In the hills around Addis Ababa there are forests of eucalyptus and many women make a living going into the hills, cutting wood and walking back down in the afternoon to sale the wood in town.
People mostly still live in small shacks even in Addis. I don't want to misrepresent Addis and make it sound like a huge slum but in addition to very western looking buildings the majority of people live in small shacks and they cook on fires. As a result you can usually smell wood smoke and in the early morning you can see it in the air. I remember waking up in Addis wondering where I was, listening to the roosters and smelling the wood smoke and I remember thinking "I must be in Africa" before waking up fully and feeling happy that I was in Ethiopia. That very same morning I took a picture to show the air full of smoke hoping it would remind me of the feel and the smell in the air...and it does.
Here is another shot from my hotel room at a completely different time just to show what Addis is made of.
You see the edge of the Hilton tennis court and the houses with goats right behind. This is in the centre of Addis Ababa and the houses are quite nice. You can see that they have electricity and eucalyptus trees even here.The hills around Addis are of course now in part naked because Addis is a BIG city and regardless of how fast eucalyptus grow the daily house fires of Addis are burning them faster than they can grow. This is a view of Addis in the distance taken from one of the hills the women go to to collect wood. there must be some rules on where the wood is cut because some parts of the hills were totally naked while others seemed practically untouched, as you can see in this picture.
The women walking down are loaded with huge bundles of wood.
Their only chance to rest is when they get at little walls by the side of the road so they can rest they load without having to pick it up off the ground again.
Women and donkeys go uphill "empty" and downhill loaded beyond belief. I never saw a man loaded with wood.
