The night was warmer and the room was too warm for my liking. There were screens on the windows but the cross ventilation was minimal. I slept with only a light coverlet. A fan would have been nice. There was mosquito netting over the beds but so far I have not seen any mosquitoes, which is a welcome benefit. This morning it is already 69 degrees with a high of 84 predicted.

This hotel (Kanta Lodge) is beautifully landscaped; there are blooming flowers everywhere, including plumeria of all things!  The rooms are individual round bungalows designed to look like native huts. There is only internet in the restaurant area but it is not bad when it is operating and not too many people are trying to use it at the same time.

The weather says there is an 80% chance of showers today so I unpacked my raincoat to have it handy if needed. It is party cloudy this morning but no near term hint of rain. A little rain might be nice to knock down the persistent presence of dust. We wonder if the people living here suffer from lung diseases as a result of breathing it day in and day out.

Breakfast is again minimal but adequate. Peanut butter seems to make it on all the breakfast menus and it makes a nice change of pace from the normal eggs, vegetable and rice dishes that seem to be on every menu.

We have another short talk by Chris at 8:30 AM with a plan to leave by 9 AM when we head further south to visit other tribes in the region. Our goal today is to visit the Hamar people which has 46,000 members. Their wealth is in the number of cattle they own. This is the group that conducts the bull jumping ceremony as part of a youth’s entry to manhood. It commonly occurs in the autumn so we will not experience it. We will see more body scarification. The “first” wife of a man  wears a metal collar with a special protrusion to indicate her seniority; his other wives wear simple metal collars. These people, both men and women, really are concerned about their hairdos. The women put butter and red ochre clay in their hair to give it an orange sheen. The hairdos are quite elaborate. The men use wooden head rests to keep their hairdos off the ground when sleeping. (There is some confusion whether only married women have the elaborate hairdos).

Our destination for the next two nights will be Turmi, which is not very far from the northern border of Kenya.  We had to retrace our steps almost back to Jinka, using roads we were on yesterday as this part of Ethiopia does not have many roads.

Our caravan made a couple of stops along the way to break up the monotony. We walked across a bridge where we viewed the activity (swimming, washing clothes, washing cars, bathing) occurring on the river below and then an impromptu stop at another home where we simply asked the occupants if we could visit. Again they graciously accepted our intrusion.

Later we stopped at a questionable roadside hotel near Jinka to eat our picnic lunch. Because the food was questionable in this part of the country we brought pre-made sandwiches from our hotel where we stayed last night. Our choices were pretty basic: egg, vegetable, tuna or beef. I was leery of the beef quality and chose the egg sandwich. I had to laugh when opening it as it was simply an egg omelet sandwiched in a bun; there were no condiments on it!  As usual it was huge and I could only eat 1/2. It was awfully bland but the bun was fresh and tasty. I was sorry I had not made a peanut butter sandwich at breakfast as some others did. Of well, maybe dinner will make up for it.

Although the distance from Jinka to Turmi was only 80 km (48 miles) it was estimated it would take at least 2 hours to get there!  Welcome to southern Ethiopia. The reason was because it was 48 miles of a washboard, dirt road. Normal highway speeds were simply out of the question. There were even sections where an alternative roadway had been created parallel to the main road because it offered smoother travel. Sure enough we arrived at about 3 PM to what we had been expecting to be an upscale hotel where we are scheduled to stay for two nights as we explore the area.

Surprise! The supposed “new” Kizo hotel is a dump!  Rooms are spartan and most of us had no hot water. There are no screens on the windows so you dare not open them for ventilation. At least there was a fan in the room and mosquito netting that sort of fit around the bed! Everyone was incensed and threatened to mutiny; so much so that Chris, our tour director, immediately began looking for alternative accommodations at the few nearby hotels in the area. One of our group suggested we accelerate our viewing tomorrow and simply head back to the more civilized accommodations in the Jinka area where we had stayed a few nights ago. There was no way we were going to spend two nights at this hotel. Someone really screwed up by not vetting this hotel before they committed to it.

While this option was being explored we were met at 4:45 PM to go visit a nearby village of the Hamar tribe who occupy this area. We learned there are 100 villages belonging to them, with 100-400 people in each village. We learned that they, too, have implemented the “200 birr, take all the pictures you want” pricing, rather than the older 5 birr per person per photo. We immediately wondered if this system has been more accepted by the villagers than what we encountered yesterday where the women were not happy at all with the new system.

The village was only 10 minutes away from our hotel as a local guide (also a member of the Hamar tribe) led our tour. It again was obvious that many people did not like this new arrangement, but the village elder barked at the dissidents and order was (?) restored. The women and children lined up and sang us a greeting song. We then proceeded to snap photos and attempted to interact with the villagers. The kids were certainly receptive, wanting to see their photographs. Older children attempted to get many of the women in our group to give them articles of clothing they were wearing. The highlight might have been when one of our travelers gave one of the tribal women her pocket mirror. Supposedly they do not have such things here.

We did get to enter one of their homes to see how they lived. They cook inside, have no lighting and sleep on the ground on animal hides. It is pretty primitive.

After an hour we decide we had enough and returned to the hotel where we learned that they have found alternative hotel accommodations for tomorrow night back at the Kanta Lodge near Jinka. We would have to leave at 7 AM in order to still see other tribes and the local, unique market but everyone eagerly agreed to the plan.

Dinner was modest-a buffet with dry cold French fries, chicken that was obvious free range as it was very, very tough, and goat, which was offered for the first time (and wasn’t bad). Cold beer helped make it all palatable!

People retired early with the hopes that tomorrow will bring better times!