So I'm in Ethiopia now
Today marks exactly a month that I've been in Ethiopia, where I'm doing a summer internship for a development-related NGO. Needless to say, it's been quite a change of scenery from life in Washington DC- or the Philippines, or anywhere else I've been, really. My only previous experience in Africa was on my brief time studying in Morocco , which of course is a very different country than Ethiopia, both countries' excellent tea notwithstanding. In fact, Ethiopia is a very different country in general, something most foreigners don't appreciate, especially those who are aware of it only in the context of marathon runners and tasteless jokes about famines. Humans have been here since before they were homo sapiens ( Lucy was found here!), and it has one of the longest written histories of any country in the world, developing its own system of writing sometime in the 9th century BC- a script that remains in use today, one of the oldest extant writing systems ...