Even More on Ethiopia

It strikes me that I was so busy complaining about the toilets and raving about the kids that I neglected to mention my fellow tourists. Interesting cast of characters.

My favorites: a couple in their mid-30s (wife Scottish, husband German, currently living in Amsterdam). It's dull to write about people I like, though, so let's just say that she was definitely the coolest Jehovah's Witness I ever met (not only does she drink, but she WORKS for an multinational alcohol company).

Other standouts (which is not to say that some of them weren't okay, or even better: an obnoxious faux-Canadian English woman in her 60s who lorded it over the natives and tourists alike. For someone who has traveled to 117 countries, she's surprisingly culturally insensitive. Her husband wasn't bad, but he would have gone up in my esteem if he'd done a better job of putting her in her place.

A very nice, kind of funny Dubliner who had the longest, filthiest toenails I've ever seen, a terrible nose-picking habit, an even worse farting habit, and an aversion to deodorant. Shockingly, he's single.

The token vegan, non-alcohol and non-caffeine using, heavily spiritual gay man who insists on spending every New Year's abroad and spending that evening meditating and lighting a candle. Okay, I guess he's really one of a kind, and was really sweet in a lot of ways, but so many rules (and so much gross green smoothie drinking).

Nearly everyone got the runs at least once (present company excluded), one guy so bad that he had to go back to the UK after day 6. Sad. I don't know my secret, but it may be that my digestive system knows my gross-out threshold so well that it didn't want to force me to go to the scary toilets any more often than was absolutely necessary. [Thank you, iron stomach, and I owe you one, considering I'm the only one who ate the kittfo (raw beef) and the national food from even the sketchiest of establishments, and never had any rules like no meat, or no tomatoes, or no fruit. My only rule was that if I was eating questionable stuff, I might as well have it spicy and with booze -- to kill the germs.]