Chapter 10
Rift Valley Lakes
By this trip we took heart and in a month we decided to go to another trip, this time south to the Rift Valley lakes. One of the lakes nearest to the capital has been a favourite place of foreigners being on mission in the country. It could even be used for swimming for high alkali content of its water. Clean sweet water cannot be used for that purpose, as bilharzias, a kind of worm, is infesting them, and that infection has been deadly that time. There were bungalows on the lakeshore.
Our trip has been a solitary one, as trips to the country among whites have been regulated by complicated ceremonies. During dry season nobody would go to that lake. For trips the rainy season was selected for two reasons. First, at that lake you could go sun-tanning even then, whereas in the capital clouds were covering the sky. Second, the lake is surrounded by a sandy territory and sand is hard to drive on in dry weather. Only in rainy season, when once a day a shower made sand hard, was it possible to get access to the lake by traditional-drive vehicles. We could do it as, first, we did not go to swimming pools of hotels in the town, second, our FIAT 127 has been half a Landrover. A good driver could drive it on sand or clay, only pedals were to be handled by care.
Our trip was a success , but as the country lies near the Equator, and the lake’s altitude is much lower than that of the capital, we could not bear heat too long. We got into the car and went to see other lakes farther south. There we found the landscape truly African. Even people are different, as they belong to the Oromo group of many nationalities with Negroid origin.
Some months earlier, in February, Alex called me by phone and offered a lecturer’s job at the university. One of the local lecturers had been enlisted, and his subject, "Workshop Management”, has remained without a host. Alas, it could not be solved by trasfer from the Ministry of Transport to Addis Ababa University. John advised me to do it beside my job at FTO. Bekele was consulted and he agreed. My work for him has been ahead of schedule, and he said he would not miss me. My extra job involved me twice a week, for two hours each time.
I did that job for two semesters, until the original lecturer returned. It was purely social work, I did not get a cent for it. My only reward has been a letter of recommendation.