river and waterfalls in the distance.

This sign graced each and every lodge door in the park.  The baboons were not timid about being around humans, and as we learned on Sunday morning, would even steal toast from our breakfast table in the restaurant.

After we settled in, we took the walk back down the road, meeting up with a few of our Ethiopian friends, and headed down to the river that is filled by several waterfalls.  Soon, our whole crew was down there having the times of their lives climbing on boulders (for pictures), climbing trees (for pictures), standing high on a cliff (for pictures), decending to the base of one of the falls (for pictures)...well, you get the drift.  After most of us had practically expended all the juice in our camera batteries, we came back up the hill to the outdoor restaurant to enjoy a wonderful campfire-lit dinner.

One of what seemed like 1,000 pictures that were taken down at the Awash Falls.  Everyone loved getting into the act.

Everyplace was fair game for more pictures.  Does it look like fun?  Heck yeah!

While we ate, someone was in my lodge unbeknownst to me at the time.  I had laid two full water bottles on one of the beds, and when we returned, one of them had been chewed through and the bed was all wet.  We had been sure to lock the doors and windows, as directed by signs left on each lodge's front door.  It seems the baboons like to raid the buildings if given half a chance.  Anyway, we weren't sure who had done this dirty deed, so headed back to the restaurant to find some lodge employees who could look at the evidence and tell us.  Turns out, we had a rat (or perhaps only a mouse) that was thirsty.  We definitely moved from the first-floor bedroom to the upstairs bedroom and crossed our fingers for the night.  All went well as we slept under mosquito netting.

We arose at 5:15 a.m. so we could be ready to depart before 6 a.m. for our wildlife spotting tour of the 700+ square kilometer preserve.  We saw oryx, dik diks, lesser kudu, wild boars, baboons, a crocodile, a white headed eagle that looked similar to our bald eagles, and some other interesting birds.  My photos were coming out terrible, so I offered my camera with the long telephoto lens to Million (another of my Ethiopian kids) who, fortunately, had a much steadier hand and better eye on this day.

A great shot of some of the wildlife we saw in Awash National Park.

When we returned to the lodge for breakfast, we had quite an interesting and surprising experience.  We were on the second level of the outdoor dining area.  As most of us were either looking over the wall to the gorge below, or sitting at our table looking toward the wall, I felt a brief pressure on my left leg and saw a hand reach out and steal a piece of toast right off of the table in front of me.  It was a baboon.  We all startled and made little shouts, which caused the creature to drop the toast and scamper down the stairs.


This was our toast thief.