Travelogue 843 – March 25
Recollections of a Visit to Ethiopia in February
Part Three
I’m healing from the fevers. This is familiar, Ethiopia in convalescence. It’s more common to the end of my trips than the start of them, but I’m ready enough from habit to slip into the routines of tending to the debilitated body.
I’ve rarely been deathly ill, and nearly as rarely in perfect health. I think the story of biological life is little more than the dialectic between Platonic health and mortal defect; than degrees of suffering; than the various narrative arcs of our illnesses. The story of a virus may reveal more truth than our own. But that is neither here nor there.
It’s morning. The place has only just opened. I sit on the terrace. The ladies are sweeping. It’s a long process. They are steady, methodical. Their motion together and the sound of the straw brooms are comforting. I’m not going to move for a while. The morning sun is just what I need.
The quality of the Ethiopian sun is something I’ve written about before. I can afford to write about it again, since it’s impossible to capture in a few words. But there is certainly that which is healing about it. It’s gentle and strong in a reassuring ratio. It soothes. It counsels lentezza. It makes one feel blessed. It might be one long note, one sustained breath on a bass flute, low and tremulous.
The mountains add their melody, something as strong as the jagged stone that marks the sky, something as genial as the hectares of eucalyptus that cover the mountain slopes. I know the spaces under those trees, the little valleys that gallop down toward the plains, the red mud and jutting rocks. They feel close to me.
In this country of perpetual poverty, it’s hard to feel altogether lost. In prosperous Holland, one might sense in grey winter one has been lost to God’s sight.
The ladies continue their slow progress across the terrace, sweeping up the fallen fruit from the spreading shoa tree that shades the tables. Their presence and their work are a solace of sorts.
Sometimes it can seem like old women have no place of value in Ethiopian society. It may seem as though they are trapped at home, ageing before their time, gossiping, nagging and complaining. Few have the active and public lifestyles that European pensioners often have.
If they are underestimated from a Western perspective, it may simply be a measure of the extent that Western societies have given up on solace. We see action. We endure our pain. We value diversity, if diversity falls in line with our worship of productivity.
I’ve received much solace and comfort from the old women I’ve come to know in Ethiopia. I’ve seen rare equanimity and keen observations. I’ve seen strength in resignation. It’s occurred to me to question the Western devotion to hustle. Health for us is movement and speed and noise. There is more to lose with the loss of reflection than we are inclined to admit. One might look no further than the mounting insanity in the political sphere.
That’s not to say that all old women here are the same. That’s not to sentimentalize hard lives and complex conditions. These women sweeping the terrace would no doubt rather be somewhere else, and my taking solace from their work has no little scent of hypocrisy to it. But complexity has no prejudice. It extends equally in all directions. Within that complexity, I find beauty. It’s a compromised beauty. We’ve learned there is no other.
Monday, March 25, 2019
Monday, March 18, 2019
Travelogue 842 – March 18
Recollections of a Visit to Ethiopia in February
Part Two
I boarded the plane without reading material. It’s the first time I’ve done that. My packing was haphazard. I decided on the morning of travel that I would just pick something up at a bookstore at the airport. Check-in took a long time. I was rushing. I couldn’t find a book shop.
Routines are fragile mechanisms, thrown off so easily. It had been a while since I made the trip to Ethiopia – almost three years. The day of the flight had come on too quickly. I had been struggling with a cold for weeks, repeatedly falling behind at work. I find it funny how rigid modern travel schedules are. It’s unnatural. We book flights months ahead of time, without any idea what our state of mind, health, or occupation will be; without any idea about the weather or political conditions. Travel never looked like this in history. One’s departure date happened when signs were propitious.
I did find a place at the airport to buy books. I chose a few items in a hurry, paid, and then, within the short half hour before boarding, managed to lay those items down somewhere and forget them. I boarded with nothing to read. I was really off my game.
I took my seat, and I spent he coming hours getting sicker than I was before. I sneezed and sniffled and battled a mounting fever. I shrank into my seat, trying not to be too annoying to the person next to me. It’s a seven-hour flight.
By the time I settled in at the hotel, my fever was high enough to disrupt my sleep. It seemed as though I was having a bad reaction to the yellow fever shot I had had a few days before. I’d had a mild cold when I went to the travel clinic, and the shot morphed the cold into a monster. The next day, I stayed in bed as long as I could. But I had one meeting.
Yenebeb made it easy for me, bringing the athletes to the hotel. We strolled outside, into the pleasant Ethiopian sunshine, and we chatted. I took photos of them. Our charity supports them in exchange for community service. We all agreed to meet a few days later at the school for autistic children where they volunteer.
