Another beautiful sunny day in Soddo! We planned to hike Mt. Damota, the highest point in Wolaitta Zone at 2738 meters, with Jeremy and Pastor Daniel (a visitor from Chicago) this morning. We met at 7am and took a hired bajaj (basically a motorized tricycle) through town and up the base of the mountain on bumpy dirt roads to a seemingly arbitrary "trailhead." We had two local boys along, Ebenezer (15) and his little brother (12) whose name I still cannot spell or correctly pronounce, as our guides. The trail up the mountain is a well worn, deeply rutted path used frequently by the families that live up in the hills and atop Mt. Damota. On market days, women and children carrying palm-leaf wrapped bundles on their backs or mats on their heads and men driving mules and horses with similar packs upon their backs come streaming down the mountain. The higher you climb, the less Amharic is spoken and the more Wolayta you hear. People live in straw huts tucked away among the trees and farm on the hillsides. Little kids either stared at us, tried to touch us, or ran away. Occasionally they threw rocks, but Ebenezer was proficient at chasing them away. He also indulged us by answering many of our questions -- "what are they saying?", "what plant is this?", "what are they carrying?" At the top of Mt. Damota is an old Ethiopian Orthodox church. When we were nearly to the summit, we met a young man on his way down who explained some of the history of the area and the church to us. Apparently a missionary in the 12th century brought Christianity to the area and the church has become a sort of pilgrimage site for some Ethiopians in the Orthodox church. He was from Addis Ababa and clearly had made this steep, high-altitude climb with no food or water as he was only carrying a Bible and a walking stick. We weren't clear from his story if the church itself had been built in the 12th century, but it certainly looks newer than that with its wooden roof and bright yellow walls. There is a second church site, a blue older church, at the summit sitting across the valley from the yellow church that is in shambles, but again does not look 12th century old. The doors were locked on both churches so we couldn't go inside unfortunately. We shared some snacks at the top while sitting on wooden benches outside of the yellow church with about five kids under the age of 9 watching us from the nearby tall grass. The trek down was filled with even more locals headed to market, near misses by out of control mules/horses reeling down the slopes, and many women and girls surrounding Auna--some helping her with her footing and others trying to touch her or talk to her in other languages. Because of this, we learned a new very important word: "inenga" or "I don't know!"
After the hike, we were exhausted. We had lunch at the hotel Nega (fries and papaya juice) and then headed back to the guest house for a much needed shower and nap. We were lounging on the couch and about to fall asleep when Jeremy came to the front door in his white coat. We knew that meant work! He told us there was a sick patient in the ER, a young guy with altered mental status and renal failure, who was waiting on a CT scan and then would be going to the ICU. Pulling on our white coats, we headed up the hill to the ER to see him. His eyes were open but unfocused, his mouth was dry, and he was grunting. He had only received 1 liter of IV fluids, so we suggested the GP give another 2-3 liters while he was waiting for the CT technician to come in from home. Knowing that things here rarely happen quickly, we went back home to make dinner and to wait to hear from Jeremy again if there was anything else we could do to help. A text message at 11:30 pm woke us from sleep...but we'll save the rest of that story until tomorrow!
Pictures below are of our hike to Mt. Damota.
No comments:
Post a Comment