Waßmann and Bahlburg with a beer saleswoman, Ethiopia, 1928

"Tallaverkäuferin am Wege [...] unter einer Feige" ("Talla seller on the way side [...] under a fig tree"). In the middle an Ethiopian man with two oil lamps. To the left Hermann Bahlburg on horseback, to the right Dietrich Waßmann sen. next to a sitting woman with a big clay vessel between her legs and another vessel covered by a lid next to her. cf. picture no. ELM/AE/Fotos - 73. -- The scene is located on the caravan route near Holota. -- The picture was probably taken on the second mission caravan to Aira. -- Hermann Bahlburg (1892-1962) was the leader of the Galla [Oromo] mission of the Hermannsburg mission in Ethiopia from 1927 until his internment in 1941. He was based mostly in Adis Abeba, where he promoted the founding of a German school and church. He was part of the first caravan to Aira and undertook several journeys to the newly established mission stations in Aira and Bedele. From 1941 to 1948 he was interned by the British occupying forces. Afterwards he returned to Germany, where he continued his work as missionary until he was banned by the leadership of the Hermannsburger Missionsanstalt. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 2007. -- Dietrich Waßmann (1897-1954) was a missionary of the Hermannsburg mission in Ethiopia from 1927 on. In 1928 he married Martha, née Asmus. He worked at first at the mission station of Aira, where he established a protestant church and built an infirmary together with his sister Martha Waßmann. In 1935 he had to leave Ethiopia. He returned in 1938 and went back to Aira. In 1942 Waßmann went back to Germany. He returned again to Ethiopia in 1951.