Our school director Brad is a bit of a birdwatcher (I’d call him a “twitcher” but he isn’t, and anyway that would be a bit rude – see here for an explanation). He’s combined this with being a keen photographer and has some superb pictures. He’s convinced I shall develop into a birdwatcher too, as my curiosity gets the better of me sometimes as I just have to find out what that bird that just hopped into my lounge and is pecking around on our carpet is called (a “Brown-rumped Seedeater” I think…)  It’s very difficult to resist wondering what a bird is called when they are all around me and they all look different from anything I’ve ever seen in the UK. Even the pigeons.

Ethiopia boasts 862 recorded species of bird; 16 of which are found nowhere else in the world. So I now know the almost five-foot tall bird that strutted imperiously across the road in Ziway with a disdainful look on its face causing me to almost stop the car was a Marabou Stork. There was a large acacia tree near the lake ahead with dozens of these monstrous birds on the top – a weird sight. We were in Ziway visiting Gary and Peggy Ifft  (see Chris’s blog post and my latest picture gallery) on our way back to Addis from a short stay in a resort by lake Langano with Aaron. While in Sabana resort we had bumped into a friend from church who loaned me her “Birds of the Horn of Africa” book so I could identify what all those small birds were that kept flying into the restaurant and eating the sugar and bread on recently vacated tables (weaver birds mostly – especially  the “Northern Masked Weaver”). Check this out:

We were enormously excited to receive our first visit from one of our children – Aaron came to see us for a week and arrived safely amidst rumours that the Ethiopian government is about to stop selling tourist visas at Addis Ababa airport. He quashed that particular rumour by emerging from customs with a stamped visa in his passport and all his luggage intact – an extremely important fact, as in his luggage was a pack of six small Melton Mowbray pork pies. (Chris was more excited by the bag of porridge oats). I took him to HQ to meet my clinic staff, and then we went and sat in a very pleasant coffee bar to have some breakfast whilst watching some big black birds circling around over the nearby Black Lion hospital (Thick-billed Ravens probably). Across town to Bingham to meet Chris (who was in a foment of excitement) and to discover Bingham complete with circling yellow-billed kites which are a magnificent sight. (When it starts to rain in a month or two the kites will vanish and the hooded vultures will reappear).

Aaron spent some time with Chris in her classroom, and we showed him the sights of Addis including a trip up Entoto mountain which is always interesting to first-time visitors given the lovely view of Addis, some historically significant buildings and the wood-carrying ladies. We also introduced him to Addis’s most famous skeleton  - Lucy, the 3.2M year old bipedal hominin who now resides in the National Museum having been dug up from her grave in the Awash valley in 1974.

After church on Sunday we took off south and drove for four hours to the Sabana resort by lake Langano in the rift valley. Aaron got to see some “real Africa” – arid plains dotted with acacia trees surrounding beautiful lakes. Langano is unique for having brown water (more so than the North sea of my youth) which is dissolved minerals rather than sediment. Apart from sitting reading whilst various birds hopped around our feet (White-browed Sparrow Weavers mostly, with pairs of Speckled Mousebirds in the trees above) we also took off one afternoon on an 11 km walk in the countryside. We were soon accompanied by small children vying for our attention, a group of teenagers driving a donkey-drawn cart and eventually Wayoo. Wayoo appeared out of nowhere carrying a long-handled spade and with my little Amharic and his somewhat better English we managed to have a chat of sorts. he was a subsistence farmer, very poor, with a wife and eight children and he was on his way home. The mysterious spade was at one point equally mysteriously beaten on a rock until it bent and split slightly. Wayoo helped us down the 40 metre high cliff to the lakeside and safely led us back to our resort, all with dry feet except Chris who’s love of paddling is the stuff of Griffin family legend. Aaron narrowly missed seeing a kingfisher sitting on a twig overhanging the lake (actually a Pied Kingfisher). We were also unpunctured by thorns, as Wayoo’s spade had come in handy in holding prickly branches out of the way. Flocks of beautiful iridescent blue-backed birds accompanied us (Superb Starlings) as we gave Wayoo a contribution to his family finances and bade him farewell a short way from our resort. Wayoo’s kindness was extraordinary, and made the walk both circular and more entertaining. We headed for the restaurant for dinner to see a large bird with a heavy beak (an Abyssinian ground hornbill if I’m not mistaken) scratching around in the dirt just outside the window.

I hope Aaron returned to the UK with some happy memories and new insights into what we are up to here, and more importantly why we are doing it. He will no doubt remember for a long time the selfless kindness of a solitary poor farmer who took several hours to help three lost-looking foreigners have a memorable walk by a beautiful Ethiopian rift valley lake.

And I definitely haven’t become a birdwatcher, although I forgot to tell you about the Bee-eater (actually it was a Little Bee-eater I think). Oh, and the African Hoopoe. OK, I’ll stop.

(PS - everything highlighted pale blue in this post is a link - do take time to click them as several of them are my own photos. The ones which are from websites or Wikipedia should be obvious - I'm not that good!!)