Awassa of Ethiopia
Awassa is a university city with 25 000 students. As it is quite big city and there are enormous differences in living standard one sees a lot of iron fences and gates with barbed wire or broken glass on top of them, and all the well off people have watch dogs or guards – or both. One day I climbed Mount Tabor, a beautiful small mountain almost next to my house, with my hosts Tariku and Demelash and seeing the beauty and tranquility there planned to make the climb part of my morning routines with some qigong at the top, but the boys adviced me not to do that since it is not safe for a farangi to go there alone, they said. Actually Demelash got robbed there once, at the base of the mountain with a knife pointing his way – luckily his Ikkyo was swift, but it didn’t prevent the other thugs coming from behind snatching his mobile from his pocket. In spite of all this I felt safe the whole time I was in Awassa – if you know the rules of where you can go and when and stick to t