Eager anticipation glints in my eyes, there is almost an air of excitement.  Before me lies my destiny, my future:  Adola College of Teacher Education.  The place that is to be my home for the next two years.  Gates bar the way, but they are opened as I approach and I am welcomed across the threshold by the gentlemen whose job it is to guard the entrance to the college.  The barbed wire atop the fence creates a slight sense of incarceration, but I bat this back as I walk the path to my new home.  The Dean and Vice-Dean are here to welcome me, although they seem a little surprised – “We didn’t expect you until tomorrow”.

Nevertheless, the welcome is warm and even extends to the Dean offering me one of his jerry cans of water as I have none at home, nor do I know how to get it.  I put this high on my list of things to find out – water is important.

Lack of water is not my only problem, I also have no food.  This is initially solved by an invitation from the Dean and Vice-Dean to dinner at the finest hotel in town- the Abera Hotel.  It might even by so classy an establishment to have been listed with a star, but I doubt it.  Still, it is the best Adola has to offer and I am clearly to be treated.

The main road through town.

The first impressions of a town stick with you and if I am to be brutally honest (unlike me I know) Adola has little to offer to please the eye, nor to entertain the mind.  It is in essence a road with buildings either side.  It is true that some dirt tracks head off from the main sealed, but mud bedecked road, but there seems to be little to appeal to the casual visitor.  However, I would focus on what it does have.  There is a bank, a post office, a number of small shops, selling a passable range of usable products a few churches and mosques and a bus station.  Oh and the Abera Hotel… I have come to believe that this is the town’s best attraction, but there are more buildings and there could be some serious competition for this place soon (by which I mean the next 10-15 years).

A side street

What Adola lacks in charm and entertainment it makes up for in donkeys and people.  The former of which there are a plentiful supply, the latter are friendly and helpful and certainly a combination of interesting characters.

My first stroll into town was accompanied by frequent curious glances and shouts of children calling out “You! You! You!” to gain my attention.  On one or two occasions this was followed by a very half-hearted “money!” As if they already knew the futility of it and it certainly lacked the persistence and hassle that I have previously experienced in Addis or Hawassa.

Now, nearly three weeks after arriving here I have noticed a decided drop in the attention I am receiving here.  I have walked into the town enough to be an increasingly familiar sight.  I reckon in a few months that they won’t even be able to distinguish me from a local… once I get a handle on the local language that is.