Ethiopians call foreigners faranji, which our local guide tells us means “French” in Amharic. In rural Southern Ethiopia, where cars are scarce and farmers walk their herds on the main roads, children run after the ten-year-old Toyota Land Cruisers carrying faranji and yell “Ayh-land-ah, Ayh-land-ah” or sometimes just “Ayh-land,” which is their name for the …
Ethiopia is incredibly beautiful. We had no idea how beautiful it was, which made the country all the more appealing, because we felt as if we’d stumbled upon a secret. In the course of one or two days of driving, we passed through rolling green hills, mountain ranges, and dusty deserts.
Our first night at the Hudad, we had dinner around a bonfire on the bluff with the mountains spread out before us, like a movie theater in the round. We were accompanied by a group of Australian woman, who were at Lalibela Hudad trying to set up a school for the local village children. The …
One Saturday morning, the summer before last, I proposed taking a hike to our kids, Esme, who was seven at the time, and Roman, who was four. We were at my mom’s on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, where she lives year-round, and the “hike” was actually a mile long walk to a creek where …
Our arrival in Ethiopia, our first stop in our trip around the world, did not get off to an auspicious start. We’d stopped over for the night in Dubai, where we marveled in the airport at the talking hologram displays, the four story interior water feature, the banks of gleaming stainless automated sinks in the …
