Wondo Genet Hotel, October 14, 9pm:
Today, Shimeles and I became friends. I’m embarrassed to say that I woefully misjudged him, his intentions, his feelings, his worldview, his character, his impression of me. We had a wonderful conversation in the car, that started as a discussion of Barukat … he told me what he’d learned about her and why she’d stayed the night with him last night, (not sex!) and his explanation left me feeling so warm towards him, and excited about what it began to reveal about his personality, that it put me in a generally excited and joyful mood for the rest of our drive north to Shashemene. Suddenly, I think something between us finally clicked, and I realized that I’d been wrong about so many things (including what I’d thought about his impression of me) and we talked, and talked, and talked some more… (I’ll generalize greatly here, because I don’t feel like recreating our conversation in print) about what it means to be happy, and to share happiness, and about women, and respect, and love, and about hardship, and optimism, and about being yourself, and being open, and easygoing, and about taking life’s hits in stride, and about not being afraid to have fun, and about hard work, and the importance of family… all mixed in with shared jokes and personal stories and admittances to each other about how grateful we were to be in the other’s company… And you know, it was really, really wonderful. I came to a new understanding of Shimeles, and with it a new respect, and I feel very lucky that he feels the way about me that he does, and I really hope that we can continue to develop this friendship because I think we still know so little about each other, but hanging out with him can be so much fun… and it’s getting to be more so!
Mmmm, I was just thinking about the delicious tiny bananas that we bought for two birr from a girl on the roadside near Arbaminch. My God they were tasty… so good, they really didn’t remind me of other bananas at all! Mmmm… I’ll have to try the local bananas here at Wondo Genet, and the papayas and other local fruits too. And also about how excited I was about the discovery that you can identify all Ethiopian music by the tribe it originates from, even if you don’t understand any of the languages, by listening carefully to the rhythm of the beat in the background. Every tribe’s music always is based on the same basal beat, and once you learn those simple beats, you can always pinpoint the origin: Gurage, Amhara, Tigraya, Omo, etc…
On the more negative side, I’m SO DAMN SICK of Ethiopian food right now, I can barely contain the barf reflex at every meal. I don’t want to even look or think of an injera for years… no more greasy wats or tibs or any of it. I feel an uncontrollable grief every time we sit down for another meal: ‘please,’ I think, ‘please, no more of this fatty finger-food. No more berbere, no more shiro, no more stuffing giant gurshas into my mouth for me… Oh God, not another greasy Doro Wat… Wait, Shim, why are you ordering seconds??’
And we always eat so MUCH! If I didn’t have to worry about rudeness and cultural protocols, if I could just eat as much as I wanted and then stop, without feeling guilty, I would eat literally one fifth to one eighth as much as I’m eating right now. Oh, today I really thought I was going to vomit if I stuffed one more heaping finger-load into my mouth, but somehow my horrified tastebuds relented and I was able to march onward through the second and third helping that Shimeles ordered. When I get home, I’m going to eat organic fruits and veggies and homemade soups and salads and eat very little and maybe be a vegetarian for a while, and not ever look back. Oh tef, how I hate you right now.
Also, for the past week or so, I’ve had constant chronic heartburn. Usually mild, but present and uncomfortable almost all day long, every day. I’m a bit worried that it might be damaging my esophagus if it keeps up like this. Anyway, Shimeles says he’s suffering from the same problem, which he blames on the chat, and I blame on his driving, but we went in together on a huge bottle of tums, and I’m munching on a couple right now. I think I’d rather just eat tums for the last ten days of my visit here than have to eat one more friggin’ fir-fir with goat sauce.
I am really worried about my current physical condition. Let me be completely honest, and look back over the past three and a half weeks spent here in Ethiopia: I literally have walked probably less than 200 yards daily, on average over all the days here. Can you imagine that? Dad gets more walking than that in just going between the computer and the refridgerator on an average day in the office. I can list to you all the walking I do on any given day: I wake up and walk to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and then walk back and pack up my things. I walk out to the car. I walk from the car into a restaurant three times a day, and back from the restaurant to the car each time. I walk from the car to a station not more than 30 feet away, and set it up or take it down, and walk back to the car. I walk from the car into a hotel, and walk once or twice between the bed and the bathroom. And that’s it. Isn’t that horrible, people?!! My God, it’s KILLING ME! My muscles are literally wasting away, and sometimes I just feel really… unwell… and I can tell it’s entirely from lack of physical exercise. Pushing the car out of the mud the other day made everything in my body as sore as from a marathon day of rock climbing. I tried to jog behind the car for a few minutes yesterday in the park, and within 15 seconds at a slow trot, my muscles were screaming, my lungs gasping, and the blood pounding in my head so hard I came down with an almost 24-hour headache. AHHHHH! I may as well have spent this entire trip laying in a hospital bed, or floating weightless in a space capsule, for the way my body has degenerated. My energy, my alertness, my spunk, my libido… all gone, dead, melted away into a pool of worthless fatty tissue. Halle, you may have to carry me off the plane in a stretcher on Wednesday night, like those astronauts who come back from Mir after two months in space. Oh, how I daydream about all the things I’ll do when I’m home, to make up for this awful deterioration: I promise myself I’ll jog up the ‘M’ every day; I’ll take my road bike up Grant Creek, or out to Alberton even, after school; I’ll take 30-mile hikes; I’ll go on three day backpack trips and fast for the duration; I’ll skin up a mountain every weekend, and maybe twice for good measure; I’ll paddle the Clarkfork through town, and then paddle back up; I’ll climb in the gym until I can’t feel my arms; I’ll NEVER drive to school; I’ll do yoga early in the mornings; I’ll sprint and strain and lead rocky mountaineer trips and learn to ice climb and not ever let a week go by without a major excursion and damnit, I’ll NEVER let myself get in this bad of shape again!
