Travelogue 190 – June 23
Feredeshem!

Sixth in the Tigray series – into the hills ...

4.15 Adigrat. We come to the heart of the journey. For dear Saba, it’s the purpose. We will visit her family outside Adigrat. We will visit ayat, the grandfather who has become mythic in stories at home.

The family meets at a Shell station on the north side of town. There’s no way to Feredeshem except to hire an Isuzu flatbed. Once the driver has completed some important gossip across the street, we load up and rumble out of town: the Sabas and I in the cabin and the rest standing in the back.

We reach the armed men in uniform blocking the highway, and they are quite angry that I and Saba #2 have forgotten our identification, but they wave us on. At the second barricade there is no passing, just a turn right onto a dirt road, a dirt road that diminishes and wanes by the mile, until the ride is quite jarring and at points we are spinning wheels on traces of paths on slopes that are nearly bare rock.

It’s not far before the landscape simply cuts loose with stunning vistas like a Western painter’s dreams. It’s magnificent. Imagine the American Southwest undiscovered and unbranded, developing along its own historical path, far from the Europeans.

Later, I ask Saba’s cousin Hadgu and his mother how long the family has been out there. They recall a few names, but have to wave surrender before the enormity of the question. I joke, ‘since Lucy’. They find that hilarious.

Arrival comes in stages. First, we come to the hilltop schoolhouse under construction, just five empty rooms of cinder block alone on a hill. One of Melesech’s brothers is waiting for us there. I believe it was Gebre-Meskel. Asfaw disembarks and walks ahead. We coast across the hilltop, descending slightly, until we can go no further, parked at the edge of a steep fall.

This is where we hike, down into a glorious valley with a view of hunchback mountains receding into the mist, into far Afar. And all the way down into the canyon, on terraces and jutting rocks, are small homesteads – including Gebre’s. Gebre is Saba’s ancient grandfather. His is a small compound of rock walls and old, twisted tree branches, three rooms around a dirt courtyard that have been there for most of the last century. By the entrance is an enclosure with two bee hives for honey: they look like hollow logs drilled with single holes for the bees, covered with rags and wood.

Part of the courtyard is sheltered by a roof of corrugated iron. Underneath is a low platform covered by eucalyptus leaves and cow hides. Here sits Gebre, beautiful old man, nearly 100, in a brown suit coat and gabi over his shoulders, in shades and a brimmed, brown felt hat vaguely Bolivian in effect. He has a white, Whitmanesque beard, and sits alone in timeless dignity, as though meditating decades of milk, livestock, honey, and barley; meditating on his brood of twelve and the far reach of his progeny now.

The family pours out to greet us, Gebre’s children and their children and children’s children. They lead us to seats on the cow hide. One auntie screams into Gebre’s ear about Saba, his grandchild from Addis Ababa come to visit. Solid Saba seems overwhelmed. I quickly get out of the way and enjoy the show. One of the old uncles parades lambs and chickens by us to see what we would like for lunch. Saba insists they not trouble themselves. Still, we aren’t there long before ti’olo is served. We crowd together and eat with twigs.

When I get a chance, I go outside and walk around our terrace above the canyon, trying to take in the scope and beauty of this place. I pull out the camera, and shy children gather around me. I make them laugh with the pictures that are captured inside. If Pey helps me figure out how to upload photos, I’ll post one.

Before we go, Saba bows at Gebre’s feet to receive his blessing. He makes a short speech that brings tears and laughter from the crowd. He lays a palm on Saba’s head in blessing.

The way back is comic. We hike back to the truck and find waiiting for us a mob of extended family. Saba is beseiged by them; she submits to a half hour of more hugs and chit-chat. I sit in the passenger seat. A very old man comes and shouts a long speech at me, something akin to the city councilman’s peroration of welcome and thanks.

Saba is fried. She abandons the crowd and gives the signal to go. Relatives are hurt that we won’t come by their houses for coffee or meals. They plead with her. She becomes desperate to get moving.

At the sound of the engine, the mobs move on the truck, climbing up into the back until there’s not an inch to spare. The ride back is long and circuitous, the driver patiently making sure everyone gets dropped off where they need to be, and stopping for locals who need a ride down the hill. There are no buses or garis. Few have horses; the only way to Adigrat or Zal Anbessa is on foot. Interspersed along the long road to town, lonely men and women walk. The distance on foot takes all day. We pass a wedding, just a circle of people singing and clapping around the lucky couple.

The crowd in the back gets us in trouble with the border military. These grim reapers stop us and make everyone get out. No one in the back has ID. They must walk. We’re close enough to town that they can catch a taxi, so they still proceed into town. The logic escapes me, but I smile anyway, trying to appease the police-lizards, meeting their unblinking glare with apologies in my humble tourist’s eyes. Their spite doesn’t waver, even as they wave us on.

Feredeshem! The sun sets over Adigrat, and I think of the family we left behind in the hills. History and time and the corrosive anxieties we vainly assemble into stories, all disperse with the daylight. They’re still out there, making a fire, gathering around grandfather.

Travelogue 189 – June 12
The Crossroads

Fifth in the Tigray series – still wandering in the great yellow north ...

4.13 Adigrat. Saba’s family leads us to the Hohoma Hotel, but that establishment is full. We wait in the tiny restaurant while Asfaw checks on another place. I’ll become well-acquainted with this characterless but clean room during my stay in Adigrat. There aren’t many options for hanging out in Adigrat.

What should be a bustling town dominating a major highway and one corner of the country’s map is, in fact, kind of a sleepy frontier town. What bustle there is is military. That major highway I mention, it leads to Eritrea. About a mile out of town on that two-lane road to Asmara, you’re stopped by men with guns. About a half-hour past that, you’ll be crossing the border.

There is a tense echo of war in the air here. It reminds me of the feeling I had in Turkish Cyprus. Lots of uniforms, lots of UN vehicles, lots of memories. These are tough people. When you watch Tigrinya TV, you get martial music, reels of war footage, pop music videos that swell with brassy jingoism – Tigray jingoism, not Ethiopian. Several of the most popular women pop singers were soldiers in their youth.

There’s lots of talk from other ethnic minorities in Ethiopia, and even the occasional bomb, but I’m quite sure that the Tigray people would pick up arms again if challenged – to a man (and woman). I don’t think any other group in Ethiopia is committed this way, top to bottom.

When we visit, Asfaw’s house, he shows us pictures from his days fighting in the hills against the Derg, the Communist regime. There’s an oddly calm atmosphere in these photos: no bravado, no sense of drama or even danger. But there was danger. There’s a faded photo on the wall of Asfaw’s home of his brother who died in the war.

The photos come out after the lot of us have crowded around the table for Adigrat’s most traditional dish, ti’olo, and have eaten far more than the stomach was designed to handle. Ti’olo consists of dumplings of barley dough rolled as you eat by the woman of the house, dipped into a red chili and meat sauce and yogurt. You eat ti’olo with the only native Ethiopian table utensil I’ve ever seen, a wooden two-pronged fork, slim as a chopstick. In the country, that’s just a stripped twig.

Back to the Shewit Hotel. I like this place. Half the price of the Hohoma and a lot more character. It’s a squat old structure, ochre in color, with a square, open courtyard in the center where the pigeons coo in the morning and evening. The rooms are basic, the water hot. The venerable old building was dropped among indifferent, bustling blocks of residence ... and among simple entertainments. Even in the morning, you’ll see the many red lights. They don’t signify what we westerners expect, or at least not as a primary purpose. Those are the t’ala houses, serving cheap traditional brew.

The hotel is a short walk from ‘downtown’: that lazy traffic circle with the dead fountain in the center. It’s another of those 60s-70s oddities you find everywhere, cement with large, bland grey marble tiles, several levels held together with concrete arms. Somehow it does capture the tenuous and shabby nature of the modern town set among history and open land – the land visible beyond in beautiful ridges like Bonanza.

On the other side of the circle is ‘Aratenya Yohannes’, one of the few cafes serving cake. I’m led there by a boy offering lottery tickets. My first reaction to his appeal is to wave him off, but he tags along beside me and says, “You’re handsome.” I believe in rewarding exceptional intelligence, so I offer him cake if he can find me a place that serves it. Thus I discover the Aratenya Yohannes, a very comfortable little venue, run by a big and quiet man who looks to be half Italian. He sits behind the counter being unimpressed by whoever he sees, even faranjis.

And back to the Shewit Hotel. They have a bar below. Day or night, it’s attended by a young woman with one of the most slack and world-weary faces in the eastern hemisphere. I do manage, after a few days, to get one sad-as-Mary half-smile out of her.

One evening, I’m abandoned to my own devices and I spend a few hours in the bar – quite happily, as it turns out, because there’s a championship game on, Chelsea-Blackburn. It’s a great game, going into overtime.

Somehow, one never feels as lost in the wilderness as when one watches football overseas. It’s a dim room with sweating walls in dying pastels and mid-century, heavy tile on the floor, almost black with age. There are several strings of Christmas lights hung above the bar. My Magdalene bar-keep does a slow and labored version of the dance called work, dousing glasses in water, pouring, wiping surfaces.

Halfway through the match, predictably, patrons call for Ethio-pop and our long-suffering Mary mutes the game, cutting off that wonderful lifeline to my soul, trivial British banter. I realize that much of my love for football in Ethiopia is just that voice: frivolous, inane, perky, suggestive of all sorts of comforts. And it’s gone. Mary, another beer, please.

Travelogue 188 – June 7
Dally, Shall We?

Fourth in the Tigray series – yes, we’re back up north for a while....

4.12 Mekele. Saba and her friend Saba (count them: two Sabas) are supposed to be arriving by bus. Originally, that bus was supposed to leave the day before I fly, arriving in Mekele that same day as I do. Then the bus was delayed because there aren’t enough passengers. So last I know, they’re arriving the day after I do.

I call Saba late on my second day in Mekele. It takes me quite a while to get through: the network is problematic up here. “Where are you, Saba?”

Now, pay close attention! This anecdote will teach you much about Ethiopia. “Where are you, Saba?” “I don’t know.” Right. I can hear the bus in the background. Looking out a bus window, one is hard-pressed to name a location. Though, addressing someone who expected you in Mekele around noon-time, a response like “still on the bus” might leap to mind. It does occur to her to tell me it’s raining hard wherever she is. I glance up at the Mekele sky, a little cloudy but benevolent on the whole, with a bit of concern. “Really?” Saba’s done with the conversation. I say, “Okay, well, call me when you’re here.”

