Eucalyptus, Bahar Zaf – the tree from over the sea.
Juniper was a much better tree than Eucalyptus which did not rot in the soil but was much slower in growing.
The local people used eucalyptus for their houses, which were round, and the walls were covered in mud mixed with teff straw (eragrostis) which was only about 6-12 inches thick. However, their houses were easily repaired as they could mix up the mud and teff straw quite easily, so they easily made repairs to the walls.
Our house at Mulu was one covered in mud but the wood we used was Juniper which did not rot so easily —-so the walls lasted for much longer. The roof was thatched with straw, but I think we used sanbalit to thatch it which was a much longer grass that lasted a long time. (I seem to remember up to ten years) so apart from odd patches that might have been disturbed by mistake, the thatch lasted for a long time. I remember that Father Christmas was a bit clumsy crawling up the roof to leave our stockings at the top of the roof always loosened the thatch a bit.
Ethiopians did not have a Father Christmas but our staff used to enter into the fun of it and would shout out look there he goes and Stephen and I used to rush onto the lawn looking up to where they pointed.
I can remember a large plantation of eucalyptus above the Alaltu river. But the juniper plantation was much smaller and took far longer to grow and (I am pretty sure that it was above the Bomfata stream) and it was fenced in so that local cows and sheep could not destroy or damage it.