Every Day is Sunday

On our first trip as a couple we stayed at the Luxor.  Six years later, we found ourselves back in Luxor but a long way from the Las Vegas Strip. 

Luxor, Egypt

Las Vegas, Nevada

The Las Vegas Luxor is built like a pyramid and has a decent nightclub, but it’s no match for the Egyptian Luxor which is home to the most extensive and impressive ancient sites in all of Egypt.

Perhaps the only similarity between Luxor and Las Vegas is the searing summer heat.  Our coolest day in Luxor had a high of 102.  We had no choice but to plan our day around the sun, and visited most of the sites between 5am-10am or between 7pm-11pm.  We spent the rest of the day trying to move as little as possible.

We waited for the sun to go down to see the famous Luxor Temple.  Approaching the temple from the Avenue of Sphinx at night will take your breath away.

They do a great job of lighting up the temple.  Ironically, seeing the exhibit at night under the lights helped us appreciate the original splendor of the site as it existed 3000 years ago.

With our new friends Ryan and Katy, we hired a guide to take us around Luxor Temple and explain the history of the place.  Our guide wasn’t the most knowledgeable Egyptologist, but he did give us a taste of the local flavor: he used every excuse to kiss Erin and Katy’s hands (“my queens”), and spent a lot of time showing us the Egyptian god of fertility.

With Ryan and Katy in front of King Tut and Ankhesanamun

We awoke at dawn the next morning and were the first people to arrive at the Karnak Palace.  The ruins at Karnak are extraordinary.  It’s a site everyone should visit… but nobody should try to capture on a blog (you can read summaries by clicking here and here).

We had the entire Palace complex to ourselves for an hour (around 30 tour buses showed up at 7:00 am).  Certainly the highlight of our visit was wandering alone among the pillars (each 42 feet high) of the Hypostyle Hall of the Palace and marveling at the ancient Egyptian engineering.

As we returned to our hotel from Karnak Palace at around 11 am, we saw some guys building a structure just outside the door of our hotel.  They explained they were building a stage for a wedding party later that night, and told us to stop by after 9 pm for the party. 

Jeff:  Erin was exhausted after getting up at 5am that morning, so I ventured out alone to the party at around 10 pm.  There were colored lights and a DJ was standing behind a pretty sweet sound system playing very loud music off his computer.  The recently constructed stage had two chairs on it for the newlyweds. 

I took a seat on the benches with the other men.  They were all smoking cigarettes and drinking tea.  The women gathered in small circles in the back and kept an eye on the kids playing on the stage.  It’s a Muslim country so no one was drinking alcohol.  Fascinated by their concept of a “party” I stayed a little longer.

I tried to make small talk, but most of the conversations were the same:  “Where from?”  “America.”  “Welcome to Egypt.”  “Thank you.”  “Barack Obama, good?”  “Yes, Barack Obama good.” 

I waited for over an hour but the happy couple were nowhere to be seen.  My new friends explained that the couple had many stops before the party (the Mosque, their parents’ house, etc…).  “Don’t worry,” they said, “the party goes until morning.”  Hmm . . . No booze, the men and women stay separate, the music is blearing but nobody’s dancing.  And this party goes until the early hours?    

When midnight came and the couple still hadn’t arrived I decided to bail.  Erin and I had set the alarm for 5:00 am to visit the Valley of the Kings the next morning and I needed some sleep.  I said goodnight to my new friends and asked them to pass along my congratulations to the happy couple. 

Ryan is a Peace Corps volunteer who was working in Madagascar until he got evacuated due to the recent coup; Katy teaches middle school in a remote native village in Alaska; Ge is a Korean who has been traveling the world for two years.  We joined this eclectic group and the five of us boarded a felucca (Egyptian sailboat) for a three-day sail up the Nile River.

Perhaps the best part of traveling is meeting new and interesting people — and there is no better way to make fast friends than to spend two nights on a tiny felucca without any bathrooms. 

