Pilgrims

So much happened in Ethiopia but I was mostly too busy living it to blog about it, so I have a few stories saved up. This is from last November.

I was out with the monkeys one day and there were lots of people walking past. There must have been a few thousand people over the course of the day, all converging onto the road heading south. They all wore white, which is the usual colour around Guassa, but today it was extra clean white. I asked about it and apparently they were going to see an angel. I've never seen an angel so I wasn't about to miss it.






It turned out they were building a huge church, possibly to honour the angel. It will take a few years to finish it. They have special services twice a year to raise money for building materials. It looks like it's going to be made of concrete but what I saw was mostly scaffolding made of eucalyptus poles.

There were thousands of people at the church service. Many people had velvet ceremonial umbrellas with sparkly gold bits. Others brought their regular rain umbrellas, which are used against the sun as much as the rain. The bishop is under the big white umbrella.


I never did get to see the angel. All the people must have scared it away.

Ethiopian churches are really beautifully decorated. These paintings are inside a big church in Addis Ababa. I think it's weird that Jesus and all the saints are painted as white people.

Under the Madonna painting you can see the king and queen who built the church. I think it's weird that they are painted looking Ethiopian while the saints above look European. Some of the saints were Ethiopian too but they are painted as white people. I think that's St Yared on the right, with the drum; shouldn't he be darker-skinned? The man on the horse below is St George, Ethiopia's patron saint.

Looking back at these pictures I can almost smell the frankincense. I miss frankincense. I don't usually like smoky things but that smoke smells really good.

Baby Monkey, Baby Monkey!

 I'm back in Lethbridge now and recovering from all the excitement so I wanted to post some more gelada pictures. Here's what baby geladas look like...












Babies spend a lot of time playing. These two are showing the open-mouthed play face. One of the baby geladas' favourite games is a sort of "king of the castle" game. Any sort of rock or steep slope will do, and the babies and juveniles wrestle and jump or push each other off. They are tough little guys and falling a few meters doesn't seem to hurt them. You can see the camp road in the background.

Geladas are born with black fur that gradually lightens to the usual brown colour. The black one at the back is younger than his playmates.

When you're all tired out it's good to get a ride. Twisting your tail around mom's provides added support.












Babies hold onto the mother's fur even while sleeping. They can support themselves within a few days after birth, leaving the mother's hands free for foraging. At first they ride on the mother's belly, with easy access to her nipples so they can suckle almost constantly. Bigger infants usually ride on the mother's back, like this one on the right has just learned to do.

Geladas and Friends

My, what big teeth you have!

 This is one of my favourite photos, a male gelada showing off his big pointy canines. I got this printed in Addis Ababa and I've been showing it off whenever people ask me what I'm doing in Ethiopia. Most people in the city have never seen geladas and don't know much about them. Some popular questions:

Does that live in Ethiopia? (Yes, they are actually endemic to Ethiopia.)

Aren't they dangerous? (No, but maybe the picture doesn't make the best impression. He's just yawning!)

Do they have males and females, like people? (Yes. I don't know why that seems strange, when most familiar animals come in two sexes, but I've been asked more than once.)

Geladas are indisputably Guassa's finest animals, but there are other species present. All the herbivores mostly get along, except for occasionally startling each other. The geladas just ignored these cattle.

 













The Ethiopian Wolf is the world's rarest canid so I'm really lucky to see them somewhat regularly. They have walked right through camp several times and they can often be heard howling at night. Contrary to what you may have seen on TV, the wolves eat rodents, not geladas. These pictures show a wolf hunting among the geladas, while the monkeys keep right on grazing.

 Guassa also has lots of birds. Tawny eagles are one of the most common.  There are also lammergyres and blue winged geese, but I don't have any good pics of these yet.

The flora of Guassa is as unique as its fauna. These giant lobelia plants grow taller than me. They kind of look like the truffula trees from The Lorax, but less soft and more spiky. When they bloom the flower makes a spike almost two feet long that grows up from the top of the leafy part.