I wait; I dally. I watch the sky to see if Saba’s rain approaches. I try to gauge how far the nearest rain is. Well, folks, ... not only doesn’t it occur to Saba to say, “Oh, I’m still on the bus,” but it doesn’t occur to her to say, “We won’t be arriving today at all.” Their bus left late on the first day, making for three days of travel instead of two – information in her possession and transmittable in an estimated three seconds of phone time. It just doesn’t occur to her.

I wait; I dally. I try to call. I worry. I decide she must have stopped in on relatives. She must be staying with them. She has a few in Mekele. She has them littered all over Ethiopia, as far as I can tell. She’ll call, I tell myself. I hang out at the glorious Milano hotel, owned by an incongruously flamboyant Ethiope, back from many years in Italy. I watch him glad-hand locals, his curls dyed orange, prancing about on very high-soled boots. The next day, I wander. I take in the castle hotel described in previous log. I’m a regular in Mekele already. Citizens wave familiarly.

I check in on my hotel at regular intervals. It’s about 2pm when I find them at my hotel. “Saba! Imagine meeting you here!” I don’t bother getting mad. She wouldn’t understand. Instead I listen to complaints about the bus journey. And I register some surprise at the resolution of my two Sabas: let’s go! We were scheduled to press on toward Adigrat; what are we waiting for? Okay, I check out of the hotel, and we walk down to the bus station for the two-hour trip north.

We catch a minibus. There are the usual amenities: three to a tight bench, not an inch to move, windows shut against demon germs, shrieking baby behind me. A couple earplugs and I’m ready to enjoy the scenery.

The first half-hour we climb one of the barren ridges outside Mekele, chugging up switchbacks, up the face of Rushmore, it seems. We finally surmount and arrive on a plateau of tough, dusty desert – not too tough for locals, who walk miles alongside the highway between villages. We pass several quarries for the pretty yellow stone that everything is built from.

The journey greens up in the middle, near Wukro, and the long desert views break into small hills and vales and charming little homesteads. It reminds me of Cappadocia. This geography holds until you reach the famous Negash, site of the first mosque outside Arabia, in the town where some of the prophet’s followers found refuge during his lifetime. Harar-green is the little dome, which you can see from the highway if you’re alert – (not the original mosque, but pretty darn old....)

Just beyond the town is a conical little hill with an old church built on top. It’s so unlikely and pretty that you watch it come and go for fifteen minutes. All the scenery in this region is striking, kind of over-the-top movie-Western backdrop, but settled by age-old farming families in their humble stone houses, many painted with square crosses. This greater region is famed for far-flung clusters of medieval churches carved into cliffs and rocks, the kind that make Ethiopia famous among history buffs.

We descend along the side of another dramatic ridge, greener than the earlier one, and we cruise along a surprisingly lush and cultivated valley, until suddenly we’re in Adigrat, speeding by swarms of school kids in red sweaters, deposited by a crazy 60s fountain, in sight of the imposing Italian cathedral. Adigrat, set in a half-bowl of three high ridges, the one to the west currently swallowing up the sun. A host of Saba’s relatives is waiting for us. They surround us and chatter and grab our bags, leading us to a hotel.

Travelogue 187 – May 28
Fish on the Rocks

Fourth in the Awasa series – pre-empting the Tigray series. The must-see walk.

5.7 Awasa. Pick a sunny morning and devote it to this walking tour. Make your way down to the lake and head south. If you’ve travelled down the main street, you’ll arrive at the jetty for small, expensive tour boats. There will be a Pepsi bar with loud music. Turn left and follow the shoreline path. To your left, there will be a little reedy marsh populated by the gruesome storks who thoughtfully pace.

You’ll have to take a detour: national security. If you miss your dirt road inland, a federal policeman will brusquely inform you. You’ve come to the promontory that divides this shore into north and south. The northern part of this little spit of land is critical to national defense, the southern critical for tourism. It’s there that you’ll find the Wabe Shebele Hotel that I mentioned earlier, the one with the monkeys. But we’ll skip that turnoff today.

We’re headed for the fish market. The dirt road detour will eventually deposit you at the lake again and at the entrance to a park occupying the southern shore of the peninsula facing a green little cove, very pretty, that looks across the lake to the southern hills. You can guide yourself to the fish market by the shouts of the crowd.

The guidebook calls it ‘the fish market’, but don’t be fooled by the formal name into visions of Seattle or Venice. This is nothing more than a mob at the lake shore, milling around the small metal rowboats that are bringing in the day’s catch. Boys are untangling nets. Fishermen are digging through the fish at the bottom of their boats, showing them to buyers. Curious boys crowd around. Other boys are cleaning fish on stones by the water’s edge with their curved knives. Kites are wheeling and swooping overhead. Ugly gentleman storks are wading in, and huge snow-white pelicans make skimming landings nearby.

I stroll back out of the park with a little boy tagging along, hoping for a tip. Rationale for the tip: that he tagged along. I stop for a photo of the far hills among the near reeds. A young man with a receipt book asks for ten birr. He says it’s an entrance fee for the park. I say I’ll be right with him, but in the meantime he can catch the dozen or so locals passing him by at that moment. Several of them laugh. He protests that they’re buying fish. I say I’ll buy one myself. Surely it’s cheaper than ten birr. He gives up, which is surprising. Rarely do I get off so easily when Ethiopians ask for money.

Outside the park, continue on lakeside. You’ll share the path with only the occasional shepherd and his several cows. It’s quiet. It’s short. You run into another resort. But the road curves up toward the hill that you’ve been contemplating since arrival in Awasa, because it’s the only hill visible from town. Tabour Hill is a flat-headed little mount with steep sides. As you reach the incline, choose your type of path: easy-going or steep and quick. I go for the latter. One benefit is that it climbs along the lakeside slope, right above the resort. I’m rewarded with many pleasant vistas, especially right above the resort, glancing at the water through the rich variety of trees planted for the rich.

Up on top, you’ll see the whole lake. The southern half, which you can’t see from town, is very pretty, surrounded by hills. Below you to the left is a village of thatched roofs and farms, and further down, a branch of the city reaching around from behind Tabour. It’s peaceful, but don’t sit until you’ve sussed out where the tykes and their sheep are. They will find you and start up about money. The nice thing about shepherds is, they can’t stray too far from their charges.

Much-needed meditation of beauty accomplished, look for another path down. You have two reasons for that: a different set of views and a shorter journey back into the city. I suggest the side overlooking Awasa. It looks steep, but it isn’t too bad. Once you start down, you’ll come across a path that will deposit you on the southern edge of town. You’ll be twenty minutes from the Pinna Cafe, where sugar and caffeine will revive and awaken your weary body and aesthetically-glutted spirit.

Travelogue 186 – May 22
ja-MI-cah and the Black Waters

Third in the Awasa series – pre-empting the Tigray series. Last we checked in on jarvis he was waving down southbound buses in Mojo.

5.6 Mojo and points southward. “Where you from, mon?” The voice is distinctly Caribbean. The driver leans into his door, and eyes me with a kind of hazy, timeless friendliness I haven’t seen since the 70s in Santa Barbara. We’re idling beside the road, waiting for more passengers. I’m in the front seat, a place of honor. He eyes me across the frozen profile of an attractive young lady headed for Ziway. She will refuse to acknowledge the faranj for the entire journey, a decision that will embarrass her when she falls asleep and repeatedly leans into me.

I laugh when I hear his accent. I should have predicted. Yes, this is the road south, and the tone is distinct from that of the northern roads, which was severe and drenched in ancient, rugged history. Here, you sway for hours along the road among gentle plains dotted with acacias. A blue mountain or two stand in the distance. The lakes appear off port side, off starboard. They’re the color of jacuzzis, salty, pale desert green. Villagers amble alongside the road. Herds cross at will, and our driver swerves or stalls as needed. He seems to know most every other driver on this happy highway, sending off lengthy codes with his horn and giving a thumbs-up.

Occasionally he looks aside at me. He furrows his brow, summons up some rusty English, and he delivers a sentence about places of note, usually something I know already. We cruise to many a stop, as passengers disembark, as we exchange passengers with other vans. Off we go again, among new series of morse klaxon. Some several hours into the journey, the driver winks and rubs his tummy. “Me hungry for some rice and oxtails.” He snaps his finger once to the reggae on the tape machine. It’s Sunday, and everybody in ja-MI-cah be eating rice and oxtails.

It isn’t long before we arrive at ja-MI-cah, the northern suburbs of Shashemene, a luxurious place compared to the town itself. The driver has decided in favor of lunch and flags another van for us, making sure I’m reserved the front seat. We part with promises to hang out in Shashemene one day.

I’ve been traveling for weeks, and I’ve just about given up on seeing anything much different out of Ethiopia than variations on dry and golden. And then, just about the time you pass through the teeming hillside town of Arsi Negele, something happens. I can’t put my finger on it at first. I just sense it, like a new scent. I’m a little uncomfortable, like I’ve crossed a border unawares. I figure it out: green!

Hillsides gather thin coats of grass, like a light patina of moss. Trees proliferate, and with a greater variety. The large fronds of the false banana appear, and the sprawling branches of the fig. The livestock lose their edge of desperation; they get fat and happy. The grass grows and grows. In a half hour’s drive, it’s a new country. And there, at the apex of Edenic growth, you come to Shashemene.

What’s the magic to that name? What’s the secret in the reference to rice and oxtails? For those of you unfamiliar with reggae or twentieth-century innovations in religion, Shashemene represents the promised land – or at least a toehold in the promised land – to practitioners of Rastafarianism, those New World worshippers of Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie,(or Ras Tafari before he was crowned,) those blissed followers of Pan Marley, those One World, Old Testament smokers of sacred leaf and visionaries of a globe united in 70s fashion. An ageing Haile Selassie, though embarrassed to be called God by Caribbean hippies, acquiesced in their entreaties and granted them a large allotment of land north of Shashemene – now called Jamaica. It’s there still, odd Mecca to the stoned of the world.

I pass it this time, with rainbow-tinged promises to return, and continue on toward Awasa. The green fades a little; the Ethiopia of long highland ridges reasserts itself, and not much further, the lake appears below us, green in the sun and inviting.

The road swings around the northern side of the lake. It’s there that the hippos are reputed to hang out, in the tekur wuha, the black waters. You can’t see a thing from the highway. I have vague plans to hire a boat to search them out, but never do it. The boats are too expensive, and I think I can walk from town. I try one early morning, setting out before the sun rises. I don’t get anywhere near the black waters; the shore-side path peters out and dies at the fence of a resort. But the walk is wonderful.