Ge didn’t say much. He spent the last two years traveling the world learning English but only had a 25 word vocabulary.  (He abandoned the boat on the second day, explaining that he needed to see more of the world).  We spent two great days sailing the Nile, watching the beautiful sunsets, sharing stories with Ryan and Katy, and falling asleep under the stars of the Egyptian night sky.

By far the biggest character on the boat was our captain Ziggy (aka Mohammad).  We’re pretty sure that he took all the money that we gave him for the boat and spent it on hash because Ziggy spent the entire two-night trip completely stoned.  We searched our camera but we don’t have a single picture of him – probably because he spent most of the two days in the small crawl space under the boat losing his mind. But at least he was entertaining.  When the mood struck he’d pick up his drum and sing us all a few songs (the best was his improvised song to the tune of ”She’ll be Coming ‘Round the Mountain”).  Luckily Ziggy had the foresight to employ a second-in-command (a 12 year old boy) to prepare the meals and do the actual sailing.  

Maybe it was Ziggy’s powerful hash, or our inexperienced second-in-command, but after two full days of sailing in circles, we finished our trip about a mile up the river from where we started.  Ziggy, put down the joint and explain to me why we’re back in Aswan!?! After all that sailing, we had to drive an hour north on a bus to see the Nile temples at Edfu and Esna. 

Although not as well preserved as Abu Simbal, the 4000-year-old temples were pretty amazing.  To put it in perspective of just how old these ruins are, if Jesus visited these temples 2000 years ago, he would have thought man, these temples are freakin old!

I can see the light!

After some hard sleeping on the felucca we were looking forward to checking into a hotel and enjoying a few days in Luxor.

We said goodbye to the lush greens of southern Ethiopia and headed for the red desert of Egypt. Although technically still part of the Africa, the sights, sounds, and smells of Egypt were a big change from everything we’ve been experiencing over the last several months. It only took one walk through the souk in Aswan – with the smells of spices, sheesha and hummos filling the air – to know that we really weren’t in Africa anymore.

Although interesting in its own right, most people visit Aswan as a jumping-off point to see the ancient Egyptian temples at Abu Simbal. In the 13th century BC, Pharaoh Ramses II built two huge monuments on the banks of the Nasser River – one to himself and one to his wife Nefertari. The temples were buried under the sand for thousands of years before they were rediscovered in the early 1800s.

Like most people, our first reaction when we saw the massive statutes at Abu Simbal was “WOW!”

Jeff:  Rames’ temples are truly astounding monuments . . . to himself.  This guy had some kind of ego!  In addition to the four 60-foot statutes of himself he had carved into the rock at the entrance of the temple, there are hundreds of reliefs inside the temple (no photos allowed) that track his deification and link him with the other Egyptian gods of the period.  Ramses may have had an inflated sense of self, but we couldn’t be too hard on him.  After all, he did decide to let the Jews out of Egypt (with some help from frogs, lice, locusts etc…).

Erin:  The temple Rames built was massive, but I was more impressed by the smaller more beautiful temple honoring his wife Nefertari.  The artwork inside the temple depicting Nefartari is incredible – stunning and after 3000 years still colorful.  Despite the BIG sign that said “No Photos” I couldn’t help myself.  The temple was too beautiful.  I sneaked a couple photos without using a flash.  I got two great ones and then went for a third when a big burly guard stopped me and asked for my camera.  I was so busted!  Heart racing, I started showing him the photos I took in Ethiopia by pressing the back button on my camera… but he was wise to my trick.  He told me in his limited English to press the forward button and started calling for the bigger burlier security guards to come over.  Yikes!  A picture of a dilapidated women’s prison flashed before my eyes.  Realizing there was no way in hell I was getting those photos out of Egypt and fearing Amnesty International might get involved in freeing me, I started to delete as fast as I could without him noticing.  I lost the photos but kept the camera and avoided an illusionary prison sentence.  