Gelada Photos

You Don't See That Every Day

The other day I spotted some traffic cones around a small hole in the sidewalk. Banff is full of creative and unconventional people, and you see the strangest stuff sometimes, but this was definitely one of the more baffling things. When I got closer there seemed to be a piece of paper in the hole...

 It's a bit hard to see but this was the best picture I could get. Yes, the hole in the sidewalk contained a note: "Hi, I borrowed this brick to complete my house". The whole thing just raises so many questions, like Why?!? It had to take a bit of work to pry it the brick out, and what can you do with just one brick?

 

Then I saw this rare two-headed elk in the river, just two minutes from my house.













Here it is from another angle. Turns out it also has two bodies, very disappointing. You can see Mt Rundle in the background. It's one of Banff's well known mountains and I really want to climb it this summer.

The Great Alberta Flood

Nobody was expecting a flood. It started raining on Wednesday, life went on, and then by Thursday morning we woke up to news of flood warnings, evacuations, roads closed and bridges destroyed. Banff is not as badly affected as some places. The park is flooded and you can't get out of town to the east, and a few buildings near the river are uninhabitable. We still have power and water and everything is open. The news from Canmore and Calgary sounds a lot worse though. Lots of people have had to evacuate and there are houses falling into the river in Canmore. Canmore was cut off completely for a while, but some buses and trucks were getting through yesterday. There were several helicopters circling over Banff, checking out the situation and looking for anyone who needed rescuing.








I'm not really affected by the flooding since I wasn't planning to leave town anytime soon, but it's always a weird feeling when there's a disaster around you. People naturally want to help but there isn't anything to help with at the moment, so all we can do is stand around in the park and gawk at the water.

I don't know why they bother with all the caution tape. If people are too dumb to notice eight inches of water on the path, I don't think a sign is going to to help them.




















This park bench would be a good place to sit for lunch- some other day!

Madagascar Memories

Sadly, I am not in some exotic location right now,
but I wanted to post some more of my photos, so here are a few more of my happy memories.


Lemur on a taxi brousse! This is one of the lemurs on the ride home to KAFS to be fitted with a new radio collar. He spent most of the journey inside a big fabric bag to minimize stress, but I took the picture when they opened the bag quickly to check on him.

A small fraction of the bounty of lychees. Lychees were in season when I left Madagascar and you could get a shopping bag full for about a dollar. They are kind of addictive so when you eat one it's easy to just keep on eating them, like chips.

 This is one of my little gecko friends. There were always a few little green day geckos chasing each other on my tent or stalking insects in the thatch roof. This one is about as long as my hand and he caught a big insect, I think it might have been a dragonfly.

Run away, it's the evil duck! Some of the ducks in Kianjavato were the usual mallards and white domestic ducks, but there was also this black kind with weird red swellings on the face. This particular duck belonged to a family who kept a little store next door to KAFS. The volunteers would go to the store for cake (mmm, mango cake with chocolate icing!) and sandwiches, and this enormous duck was always there hissing at us and snaking its neck. It looked kind of demonic so I called it the evil duck.

 I have fond memories of drinking at Hotely on a Sunday afternoon. Sunday is market day in Kianjavato and everybody goes into town wearing their best clothes, going to see and be seen as much as to shop. Hotely is right in the middle of town and their porch has a great view combined with shelter from the sun or rain, and of course the cold beer. Looking at this picture I can almost hear the rain on the sheet metal roof, taste the Namaki coffee rum and Three Horses Beer, and smell the gutter you have to cross on a little plank bridge between the porch and the street. The street is usually packed solid with people on market day but this day everyone who could was waiting out the worst of the rain under whatever shelter they could find, so there were only a few people and the hotely dog out on the street. Also in the picture is the famous red car, maybe the only car for miles around. You could tell the guys driving it thought they were pretty cool, with Celine Dion blasting from the stereo.