This is a letter and collection of photos from regular TWN reader Paul Norheim that I thought deserved placement on the blog. — Steve Clemons
Hi Steve,
I’ve just returned from a seven weeks’ vacation in Ethiopia. Inspired by your (and Andrew Sullivan’s) “A View From My Window” theme, I took some photographs from different hotel windows and terraces while staying in several hotels during my travels to different parts of the country.
Most of the pictures turned out to be crap, but here’s a handful that I liked while viewing them on my PC monitor back home. Hope you like them too…
The first two pics are from one of the seven crater lakes inside and surrounding Debre Zeit, a town 45 km from Addis Ababa where my parents worked as teachers for 9 years during the 1960’s and 70’s, and where I spent much of my childhood:
Dreamland Resort, Lake Bishoftu, Ethiopia.
The third one is also from my former home town, but from a newly built lodge nearby another lake:
Debre Zeit, Ethiopia.
The next two photos were shot in Awasa, a town by a lake with the same name in the Rift Valley, Southern Ethiopia. I spent a couple of days there in an old, rundown hotel, and while on my way back to my room after a swim one day. I discovered this monkey sitting right outside my window. You may call it a variation on the View-from-my-window theme…
The View From My Window. Lake Awasa, Southern Ethiopia.
The next photo is taken from the same window/terrace – this time me watching mother & child in a tree just outside my room:
Lake Awasa, Southern Ethiopia.
The last picture is not taken from my hotel window, but from right outside the walls surrounding the old Muslim City of Harar, Eastern Ethiopia – not far from the Somalian border. In Harar not only the dogs, but also the hyenas walk freely around in the streets. They even have a “Hyena Man”, who feeds the hyenas with raw meet every night. Feeding the Hyenas… that could also be a political metaphor….
Hyena man. Harar, Eastern Ethiopia.
And that was it… Hope you enjoyed the pictures. I certainly enjoy your blog!
Best.
Paul Norheim
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