Travelogue 318 – February 3
Chancho, Part One
Chancho is just far enough north on the highway to Bahir Dar to escape being a suburb of the rapidly expanding capital city. When you travel north out of Addis Ababa, you speed through a shallow pass called Fitasha, which is where I often launch long runs along the ridge, and which forms the northern limit to the city. Beyond is a gentle decline through eucalyptus forests and by small farmsteads, until you enter the precincts of Selulta, a town that was a quiet village before being overrun by the Addis Ababa leisure class. Now, where the road levels out and the landscape opens up into rolling yellow hills, you can find dozens of concrete hotels with sprawling courtyard restaurants, in various stages of construction or operation or premature decay. The athletic class has also found a home in this area. The Olympic star, Kenenisa, has been partnering with the government in opening a track camp and stadium in the hills below the ridge. This road is where Team Tesfa had a start of sorts, where we conducted a time trial for several of the original team members. Runners like this road: it's smooth and relatively straight for long miles.
The entry into Chancho mirrors to a lesser degree the south side of Selulta, in that the southern road is lined with optimistic rows of concrete hotels. One of the few that is completed is where I stay during this week's visit to the building site.
School Number Seven, Project Selam, is funded by Mike and his family and his church in Green Bay. Mike is an early retiree, and excited to make a difference with his new freedom. The school is located in a tiny village in the hills near Chancho. It's a twenty-minute walk across open meadows of yellow grass. You can see the hilltop dedicated to the project from town. As you approach, you can make out the project's labor force: just the colors of clothing in motion from a distance, but they are Mike and his family, Cien as foreman, half a dozen men from Team Tesfa, and a varying host of village men and women pitching in with hands, shovels, pickaxes, and wheelbarrows. The initial work was relocating a wall, stone by stone. Then came the leveling of the rocky land, and tearing down the original small and decrepit house. Next was digging post holes.
It's a beautiful site. One of the pleasures of working there is the view, which spans nearly three-quarters of a circle in perspective from our hilltop, across miles of hills and open fields and small villages. The villages are identifiable by the round, peaked thatched roofs of the huts gathered in clusters, usually on a hillside. In summer, during rainy season, I hear that much of the meadowland in the valleys becomes inaccessible marsh.
It's at the bottom of the nearest valley, in a modest riverbed, that Ijigu is overseeing a local group who is mixing the mud to put on the walls of the school. You can just make them out from the school site. Walk down to watch the work. It's messy. They've dammed the stream that runs between high walls of mud and grass; they've dammed it with mud to create a pool. Along the banks of the stream, they've cultivated big pools of mud through which the workers wade barefoot, churning and overturning slop with shovels. One woman splashes the mud with water from the steam continuously. Others mix in the straw and gravel. This concoction sits for days, fermenting. Some time next week, we'll get a train of donkeys together to transport the mud to the school site. A few of those donkeys are crossing the stream now, one of them pausing to relieve himself in the water.
When the day's work is done, Mike and his family, Cien and some of the team boys return to the house we've rented in Chancho. Everywhere they go, they are accompanied by a chorus of 'Faranj!', stares and laughter. The house is one of the nicest in town. It's concrete. There's hot water. It's a tight fit for the group, being only a series of four rooms in a one long and narrow construction, but it's cozy enough. The house has a huge grassy yard, where the group plays a silly variation of volleyball in a circle while individuals take turns cleaning up and while the sun goes down. Tall eucalyptus surround us, among the tallest branches of which kites flap their wings and call.
On afternoon, Ijigu and the team boys bring home a young gelada baboon that has escaped his master. He has twine tied around his neck. The little guy is a bit jumpy, especially when the team boys tease him; the white people are all a little scared of him. But he stays in the yard with us, and he settles down, and we feed him bananas. Neighborhood children are crowding the compound gate to peek in.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Travelogue 317 – January 28
Meet
The weather has been gorgeous this week. The healthy sun has been a blessing, just when the work has been most hectic, most frustrating. The sun rises just after six in clear skies and warms the chilly city. It descends by degrees into the courtyard of my house, and by the same degrees it lifts my mood. It fuels the optimism that makes the work possible.
We continue to negotiate, day by day, over the fate of the old shack left on the land meant for our seventh school, conducting circular dialogues with that parasitic species without which human history is impossible, the species called 'officials'. Though entrusted with the organization of our social life and governance, though entrusted with some of the most sophisticated systems evolved by humankind for humankind's benefit, logic is not among the first skills exhibited by this species. Perhaps they are like slaves to the sun king, who dare not look into the light. They only serve by bowing and by pushing eager subjects away.
I start the day with a much more enjoyable and inspiring set of animals than officials. I attend the day's first races at the week-long club track championships at the capital's main stadium. Foremost among the races is the women's ten-thousand meter. I say 'foremost' because in Ethiopia there's a special lustre to the five and the ten thousand. Review your tapes of the last Olympics: you'll see that Ethiopia was content to surrender medals to their arch rivals, the Kenyans, in every other race. But the five and ten were Ethiopian territory. And I also say 'foremost' because we have two contestants in the race.
The stands are sparsely populated at this early hour, but Team Tesfa has brought out twenty or thirty loyal teammates, who sit around the coach on the concrete steps, holding up their banner. I join them and wait for our race. This is a great crew, energetic and cheerful, young and healthy. They hang all over each other, as young Ethiopians do. To an American audience, that phrase would suggest sexuality, but here it's innocent affection, girls and girls, boys and boys, and yes, boys and girls with arms around shoulders, playing with each other's hair, leaning into each other and laughing. They chat continuously. They revere their coach, a bear-like figure much beloved in the whole running community. Each time an athlete arrives, everyone shakes hands. The handshake involves a slap as hands meet, and often a meeting of shoulders. Jamie arrives, our guest this month from the University of Minnesota.
One member of the group in particular it warms my heart to see. Chaltu is a very talented athlete in her mid-twenties, one of those that shows great promise in the five thousand. Formerly a member of Team Tesfa, she qualified for the government's Tirunesh camp. Named after one of those Olympic athletes that wowed the world several years ago, the purpose of this camp is to develop talent for the next Olympics. Three of our athletes have qualified and now train at the camp. Chaltu was always a favorite of mine, and popular among the athletes. She has a sunny smile and a ready laugh. She was a strong leader and role model for the younger girls on our team. That she is hanging out with our team during the meet means a lot to me. This team is a strong and cohesive unit. Their presence is proof of their spirit: most of the athletes derive no material benefit from their association with the team. They voluntarily attach themselves to the group, and I see them again and again on each visit.
Further proof of the bond among them is offered once the race begins. The ten thousand is a race of many laps around the track. That doesn't discourage the group from robust cheering every time the two teammates pass. And it never fails to produce a corresponding response. When Workinesh swings around the nearest curve in the track and hears our encouragement, her back straightens and her stride lengthens. Each time, she passes the woman in red with whom she battles for the entire race. She comes in ninth in an exciting race. Afterward she joins us in the stands to a hero's welcome. The coach gives her a kiss on the forehead.
I have to get back to work. I have to rejoin the world where no one seems to root for each other, or even for the children who might have an opportunity to enroll in their first school this spring. One official foists us off on another, who passes us off again. The clock ticks on, and it's the opposite of what we witnessed this morning: the players slow down. The fans boo, or disperse in the middle of the race, or they gather round the coach chanting 'Money, money,' and holding out their empty, calloused hands.
Meet
The weather has been gorgeous this week. The healthy sun has been a blessing, just when the work has been most hectic, most frustrating. The sun rises just after six in clear skies and warms the chilly city. It descends by degrees into the courtyard of my house, and by the same degrees it lifts my mood. It fuels the optimism that makes the work possible.
We continue to negotiate, day by day, over the fate of the old shack left on the land meant for our seventh school, conducting circular dialogues with that parasitic species without which human history is impossible, the species called 'officials'. Though entrusted with the organization of our social life and governance, though entrusted with some of the most sophisticated systems evolved by humankind for humankind's benefit, logic is not among the first skills exhibited by this species. Perhaps they are like slaves to the sun king, who dare not look into the light. They only serve by bowing and by pushing eager subjects away.
I start the day with a much more enjoyable and inspiring set of animals than officials. I attend the day's first races at the week-long club track championships at the capital's main stadium. Foremost among the races is the women's ten-thousand meter. I say 'foremost' because in Ethiopia there's a special lustre to the five and the ten thousand. Review your tapes of the last Olympics: you'll see that Ethiopia was content to surrender medals to their arch rivals, the Kenyans, in every other race. But the five and ten were Ethiopian territory. And I also say 'foremost' because we have two contestants in the race.
The stands are sparsely populated at this early hour, but Team Tesfa has brought out twenty or thirty loyal teammates, who sit around the coach on the concrete steps, holding up their banner. I join them and wait for our race. This is a great crew, energetic and cheerful, young and healthy. They hang all over each other, as young Ethiopians do. To an American audience, that phrase would suggest sexuality, but here it's innocent affection, girls and girls, boys and boys, and yes, boys and girls with arms around shoulders, playing with each other's hair, leaning into each other and laughing. They chat continuously. They revere their coach, a bear-like figure much beloved in the whole running community. Each time an athlete arrives, everyone shakes hands. The handshake involves a slap as hands meet, and often a meeting of shoulders. Jamie arrives, our guest this month from the University of Minnesota.
One member of the group in particular it warms my heart to see. Chaltu is a very talented athlete in her mid-twenties, one of those that shows great promise in the five thousand. Formerly a member of Team Tesfa, she qualified for the government's Tirunesh camp. Named after one of those Olympic athletes that wowed the world several years ago, the purpose of this camp is to develop talent for the next Olympics. Three of our athletes have qualified and now train at the camp. Chaltu was always a favorite of mine, and popular among the athletes. She has a sunny smile and a ready laugh. She was a strong leader and role model for the younger girls on our team. That she is hanging out with our team during the meet means a lot to me. This team is a strong and cohesive unit. Their presence is proof of their spirit: most of the athletes derive no material benefit from their association with the team. They voluntarily attach themselves to the group, and I see them again and again on each visit.
Further proof of the bond among them is offered once the race begins. The ten thousand is a race of many laps around the track. That doesn't discourage the group from robust cheering every time the two teammates pass. And it never fails to produce a corresponding response. When Workinesh swings around the nearest curve in the track and hears our encouragement, her back straightens and her stride lengthens. Each time, she passes the woman in red with whom she battles for the entire race. She comes in ninth in an exciting race. Afterward she joins us in the stands to a hero's welcome. The coach gives her a kiss on the forehead.
I have to get back to work. I have to rejoin the world where no one seems to root for each other, or even for the children who might have an opportunity to enroll in their first school this spring. One official foists us off on another, who passes us off again. The clock ticks on, and it's the opposite of what we witnessed this morning: the players slow down. The fans boo, or disperse in the middle of the race, or they gather round the coach chanting 'Money, money,' and holding out their empty, calloused hands.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Travelogue 316 – January 25
Amazing Invention, the Calendar
It's Monday, and the beginning of a serious week. Once the sun is up, once business starts, I realize just how serious it will be. But before all that, I indulge in the silence of the sleeping city. Like a difficult person who might appear angelic in sleep, this difficult African capital city is at peace at night; it poses no threats, no problems.
It's Monday, barely. It's 5am. Jamie, Tsege, and I are going for a serious run to kick off this serious week. We start off in Shiro Meda, at the top of the city, where the stars are bright. The Ethiopians in our group are shivering, but the Minnesotans are basking in something like a perfect temperature. I'm taking in the constellations before we start. Scorpio is rising, and above it my own patron constellation, the most aesthetically boring constellation of all the zodiac. And ahead of us as we take our first steps is the Southern Cross.