I was exhausted, but I urged Yenebeb to take me one more place, to a bookshop. I wasn’t sleeping, I couldn’t go out, and I had nothing to read. I wasn’t going to survive. He thought about it, and he guided me across the harrowing streets of Megenagna toward one of the ubiquitous malls.
These malls are hallmarks of the past decade of financial growth in Addis. Everyone with a birr to rub together invested in real estate and construction. This resulted in dozens of uninspired glass-faced buildings lining every street in the newer districts of the south. They all rent out to retail and bill themselves as ‘malls’. Megenagna has more than its share of these ugly emporia.
We were searched at the doors to the building by listless security people. We entered the central atrium, stepping across the polished tile, looking into the shops on all sides and open to view behind glass walls. We found out there was a book store on the third floor. There were escalators, a measure of affluence, even though they only worked from the ground to the first floor. It was a sign of my despair that I agreed to climb stairs. Muscles were screaming.
The store was humble, occupying a corner spot on the outside circuit. It was a collection of cheap metal shelves pushed against the walls and filled with long banks of uniform colours in the distinctive local bindings. Almost everything was in Amharic or Oromifa, but there were a few selections in English.
I chose a history of modern Ethiopia, written some time ago by a historian at the University of Addis Ababa. In the coming days, I would spend quite a few hours suffering fevers in my hotel room and reading about the nobility and peasantry of nineteenth-century Ethiopia; reading about Emperors Tewodros, Yohannes, and Menelik; reading about battles, taxes and tributes. It made for good company while I recovered.
Recollections of a Visit to Ethiopia in February
Part Two
I boarded the plane without reading material. It’s the first time I’ve done that. My packing was haphazard. I decided on the morning of travel that I would just pick something up at a bookstore at the airport. Check-in took a long time. I was rushing. I couldn’t find a book shop.
Routines are fragile mechanisms, thrown off so easily. It had been a while since I made the trip to Ethiopia – almost three years. The day of the flight had come on too quickly. I had been struggling with a cold for weeks, repeatedly falling behind at work. I find it funny how rigid modern travel schedules are. It’s unnatural. We book flights months ahead of time, without any idea what our state of mind, health, or occupation will be; without any idea about the weather or political conditions. Travel never looked like this in history. One’s departure date happened when signs were propitious.
I did find a place at the airport to buy books. I chose a few items in a hurry, paid, and then, within the short half hour before boarding, managed to lay those items down somewhere and forget them. I boarded with nothing to read. I was really off my game.
I took my seat, and I spent he coming hours getting sicker than I was before. I sneezed and sniffled and battled a mounting fever. I shrank into my seat, trying not to be too annoying to the person next to me. It’s a seven-hour flight.
By the time I settled in at the hotel, my fever was high enough to disrupt my sleep. It seemed as though I was having a bad reaction to the yellow fever shot I had had a few days before. I’d had a mild cold when I went to the travel clinic, and the shot morphed the cold into a monster. The next day, I stayed in bed as long as I could. But I had one meeting.
Yenebeb made it easy for me, bringing the athletes to the hotel. We strolled outside, into the pleasant Ethiopian sunshine, and we chatted. I took photos of them. Our charity supports them in exchange for community service. We all agreed to meet a few days later at the school for autistic children where they volunteer.
I was exhausted, but I urged Yenebeb to take me one more place, to a bookshop. I wasn’t sleeping, I couldn’t go out, and I had nothing to read. I wasn’t going to survive. He thought about it, and he guided me across the harrowing streets of Megenagna toward one of the ubiquitous malls.
These malls are hallmarks of the past decade of financial growth in Addis. Everyone with a birr to rub together invested in real estate and construction. This resulted in dozens of uninspired glass-faced buildings lining every street in the newer districts of the south. They all rent out to retail and bill themselves as ‘malls’. Megenagna has more than its share of these ugly emporia.
We were searched at the doors to the building by listless security people. We entered the central atrium, stepping across the polished tile, looking into the shops on all sides and open to view behind glass walls. We found out there was a book store on the third floor. There were escalators, a measure of affluence, even though they only worked from the ground to the first floor. It was a sign of my despair that I agreed to climb stairs. Muscles were screaming.
The store was humble, occupying a corner spot on the outside circuit. It was a collection of cheap metal shelves pushed against the walls and filled with long banks of uniform colours in the distinctive local bindings. Almost everything was in Amharic or Oromifa, but there were a few selections in English.
I chose a history of modern Ethiopia, written some time ago by a historian at the University of Addis Ababa. In the coming days, I would spend quite a few hours suffering fevers in my hotel room and reading about the nobility and peasantry of nineteenth-century Ethiopia; reading about Emperors Tewodros, Yohannes, and Menelik; reading about battles, taxes and tributes. It made for good company while I recovered.