We were both blown away by Abu Simbal — the beautiful scenery by the Nasser river, the massive scale of the temples and the intricate craftsmanship –  but we were even more astounded by what we learned once we got back from Aswan.  It turns out that archeologists were worried about the rising water table levels in the nearby river, and so in 1964 they MOVED THE TEMPLES!  It took four years and $40 million (about $275 million in today’s dollars), but they successfully dismantled both temples and then rescostructed them in a new location about 500 feet away.  They did such a good job that we had no idea about the re-location when we were at the site.  We couldn’t decide which was a more amazing feat for mankind: carving the temples out of rock in the 13th century BC or moving the rock temples in the 1960s.

During the first half of Erin & Jeff’s time in Ethiopia, it was great to share my life with them.  They walked with me to work; we went to the children’s home where I volunteer; we went out dancing with my crew; they traveled with me to the field to visit rural health centers.  They were the best guests ever and it gave me a whole new perspective on my life through having people to share it with.

Then we got on a plane and went to Arba Minch and I joined them in their life (at least for this year), adventure, travel, and getting out of my comfort zone. No one left the trip disappointed, although we did return a little more bruised and battered than we started.

One of the coolest things about living in Ethiopia is the diversity of this country. Travel north and you’ll experience history Christian churches from the 12th or 13th century in Lalibela. Travel east and you’ll experience the 4th holiest city for Muslims in Harar. Travel west and you’ll experience the birthplace of coffee (a holy place for coffee addicts like myself). And travel south and you’ll see tribes and communities that you can hardly imagine exist.  Jeff and Erin did a great job documenting the experience, so I’ll leave that to them, but I’ll just add some highlights.

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(1) Highland! Highland!  At first we thought that the kids on the side of the road were greeting us (Hi there! Hi there!) but we quickly realized that they were asking for our Highland brand bottled water.

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Wertkinborns Insert:  There were the kids who chased after our car and screamed Highland!, and then there were the kids who tried to get us to stop by doing this crazy dance by the side of the road.  Anne’s too modest to mention that she mastered the Konso dance in less than five minutes.  The dancing kids put even the late King of Pop (RIP MJ) to shame.  Even Michael would be impressed by these one-legged moves, and by how quickly Anne picked it up.    

(2) On Day 2 of our trip, Jeff managed to slice his thumb open. He calmly tells Erin that the cut himself. She grabs me to see if I have anything helpful in my backpack (I don’t, of course) and I get the 2 doctors we’re traveling with. While they apply a compression, Erin nearly passes out. Then, when the crisis had averted (I’d highly recommend traveling with 2 really cool doctors on all trips), I managed to step on a thorn that went about an inch into my foot. Sure, the kids there do it all the time, but it was still disturbing to me. When we arrived back at camp, the doctors stitched Jeff back up, and it pained me just to watch the experience. Jeff is now my hero for his ability to manage pain.

Best free clinic EVER

(3) We spent about 50 billion hours in the car (give or take) – dirty, hot, uncomfortable. In true road trip fashion, these stretches of time led to hilarious conversations. Which may be some of my favorite moments of the trip. For example, Jeff played his acapela group song for the car. Erin and I discussed (at length) termite hills. And what they resemble.

It was honestly hilarious, the stupid things you talk about with lots of time on your hands. Couldn’t have picked better travel buddies for such absurd conversation as Erin and Jeff.

Seriously, for those of you reading, if you have the chance to join Jeff and Erin on any of their adventures – this year or in the many I imagine will happen after 2009, do it! It was such a great experience and Jeff and Erin are the best travel buddies ever.

After days and days of driving, we were anxious to get out of the car and excited about exploring Jinka on foot. We were walking across the Jinka air strip (we assume they clear the cattle when a plane is about to land) when we were approached by two young boys.

Jinka Air Strip

The boys told us they were part of a soccer team that didn’t have enough balls to hold a proper practice, and they asked if we would buy them a soccer ball for about 40 Ethiopian Birr. Now, over the course of our three months in Africa we learned that one of the worst thing aid workers can do is give something away for free. The best programs ensure buy-in by the local community by requiring them to get invested in the project and raise a percentage of the necessary funds (Bomet and Kampala were the best examples we saw).