What do you see lakeside at 6:30am? There are men among the rocks washing themselves and their clothes. There are gari drivers washing their horses. There are fishermen drifting among the reeds and beyond. These latter shout to you and sing. Morning people are songsters here. Solitary men walking to work belt out traditional-sounding melodies, though for all I know they’re improvised.

Most of all there’s blessed peace. Delicate, long-legged birds run along the tops of lily pads. A fresh breeze and tattered clouds keep things cool. The crooners go about their business, and in between them there’s lots of quiet walking. I sit beside the lake a long time. Somewhere behind me, one farmer works his tiny plot. A little boy wades in to wash his face. Sunlight creeps down the sides of hills across the lake.

Travelogue 185 – May 17
Monkeys On The Beach

Second in the Awasa series – pre-empting the Tigray series ...

5.6 Awasa. I’m sitting at the Wabe Shebele Hotel on the afternoon of my arrival in Awasa, relaxing. I’ve earned my oh-so-comfy plastic chair on the patio with my Harar beer, earned it with a whole lot of sitting in the morning. In a fit of rueful ambition, I decided to take the entire trip to Awasa in one day. My original plan had been a day’s rest for the hind parts in Mojo. But travel had proven to be so speedy on a Sunday morning, I was lulled into foolhardiness. After a sleepy breakfast at the Daema in Mojo, I strolled across the road to catch a southbound bus.

A note here to future generations of jarves: you will be overtaken by teenage boys who will insist on being your brokers for a ride. Politely tell them that your hand functions just fine, and demonstrate by waving down a bus. They will still insist on a fee. Politely say, ‘Bugger off.’

I’ve opted for the cozy plastic mounts on the hotel patio, rather than their counterparts on the grass by the shore, because I’ve already done my shoulder-to-shoulder time, looking at sights and absorbing Ethio-pop at thunderous levels. Apparently, local tastes in relaxation run parallel to their tastes in travel.

Lake Awasa is about the sixth of the Ethiopian Rift Valley Lakes, counting from north to south. You get to count them down on the trip, as they begin right there beside the southern road from Mojo: Koka, Ziway, Langano, Abiata, Shala, and then Awasa. The Rift Valley and its lakes continue on, of course, into southern Ethiopia, into Kenya and Tanzania, some of these southern lakes being the deepest in the world. Great Rift Valley? you wonder. Just one of the more intriguing geological phenomena on the planet, that’s all – a terrible grinding of tectonic teeth that, indirectly, we have to thank for monkeys standing on two legs and writing novels. But all that’s beyond my province.

The Rift Valley lakes are most commonly a tourist’s destination because of the wildlife, particularly the birds. Once I’m checked into my hotel, I seek out the lake. I follow a path alongside the shore, and I watch. You can’t help noticing a few denizens of the town: the hideous Maribou storks, for one – gawky and huge, stalking around town and perching at the tops of trees in a strange way that seems to defy physics. There are some familiar characters: little kingfishers executing their dizzy dives and yellow weavers looking cheerful. There’s the hamerkop, a water bird with a crazy tuft of hair out the back of its head, perfect for Warner Brothers. And at the hotel, among the high branches of the fig trees, that ridiculous hornbill with a beak a big as its body. It’s most fun to see in flight. You expect it to tilt with the weight of the bill.

Perhaps the strangest genus I’ve seen today is the Amish family gathered at lakeside at the hotel: awkward bearded men in plaid and prim ladies in kerchiefs sheltering hordes of very white and wide-eyed children. I stare and hoist my Harar to them in salute. Did you come by boat?

And yes, I get my first dose of African monkeys. Too much: it’s the chips that lure them out. There are a lot of them. You see them dashing across the roads by the lake in the late afternoon. Once I’ve fed one, I have a family or two prancing around me. They jump onto the chairs and grab at my food with their black nails. Eventually, I set my plate onto the vacant table next to me and let them pick at my chips until they’re gone and one forlorn little guy is left to bend over the plate and lick the salt and grease.

These are vervet monkeys, kind of cute, lanky and brown with white trimming and black faces, sporting long tails. Their eyes dance around in a kind of blank wonder. One big male sits and watches to see if I drop anything. He shows off his robin’s-egg balls and cardinal pecker. I’m impressed, and guess that many of the babes hanging onto their mothers must be his.

Late in the afternoon, I’m blessed with the sight of an extraordinary monkey. He’s bigger and when he jumps around, you feel the weight of him. They call him the old priest, and his face is solemn and grave inside its black square, surrounded by a white fringe. He wears a black square hat, too, in the style of the Orthodox priests. If the head says church, the body says comic book hero. He has a deep black pelt with a cape of pure white in a U pattern on his back. At the end of his long, black tail is a large tuft of white. No wonder the colobus monkey has been hunted for his fur for centuries. He’s thriving in Awasa though, dashing through the trees like a huge, aerial skunk.

Travelogue 184 – May 13
On To the Peaceful South

Sorry, but I must interrupt the Tigray series to report on another, more recent journey – this time south to Awasa. I’ll return north after this burst of enthusiasm, I promise.

I’ve got to begin the story of the Awasa journey with its conclusion. The journey ends back in familiar Mojo, which cheerful little town sits cheerfully astride what may be the most important highway junction outside of Addis Ababa. It’s the choice of northern or southern Ethiopia, east or west, right there beyond the garden walls of the Daema Hotel, which is where my journey ends.

It’s a pleasant garden, by the way. The hotel is an anomaly. Everything else in Mojo is tawdry, dusty, and telegraphs ‘gas up and keep going’. But this place has a bit of polish: CNN, a decent dining room and menu, and the garden. The garden is tidy and hosts a lovely variety of flowers and trees. It features a small quadrangle of grass that is so peaceful that, travel-weary as I am, I can’t get myself to move for several hours, choosing instead to chart the sun’s progress among billowing white clouds and measure the fine shifts in the slight afternoon breeze and watch the colorful and strangely large Ethiopian hummingbirds.

Afterward I walk home. Yes, home in Mojo. I spend my first night in the summer cottage. Because I have so much business in Mojo and Debre Zeit this summer, and because the rainy season in Addis Ababa is no joy, I’ve rented a small house. It features all the luxuries a summer house should: a tap outside in the grass, where I’ll have to wash, a room with a hole in cement for my loo, and a papaya tree in the corner of the yard. The small main house on the property is uninhabitable, made of mud and more mud – and old mud at that. For some reason, several of the tiny service quarters in the back are built to a higher standard and provide the base of comfort I’ll need: cement floors and straight walls.

The first night is a delight – though I find out quickly that I’ll need a mosquito net. I lash out at the buzz in my ears for a few hours and then give up. Instead, I listen to the moans of the cow next door and chuckle of hens on the other side. There’s a rustle of wind in the treetops in Mojo that I find characterizes the place. You’ll see it in the ambling walk of citizens and in the shade of lazy green in the grass. The walk home under the softly rustling leaves is particularly nice, idyllic even. The streets are sparsely populated, and those out walking are not terribly tempted by the sight of a faranj. The most common form of transport is gari, the horse-drawn carts. Second might be the bicycle.

Morning comes early, especially in the bright eyes of the ambitious cock next door. He’s crowing regularly by two a.m. I’m out of bed at five. My aged guard is standing sentinel outdoors by the bathroom in the half-light, draped in his white gabi. At five in the morning it’s a jarring sight, and yet oddly tranquil after the first adrenaline. I wash up and I’m out the gate to scout for a minibus back to Addis.

The day before, it had been five a.m. out the back gate of the hotel compound in Awasa. Even that early, I’d missed a few buses. I caught a small one calling out for Shashemene. It promptly turned back around for the bus station because there weren’t enough passengers. So I resigned myself to the big, slow ride advertising Addis Ababa, spewing out deadly fumes as people climbed aboard. I managed a window seat, though I had the bad luck to draw a big-shouldered lump for a neighbor. Three souls to a seat, bag on my knees, and not an inch to move for four hours, watching a classic bit of Africa spin its story, the land draining of green again, down into the dusty bed of central Ethiopia.

Travelogue 183 – May 5
Triumphant Stacks of Stone

Third in the series on Tigray. Two must-see’s in Mekele:

4.13 Mekele. Just about the time the afternoon begins to cool and the sun begins his downward slide, take the Mekele walk of the churches. Not too far from the traffic circle that I described last time, there’s a road to the base of one ridge. You’ll see a church arch at the end of the dirt road. That church you see is just the first of five practically piled one on top of the other, crowned by the highest – which else? – Maryam.

It’s a lovely walk up the hill, the dirt lane winding steeply among the churches, among the little neighborhoods like villages, and finally above the town. For an Italophile like myself, it can be spooky. The eerie identification with Italy seems only to grow stronger up here, but now it’s combined with a sense of time travel.

It can feel as though you’ve entered a parallel to Giotto’s world: the steep dusty roads among houses of yellow stone, the hay stacks and wandering donkeys and sheep, the people leaning over their low walls and chattering. Of course, the faces are darker. The roofs are made of sheets of iron. The churches are round and painted red, green, and yellow. The religious ornamentation is distinctly Ethiopian. But the illusion still maintains some power somehow.

A pack of children come running, shouting ‘faranji!’ and they mob you with big smiles. Several will accompany you up the path beyond walls and churches, past the last monastery, babbling away in Amharic and Tigrinya, eagerly pointing, explaining, naming while they hold your hands. Here’s the cactus flower bud that’s a delicacy in Tigray, but it’s too early or late in the season. Here are a few of the small yellow berries from the sprawling fig or fig-cousin. Here’s where the hyena took down that cow the other day. Here’s where the rats come from, those little cracks in the cliff. “Ah, yes, rats!” Here’s something I can comment on. We trade stories about how they chew on our clothes. Once you’re up high, look down on the sleepy desert city.

Before you’re in danger of losing the sunset, aim yourself toward the other side of town. You can use that big bowling trophy on the horizon as a guide, the monument raised in the era of our current beloved administration, the monument that nows characterizes Mekele in photos and on TV.

I suppose we can afford a short digression about the monument, a slim tower of curving concrete on a hilltop, crowned by a golden sphere. The tower stands wach over a vast new museum devoted to the intrepid soldiers of the Tigrinya separatist movement of the 70s and 80s – oh, one of whom happens to be our beloved federal prime minister. The museum is quite the pretty complex, and larger than any museum I’ve seen in Ethiopia, including the National Museum in Addis Ababa.

