Field Trip: Day Two - Shashemene

We left Meseret Hotel at 7:30 to get breakfast at Azeb Restaurant (or, in Oromian, spelled Reestooranti). After some scrambled eggs and a macchiato, we headed down to Shashemene to see the treatment facility there. I'd been interested to visit Shashemene since reading about it in my guidebook, which says that in 1948 Ethiopian Emperor, Haile Selassie, granted land here to settlers from Jamaica, notably to members of the Rastafari movement, who eventually came in the 1960s. (A quick background breakdown: before becoming Emperor, Haile Selassie's given name was Tafari, or Prince Tafari. In Amharic, Ras means Prince. Hence, Ras Tafari. See the connection?) Apparently, the community has only about 200 settlers now, so unfortunately we didn't notice anything even remotely related to this when we passed through town on the way to our field visits. When I asked Dereje, a devout Orthodox Christian, about the Rasta belief that Haile Selassie was "the second coming", he simply said, "He was a man and a politician."
However, we were amazed by the scenery driving up to the river and intake facility. Driving down a path lined with towering trees on both sides, it seemed like an approach to a  Buddhist temple in Japan. The serenity of the area was overwhelming. When we stopped and got out of the car, a group of children approached us. However, unlike in the city, where kids will often beg for money, these kids wanted to say hello and have us to take their picture. I snapped a few shots and they excitedly looked at the results and laughed and cheered, posing for more pictures as we headed to the riverside.
After the instructors gave a brief lecture, we left that site and headed to the treatment facility 1.5 km away, to where the water is taken by gravitational force alone. There is it pumped through the sediment tanks and aerator, and through chemical treatment before supplied to the town.
I took a bit extra time exploring the chemical treatment facility, videotaping the upper floor of the facility, so I was the last one back downstairs. When I went to exit, however, I found that the door had been locked from the outside! Feeling like a kid stuffed in a locker at school, I called T on his cellphone and a guard rushed over to open the door, apologizing for the mistake. Maybe now I can say that I got locked up in the Shashemene monkey house if I ever need to prove my street cred!