If you come visit us, chances are that something like this will be your first experience of Ethiopia. So many foreign flights land at Addis Ababa's Bole Airport in the middle of the night. Your first impression of the capital city will be of a ghost town. The dark streets are barren of life. This is a city like a bee hive during the day; so the stillness at night is striking. Of course, this is the very reason we're running at 5am. And even at 5am, we're still dodging some capricious traffic, some weaving pedestrians on their way to work.
It's either up or down out of Shiro Meda, and we're not going up into the mountains. We run downhill for several miles, passing the university and several ministries, passing the obelisk at Sidist Kilo and the old stone lion at Arat Kilo. We pass the prime minister's palace and the president's palace. We pass the Hilton and finally the hill bottoms out at Meskel Square. Now we head out Bole Road, toward the airport. This is the reverse of your journey when you arrive, staring out the taxi window with wonder at the emptiness of the ramshackle city, wondering at the occasional drunk, prostitute or solitary on his way to God knows where.
Once the day starts, it really goes. The tragicomedy that is business in Ethiopia opens with farce today. Cien has arrived at the new school site in its small village – set to clear the land and take down the crumbling shack that was abandoned there – only to be told by local officials that he can't touch it. This initiates a day-long series of phone calls. There are regional officials of various stripes and there are local ones. There are education officials and there are town officials and there are elections officials. How is this an elections issue? That's the surprise of the day ... and all I wanted to hear in a tense election year.
We were forced to send Cien short-staffed to the village. We had hoped that a good contingent of the team men would accompany him, and pick up some skills in carpentry and construction. But planning is too often folly here: we found out Friday that there's a major national track meet starting Tuesday. 'Oh, really?' we say, 'And what's the schedule?' Our coach doesn't know. They don't release the schedule for the week-long track meet until the first day of the event. Hmm: and have any athletes had a chance to prepare for these races? ...But I digress.
Why is the elections board involved in our school project? It seems that the local board has since the time of prophets used the crumbling shack on our land as a center for their commendable civic function. There's some sort of election coming – not the big one, but something small and local. Did anyone consider this during the year of planning that has gone into this project, or even in the final weeks before we have donors boarding planes for expensive flights to Ethiopia in order to participate in the building? No, but they offer some specific numbers: you can't touch the sacred shack for 13-25 days. Ah! That just about covers the time that our donors are in town.
Stephanie enters her week short-staffed, as well. She has plans for a few major arts events at the Mercato school. But the track meet robs her of some help. She has already lost one day last week to the amorphous holiday, Temket, which fluctuates in duration between two days and four, depending on who you ask. School staff claims two days off, just as we expected one. And then, on the first day back Stephanie's main translator doesn't show up because he has an exam at the university. Somehow this isn't worth mentioning earlier. And so on ...
It's 5:30am. The city sleeps on. The officials sleep on. The priests and the teachers sleep on. The sages of the athletics federation sleep on. I wish them sweet dreams. This city under the stars is drifting along rudderless and contented. We runners round the circle by the airport and head back into town, blissfully ignorant of the hurdles ahead once the sun has risen.
Amazing Invention, the Calendar
It's Monday, and the beginning of a serious week. Once the sun is up, once business starts, I realize just how serious it will be. But before all that, I indulge in the silence of the sleeping city. Like a difficult person who might appear angelic in sleep, this difficult African capital city is at peace at night; it poses no threats, no problems.
It's Monday, barely. It's 5am. Jamie, Tsege, and I are going for a serious run to kick off this serious week. We start off in Shiro Meda, at the top of the city, where the stars are bright. The Ethiopians in our group are shivering, but the Minnesotans are basking in something like a perfect temperature. I'm taking in the constellations before we start. Scorpio is rising, and above it my own patron constellation, the most aesthetically boring constellation of all the zodiac. And ahead of us as we take our first steps is the Southern Cross.
If you come visit us, chances are that something like this will be your first experience of Ethiopia. So many foreign flights land at Addis Ababa's Bole Airport in the middle of the night. Your first impression of the capital city will be of a ghost town. The dark streets are barren of life. This is a city like a bee hive during the day; so the stillness at night is striking. Of course, this is the very reason we're running at 5am. And even at 5am, we're still dodging some capricious traffic, some weaving pedestrians on their way to work.
It's either up or down out of Shiro Meda, and we're not going up into the mountains. We run downhill for several miles, passing the university and several ministries, passing the obelisk at Sidist Kilo and the old stone lion at Arat Kilo. We pass the prime minister's palace and the president's palace. We pass the Hilton and finally the hill bottoms out at Meskel Square. Now we head out Bole Road, toward the airport. This is the reverse of your journey when you arrive, staring out the taxi window with wonder at the emptiness of the ramshackle city, wondering at the occasional drunk, prostitute or solitary on his way to God knows where.
Once the day starts, it really goes. The tragicomedy that is business in Ethiopia opens with farce today. Cien has arrived at the new school site in its small village – set to clear the land and take down the crumbling shack that was abandoned there – only to be told by local officials that he can't touch it. This initiates a day-long series of phone calls. There are regional officials of various stripes and there are local ones. There are education officials and there are town officials and there are elections officials. How is this an elections issue? That's the surprise of the day ... and all I wanted to hear in a tense election year.
We were forced to send Cien short-staffed to the village. We had hoped that a good contingent of the team men would accompany him, and pick up some skills in carpentry and construction. But planning is too often folly here: we found out Friday that there's a major national track meet starting Tuesday. 'Oh, really?' we say, 'And what's the schedule?' Our coach doesn't know. They don't release the schedule for the week-long track meet until the first day of the event. Hmm: and have any athletes had a chance to prepare for these races? ...But I digress.
Why is the elections board involved in our school project? It seems that the local board has since the time of prophets used the crumbling shack on our land as a center for their commendable civic function. There's some sort of election coming – not the big one, but something small and local. Did anyone consider this during the year of planning that has gone into this project, or even in the final weeks before we have donors boarding planes for expensive flights to Ethiopia in order to participate in the building? No, but they offer some specific numbers: you can't touch the sacred shack for 13-25 days. Ah! That just about covers the time that our donors are in town.
Stephanie enters her week short-staffed, as well. She has plans for a few major arts events at the Mercato school. But the track meet robs her of some help. She has already lost one day last week to the amorphous holiday, Temket, which fluctuates in duration between two days and four, depending on who you ask. School staff claims two days off, just as we expected one. And then, on the first day back Stephanie's main translator doesn't show up because he has an exam at the university. Somehow this isn't worth mentioning earlier. And so on ...
It's 5:30am. The city sleeps on. The officials sleep on. The priests and the teachers sleep on. The sages of the athletics federation sleep on. I wish them sweet dreams. This city under the stars is drifting along rudderless and contented. We runners round the circle by the airport and head back into town, blissfully ignorant of the hurdles ahead once the sun has risen.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Travelogue 315 – January 24
Ups and Downs in the Highlands
Tsege is looking better. She's putting on weight. She's smiling. When I first saw her this year, she was gaunt and troubled; she had to her countenance something of the fish out of water, gasping for breath. That day, I fed her and I forbade her to go back to her 'home'.
Tsege is one of our young women on the track team. She's been with us for a few years. It seems that she was forced out of her family's home about three months ago. She has lived the typical story of a girl that comes to Addis Ababa to live with extended family, becomes an object of scorn, abuse, and exploitation, and is ejected when she develops her own will.
The story of the past three months has been one of homelessness, begging, and being at the mercy of friends and friends of friends and acquaintances, and the greedy and the lascivious. She spent the final weeks sleeping on the floor of a house belonging to strangers, acquaintances of acquaintances. She was being harassed by one of the men, and was frightened. She had been forced to stop school and training. She stayed in contact with team members, so she knew of the arrival of Jamie, this year's visitor from the University of Minnesota women's track team. She showed up at the guest house to greet her.
I was startled by her appearance, as one never ceases to be by suffering, by intimate portraits of suffering, no matter how many times one has encountered them. When I insisted that she stay at the guest house for a while, her first response was almost instinctual, fearful, in the manner of exhausted prey: 'But where will I go after?' I urged her not to worry – we'll stand by her one way or another – but her eyes were wide and her nostrils flared, like there was a wolf waiting beyond the gate.
She has settled in well, and her smile adorns the bare guest house like garlands. The house is full and busy. We have three guests from the States, all here for different projects. Ijigu is security and handyman. Team members are often stopping by. Foundation meetings take place in the salon. It's a safe place.
It would be nice to get Tsege some more clothes. She has two sets of them, jeans and t-shirts and a tattered windbreaker. She never goes anywhere without the windbreaker, including when she trains. It doesn't matter what the temperature or what the altitude.
It's hard not to be aware of altitude in Ethiopia. It's a constant companion. You're reminded of that by sudden shortages of breath and an ache in your oxygen-starved muscles. And its a moody companion, changing with every step, up or down, in this mountainous country. I'm made more keenly aware of altitude by Cien's watch. Cien is here to do some advance work on school number seven. He is an outdoorsman. He has a watch that reads altitude. Now we count every meter and foot we climb on our painful runs. One of our runs takes us nearly to eleven thousand feet.
We take Tsege on our trip to Debre Zeit. Cien's watch informs us we've dropped over two thousand feet since we left Addis Ababa one hour ago. It's warmer. At the end of our first day, I talk everyone into a late afternoon run. Sunshine and shadow are sharp and golden among the yellow hills of Debre Zeit in the afternoon. We spend an hour and half on the dusty trails, among haystacks and fallow grass, passing twelve year-old, eight year-old, five year-old shepherds with their sheep and cattle. They stare, only shouting once we've passed. Families wave from hundreds of meters away.
Tsege is wearing her windbreaker. After a few miles, she feels sick. The sun is still potent when you run along unsheltered hillsides. These athletes are used to starting their runs before the sun has risen. Back at the hotel, there's no water. We have to wash up out of buckets.
We return from Debre Zeit. Tomorrow marks the beginning of the hard work for the volunteers. It's Stephanie's last week, and she'll be putting together art festival days in Mercato, and painting a mural. Cien is off to Chancho, where he begins clearing the land for the next school. Jamie attends the team's first track meet of the season, and launches into meetings with the staff and the team girls about the year's program planning.
Tsege is still around. She'll stay with us for a while longer, eat with us. She'll attend our meetings. She'll forget, I hope, what it's like to be frightened all the time.
Ups and Downs in the Highlands
Tsege is looking better. She's putting on weight. She's smiling. When I first saw her this year, she was gaunt and troubled; she had to her countenance something of the fish out of water, gasping for breath. That day, I fed her and I forbade her to go back to her 'home'.
Tsege is one of our young women on the track team. She's been with us for a few years. It seems that she was forced out of her family's home about three months ago. She has lived the typical story of a girl that comes to Addis Ababa to live with extended family, becomes an object of scorn, abuse, and exploitation, and is ejected when she develops her own will.
The story of the past three months has been one of homelessness, begging, and being at the mercy of friends and friends of friends and acquaintances, and the greedy and the lascivious. She spent the final weeks sleeping on the floor of a house belonging to strangers, acquaintances of acquaintances. She was being harassed by one of the men, and was frightened. She had been forced to stop school and training. She stayed in contact with team members, so she knew of the arrival of Jamie, this year's visitor from the University of Minnesota women's track team. She showed up at the guest house to greet her.
I was startled by her appearance, as one never ceases to be by suffering, by intimate portraits of suffering, no matter how many times one has encountered them. When I insisted that she stay at the guest house for a while, her first response was almost instinctual, fearful, in the manner of exhausted prey: 'But where will I go after?' I urged her not to worry – we'll stand by her one way or another – but her eyes were wide and her nostrils flared, like there was a wolf waiting beyond the gate.
She has settled in well, and her smile adorns the bare guest house like garlands. The house is full and busy. We have three guests from the States, all here for different projects. Ijigu is security and handyman. Team members are often stopping by. Foundation meetings take place in the salon. It's a safe place.
It would be nice to get Tsege some more clothes. She has two sets of them, jeans and t-shirts and a tattered windbreaker. She never goes anywhere without the windbreaker, including when she trains. It doesn't matter what the temperature or what the altitude.