We decided to apply our recently-acquired wisdom to the boys. We told them that if they could come up with 10 Birr, we would donate the remaining 30 Birr and buy them the soccer ball. They said they’d raise the money and, true to their word, two hours later they appeared outside our guest house with money in hand.

We walked to a nearby shop and picked out a soccer ball. We thought it was strange that the price of the ball was now 50 Birr (and not 40 Birr as they had said) but we were caught up in the moment and went ahead with the purchase. The boys seemed genuinely excited.

We felt pretty good about the whole experience . . . until we re-told the story that night at dinner. Our guide Andi just shook his head.  There isn’t any soccer team and the whole thing is a scam! The cheap balls actually cost 15 Birr, and the local shop owners sell them at an inflated price to tourists. The boys get a cut of each sale and get to keep the ball. We were bamboozled! We must have had “sucker” written on our faces because a different group of boys tried to run the same scam on us the next day.

We were kicking ourselves for falling for the scam (we should know better!) until Anne passed along some of the wisdom she’s gained during her time as an international air worker: “You have to get hard and cynical to succeed in this business, but if you aren’t compassionate enough to want to buy poor kids a soccer ball then it’s time to find a new line of work.” Wise words.

That night was the final of the Champions League (FC Barcelona v. Manchester United) and so we decided to put the experience behind us and enjoy ourselves. The entire town was shutting down to watch the game, and so we joined the crowd. It wasn’t a bar (no drinks served) and the seats weren’t that comfortable (wooden benches), but it was an incredible atmosphere to watch a game.

The Ethiopians are passionate in their devotion to their favorite European football teams and we had a great time (especially Jeff) chewing chad with the locals and and erupting in cheers for each goal scored by FC Barcelona.

We were sad to leave Jinka and not excited at all about the 10 hour ride back to Arbor Minch.  Luckily there was plenty of random entertainment on the road.

It started out like your typical Wednesday.  We climbed into an SUV and started down a dirt road on our way to visit an indigenous tribe in a remote part of Ethiopia.  All of a sudden a band of naked men stepped into the middle of the road.  Now that is a little out of the ordinary.

The men formed a naked roadblock in the hope that we’d stop our car and pay them to take their picture.  But our driver/guide Andigar just leaned on the horn and didn’t slow down.  With about 100 meters to go in the STRANGEST game of chicken we’ve ever been a part of, the naked men flinched and moved quickly to the side of the road.  It all happened too quickly to get a good photo, but it is worth reporting that one of the naked men was so fat (a rarity in that part of the country) that his belly hung down well below his johnson.

After the naked brigade, we didn’t encounter any other roadblocks and were ready for the highlight of our trip – a visit to the Mursi tribe of the upper Oma Valley. 

Wild!  Those are clay plates inserted into their lower lips.  It’s an integral part of Mursi culture for women to cut the bottom lip of their daughters and, gradually over time, the girls’ lower lips are expanded using larger and larger clay plates.  By the time they are of marrying age, Mursi women can insert clay plates sometimes as large as their face!   

 Nobody knows for sure why the Mursi began this tradition.  Apparently everybody has a theory, including our guide.  Andi explained that when Arabian traders came to southern Ethiopia in the 12th and 13th centuries, it was common for them to come into tribal villages and kidnap young girls to keep as concubines or sell as slaves.  As a survival mechanism, the Mursi women began wearing plates in their lips to make themselves less desirable to the Arab invaders.  This practice morphed into a cultural tradition and has continued long after the threat from foreign traders ended.   Now Mursi women who wear the plates are deemed to be more attractive and desirable to Mursi men.

Her lower lip hangs when she takes out her plate

The whole experience was fascinating.  We learned that the Ethiopian government has officially outlawed lip-cutting, but this new law has not stopped the Mursi from continuing what they consider to be a proud tradition.  If history is any indication, the power of modernity (and the new hydroelectric dam planned by the Ethiopian government) will likely cause the Mursi to abandon their traditional way of life and their practice of wearing lip plates.  We spent most of the car ride back discussing whether this type of progress is good, bad, avoidable and/or inevitable.