The structure is heroic, and no doubt the soldiers were heroic in their day. Their eventual triumph over the Derg, the Communist regime, is ambiguous, as most glorious victories are. As far as I know, this glorious tale reads like a US-engineered magic trick: a re-routed flight for the Communist dictator and a relatively anti-climatic march into Addis Ababa. But so it goes: the museum is beautiful.

Somewhere on the way toward the great bowling trophy, you’ll come across another traffic circle dominated by another castle, a companion to the earlier one. This one once belonged to a lesser relative of the Emperor Yohannes IV, and I would say the lowly cousin got the better real estate. The castle stands high above said traffic circle, inside a large estate, looking a bit Addams Family. Enter: it’s a hotel now, the Abreha Castle Hotel.

Time your arrival for twenty minutes before sunset. Use that interval to stroll through the gardens that climb the hill. They’re very peaceful and pretty, in a seedy sort of way. You might come across the occasional group of students, but it’s quiet. Atop the hill, the castle is surrounded by a very nice terrace where you can have tea and watch the desert sunset tint the town with its colors.

Travelogue 182 – April 30
Mekele and Yohannes

Second in the series on Tigray. Stay alert: don’t miss one in this award-winning series.

4.12 Mekele. I’m resting from a long walking tour of the city, sitting upstairs in a quarter circle of a cafe that is set astride the top corner of a building. The big cafe windows overlook the most important traffic circle in the city. Off one spoke of the circle, across from the cafe, is the city hall; off another spoke is the nineteenth-century castle of Emperor Yohannes IV, now a museum. Behind both are the two Nevada ridges that are the city’s backdrop.

Don’t be fooled into picturing Piccadilly. It’s a small, dusty town. In fact, I think I can safely conclude after this latest trip that Ethiopia is one real city and a smattering of dusty towns.

Two students are eyeing me cynically. One has African features. The other is classic Ethiope: Hindu eyes and a sweet smile when it appears. They speak in Amharic, but the hard glint in the eye is Tigrinya. They are a proud people, conditioned by the desert, I suppose, by their long history, and the years of war in recent history.

Everyone but the students is speaking Tigrinya. The language certainly has an edge to it. Previously, I’ve heard it most from the mouth of Saba’s mother and her relatives. It’s an odd shift from Amharic. The voice drops into the throat to reach for the Semitic gutturals. Amharic has the same roots, but has dropped these sounds somewhere along the way. It sounds like a warrior tongue.

The women here almost universally wear their hair in the Tigrinya style: tight braids across the pate, dissolving into free, bushy hair in the back. Two, sometimes three braids are stung across the forehead, sometimes decorated with gold jewelry with the same motif as their earrings – which they often wear on the upper part of the ear – the round shield-like design with a convex circle in the middle.

My first impression of Tigray is a spooky hint of Italy. For some reason, I feel like the people and the place are more European. Maybe it’s the aloofness. Maybe it’s the stone houses. Elsewhere in Ethiopia, houses are commonly built with mud walls. All over Tigray, the walls are stone, either loosely but artfully pieced together, or held together by mortar. It’s very attractive. The stone is mostly yellow, like Minnesota limestone. Everything seems cleaner and brighter. Brighter from the outside, anyway; the windows are scarce and small because of the sun.

The castle across the way was designed by Italians. You can see it in the chevrons along the top of the structure that remind me of Verona. When I go to visit the museum, the staff seems surprised. They have to turn on the lights for me. They bluster a bit, as though they have to be reminded of the routine.

The main exhibit, of course, is the building itself: one large hall with juniper ceilings. A steep staircase of juniper to a few small rooms and a door onto the roof, where you can take in a nice view of the city. There are some nice items inside: the usual plethora of medieval crosses and crowns and manuscripts on goat skin, all beautiful. There are a few relics of ancient empire: statuettes and inscriptions in ancient Sabaean, the old Yemeni precursor to Ge’ez, Tigrinya, and Amharic. One fifth century BC housewife or priestess in clay looks like she could be selling spices in the market today: braids and nearly the same costume. On the floor in one corner is a bronze bust of a sneering Mussolini.

Upstairs is most fascinating: costumes and saddles from Yohannes’s time, and in the middle, the gigantic throne carved from one piece of juniper. That includes the steps and platform and the huge crown suspended above the seat with lion’s head hand-rests. ‘King of kings’ is woven into the back cushion.

The reign of the only Tigrinya king of kings was illustrious but ended tragically. He died saving the kingdom from the advance of the Mahdist forces from Sudan in 1889, forces that had already proven too much for the Brits. He won the day, but lost his life, clearing the way for the King of Shoa to take over and become Menelik II.

Yohannes IV was second in a run of three great emperors in the mid and late nineteenth century. The first was the quirky and also tragic figure of Tewodros, who is much beloved by modern Ethiopes. Tewodros was raised in a monastery, and his first career was as a bandit. But he had a chieftain as a father and he was a capable general, so he eventually rose to unite a long-segmented Ethiopia and become emperor. He was a reformer and a rebel, and proud.

The story of Tewodros’s demise is characteristically odd, and even more oddly held in great reverence by the modern Ethiope. Apparently, he put a friendly message to Queen Victoria into the hands of the local consul. Tewodros was insulted that the consul didn’t carry it himself, and even more insulted that the queen didn’t reply, preferring her chances with the Ottomans. Tewodros started taking hostages. One thing led to another, and soon he was facing Napier himself with the bit of artillery he had introduced to Ethiopia as reformer-king, (largely with help from the Brits). When the battle was lost, he swallowed a bullet, plunging the empire into a new round of chaos that opened the way to the Tigrinya adventurer, Yohannes IV.

Well, such are the tales of empire, I suppose. And the brief interlude during which Mekele was imperial city leaves us a few proud ruins to stroll among: the several castles of Verona.

Travelogue 181 – April 28
A Tale of Two Airports

I’m back! Back from two weeks in Tigray, the northernmost region of Ethiopia. Prepare yourselves: you’re going to be hearing a lot about Tigray in the next few weeks. The journey begins with a flight to Mekele, the regional capital.

4.11 It’s mid-morning and I’m sitting in my cafe in Addis Ababa, watching a fine day spoil by fine degrees as grey clouds boil over the northwestern mountains. I’m watching carefully, trying to gauge how quickly the mass will make its way south to the airport at Bole. I sigh with practiced resignation: this is Addis Ababa. I share my tired joke with the waitresses: ‘thirteen minutes of sunshine’ – a play on Ethiopian tourism’s slogan of ‘thirteen months....’

I’m at the airport on time. I’m safely inside, where no clouds can disturb my tea. Domestic flights take off from the old terminal. The new Bole airport is wonderful, the toast of African travelers. The old one, well, it’s old.

I’m sitting at the marble slab of a counter at the Sky Bar in the square, blank, concrete terminal, leaning into the back of my white plastic swivel stool. I’m sipping tea and enjoying the time warp. But suddenly it’s faranji corner. Is it the dashing figure I cut, or do all faranji think alike? There’s a restaurant beyond me that looks perfectly fine; the counter is long and has plenty of seating. But here they come.

First it’s a pair of young German women. They studiously ignore me as they sit next to me, order mineral water, and light up cigarettes. There’s an elderly couple, an Irish priest and his wife who served in this area years ago. There’s an odd trio: a roly-poly, greying Italian man regaling two starchy German ladies with travel stories. Every one of them ignores the rest and me, in perennial fashion of faranjis in Africa, pretending to be there first, and speaks to anyone local with a cringing air of apology.

It’s only a fifty-minute flight, mountains all the way. I read the Ethiopian Airlines magazine – an article about swinging Beijing – occasionally glancing down at the landscape becoming increasingly lunar. By the time we’re approaching Mekele, the mountains have mellowed but become tawny, bone dry. And that’s when you recognize it, nestled under a ridge with verges of green. I’ve seen it a hundred times on Ethio-television, that very ridge. You don’t see the surrounding wasteland on TV, so you imagine it to be a bit of cool Colorado. The plane keeps going, landing somewhere over the green ridge and off toward the desert.

Stride confidently from the plane, enjoying the familiar feeling of having everything on your back. Sling the cap over your head against the dazzling sun, walking across the tarmac toward the tiny terminal. Regain some of the romance sacrificed so brutally to the Germans. They stop to wait for baggage; you don’t. Walk through the two-room airport and outside. Assess the situation. Yes, there are the taxis. But they only go when they’ve got four passengers, unless you want to pay for four.

Quickly re-assess the situation. Yes, there, at the end of a long drive is the highway into Mekele, and there, unmistakably, you see the blue minibus that means cheap travel. Throw that bag over your shoulder and walk. Sure enough, by the time you reach the highway, one of the drivers has mutinied and followed you. Keep walking while you answer his price with some thing half as much. Eventually, you’ll get him, just as the next minibus approaches. But be forewarned, he will whine about the price all the way to Mekele, and that’s twenty minutes or so because his Lada rattles up the hills in second gear. Get him started on Tigrinya lexicon to distract him. ‘Dihandehee. Tseboh.’

We pass my hotel and have to turn around. Sure enough, the Dallas Hotel, recommended by my tour book, and where I’m supposed to meet Saba the next day, has no sign out front. My phone is receiving no signal. All rightie. Welcome to Mekele!

Travelogue 180 – April 6
Shoes and the Cross

It’s Good Friday. Every year, Jesus is nailed to the cross, and every year we celebrate. The churches are loud. The neighbors are loud. They commemorate the event with synchronized moaning. And then, duty done, they crank their Ethio-pop and laugh through the thin walls.

It’s Good Friday. Christ dies miserably again, to rise from the grave in three days. In only two, on Sunday, we will celebrate the resurrection – the point of the drama, if I have understood the gospel.

As if to celebrate the Resurrection symbolically, lyrically, the city is engulfed with choruses of cries of the cockerel. Every family has bought one for the occasion, but the motive isn’t life everlasting but the lusty wring of the neck come Easter and the end of the long fast.

Toward a similar purpose, bands of hawk-eyed shepherds in sandals and long blankets and rude switches have crossed the hills and mountains to enter Addis Ababa behind large flocks of sheep. Tonight they take positions along all major thoroughfares to stand vigil beside their beasts and to haggle with city folk hungry for meat.

