I was in Addis Ababa for work last week, and in addition to drinking coffee, eating shiro, and hacking on DSpace, I managed to get out and see a pretty amazing sight outside of Addis: the Koremash Gorge.
Other than being a bit hazy, it was a beautiful day for a panorama…
I don’t know why this thing isn’t more popular… maybe it’s because of all the old things in north of Ethiopia? There’s more to Ethiopia than obelisks and crazy monks living in caves*!
We spent the night at Rolf’s Place, a beautiful mansion and bed-and-breakfast getaway located in Nairobi National Park. It’s situated on a cliff over some sort of a gorge, and there’s this wooden bridge spanning the ravine from the parking lot to the property—quite breathtaking!
We ate a few meals in the restaurant which overlooks the gorge, and we could see giraffes wandering around munching on trees just across the way. There’s not much else to do besides eat, but you can swim, play paintball, and ride horses.
First, there is no such thing as “lawn mowing” in Kenya (gotcha!). Second, unless you’re the the President of Kenya or the US Ambassador (they live in mansions with big lawns), there aren’t even any lawns to speak of. That’s not to say we don’t have grass. My goodness, there is grass for days and days! Forget Southern California, where strip malls and concrete effectively form one huge, 200-mile-long city; This is Kenya, bwana (“man”)! We have plenty of open space and it’s allllll grass (and sand, but that’s for another time)!
I had an epiphany the other day while walking home through an empty field. It had rained a bit so there was mud all over the place. I remember thinking it was good the grass was low because it allowed me to avoid the mud. The funny thing is, I’ve never seen one lawn mower in Kenya. I don’t even think the two words “lawn mower” have entered my brain once at the same time in the last two years… The only place I’ve ever seen anyone cutting grass is in my backyard and on the college compound, and they do it by hand.
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