My most recent trip to Africa was to Ethiopia, and specifically to the highlands west of Addis Ababa. As I talked about in a previous blog, I really didn’t know what to expect. I was told that the people of Ethiopia were very stoic and hard to photograph. In practice though, I was pleased to find that this was not the case. The only time this seemed to happen was when the subject was not only aware you were photographing them and only them, but also that there was not a situation of trust between you both. I found that the ways to alleviate this were twofold. The first was to be in a situation of trust, which for me was easy due to all that was going on between Petros and the people of Gojo. Over nine hundred people were seen by the medical and dental staff, in addition to all the widow and orphan projects happening. The second aspect was to just be discreet and not simply walk up and take someone’s picture. I spent a lot of time just sitting and waiting for people to lose awareness of me, or using the distractions of other things going on to allow people to become less aware of me.  After a week spent with them, I felt I was able to share in their joys and sorrows, their triumphs and tragedies. Though there were fortunately more joys than sorrows, for the purpose of capturing the soul of the people, it was in many cases the latter where their souls were bared more fully. So here are some of those windows into the souls of the people of Ethiopia. None of these expressions were coerced. They were all caught in the moment.