Erin:  After seeing the Hamer people at the market, it was a bit of a let-down to go back into “tourist mode” for our visit to the Dasenech tribe. We were having the same experience with the Dasenech as we had with the Abore.  “Photo!  Photo! Photo!” was all I heard.

Jeff:  I was trying to figure out how to distract the Dasenech from asking me to take their picture, but I was a little tired of juggling.  One of the younger boys pointed at my Leatherman and gave me an inquisitive look, so I decided to show the kids how it worked.  It was hot out and all the kids were crowded around and I kind of lost sight of the blade as I was showing them how well my knife can whittle a stick. 

Erin:  But the problem is that Jeff has never whittled a stick before.

Jeff:  I cut my finger…and the cut was pretty deep.

Erin:  I’m checking out the inside of one of the huts – they’re cooking something and it’s getting extremely hot.  I’m feeling faint so I step outside only to hear Jeff say “Hey Erin, can you come here, please.”  As I look up, I see blood gushing down Jeff’s arm. 

Jeff:  Erin eyes bugged out of her head when she saw my hand.  I was pretty impressed at how quickly she acted.  She poured some water on the cut, then took off my sock and used it to wrap the cut.  When the blood finally stopped gushing, I asked her to go find the South African doctors we were traveling with.   

Erin:  Holy sh** I was freaked out.  I tried to stop the bleeding but I was feeling faint from the smoke and now the blood so I grabbed the first person I could find, which turns out to be Anne.

Jeff:  So Erin comes back with Anne.  I say something like, “It’s great to see you Anne, but do you think you might ask one of the doctors to come over.” 

Erin:  Jeff’s got the deep cut but I’m the one who gets lightheaded and need to sit down to keep from collapsing.  While blood is dripping off his elbow Jeff turns to me and asks me how I’m doing. Meanwhile, Anne gets the doctors.  The Wertkinborns are down for the count.

Jeff:  Our South African doctors Jodi and Adelaide come over to me, take one look at the cut, and tell me I need stitches.  They grabbed some tissue and created a compression to help stop the bleeding. 

Erin:  Amazingly, we were prepared for the situation.  For five months I’d been lugging around a medicine bag that included a suture kit, antiseptic, and bandages.  Since we were traveling with two doctors, we had everything we needed.   

Jeff: So Jodi performed surgery in the African bush.  I have to admit that getting stitches without any antithetic was very painful.  I don’t know anything about medicine but there has to be more nerves in your thumb than in most other parts of your body.  The first stitch was shockingly painful, more than I thought it would be.  My body adjusted and by the second stitch I could feel every movement of the needle and the thread as Jodi laced it through my thumb.  I was very glad when it was over, I don’t think I could have handled more than 3 stitches without any whiskey.

Erin:  Just watching made me wince, but Jeff didn’t show any pain.  Even the doctors were impressed by the way he managed the pain.  As usual, Jeff was calm and collected.  But I still had to take away his Leatherman.

The world is shrinking.  Only 100 years ago, anthropologists like Margaret Mead went to Somoa to study indigenous cultures untouched by modernity.  Now there’s a Coconuts Beach Resort in Somoa.  For better or worse, there are very few places left in the world where people live the same way they’ve been living for centuries.  One of those places is the remote Oma Valley in southern Ethiopia.

Along with our Addis host extraordinaire Anne, we made our way South (first by plane and then many, many hours in an SUV over dirt roads) to see the tribes of the Oma Valley: the Arbore, the Hamer, the Banna, and the Mursi.  We shared the car with Jodi and Adelaide, two doctors from South Africa.

We were a little worried that our trip was going to be like going to a “people zoo” where we just stood around and gawked at people who look different from us.  Our guide told us not to worry – we’d be visiting villages on market days when the tribal people naturally gather and we could interact with them, participate in the commerce, or observe from a distance. 

But there weren’t any markets being held on the day we arrived, so instead we visited the Arbore tribe in their village. 

