5 Things My Mother Told Me Never to Do:
1) Go fishing 20 yards away from an angry hippo
2) Eat raw fish in Africa
3) Drink "fresh" milk (basically straight from the teat)
4) Hitchhike
5) Hitchhike at night in Africa
To call Awassa an adventure would be the understatement of the year.
Stu, Ray, Tesh and I left for Awassa on Wednesday. We got very lucky and were able to hitch in some NGO's Land Rover that was headed south. Compared to everything else that was to come, this was like riding in a limousine. The 4-hr car ride cost us $4/person and we got to our hotel on the shores of Lake Awassa in time to watch the monkeys play in a gorgeous sunset over the lake. We went for a walk along the lake, ending up at a lakefront bar and then finding a restaurant with fish goulash (on injera) and fried fish for dinner. The experience was enhanced by the lack of power throughout the town and the awesome cloud-to-cloud lightning that lit up the night sky.
Thursday was filled with more excitement than you can shake a stick at. We awoke @ 6:30 to go to the fish market with hopes of finding a boat, driver, and rods/lines/hooks for rent. We found a boat and driver without problem (minus the necessity to constantly bail the leaky boat) and then rowed along the shoreline, renting wooden poles with lines and hooks off kids fishing from the shore. I brought all of my fly-fishing gear and was rigging up during our row to a spot 100 yds away from the fish market. The fish market is nothing more than a stretch of coast where boats (no bigger than jon boats), pull up with nets full of tilapia and catfish, and kids squat along the water gutting, filleting, and chopping fish like there's no tomorrow. Birds larger than me lurk in the background waiting to gorge on the discarded fish guts.
No sooner had we set up our fishing shop in a grass bed 100 yds offshore, than a giant Hippopotamus (all hippos are giant) surfaced 20 yds away to let us know he wasn't too happy with our choice of fishing locale. He made some angry faces and a few unhappy noises, but I think we "scared him off" by banging the oar against the side of the boat. He disappeared and fifteen minutes later without a bite from any Asa (fish in amharic), our guide said, "Let's go try the spot where the hippo was." We tried it, again to no avail, and luckily without any more standoffs w/the hippo. It was around this time that my fly fishing fun came to an end.
The guide grabbed my fly, said (in amharic) "oh the fish won't eat this," put 3 worms on the fly hook, and dropped it in the water beside the boat. I thought about arguing but realized that the idea of fishing for sport must be completely and entirely foreign to the locals. For them, fishing is a means of survival and the more fish you can catch the better; who cares if it's more fun to wave a stick in the air with a hook on the end trying to make it look like a fly? Needless to say, my modified bait was unsuccessful and although I got a few more casts in later, my fly fishing fun was too foreign for the locals - but one guy did try to buy my rod later, offering me 100 birrh (~$10)...I declined.
We rowed to a new spot, 10 yds offshore from where 5 local boys were catching tilapia hand over fist. Stuart caught our first fish, then Ray, then Tesh, then Stu again, then me. Ray's fish was the biggest, mine was the smallest. Twas fun but at the end of the day, was still fisihing with a bobber. After our 2.5 hr expedition, we offloaded @ the fish market. While we walked around taking pictures of men gutting fish, boys disentangling nets, and women baking corncakes, our guide was busy filleting the two largest catches. He presented us with raw chunks of our fish with a bit of pepper sauce, and down the gullet they went - delicious! We were also served yummy pieces of fried dough. Little did we know this was just an appertif and we walked to a clearing beyond the market where our guides then bought six whole fried tilapia. Hands down one of the best breakfasts I've had here, as we picked the meat off the bones, dipped it in pepper sauce, and left only the skeletons on the plate. It was an awesome, once-in-a-lifetime kind of morning. We were done by 11 and off to visit Tesh's family....
I will write about this experience tomorrow but don't worry...the craziness continues....
Comments