Wolves, carrots, mystery food, desperation & bathroom privacy...and Christmas!

• In Debark, Ethiopia, before taking off on a short hike, I learned about the plight of the Ethiopian Wolf.  These delicate-legged canids used to be commonly seen in Ethiopia, but with the increase in number of domesticated dogs, there was an associated rise in highly contagious distemper and rabies outbreaks, which then decimated the Ethiopian Wolf population to an estimated 500 total today.  In the Simien Mountain area (northern Ethiopia) the number of wolves is estimated to be a mere 75.  The Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme (www.ethiopianwolf.org) is dedicated to preserving this species in the wild, and though I immediately emailed them to inquire about possible veterinary opportunities, I received an auto-reply saying that they are on holiday until mid-January.  I would love to have a chance to work on this project in some capacity!
• I had one of the best carrots ever in my life today...2 boys were selling bunches of them by the side of the road, and I ate one for dessert: a rich, bright orange hue, fantastically crunchy and so sweet!!  (I did rinse it under the tap for a long while and scraped at the crevices with my fingernails, reassuring myself that surely, by now, any organisms like Cryptosporidium or Giardia would have long been dead...).   Side note:  historically associating Ethiopia with the famines of the 1980s, I had NO idea how much fertile farmland exists in northern Ethiopia; it produces an abundant and varied amount of fresh, local and organic food, and with the regular use of crop rotation on smaller plots of land (and animal rotation as a natural source of fertilizer), the soil here is far healthier than that found in areas employing large-scale, industrialized agricultural practices.  It's also immensely comforting to see free-roaming food animals...at least if they're going to be sacrificed for calories, they've lived a far better life here than most of their counterparts in the States.
• My boyfriend has joined me for the Ethiopia leg of my trip, and in Mekele, we popped into a small restaurant because it was hopping with locals.  A banner inside proclaimed "Welcome," but that was the extent of English communication as far as the staff or menus were concerned.  We were, however, warmly greeted with smiles, invited to sit, and promptly given menus completely in Amharic...at least we could decipher prices (!).  We pointed to 2 men and their bowls and then pointed to ourselves to indicate we wanted the same.  What were they eating?  Not sure, but it looked and smelled good.  I asked if it was "fasting" and another diner who spoke a small amount of English came over after noticing how long we were taking to order, and he affirmed that it was, so at least I knew I would not be eating some bizarre meat concoction.  We were then each given 3 sizeable mini-loaves of bread, which we started picking at, thinking "Wow!  This is A LOT of bread!," and that was when I noticed that the old man next to us was steadfastly tearing up his bread into bite-sized chunks and dropping them into his metal bowl.  We started to do the same, and our neighbor nodded, gave us a thumbs-up and motioned that our chunks needed to be yet smaller.  Our bread bowls were taken away and returned a while later, now topped with tomato sauce, onions, pepper, spices, scrambled egg, and yogurt/cheese, and the server then mixed it all with a great flourish and plunked each bowl down ceremoniously.  It was absolutely delicious and so filling, but we still don't know what exactly we had for dinner that night.  Mystery food can be so much fun!  Side note: Mekele was a really pleasant, bustling, prosperous city with zero tourist-hassle-factor...I would have liked another day there. The university there is known for its engineering program, and that likely accounts for the noticeably available and speediest WiFi access thus far!
• Ethiopia has differed from other third-world countries I've visited (namely Mongolia and Myanmar) in one distinct way: single young adults between 16-30 years of age who are keenly aware that there is a "better way to live out there" are desperately ready to leave their home and family, even if they know they might never have the opportunity to return.  Most of the small-medium sized towns here have an annual lottery where 5 residents are picked at random to move to the United States, and those 5 are spoken of reverently as having an enormous amount of good fortune.  I don't know what opportunities are available for the top "x" percentage of each secondary school, but one very intelligent 17 year-old in Axum, who spoke the best English of anyone we've met so far, spoke wistfully of aspiring to be an ophthalmologist, as blindness and other ocular diseases are both commonplace and under-treated here.  As long as he maintains his grades for his final year of secondary school, he hopes to obtain scholarships to attend university in Addis and then possibly abroad thereafter...he is also currently the father figure to his 10 year old sister & 5 year old brother, as their mother lives a 3-hour walk away in a small village that doesn't have a school.  His sister says she would like to be an engineer someday.  It is sad to think of the cruelty of pure chance: pure chance places a person somewhere, and depending on where that place is and the external circumstances associated with that place, that person may simply be unable to change the fate of his/her life, regardless of how intelligent or ambitious that person might be.
• Ethiopia has fantastic coffee that is immediately roasted right before it's served in most cafes and restaurants.  Being the typical morning beverage of choice, this does, however, lead to interesting bathroom experiences out in the bush.  What I've found is that it may LOOK like no one is around for miles,  but that is never the case.  One time, outside of a small, less-visited monastery, I spied a perfect bush behind which I could relieve my bladder, but when I climbed up there, there was an elderly woman squatting there (in MY predetermined spot!), apparently just resting...she was kind enough to point me in the direction of another good pee-spot.  Another time, off the side of the road (BTW, the odds of rolling down an embankment while in a hurried search for the right pee-spot are moderately high), I found a secluded quiet area with no visible signs of life nearby, but by the time I pulled up my pants, there were 2 old men with a couple of donkeys and an assortment of sheep and goats right on the road beside me!  This is THE ONE time I actually envy the male anatomy.  :-)
• Marry X-Mass!!  There is one sign up the road displaying this today, as we are in the tourist-driven town of Lalibela.  
  
  Ethiopians celebrate Christmas on January 7 like the other Orthodox faiths, so Decmber 25 here is pretty quiet.  The biggest festival of the year falls on January 19, the Epiphany (J.C.'s baptism), also known as Timkat.  I've had trouble remembering it was Christmas even; no pervasive holiday music, bright twinkling lights on trees, or ads promoting gift cards as the perfect stocking stuffer!