A man in a business suit passes you, a parcel of green grass under one arm and a live chicken under the other. He’s grinning with great anticipation, and you wonder what it is about holidays that makes people so happy. The day off work? A day with family? Unconvincing. Food seems the most plausible argument: a resurrection of the senses.

The kite guy returned to Addis for a few days, bringing with him stories of desperate people. He’s been to Chad, where he was determined to reach the refugees from Darfur. It’s not a well-travelled route. He bought one of two astronomically-priced tickets on the market, flew to the capital, crossed the entire nation on a UN plane as a kind of charity hitchhiker. He arrived at the last major town in the east, a place that looked in his photos like scattered mud bunkers among sand and dust and withered, solitary acacias, home to wild men in white and wild men in jeeps with rocket launchers.

He found himself stranded there, behind barbed wire with an odd assortment of fiery Europeans. Among this set, it isn’t ‘how could you have voted for that man?’ It’s ‘why haven’t you killed your president?’ The ‘you’ is personal, and the stare is accusing.

The rest of the trip to the camps proves impossible because of cost and because of time. He ventures out among the local kids. They play a bit rough. They mob cars. They stone him. They swarm over the largest kite when it lands and tear at it with claws and knives.

Here at home, things are tamer. This time through Addis, the kite guy says it feels like Beverly Hills, except the people have manners. I see through his eyes: people are gracious and gentle. The smiles are genuine as they shake your hand. They look at you like children as they struggle with their faded grade-school English.

Last night, we go to a play. It’s a production by Graham’s charity. It’s something written and performed by the teenage sex workers. My Amharic is not up to the task but, with or without language, it’s poignant. It’s a short piece and plot is reduced to a small tableau on the side, where a girl is sick on her couch, attended by her mother. Center stage are the rest of the girls singing together in a series of sad meditations, moving in simple, coordinated lines or circles across the stage, subdued and sincere and almost like church processional. The only dramatic moment is when a man enters in order to push one tender young girl onto the ground. All in all, a beautiful effort. I was touched, anyway. The kite guy was lulled by the darkness and the melancholy voices and the momentary lack of danger into a sleepy daze.

My children in Shiro Meda enter their holiday in new shoes, thanks to Margaret in Minneapolis. Thank, thank you! She sent some money express, concerned that the kids be happy on their holiday, concerned that they have good gear on their feet, but especially concerned that our girls have something pink to wear.

So there they are at our Easter party, beaming in sturdy, blue and pink footwear, lining up to bow to Laura and hand her pages of art they made for her during the week, saying, “Thank you, Miss Laura” – beaming, as I say, like kids will though the occasion is a sad one. It’s still an occasion, still a party, even though it’s time to say good-bye to Laura. She leaves Saturday.

How can they understand? Shoes arrive. They love them. They’re instructed to say thank you. Wonderful people arrive from across the seas. After a few weeks, they’re shouting, “Miss Laura, I love you!” Nobody asks them to. I’m not even sure where they learned the phrase. Then one day, they’re told, “Say good-bye.”

Good-bye, Miss Laura. Thank you for everything you did for us.

Travelogue 179 – March 29
The Bourne Conveyancy

Dreams are funny. In one, I’m crippled beyond repair in an auto accident, disfigured. I have no hands. In the next, I’m Matt Damon hanging out with his buds. Waking in the morning is neither too consoling nor too disappointing. I’ve got hands, but I’m not Matt Damon. I can tie my shoes, but the ladies are still indifferent. So it goes.

I may not have Damon’s paparazzi at my door, but I still generate some buzz. At the bus station, the shouting wayalas gather around and tug at me. Once I’ve boarded one of their buses, the proud wayala struts away, advertising that he’s got the nich-so on his bus, the white guy. He’s riffing in the brassy, high-pitched rant of these boys who spend a lot of time on the street. He’s making a good joke out of it, and everyone in the van laughs and turns to look at me – though in a kindly way.

It’s a tight fit. A row of broad-shouldered men share the back bench with me. Still the wayala is trolling for more passengers as we bounce along through the southern Addis suburbs. We find one, a young woman who sits in the fold-out aisle seat directly in front of me, pressing back into my knees. I’m wedged in tight for the rest of the trip, which might be a good thing. It might help with motion sickness, which I find almost inevitable on these Ethiopian buses, what with the exhaust that pours into the bus, and what with the Ethiopian superstition against opening car windows. The breeze will give them a cold. Everyone draws curtains against the sun, so we bump along in a sweaty cocoon.

The bus driver is talking to himself. He’s a stout old man who appears to put a lot of muscle into the steering wheel. I can see his round face in the rear-view mirror. He’s put on an Eastwood grimace. He’s narrating a noir tale from his days on the force. The wayala sits after a while. He keeps glancing back at me over his shoulder. He’s trying to come up with a crack about me and regain some of his glory, but seems cramped by the restricted theater.

An older fellow in a green plaid sports jacket is telling stories. He’s turned in his seat so he can address the people behind him. I wonder how he has space to do that. en his neighbor speaks, he listens with a spooky intensity. I think of the kite guy’s observation about Ethiopes.

We’re having beers at the old Hotel Taitu and spinning theories. He says, “Even the Rastas here, they’ll say, ‘Take it easy, man,’ but it’s not, ‘Take it easy, man.’ It’s TAKE IT EASY ... MAN.’ You know?” And he imitates the stare.

I remind him of the long, proud history. I remind him that it’s almost as much a Middle Eastern culture as an African one. I think of the impressive stares of the Arabs, stares that could be visitations of the old souls of warriors who rode for the Caliph. Indeed, they would have to be to justify such a gleam of pride.

We arrive at the outskirts of Debre Zeit. The Addis end of DZ, the west side, is the upscale area, where the town’s nouveau riche can’t put up houses or offices or hotels fast enough. I call out for a stop and somehow dislodge myself. Outside, I stand at the side of the highway, sweaty, woozy. I take a deep breath and straighten my clothes, my knees, my back. I still have my hands. That’s a plus.

I take a seat at the Pyramid Paradise, my preferred hangout in DZ these days. They have a pleasant courtyard, spacious and cultivated with a nice variety of flowers and trees. They have a tasty egg sandwich. I call Saba. We’re supposed to meet at the station but Saba’s always late, and you never hold still in Ethiopia, so I board. Saba says she’s on her way. She’ll be here momentarily.

At the next table sits a local businessman. He has a belligerent look about him, a scowling brow and a heavy bottom lip. He has a mobile phone ear-piece that makes him look even more menacing. It’s 8 a.m. He starts with a beer. Once that is down, he orders a black coffee and adds three spoons of sugar. A few minutes later, he’s off to his day of cracking knuckles.

What is it that makes people happy? Matt Damon just wanted peace on his tropical shore with Run Lola Run. This guy looks like he wants to strike terror into the hearts of peasants – just another backwater tyrant. A Cheney without missiles.

Baboons organize themselves in cozy and violent hierarchies. If it weren’t for the language barrier, Cheney would find a sympathetic community in the hills around the Blue Nile. It sounds like he needs one these days.

I haven’t heard of many baboons that enjoy leisurely strolls in quiet places. I’m obviously one of the failed mutations among primate evolution. When our morning meetings are done, and Saba has left to check on a few things around twon, I opt for the walk along quiet dirt lanes, a chance to scrutinize this resort village that might, if all goes well, become home for the summer.

I like it. It isn’t Damon’s beach town, but it’s something of a paradise for a guy of lesser genetic virtues. Everything is ambling and genial: the clouds, the cows, the old men in green plaid. Even the occasional ‘money’ boy is amiable and shy and unconvincing. There are no crowds to navigate, though a fair share of dust. I find a broad lane that doubles as a gully during the occasional rains, and I aim for the next lazy curve in the road, there beyond the cows hanging their heads, where the shrubs and palms overcome the view of where we’re going.

Travelogue 178 – March 23
The Kite Guy

The spring mini-rains have set in. The timing is almost disastrous. The kite guy has arrived. I’m watching the skies anxiously. Mornings are bright and cheerful, but clouds move in quickly, crowding the heights all day, and getting darker as the afternoon advances, letting loose by 5:00 or so. If kite day follows this pattern, we’ll be okay, getting the kids out in late morning.

The kite guy comes from Minneapolis. He’s friend of a friend, and we met at a party once upon a time. The kite guy has been around the world; he’s worked in Peru and Rome. He’s been in Ethiopia before. He’s made some money in the last year that he wanted to spend in a fun way. He founded a charity that brings good cheer and healing to kids who have gotten a rough deal in life – whether from disease, poverty, or loss of parents. He brings them kites. He’s working on a plan whereby local families earn a little by manufacturing kites for his project. On this trip, the kite guy has been through Kenya, Malawi, and Tanzania. Next, he goes to Chad.

Fortune brings us a kite day hot and breezy. The clouds are big and friendly. Rather than muddy clothes, I get sunburn instead. We pile the kids into four mini-vans, and we dash off down the hill toward Jan Meda, a series of wide open fields. This may be the kids’ favorite part of day, laughing at each other out their mini-van windows as the drivers weave in and out of traffic, and among each other’s vehicles, to every adult’s distress and the children’s glee.

The kite guy pulls out the big ones first, and every time a big set of wings lifts off, the children scream and run behind. One of the large kites has the kids’ colors all over it, pictures of hands and cats and vegetables that they drew the day before, all amid balloon letters that spell ‘Tsegereda Memorial School’.

Some of the teenage boys loitering in the fields join in the act, and, all in all, they act the gentlemen, helping the children along, holding kites while the kids get a head of steam. When the little ones get a crack at child-sized kites, the boys entertain themselves with the big ones.

The kids line up patiently for their chance at the little kites. The kite guy is donating one for each child. They are tiny square kites with a long spool of string. Though they’re watching with great fascination, each child has to be briefed again by teachers. That briefing runs like this: ‘Run!’ Some stare back. Some turn and take a step or two and turn around, dragging the kite. Eventually, they get it and take off as fast as they can, charging ahead across the grass without looking back. ‘Look up!’ I cry futilely. They don’t. But they’re grinning anyway as they run back. Success!

I’m sure you want the rat update. It’s a mixed report. Jackie has failed as a rat-hound. The two animals have reached some kind of detente. She gets a quiet night indoors, and the rat roams free, as long as it doesn’t disturb her sleep. We resort to Plan C or D: poison. Sad to have to turn to violence, though vengeance feels good. Bakalech leaves enough poison among some bits of bread to take out a village, and in the morning, the entire feast is gone. We hold our breath and there is indeed a hiatus of a few days from rat turds and holes in my socks. But if one has died, another one found the trail indoors. The next step might have to be a kitten.