Monday, March 11, 2019
Travelogue 841 – March 11
Recollections of a Visit to Ethiopia in February
Part One
My view is west along the line of the mountains. The mountains are near. I’m sitting on a terrace situated in the foothills. These are friendly mountains, green and accessible. These aren’t the Alps, sheer and snowy. They’re not imposing at all. Down in the city, at the base of the mountains, you’re already standing at more than two thousand metres above sea level. So the peaks don’t need to soar above the Ethiopian highlands to challenge the Alps in altitude.
The terrace is situated under the sky, under a tall blue sky. The morning sun is strong, and I’ve positioned myself to collect some of its glorious light on my face and shoulders. I’m well-practiced in this art.
These are my mountains. They are as familiar as the streets of any American city. I lived in these foothills for years. My neighbourhood was further west, just below the famous peak of Entoto. But I did spend time in the hills of Megenagna, even at this very terrace. The restaurant has been here for years. It’s an Italian restaurant that occupies the location of a house built at the end of the nineteenth-century by one of Menelik’s generals, just after the epic battle against the Italians. Addis Ababa was the new capital of Menelik’s empire, still unrealized, an open plain below these mountains.
I’m staying just down the hill, in a hotel that didn’t exist the last time I was in Addis. I walked up the steep incline early in the morning. The street curves around the base of a high bluff and then turns and climbs up behind it. It’s an old asphalt switchback with crumbling shoulders and dirt margins. We pedestrians walk in the dirt, while trucks and SUVs creep by in low gears. This neighbourhood might be the Hollywood Hills of Addis; the residents live in mansions. Some of them are famous athletes who trained in the mountains above in their youth.
The restaurant has only just opened for the day. The terrace is being cleaned by three women. They are sweeping up the mess left by the towering shoa tree in the middle. The tree drops messy fruit onto the terrace in surprising quantities. The ladies are sweeping the entire time I’m sitting there, from the top of the stepped terrace to the bottom. I’m staying a while. It’s not right to rush while in Ethiopia.
That sky, pale blue and suffused with sunlight, has no boundaries and so is more or less the same sky as the one that hangs so low over northern Europe. The clouds there, so like a grey ceiling, are here like white adornments, so big they make the sky look bigger.
But it’s the same sky. I arrived from out of that sky, descending from it like a leaf drifting to earth, rebelling against gravity a while before settling in to become a part of the mulch.
Recollections of a Visit to Ethiopia in February
Part One
My view is west along the line of the mountains. The mountains are near. I’m sitting on a terrace situated in the foothills. These are friendly mountains, green and accessible. These aren’t the Alps, sheer and snowy. They’re not imposing at all. Down in the city, at the base of the mountains, you’re already standing at more than two thousand metres above sea level. So the peaks don’t need to soar above the Ethiopian highlands to challenge the Alps in altitude.
The terrace is situated under the sky, under a tall blue sky. The morning sun is strong, and I’ve positioned myself to collect some of its glorious light on my face and shoulders. I’m well-practiced in this art.
These are my mountains. They are as familiar as the streets of any American city. I lived in these foothills for years. My neighbourhood was further west, just below the famous peak of Entoto. But I did spend time in the hills of Megenagna, even at this very terrace. The restaurant has been here for years. It’s an Italian restaurant that occupies the location of a house built at the end of the nineteenth-century by one of Menelik’s generals, just after the epic battle against the Italians. Addis Ababa was the new capital of Menelik’s empire, still unrealized, an open plain below these mountains.
I’m staying just down the hill, in a hotel that didn’t exist the last time I was in Addis. I walked up the steep incline early in the morning. The street curves around the base of a high bluff and then turns and climbs up behind it. It’s an old asphalt switchback with crumbling shoulders and dirt margins. We pedestrians walk in the dirt, while trucks and SUVs creep by in low gears. This neighbourhood might be the Hollywood Hills of Addis; the residents live in mansions. Some of them are famous athletes who trained in the mountains above in their youth.
The restaurant has only just opened for the day. The terrace is being cleaned by three women. They are sweeping up the mess left by the towering shoa tree in the middle. The tree drops messy fruit onto the terrace in surprising quantities. The ladies are sweeping the entire time I’m sitting there, from the top of the stepped terrace to the bottom. I’m staying a while. It’s not right to rush while in Ethiopia.
That sky, pale blue and suffused with sunlight, has no boundaries and so is more or less the same sky as the one that hangs so low over northern Europe. The clouds there, so like a grey ceiling, are here like white adornments, so big they make the sky look bigger.
But it’s the same sky. I arrived from out of that sky, descending from it like a leaf drifting to earth, rebelling against gravity a while before settling in to become a part of the mulch.
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