@brittarnhild
As part of my preparation for travelling to Ethiopia was to visit amazon to buy a map of the country. Amazon are professional sellers, and while you are there buying one thing, you get hundreds of other suggestions. I both love and hate than.....well, most of the time I love it, but it always is hard for my creditcard.
As soon as I had bought the map, I was of course taken to new sites, and that is how I found Elizabeth Laird's The Lure of the Honey Bird, The Story Tellers of Ethiopia.
Elizabeth Laird knows the old Ethiopia from when she was a teacher here in the 1960ies. Now she has come back, travelling in all the twelve different regions collecting tales from the rich storytelling traditions, making small books of folk tales for school children. The Lure of the Honey Bird is written like a traveller's tale, from when she travelled around in the country collecting the stories. She also shares many of the tales in the book.
Laird's travel tales charms me deeply, and so do her collected stories. Some so different from the tradition I am familiar to, others so much alike. We live in a small world. We live in an amazing world.
I have the book on my bedside table, and reed deep into the night with the help of a led headlight.
A perfect combination. During the days I do my own Ethiopian travels, collecting tales for my blogs, during the days I continue to travel, by books :-)