A Shower for Heidi and Audrey

On September 28, 2019, I attended the baby shower Heidi’s sister, Mauresa, held for Heidi.  Everyone is excited to meet Baby Audrey, when she arrives in a couple of weeks.  

When I arrived, pink, yellow, and green streamers festooned the room next to the Woods Cross Stake kitchen where the party was held.  "My family knows how to plan a party," Heidi has said, and that is certainly true.

I enjoyed meeting Heidi’s cousins and aunts, as well as Heidi's good friends from Church and her job.

Mauresa led some fun games, including tasting and identifying various flavors of baby food (the beef was nasty) and guessing the answers Mike and Heidi had given to questions about their baby.  They were asked what they most looked forward to about having a baby, and they both answered, “Having a little friend to play with.”  Mike and Heidi also joked about looking up their baby’s proposed name (Audrey Marie) on the internet and learning that it was the name of a female wrestler!  I won two Almond Joy candy bars for my good answers to the game questions.  I don’t usually allow myself the luxury of eating candy bars, so that was a treat.

I ordered a variety of gifts on Amazon, but they didn’t arrive in time for the shower.  I hurried to Smith's and bought a $50 Amazon gift certificate, to cover the gap, as well as a teething toy and some rubber duckies.  I told Heidi to use the $50 to buy some of the things on her Amazon gift list which she might not receive from friends and relatives.

I told Heidi how fond I am of her family, “And they love you, too,” Heidi responded.  I lent Gay Bastian, Heidi’s mom, my seven or eight blue Chinese porcelain vases for the wedding reception of Heidi’s sister, Calise, last summer, and Gay responded by bringing me, at the shower, a box of peaches and apples “right off the tree.”  Gay mentioned how glad she was that Heidi and Mike don’t feel they need to be together every minute in order to be happily married.  “I know Mike feels very close to you and that he had a great time in Ethiopia, but Heidi had a blast with us in Axtell, too!” Gay said.

Snowbird: The Aerie

 A highlight of fall, for Dave and me, is our condo week at Snowbird, the next full week after Labor Day.  This year, our week began on September 14, 2019.  We enjoy the turning leaves, the drives up and down the mountain canyons at dawn and in the evening, and the crisp air smelling of pine.  We also try each of the Snowbird restaurants during our visit.

Our two  favorite restaurants are The Lodge and The Aerie.  Both have elegant food, such as this steak at The Lodge.

 The Aerie has a spectacular view out the windows to the granite cliffs of Snowbird.  On September 19, 2019, Mike and Heidi joined us for dinner at the Aerie, and then stayed the night at the condo with us.

Ethiopia XII: The End

On the last night of our trip with Mike and Camille, September 7, 2019, we stopped by The Abyssinian night club, where we ate one last Ethiopian dinner and watched a program of Ethiopian song and dance.  Our two drivers joined us (far left and far right), as did Desale, the owner of Grand Ethiopian Tours (next to me).  Bayuh introduced us to Haile Mariam, sitting at the next table.  He joined us for a photo (to the right of Desale).  Haile is a major Ethiopian celebrity who won two gold medals at the Sydney and Atlanta Olympics in the 10,000 meter race.  He now owns a chain of luxury hotels, including the “Haile” in Aber Minch, where we spent a night, and the “Haile” in Shashmene, where we ate lunch on September 7.  Desale and Haile need each other.  Haile provides luxury hotels for Desale's wealthy tourists, and Desale fills up Haile's hotels!

        

Finally, it was time to leave, so Camille could catch her Ethiopian Airlines flight to D.C. via Ireland.  Michael came back with us to the Jupiter Hotel, to wait in the lobby until a 10 p.m. shuttle took him to the airport for his Turkish Airlines flight to New York via Istanbul.  Dave and I went to bed at the Jupiter, with mixed feelings.  Due to a scheduling mix-up, we had one more day in Ethiopia.  We were ready to go home with Mike and Camille, but there were also more adventures to be enjoyed.

On Sunday morning, September 8, 2019, I dragged out my black skirt from the bottom of my suitcase to wear to church.  After a few phone calls and circling the neighborhood, Bayuh led us to one of the four LDS chapels in Ethiopia.  Church supposedly started at 9, but when we arrived at 9:15, the chapel was locked and small groups of young people sat on benches or stood in the courtyard.  We chatted with an Ethiopian computer scientist who had just completed his schooling in Norway, and the Norwegian girl who followed him home.  Both were Church members, converted in Norway.