Everyone has been sick this week: Laura, Linda, and even my favorite waitress, Tigist. Tigist is my favorite because of her professional attitude ... and her gorgeous smile. She’s had a cold and a bad stomach. I tell her to drink tea. No, stomach problems, she says in rat-a-tat Amharic. Tigist has great faith in my genius. She speaks not a word of English. And every day, she asks if I’ve learned Amharic. No matter what I answer, she launches into long streams of pleasantries. I nod and enjoy her sweet smile. I suggest lemon. No, bad stomach. How about ginger? No, bad stomach. Doctor? No, Jesus. Jesus and bad stomach must logically relate, though I don’t know which came first. Her solution, I see later, is a glass of holy water mixed with dirt from a church floor. Cheers, Tigist.

Travelogue 177 – March 15
Beware

It’s the Ides of March and there’s nothing much to beware, except maybe sunburn. Jackie trots after the ball at half-speed at midday, her head hanging and tongue lolling. Bakalech drags her feet as she slouches across the bright courtyard.

Sophie called yesterday from Awasa, and I had no answer to “What’s new?” I tried to think of something for today’s call. All I could come up with was, “Did you hear about the rat chewing on my head?” She enjoyed that story, as all my Ethiopes have. There’s something of the sadist in many Ethiopes. Is it something about a culture shaped by suffering?

It’s a true story, too! I awoke one night last week with the sensation of someone munching on the hair on the back of my head. A little bed-time nibbling I’m not opposed to, depending on the bed-mate – though hair seemed an odd choice. But memory eventually dawns: I have no bed-mate, and I’ve played fortunate host to aggressive rodents lately. I turn over and, sure enough, there she goes, in an unconcerned waddle across the floor. She’s a big one, with a long tail.

Watching her go, I almost feel regret and pity. The poor thing wants a little company, or maybe she needs some protein. She has to fill her belly, like any creature. But I do change rooms then and there. God knows what she would have fed on if I had been turned the other way.

The next night, Jackie gets indoor sleeping privileges. And the little mutt performs well, standing guard while also keeping quiet enough for sleeping humans. I’m pleasantly surprised. Perhaps she knew that Plan B was a cat. To save her place in the food chain, she must be versatile. This morning I observed her cleaning herself like a cat, licking a paw to wash her face.

Okay, so there are man-eating rodents to beware this Ides, and sunburn. And I might mention that crafty old devil, Death, who seems craftier in his work here than he is back home. Or maybe it’s more blunt.

Graham calls this morning. He has to postpone the parenting workshop scheduled for Friday, the infamous parenting workshop that’s been rushing forward like the next Ice Age since its conception last fall. It seems there’s been a death in the family of his assistant. It’s a case of fine one day, dead the next, which seems very common in Ethiopia. They were driving somewhere. Said relative entered the car under his own power and exited in the arms of his family. “He was about thirty!” Graham exclaimed.

I asked if there were a cause of death, knowing full well the likely answer. None. “You know how it is,” Graham says, “trying to get details out of these people.” I do, though, to either of us, cause of death would hardly be a minor detail. “Wasn’t your friend in the car with him? How did he die?” I ask. Again, no details. He’s dead.

Coincidentally, another one of my Shiro Meda parents died yesterday. Cause? Unknown. He’s dead. I’ve only worked with sixty children at that school! How many parents or guardians would you imagine, in three years, could keel over? It’s mind-boggling. In Abraham’s family, it’s been mother, then father, then grandmother. He’s with an aunt now. Now it’s little Yabsira’s father. Cause unknown.

It makes you think about the Western idea of death. Graham says, “People don’t just die!” Well, until recently, they did do just that. Now, in the West, it doesn’t simply happen; it always has a Reason. We may not be able to stop it, but every darkness has its label, and every rat its hole.

I can report that Death, that bitter old angel, hasn’t had his wretched way with everyone in Ethiopia. There’s one crusty old survivor he’s still chasing: Saba’s grandfather. We’ll be shaking hands with this Methuselah next month when we travel north into Tigray, into the homeland of Saba’s family. Upon every report, this gentleman increases in longevity. The first word a few years ago was that he was just over a hundred years-old. But this morning, Saba insisted he was 125! I tried to reason with her. How can Melesech, who’s only a few years older than I, have a father who is 125? Saba’s retort: Melesech’s eldest sister is in her 80s! Well, what can I say? I can’t wait to (gently) slap this old soldier’s back. “Say, how have you kept the rats away?”

Travelogue 176 – March 8
You Go

It’s another in an amazing string of brilliant cloudless days. The morning ritual has returned to its old, peaceful custom. I never tire of the same breakfast, and Bakalech never tires of the same jokes: no dinner today; she’ll give my food to Jackie; she’ll take Jackie home one day. But there’s a surprise for her today, the enormous rat that found its demise on my dining room floor, finally taken by the trap. The poor thing is growing stiff in the trash out back. I didn’t have the stomach to extract the thing from the trap, so Bakalech has to buy me a new trap. She laughs a long time over that one, but I notice she doesn’t volunteer to do the job herself.

As I leave for the day, as I click the gate shut behind me, a man passes muttering to himself as though chanting. His shirt is unbuttoned to his belly. His eyes are concentrated on the road ahead. The sandals on his crusty feet slap noisily. It sounds like he’s saying, “You go. You go. You go. You go.”

I stop in Piassa to see the boys. They sit in a long line roadside, where the taxis stop. My dembenya, or regular guy, is busy, so I sit in his neighbor’s chair. He starts in on my shoes while the dembenya complains. When Laura and I come around, there’s always an uproar. The boys fight for our business. There’s the trouble-maker, a charming guy with a big mouth, bossy and sarcastic. There are the two little brothers whom Laura favors. My dembenya is one of the quiet ones. Everyone gets into the vaudeville of this moment, including the tea lady who serves out of thermoses, and the newspaper guys. Everyone is a comedian.

Today there’s a tiny, barefoot old woman with a face marked by a million lines. She’s so busy trading remarks with the boys that she neglects to beg. One of the guys directs her toward me, and when she sees me she breaks into such a smile, like she’s being introduced to her child’s best friend. She could be reaching out to pinch my cheek, but there are coins in her palm. I can’t resist – though usually I’m a difficult mark – and I hand her fifty centime. She hangs around with a dazed smile, and the boys tease her. I’m guessing it’s all good-natured, though she’s provoked into a quick battery of blows on the back of my shoeshine boy. They all laugh. Another boy shouts something provocative so that she’ll chase him in circles. A minute later, she’s beaming again.

In Piassa, I go in for the daily internet lottery: will it work? How slow is it? A-OK. Pete has emailed with an impatient reminder about information I’ve forgotten to send. Later in the day, he calls.

“Graham is no Peter,” I’m reminded of John’s famous quote, famous among the latest ephemeral expat community I have gathered – so fragile a community it’s already dispersed – who have decided that Graham and Peter represent the opposite poles of British manhood.

John has left with his wife Tayat for England. They’ll be back by summer, unless, as John muttered to me apprehensively, Tayat should discover while they’re in England that they have a bun in the oven. Then all bets are off. John wants to stay in Ethiopia. They’ve been married for over a year now. I was witness in their wedding back in the fall of ’05, some time after the street demonstrations. It may be time for babies.

Laura and I have been made very familiar with their chances of conception. They relish their sex life and don’t hesitate to share. Neither Laura nor I encourage these confidences, but they flow without check, and to our chagrin, often come illustrated. Tayat pulls out the digital camera which doubles as a video recorder.. I can report to you, dear reader, that John is a rare specimen of manhood at 78. He has the physique of a man of ... 50? I don’t know, but apparently it functions as it should, except when he drinks too much.

This we toast at their going-away party. Which ritual Tayat watches with a grimace of disgust. But John’s alcohol levels matter little at the moment because it’s Orthodox Lent, which is a manic fifty-five days in length, and which enumerates sex as one of those temptations that thou shalt avoid. This the couple has informed us, as well. So John and I raise our glasses and wink, and down goes the spirit of male joy and impotence, glug-glug, past my yellowing middle-aged teeth and past his white false ones, on to work its magic. Cheers!

Travelogue 175 – February 28
Much Ado About Moving

What can I say? As I sit to write, what emanates from the speakers but “Hotel California”? There’s never a day here without some surreal touch. The glass of the window radiates with African sunshine. Outside are the squalid streets and the mountains above, laid with eucalyptus shag, scorched with brilliant midday light. But I’m testing myself to see if i remember the guitar solo at the end. An American never leaves home.

Yesterday was also a scorcher. I sat outside, partaking of breezes and pollution, and watching those same furry mountains rub themselves against a scanty line of white clouds. Sebla joins me and introduces herself. Everyone knows Sebla, but I’d never known her name. She is here every day, just like I am. But her daddy owns the cafe. In fact, her daddy owns the whole building.

There’s a story to that. The building previously occupying this site was the Tigray Hotel. People still call this structure the Tigray Hotel, though the real thing was bombed four years ago. Forty people died. It’s politics; why else are bombs set off? See if you can follow: there’s an Oromo separatist movement that is fond of bombs. The current Ethiopian government is dominated by Tigrenya people, led by Mr. Meles, who, in his day, returned many souls to their Maker in the name of Tigrenya independence. The Tigray Hotel was, oddly enough, a hang-out for many Tigrenya people. Ergo, what better spot for incendiary devices and murder to advance the cause of Oromo pride? More terrorist logic bred in caves, ingested with the native soil that peppers their raw, native meat.

The property is bought by Sebla’s daddy, who is blessedly neither – he is Guragay. He builds the current bit of pink modernity amid the iron-roofed, colonial-era brothels and bars: four floors and basement, middle floors commercial rentals, top and bottom family businesses – cafe above and night club below. All is well. Sebla, fresh out of business school gets to manage the whole show.

Sebla is cute. She’s pretty in an elaborate, manicured way. The eyebrows are plucked and sketched back in. The nails are immaculate and feature tiny flower designs. Her clothing says upscale, way beyond the needs of this neighborhood.

So, pretty Ethiopian woman approaches. I know what is expected: money, America; America, money. I’m lucky to get away for only the cost for her tea. But Sebla has money and she has work. I’m intrigued.

She smiles. She’s nervous. There’s the usual small talk about Ethiopia: why I’m here, how long, what I think of it. And by the way, where are you from? “I’m going to America,” she tells me. Okay, one hurdle cleared. She already has a visa. The other shoe drops: “How do I stay? Do you know? Do you have any ideas?” No, I sure don’t. “Why do you want to stay in America when you’ve got work and family and plenty of money here?”