Unfortunately, our “people zoo” concerns were proved correct on the first day.  The Arbores have become accustomed to seeing tourists, and they now insist that you give them money to take their picture.  Giving them money isn’t so bad, except that the tribal members badger you to take their picture for a fee.  It goes well beyond ordinary badgering – they grab at your elbow, tug at your shoulder and repeatedly yell “photo, photo, photo” in your face. 

This old woman wouldn't leave Anne alone until she paid for a picture

It was getting a little tense and uncomfortable in the village for all of us, and so Jeff figured he might as well try his old juggling trick to distract them.     

Apparently a crazy white guy throwing rocks to himself is not as interesting in the south of Ethiopia as it was in the north.  Jeff was able to hold the Arbores attention for about 3 minutes, and then the “photo, photo, photo” resumed.  Visiting the Arbore wasn’t great, and so we were looking forward to the next day where we would go to market day in a Hamer village.

Hamer women selling butter at the Key Afer Market

 One of the things that makes the Hamer women so distinctive is the way they color their hair with ochre.  According to our guide they mix ochre, water and binding resin, and then rub the mixture into their hair to create copper-colored tresses.  The ochre dye often drips from their hair and onto the rest of their body.

The Hamer men also indulge in elaborate hair-dressing.  They wear a clay “cap” that is painted and decorated with feathers and other ornaments. Only men who’ve made a big kill get the honor of wearing a clay cap.

You can tell a lot about a Hamer woman just by looking at her.  If she’s wearing one iron necklace, she is the first wife of her husband.  If she is wearing two necklaces, she is the second wife and so on.  After about wife 3 there isn’t any space left on their necks so they forgo them completely. Sucks to be wife four or maybe she got the best deal…hard to say.  

One of the most exciting and disturbing things we learned about the Hamer people is the coming-of-age rituals they perform.  Before he is allowed to marry, a boy must successfully complete a “cattle-jumping” ritual – he must jump across the backs of 5-6 cattle standing in a row without falling.  And all the jumping is performed in his birthday suit as a symbol of the childhood he is about to leave behind.  

The disturbing part is the role the village’s women play.  Women supporting the young boy (especially the boy’s sisters) provoke the men in the village to whip their bare backs with sticks that inflict raw open wounds and scar them for life.  The more lashings the women provoke, the more they are seen to support the boy in his quest to successfully complete the ritual.  According to our guide, the women not only welcome the lashings, but wounds are seen as beautiful and the mark of a true Hamer woman.  

Because we were there on a market day, we were able to walk around and simply observe the Hamer people going about their daily lives.  The market largely consisted of grain, cattle, and animal skins clothes, spices, and clay pots. They stopped bardering for goods just six years ago!

Later that night, we went back to the Hammer village so they could show us how to dance.  Learning the dance was easy, but what the Hammer girls didn’t tell us is that if you dance with a boy you are insinuating that you’ll shack up with him later.  SO the girls are really choosy and often ran away giggling.    

Traveling in Africa we expected to see elephants, lions, and maybe even the occasional mountain gorilla.  We certainly didn’t expect to see 400 year-old castles and be regaled with stories of African royalty.  And then we got to Gondar in the north of Ethiopia.

The story of Gondar is kind of like the story of Camelot.  In 1632, the Emperor Fasilades (yes, Ethiopia had emperors!) established Gondar as the capital of Ethiopia.  Fasilades built himself a walled palace compound complete with beautiful castle, church, and stone bridges over protective moats.

Unlike King Arthur and Guinevere - Fasilades and his successors (his son Yohannes I, his grandson Iyasu the Great, his great-grandson Tekle Haymonot, and his great-great daughter-in-law Zewditu) were real! Over a span of 236 years, each of these emperors added castles within the original walled compound and cumulatively built 44 churches all around Gondar.

As we walked around admiring the castles, we were approached by Anna Little, a journalist and videographer who works for the Associated Press.  She needed some tourists for her piece on Gondar, and so we volunteered to be interviewed about our impressions of the place.  We really wished we had showered and shaved but I guess the grungy backpacker look is authentic.  

