The Aregash Lodge in Yirg Alem is an oasis! I always look forward to staying here on the way to the southern coffee growing areas of Yirga Cheffe, Kochore, Gedeb, and Shakiso. It’s owned by Gregorg and his family, since 2003. But last year it was attacked by a local mob and one of the main buildings burnt to the ground. (Nobody was hurt). It’s wonderful to be back, and beautiful as ever, but a bit uncanny. Things are not always as they seem in Ethiopia, certainly for an outsider.

It leads me to think about this social unrest, ethnic clashes, but also the way America is seen by my Ethiopian friends, equally unsafe and incomprehensible. I am not sure why, but talking about a place I barely know like Ethiopia (despite coming here for so many years) only makes me reflect back on my country, as I know it. I feel the same misunderstandings I probably carry about Ethiopia are parallel to the things I hear my travel companions say about the US. Then again, it seems they could be right … and I could be right too.

When can you say you know a place? In what way do you know it, and in what way is it unknowable? The tourist myth of “strange lands” redirects back to “home”. I am not sure I know either. What sucks about this recording is trying to speak on behalf of a place, behalf of a country. How can I? I try to assure Teshe that America is not as unsafe as it sounds. Everyone is not armed. But I hear of their friends held up at gunpoint in the US, and they say “yes, you can get robbed in Addis but nobody is going to shoot you! “ How can I respond? And this is a country emerging (hopefully) from civil war! I guess there’s good reason for my unclear thoughts and sentences in this recording. It’s hard to find clarity in this. I hope you disagree with some things I say in here because I already have my own quibbles with them.