Konso Cultural Trekking

  Ethiopia

• Other Cities in Ethiopia: 
Rural Areas

Dates: 09/22/2009

Description: SFEL Konso Cultural Trekking includes traditional skills and activities workshops in activities such as spinning, weaving, pottery, dry-stone terrace building, dance, music, and much more . . . (SFEL promotes local guides and community based activities to promote community benefit, and positive relationships, between the visitor and local community. This is a real responsible trekking.

The Konso village is remarkable for the beauty and simplicity of its workmanship, constructed entirely from natural materials, cultivated or gathered from the surroundings. The village is ringed by dry-stone walls, at least a meter thick and two meters high. Stone-lined pavements run between the housing compounds and the stones have often become polished to a shine by long years of service in the village's transport system. How many times have you visited the Ethiopian New York? A site in Konso which is mysteriously eroded sandstone pinnacles that resemble a metropolitan skyline. 'Perhaps nowhere else in traditional Ethiopia has the hand of man so impressed itself on the landscape as in Konso' Hallpike.

Strawberry Fields Cultural Trekking is working to insure in providing benefits (especially employment and skills) to the communities which themselves form the tourist attraction in the visited area, promoting an atmosphere of respect, understanding and appreciation between the visitors and the local people, preserve and promote, rather than exploit and corrupt local culture and traditions, reducing the impingement of tourist activities (such as photography) onto the lives of the local people to a bare minimum.

Highlights: SFEL Cultural trekking program presents an introduction to Konso's culture trekking, community based activities, lecture on Konso's history, geography, agriculture, ecology, folk law, and customs, and culture from local author and intellectual Mr. Korra Garra.

Cost in US$: 800

This Program is open to Worldwide Participants.

Participants Travel to Ethiopia Independently or in Groups

Typically Participants Work in Groups of 3

Application Process Involves:

• Online Application plus Application Assessment

Post-Program Services Include:

• Exit Debriefing Abroad

Strawberry Fields's Mission Statement: Integrated ecological design. Strawberry field forms the epicenter of a new series of ethically-minded, communtiy based, education and adventuretourism activities in Konso Special Woreda. SFEL is a concept in applied community development: a sustainable business integrating and eco-lodge, farm, and Permaculture training facility.

Year Founded: 2007