It's hard not to be aware of altitude in Ethiopia. It's a constant companion. You're reminded of that by sudden shortages of breath and an ache in your oxygen-starved muscles. And its a moody companion, changing with every step, up or down, in this mountainous country. I'm made more keenly aware of altitude by Cien's watch. Cien is here to do some advance work on school number seven. He is an outdoorsman. He has a watch that reads altitude. Now we count every meter and foot we climb on our painful runs. One of our runs takes us nearly to eleven thousand feet.
We take Tsege on our trip to Debre Zeit. Cien's watch informs us we've dropped over two thousand feet since we left Addis Ababa one hour ago. It's warmer. At the end of our first day, I talk everyone into a late afternoon run. Sunshine and shadow are sharp and golden among the yellow hills of Debre Zeit in the afternoon. We spend an hour and half on the dusty trails, among haystacks and fallow grass, passing twelve year-old, eight year-old, five year-old shepherds with their sheep and cattle. They stare, only shouting once we've passed. Families wave from hundreds of meters away.
Tsege is wearing her windbreaker. After a few miles, she feels sick. The sun is still potent when you run along unsheltered hillsides. These athletes are used to starting their runs before the sun has risen. Back at the hotel, there's no water. We have to wash up out of buckets.
We return from Debre Zeit. Tomorrow marks the beginning of the hard work for the volunteers. It's Stephanie's last week, and she'll be putting together art festival days in Mercato, and painting a mural. Cien is off to Chancho, where he begins clearing the land for the next school. Jamie attends the team's first track meet of the season, and launches into meetings with the staff and the team girls about the year's program planning.
Tsege is still around. She'll stay with us for a while longer, eat with us. She'll attend our meetings. She'll forget, I hope, what it's like to be frightened all the time.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Travelogue 314 – January 15
Bohemia on a Hill
“Nature is a Haunted House, Art – a House that tries to be haunted.”
Emily Dickinson
Stephanie is in town. She is the head of our Art Aid program, a project that she founded to offer arts education to the children here. She comes every year to teach and to play. Stephanie is a painter. She paints all the time. I find her sitting on the guest house porch painting small images on playing cards. She wants to attend an art opening at the well-known Asni Art Gallery in Addis.
I haven't heard mention of the Asni Gallery in a while. In fact, a few years ago, it was closed. I was informed of this by irate Brits whom I had sent in fruitless search of the place. The gallery had built a reputation as the home to Ethiopia's artistic promise.
I'm tired, and so I'm resistant to the idea. Events in Ethiopia have so rarely lived up to promotion or have justified the arduous transportation involved. But I allow myself to be convinced by Stephanie and Menna, who are both keen to see the show.
I can't remember if the current Asni is the old Asni, whether it occupies the same location as it once did. I'm not even sure I ever visited its old incarnation. But I can tell you that the site is well worth visiting now, well worth the one-birr entrance fee. The site is arguably the only reason to go, but I won't insist on that point. There is a happy, accidental meeting of setting and whimsy and misfiring artifice that makes the place a delight.
First, there's the land. This is a grant from the government, a huge tract that occupies one of the foothills in the district of Faransae. Most of the land is surrendered to nature. In fact, you'll notice right away that the trees towering over you are not the usual eucalyptus. They form a collection of what might just be indigenous flora! I don't know enough to say definitively, but it's sobering to find oneself faced with even the specter of what might have been. I stare into the woods behind the art camp with a brief sense of awe, as the day's last sun filters through the humble leaves and fir needles.
Then there's the house. This house is a marvel. I have to assume that it's the original manor built in someone's fit of colonial ardor, a two-story pleasure palace with a ground-floor porch and second-floor balconies around the whole perimeter. The roof is peaked corrugated iron, painted green. You'll find similar structures all around Addis, but not in this wonderful a state of dilapidation. The rooms are dark and hollow; the balconies are worn through to wafers of wood in places; the banisters zig-zag; the roof is falling in; the plaster on the walls is broken and reveals great patches of mud in places. No line is straight. I can't help thinking of Tim Burton, but so much more beautiful for being free of the burden of false lighting and idiot purpose.
The last element in this pastiche consists of the busy but unconvincing efforts of man. Everywhere are bits and scraps and piles of art. There are sculptures made of refuse, set here and there in the lawn: a train, a man playing sax. There are goat skins painted with child-like doodles hanging from the balcony of the house and stretched out in the grass. Along the bottom of several walls of the house are piles of sculptures made of old pottery, cast aside like trash. Above them are photos taped to the wall, most of some dreadlock artist grinning beside his work. Is this some sad, toppled memorial? Everywhere, kids have taken paint to the house, drawing quick caricatures and slogans in Amharic. As one walks around the house, one finds sketches on scrap paper on the ground. It's this haphazard, careless quality to the art that saves it from bathos, and that makes it a harmonious part of its environment. It's only the chaotic profusion of the art that is able to properly complement the grand and decadent setting.
There's a smaller building with a single room painted white where the same art is displayed museum-style, and the art can't maintain itself through ten minutes of attention. It stands as proof of the efficacy of the chaos outside. The artists have lit a fire in front of this building, and have initiated a drum circle around it. Does any artist ever understand his or her own source of authenticity?
I've mentioned before my feeling that Addis Ababa is a city occupying a cultural moment like the early 60s in America, in which conformity and eccentricity hold hands, in which idealism is in an infant state, in which politics is only secondarily about civil rights, in which the nation finds itself trying to manage an awkwardly unbalanced economic boom – making for desperate shanty towns in the shadow of ubiquitous new construction. The art camp feels like another proof of my theory, the sort of painfully self-conscious bohemian 'scene' that popped up in pockets of New York or London, generating far more real value with their whimsy than their productions. Years from now we might display their pieces, more for nostalgia than for aesthetic appreciation.
Bohemia on a Hill
“Nature is a Haunted House, Art – a House that tries to be haunted.”
Emily Dickinson
Stephanie is in town. She is the head of our Art Aid program, a project that she founded to offer arts education to the children here. She comes every year to teach and to play. Stephanie is a painter. She paints all the time. I find her sitting on the guest house porch painting small images on playing cards. She wants to attend an art opening at the well-known Asni Art Gallery in Addis.
I haven't heard mention of the Asni Gallery in a while. In fact, a few years ago, it was closed. I was informed of this by irate Brits whom I had sent in fruitless search of the place. The gallery had built a reputation as the home to Ethiopia's artistic promise.
I'm tired, and so I'm resistant to the idea. Events in Ethiopia have so rarely lived up to promotion or have justified the arduous transportation involved. But I allow myself to be convinced by Stephanie and Menna, who are both keen to see the show.
I can't remember if the current Asni is the old Asni, whether it occupies the same location as it once did. I'm not even sure I ever visited its old incarnation. But I can tell you that the site is well worth visiting now, well worth the one-birr entrance fee. The site is arguably the only reason to go, but I won't insist on that point. There is a happy, accidental meeting of setting and whimsy and misfiring artifice that makes the place a delight.
First, there's the land. This is a grant from the government, a huge tract that occupies one of the foothills in the district of Faransae. Most of the land is surrendered to nature. In fact, you'll notice right away that the trees towering over you are not the usual eucalyptus. They form a collection of what might just be indigenous flora! I don't know enough to say definitively, but it's sobering to find oneself faced with even the specter of what might have been. I stare into the woods behind the art camp with a brief sense of awe, as the day's last sun filters through the humble leaves and fir needles.
Then there's the house. This house is a marvel. I have to assume that it's the original manor built in someone's fit of colonial ardor, a two-story pleasure palace with a ground-floor porch and second-floor balconies around the whole perimeter. The roof is peaked corrugated iron, painted green. You'll find similar structures all around Addis, but not in this wonderful a state of dilapidation. The rooms are dark and hollow; the balconies are worn through to wafers of wood in places; the banisters zig-zag; the roof is falling in; the plaster on the walls is broken and reveals great patches of mud in places. No line is straight. I can't help thinking of Tim Burton, but so much more beautiful for being free of the burden of false lighting and idiot purpose.
The last element in this pastiche consists of the busy but unconvincing efforts of man. Everywhere are bits and scraps and piles of art. There are sculptures made of refuse, set here and there in the lawn: a train, a man playing sax. There are goat skins painted with child-like doodles hanging from the balcony of the house and stretched out in the grass. Along the bottom of several walls of the house are piles of sculptures made of old pottery, cast aside like trash. Above them are photos taped to the wall, most of some dreadlock artist grinning beside his work. Is this some sad, toppled memorial? Everywhere, kids have taken paint to the house, drawing quick caricatures and slogans in Amharic. As one walks around the house, one finds sketches on scrap paper on the ground. It's this haphazard, careless quality to the art that saves it from bathos, and that makes it a harmonious part of its environment. It's only the chaotic profusion of the art that is able to properly complement the grand and decadent setting.
There's a smaller building with a single room painted white where the same art is displayed museum-style, and the art can't maintain itself through ten minutes of attention. It stands as proof of the efficacy of the chaos outside. The artists have lit a fire in front of this building, and have initiated a drum circle around it. Does any artist ever understand his or her own source of authenticity?
I've mentioned before my feeling that Addis Ababa is a city occupying a cultural moment like the early 60s in America, in which conformity and eccentricity hold hands, in which idealism is in an infant state, in which politics is only secondarily about civil rights, in which the nation finds itself trying to manage an awkwardly unbalanced economic boom – making for desperate shanty towns in the shadow of ubiquitous new construction. The art camp feels like another proof of my theory, the sort of painfully self-conscious bohemian 'scene' that popped up in pockets of New York or London, generating far more real value with their whimsy than their productions. Years from now we might display their pieces, more for nostalgia than for aesthetic appreciation.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Travelogue 313 – January 7
A Warm Areke for Christmas
It's been a busy season. We've just returned from Debre Zeit, where Chris dressed up as Santa for the children at our school and passed out candies, where we strolled around the market smelling spices, where we sat by one of the lakes identifying birds, where we took long runs at dawn into the hills, startling the young people who were walking into town for school. All in all, a productive trip.
But now it's time to relax. The holidays are upon us. Selam has invited us over for Ethiopian Christmas. Selam is a great host, so I encourage all the foundation guests in town to accept.
Selam's house is in Piassa, among a group of woodworkers' shops and off the road. She has three rooms. The salon is the roomiest. It needs to be because Selam's house is the social center of the neighborhood. There are always people in and out, relatives and neighbors. And as near as I can tell, it serves as the next best thing to an office for the foundation when I'm out of the country.
The room reflects a rise in the world for Selam. She has a Christmas tree now, and a nice one. It stands four feet or so. It has ornaments. It's fitted with those tiny clusters of those flashing filament lights like tiny fireflies perched among the plastic needles. Underneath, there are a good number of gifts, no doubt mostly for her daughter, Ami.
Ami is five year-old now. I've known this little girl since she was a baby. Now she says, “I am fine, thank you. And you?” and she wants to be lifted up and swung around. She hefts Menna's bag over her shoulder and walks by like a big girl. She has a smile that is meltdown cute. She is dressed in traditional garb for the holiday.
Cynical as I am about holidays, I always forget how pleasant they can be if done right. Selam's house is perfect. We sit in a large circle on her plush sofas, and we joke and chat. We eat, and we enjoy the smell of incense and of coffee being roasted. Waiting for the coffee, we indulge in a little 'areke'. Areke is actually a home-distilled Ethiopian liquor, not unlike slivovice in its clear hue and paint-thinning qualities. But 'areke' is a term employed quite generally to include other liquors in the cabinet, including the very popular ouzo. Tonight, we're sipping lemon-flavored ouzo. It's tasty, and it goes a long way toward loosening up the conversation.