“Oh, I just want the choice. Get my green card, and then I can come and go. ... So, what do you think? Marry somebody?” She smirks to hide her hunger.

My neighbor Bogale tells me that out of twenty-two childhood friends, there are four or five left in Ethiopia. The rest are in America or Europe. He shrugs. Bogale is a philosopher. “My family teach me, look first, find out who I am. Why go?” Life is simple. First family, then friends, then other humans, and then? Then what? Money? Very firmly, he says. “Love is not money.” He repeats it with a stern look, “Love is not money.”

Bogale doesn’t believe in a anything that divides people. I’m impressed with him. Even religion is suspect. “I know what I know,” he says. “Everything else, zimbolo.” It doesn’t matter.

With feeling, he says that it hurts him that his friends go abroad and they fade away. Communication drops off. He says you can even tell who is getting ready to go. “They come out of their gate, they don’t show you their face.” They don’t say hello on the street. They’re gone.

So who’s the success, Sebla or Bogale? And who’s the more human? Cheap moral, I know. Check in on the story after a year: watch for Sebla on the streets of Georgetown. And look in on us here. I’ll be admiring Bogale’s martial arts books under the same old sun.

Travelogue 174 – February 21
Portraits

I have an ally in the neighborhood named Bogale. I’m not unique in that; he is everyone’s friend. He comes to my rescue when Bakalech is sick and she refuses to run in my phone bill payment, – it’s the simple things that reduce expats to functional infancy – giving us his true-blue, gap-toothed smile: “No problem.”

Bogale lives next door in his family’s house, where he rents rooms out. He’s a young man with some talent and ideas, a guileless face. He studies wood-working. He likes martial arts. I’ve had to promise him some training time this summer when I start running again. His English is better than that of most Ethiopes.

He’s not so ambitious that he doesn’t have time for standing outside his gate and chatting with passers-by, and not so complacent that he won’t pitch in with neighborhood work. He spends a weekend sweeping the length of our dirt road. He watches neighbors’ houses while they’re away. He lends a hand painting. He helps me on move-in day. None of these seems motivated by hopes of reward, which is pleasant, unusual.

My other neighbors have been behaving, conscientiously piecing together a silence of sorts, an Ethio version of silence, an Ethio-Pente-with-young-kids version: a confined ruckus and roar. They try, and I appreciate that. Still they have their prayer sessions three times a week, wailing sessions called prayer.

I find the Pentecostal concept confusing. The Spirit took possession of the Apostles and they spoke in tongues – once, as far as I recall. It came as a surprise and then they went out to conquer the world. Fast forward to this bunch, who get the Spirit right on schedule, three times a week, and their tongues sound exactly the same every time. They part with civil good-nights and promises to be back on Tuesday. Am I missing something? It reminds me of history’s zealots, determined to suffer more than Jesus, by a magnitude of hundreds if they could.

I’m having some trouble with one new neighbor, the mouse who has borrowed in under the wooden wardrobe in my bedroom. I wake up, and he’s chewed holes in another one of my dwindling garments. Will Jackie accept a cat? I’ve tried a mousetrap. The delicate little creature just eats the food without triggering the trap. Check the sores on my fingers to see how sensitively I’ve tried to set the mechanism.

Here’s me at the school in Shiro Meda: founder in his dotage – a nuisance, but what can you do? I arrive and I take a deep breath. I swear the air in that little playground is different. It’s like springtime. I trade greetings with Tsehay, Mintawab, and Fellaku, the non-teaching staff, and then I rush back to the classrooms.

Wogayehu is with the first-graders now. Wogayehu is determined, dedicated, and talented, slight in body but big in voice She has this challenge ahead of her now: to lead the children through a year’s curriculum in the next semester. Still, she makes way for me, indulgently, when I enter the class. The students are all smiles. Me, I’m still so delighted to have them back that I’ll stand and admire them for long minutes, until some protest that I’m standing in front of the blackboard: “Move, Mister Dana!” I’m so charmed that I don’t move at all.

I wander around the class, patting heads and looking over shoulders. It’s a tight fit because Wogayehu has insisted we move her class into my old bedroom. I wouldn’t have believed they would fit, but she made it work. It works better than the bigger space in the back. I ask the kids to recite English for me. I unroll the map of Africa that Laura brought for them, and I challenge them to find Ethiopia. I wade through the waving arms and pointing fingers. It’s Ermias who gets it. “Addis Ababa,” he adds, showing off, pressing his finger deeply into his continent.

Wogayehu has her limits. I’ve got to go. I stop in on the KG class and get everyone giggling. The new KG teacher, Haregwa, endures the interruption gracefully. I’m outside, a hard day’s work at the school done, looking up at the sky, feeling a bit lost.

Stephanie has been to the school a few times now. She participates in the Friday art projects. Stephanie is an artist. She’s from Michigan. That sort of distinction goes over Graham’s head. It’s enough that she’s from America – the first and perhaps most devastating fact in a deteriorating relationship. Being from America is like a secular original sin, one that I seem to have recovered from because I have submitted and enjoyed his wit. Stephanie didn’t. She came to Ethiopia to volunteer for his program, which is how she eventually arrived in our classrooms. But the two just never hit it off.

Stephanie is a striking woman, tall and blonde and graceful. Her smile is beautiful. We stay late at the Tsion several nights, after Laura has retired, drinking beer and talking about art. She seems impressed that I know a few big names. We’ve been to some of the same galleries in Europe. She tells me how Rembrandt’s eyes changed after his wife died. “Look at the eyes.” She’s a believer.

Stephanie is planning a project for next week combining music and art. We’ll be testing that old superstition about Mozart and kids and higher mind function. She plans to auction the art that comes out of her experiment as a fundraiser for the school: the Classics in Crayon. Let me know if you’d like to bid.

Another visitor and another. I think Tsegereda will appear in the guidebooks soon. Next month we’ll be receiving a visitor from the US. Enough said, or shall I report that he’s from Minnesota? The mission of Patrick’s non-profit is to spread the gospel of kites around Africa. He and his entourage will visit four or five countries, reeling out the string and running into the wind. Tsegereda School is on the itinerary, but I may be out of town, scouting future school sites and being a tourist up north in Tigray.

And shall I report about Dai, our new Japanese friend? I’ve seen him in the cafe at intervals all winter. He sits absorbed in his notebook for half a day, the picture of a new Japan: tall and strong, scruffy hair confined in a hip-hop ski cap, Allman Brothers tie-dye T-shirt, curled wooden spike in his ear, sheep’s horn on a string around his neck, totemic tattoo on his biceps of an Alaskan eagle. He has motorcycled across much of Africa in previous years, and he’s settled on Ethiopia as a place worthy of more time and further photographic treatment. He has a website, which I’m happy to pass along to the curious. Let me know. And pass word along about the hottest new tourist attraction in Africa: a little kindergarten in the hills above Addis Ababa ....

Travelogue 173 – February 17
The Mountain

It’s an odd-looking mountain, kind of a trapezoid with steep sides. t stands alone. It’s dark green with a forest of firs, something of old Ethiopia, I would think: old growth that hasn’t been supplanted by eucalyptus. That might have happened because, as you would expect with such an odd mountain, it has become a holy place. There’s a church halfway up and another on top. Monks and nuns are common sights on the roads.

This is Menagesha, a spot easily missed on the western highway out of Addis, about forty minutes by bus. Call for a stop once you hit the first town after passing a huge complex of Dutch greenhouses. You’ll have spotted the odd mountain almost as soon as you left the capital city.

How do I know about Menagesha? It was a favorite get-away of Francois’. He learned about it from his friend Adonijah, the black Rastafarian from Louisiana, who has been in Ethiopia for about eight years on a tourist visa that expired seven years ago. He moved to Menagesha last year. But when Saba asked locals about him, we discovered that he had decamped some time ago. It occurs to me that Francois may have told me already that he moved south to be with one of his wives. Rastafarian men have rigorous sexual duties.

Try to get an earlier start than we did. It’s one of those places easy to get to and not so easy to leave. Even at 2:30, when we’re back in town, we have to settle for an Addis city bus. It isn’t too bad. It takes a different route back, more rural and more scenic. You pass a nice little lake that I didn’t know existed, watering hole for a few handsome flocks of herons. Scenic as it is, though, the road rattles the brain until it aches. And that’s before you enter the interminable northern suburbs of the capital, sun and crowds robbing you of oxygen.

Once you’re in Menagesha, stroll the main drag until you find the entrance to the road to the mountain, which is designated by an arch topped by a cross. You’re immediately in the farmers’ town, a few parallel dirt roads saving it a place on the map. Beyond, our road meanders past small farms, where locals are cultivating potatoes and spinach and false banana trees. They shout helloes. When I say small farms, I mean small, like a hundred yards from the road to the brown grasses of the untamed.

School children in red ask for pens or money. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself alone with the impressive scenery: the small, lush farms and their huts, and past them, the long, yellow fields and valleys. One flat-topped acacia stands solitary, as though its field were a Japanese garden.

The mountain is calling me. I leave Saba and Laura, who don’t hear the call and would rather walk slowly. Our time is limited, so I stride ahead. It’s not the smartest plan. I should have relaxed with them in the churchyard instead. No, I pass the pretty church, circular and colorful according to tradition, and the shady field of graves behind it, on to the steep slopes made dim by thick forests. Saba said I would see monkeys, but I don’t. I think I hear them, but it’s the trees, clacking against each other in the breezes, groaning as they bend, screeching as they rub against each other. The road up is grueling, and the trees are too dense to allow much of a view. At the top is another church or monastery, still as a ruin. I sit a while on pine needles. I could be lost in the Sierra Nevadas.

By the time I’m back to the first church, where Laura and Saba are sitting peacefully under a tree, greeting church visitors, my legs are shaking . My knees are aching. Happily, Saba has packed a lunch. It’s bad manners to eat outdoors, but we can’t be stopped by convention now.

At the bottom of the first slope, we’re lucky to encounter a gari dropping children at their house. We crowd in. It’s a ride to make one question, trembling knees and all, wouldn’t it have been better to walk? Laura and scream alternately. Her shouts are fear; mine are pain. I’m at the end of the bench, one buttock on the wooden plank and one buttock on the iron rail twisted into a sort of rail. The rocks in this road are like the stars in the sky, infinite and varied, random and mysterious, turning an impersonal and vaguely malevolent eye on the affairs of man.

