Traditional architecture is circular here – and in the flyblown towns, full of tea and tyre shops, square huts with corrugated roofs were a sign of decadent modernity.
We spent a night at Jimma, where taxis were donkey chariots driven by eight-year-olds; then moving on to Kaffe, where we slept among the topiary hedges of a government coffee plantation. As we pushed west and south, the road became rougher; the vegetation wilder; the faces blacker; the clothes more bedraggled; and the smiles wider.
Stanley Stewart (to
be continued)
