today is Christmas in Ethopia

We are having a quiet day after lots of travelling. We went to the town of Yirga Cheffe (and learned that the last e is not silent) - it is about a 10 hr drive from Addis Ababa, and it does not get a lot of tourists. We met one other foreigner there and she is there as a peace corps volunteer. We got to see two coffee processing places. Turns out we arrived right during the harvest, so we got to see the coffee beans drying out. It is such a manual process the whole way though - I appreciate coffee even more having seen how much work goes into it. What is really sad is that all the roasted coffee in Ethopia gets over-roasted so that it is black and the coffee is undrinkable. So much great coffee is made here, grown here, but then it is destroyed in the roasting process. We bought a kilo of green beans and will try to get them roasted in Joburg. It was fun to see green beans being sold by the side of the road. Almost anything you want is sold by the side of the road. Little kids are all excited to see white people and they yell you-you-you and then ask for money. I was happy we had a good guide. He negotiated our way into the coffee processing places (which are on the side of mountains and mostly involve very long tables w beans spread out on them.) We will both be uploading photos to flickr when we get back.