We arrive, sore and grateful, at the dusty highway, where we take our place among the crowd at the bus shelter, standing in the sun, crouching in any shade. There are no schedules. Just wait, contemplate the odd mountain.

Travelogue 172 – February 13
Two Episodes

that illustrate life in Addis. The first features myself and Pete, who is Tesfa Lord in London. He happens to be in Ethiopia on other business. Some time after I left Europe last summer, he scored a job with another NGO working in Ethiopia, a real NGO, one with money and history. He’s director of the office in London, and now he gets his first introduction to programs here.

He’s been here almost three weeks and every time he gets a chance, he sneaks away from the day job to join us, look in on the school or hang out. Our routine on these occasions is quickly resolved: coffee and beer, in that order.

There’s coffee at the regular Piassa cafe with the view over the city, accompanied by long and leisurely and circular discussions of strategy for Tesfa. About the time we have once again acheived universal education across Africa, or we have forgotten what we were talking about, we head out into the sunshine in order to catch a taxi north. Pete and I will stop at my place to sit in the sun and throw the ball for Jackie. In spirited moments, we go in for soccer. Jackie shows some talent, stopping or shuffling the ball with her front paw.

Evenings are reserved for beers at the Tsion Hotel, the city’s last major patio on the road north, a few blocks from Laura’s house. The outdoor tables are crowded and unfit for conversation, condemned with Ethio-pop, but inside is a cosy room of dark faux wood and quiet. The bartender is friendly. He knows what we will drink. The waiters are prepared for Laura’s guilty order of spaghetti and meat sauce.

It’s a nice refuge, but not a failsafe one. One night a very drunk man strikes up a loud, one-way conversation with us. He’s an Ethio expat come home. For thirty years he lived abroad, in Russia, Paris, London, Washington. He’s come home to care of his 91 year-old father, one of three surviving generals of the imperial army, lucky to have escaped the fate of most of his colleagues, a bullet. The son teaches at Addis Ababa University now, making 2500 birr a month to his great distress. But his 78 ‘children’ (students) love him. He insists on that. Moral of the story, (with an emphatic slur): you think it’s hard being faranj, but it’s ten times harder coming back.

But I digress. Or rather, I haven’t begun. Episode #1: Pete and I are due at the Tsion in an hour. It’s a lovely afternoon. We decide to walk, and since we have time, we will take a diversion off the main road.

It doesn’t take more than fifty paces down a side road made of large stones, (roads popularly known as CARE roads because they are the handiwork of an NGO by that name,) before you’re out of big-city Addis. We come to one of those stinky, trash-laden gullies called rivers. On the left side of the road the river is bound by a steep slope occupied by what looks like a community garden. It’s very neat. Pete is intrigued, so we divert again, up a small dirt path.

A pair of boys joins us. My reflex is to tell them we have no money. But they want to tell us about the gardens. Family plots, we pick up: an NGO. The story is fleshed out when we come upon some adults who work for the NGO.

After a quarter mile or so, the slope broadens and the gardens spread above us. We see a group gathered around a mechanical water pump that operates like a stepper. Most of the group is boys delighting in the top. Two men are supervising: founders of the local NGO. The family plots are tended by AIDS victims. The project looks well-organized: clear plot boundaries, irrigation, delicate plants in bags. The men become very earnest when they learn Pete runs a British NGO. I drift away when I see the look in their eyes. I’ve seen it before, and it usually means long lectures that brook no interruption or humor.

One boy has an attractive amulet that looks like a small gear set with fake diamonds. When I remark upon it, he offers it. I always forget about this tic of Ethiopian hospitality. He’s insistent, but I’m more so. As a group, the boys and I make it up the slope, climbing like goats single-file. We come across a toothless old woman carrying two 20-liter jugs of water from the pump up to containers that release into irrigation channels. I take one jug, though she protests, and stagger ahead. This woman has muscle. One of the other boys takes the other, two-handed.

On top of the hill, local teens hassle our boys. Participating in the program identifies them as sons of HIV families. Pete and I move on, and the boys don’t abandon us. They want to show us a church up another obscure road. We each have our group of chatterers, holding our hands and testing their English. We must know about the neighborhood. They must hear how we love Ethiopia. They must know what we think of Henry and Rooney and other soccer stars. We must see their collections of stamp-sized and wadded pictures of favorite players.

There is indeed a church at the top, but our gaze is drawn instead to the city below and the wooded mountains above. The views never stop on this side of town. We continue up, along the bed of an asphalt road in the works, amid the peace of the trees and the comments of older women who pass on their way to church. The boys just giggle and look back at them.

I’ve only had space for one episode. And what’s so emblematic about it, after all? The urban garden project that, in its order and innovation, has to be NGO work? The earnest Ethio-NGO dudes, who struggle to impress and fish for support at the same time? The stoic strength of the crone? The innocence of the boys, and the beauty of their city village? I don’t know. The chemistry of it all together, maybe, an admixture of simple and horrible, and the relentless intertwining stream of it. Anyway, Episode #2 another time...

Travelogue 171 – February 2
Shirishir

It’s time we check in on Mojo. The mega-school in small town Ethiopia has been operational for three months. How’s it doing?

We don’t tell them we’re coming: best if we catch them on an average day. Though it’s not entirely average. We’ve been beseiged by the first of the miniature rainy seasons. It has rained all night, and the first morning’s light is dim. I want to cancel, but Laura and Saba are sure it will be fine. They’re right.

Report on Mojo: transport is fine. We catch a minibus, and the ride is smooth. Day dawns with increasing light and strength. The clouds are giving way.

Report on Mojo: the cafe where we traditionally have brunch has gone downhill. The patio is surrounded by mud and trash and ragged dogs that linger and hang their heads. The cafe doesn’t offer anything to eat but raw meat. We take tea.

Report on Mojo: the garis are efficient as ever, if difficult to climb into. The horse-drawn carts have become emblematic of Mojo in our imaginations, though garis can be found in all Ethiopian towns. We could walk to the school, but why, when we can bounce along in these elegantly awkward little conveyances, waving at local kids and collecting spots of mud on our clothes?

Report on Mojo: we arrive and it’s still early in the school day. Our principal is in her office. She looks at me with her customary perplexity, not the most hospitable soul. Why didn’t we call? She insists that we can’t understand her challenges with these small town children. She complains that she is pregnant again and can’t continue her coursework in Nazarit. Whatever her character flaws, though, she administers a strong school. Everything is running like clockwork.

In the first classroom, the biggest, the children are learning English. The teacher is a young man who is determined that our visit won’t disrupt his lesson. The children are naming letters and matching them on the board. Nothing is conducted in less than a jarring shout. Later, in the yard, the kids will sing the alphabet song for us.

In the second, the smallest classroom, they are working on math. They are becoming acquainted with 22 and 23, reciting again in earth-shaking chorus.

The third room is dedicated to the Oromo language. We’re learning body parts. Master linguist I may be, but these 5 and 6 year-olds have hand and stomach and nose down pat and I’ve already forgotten.

We stay through break-time while our little students patiently line up for turns on the merry-go-round and the swing. Pair by pair, they abandon those toys for the more amusing white-skinned ones, living dolls with cameras and funny words and cat’s eyes. We each have a circle of kids around us. ‘My name is Birtukan.’ ‘My name is Abeba.’

We take Laura back to Debre Zeit for some sight-seeing. We check into the Bishoftu Hotel, our favorite from last year, where the bar overlooks the crater-lake from the lip of its sheer-sided bowl, overlooks the placid green water and the occasional shadow flights of pelicans and pigeons. The same Russians with big bellies sit on deck chairs outside their rooms, except at dawn when they’re ordering scrambled eggs in the restaurant. The same slow waiters shout as they sweep up the courtyard after ten o’clock closing time in the bar. The same ancient taps release their trickle of water after four full turns of the faucet.

Our party splits up. Saba shows Laura the town. They go to Lake Hora and stroll along the shore in the park, bird-watching and teen-watching. An entire secondary school class is communing with nature, complaining about the very site they frequent with friends in their free time.
I set out on a hike along the path I tried last year, determined to go farther this time. This is the road that follows the curve of the lake, passing big houses and shacks and the stark bones of new hotels rising above the cliffs. On the far side, the road turns away from the lake on a tangent that climbs beside the large, barren hill opposite our hotel. The town peters out; the dirt road turns into a vague path beside a gully.

Keep climbing. Resist the temptation to take the right-hand path into some shade. Your path will pass left between small, brown hills and you’ll descend into a wide valley. It is summer gold and traversed by several meager shepherd’s paths. There’s one homestead with a pack of boys playing soccer in the yard. They’ll invite you to play, invite you to pay for a new ball. Keep going, and you’ll find yourself alone between brilliant blue sky and golden grasses, with only the occasional set of shepherd boys who shout and wave from a distance.

I realize at once that for six months I’ve only been alone inside the walls of my house. Take a walk in Addis and you’re anything but alone. Lots of sense impressions, but peace and solitude are the last.

Before reaching the valley, I have excited the usual rants and stares and whistles and laughter. Last year I bristled at the attention, retorted and scowled. This year I only notice it in retrospect, in contrast to the profound silence in the valley. I walk on in wonder, feeling liberated, intoxicated by the combination of sun and silence.

I decide to climb the mountain across the valley. And this I do, up the steep incline, among the eucalyptus that hides me from eyes below – another blessed degree of privacy. I can’t stop, though finally I’m dizzy with heat and exertion. There’s no shade on the last slope, but I just about run up it in exhilaration. At the top is a single, stunted fir that lends enough shade for sitting.

I take off my shoes and stretch my feet toward the steep decline on the other side that tumbles into Shangri La itself, a narrow vale of yellow fields and a cluster of round thatched roofs. Several neighbors are talking across a boundary between fields. I can just about hear their words, though they are little more than pebbles to my sight.

Beyond them is a larger and greener mount, the site of another meteor impact by the looks of it. The nearest side is hollow and offers a rock face that my inexpert eye would call a fun climb – unusual in this area of mellow, grassy grades. It appears there’s another impressive crater beside the mountain, to the left. And all is quiet as a breeze.

Down one adjacent shoulder of the peak is a herd of cattle grazing. I spotted them as I climbed, a few movie-set silhouettes against the sky. No one is tending them. That’s all the company I have, except for the occasional gliding kite, and they’re wonderfully uninterested in the faranj. I love them for that.