There are a few crazy old ladies in the neighborhood who like to stop by Selam's. One is very friendly and voluble. She enters with loud greetings. She remembers me well, and she bows an extravagant hello. She stays long enough to make some grand and hilarious pronouncements about absent neighbors, about life, about foreigners; she stays long enough to down a full cup of areke, and she's gone with a flourish. The other nutty old lady just stands befuddled at the threshold until she's shooed away.
If the house is warm and welcoming, it's because Selam is the same. She has a ready smile, almost as cute as her daughter's. (Selam asks who's prettier, her or her daughter. That's a delicate position to be put in.) Selam has been foundation staff for several years now, one of a small core of regulars. Her usual contribution to staff meetings is humor. She always has a comment, and she is fun to tease. But her comments are not all jokes. She has a canny understanding of things, a quality she shares with our friend-turned-terrorist Saba. I have a lot of respect for Selam, and appreciate how she has grown since she started working for us. Now she occupies a management position for us, overseeing two schools. She will go back to school again herself, to obtain her teaching certification. We're proud of her.
Coffee's ready. Outside the sun is getting ready to set. The hours have flown by. Maybe this is Selam's greatest talent, to summon an hospitable peace into an ordinary afternoon, to make it warm as areke in the belly.
A Warm Areke for Christmas
It's been a busy season. We've just returned from Debre Zeit, where Chris dressed up as Santa for the children at our school and passed out candies, where we strolled around the market smelling spices, where we sat by one of the lakes identifying birds, where we took long runs at dawn into the hills, startling the young people who were walking into town for school. All in all, a productive trip.
But now it's time to relax. The holidays are upon us. Selam has invited us over for Ethiopian Christmas. Selam is a great host, so I encourage all the foundation guests in town to accept.
Selam's house is in Piassa, among a group of woodworkers' shops and off the road. She has three rooms. The salon is the roomiest. It needs to be because Selam's house is the social center of the neighborhood. There are always people in and out, relatives and neighbors. And as near as I can tell, it serves as the next best thing to an office for the foundation when I'm out of the country.
The room reflects a rise in the world for Selam. She has a Christmas tree now, and a nice one. It stands four feet or so. It has ornaments. It's fitted with those tiny clusters of those flashing filament lights like tiny fireflies perched among the plastic needles. Underneath, there are a good number of gifts, no doubt mostly for her daughter, Ami.
Ami is five year-old now. I've known this little girl since she was a baby. Now she says, “I am fine, thank you. And you?” and she wants to be lifted up and swung around. She hefts Menna's bag over her shoulder and walks by like a big girl. She has a smile that is meltdown cute. She is dressed in traditional garb for the holiday.
Cynical as I am about holidays, I always forget how pleasant they can be if done right. Selam's house is perfect. We sit in a large circle on her plush sofas, and we joke and chat. We eat, and we enjoy the smell of incense and of coffee being roasted. Waiting for the coffee, we indulge in a little 'areke'. Areke is actually a home-distilled Ethiopian liquor, not unlike slivovice in its clear hue and paint-thinning qualities. But 'areke' is a term employed quite generally to include other liquors in the cabinet, including the very popular ouzo. Tonight, we're sipping lemon-flavored ouzo. It's tasty, and it goes a long way toward loosening up the conversation.
There are a few crazy old ladies in the neighborhood who like to stop by Selam's. One is very friendly and voluble. She enters with loud greetings. She remembers me well, and she bows an extravagant hello. She stays long enough to make some grand and hilarious pronouncements about absent neighbors, about life, about foreigners; she stays long enough to down a full cup of areke, and she's gone with a flourish. The other nutty old lady just stands befuddled at the threshold until she's shooed away.
If the house is warm and welcoming, it's because Selam is the same. She has a ready smile, almost as cute as her daughter's. (Selam asks who's prettier, her or her daughter. That's a delicate position to be put in.) Selam has been foundation staff for several years now, one of a small core of regulars. Her usual contribution to staff meetings is humor. She always has a comment, and she is fun to tease. But her comments are not all jokes. She has a canny understanding of things, a quality she shares with our friend-turned-terrorist Saba. I have a lot of respect for Selam, and appreciate how she has grown since she started working for us. Now she occupies a management position for us, overseeing two schools. She will go back to school again herself, to obtain her teaching certification. We're proud of her.
Coffee's ready. Outside the sun is getting ready to set. The hours have flown by. Maybe this is Selam's greatest talent, to summon an hospitable peace into an ordinary afternoon, to make it warm as areke in the belly.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Travelogue 312 – January 4
The Fellowship of Pain
I'm still feeling the altitude when I run. Our course is on top of the mountains above Addis, and the altitude is somewhere around 9,000 feet. That translates into shortage of breath, especially when heading uphill, and into aching muscles crying out for oxygen. The first time I ran, I had to stop frequently, but today, I'm able to keep going.
I'm surrounded by members of Team Tesfa. There are some fifty runners associated with the team right now, at various levels of commitment and consistency. The team was established over two years ago, when I was getting to know the Ethiopian running community. We established the team around four teenage girls who were in desperate straits. They are still with us. Two of them are running with me today.
We meet at 6am, and we take a taxi up to Kusquam, a church about halfway up the steep slope of Entoto Mountain. From there the run begins, running for a mile or two up, up, and up the mountainside, running past the hundreds of women in rags who walk up the mountain to collect wood that they carry on their backs back down the mountain, sturdy women from the south who laugh and shout at us. In no way do they seem as miserable as their daily labor would suggest that they must be.
I'm flattering myself when I say I'm 'running' up the mountain; I'd say it's a jog, or even a shuffle. The team members are unwaveringly patient and encouraging as I gasp for scarce oxygen and sweat in the cool morning air.
At the top of Entoto, just as the road crests and levels off, we pass Entoto Maryam, Menelik's first church in Addis Ababa, and behind it, his mountain outpost palace, built while the city was just a glimmer in the emperor's eye. It was left to his wife, Taitu, to see the wisdom of moving off the mountaintop and tapping the hot springs below.
Not only do I clear the hilltop, but I carry on toward greater slopes without stopping. And yes, there are greater heights. I wasn't aware of that before this run. When we get to the fork in the road, past a row of humble houses, past the spot where my starstruck athletes pointed at an SUV and whispered that it was Derartu's (a famous Ethiopian female marathoner's), we take a right instead of the left with which I'm already familiar. I've been intrigued with this turnoff for a while, the wide dirt road that gently rises beyond. Ijigu says it heads to faraway Kotebe. It looks so benign, I'd like to clock a few miles along its span. This is when I discover that Entoto is little brother to a few other peaks. One is home to a high and lonely radio tower.
Among the mountaintops, it's easy to forget that you're within running range of a world capital. The radio tower rises above a forest. Beyond is a farmhouse among its fields. We'll go on to pass the occasional thatch-roofed hut. The eucalyptus woods are thick, but they bow and part sometimes to reveal a view of the valleys to the north, among mysterious hills that roll on for hundreds of kilometers. It's up that way that we'll be building school number seven in a month or so.
Meseret and Amsal run on either side of me. These are two of the original girls at the core of the team. They lope along gracefully beside me, clearly in their element while running. Meseret follows the grassy fringe alongside the rocky and rutted road we're following. She is all poise, the line of her back describing energy and strength, while mine bows forward in weary effort. If I listen past my painful breathing, I hear theirs, even and comfortable. Or I hear the occasional cough to clear the perpetually afflicted Ethiopian lungs.
There is nothing like the bond forged this way. I may be their boss or their benefactor, but running together I'm sharing one of their greatest joys in life, and one of mine. This isn't the same as sharing ice cream or a good movie. It's grueling work with dubious dividends – remembering that they are not in it to balance their cholesterol levels; they are running to win races and make dreams come true. It's so simple, so elementary, running, and so elegant. We point our feet toward the mountains, and we go. We're a team.
The Fellowship of Pain
I'm still feeling the altitude when I run. Our course is on top of the mountains above Addis, and the altitude is somewhere around 9,000 feet. That translates into shortage of breath, especially when heading uphill, and into aching muscles crying out for oxygen. The first time I ran, I had to stop frequently, but today, I'm able to keep going.
I'm surrounded by members of Team Tesfa. There are some fifty runners associated with the team right now, at various levels of commitment and consistency. The team was established over two years ago, when I was getting to know the Ethiopian running community. We established the team around four teenage girls who were in desperate straits. They are still with us. Two of them are running with me today.
We meet at 6am, and we take a taxi up to Kusquam, a church about halfway up the steep slope of Entoto Mountain. From there the run begins, running for a mile or two up, up, and up the mountainside, running past the hundreds of women in rags who walk up the mountain to collect wood that they carry on their backs back down the mountain, sturdy women from the south who laugh and shout at us. In no way do they seem as miserable as their daily labor would suggest that they must be.
I'm flattering myself when I say I'm 'running' up the mountain; I'd say it's a jog, or even a shuffle. The team members are unwaveringly patient and encouraging as I gasp for scarce oxygen and sweat in the cool morning air.
At the top of Entoto, just as the road crests and levels off, we pass Entoto Maryam, Menelik's first church in Addis Ababa, and behind it, his mountain outpost palace, built while the city was just a glimmer in the emperor's eye. It was left to his wife, Taitu, to see the wisdom of moving off the mountaintop and tapping the hot springs below.
Not only do I clear the hilltop, but I carry on toward greater slopes without stopping. And yes, there are greater heights. I wasn't aware of that before this run. When we get to the fork in the road, past a row of humble houses, past the spot where my starstruck athletes pointed at an SUV and whispered that it was Derartu's (a famous Ethiopian female marathoner's), we take a right instead of the left with which I'm already familiar. I've been intrigued with this turnoff for a while, the wide dirt road that gently rises beyond. Ijigu says it heads to faraway Kotebe. It looks so benign, I'd like to clock a few miles along its span. This is when I discover that Entoto is little brother to a few other peaks. One is home to a high and lonely radio tower.
Among the mountaintops, it's easy to forget that you're within running range of a world capital. The radio tower rises above a forest. Beyond is a farmhouse among its fields. We'll go on to pass the occasional thatch-roofed hut. The eucalyptus woods are thick, but they bow and part sometimes to reveal a view of the valleys to the north, among mysterious hills that roll on for hundreds of kilometers. It's up that way that we'll be building school number seven in a month or so.
Meseret and Amsal run on either side of me. These are two of the original girls at the core of the team. They lope along gracefully beside me, clearly in their element while running. Meseret follows the grassy fringe alongside the rocky and rutted road we're following. She is all poise, the line of her back describing energy and strength, while mine bows forward in weary effort. If I listen past my painful breathing, I hear theirs, even and comfortable. Or I hear the occasional cough to clear the perpetually afflicted Ethiopian lungs.
There is nothing like the bond forged this way. I may be their boss or their benefactor, but running together I'm sharing one of their greatest joys in life, and one of mine. This isn't the same as sharing ice cream or a good movie. It's grueling work with dubious dividends – remembering that they are not in it to balance their cholesterol levels; they are running to win races and make dreams come true. It's so simple, so elementary, running, and so elegant. We point our feet toward the mountains, and we go. We're a team.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Travelogue 311 – December 31
Last of the Oh's
It's the last day of the year and my second day in Ethiopia. Yesterday I adhered to a mild schedule, keeping appointments I could handle on very little sleep. I had arrived at Addis Ababa's Bole airport at 4 am.
Yesterday's joy was visiting our newest school, the one in the Mercato district of the city. This has been a project long in the dreaming and longer in the manifestation. Mercato, you might be surprised to find out, is the market district of the capital city, supposedly home to the biggest market in Africa. But what is fact is the pervasive poverty and squalor. It's a neighborhood that is hard on its children, crowded and dangerous, and lacking in resources to support the needs of the young. It's an old district, densely packed with mud shacks and market stalls. Finding space for a school was a laborious process.