 A cab arrived, depositing a sturdy, very dark man and an equally sturdy, very dark woman.  We introduced ourselves and learned that the man was originally from Congo/Brazzaville, but is now working for the Church in South Africa, supervising seminary and institute programs across the continent.  The woman is from Uganda, the headquarters of the mission of which Ethiopia is a part.  The man and woman had spent the week in Addis, trying to organize seminary, institute, and Young Adult programs.  I remembered Mother saying that the Ethiopians are sensitive about color, with some light-skinned Ethiopians from the north feeling superior to the dark-skinned Ethiopians from the south.  I wondered how well all the Africans of different colors and cultures mix in LDS churches.

I wandered around the church compound, examining the Ethiopian district headquarters (behind me) and the outdoor church basketball court.

The branch president finally arrived, and Church services started at 10.  “The branch president was traveling,” a young member told us.  We met the four missionaries assigned to this branch, all from Utah, who explained that Ethiopia is a tough mission, particularly since they are not trained in the local language, Amharic, and many Ethiopians have received inaccurate information about the Church.  We heard the missionaries speak during Sacrament Meeting, accompanied by Amharic translators from the congregation, and we learned that the man from the Congo was an Area Seventy.  He spoke with power.  I wondered what he thought of the branch president who was an hour late at starting church!

The woman from Uganda shivered.  She couldn’t believe Ethiopia was so cold!  She speculated that the reason the Church is growing so slowly in Ethiopia is because Ethiopians don’t speak English as well as Ugandans do.  “In Uganda, the first words you speak to your baby are in English, and families practice speaking English at home.”  I realized that, in our two weeks in Ethiopia, we had received only a taste of what Africa is really like, including the extreme differences in cultures across the continent.

 After Church, we drove with Bayuh and our driver, Mosi, to Debra Zeit, a resort town an hour away. The town used to be called "Bishoftu", and I remembered it from my years in Ethiopia as a child.

Bayuh escorted us to the Ethiopian buffet at the Kuriftu Resort, a sister hotel to the elegant lakeside resort we stayed in on Lake Tana.  

The food was delicious, but even more memorable were all the partyers—a cross-section of Ethiopia’s upper class and elite.  We saw many families (Bayah confirmed that the Ethiopians are particularly family-oriented), and many beautiful Muslim women in gauzy headscarves and flowing robes, as well as Ethiopian Orthodox women in their flashy finest.

Mike told us, earlier in our trip, that Fanta is the most-drunk soda in the world.  It was originally owned by an Italian company but is now owned by Coca-Cola.  Pineapple Fanta is definitely not a drink I could find in the U.S.!

From our lunch table we watched kayakers slowly paddle around the lake.

After lunch, we wandered through elegant shops surrounding the resort, selling leather bags and notebooks, and cotton scarves and dresses.  We bought a jar of Ethiopian honey and a statue of a Mursi woman with a ceramic disk in her mouth.

We also peeked into a big, new Ethiopian attraction—a water park.  After visiting so many impoverished, traditional villages in Southern Ethiopia, it was quite stunning to see how the modern, wealthy Ethiopians from Addis lived.

After extricating ourselves from a traffic jam in the Kuriftu Resort parking lot, we went with Bayuh to two more crater lakes, besides the one at the resort.  The first was natural, with few visitors.  

We took a boat ride across the lake, with Bayuh identifying grebes, Egyptian ducks, and other birds.  We then walked along the shore for a while before riding the boat back to the other shore. 

Poinsettias grew wild along the shore.

As we drove back through Debra Zeit to Addis, we saw another LDS Church.  It seemed more elegant than the one in Addis.  Bayuh dropped us off at the Addis airport, and there were hugs all around.  “I was honored to be a guide for such a fine family,” Bayuh said.  We promised to write glowing reports of Bayuh and Grand Ethiopian Tours on TripAdvisor, and I did that as soon as I got home.  Since my return to SLC, I have received calls from two Salt Lakers planning trips to Ethiopia with Grand Ethiopian Tours, and I have emphasized what a wonderful time we had.

