Travelogue 327 – March 13
Misti Blue

This place is not entirely real. That’s my suspicion. I’ve left the hard-bitten Lima for a place half-fantasy. Imagine a town that sits under a high volcano that looks like something out of a cartoon. This mountain rises so starkly from the horizon that you’d expect a little cartoon collar of clouds two-thirds up its height – and sometimes there it is! It’s the end of summer here, and there are traces of snow on the summit. Clouds collect against it sometimes, sometimes just behind it, looking like volcanic smoke. This is Misti. Turn thirty degrees or so to the left and there’s another volcano, this one craggier, broken, higher and capped with more snow. That’s Chachani.

Chachani stands above the city’s central plaza, the Plaza de Armas. It rises between the towers of the cathedral, one of which was toppled by an earthquake nine years ago and reconstructed. The cathedral itself contributes the one side to the elegant quadrangle of the plaza, fronted on the other three sides by colonial arched arcades made from the local white sillar stone. This volcanic stone is everywhere, earning the town its nickname of the ‘White City’. The plaza itself is green with palm and flower, set with fountain and benches, and always abuzz with activity.

There’s a guy playing guitar underneath the walls of the Santo Domingo church, not far from the Plaza de Armas. His face is indio; his face is slack with sad concentration, his eyes far away while his fingers pluck and strum, pluck and strum in a calm rhythm. His hair is shaggy, his features melancholy in that way particular to the indigenous. I find myself endlessly fascinated by the faces here. There’s an intense beauty there, whether male or female, and I catch myself staring in admiration.

Above the guitar player is the pitted sillar wall of the church, supporting some of the oldest mestizo carvings in town, carved by locals trained in the artistic methods of the Spanish, but adapting them to express something unique. Stark indio faces peer out from curling elaborations of vines, leaves, flowers and grapes in rounded relief. Winged angels appear, as do doll-faced madres in full queen-of-heaven gear, outfitted like Elizabeth I in her iciest glory. The doll quality of these simple figures matches the oddly precious figures encased in glass inside the churches, campy, diorama-like displays with female saints or the holy family, rosy-cheeked manikins dressed like Christmas trees to attend to the prayers of old women with bad knees. Outside, the brown-skinned indio keeps up the sad drone on the Spanish guitar. I wonder if he prays to the wedding-cake madre, and whether she manages to direct a few centimos his way.

Travelogue 326 – March 11
Orient, Part Two

Pampas is a neighborhood of the capital city. Lilia works in Pampas. She heads up an agency called PRISMA. Their projects relate to public health, either research or hands-on work among the community. Pampas is a large squatter’s settlement, or barriada, that has been organized into a legitimate district. The people are poor. Their neighborhood climbs a steep, bare hill and spills over is crest. At the base, the houses are older, and therefore better-built. At the top are the newest settlers, who live in patchwork huts among dirt roads. Lilia has agreed to pull together her staff to discuss with me the state of education in the barriada.

We take a drive; we visit a few schools. Each school is small, only 3-5 classrooms, on terraces carved into a hillside, paved with concrete. But the construction is solid, brick and mortar, plaster and paint, strong enough for a country prone to earthquakes. The classrooms are well-appointed, lots of toys and books, furniture solid. The children are plump and smiling. All in all, I finish the school tour feeling regret for the Ethiopian children. The schools in the barriada could pass for schools for the very richest in Addis Ababa.

This is a trip of firsts for me. It’s the first time I’ve been south of the equator. It’s the first time – incredible! Despite years of Spanish in school – first time as an adult in a Spanish-speaking country. (There’s family lore of a trip to Mexico City: people stopping to touch my blonde hair. My sole moment as traffic-stopping beauty and I don’t remember any of it.) It’s my first trip to this continent, land of brutal conquests, of tragedy and music, of sierra and pampas. And, did I mention, the first time south of the equator? Why is that so exciting? There’s little to it: I haven’t even bothered to watch the waters in my toilet. I enjoy seeing the Southern Cross high in the sky, and seeing the sun in the north. The latter sounds completely arbitrary, whether the sun tilts left or right, but I swear I can sense a difference, a weirdness. In fact, there’s something a little weird to the entire experience, something so far-reaches-of-the-world to it. Though this spot is no further west than Minneapolis, more or less, I feel, standing on Lima’s Oceanside cliffs, like I have traveled west to the utmost reaches of dry land, West as West can be.