The school is tucked away among a tight concentration of dirt roads and alleys. On Mondays, you have to squeeze and cough your way among throngs of trucks bringing wares to the markets. Inside the school compound, the courtyard is a peaceful well of brick and concrete. The children are arranged in rows of tiny chairs in the sun. The small building's porch is festooned with ribbons. Once we have arrived the program begins. That includes songs and dancing. The guests get to pass out candy to the children. The children are shy, quiet, almost sullen. Part of that is the culture; tradition dictates that children are respectful. Poor families are strongly traditional. The other part of their subdued behavior I surmise is malnutrition. Many are lethargic from being underfed.
Ethiopia has already asserted its farcical nature. Just today, the hot water and my stove have died. Staff that is supposed to escort me on my first run is late, and I leave without some of them. The taxi driver is pulled over for talking on his mobile, and we sit for twenty minutes while he confers with the cop. And Selam doesn't show up with the money I needed changed from dollars to birr, so I'm broke.
But the day moves forward and I'm smiling. We do make it up Entoto mountain at dawn, and I get a grueling run up above the city. We can see much of Addis Ababa from up there. Fog is creeping along the valleys, obscuring some neighborhoods, but most of the town stands peacefully exposed to our view, hardly seeming to add up to a major city.
We all stand on a mountain of sorts today. It's the last day of the year, and if it's not the end of a decade, it's the last of the oh's. It's been an exciting set of zeros. The world will never be the same, after our servitude to Bush and/or Bin Laden. And I've spent a majority of the aughts in thrall to my own strange mission, Leeza's mission. Here I am again in Ethiopia, even as the aughts dissolve.
It's on to the teens. Or back to the teens. One never escapes them, does one? Well, maybe I'll live long enough to see the Roaring 20s.
Last of the Oh's
It's the last day of the year and my second day in Ethiopia. Yesterday I adhered to a mild schedule, keeping appointments I could handle on very little sleep. I had arrived at Addis Ababa's Bole airport at 4 am.
Yesterday's joy was visiting our newest school, the one in the Mercato district of the city. This has been a project long in the dreaming and longer in the manifestation. Mercato, you might be surprised to find out, is the market district of the capital city, supposedly home to the biggest market in Africa. But what is fact is the pervasive poverty and squalor. It's a neighborhood that is hard on its children, crowded and dangerous, and lacking in resources to support the needs of the young. It's an old district, densely packed with mud shacks and market stalls. Finding space for a school was a laborious process.
The school is tucked away among a tight concentration of dirt roads and alleys. On Mondays, you have to squeeze and cough your way among throngs of trucks bringing wares to the markets. Inside the school compound, the courtyard is a peaceful well of brick and concrete. The children are arranged in rows of tiny chairs in the sun. The small building's porch is festooned with ribbons. Once we have arrived the program begins. That includes songs and dancing. The guests get to pass out candy to the children. The children are shy, quiet, almost sullen. Part of that is the culture; tradition dictates that children are respectful. Poor families are strongly traditional. The other part of their subdued behavior I surmise is malnutrition. Many are lethargic from being underfed.
Ethiopia has already asserted its farcical nature. Just today, the hot water and my stove have died. Staff that is supposed to escort me on my first run is late, and I leave without some of them. The taxi driver is pulled over for talking on his mobile, and we sit for twenty minutes while he confers with the cop. And Selam doesn't show up with the money I needed changed from dollars to birr, so I'm broke.
But the day moves forward and I'm smiling. We do make it up Entoto mountain at dawn, and I get a grueling run up above the city. We can see much of Addis Ababa from up there. Fog is creeping along the valleys, obscuring some neighborhoods, but most of the town stands peacefully exposed to our view, hardly seeming to add up to a major city.
We all stand on a mountain of sorts today. It's the last day of the year, and if it's not the end of a decade, it's the last of the oh's. It's been an exciting set of zeros. The world will never be the same, after our servitude to Bush and/or Bin Laden. And I've spent a majority of the aughts in thrall to my own strange mission, Leeza's mission. Here I am again in Ethiopia, even as the aughts dissolve.
It's on to the teens. Or back to the teens. One never escapes them, does one? Well, maybe I'll live long enough to see the Roaring 20s.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Travelogue 310 – December 28
Footie
There are two things I wanted from England right away: football and bitter. I arrive in England on Boxing Day. That's an ambiguous holiday. Boxing Day: what does it signify? Since it's the day after Christmas, I have half-thought it was the day when Brits put their gifts back in the boxes they came in. It would be properly British to set aside a day for putting their gifts in order. But in fact it seems to have been a day set aside for the servants. Send them home to their families, give them gifts and wish them well. Good for morale and all that.
I've arrived in Bath in late afternoon. Pey and her family have plans to visit Giles's parents, so I think I will be arriving to an empty house. I decide to stop by the old Ram for a taste of Britain. The only bitter they have is called 'Rolicking Rudolph' or something like that, unsuitably fey-sounding, but a bitter is a bitter. And it just so happens that a football match is just starting up: Liverpool meets Wolverhampton. Groups of middle-aged men start streaming in at game-time. Also entering, a young couple with an amusing bull terrier that enjoys stretching out in extravagant sleeping poses and uttering great sighs. Also entering, an old man with a mop top who continues talking to the bartender even when the bartender has moved on.
It might be a sign of my advancing age, but I watch more sports now than I could ever have imagined as a youth. I have entertained myself with American football all autumn, though really I have serious reservations about the sport. Half of the draw is the Favre factor, Brett having joined the Vikings and boosted them into high ratings and high hopes.
Now that I'm in transition, becoming an eastern hemisphere man for half a year, my attention swings back toward European football. My level of knowledge about the sport has really decayed, even though it was never much. Giles is appalled. I can't name one player on Tottenham's team.
It turns out everyone has been worried because of the terrorist who popped up in Detroit on Christmas Day, the same day I traveled. He wasn't the most impressive terrorist, it would seem, managing only to seriously burn himself. But Pey and family came home early, and I had a number of nervous emails to answer.
One travel corner rounded, today has turned out to be the most relaxing day in months. It started with a shock, when I saw the clock as I awoke. It was 1pm! And this wasn't a matter of lazy half-wakings and rolling over. I was out cold all night. I had a leisurely breakfast, and a few hours later I was out for a long run.
You can't stroll around the lovely town of Bath without stumbling upon the Avon River. Some two hundred meters away from the back of the train station, you'll see the old Kennet and Avon Canal breaking away from the river, turning off under a small stone archway. Beside the canal runs a dirt towpath, which is perfect for long walks and long runs. I'm restless after all the sleep, so I'm eager to log some real distance.
While the canal travels through Bath, you pass a few locks; you pass under cute little bridges; you dodge winter puddles and nettles, and still your legs are a mess before long, Passing under large roads, the path cleaves to a narrow ledge between the wall of the overhanging arch and the water. It gets quite dark in there, and you must take care for your ankles.
On the left, across the valley, you'll see Salisbury Hill. Eventually, you leave Bath proper and the canal veers toward the south. You enter a narrow, rural valley. The sky, already winter-contracted, seems to dim and concentrate even further. There's only the train track, the river, and you. The puddles become icy. The sun weakens. It's four o'clock, and the long solstice sunset begins. You should turn around, but the air is damp and fresh and invigorating. And there is the anticipation about what may lie around the next bend in the canal underneath the stoic hills.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Travelogue 309 – December 17
Stranded
I've had a run of bad luck this week. If I were to describe my bad luck with a color and with a scent, I would say color it like the glacier in my sinuses. I wish them all well in Copenhagen, but climate change has had zero impact on this particular glacier. It congeals at night until my head is about as dense as a bowling ball. In the morning, there's a spring thaw and I'm toppling china and books and bottles looking for tissue paper. The head cold is long gone; I'm working at full capacity at school, computer, and gym. But the sinus passages are completely blocked. Waking in the morning is like coming to consciousness after a night in a sulfurous marsh.
Color it white, but not the white of mucus. Make it crystalline white and odorless as a puff of breath on a winter morning. There's no sound to it. The block is hushed in the Arctic suspense. There is only a click. I turn the key again, but there's only a click. Let a big, vaporless sigh and admit you're stranded.
Color it white as the bars at the bottom of my computer screen that indicate connection. They should be green. I've devoted the day to my final push at grading. It sounds like someone's climbing up the side of the house. I don't see anything out the window. Nothing except a white car parked in front, its tailpipe steaming. There's a flicker inside one of the car windows. I walk around the house, checking windows. The car is in motion. Now it's in back. An arm swings out a partially lowered window, and in the hand is a camera. Click. He moves on. Next door, there's a cable guy fooling with black clusters of cable hanging from the roof. He says 'sir' with an oily smile. Things have gotten too weird at home, and I can't get my work done. I pack up and walk for the bus.
Life at the gym is good. Leg and lung are strong. I'm happy cultivating my new crush on Rachael Ray. I try to imagine her voice. The TVs are on mute, and I've never heard of her before I started at the gym. I log my hour on the elliptical. Rachael Ray says, “Let's consider the ellipse, Nature's circle. It took humankind to invent the circle. Nature is satisfied with the ellipse. Consider honorable Johannes Kepler, natural philosopher with a mind in Nature's imprint. Kepler understood that, as much as man wants constants, Nature abhors them. The grooves of planets will be stretched into gentle curves, and then wrapped around tight, accelerated turns, all dictated by the weakest but most unforgiving of the four forces governing this peculiar universe.”
Hallelujah, Rachael! I know imperfect shapes. I confront them every day – in the mirror, at work, and in my dreams. Can you see me now, describing seven-thousand of them with my feet? The body won't make circles, no matter what DaVinci or the whirling dervishes might imagine. At its most precise, it might make ellipses, just like the heavenly bodies from which we sprung. The term ellipse comes to us from Greek, from a word that means 'falling short'. That's what we do, Rachael, we fall short.
So today I sit stranded at a Caribou Coffee downtown, working my day into an imperfect shape. Determined to be cheerful, I take the bus downtown to do errands. I walk up and down Nicollet Mall, stopping here and there, carrying heavy bags. I go to the gym, and count off thousands of ellipses. Now, here I am. I sit near the window of the skyway, watching buses pass. Up above the buildings shine lights at each other in their windows, and display glowing reflections of each other. The sun is sinking quickly. I'm thinking the buildings want to tell us something with their straight lines and pure colors, but it will be night before we figure it out.
I have to be downtown again in the evening. I should go home first, but I don't think I can move again. I think I'll have to surrender peacefully to the fall of night right here. I'm discovering some virtue to sitting quietly while the world travels its elliptical course.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Travelogue 308 – December 6
Inside
Life retreats inside. I'm even running inside now, on most days of the week. I've traded the winding trail along the Mississippi River for the static view of Nicollet Mall outside the Y's big picture windows. I've traded the feel of the road under my feet for the unvarying support of the elliptical. Sad: it's a concession to age. 'Low-impact' was not in my vocabulary even five years ago. So I sweat and I watch the people walk by in heavy coats.
About a week ago, temperatures fell below freezing, and they haven't approached the thaw mark since. Just that quickly, the lungs and sinuses are robbed of moisture. The world is crackling dry.
So I run in one place, partaking of a single view. I breathe the uniformly humid air. My thoughts resolve into similarly static patterns. The word 'thoughts' falsely implies thinking. It's not really thinking. These 'thoughts' are default subjects and images. One entertains them with the same diffuse intensity as television. At most, they evoke nostalgia or the kind of momentary sadness that poses as profound feeling. Or one chews on notions that are like old gum, previously chewed and flavorless.
I have a slight cold, and the closed, stuffy air in my head seems to mirror the claustrophobic environment of the gym. There's a piquancy to the first winter head cold, like a seasonal aroma that awakens a fond memory, a feeling that feeds the sense that I'm having deep thoughts while I'm working on the elliptical. What mysterious brain chemical corresponds to nostalgia? One stands on a Minnesota hillock and feels as though one has surmounted Everest.