Ethiopia XI: The Konso and the Droze

We spent the morning of September 5, 2019 driving north, over dirt roads, bumpy pavement, and an occasional, exhilarating stretch of new pavement.  Ethiopia already has one freeway, stretching east from Addis Ababa to its most-used port at Djiboui, and it is slowly building a better road system. At noon, we climbed an escarpment to Karat-Konso, the main market town for the Konso tribe.  We wandered through the market, which was authentic—no souvenirs.  There were piles and piles of tires, from which sandals were being made, and piles and piles of bright-colored, cheap clothes.  There was also an area where special pedal-operated sewing machines were set up, with tailors attaching bright borders of embroidery to white shawls, to create custom outfits as women looked on.

David finally bought some tire sandals to take home with him.

We then visited the Konso village, where our local guide led us through the three concentric circles of houses constituting the village, with the inner circle surrounding the top of the hill/mountain, occupied by the wealthiest members of the community.  Each circle was organized with private homes, community houses, and open areas.  Young men leave their parents’ home and stay in the community houses once they are 12.  

One of the customs is for young men wanting to get married to lift an extremely heavy stone and throw it over their heads.  Mike lifts weights, and he was able to lift the stone, with great effort, up to his waist.

Konso towns erect high monuments, with a branch added each year, to indicate how old the town is.

We kept driving north.  We paused to admire the view from a mountainside down to Lake Chamo, one of the southernmost lakes on the floor of the Rift Valley, and then to see eight cylindrical Ethiopian beehives perched in the branches of an acacia tree.  Honey is one of Ethiopia’s beloved products, served at every breakfast and made into the national alcoholic drink, tej.

Finally, we arrived at the spectacular Haile Hotel in Aber Minch, with a view of Lake Chamo and Lake Abaya, connected by “God’s bridge.” It would have been an elegant hotel anywhere in the world, with a marble-floored lobby and a wall of two-story windows looking out at the lake, two swimming pools, and air conditioned rooms with marble showers and comfortable, modern beds.  We wallowed in its richness.

We ate a delicious buffet of Ethiopian food at the Zebra Restaurant.  The guests at the hotel were mostly rich Ethiopian families.  Bayuh explained that this is where Ethiopian politicians, businessmen, and professionals come for vacations.  Since Ethiopians are usually very family-centered, they bring their children with them.

Our last tribal visit, on September 6, 2019, was to the Droze, who live at the top of a mountain 35 kilometers from Aber Minch.  Our local Droze guide came from the village but spoke good English, since he was on his summer vacation from a tourism program at a university in Addis.  He led us into his parents’ home, a very tall tukul shaped to look like an elephant—a style from 200 or more years ago, when there were elephants in this area.  

There were two rooms in the dark, dirt-floored tukul—an anteroom with a fabric-covered bed for guests, and a main room divided between space for people and space for animals.  We peeked into the animal section of the room and saw two cows and five sheep and goats!

  We met our guide’s mother, who was spinning yarn from the cotton from the family’s lowland farm.  She gave Camille and me each a chance to turn the spindle and make yarn.  

Our guide also described the many uses of the false banana tree growing next to the house.  The leaves are used for umbrellas and to cut up and feed to the house animals.  The trunks are scraped, with the scrapings fermented for three weeks, and then made into a sort of bread.  The roots are roasted and sliced, as for potatoes.   We watched as our guide’s sister scraped stalks from the false banana tree into a paste to ferment.  We watched her chop up a mess of fermented banana stalk paste to cut the heavy fibers.  We then watched her cook the paste on a large, round, ceramic slab like that used to cook injera.  Finally, we went to the fabric showroom, where we ate bits of the banana stalk pancake with honey and berbere. “The Droze are Ethiopia’s best weavers,” Bayuh told us, and we were entranced with the beautiful, colorful scarves and table runners.  

On Mike's and Camille's final day in Ethiopia, September 7, 2019, we stopped at  a national park near Lake Langano, a day's drive north of Aber Minch.  We walked with a park ranger into the acacia-covered park and immediately saw Grant’s gazelles, ostriches, and warthogs in the distance.  

We walked closer and closer, until the ostriches were just 10 to 15 feet away, raising and lowering their long necks to eat bugs (or leaves?) on the ground and in the trees. 

With his telephoto lens, Mike took winsome pictures of the warthogs, with their large curved tusks, watching us warily.  They looked tough, but they turned and ran at the slightest provocation, their fat buttocks wagging and their tails held straight up into the sky.