We had drinks with Anna after the “shoot” and learned about the really cool work she does all over Ethiopia (http://www.annalittle.com/).  We’re still waiting to see if the footage surfaces anywhere – we’ll post about it if we hear anything ; )   

While we were touring around, Anne Batchelder was making her way to Gondar to do some work on behalf of the Clinton Foundation.  Anne let us tag along for a visit to a local health center about two hours outside Gondar.  We toured the facilities and learned about the different ways that this rural health center was meeting the challenges of serving an impoverished population. 

Breakroom for the nurses

After touring the incredible churches at Lalibela, we headed out to the Ethiopian highlands for a three-day trek.  By day, we trekked through villages and walked along escarpments with 3,000 foot drops.  By night, we drank warm beers and told stories around the fire with our new friends from the UK (Gabe and Richard were an impressive comedy duo) and slept in Tukols in local villages. 

We spent the night in the second Tukol -- the first Tukol in the picture is the outhouse

Women carrying water from river to their tukols

The group

Jeff:  It was our second day of the hike when we came across about 300 villagers working on irrigation channels in the fields.  I guessed that they didn’t have too much experience with white people because as soon as they saw us they stopped their work and stared at us.  Because of the language barrier, we couldn’t do anything but stare back.  Our staring contest was getting a little awkward, and so I did the only thing I could think of to break the ice: I picked up three rocks and started to juggle.  The kids in the group rushed to the front and started oohing and aahing.  I think it was the first time they had seen anyone juggling.

Erin: The kids may have been oohing and aahing, but the adults were just staring in bewilderment.  The look on their faces seemed to say “why is that crazy feringie throwing rocks in the air?”  When he finished juggling everyone stood there silent until somebody started clapping and eventually they all broke out into applause.  The kids walked with us for an hour waiting for Jeff to juggle some more.

Jeff:  And I did juggle until my hands were full of cuts from the rocks.  Hey, I didn’t mind being the center of attention for a while.  After all, it was my birthday!

Erin: So Jeff’s not big on celebrating his birthday but I wanted to do something fun.  My options were a bit limited by the fact that we were staying in villages without electricity or running water.  I spoke with some of the locals about it, and they all agreed on the best gift a man could get on his birthday.  So I bought Jeff a SHEEP!

Jeff:  I was sitting on a bench overlooking the valleys reading my book when all of a sudden this guy from the village walks up to me and presents me with a sheep.  It took me a second to realize that the sheep was actually for me.  I thought briefly about sending it to the States for my parents to keep until we got back, but ultimately we decided to have it for dinner.

Erin: I was genuinely excited about buying Jeff a sheep but there was NO way I was watching them kill the poor thing.

Jeff:  It was cool watching the locals slaughter, skin, and carve the meat from the sheep.  When you only shop in supermarkets and buy meat in cellophane, it’s easy to forget that meat actually comes from a living, breathing animal.  It made me appreciate the strong connection that local people have with their animals.   

Erin:  It was disgusting.  I need more degrees of separation from my food.

Jeff:  Every part of the sheep had a purpose.  After they removed all the meat, they were careful to clear the intestines so they could use them for casings.  In an unforgettable exchange, Gabe asks, “What is he doing?”  Richard replies in his erudite British monotone, “Well, it appears he’s blowing in its arse to make an air sausage.”

Erin:  When it was all finished. I looked at all the meat (in the bowl) and realized that this sheep would feed about 25-30 people.  That’s a whole lot of mutton for just 6 trekkers.  So we asked our guide to invite some of the villagers to share in the meal.

Jeff:  It was great to have the villagers come to the party and share in the feast.  They were so grateful for the rare treat that they came up to me individually to wish me a happy birthday.  Two of the villagers brought a bamboo flute and drum and we stayed up late singing and learning how to shoulder-dance in the Ethiopian style.  

Erin: The sheep was by far our best purchase of the trip – the party was fun and the food deeelicious.

Jeff: It was definitely one of my most memorable birthdays.