My banal thoughts carry on a dialogue with the three TVs mounted above the picture windows of the gym. The sad truth is, I can't resist watching. The only thing more powerful than my contempt for TV is my powerlessness to turn away from one. I always seem to come to the gym when Dr. Oz is on. Everyone applauds formerly obese people as they appear from the wings and stand next to images of themselves at full weight. Meanwhile, the mind stops at a few favorite stations in my childhood. It flits among them, and among heartaches. It flows along well-worn grooves toward aspirations once vital, now desiccated. The pain on the exercise machine suggests all sorts of past aches, while the mind strives after dreams of glory to compensate. On another TV screen, talking heads conduct one more discussion about Afghanistan – a place that seems to serve as a stand-in for all that is frightening in the unconscious among a variety of conquering nations in history. “Into the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred.” (Written about the Crimea, I realize, which exists in no one's unconscious, except maybe some retired apparatchiks.)
And as I enter the chilly shadow of another approaching departure, my mind darkens with anxiety and mourning. There are sudden panics about what I've forgotten. Involuntarily I ponder death. I'm haunted by endings, thinking of apologies I should make, thanks I should offer, and other sorts of last wishes. I'm missing things before they're gone.
'You're going to miss us, aren't you?' my students ask, not with an interrogative rise at the end, but with a falling syllable of certainty. They brandish sweet smiles, conspicuous for their absence through most of the semester. They ask what classes I'm teaching next semester. I tell them none, and they seem sad. “Ethiopia?” they ask, almost with horror.
Yeah, there could be nowhere farther from the downtown gym than Ethiopia. I'm trying to conjure up images of it while I clock 150 steps per minute on the elliptical. The images are slow to upload. I've said good-bye to the place under my feet, and can't even imagine the destination. It's like being suspended above the earth on pedals that simulate a running motion. Maybe if I pedal faster.
Inside
Life retreats inside. I'm even running inside now, on most days of the week. I've traded the winding trail along the Mississippi River for the static view of Nicollet Mall outside the Y's big picture windows. I've traded the feel of the road under my feet for the unvarying support of the elliptical. Sad: it's a concession to age. 'Low-impact' was not in my vocabulary even five years ago. So I sweat and I watch the people walk by in heavy coats.
About a week ago, temperatures fell below freezing, and they haven't approached the thaw mark since. Just that quickly, the lungs and sinuses are robbed of moisture. The world is crackling dry.
So I run in one place, partaking of a single view. I breathe the uniformly humid air. My thoughts resolve into similarly static patterns. The word 'thoughts' falsely implies thinking. It's not really thinking. These 'thoughts' are default subjects and images. One entertains them with the same diffuse intensity as television. At most, they evoke nostalgia or the kind of momentary sadness that poses as profound feeling. Or one chews on notions that are like old gum, previously chewed and flavorless.
I have a slight cold, and the closed, stuffy air in my head seems to mirror the claustrophobic environment of the gym. There's a piquancy to the first winter head cold, like a seasonal aroma that awakens a fond memory, a feeling that feeds the sense that I'm having deep thoughts while I'm working on the elliptical. What mysterious brain chemical corresponds to nostalgia? One stands on a Minnesota hillock and feels as though one has surmounted Everest.
My banal thoughts carry on a dialogue with the three TVs mounted above the picture windows of the gym. The sad truth is, I can't resist watching. The only thing more powerful than my contempt for TV is my powerlessness to turn away from one. I always seem to come to the gym when Dr. Oz is on. Everyone applauds formerly obese people as they appear from the wings and stand next to images of themselves at full weight. Meanwhile, the mind stops at a few favorite stations in my childhood. It flits among them, and among heartaches. It flows along well-worn grooves toward aspirations once vital, now desiccated. The pain on the exercise machine suggests all sorts of past aches, while the mind strives after dreams of glory to compensate. On another TV screen, talking heads conduct one more discussion about Afghanistan – a place that seems to serve as a stand-in for all that is frightening in the unconscious among a variety of conquering nations in history. “Into the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred.” (Written about the Crimea, I realize, which exists in no one's unconscious, except maybe some retired apparatchiks.)
And as I enter the chilly shadow of another approaching departure, my mind darkens with anxiety and mourning. There are sudden panics about what I've forgotten. Involuntarily I ponder death. I'm haunted by endings, thinking of apologies I should make, thanks I should offer, and other sorts of last wishes. I'm missing things before they're gone.
'You're going to miss us, aren't you?' my students ask, not with an interrogative rise at the end, but with a falling syllable of certainty. They brandish sweet smiles, conspicuous for their absence through most of the semester. They ask what classes I'm teaching next semester. I tell them none, and they seem sad. “Ethiopia?” they ask, almost with horror.
Yeah, there could be nowhere farther from the downtown gym than Ethiopia. I'm trying to conjure up images of it while I clock 150 steps per minute on the elliptical. The images are slow to upload. I've said good-bye to the place under my feet, and can't even imagine the destination. It's like being suspended above the earth on pedals that simulate a running motion. Maybe if I pedal faster.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Travelogue 307 – November 24
Blue Fog
It's feeling like autumn today. There's a chilly fog suspended over the Twin Cities. I'm driving home from one of my colleges. I'm driving south on 94. The car is turned toward downtown, but there is nothing to see but a heavy grey sky, pushing the boundaries of the vacuous heavens down, trespassing into the realm of soil. There's no city today.
Fall wants to claim a title to sadness. 'I am the blue season. I approach close to the skin. I cloak the light and make humans turn on lights.' The highway is a trail of red bulbs one way and white the other. Autumn is a sallow, middle-aged man. His eyes are sometimes mocking, sometimes shot with elusive wisdom.
My mood resonates with Autumn's. I'm fresh out of an afternoon class in which I chewed out a student that didn't deserve it. The true cause of my ire was some bad news in the morning, mixing dangerously with late-semester fatigue. The student is actually one of my favorites – isn't that always the way? But he's a smart aleck and his timing of an innocent comment was unconsciously bad. I overreacted.
There are no excuses for a teacher. Responsibility descends toward the center with a kind of moral centripetal force. One person stands up front; many sit in the seats. Don't be fooled by an errant sense of fair fights. They will band together, and that's their right. Saying that is not succumbing to the trend of academic consumerism – the mindless bromide that is current: 'I pay your tuition'. No, it's a bow to the oldest of traditions: responsibility devolves upon on the one capable of bearing it. That thought is loosely akin to, 'Responsibility devolves upon the one appointed to bear it,' though there is not always a strict correspondence.
I can say, 'there are no excuses for a teacher,' in several languages and in a variety of tones. The tone depends on the season. Spring is sensitive, easily bruised. Things should be different, that season says. Summer is rebellious. Summer feels cornered by statements like 'there are no excuses'. The season of hot tempers lashes out, thrusting away the feeling of guilt. Extenuating circumstances, and all that. Actions are just the final, inscrutable signs of a long string of irritants, the ultimate knots among endless threads. In high temperatures, moral absolutes relax and seem to melt away.
But fall is the season of the harvest. It's the time we reap what we sow. The sap in the trees is in retreat. Ice is on the march, lining everything with its sharp edges. Doors and windows are shut; one's world closes in. It's the season of resignation.
So I drive on through the fog, feeling miserable. Responsibility and misery are close cousins. When one lives with responsibility, one lives with misery. You can't keep one and push the other away. You have to sit together in silence in the same small Honda together, all the way home.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Travelogue 306 – November 19
The Sky is Falling
I had the opportunity to watch the end of the world the other night. This was the famous Mayan prophecy made good by CGI and friends. It was good fun while it lasted – watching skyscrapers being tossed about like so many beans, monitoring the slaughter of billions while bad guys plotted and good guys wrung their hands. Volcanoes blew and oceans swelled. All quite grand.
Before I even get home, my mood had begun to sink. The adrenaline high of unrelenting action gives way to the grim subtext of the plot. On the ride home, the city seems very fragile. I seem blessed with special sight: I foresee the lifespan of the city's buildings, from their concrete-dust beginnings to the wrecking ball – either the city's or Mother Nature's. And my supernatural gift extends beyond man's creations. Crossing the river, I see the mighty Mississipp's growth pains. I see the messy St. Anthony falls before it was shaped. Every boulder has arrived in its current resting place in a fit of violence, in a spray of pulverized stone.
Now I have trouble getting to sleep. I'm suspended in a solution three parts grief and five parts anxiety. The mind is racing. It's the perfect prelim to nightmares. So I turn to George Eliot as a tonic. She lives and writes safely on this side of Armageddon and far across the ocean from the Mayans. The lives of all her characters and contemporaries run their course without one tectonic shift or catastrophic meteor collision or polar shift.
And why does it come as a kind of revelation that entire generations have lived in peace? These days, most of us have severe doubts that we or our families will pass quietly into old age and the soul's timely oblivion. No, there will be brimstone. There will be tsunamis higher than Mt Everest. There will be unconditional war with sentient machines, or with aliens. Or perhaps something less dramatic, like the seven angels' trumpets and Jesus returned.
I doubt there's been a generation that didn't delight in stories of the end. But maybe the generations alive now have an edge in the proliferation of apocalyptic nightmares. Speaking of my own education, I was raised in a time when it was taken for granted that humankind had the power to obliterate civilization with its weapons. And I've had the privilege to live into the age when the sane among us admit that we have undermined the very climate of the planet that sustains us.
My generation has grown up being educated that the universe was born from a Big Bang, and will eventually fall back into that furnace again. There is no eternity. We've been educated in the violence of planetary origins, tectonic theory, and the rather gory origins of life – rising out of slime, proceeding through bloody Jurassic Park, and on into Darwin's fierce world of struggling species. Maybe this is the root of Christian resistance to science: with every layer of violence, with every degree of impersonal magnitude, the throne of a loving God becomes more remote.
But doesn't this litany of violence reveal a large fairly large gap – or series of gaps – in our education? We learn history only by its tumults: its wars, famines, and disasters are the signposts. But how do we illuminate with some proportion the millions of long lives lived without tumult? We teach about the cataclysms of geological time, but how do we make real and relevant and interesting the nearly inconceivable spans of years between cataclysms? How do we learn to appreciate the tedious, boring lives of countless Tyrannosaurus Rex who died from the weight of their years, and never encountered aliens, Mayans, or flaming comets? How do we teach peace?
Friday, November 13, 2009
Travelogue 305 – November 13
Far Sight and Mad Dogs
I won't tell you how the novel ends. But the climax sort of rhymes with this little passage: 'Atticus pushed his glasses to his forehead; they slipped down, and he dropped them in the street. In the silence, I heard them crack.'
The climax of the story happens on Halloween. It's a day like today, I imagine. It's just about warm enough to be an Alabama winter. It's gloomy out. A fine mist is falling. The bare trees stand patiently against the season, without solace.
It's the trees that put the lie to the stretch of strange weather. Most branches are bare. The leaves left are an anemic yellow. It makes for an odd effect. Suddenly, there is new depth to the landscape. One sees through the walls of trees and sees space. The weather lulls the perceiving mind into expecting the same sights and sounds. It feels like September … but there's Christmas music at the Caribou Coffee. But the sun is setting at five. But when I take this corner I see across the river, when I didn't used to. I am disoriented by sudden sight.
In the news today: “The alleged 9/11 mastermind and four other suspects will go on trial close to where the Twin Towers fell.”
I have to copy a quiz for class today, and I've left no time to do it at school. I'm in no mood for work. After a nine-mile run on Wednesday, a sniffle and a cough have crept into my sinuses. I'm sleepy and lethargic.
Down on Fourth Street, you'll find one of the only remaining small businesses in Dinkytown, a printing and copy house. The owner is almost always there, a greying man with a diffident smile. We engage in a lazy small-town conversation while he is copying my quizzes. A lazy and personable conversation is very welcome in the barren psychological space that is this University of Minnesota college town.
He asks about the weekend. He says his Saturday will be the Gophers game and a nap. The U's football team has a new stadium. I ask him if that has inspired the team to great heights. No, they're just hanging on to slim hopes for a bowl game. And what with all the legal issues…. Legal issues?
