The Podocarpus tree is quite a large one and has yellow flowers. There was one near our home at Mulu which had a spring coming out from the foot of it, so the ground was quite marshy. It was on the edge of the valley and was quite near the Saturday market. Everyone in the surrounding countryside would go to the local markets. They might not have anything to buy and sell but it was a great place for meeting people and getting the local gossip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMnwKDqyRb8
I can remember walking quite near the tree on one of my last trips back to Ethiopia and there was a group of people coming from the market when suddenly a lady rushed over to greet me saying “Kilippa, Kilippa” and gave me a great hug and kisses on both cheeks. Luckily I had remembered her, so I was able to ask after her family.
There were always lots of donkeys going to and from the market as they were able to carry things they were buying or selling. Sometimes they would sell things they had grown, they would then buy things that they didn’t make themselves like clothes and shawls. You can imagine the donkeys talking to each other and exchanging their own news.
A new limestone road had been built which was all weather and so trading was much more varied. The people who lived at the top of the gorge thought themselves more important than those who lived at the bottom. The Highland people were healthier than the people in the valley as they didn’t have to contend with malaria. You can get a pill that you take against malaria, which we did when we went down to the bottom of the valley. But the local people could not afford it.
You can grow coffee down in the mugger valleys and people who lived there would bring it up to sell at the local market. We grew coffee down the valley also.
We would dry it properly as Grandpa had been a coffee officer and knew exactly how to do it. One year, the coffee we grew was declared the best in Ethiopia. We had not heard this until the people who lived near us came to tell us, this was very exciting to hear.
The Thursday market was the most exciting of them all, it was a horse market where horses and mules were sold. The horses were ridden all over the field that the market was held in. The people wanting to buy a horse would stand away from the crowd and the owners of the horses came galloping up past them. We use to go and watch but you had to be careful to keep out of the way because the horses were being galloped so fast. There were a lot of mules their as well, and strangely they fetched more money than the horses. People who rode mules were usually better off and mules were very nimble at going over all sorts of country. The local women used to make enormous jars from clay, you could order the size of pot that you wanted and we used them for putting plants in as my mother sold plants we would often go to the market in order to buy the right pot that she wanted.