I was riding up the interstate to the mountains to go skiing. I turned on the radio. A journalist was conducting an interview in Gambella, Ethiopia. Gambella: a small town on the Baro River in the southwestern lowlands of that country. Nilotic cattle-herding tribes: the Anuak, the Dinka, the Shilluk mixed with highland peoples, the Amhara and the Oromo, to create a distinct medley of colors, sounds, dress and cultures.
Gambella was a two day walk from Dembi Dolo, my town in the late 1960s when I was a Peace Corps volunteer teaching in a secondary school. Friends and I would walk that trail during school vacations to hang out with other volunteers who ran a dormitory for refugees from the civil war that raged in the Sudan even back then. So it all came in a flood of memory as I drove up I-70 to the snow covered mountain ranges of Colorado. We are made up of present and past; memories and the current moment collide in stunning ways.