In the local news: ““Football player accused in assault of female student”, and “Gophers football staff member jailed on DWI charges.” Kids and their pranks.
So there's a mad dog approaching down the small town street. Everyone has retreated indoors, except Atticus. “Nothing is more deadly than a deserted, waiting street. The trees were still, the mockingbirds were silent.' Atticus stands alone with a rifle.
In an interesting twist, it seems that the Republicans would rather that the masterminds of the 9/11 attack did not stand trial. They're not even tempted by the prospect of a line of Arabs at the entrance to the gas chamber. Why? Because a certain bogeyman made a promise to shut Guantanamo. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell says bringing the suspects from Guantanamo into the US puts Americans "unnecessarily at risk"!
Mad dogs always trot straight forward, unconscious as zombies. Imagine two dogs who were enemies in life, trotting forward along the instinctual, invisible line, side by side, content in the righteousness of rabies, comforted by rage. Most of us rush indoors, and watch the dramas through the fog of our windows.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Travelogue 304 – November 8
Our Wonderful American Amateurs
Harper Lee published one book in her lifetime. It won a Pulitzer Prize, was a bestseller, and was voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a 1999 poll by the Library Journal. It happens that I'm having one of my classes read the book this semester. The bookstore had extra copies, I had to assign some fiction, and I was familiar with it; so I assigned it.
This class is at the downtown college, and I am one of a small minority of white people in the classroom on any given night. It didn't take long for me to develop concerns as I prepped for lessons around this novel. The language is 50s American South. I deliberated; I considered dropping the book. But it's in the syllabus by now.
Instead I initiate one of those class discussions the thought of which makes me cringe. Group discussions of racism: an idea so revolutionary it was trite within weeks of its first enactment. What can I do? The surprise of this detour is the authenticity of the discussion. There is little discomfort. And no, there is nothing new said under the sun, but it's a subject everyone in the room can relate to. Willis in the back is middle-aged. He can say with a smile, without rage, that racism is something he experiences everyday. He describes the lady in the elevator who lays a protective hand over her purse when he enters. Oddly, the only one with no stories is the Native American, Mike, who advertises with eagle feather tattoos.
'Hey, guys, Scout grew up in a different time. It wasn't Obama's America. People said negro and colored, and they didn't know any better.' They nod blandly. 'I think we can handle it,' says the 18 year-old with the perfect Afro. He says it with a wink and a sardonic smile. Nice: we did that without professional facilitation. Sing an ode to native wisdom.
Harper Lee had a few advantages in life. She grew up next to Truman Capote. Me, I grew up next to a chubby Argentinian boy who liked to push me around. And now that I'm thinking about it, he stole my basketball. Harper probably would have picked on me, as well. They say she was a tom-boy. And she was an avid reader. I love that combination. Those are the only two things I want to know about her childhood.
It wasn't until her late 20s that she decided to become a writer, volunteering for an all-American dose of deprivation in New York City. She published a few stories, and more importantly she forged a friendship with musician Michael Brown, who offered her a year's salary to produce a novel. Whatever lucky breaks she had had up to that moment, now she had to produce. And she hit her home run.
Apparently one best novel of the century was enough. Her only subsequent appearance in the limelight was to become Catherine Keener for a junket into Kansas with her friend Truman. 'Quadruple murder, Harper; it'll be a lark.'
Yesterday was the Tesfa 5K at Fort Snelling State Park. The gods smiled upon us. They did more than smile. They showered us with sunny blessings: sunny and 60°. I leapt on my bike in the morning, eager for the race. Everyone who showed up was in fine spirits. It's the fourth year we have staged this race, but we're still beginners in the road-run business. It's happy chaos for an hour, but somehow we get everyone registered and to the starting line on time. I recognize a number of faces among the runners from previous years and from previous Tesfa events. We exchange encouraging words. The race begins, and the so does the pain. Fellowship and pain; are these the incentives for sacrificing a beautiful Saturday morning?
What about the those over-sized clocks at the finishing line? They seem to move us. How can it matter? This isn't London 2012. Let's face it: I'm struggling to beat the first-place dog in the race. The guy in front of me has a good seventy pounds on me. His pace is a roll. If any effort can produce a greater ratio of suffering to insignificance on Destiny's sonar screen, I am hard-pressed to come up with it. Yet, all our eyes are locked onto those digital numbers as we approach the finish line. There's little more important in those final instants.
I cross the line, another of America's glorious amateurs. I note my time, slower than last year's time. We head back to the park's pavilion to collect our awards.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Travelogue 303 – November 5
Noise in the Machine
Machines make noises. We shouldn't take offense. My bike is making a clicking noise now, since I took it into the shop last week. I have new gears and a new chain, so it clicks when I pedal. I take that as a healthy noise, like the hum of a tuned-up auto.
My car is another story. Things have happened underneath that I don't dare investigate too closely. The muffler has checked out long ago. Everybody in the neighborhood knows that. In addition, a pipe down there seems to have seceded from the union and hangs on a thread, lodged between a few other mysterious greasy parts down there – between the distributor cap and the rear bearing support bushing, I would say if you asked. I would say that because the names are melodious. And besides all that, the rear brake is making a scraping sound, too, especially on a cold day.
But the old Honda put-puts with extraordinary vigor and confidence, considering that her entrails are hanging down between her tires. She must last me another six weeks. The car is actually Margaret's. I 'bought' it from her for a low sum, so that I have something to carry me to work this autumn. After Christmas, when I have boarded a plane for Ethiopia, the car will revert to family ownership.
She is white and compact, my Honda. Her rear bumper is sinking with time toward the road, proudly tilting the Obama bumper sticker toward the sky. My addition to the look is a faint set of red streaks on the front bumper, lifted from the side of a van that was occupying my parking space. The van belonged to a recalcitrant college daddy using Craig's lot behind his house. With a few little nudges, the Honda and I thought we just might fit, but the daddy changed his mind and ran out with his hand in the air. 'Are you blind?' he asked with sudden irritability. I said I was busy reading the 'No Parking' sign.
The radio in the car makes it own noises. There was a show on public radio yesterday about what it means to be conservative these days. One happy caller from Virginia says the new Republican governor has promised to do whatever is necessary to create jobs, including cutting taxes and improving transportation. Hmmm. Sounds like my good intentions to fix the muffler by adjusting the rear bearing support bushing and polishing the distributor cap. Our Republican governor in Minnesota will be moving on to his presidential bid next year. As far as I can tell, he seems to think budget caps will cure H1N1 and take us to Mars. There's something appealing about this brave new world, in which cause and effect are divorced. It was never a satisfying match.
Another caller was enraged. Wall Street is running rampant. Nothing is being done. Nothing! Rage is all the rage these days. Is the question being answered: what does it mean to be conservative? Does it relate to volume of protest, to abstract rage, or to the efficacy of tax cuts in the fight against the Taliban? Or is it a kind of four-year revel in the incidental setbacks of Obama's presidency? I'm not entirely sure.
Well, this is the life of itinerancy. Every fall I sleep in a different bed in a different room. I drive a different car to work, and harangue a new cohort of kids. Today, it's tailpipes; tomorrow, it's tax cuts. Yesterday, it's a new president; today it's rage in the parking lot. I don't know. You just have to lean over the engine and take your best guess.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Travelogue 302 – October 31
Tricks
I have a headache today. The day is partly cloudy and chilly. 'Partly cloudy' is enough to make one sing: October has been incredibly gloomy. It makes a person without a headache want to sing. A man with a headache takes a break from grading papers to try a coffee cure.
This is a headache of storms. Or is it a headache of arts? Last night I went to a film. The verdict was, great cast, skimpy story. It's 1961. An English teenager, unusually bright, is seduced by a romantic older man who takes her to Paris. Yes, that's about it. The actors give unlikely life to this scarecrow plot, so it is a pleasure to watch, but I can't help wanting more. My friend Rosanne (real name protected in deep code) disagrees. We have to discuss this over drinks.
Outside, the rain has returned. In the light from a street lamp, the shower is driven sideways by a strong wind. I'm on my bicycle tonight. I order another drink, hoping to wait out the shower. This is Uptown on a Friday night: the bar is getting crowded. They're a young set, and fashionable. Tonight fashion is diverted into costumes. Ladies in tin-foiled boxes are dancing. A clown in a boa is laughing too loudly. The bartender has a carnival strongman beard and wears red devil's horns.
Roseanne and I eventually reach a compromise on how to fix the film. She resists giving the seducer any more scenes. But we agree that the teenager needs to present a more compelling case for going back to school. I'm a teacher, and the character has me convinced by the movie's midway point that college is a waste of time. So finding out your lover is a schmuck doesn't lead me to think, 'time for a degree in English literature.'
Sheets of water glow in the street lamp's halo, shifting in waves near a horizontal plane, waves suggesting bedsheets in a gale. The sheets have to sparkle, like shards of water flying through light. Then those bedsheets will look just like rain in a street lamp. The party is gaining the momentum of a storm. By and large, these are university kids, and they have me no more convinced in the efficacy of higher education than the sullen maiden in the British film. Neither the storm inside nor the storm outside will slacken soon. I dress for the ride.
I've ridden only a block when a van darts from the curb into the road and right into the side of a passing taxi. It's so sudden and pointless, it could be comic. But the crunch of impact is drowned in the weather, and the event is dwarfed by a wet, black night. Another few seconds and I would have been sandwiched between the two. I pass by silently. A stunned college boy emerges from the offending vehicle. His van is full of stunned college students. He is directing his vacant stare toward the bashed-in side of the taxi.
The rain has turned into a wet snow, and that adds a random, swirling element to the motion of the bedsheets. The bedsheets are unraveling. By the fourth block or so, I'm soaked. The stream off my back tire has coated my backside with muddy grit. It's a cold sensation. I resign to it. The storm and the night merge and deepen. There is space and dimension, where earlier – before I got on my bike – there were only two dimensions of bad weather, a black and white pixillated screen. Now there is movement and stillness together, silence and muffled city sounds. I cross the river, suspended in the dense autumnal atmosphere over the water. There's no urgency; the season is generous.
The coffee cure isn't working today. Outside the streets are dry. I can cycle home among mild breezes and nurse my headache. I won't have to throw my drenched clothes into the bath tub. I'll be asleep before tonight's wild revelry gets going in my neighborhood: college kids being brilliant.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Travelogue 301 – October 17
Mazes
Monika has a bright little girl of nine years. Ask her, 'What does one do for fun in Montreal?' Ask a nine year-old who is excited about Halloween, and your answer is the old town. But old town is a code for the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth is a warehouse in the old port that has been converted into a maze for family amusement. And now that it's Halloween season, pirates have taken it over. One bored pirate with decaying teeth and an ill-fitting fright wig takes our money. When there are enough of us enclosed in the first room, another bored pirate with caked black make-up around her eyes gives us the orientation.
I'm ahead of the little girl. I know about the Labyrinth already. I've run by it on my second morning. Across the street from it is the funhouse church, dating back to nineteenth, eighteenth, seventeenth century colonial days. It was founded in 1655 by the city's first teacher, Marguerite Bourgeoys, in later days a saint. The current chapel is largely a nineteenth century creation, with a spire topped by a bronze of the Virgin overlooking the old port, and angels flanking her. The church became a popular repository for the prayers of anxious sailors.
Running further south along the river, you'll pass the domed public market, the Bonsecours Market, that looks more like a city hall than a market. In fact, is was city hall between 1852 and 1878. It also housed the Parliament of United Canada in 1849. Further on is the Montreal Science Center, a massive complex with lots of glass, and featuring a red model of a molecule in front that is great fun to climb on.
On my third day, I run even farther south. I left old town behind and found myself alongside a canal that reminded me of Bath in England. The canal charts a peaceful course underneath huge silos and then red-brick warehouse buildings from another time. There are parks and bike paths.
