Not a pleasant night. Even though there was a mosquito net around my bed small gnats managed to get in and bother me as I tried to work on my blog. I finally gave up at 9:30 and turned out all the lights to avoid the bug onslaught.  Luckily they quit bothering me and I was able to fall asleep.

I awoke in the night to dead quiet and realized they had shut off the power to the hotel so my fan quit working. At 5 AM a local rooster and the electric power kicked back on telling me it was time to get up.

Chris had arranged for a 6 AM breakfast and a pull away time of 7 AM. I am sure everyone will be delighted to move on! We basically will drive an extra two hours today, but will have two hours less of a drive the next day. Everyone agreed it would be worth it.

Breakfast was surprisingly decent given where we are. They had peeled boiled eggs and of all things, crepes which were excellent. I had two with honey.  Their bread was also quite good and many of us made peanut butter and jam sandwiches for our later lunch as we drive back to Konso.

The visit this morning was to a village of the Kara (means “fish”) people, who live near the Omo River. Unfortunately it required a 90 minute ride on dirt roads to reach it. The Kara tribe numbers about 8000 and live in three villages. The one we are visiting has 1500 people living there. They live by fishing and agriculture; they do have cattle but not as many as other tribes. They consider themselves similar to the Hamar tribe but there have been some conflicts between the tribes. The women practice scarification and the men wear white chalk paint in patterns that mimic the guinea hen, common to the area. Men also perform bull jumping as part of the path to manhood. The tribe sometimes has conflicts with the Hamar tribe who also live in the area.

It started to drizzle a bit when we arrived but it was intermittent so it did not impact our visit. The little kids were very interested in us and commonly sought to hold hands with the people in our group. One little guy who couldn’t have been more than 18 months held hands with one of the men the entire time we were at the village. A local guide from the village explained the Kara way of life and arranged for us to take photos of the people living there. They also had implemented the 200 birr for all the pictures you wanted scenario and the villagers seemed more willing to accommodate this new method rather than the old 5 birr per picture. The tribe appears to be a bit more advanced than other tribes we visited in that we saw a few “modern” homes for the richer people and some mechanized farm equipment. We were also surprised to meet villagers who spoke decent English. We spent a total of one hour there, then started the long 90 minute trek back to where we came from. It was a long journey for such a short visit.

The nearest town to our hotel is called Turmi and today was market day for the Hamar tribe. We stopped and another local guide walked us around explaining what people were selling or bartering. This is a small, local market and deals with day to day needs of the people living here. It was much more enjoyable than the large city markets we have seen. We took some select photos (5 birr each) of specific people (no charge for distant pictures of the marketplace) before leaving the area for our two hour drive back to the town of Konso where we will be staying the night at the hotel (Kanta Lodge) we stayed before coming south.  No one complained of the added two hour drive. In reality we would be taking this same drive tomorrow if we stayed a 2nd night at the Kizo Hotel in Turmi, so tomorrow’s journey back northward will simply be two hours shorter. Everyone was thrilled.

 The intermittent rain in the area made some of the road quite slippery (it is mostly clay) so we had to slow down a bit when passing through those wet places. By 1:30 we were back in Jinka where we stopped at a local hotel where we ate our “takeout “ lunches (I ate my peanut butter sandwich) and stretched our legs. Amazingly we had no sooner arrived when local entrepreneurs set up their souvenir shop and enticed us to buy their products. The sales people are mainly elementary and high school kids and they are pretty good at negotiating to maximize their profits. It is a good learning experience for kids so young.

Back on the road at 2:30 for our last leg of the trip, another two hour drive back to the Kanta Lodge in Konso where everyone looked forward to decent rooms and hot showers. Dinner was again ala carte at the hotel and the meals were as good as they were a couple of nights ago.

Our venture into the southern part of the Omo valley has come to an end and we will begin our trip northward back to Addis Ababa.  Tomorrow we have a leisurely 2-3 hour drive back to Arba Minch and the marvelous Haile resort where we had previously spent two nights. Everyone is eager to return to it!