Oceanside in Miraflores is extremely pleasant, by the way, worth an afternoon’s investment to stroll. Just about the entire stretch is devoted to attractive, green parks overlooking the cliffs, often carpeted in ivy, tumbling down to the coastal avenue. The waves are dotted with surfers. The air above is dotted with parasailors. The parks are grassy and criss-crossed by clean walkways that are dotted by a harmless variety of bourgeoisie. Offshore are those crazy, barren islands that serve to remind you that you are on another planet. The center piece to the Oceanside park system is the Parque del Amor, with its colossal monument to tender embraces, its bright ceramic mosaics, and its giddy middle-aged tourists who push you out of the way in their frenzy for photographs. Ah, the raptures of Amor!

Travelogue 325 – March 10
Orient, Part One

Finally I get to sit for a coffee somewhere outside an airport. I’ve found an Italian-style café, where I’ve found some carrot cake and espresso, where I’ve found some afternoon sunlight in which to warm my back.

Where am I? The sun on my shoulders lulls me into a sleepy, blank state. I could be anywhere. I had to run several urgent errands immediately after arrival at the hotel. This city, with its crowds, its concrete domino high-rises, its hot sun, this city reminds me of a dozen others, Cairo and Rome being foremost.

People from around the world stroll by the café window. This is a rich neighborhood. It’s a haven for tourists. I’m staying here because it’s near one of my first meetings of the trip, and because it’s safe. I’ve been issued so many warnings about the dangers in this city. The neighborhood is called Miraflores. Like most rich, cosmopolitan neighborhoods, this one has little original character. I snap to from my daze, and I’m disoriented. It could be any sunny city.

Arriving here, the plane wheels over huge, tawny islands offshore, shockingly barren and jagged. We swing around to glide over a leg of the city, toward the airport. The mountains beyond are brown and dry. I am overtaken by a familiar sensation, a familiar question, ‘What have I done?’

I see poverty below us, near the airport, unplastered, unfinished buildings of cinder block or brick, streets in various stages of development or deterioration. Poverty, as well, has its international characteristics. She welcomes me in her brusque way. Poverty is my unfriendly companion, my host, and my reason for travel these days. She stares at me with unblinking eyes from her dismal doorways and alleys. She knows me, while I can never entirely know her. It’s one of those relationships. Poverty doesn’t say much.

The coffee does its job, and I can’t resist a stroll toward the ocean. Water is a magnet, and there’s plenty of water out there, pulling at me, luring me with a sad lullaby for the deserts.

Travelogue 324 – March 10
Old Man

The old man has a face like granite; he has a face like time. It’s like both, as though time were a cliff suspended above a violent stretch of ocean and carved over eons by wind and rain, shaped by innocence -- in a world where nature is innocent, that is. His weathered face is innocent, as though age might in some cases liberate the soul, year by year, from the corruption of this world.

Much of the night he stares with his mouth agape, in a kind of sublime astonishment. The cabin of the jetliner is darkened for the unnaturally long night. Mute images blink from the video screens hanging at intervals above the central aisle. The cargo of bodies lies still and bunched under blankets. The roar of the jets is constant. Outside the portal the bright stars turn according to their clock, Scorpio surmounting by degrees the horizon and eventually soaring free. The compass tilts invisibly, and the southern stars climb. The old man leans forward into the aisle and stares with wonder. The way is lit by small bulbs embedded in the floor.

Our deferred dawn is a slow explosion of red along the eastern horizon, raging silently and vividly, like an antidote to end-time. It is exceedingly slow to burgeon into day because of our time-bending trajectory. I watch a massive river wind under the pre-dawn light, winding across a flat plain, shrinking with the miles. We seem to be heading toward its source. Then cloud cover takes over, and there’s nothing to see but the smoldering sky.

The old man pulls out his handkerchief and wipes his glasses again. Wiping his glasses is the only time he moves. The stewardess had advised me to change seats when he first sits down next to me, implying, I suppose, that he would either be a disturbance or a dead weight blocking my way to the bathroom. I stayed. He was fine. I had to help him open his food packets when meals came, but he jumped right up when I had to get out, though he rode in on a wheelchair. He’s still strong.

The clouds part and we’re over the mountains, severe and jagged peaks, and I know we’re near our destination. They march on, as far as the eye can see, these famous mountains, quiet as the old man, but tragic and brooding. We approach the capital city and suddenly the mountains descend into a white carpet of fog and cloud that extends to the horizon. It’s a striking vision, as near a picture of world’s-edge as one could imagine. I have traveled far. The clouds crash against the mountainsides like surf in still motion.

We descend toward the white sea, touching eventually, and breaking through. Immediately we are in a new world. The clouds are grey underneath, hanging over a huge city spread out over brown hills. The plane glides toward another ocean, this one blue.

Travelogue 323 – March 10
The Waves

There’s an art to travel. Not a very high art, to be sure – perhaps even a dark art. Sometimes I think it must be, this crossing of lines and intrusion. But I’m an innocent: sometimes the greatest practitioners have no malign intentions.

Either way, great artist I’m not: I’ve arrived at my resting point in a foul mood. This is a long trip. I knew that going in – a bus to Heathrow from Bath, a short flight followed by a very long one. But I allow myself to be thrown before I’m halfway through.

I’m cheerful enough as I walk down the green hillside that separates Pey’s house from the town center, a hill so infamously steep that the steps in either direction are like a half marathon on the knees, so steep that Pey won’t walk it twice in one day, so steep that I have yet to run up its entire length. It’s a great place to pause, by its nature as a struggle and virtue of its nature, all peace and prospect. I’m cheerful enough, pausing for a little sigh over bustling Britain, halfway through its busy day.

The moral of this story might be never to start a long journey with a bus trip. But I don’t have a choice, given the geography of options. Train requires a transfer and an extra hour. So, though it makes me nauseous every time, I board. They’re comfortable buses; it’s a good service, but driving in England is a bit of a village carnival ride. One might be tempted to raise one’s hands and shout, but there’s no wind inside these vehicles. Instead, there’s a stagnant hush. We might all be holding our breath in silent suffering.

I choose my seats on a flight according to a rather simplistic model of human behavior, one that says two types of people sit at the front of an airplane, those who travel with small children and those who will shove and step on toes in order to be first on and off, a neat coincidence that would save me countless headaches if it were always true. But tonight there’s a mom and her colicky baby one row behind me, at the back of a nearly empty plane. I could break out into desperate squalls of tears myself by mid-flight, particularly as the climbing and plummeting levels of temperature and oxygen cross in a violent X on the great chart of human discomfort. Add a third line for hunger, recalling late how intra-European flights never serve free snacks, and by landing time I have contracted a severe case of bitter disaffection.

It’s my first time in the Madrid airport. For you connoisseurs of grand and/or comfy airports, I can heartily recommend this one. The halls are vast and new. They are long in a way that invites meditations on distance and its hypnotic power over the imagination. One craves that sometimes, to stride in straight lines down spacious passages toward an ever-receding point where the clean lines that bind one merge and vanish.

That’s what I need, I think, a long walk. My everything for the trip is on my back. I have three hours. The longest leg of my journey awaits me. I’m going to put on some miles – across polished tiles; by wall-sized midnight windows on tarmac; by closed and closing shops, blandly pastel and alluring (alluring in the way a rack of glossy magazines catches the eye sometimes; the content is irrelevant), by the occasional verbal and visual monotone of TV news in Spanish, under fascinating undulating ceilings half a football pitch above.

And … it works. The forced march down squeaky long Spanish hallways has lifted my spirits! I’m refreshed as I arrive at the crowded gate for my next flight. I join the queue with new resolve.

Travelogue 322 – March 7
The Mankini

The sun is trying to drive temperatures above freezing this morning, and the city of Bath is particularly beautiful from Pey's second story window. The sky is clear and a brilliant blue. For a town that rarely sees the sun, it's odd that the characteristic yellow stone of Bath seems made for sunshine, particularly of the early- or late-in-the-day variety. Light spills across the lip of the valley, and the stone of the famous abbey and its contemporary structures glows and joyfully casts quarter-mile shadows across roofs and alleys.

I'm supposed to put together my 'kit', meaning a change of clothes and whatever else I might need after I cross the finish line, IF I cross the finish line. But glancing over the frost on Pey's tiny lawn, and then up into the bright, warm sky, I'm confused. How many layers do I need? I'm thinking of horror stories from previous years of the half marathon, in which the race starts a half-hour, an hour late. Shall I stand among the masses of runners in the chill morning air in my shorts and light jersey? Will I make it all thirteen miles in long sleeves and full length sweats over my legs? I'm running out of time; I throw all possibilities in my backpack and jump into Pey's car.

I'm fortunate: the race starts on time. Guided by a few race veterans, I sneak into my cohort of runners some ten minutes before the start. I hop and stretch and grumble about the cold like I've been there for a half hour. I've opted for long sleeves top and bottom. We're treated to a brief speech by Britain's only gold medalist in the recent winter Olympics, Amy Williams, who is from Bath and who rides a 'skeleton'! (Go figure.) And then we're off! Sort of – the crowd is so tightly packed that it's a walk for a full minute.

I'm fortunate: Pey's daughter is manning a table at her sister's school, selling cakes. As I run by, I'm able to toss her dad's sweat pants to her. By Mile Three, I'm pulling off the long-sleeve shirt underneath my Tesfa jersey. By Mile Four, I'm tossing it by the side of the road. There's a pound in my hand and ten pounds from my wallet, tossed aside. But a sacrifice must be made. I have a time to beat in this race, and I'm in earnest.

I may be in earnest, but the crowd is not. It's a city run, and there are people lining the course the whole way, and they're having a good time. Too good a time, it seems. I'm wondering why everyone is laughing when I go by. It doesn't take long to figure out. Once the runners have settled into their paces, I see that I'm among some colorful characters. I'm just ahead of the South Asian guy in a tutu, and I'm right behind the red-haired Mankini, a guy who's running in nothing but a lime green thong, stretched very tightly over shoulders and between butt cheeks. The Mankini seems to have something like the Mayan calendar tattooed on his back. Or maybe it's a Celtic mandala. I have far too much time to contemplate this. I would really like to pass the Mankini, or be left behind, or trip him, but he's matching my pace almost perfectly. I'm doomed to spend an hour and a half ten yards behind his behind and running in the laughing wake of his progress. “Go, Mankini!” from all sides. But it's a day of sacrifice, and I'm not afraid.

Despite the adversity, the cold and the male nudity, I have a great race. I feel wonderful; I never reach the 'wall'; and when I make the turn onto Great Pulteney Street toward the finish line, I have enough for a kick. I suppose the cold and the laughter finally got to my friend, the Mankini, because he dropped behind me in the last two miles. The laughter fades away; the cheers rise. I'm dashing down the final hundred meters. I'm done.

Travelogue 321 – February 24
Way of the Goat

Everybody's leaving. Last weekend is was Troy and Erin. Then it was Mike. Last night it was Jamie. Jamie was here for about six weeks, getting to know the athletes on Team Tesfa. She is a former athlete at the University of Minnesota, recently graduated. She works with our advisory committee based at the U, and she is the second U athlete to visit Ethiopia.

Before going to the airport, Jamie meets us for dinner. She's invited a few team members, Tsege, Workinesh, and Teklu. And she's invited the entire household staff at our guest house: her name is also Workinesh. We go to the premier restaurant on this side of Addis, Serenade. It's an Italian or Mediterranean restaurant (there's been some dispute among my guests) located between Sidist Kilo and Piassa. It's almost impossible to provide directions to the place – sorry, future tourists – a small house that smells of European bread, lost among the houses of an indistinct neighborhood. The clientele is overwhelmingly white. Its walls are decorated with versions of Modigliani. The highlights are the fresh bread and oil, and the desserts.

One dessert is good ice cream, a delicacy hard to find in Addis Ababa, and almost always provided by Italians here – one of my arguments in the debate about Serenade's identity, that and the Modigliani on the walls. The highlight of our evening is watching the Ethiopians try ice cream for the first time. How is it, we ask. “Kazkaze,” they say with surprise and dismay: Cold! Workinesh, the housekeeper, puts a large spoonful in her mouth and chews. Her eyes open wide in dismay, and she winces. She grabs her cheek. Teklu tries, and the contortions in his face has everyone shouting with laughter. Tsege is experienced. She has already tried ice cream with us. She is trying to teach the others how to let it melt in their mouths.

The next morning at 6am we're up in the mountains. My runs have felt great lately. I've hit my stride. We pace in a group along the rocky roads along the ridge for about three miles. And then we reach the monster hill, where I am usually reduced to a shuffle. I tell everyone to stop, and I make my slow way up to the top of the first steep slope alone.

I've taken a group of short and middle distance athletes under my wing. Ethiopia is not a kind environment for these athletes. Compared to the darlings of long distance running, these athletes are held in mild contempt. It just so happens that we have a few modest talents on our team in the middle distances. But how could one know what they're capable of? There is one open track meet per year, and the date seems to float. I've made the decision that, if possible, our team will host a track meet in the late spring.

At the top of the hill, I wave my hands, and the two women below set off. From my vantage point, their movements seem sluggish and indistinct. It hardly looks like running at first. But their efforts come into focus; they are leaning forward and their arms and legs are working in a strong, machine-like harmony. They push past me in just over a minute each. I'm timing them with my new watch, bought for me by Dirige, one of my running partners and a 400-meter talent. I wave my arms again and the men start their sprint.

After our drills, the remainder of our run is about 45 minutes, at first along the wide road, which spans a long and pleasant plateau after the killer hill, and then down paths among farmland back into the city. This latter part is particularly fun. The hills are beautiful. Tilled fields spread to either side of us, dotted by occasional huts, and in the distance the green slopes of the mountains descend toward Addis Ababa. It's a challenging stretch for runners. The paths are rutted and rocky. The running is something like a dance, and I can't help throwing caution to the winds, dismissing the fear of twisted ankles just before my road race, abandoning myself to the gravity and to the crazy paths. Further down, we're dashing down gullies that are jumbled courses of boulders. We're going too fast to think; our feet find their places on their own. It's exhilarating. Eventually we arrive at another uneven dirt road that leads us down to the highest reaches of the Faransae district, where the taxi boys make crude comments at us, where a small Downs boy mimics our stretching exercises and laughs.

Travelogue 320 – February 23
Whitney

I see that the sun is struggling to make a comeback this morning. I'm inside the Romina Cafe, facing the big windows, facing the terraced patio, the patio full of tilting aluminum tables with red tablecloths that are dappled by the shade of a variety of trees. When I arrived, two meetings and two coffees ago, the clouds seemed to have won the day. I don't complain anymore: the clouds have already won the war for the month of February. It's only recently that Helios has taken a few battles, allowing us to soak up some light and warmth, walking the muddy streets of Addis Ababa in a contented daze.

The Romina is one of my long-time regular spots, though I haven't frequented it much lately. I've had to rediscover it. It's a relaxing stop in late morning, between the early and lunch rushes, one broad room done up in a vibrant palette of reds and oranges. The orange floor tiles are clean. There are no rude smells intruding upon one's snack. The cakes and coffee are nice. The clientele is largely drawn from the nearby university, ebullient kids and earnest elders. But best of all is the American 80s soundtrack.

I'm led to wonder again, what is it about the 80s that preserves the decade forever? You find it in the Dinkytown cafe in Minneapolis, where the spike-topped manager in his late 20s plays Depeche Mode for hours on end. You can't escape it in Italy, where teen-agers sport jean jackets and painfully awkward hairstyles, spiky mullets with dyed patches. And you find the decade alive and well in Addis Ababa cafes, where Whitey is still queen, forever young and sober.

I've been doing some 80s diving lately. I've been reading, and really enjoying John Irving. Shocking that this is the first novel of his I've read. It's been a while since I laughed out loud while reading a novel. Very fun. It's an interesting little Jesus parable he's written, set during the buildup of the Vietnam War.

Mid-February brought rains, the kind of rains common in summer, the kind that bring cold winds and downpours that can turn into hail. While I grumbled, the crew up in Chancho took in stride, saying the clouds were a nice break from toiling in the glaring sun. Now the rains have tapered off, but the clouds have been persistent. It's pleasant to see sunshine among the leafy canopy of the patio outside.

Leeza used to talk about this Addis Ababa neighborhood, called Arat Kilo, and remembering it made her smile. It brought back cheerful memories of her teenage years, when she would go to Arat Kilo with her friends. She couldn't talk about Arat Kilo without mentioning the cakes, without a mischievous arching of an eyebrow. Things haven't changed too much. Even though tasty cakes can be found in almost any quarter of the capital city now, Arat Kilo holds its own, dozens of premier cafes within its narrow bounds.

And Leeza loved Whitney Houston. She had a CD of Whitney's greatest hits, and she wondered why I wouldn't dance with her. I wish I had. This morning, Whitney wants to dance with somebody. Her mood is joyful. Her voice is young. It is caressing, and it's strong. She tells me she will always love me. I can listen to her with a smile of my own now. For years, Whitney's voice brought to me a stabbing pain in the heart.

That passes. Whitney had her happy days, just like we did, God bless her.

Travelogue 319 – February 4
Chancho, Part Two


The new school is in the village of Ekodaga, where the people are friendly and where the gentle hills bring peace to the crowded mind. The village is a twenty-minute walk from the town of Chancho. The walk is a triumph of sorts: alone under a big African sky, among golden meadows and grazing lambs, under mild breezes, and always within sight of our school project on its small hilltop.

Ahead, Chancho looks like a charming town, gathered around two tall, round hills, among foothills that lead west toward picturesque mountains in the near distance. But the experience of Chancho strikes one as something altogether more sordid. This town clings to the highway (never more than ten meters across, despite it being part of the busiest north-south artery in Ethiopia) like children along a parade route, or like beggars along the boulevard, as the case may be. The people seem brusque and childish, mixing greed and innocence in mystical ratios. Strolling the strip – an unremarkable set of ad hoc shops and shabby cafes – is to run a gauntlet of cat-calls, comments, sulky stares, and a tedious litany of 'Money, money,' chanted by children who can't address you eye-to-eye, but only after you've passed.

But stop: first impressions in Ethiopia are rarely flattering. We're not here to flatter, but it doesn't serve to take easy offense. Try – and this can be extremely hard in Ethiopia – try to take yourself out of the picture. Observe. This is a culture of banter. The streets are as crazy a tapestry of sound as of sights, a continuous swirl of chatter and laughter. The faranji wanders by and is woven in, a bright new color. An American reacts as though to a challenge; an Ethiopian reacts by joining in. Try it: reply with a joke. The crowd will enjoy it, and you'll be a part of the scene, rather than the object of jest.

Tuesday is market day. A field on the edge of town is devoted to the event. There are simple stalls erected from sticks and canvas or plastic, but most commodities are laid out on the ground in rough rows. Old women from the countryside sit beside their vegetables and spices. Men haggle over donkeys that lie hobbled in the grass. Market day is a time for the community. Men sit on bags of grain and gossip. Women gather in groups, the groceries a pretext for a morning of chit-chat.

If you doubt the gravitational pull of market day, hike into the countryside on Tuesday morning. Travel the peasant superhighway, the worn paths that radiate outward from the town. I'm running long distances these days, so I have the advantage of logging long miles across the endless fields. I follow the ancient lines of mud from grassy valley to grassy valley, past each tortoise-backed hill and its moss-like growths of eucalyptus, past villages of each a dozen huts, past patches of broken mud, the family plots that barely feed the children; I run an hour out until I can't even spot the landmark hilltops of Chancho. It's dawn when I start, and I'll pass the occasional shepherd, the occasional old man with his arms flung over the dula, or walking stick, that is perched across his shoulders. I pass the occasional man on horseback, trotting toward Chancho. But by eight or nine, by the time I'm returning, there is an exodus in progress, families on foot from at least six or seven miles outside of Chancho, heading in to the market.

Back in town, the only way you're going to get from one end to the other of the attenuated roadside city is either on foot under the hot sun or by gari. A gari is a simple horse-drawn cart. I love traveling this way; I've done so often in other towns. But this is the only town this size I've seen in which it's the only option. I inspire much hilarity when I pass in a gari. It would appear that I'm the first faranj many have seen riding this way. There's hardly a way to be more conspicuous. Nothing to do but smile and wave and join in the fun!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.