This canal is the famous Lachine Canal, named after China, the alluring phantom haunting every French captain's dreams in the early days of the Canadian colony. Quebec had been blessed with one of the few major east-west river arteries on the continent. There must be a way here to reach the riches of China and India! First the stubborn river itself had to be conquered. One little hurdle was the series of rapids near Montreal, called the Lachine Rapids. France applied itself to this problem as early as 1689, but could not get a canal built. It took nearly 150 years until the Lachine Canal could be successfully dug and opened for navigation, cutting across the southern corner of Montreal's island. The canal opened for business in 1825. By then, the French were long gone, and locals had succumbed to the sinking feeling that Shanghai was not going to be a destination for their river boats. I ran up the canal as far as the St Gabriel Lock.
The Labyrinth takes up the entire wharfside warehouse, its interior alleyways twisting and turning underneath blank metal walls and ceiling of ancient utility, consuming the vast rectangular floor. The maze is defined by hanging tarps and barrels, playground tunnels and slides, dry ice, ropes, nets and simple ramps. The slides are fun, but I think their primary purpose is to provoke teenage girls to scream and thereby add to the atmosphere.
For Halloween, there are four clues left by ghostly pirates to guide us through the labyrinth, four large rooms with puzzles on the wall. Put the clues together and the kids get prizes at the end of the maze. The fifty or so people in our cohort set off, and it's reminiscent of the Twin Cities Marathon three weeks earlier, in which the runners are herded along streets too narrow for the harrowing mass of them and given barely room to stride. I made the mistake of bringing my backpack. As we crawl through tunnels and thread our bodies through tight bungee cord spider webs, I am the weak link. I'm an even weaker link in the clue rooms, where my sharp-witted companions run all the bases before I take a swing.
At one point, there's a mathematical puzzle that was printed with an error in it that makes it insolvable. Monika and I are dead determined to force a solution, sacrificing the little girl to excruciating, eye-rolling boredom while we go back and forth: 'No, I keep telling you, a and b and c can't add up to nine because then c and d have to be the same number which is impossible.' 'And I keep telling you, a and b and c have to be consecutive, which means they have to be ….' 'Mo-o-o-om,' the girl moans plaintively.
We do emerge eventually into daylight again. The hillbilly teenage pirate behind the final counter graciously allows us the prize for our frustrated efforts in the algebra room, a reflector bear. Monika's girl wears it around her neck as she climbs on the red molecule, while Monika and I recover at the science museum cafe. The late afternoon sun is hanging just above the buildings of downtown, keeping us warm. We're too tired to do old town now.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Travelogue 300 – October 16
Mount Royal
The clouds break just before we reach this little town, and we come in low over rolling hills clothed in vivid fall colors. We glide in over Lake Champlain and swing in an arc below the town of Burlington in order to reach the airport on the east side of town. In the distance are Vermont mountains capped with an early layer of snow.
I have had two layovers, and every town on the way was the same. From Minneapolis to Milwaukee to New York, the country is awash in rain. But the long lake that divides two states and ventures into Canada stands strong against the continental cloud mass. In Burlington, the sun peaks through the shattered gloom.
Monika is waiting for me at the small airport. She has business in town. Monika has business in a lot of crazy places. She works in fair trade coffee. She has the delicate job of balancing needs, supply, and standards among a broad group of very different people: growers in Latin America and Africa and importers / roasters all over North America. Today the business is in Vermont. She packs me in the car among boxes of coffee paraphernalia, and we get on the highway heading north. Jean Francois's is driving. He's a young cafe owner getting some training in Vermont.
The 45th parallel merits a sign on this highway. We're halfway to the North Pole. Soon after, I'm pulling out my passport. It's odd for me to encounter an international border on a highway. I'm usually pulling out the beat document in airports. The last time I crossed this particular border – many years ago – passports weren't necessary. We conduct the bilingual interview of mistrust, get scrutinized, have our papers scrutinized, and we're on our way.
About an hour later, we clear the crest of a gentle hill and enter the broad valley of eastern Canada's great waterway, the Saint Lawrence River. We catch sight the towers of Canada's second city, Montreal. It's dusk by now, and the buildings are indistinct shadows against the backdrop of the mountain which gave the city its name, Mount Royal. It looks like a square-topped pile of rock carpeted with autumn's trees. When I mention to my Canadian hosts that, even on vacation, I have to run long miles every day, Jean Francois suggests I run up the mountain.
We cross a crowded bridge, peeking into Le Ronde from the air. Le Ronde is the city's amusement park, situated on its own little river island. We descend into the city – itself a massive river island, – and scuttle from block to block around inexplicable jams in traffic, into the borough of 'Le Plateau', and come to a halt finally in front of Monika's flat, as night comes on.
We stroll. We eat. We stroll. We drink. 'Le Plateau' reminds me of Park Slope in New York City. In the morning, I get up and test the caliber of the a.m. air, breathing into it and looking for vapors. I bolster my resolve. I suit up, lace my Sauconies, and while the city is still innocent with awakening, I launch into its streets. Launch might be an exaggeration. Let's say 'lurch'. It's chilly, and my joints are stiff.
Crossing the first intersection, I see the early sunlight bathing Mount Royal; the distance seems within my grasp. Jean Francois's words come back to me among the sounds of traffic, and I make a right turn toward the mountain. Now I have a potent goal, and I race along narrow sidewalks lined with signs in French, sidewalks that become increasingly busy. As I engage with the first slope of the mountain, crossing the last streets before park land, I fancy I'm in Montmartre.
There's not another runner in sight. Pedestrians are bundled up and staring at me. I didn't pack any sweat pants, so the long-suffering knees are bare again. The higher I go, the more chill the wind becomes, but now I can't turn back. I must reach something like the top, and indeed I don't turn back until the road crests this spur of the mountain and starts downhill again.
So my first real sightseeing stop in Montreal is a panoramic observation point on the side of the winding road that climbs up the gentle peak. I spot Monika's neighborhood, given away by the green-domed church two blocks from her flat. My gaze sweeps over the skyscrapers, and the flashes of morning light in the river. It takes in the geodesic dome built for the 1967 World Fair Expo. Yes, a regal prospect.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Travelogue 299 – October 11
Unwelcome Guests
Time is always the first to arrive. Time arrives at the birthday party before the host is dressed. Time is the unwelcome guest.
Yesterday morning, we awoke to snow on the ground outside. What? That's more reality than any of us was ready for. I go ahead and dress for running – a few more layers on top, but I have no sweat pants yet – and out the door I go. It's been an ugly month so far. Fall has entered with wind and rain. I've had to toughen up. But snow? 32 degrees?
By the fourth mile, the exposed skin – over the knees, the calves, the thighs – is protesting. By the fifth mile, I'm afraid to stop. The joints might not start again. I'm imagining my odds hitchhiking: sweaty guy with abnormally red face and legs and a dazed expression.
It's fall; it's flu season. The joke and the alarum at college is H1N1, also known by its daintier name, 'the swine flu'. Scarcely a day goes by without emails to faculty about the flu: policy, warnings, advice, and health tips. And admonishments of compassion: some students might take advantage, but be forgiving. Prepare lots of make-up work.
I think I need some make-up work in running. If it's winter already, it's time for Plan B in logging the long miles. I've signed up for a gym, but haven't had time to go more than once. How do people make time for gyms? I had one hour the day that I went. I visited a series of machines randomly. I had no time to shower. What good did that do me?
While teachers are being sent to slaughter in their incubator-classrooms, locked in windowless rooms with rows of sweating microbe factories, the rest of the population is washing their hands and heading for the bars. Minnesota is enjoying a bubble of sports nirvana. The acquisition of Brett Favre yielded exquisite returns as the Vikings trounced the Packers in the most-watched regular-season game in history. And the Twins, after fighting back from a seven-game deficit, meet the Tigers in a one-game tie-breaker that becomes a twelve-inning spectacle. I catch the first six innings at the doomed Metrodome, and the next six innings at the bar, where I join the spectacle, standing and hollering when my favorite rookie, Carlos Gomez, slides across home plate for the final run.
Then I wash my hands.
All that the victory bought the Twins was a charter flight to New York, where less than twenty-four hours later they have to face the well-rested Bronx Bombers. They get blitzed. But in the next game, the Twins push their persecutors into the eleventh inning. (Another late night for teachers with weakened immune systems.)
Tonight we wash our hands, and we watch our boys host the Pinstripers here at home. It's an onerous task. Who doesn't want to smack A-Rod in the supercilious grin sometimes? Who doesn't want to see the big city money machine bog down in a Minnesota marsh? And yet, who isn’t proud to be meeting the Yankees in the playoffs?
Who doesn't root for Joe Mauer with the honest face – the man who was famously cheated out of a double by the foul-line ump? Watch Joe Mauer: ask yourself, how does someone become a catcher? Nine innings in a crouch, making signs in your crotch. How does someone become a teacher? Nine hours on your feet, making indecipherable signs on the blackboard, and saying, ‘Shh’. Such is the inscrutability of life. Wash your hands and it might all come out all right.
Unwelcome Guests
Time is always the first to arrive. Time arrives at the birthday party before the host is dressed. Time is the unwelcome guest.
Yesterday morning, we awoke to snow on the ground outside. What? That's more reality than any of us was ready for. I go ahead and dress for running – a few more layers on top, but I have no sweat pants yet – and out the door I go. It's been an ugly month so far. Fall has entered with wind and rain. I've had to toughen up. But snow? 32 degrees?
By the fourth mile, the exposed skin – over the knees, the calves, the thighs – is protesting. By the fifth mile, I'm afraid to stop. The joints might not start again. I'm imagining my odds hitchhiking: sweaty guy with abnormally red face and legs and a dazed expression.
It's fall; it's flu season. The joke and the alarum at college is H1N1, also known by its daintier name, 'the swine flu'. Scarcely a day goes by without emails to faculty about the flu: policy, warnings, advice, and health tips. And admonishments of compassion: some students might take advantage, but be forgiving. Prepare lots of make-up work.
I think I need some make-up work in running. If it's winter already, it's time for Plan B in logging the long miles. I've signed up for a gym, but haven't had time to go more than once. How do people make time for gyms? I had one hour the day that I went. I visited a series of machines randomly. I had no time to shower. What good did that do me?
While teachers are being sent to slaughter in their incubator-classrooms, locked in windowless rooms with rows of sweating microbe factories, the rest of the population is washing their hands and heading for the bars. Minnesota is enjoying a bubble of sports nirvana. The acquisition of Brett Favre yielded exquisite returns as the Vikings trounced the Packers in the most-watched regular-season game in history. And the Twins, after fighting back from a seven-game deficit, meet the Tigers in a one-game tie-breaker that becomes a twelve-inning spectacle. I catch the first six innings at the doomed Metrodome, and the next six innings at the bar, where I join the spectacle, standing and hollering when my favorite rookie, Carlos Gomez, slides across home plate for the final run.
Then I wash my hands.
All that the victory bought the Twins was a charter flight to New York, where less than twenty-four hours later they have to face the well-rested Bronx Bombers. They get blitzed. But in the next game, the Twins push their persecutors into the eleventh inning. (Another late night for teachers with weakened immune systems.)
Tonight we wash our hands, and we watch our boys host the Pinstripers here at home. It's an onerous task. Who doesn't want to smack A-Rod in the supercilious grin sometimes? Who doesn't want to see the big city money machine bog down in a Minnesota marsh? And yet, who isn’t proud to be meeting the Yankees in the playoffs?
Who doesn't root for Joe Mauer with the honest face – the man who was famously cheated out of a double by the foul-line ump? Watch Joe Mauer: ask yourself, how does someone become a catcher? Nine innings in a crouch, making signs in your crotch. How does someone become a teacher? Nine hours on your feet, making indecipherable signs on the blackboard, and saying, ‘Shh’. Such is the inscrutability of life. Wash your hands and it might all come out all right.
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