Tree Planting

Raining season is the tree planning season.  Every public and private organizations participate, just like China.  Thursday Aug.14 was the tree plating day for MoH, we were happy to tag along.

A train of buses at the destination:

 

 

Picking the seedlings.

My two Acacia seedlings:

Motivation speech: this event  is to commemorate  two years anniversary of the pass beloved  prime minister Meles Zenawi.  One thing I noticed that the posters of old prime minister is everywhere, but posters of the current prime minister is non exist.

Land erosion and lava rock.  Densely populated Ethiopia is heavily farmed, only 5 % forest coverage left, one Ethiopia Herald reporter told me.  The government requires one farmer plant two trees a year. 

 

  Different from tree planning in China, the tiny holes, dug by peasants, were waiting for us.  That solved my puzzlement about shovels.   This is me happily showing off tree planting.  What a staged event, fun though.  No labor at all.

 

Me, Eduardo and Senait (our lovely local translator) after tree planting.

 

Jonathan, as usual, is busy in taking every opportunity to interview people.  His latest journalist equipment is Samsung Galaxy5.

 

 My attempt to make a handsome whip made the little shepherds laugh. 

 

Local teenagers who dug the holes for us.

 

 

New friends, Little Shepherds, said goodbye to us. The plastic bag shepherd caps are very cute.

 

 

The highlight of the event was the ambulance ride back to the city, the privilege of working for MoH. since we hangout in the filed for too long.  Ethiopia now have 1250 ambulances.  People are very kind to us.  They waited on the road side, stopped our ambulance to give us much needed bottled water.

 

 

Amharic lesson on the bus