Today, though, I must say, I was in a very good mood. I was thinking about what wonderful friends I have at home, and how much I owe to my mother and father, who brought me up in just such a way… Who shaped little Lew into a young man who may not be on the fast track to Medicine or Law or his first quick million, but is wonderfully happy and knows what makes him so; takes nothing for granted; loves to live, and to love; and smiles and laughs and feels and takes risks and goes on occasional flights of unbound euphoria and is pretty sure that he’ll make sure that wherever fate carries him, he’ll always keep these things the principal force in his life and never forget how he owes it all to his good ol’ mom and dad… (*Sniff* … Thanks mom!)
Which also made me consider how grateful I am to have such a wonderful family, and though it’s small, to be so close to everyone in it, and to love them all so much! If you’re not part of that family, I’m sorry, because this is probably disgusting to read, but … hey, maybe I love you too! XOXO

Today we met Mimo (Shim’s eldest sister) and her friend Mesii, and we all drove up together from Shashemene through gorgeous mountains and farmland and villages and orchards and river valleys and old royal-family retreats to Wondo Genet, which used to be the home of the princess, Haile Selassie’s daughter. It is fantastic! A real mountain retreat, with mist in the eucalyptus, and strange little monkeys all around, and so many flowers all around in the lush moss, and trees with bright red flowers and others with bright purple, and everywhere the sounds of birds chirping in the damp leaves and gurgling water. We got two nice rooms (I’m sharing with Shime, who’s snoring like a lion right now) and after taking a little rest while it rained outside, we walked down to the hotspring just after dark. The place was positively magical: Everything was dark, but I could hear the sound of rushing water, and just make out steam rising through dark trees. We came to a place where powerful streams of hot water gush out of a cliff face and form a wonderful steaming hot shower, where Shim and I stood and let it crash down over our heads and necks and sore muscles and joints, for almost 20 minutes. The night was cool and moist and there was a good breeze carrying air fresh from the recent rain with the strange smell of eucalyptus and other unknown plants. We had the place almost entirely to ourselves, it seemed, except for a few other dark bodies which appeared more spirit than man: the dark black Ethiopians blend in so well with the night that several times I bumped right into someone in the shower and still only knew it from the feel of warm skin: even right against them I couldn’t make them out from the dark rocks and water. We moved over to the large hot pools, where water is piped directly out of the spring maybe a kilometer above on the mountain, and jets out untouchably hot into three cement baths large enough to swim short laps. Not a single other person was in the pools. I could hear monkeys making a chatter somewhere distant in the trees. The rains had made the creek which ran down next to the pools swell with muddy water, and it was now a tumbling, rushing river, which rushed down the steep hill not twenty feet away from where we swam, surging with a muffled splatter down through the roots of a giant, gnarly sycamore and cascading over a small waterfall before rushing off again into the darkness below us. There were a few dim lights hung about, which illuminated bits of dark, wet foliage, drooping banana leaves and dripping yew branches, all twisting and thick and mysterious in the drifting fog and steam… The whole place had an impossible, forbidden feel to it… like we had sneaked into Disneyland at night and were playing inside Splash Mountain: a fantasy place where people weren’t supposed to be. Or, even more, it felt like I had stumbled into Rivendel. The gushing, splashing water, the hot steam and cold air, and the dark shapes moving silently behind distantly burning lamps, the exotic lush foliage and immense mystery and delight of the place, made it all seem like something that could only be imagined, from the time of Middle Earth. I stood half in the water and watching the muddy water rush through the roots of the great, magic, lichen-drooped tree for a long time, just savoring the feeling of it, and grinning all the way to my gums in the dark. Now, I could say, Wish you were here! The land of the Lotus Eaters, indeed.