July
28th, 2010 Camel Wreck-Shashamene-Kokosa
I
had a nice visit with my family before scripture study and prayer. It is really
good to be able to talk with them even though I am half a world away. I anticipated that it would take about 45
minutes to get my breakfast and I was about right even though there was only
one other couple in the restaurant that came in after me. I had ordered an
omelet not the most complicated of breakfasts to cook.
Abera
and I went shopping for jumper cables but they don’t know what they are in
Shashamene so I bought 20 feet of heavy wire and some battery clamps and made
my own for 392 ETB($28). They don’t look
very good but they got the job done. We
also purchased a large jug for storing milk, a couple of plastic buckets,
basins, and pitchers all for 108 ETB($7.80)
We also spent about 50 birr on water and 50 on oranges, bananas, and
bread. This will feed us for a couple of days I hope. I am sure that Abera will go with Negeso to
his restaurant a time or two and probably take Mulgeta and Gemechu. We also
bought 20 liters of gas (13.23ETB/Liter, $3.65/gal) to run the little generator
that they bought after my last trip here.
Jamal tried to run it on diesel but it didn’t work very well.
A load of camels ran off the main road and crashed. Many of the drivers chew "chat " a hallucinogenic plant. |
The drive went well until we were about half way down the muddy lane to the farm. Abera overcorrected and slid to the low side of the road and got stuck. He looked at me as if to say can you get us out now. It took a shovel and four people pushing but we got out and Abera learned a little bit about mud driving. I pulled out some birr to reward the helpers. Two of them gratefully accepted but two of them said that is not enough they set the one birr back on the truck seat and said give us ten birr each. (Ten birr is a day’s wage in this area). I said if you don’t want the birr I will keep it and we drove off. Abera was disgusted with them. I asked him if it was because I was a farenge (foreigner) that they acted that way. He said yes that he never pays people that help push and usually they don’t expect pay.
Gemachu and Mulgeta using the newly installed water pump. They were very excited! |
Mulgeta
and I bred the three cows that came into heat.
I hope that the rest of them will come in tomorrow. I am not sure about the semen quality but I
am using this more as a training exercise for Mulgeta. Tsehay is having the semen checked in Addis. If it is no good we will just have to buy new
semen. There are probably 6000 to 7000 doses in the tank. The semen that I have
here was in the smaller tank so I hope that it was OK. Mulgeta bred all three
cows with only a little difficulty on one of the cows. I also started training one of the workers to
thaw the semen. He will need more
practice.
Sultan explaining the project to Mulgeta. The idea is to have the overflow of the first trough to fill the second one. |
Our new crop of Boran calves watched over by one of our herdsman. The cows are being milked as part of our dairy program. Most of the milk goes to a restaurant in Kokosa. |
Abera is very excited about his new toy. This will work much faster than the hand labor plowers. |
With
the generator running tonight I am able to type even after dark and not worry
about my battery dying either. With no light around it gets very dark here on
the farm. When the sky is clear you can
see millions of stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment