Travelogue 81 -- May 30
The Potentates
God is playing with us. Or the gods of global warming. Bands of quick clouds fly over Minnesota, dumping rain here and there, painting the skies dramatically. When it's dry, the air is thick with fluff from the dandelions and cottonwood trees. June's a few days away, and no one dares take off his or her jacket.
Raul paces the parking lot, a dwarfish bobcat. He was due twenty minutes ago, and now he crosses the asphalt in front of us, not acknowledging us, murmuring into his cell phone. As it happens, we have to speak to this man, who owns the lease on the building that Baja inhabits. Eman and Craig have plans to open up a café, and there's space for rent in this vestige of old, brick Minneapolis.
Finally, he hangs up and approaches. For us, he has sulky glances and, "You wanna see the place?" We enter. It's one long room, spare wooden floors, high ceilings, and bare brick walls, divided arbitrarily by the skeletons of a few new walls. He grumbles that if there isn't enough interest, he'll sell the building. We've already had it from the bartenders at the Baja that Raul doesn't own the building. In fact, he's facing a few legal battles over his trick of asking payment on bills a few times over. We explain our plan, and he nods sullenly, checking his cell phone.
Ravenna is a surprise. I like when places surprise me. It's smaller than I expected. I suppose a few things can happen in the fourteen hundred years since a city is the western capital of the empire. You have to catch a small regional train from Ferrara or Bologna to get there. I also, ignorantly, expected a sea front. But it's a whole lot of marsh away from the sea. In fact, the town seems to face away from the sea. You exit the train station and walk inland into town. I quickly recognize that I've re-entered northern Italy. It's the way people walk and the way they train their eyes. No more yelling, no more cocky gestures. It's back to that familiar, cold European irony and self-assurance.
My first excursion is to find Dante's tomb. It’s the reason I came, following through on my resolution a few years ago to complete the Dante tour. Here's where the poet died, after years of exile, a guest of the ruling Da Polenta family. Some four hundred years later, the town built this neo-classical tomb. On my first day, I have to be contented with looking in through the closed gate. But I pass it many times on subsequent days. Once, I file through with a bunch of high schoolers. And then finally, I happen to pass when it's open and empty. I pay my respects to his spirit. His remains, I don't know exactly where they ended up. There are many stories of their peregrinations around town during wars, and there are even little monuments nearby: here's the box where the monks hid Dante's remains during the such-and-such war ….
Ravenna's real claim to fame are the mosaics. Early, end-of-the-empire Christians carried on this very Roman art form for several centuries into the new era. Justinian took back Ravenna for the "Roman," or Byzantine Empire in the 530s, and quickly, he and his put their stamp on the city. We can visit him and his illustrious wife to this day in the Basilica of San Vitale. In the apse, he and his men stand over the altar on one wall, while she and her attendants stand over it on the other. These famous mosaic images are fascinating in the way they convey so much personality and presence, in what is essentially very simple, if sumptuous, craft. The mosaics glow, as they do in the earlier mausoleum of Galla Placidia, mother of one of the final western emperors, which sits behind San Vitale. It's an amazing little domed building, plastered everywhere with rich mosaic color, little alabaster windows admitting dim light, four massive sarcophogi quiet in their alcoves.
There's an exhibit while I'm there of Roman imperial art, centered around the ritual of the banquet. They have several mosaic floors dug up from somewhere nearby. Apparently, it's all the fad in this period -- I seem to recall it's the third century AD -- to install a floor that depicts the remains of a messy feast. So the fragment I'm looking at portrays fishheads and walnut shells and the bones of fowl and even a mouse chewing on crumbs. Outside, there's a workshop, where a woman creates a duplicate. She breaks off individual tesserae from glass or stone and places them in her lime concoction spread across a board on her easel.
I enter a café to kill some time before the Italian restaurants open in the evening. All eyes are on the TV. I see crowds in St. Peter's Square in Rome. I figure out they've sent up the traditional smoke signals over the Sistine Chapel. Eventually, the door on the balcony of St. Peter's opens, and some cardinals bustle out. We're breathlessly watching the old men prepare. Their lack of polish is refreshing. One takes the mike, and in a surprisingly short announcement, the news is conveyed. "E il tedesco," the café owner spits and turns away, shaking his head. Excited chatter sweeps across the café. People share awkward smiles and blink at each other. What does it mean? Il tedesco emerges, robed in white. He holds his hands high. His grin is uncomfortable. The café patrons watch him quietly. A few chuckle at his Italian when he speaks.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Travelogue 80 – May 25
Baja and the Bay, Part Three
The lights go out again, and the music fades. We look around in wonder. Fantu taps my shoulder. "Can I borrow your phone?" His smile is shy and ironic both. He knows he's in for another round of teasing about his phone calls. My minutes are free now, so I lend him the little blue beast in my jacket pocket, the cell phone. He's calling San Francisco. Fantu has a girlfriend now, someone introduced to him by a friend, a woman he's never met. But she knows his schedule and his life intimately. He calls her at nearly every stop during the day. Earlier, upon Eman's demand, he has sent her photo around the table. The girlfriend is posing in traditional Ethiopian gear, stuff that resembles Native American clothing. We can't see her face. Eman leans into Craig's chest, and they both look at the photo in Craig's hand. They're beaming. Eman especially: she's happy for her friend; she's happy in the warmth of her companion. I'm reminded of Leeza's radiant smile. This would be a happy sight for her.
Now it's raining on Corfu. A fierce wind is whipping up white-caps in the little bay. I've taken refuge in the only bar open in Paleokastritsa. The pretty blonde Brit has left. When I first came in, she said they would be closing in an hour, but that deadline has come and gone. George, the owner, still plays cards with some locals. David and I chat. He came here to stay with his father, who has since passed away. "I'm here for good," he says complacently. He's ten years older than I. There's something of the pudgy boy in the schoolyard about him. We talk about the British community here. There are a lot of them. There are the aging surfers who run the other bar down the street. There aren't too many Americans. There's a Canadian. George is trying to set David up with her. George comes up to the bar, and they laugh about that. She's daft, apparently.
We listen to the winds. All the doors are open. Before the rains came, I had seen some fireflies out there. They reminded me of meadows in New England, evenings with Hillary. "We were closed yesterday," George says. He's going to tell me the story David told me already. "Just like that," he shakes his head. There was another George who worked in the bar, part-time, just for fun. He had worked in bars and hotels around the world. He was a real gentleman, they say, always chatting up the ladies, always polite. About three or four days ago, he keeled over, right there in the bar. This George paints the picture, with a haunted expression. The old George was talking; he was raising a cigarette to his lips. "Just like that!" He stares. Unsteadily, he raises a toast to George. After that, he returns to the game.
The next day, I begin the long haul back to Italy. I didn't sleep too well. The winds are making the shutters bang. I keep rising and staring out at the stormy night. Lightning blooms and shakes us. In the morning, the weather has settled. It's cloudy, but quiet. The journey ahead: a bus to a ferry to another ferry to a train to another train, and in a day and a half, I'll find myself in Ravenna.
I stop in Corfu Town, and I walk for a while. I stop by the tomb of Menecrates, a seventh-century BC friend of Corfu's -- not even a citizen, but a representative for his people on the mainland. It's a round bit of limestone masonry, overgrown with grass, sitting inside a shallow well of stone. You can just decipher some ancient Greek inscribed around its low wall. Old Menecrates died at sea.
I also have some time in Igoumenitsa, the town on the mainland where ferries come and go. It's an unremarkable, quiet place that hugs a bit shore inside a rocky bay and climbs the steep mountains behind. At dusk, residents promenade by the bay. You can just make out some sun beaming down on the hilltops of Corfu with colors of its setting. I check my email in a spare place called "La Boheme." It could be anywhere.
And I'm on another deck, this time, on a huge ship going to Ancona. Albania slides sullenly by again. I retreat to my cabin, which is chilly because I opt for an "outside" room, with windows. It's cheaper. The hum makes me sleepy.
And we stand outside Baja, smelling the damp air. Fantu wants to borrow Eman's phone. "Are you kidding?" she asks. As he talks, he gazes up at the glow of the moon that illuminates the fast clouds. It's like he can almost see her.
Baja and the Bay, Part Three
The lights go out again, and the music fades. We look around in wonder. Fantu taps my shoulder. "Can I borrow your phone?" His smile is shy and ironic both. He knows he's in for another round of teasing about his phone calls. My minutes are free now, so I lend him the little blue beast in my jacket pocket, the cell phone. He's calling San Francisco. Fantu has a girlfriend now, someone introduced to him by a friend, a woman he's never met. But she knows his schedule and his life intimately. He calls her at nearly every stop during the day. Earlier, upon Eman's demand, he has sent her photo around the table. The girlfriend is posing in traditional Ethiopian gear, stuff that resembles Native American clothing. We can't see her face. Eman leans into Craig's chest, and they both look at the photo in Craig's hand. They're beaming. Eman especially: she's happy for her friend; she's happy in the warmth of her companion. I'm reminded of Leeza's radiant smile. This would be a happy sight for her.
Now it's raining on Corfu. A fierce wind is whipping up white-caps in the little bay. I've taken refuge in the only bar open in Paleokastritsa. The pretty blonde Brit has left. When I first came in, she said they would be closing in an hour, but that deadline has come and gone. George, the owner, still plays cards with some locals. David and I chat. He came here to stay with his father, who has since passed away. "I'm here for good," he says complacently. He's ten years older than I. There's something of the pudgy boy in the schoolyard about him. We talk about the British community here. There are a lot of them. There are the aging surfers who run the other bar down the street. There aren't too many Americans. There's a Canadian. George is trying to set David up with her. George comes up to the bar, and they laugh about that. She's daft, apparently.
We listen to the winds. All the doors are open. Before the rains came, I had seen some fireflies out there. They reminded me of meadows in New England, evenings with Hillary. "We were closed yesterday," George says. He's going to tell me the story David told me already. "Just like that," he shakes his head. There was another George who worked in the bar, part-time, just for fun. He had worked in bars and hotels around the world. He was a real gentleman, they say, always chatting up the ladies, always polite. About three or four days ago, he keeled over, right there in the bar. This George paints the picture, with a haunted expression. The old George was talking; he was raising a cigarette to his lips. "Just like that!" He stares. Unsteadily, he raises a toast to George. After that, he returns to the game.
The next day, I begin the long haul back to Italy. I didn't sleep too well. The winds are making the shutters bang. I keep rising and staring out at the stormy night. Lightning blooms and shakes us. In the morning, the weather has settled. It's cloudy, but quiet. The journey ahead: a bus to a ferry to another ferry to a train to another train, and in a day and a half, I'll find myself in Ravenna.
I stop in Corfu Town, and I walk for a while. I stop by the tomb of Menecrates, a seventh-century BC friend of Corfu's -- not even a citizen, but a representative for his people on the mainland. It's a round bit of limestone masonry, overgrown with grass, sitting inside a shallow well of stone. You can just decipher some ancient Greek inscribed around its low wall. Old Menecrates died at sea.
I also have some time in Igoumenitsa, the town on the mainland where ferries come and go. It's an unremarkable, quiet place that hugs a bit shore inside a rocky bay and climbs the steep mountains behind. At dusk, residents promenade by the bay. You can just make out some sun beaming down on the hilltops of Corfu with colors of its setting. I check my email in a spare place called "La Boheme." It could be anywhere.
And I'm on another deck, this time, on a huge ship going to Ancona. Albania slides sullenly by again. I retreat to my cabin, which is chilly because I opt for an "outside" room, with windows. It's cheaper. The hum makes me sleepy.
And we stand outside Baja, smelling the damp air. Fantu wants to borrow Eman's phone. "Are you kidding?" she asks. As he talks, he gazes up at the glow of the moon that illuminates the fast clouds. It's like he can almost see her.
Friday, May 20, 2005
Travelogue 79 – May 20
Baja and the Bay, Part Two
The waitress is tired from running up and down the stairs at Baja, carrying drinks, bringing checks. We're the only ones up here. Steve wants to argue about the bill. He wants to pay; then I haven't paid enough. He wants the receipt because we talked business, but I protest that now I've paid half the bill. when Nea laughs at us and all is forgotten.
We return to Craig's house, and Eman wants to show me pictures from their trip to -- where else? -- Baja. Last winter, they biked, (motor-,) down from Arizona. I hazily flip through them all. Eman, a petite silhouette in afternoon sunshine, repeatedly steps into blue waters. A jagged island rises from the sea. They snooze on the deck of the ferry from the mainland. A smokestack rises into a thin cohort of clouds. They set off on a barren dirt road. It winds among miles and miles of hills. Craig stands beside his still bike in black leather pants. It's another time.
To get to the western side of Corfu island, you catch a bus near the port. It's only a couple euros, and it leaves on time: the one reliable human phenomenon on the island. You pass some meager suburbs and some grand houses above, red tiled roofs in the hills. And then, the oleander takes over, and the cypress, and the olive, and the blossoming cherry trees. The meadows are bright green and yellow. You pass shady streams under steep hills. You stop at a crossroads, where two old women struggle down the bus steps onto the road.
It's only a little more than a half hour before you are catching glimpses of the western sea. And then you're catching impossible panoramas: wooded bluffs and craggy rocks in the bright blue, agitated waters. You pass glorious bay after glorious bay, wanting to stop, but the bus carries on, faithful to the island's one well-executed duty. You descend into Paleokastritsa right on time. You are one of several disembarking beside a small crescent beach, sheltered by two high arms of rock. Atop one is a monastery, first founded eight hundred years ago, set on the spot where tradition says Odysseus met Nausicaa. Inside the monastery church, you're pushed aside by teenage girls who want to bump their heads against icons.
The first hotel I find is closed, and the Brit working on it, lanky and blonde, loose-jointed as a surfer, tells me it isn't season. Everything but his restaurant is closed for a few more weeks. Wandering around, I find a Greek guy working on another hotel who calls his aunt on his cell phone. He drives me over to her place. She silently and smilingly opens one of her guest rooms. It's spacious and peaceful with a porch overlooking another gorgeous bay, looking over trellises with grape vines, looking over a laughing Greek father and daughter in their courtyard. I'm sure I'll never leave.
I decide upon an exercise of Greek hubris. I'm going to climb the towering, craggy mountain behind the town to reach the 13th century Byzantine castle that you can just discern above. I'm aided by tiny roads that wind among mansions and olive groves. Gradually, the former dwindle; the latter preside. The gnarled olive trees stand peacefully along their terraces, in earth piled behind ancient, low stone walls. There's a shortcut, a steep gravel path going straight up. Soon, I'm climbing among woods offering glimpses of dream-like refuges among every sort of wildflower. I keep climbing. Wheezing, I arrive at a quiet town perched on the side of the mountain, Lakones. Aside from the two-lane highway that will lead me to the castle, there are no roads in the town, only narrow, stepped alleys meandering between houses.
The road winds silently on, through several more villages, none as cute as Lakones, and I begin muttering about the Furies. Buzzards have spotted me and circle. I stumble forward, determined, and somehow, in the late afternoon, I emerge upon a windy bluff opposite the crumbling fortress, isolated on this spire of rock. At the base of the steps I encounter a local couple just getting out of their car. I beg them to drive me back down the hill. Their appearance suggests they're taking a break from a rehearsal of "Grease." He is muscle-bound and regards me with disdain. When he speaks, I wonder if this island is the origin of the Brooklyn accent. I don't ask. They reluctantly, and yet graciously, agree. All the way down, he teases his girlfriend about her driving.
Before we go, I have a chance to stand on the heights, my Herculean labor rewarded. From the vantage of one broken wall, there is only air and sea, the land falling precipitously away. I feel history again. What an odd collection of souls have stood here and seen this sea! I wonder why we can't know each other.
Baja and the Bay, Part Two
The waitress is tired from running up and down the stairs at Baja, carrying drinks, bringing checks. We're the only ones up here. Steve wants to argue about the bill. He wants to pay; then I haven't paid enough. He wants the receipt because we talked business, but I protest that now I've paid half the bill. when Nea laughs at us and all is forgotten.
We return to Craig's house, and Eman wants to show me pictures from their trip to -- where else? -- Baja. Last winter, they biked, (motor-,) down from Arizona. I hazily flip through them all. Eman, a petite silhouette in afternoon sunshine, repeatedly steps into blue waters. A jagged island rises from the sea. They snooze on the deck of the ferry from the mainland. A smokestack rises into a thin cohort of clouds. They set off on a barren dirt road. It winds among miles and miles of hills. Craig stands beside his still bike in black leather pants. It's another time.
To get to the western side of Corfu island, you catch a bus near the port. It's only a couple euros, and it leaves on time: the one reliable human phenomenon on the island. You pass some meager suburbs and some grand houses above, red tiled roofs in the hills. And then, the oleander takes over, and the cypress, and the olive, and the blossoming cherry trees. The meadows are bright green and yellow. You pass shady streams under steep hills. You stop at a crossroads, where two old women struggle down the bus steps onto the road.
It's only a little more than a half hour before you are catching glimpses of the western sea. And then you're catching impossible panoramas: wooded bluffs and craggy rocks in the bright blue, agitated waters. You pass glorious bay after glorious bay, wanting to stop, but the bus carries on, faithful to the island's one well-executed duty. You descend into Paleokastritsa right on time. You are one of several disembarking beside a small crescent beach, sheltered by two high arms of rock. Atop one is a monastery, first founded eight hundred years ago, set on the spot where tradition says Odysseus met Nausicaa. Inside the monastery church, you're pushed aside by teenage girls who want to bump their heads against icons.
The first hotel I find is closed, and the Brit working on it, lanky and blonde, loose-jointed as a surfer, tells me it isn't season. Everything but his restaurant is closed for a few more weeks. Wandering around, I find a Greek guy working on another hotel who calls his aunt on his cell phone. He drives me over to her place. She silently and smilingly opens one of her guest rooms. It's spacious and peaceful with a porch overlooking another gorgeous bay, looking over trellises with grape vines, looking over a laughing Greek father and daughter in their courtyard. I'm sure I'll never leave.
I decide upon an exercise of Greek hubris. I'm going to climb the towering, craggy mountain behind the town to reach the 13th century Byzantine castle that you can just discern above. I'm aided by tiny roads that wind among mansions and olive groves. Gradually, the former dwindle; the latter preside. The gnarled olive trees stand peacefully along their terraces, in earth piled behind ancient, low stone walls. There's a shortcut, a steep gravel path going straight up. Soon, I'm climbing among woods offering glimpses of dream-like refuges among every sort of wildflower. I keep climbing. Wheezing, I arrive at a quiet town perched on the side of the mountain, Lakones. Aside from the two-lane highway that will lead me to the castle, there are no roads in the town, only narrow, stepped alleys meandering between houses.
The road winds silently on, through several more villages, none as cute as Lakones, and I begin muttering about the Furies. Buzzards have spotted me and circle. I stumble forward, determined, and somehow, in the late afternoon, I emerge upon a windy bluff opposite the crumbling fortress, isolated on this spire of rock. At the base of the steps I encounter a local couple just getting out of their car. I beg them to drive me back down the hill. Their appearance suggests they're taking a break from a rehearsal of "Grease." He is muscle-bound and regards me with disdain. When he speaks, I wonder if this island is the origin of the Brooklyn accent. I don't ask. They reluctantly, and yet graciously, agree. All the way down, he teases his girlfriend about her driving.
Before we go, I have a chance to stand on the heights, my Herculean labor rewarded. From the vantage of one broken wall, there is only air and sea, the land falling precipitously away. I feel history again. What an odd collection of souls have stood here and seen this sea! I wonder why we can't know each other.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Travelogue 78 – May 15
Baja and the Bay, Part One
We're back in the Baja, and Nea asks, "Now, why is it we're always coming here?" There's not much to recommend the place. It's a bland, two-story bar and restaurant, vaguely Mexican in theme, almost always empty. You rarely see the same server twice. We're alone upstairs and no one's turned on the lights up here. Outside, a dark day is collapsing into evening's darkness. It's still raining. This morning, I went running right after waking, and it took me about a half mile to realize something was wrong. My hands were red and raw; the light rain cut into my skin. I stopped and looked into the sky. Is this May? The temperatures are down around freezing.
Ah, yes, the Baja. It's where I go on my first night out in Minneapolis. Since last year, they've opened up the bottom floor so there's a dance floor. That night, gay men are line-dancing. Otherwise, the place is empty. I stare, and I tell Craig to rush the $2 margaritas. Culture shock is descending.
Tonight, it’s Craig and Eman who are dancing. They sway and tilt across the second floor's carpet. They're pleasant to watch, particularly as Craig is a good foot and a half taller than Eman, and because Eman's smile is so radiant. She cries out, "I saw you on Channel Six," and has another laughing fit. It's her favorite joke tonight. A man in her building told her he saw her on Channel Six. That's the cable channel where building residents can watch the video from the lobby and the elevators.
Eman's building is always entertaining. We tease her that it takes longer to get from the parking lot up to her apartment than it takes to drive across town. First, you stand in the lobby, waiting for someone to let you in the building. It's the accepted practice; no one actually has a key. Then you wait for the elevator among a burgeoning crowd of Hmong and Somalis and Mexicans and all their children. The elevator clunks to a stop at every floor up to number nineteen, Eman's floor. They all look the same, like an abandoned hospital complex, with someone waiting and glancing in, like their mother's plane has just arrived. You walk down the hall to the tune of five languages from behind the doors, five different ways to scold kids.
But here we are at the Baja. I order more nachos on Steve's credit card. He scowls. He complains about the margaritas. The waitress tells us they've run out of the proper mix, and the manager has locked the liquor closet and left. Some swaggering ganglanders are being guided through by another employee I don't recognize. It seems they're thinking of trashing the place to celebrate a wedding. I regale my crowd with stories from Ethiopia, of failed romances and foiled ideas. I happily gather their advice, knowing I haven't the will power to obey. I make them laugh with my nightmare of being trapped forever inside an Ethiopian greeting: "How are you? Are you fine? How's your family? Is work good? How are you?" I'm thinking, with some measure of kinship, about the Chinese man just released from prison after his murdered wife showed up alive. The lights flicker, glare, go out. Nea says she's figured out why I like the Baja. "It's weird."
At another bar a world away, I comment to David that it must get crazy when summer comes. Tonight, the bar is empty but for me and David and George and a few locals. David is a stocky, retired, good-natured Brit, a regular here. There are a lot of Brits on the island of Corfu. George is the owner, a short and bald Greek with a hazy smile, husband to the gorgeous tall, blonde Brit behind the bar. It's the only place to eat in this small town. I had schnitzel. It's what they're serving -- what can I say? This morning, I've taken a bus out of Corfu Town. I'm now on the western shore of the island. Outside, dark under a wintry sky, is one of the prettiest little bays I've ever seen, one of about three or four on this town's rocky coast. David nods amiably. He says he doesn't mind it. He likes meeting people. He sees it as a service to the bar for being so kind to him. He chats up the tourists. I take a sip from my kumquat brandy, enchanted with its bright orange color and flavor. George returns to his card game.
Baja and the Bay, Part One
We're back in the Baja, and Nea asks, "Now, why is it we're always coming here?" There's not much to recommend the place. It's a bland, two-story bar and restaurant, vaguely Mexican in theme, almost always empty. You rarely see the same server twice. We're alone upstairs and no one's turned on the lights up here. Outside, a dark day is collapsing into evening's darkness. It's still raining. This morning, I went running right after waking, and it took me about a half mile to realize something was wrong. My hands were red and raw; the light rain cut into my skin. I stopped and looked into the sky. Is this May? The temperatures are down around freezing.
Ah, yes, the Baja. It's where I go on my first night out in Minneapolis. Since last year, they've opened up the bottom floor so there's a dance floor. That night, gay men are line-dancing. Otherwise, the place is empty. I stare, and I tell Craig to rush the $2 margaritas. Culture shock is descending.
Tonight, it’s Craig and Eman who are dancing. They sway and tilt across the second floor's carpet. They're pleasant to watch, particularly as Craig is a good foot and a half taller than Eman, and because Eman's smile is so radiant. She cries out, "I saw you on Channel Six," and has another laughing fit. It's her favorite joke tonight. A man in her building told her he saw her on Channel Six. That's the cable channel where building residents can watch the video from the lobby and the elevators.
Eman's building is always entertaining. We tease her that it takes longer to get from the parking lot up to her apartment than it takes to drive across town. First, you stand in the lobby, waiting for someone to let you in the building. It's the accepted practice; no one actually has a key. Then you wait for the elevator among a burgeoning crowd of Hmong and Somalis and Mexicans and all their children. The elevator clunks to a stop at every floor up to number nineteen, Eman's floor. They all look the same, like an abandoned hospital complex, with someone waiting and glancing in, like their mother's plane has just arrived. You walk down the hall to the tune of five languages from behind the doors, five different ways to scold kids.
But here we are at the Baja. I order more nachos on Steve's credit card. He scowls. He complains about the margaritas. The waitress tells us they've run out of the proper mix, and the manager has locked the liquor closet and left. Some swaggering ganglanders are being guided through by another employee I don't recognize. It seems they're thinking of trashing the place to celebrate a wedding. I regale my crowd with stories from Ethiopia, of failed romances and foiled ideas. I happily gather their advice, knowing I haven't the will power to obey. I make them laugh with my nightmare of being trapped forever inside an Ethiopian greeting: "How are you? Are you fine? How's your family? Is work good? How are you?" I'm thinking, with some measure of kinship, about the Chinese man just released from prison after his murdered wife showed up alive. The lights flicker, glare, go out. Nea says she's figured out why I like the Baja. "It's weird."
At another bar a world away, I comment to David that it must get crazy when summer comes. Tonight, the bar is empty but for me and David and George and a few locals. David is a stocky, retired, good-natured Brit, a regular here. There are a lot of Brits on the island of Corfu. George is the owner, a short and bald Greek with a hazy smile, husband to the gorgeous tall, blonde Brit behind the bar. It's the only place to eat in this small town. I had schnitzel. It's what they're serving -- what can I say? This morning, I've taken a bus out of Corfu Town. I'm now on the western shore of the island. Outside, dark under a wintry sky, is one of the prettiest little bays I've ever seen, one of about three or four on this town's rocky coast. David nods amiably. He says he doesn't mind it. He likes meeting people. He sees it as a service to the bar for being so kind to him. He chats up the tourists. I take a sip from my kumquat brandy, enchanted with its bright orange color and flavor. George returns to his card game.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Travelogue 77 – May 10
Somewhere in Old Corfu Town
The mantra on the radio is fifty percent chance of rain. It has been for days. We drift under slow clouds that threaten, that sprinkle, that move on and allow teasing spots of sun, that muffle the sparse signs of life in Minnesota. It’s neither warm nor cold. You don the jacket; you shake it off. It’s suddenly humid and suddenly brisk. The treetops sway, bright green with new growth, whispering timelessly. You drift along wide roads, the sides of which are yellow with dandelions. You pass hedges of lilacs, blooming with tiny purple cones that are stingy with their scent. They’re not Greek bushes. In Corfu Town, the lilacs are luxurious, light violet and large as bunches of grapes. They lie across the tops of balconies and their scent permeates the squares.
I drift across the channel in the early morning. An indeterminate storm is coming or going. It’s chilly. I watch the approach to Corfu with an interest that’s stifled by the grey weather, and that is strained by my money anxiety. I’m floating somewhere far away; that is, nowhere; that is, somewhere between spots on the globe, with no money in my pocket. I haven't eaten since the cash machines said no.
Corfu is a long, thin island hugging the Greek coast. Approaching, you're between two long coasts stretching out of sight. A brown morning smog hangs over Corfu Town. Kerkyra, by the way, is the local term for island and town. When you're close enough, the town jumps out at you. You see the old Venetian fort perched above cliffs atop a rocky peninsula. Behind is the scenic town, white walls, yellow walls, brown tiles. Across the bay are high mountains. You pass the fort and watch the town unfold along the coast. You're somewhere again.
Right off the boat, I dive into the nearest neighborhood, looking for a hotel and for an internet café where I can check for responses from my bank. It's not the tourist part of town. Off the seaside road, it's hushed. Old people shuffle by. Short buildings decay quietly. I'm on my way to discovering two facts about the island. The first is that hotels are scarce. The second is about service. I find a place labeled "Internet Café." Inside, a row of gruff guys at the counter turn to stare. When I ask about computers, the barista shrugs and gestures toward empty tables. "I see. Well, do you know where …?" He shrugs again. I get the same response at the hotel, once I find one that takes credit cards. "You'll have to go into town." No kidding.
It's all eventually settled. I find an internet place, a sudden, smoky haven of European coolness amid the lazy, old town. I find the blessed magic cash machine. I find the cheese pie and frothy cappuccino. I'm free to wander in a glutted, blissful fog around the streets. Head toward the fort's peninsula and you cross into Old Town in the blink of an eye. Prices jump, the condition of buildings improves, tourists appear. The streets narrow and become beautiful. You're back in Italy. The island was, after all, Venetian for hundreds of years. The gorgeous plaza underneath the fort, with green lawns and lined with cafes, is called the Spianada, and the oldest neighborhood, right behind it, is called the Campiello.
The Brits left their mark, too, in the early nineteenth century. Their statues stand in the Spianada. You'll find there a circular, pillared monument that may fool you for a moment, if you don't notice what good shape it's in. 1816: erected in honor of Sir Thomas Maitland. My favorite British relic stands on the site of the old fort, the church of St. George, an 1840 structure in Doric style. You see it from the ferry, like something from the Athenian Agora, but gleaming in suspiciously good health. Two thousand years have treated it well! I laugh when I finally stand beneath it. There's something so British, so Byronic and earnest about it. You can sense their thrill and the solemn duty they bring to being stationed on Greek soil.
There is something Greek on the island, too, believe it or not. I enter the sixteenth century church of St. Spyridon, the one with the lovely clock belfry that you can see from the ferry, yellow with a red dome. Like most Greek Orthodox churches, the interior is quite dazzling with silver and gold and crowds of icons. A group of high schoolers are sharing the space with me. I become entranced by a book encased in silver when I'm nearly bowled over by the teenage girls. They tap me on the shoulder and push by. I should have remembered from Ethiopia how the Orthodox have to kiss and bump their heads against everything. They line up to kiss the book, and then move on to each of a series of huge icons by the altar. It's nice to witness these strange marks reverence from teenagers, as they brush their big Euro hair aside to kiss the saints.
Somewhere in Old Corfu Town
The mantra on the radio is fifty percent chance of rain. It has been for days. We drift under slow clouds that threaten, that sprinkle, that move on and allow teasing spots of sun, that muffle the sparse signs of life in Minnesota. It’s neither warm nor cold. You don the jacket; you shake it off. It’s suddenly humid and suddenly brisk. The treetops sway, bright green with new growth, whispering timelessly. You drift along wide roads, the sides of which are yellow with dandelions. You pass hedges of lilacs, blooming with tiny purple cones that are stingy with their scent. They’re not Greek bushes. In Corfu Town, the lilacs are luxurious, light violet and large as bunches of grapes. They lie across the tops of balconies and their scent permeates the squares.
I drift across the channel in the early morning. An indeterminate storm is coming or going. It’s chilly. I watch the approach to Corfu with an interest that’s stifled by the grey weather, and that is strained by my money anxiety. I’m floating somewhere far away; that is, nowhere; that is, somewhere between spots on the globe, with no money in my pocket. I haven't eaten since the cash machines said no.
Corfu is a long, thin island hugging the Greek coast. Approaching, you're between two long coasts stretching out of sight. A brown morning smog hangs over Corfu Town. Kerkyra, by the way, is the local term for island and town. When you're close enough, the town jumps out at you. You see the old Venetian fort perched above cliffs atop a rocky peninsula. Behind is the scenic town, white walls, yellow walls, brown tiles. Across the bay are high mountains. You pass the fort and watch the town unfold along the coast. You're somewhere again.
Right off the boat, I dive into the nearest neighborhood, looking for a hotel and for an internet café where I can check for responses from my bank. It's not the tourist part of town. Off the seaside road, it's hushed. Old people shuffle by. Short buildings decay quietly. I'm on my way to discovering two facts about the island. The first is that hotels are scarce. The second is about service. I find a place labeled "Internet Café." Inside, a row of gruff guys at the counter turn to stare. When I ask about computers, the barista shrugs and gestures toward empty tables. "I see. Well, do you know where …?" He shrugs again. I get the same response at the hotel, once I find one that takes credit cards. "You'll have to go into town." No kidding.
It's all eventually settled. I find an internet place, a sudden, smoky haven of European coolness amid the lazy, old town. I find the blessed magic cash machine. I find the cheese pie and frothy cappuccino. I'm free to wander in a glutted, blissful fog around the streets. Head toward the fort's peninsula and you cross into Old Town in the blink of an eye. Prices jump, the condition of buildings improves, tourists appear. The streets narrow and become beautiful. You're back in Italy. The island was, after all, Venetian for hundreds of years. The gorgeous plaza underneath the fort, with green lawns and lined with cafes, is called the Spianada, and the oldest neighborhood, right behind it, is called the Campiello.
The Brits left their mark, too, in the early nineteenth century. Their statues stand in the Spianada. You'll find there a circular, pillared monument that may fool you for a moment, if you don't notice what good shape it's in. 1816: erected in honor of Sir Thomas Maitland. My favorite British relic stands on the site of the old fort, the church of St. George, an 1840 structure in Doric style. You see it from the ferry, like something from the Athenian Agora, but gleaming in suspiciously good health. Two thousand years have treated it well! I laugh when I finally stand beneath it. There's something so British, so Byronic and earnest about it. You can sense their thrill and the solemn duty they bring to being stationed on Greek soil.
There is something Greek on the island, too, believe it or not. I enter the sixteenth century church of St. Spyridon, the one with the lovely clock belfry that you can see from the ferry, yellow with a red dome. Like most Greek Orthodox churches, the interior is quite dazzling with silver and gold and crowds of icons. A group of high schoolers are sharing the space with me. I become entranced by a book encased in silver when I'm nearly bowled over by the teenage girls. They tap me on the shoulder and push by. I should have remembered from Ethiopia how the Orthodox have to kiss and bump their heads against everything. They line up to kiss the book, and then move on to each of a series of huge icons by the altar. It's nice to witness these strange marks reverence from teenagers, as they brush their big Euro hair aside to kiss the saints.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Travelogue 76 – May 5
Between the Lakes and Deep, Blue Sea
I’m back in Minnesota! Even in spring, arrival into MN is like being dropped into deep, powdery snow, into a roar of silence, into enforced meditation. Even downtown is a bit of a cloister walk. I seem to have arrived just as spring does. The locals tell me there were some warm days in early April, but each of the few days I’ve been here have been ten degrees warmer than the last, under blue skies. I’m tempted sometimes to doff the jacket! Minnesotans are quietly exuberant. The geese are out with their babies. I treat myself to a walk along the river shore, and there they are: mom hissing at me, and the fuzzy babies scurrying and pecking among the new grasses. The goslings have no adult markings in their canary yellow down: all innocence. The robins are hopping about, as are the bunnies, gearing up for the feast and riot of Minnesota spring. The college boys next door to Craig are exhibiting similar behaviors, primping on their porch with rosy cheeks and eyes duller than one might expect from university students, bathing in rock that was bad twenty years ago.
I’ve enacted a certain ritual of hope myself today: I bought a cell phone! Amazing what love will lead one to do. Everything that that little lozenge of electronics embodies is wrong, most essentially the idea of unlimited accessibility, unlimited communication. Why would a writer object to communication? Because I believe in words used sparingly and beautifully. Maybe I’ve become a little too fond of the rare Minnesota sky, so wide and clean. I think the collective human mind is best when it reflects such a sky. Owning a cell phone implies that there really is that much to say. But love led me into this business – love of Leeza and love of the kids. And talk is the grease of the money machine. I’ll pretend.
The guy behind the counter makes an elaborate show of boredom. Every sentence expires with a sigh. He slouches heavily on his stool, twisting slightly left, slightly right, eyes on the street outside, watching the spring spring in the step of the ladies. His answers are precise, as are every motion in the subsequent sale. There’s something of the wicked cynicism of a drug sale to the encounter, even in the suggestion of a smirk when he passes the instrument across the counter. “There you are.” “Money?” I say. He says I’ll be billed, with the same evil confidence. That’s that. My God, what have I done? Outside, I pause on the sidewalk, feeling the sullied kinship with humanity that the husband feels in his furtive cigarette at the bar. Oh, but that analogy no longer applies in Minnesota, I hear. Indoor smoking? Outlawed! Last night at Frankie’s, nearly as many stood outside the front door as inside it. This crusade leaves me a little cold, to say nothing of these poor saps once winter comes around again. But Americans love their bursts of temperance.
Oh, I’m in a didactic mood, aren’t I? And I’ve left the story of my trip hanging. Last I heard of myself, I believe I was suspended above the Adriatic Sea as Apollo spreads rosy-fingered dawn across the wine-colored hills. And I will don my helmet as Ilium heaves into view. Or maybe it’s just Igoumenitsa, and all I have is a baseball cap that fares poorly against the sharp winds. I retreat back inside the ferry to stand with the growing crowd of tourists by the exit, waiting for our arrival at the wharf and the lowering of the doors, through which we disembark alongside the rumbling trucks.
Between the Lakes and Deep, Blue Sea
I’m back in Minnesota! Even in spring, arrival into MN is like being dropped into deep, powdery snow, into a roar of silence, into enforced meditation. Even downtown is a bit of a cloister walk. I seem to have arrived just as spring does. The locals tell me there were some warm days in early April, but each of the few days I’ve been here have been ten degrees warmer than the last, under blue skies. I’m tempted sometimes to doff the jacket! Minnesotans are quietly exuberant. The geese are out with their babies. I treat myself to a walk along the river shore, and there they are: mom hissing at me, and the fuzzy babies scurrying and pecking among the new grasses. The goslings have no adult markings in their canary yellow down: all innocence. The robins are hopping about, as are the bunnies, gearing up for the feast and riot of Minnesota spring. The college boys next door to Craig are exhibiting similar behaviors, primping on their porch with rosy cheeks and eyes duller than one might expect from university students, bathing in rock that was bad twenty years ago.
I’ve enacted a certain ritual of hope myself today: I bought a cell phone! Amazing what love will lead one to do. Everything that that little lozenge of electronics embodies is wrong, most essentially the idea of unlimited accessibility, unlimited communication. Why would a writer object to communication? Because I believe in words used sparingly and beautifully. Maybe I’ve become a little too fond of the rare Minnesota sky, so wide and clean. I think the collective human mind is best when it reflects such a sky. Owning a cell phone implies that there really is that much to say. But love led me into this business – love of Leeza and love of the kids. And talk is the grease of the money machine. I’ll pretend.
The guy behind the counter makes an elaborate show of boredom. Every sentence expires with a sigh. He slouches heavily on his stool, twisting slightly left, slightly right, eyes on the street outside, watching the spring spring in the step of the ladies. His answers are precise, as are every motion in the subsequent sale. There’s something of the wicked cynicism of a drug sale to the encounter, even in the suggestion of a smirk when he passes the instrument across the counter. “There you are.” “Money?” I say. He says I’ll be billed, with the same evil confidence. That’s that. My God, what have I done? Outside, I pause on the sidewalk, feeling the sullied kinship with humanity that the husband feels in his furtive cigarette at the bar. Oh, but that analogy no longer applies in Minnesota, I hear. Indoor smoking? Outlawed! Last night at Frankie’s, nearly as many stood outside the front door as inside it. This crusade leaves me a little cold, to say nothing of these poor saps once winter comes around again. But Americans love their bursts of temperance.
Oh, I’m in a didactic mood, aren’t I? And I’ve left the story of my trip hanging. Last I heard of myself, I believe I was suspended above the Adriatic Sea as Apollo spreads rosy-fingered dawn across the wine-colored hills. And I will don my helmet as Ilium heaves into view. Or maybe it’s just Igoumenitsa, and all I have is a baseball cap that fares poorly against the sharp winds. I retreat back inside the ferry to stand with the growing crowd of tourists by the exit, waiting for our arrival at the wharf and the lowering of the doors, through which we disembark alongside the rumbling trucks.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Travelogue 75 – April 27
All the Pretty Places
Well, I have fallen grievously behind in my reports, primarily because Italy is mysteriously lacking in internet cafes. So many kilometers and many towns since my last log, I hardly know where to begin. Last I recall, I was making my way over the Appenines in the company of a beguiling Argentine. Oh yes, and then there was:
Bari: All in all, the pleasant surprise of the trip. As the train rolls into this southern Italian town along the Adriatic coast, you look out the window glumly, saying to yourself, “Another Euro-sprawl – blocky housing highrises, busy traffic, denim and big hair as far as the eye can see. But be not dismayed. Look for the so-called pension where the old man who buzzes you in leads you to the extra bedroom in his coop apartment, the cold room with high ceilings and huge, old-world bureaus, where the door doesn’t lock and the weary wife smokes in the kitchen. Drop your stuff without worries and hurry down to the old town, just as the sun sets.
It’s a lovely section of town, taking up most of the city’s peninsula into the sea. Narrow alleys of thick, pock-marked flagstones and buildings of white stone; Venetian churches eight and nine hundred years old, strangely carved with sphinxes and elephants. You stand alone in the beautiful front courtyard of San Nicola, but for a group of boys kicking around a soccer ball. You’re hungry, but restaurants won’t open for another few hours. Instead, you stand puzzled at the threshold of open salons that you take for primitive bars. A group of men plays cards, a bottle on the table. There are a few framed religious pictures on otherwise bare walls. They stare at you. You realize this is a home. The homes in this section have living rooms on the bottom floor indistinguishable from storefronts, and families open them at this time of evening. In others salons, matrons sit in circles and scream. In fact, everyone in the crowds on the streets screams at each other. Cars rumble by, leaving inches on either side for people.
In the daytime, these matrons are in the alleys behind their houses, rolling pasta and putting them in mesh-bottomed boxes outside to dry. They’re hanging laundry above, from their balconies. A boy of about ten puffs out his meager chest and playfully acts ready to backhand you. If you’ve just come from Ethiopia, you realize with a high degree of discomfort that in southern Italy, everyone has begun to stare at you again.
You check out the port because you’re still under the Argentine’s spell, and you’re dreaming of ferry rides across the Adriatic. Milling around the first pier are Slavs of various stripes, Albanians and Croats mostly, all grey-faced and thin, smoking through their bad teeth. You are sentimental about your days in eastern Europe, so you try to converse with them. They’re gruff and dismissive, and you love them for it. At the café at the port’s entrance, old men are playing backgammon. From another pier launch the ferries for Corfu. You debate with yourself, and Corfu wins because you’ve daydreamed about Greece since you were little.
Since it’s an overnight journey, you submerge back into the old town. You settle at the only café that approaches western hipness. A young woman with dreads, drenched in ennui, works behind the counter. She wears a “Czech” T-shirt, which you enquire about. She wants to move to Prague. She sighs about Bari, and about Italy in general. There are no jobs. There’s no culture. It’s boring. She worked for a publishing firm before this. They wouldn’t give her a permanent contract. She worked for the university. They wouldn’t pay her.
Boarding the ferry is a great thrill. The Greek language is alive! You’ve had your days when you dabbled with ancient Greek, a kind of ambiguous ancestor worship. But here is Greek script all over the ship. You watch Greek TV, and you’re alarmed to find it sounds Slavic. You wander over the whole boat while waiting to set off, determined to stay awake all night and watch the water. But once it’s finally under way, the cold winds drive you inside, and the gentle hum and vibration of the engines, along with the slight rocking of the sea, make you irresistibly sleepy. You can’t stay awake. Sometime just after dawn, you manage to pull yourelf out of bed and ascend to the deck. You’re the only one out there. The boat is passing through a narrow channel between the Greek or Albanian mainland and some islands. The scene is stark and strange. The hills are dark and jagged. The sea is steely blue. History becomes frightening, but you can’t take your eyes off those hills.
All the Pretty Places
Well, I have fallen grievously behind in my reports, primarily because Italy is mysteriously lacking in internet cafes. So many kilometers and many towns since my last log, I hardly know where to begin. Last I recall, I was making my way over the Appenines in the company of a beguiling Argentine. Oh yes, and then there was:
Bari: All in all, the pleasant surprise of the trip. As the train rolls into this southern Italian town along the Adriatic coast, you look out the window glumly, saying to yourself, “Another Euro-sprawl – blocky housing highrises, busy traffic, denim and big hair as far as the eye can see. But be not dismayed. Look for the so-called pension where the old man who buzzes you in leads you to the extra bedroom in his coop apartment, the cold room with high ceilings and huge, old-world bureaus, where the door doesn’t lock and the weary wife smokes in the kitchen. Drop your stuff without worries and hurry down to the old town, just as the sun sets.
It’s a lovely section of town, taking up most of the city’s peninsula into the sea. Narrow alleys of thick, pock-marked flagstones and buildings of white stone; Venetian churches eight and nine hundred years old, strangely carved with sphinxes and elephants. You stand alone in the beautiful front courtyard of San Nicola, but for a group of boys kicking around a soccer ball. You’re hungry, but restaurants won’t open for another few hours. Instead, you stand puzzled at the threshold of open salons that you take for primitive bars. A group of men plays cards, a bottle on the table. There are a few framed religious pictures on otherwise bare walls. They stare at you. You realize this is a home. The homes in this section have living rooms on the bottom floor indistinguishable from storefronts, and families open them at this time of evening. In others salons, matrons sit in circles and scream. In fact, everyone in the crowds on the streets screams at each other. Cars rumble by, leaving inches on either side for people.
In the daytime, these matrons are in the alleys behind their houses, rolling pasta and putting them in mesh-bottomed boxes outside to dry. They’re hanging laundry above, from their balconies. A boy of about ten puffs out his meager chest and playfully acts ready to backhand you. If you’ve just come from Ethiopia, you realize with a high degree of discomfort that in southern Italy, everyone has begun to stare at you again.
You check out the port because you’re still under the Argentine’s spell, and you’re dreaming of ferry rides across the Adriatic. Milling around the first pier are Slavs of various stripes, Albanians and Croats mostly, all grey-faced and thin, smoking through their bad teeth. You are sentimental about your days in eastern Europe, so you try to converse with them. They’re gruff and dismissive, and you love them for it. At the café at the port’s entrance, old men are playing backgammon. From another pier launch the ferries for Corfu. You debate with yourself, and Corfu wins because you’ve daydreamed about Greece since you were little.
Since it’s an overnight journey, you submerge back into the old town. You settle at the only café that approaches western hipness. A young woman with dreads, drenched in ennui, works behind the counter. She wears a “Czech” T-shirt, which you enquire about. She wants to move to Prague. She sighs about Bari, and about Italy in general. There are no jobs. There’s no culture. It’s boring. She worked for a publishing firm before this. They wouldn’t give her a permanent contract. She worked for the university. They wouldn’t pay her.
Boarding the ferry is a great thrill. The Greek language is alive! You’ve had your days when you dabbled with ancient Greek, a kind of ambiguous ancestor worship. But here is Greek script all over the ship. You watch Greek TV, and you’re alarmed to find it sounds Slavic. You wander over the whole boat while waiting to set off, determined to stay awake all night and watch the water. But once it’s finally under way, the cold winds drive you inside, and the gentle hum and vibration of the engines, along with the slight rocking of the sea, make you irresistibly sleepy. You can’t stay awake. Sometime just after dawn, you manage to pull yourelf out of bed and ascend to the deck. You’re the only one out there. The boat is passing through a narrow channel between the Greek or Albanian mainland and some islands. The scene is stark and strange. The hills are dark and jagged. The sea is steely blue. History becomes frightening, but you can’t take your eyes off those hills.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Travelogue 74 – April 20
Life Lessons
They say we travel to learn, right? Here are a few recent lessons.
First, when you get on a train out of Rome, and you have no definite plan other than to see Sergio in Abruzzo, beware the Argentine girl with milk chocolate eyes and the soft voice who sits across from you. She will tell you all about her travels in the south of Italy and infuse them with sun and wine. Should it happen that Sergio doesn’t answer the phone, as he hasn’t for the last few days that you’ve called from Rome, you are in particular danger. Candelas is her name, and though she gets off the train much earlier than your destination, in order to hike around those tall, snow-capped mountains you’re passing as you cross the spine of Italy, she stays with you. Later, you walk to the beach in Pescara, and you meditate the mellow Adriatic Sea, and she whispers in your ear, "Go! Go!" Your feet unconsciously lead you back to the train station, and in a sleepy voice, you order a ticket to Bari.
Secondly, never second-guess on a ten-euro purchase. I didn’t pack much when I left Ethiopia, planning on traveling light. Now, the clothes I have are getting rank. I’m going to buy some cheap clothes, and, what’s more, I really want to go Euro-trash. I’m enjoying the idea of running around Europe in those sweat pants with stripes down the sides that rustle as you walk. I had my chance on my last day in Rome, at a street fair. I had them in hand, walking to the cashier, but some repressed, misplaced fear and pride rises in my throat, and I turn back. I have regretted it ever since. Fortunately, I’ve had a chance to partially rectify that bad move. The other day, I bought a Euro-trash pullover, complete with the tight middle and stripes down from the armpits. I wear them proudly today. Next, I just need the 80s hairstyle gone bad, the spiked and dyed mullet, and I’m set.
Third lesson is that being out of money produces raised levels of anxiety. It reduces enjoyment in travel. It is distracting. Arriving in Bari, I'm low in cash. I go to the "Bancomat." When it rejects my request, I begin to panic. Last year, when I was in Europe, I was shut out of my account. I was down to about ten euros by the time I could track down someone in the States who could take care of the problem. It took weeks. The most interesting corporate response to that crisis, last year, was dreamed up by my credit card company. When I requested my password for cash advance, they sent it in the mail to my home address. I was dying to learn the logic behind that move, and called them many times afterward to satisfy my curiosity. Anyway, that day in Bari, I run around to a handful of Bancomats, and it's the same story at all of them. Suddenly, I'm facing two weeks of living off my credit card.
Fourth lesson: don't break a fast with cappuccino and a cheese pie, if you can at all avoid it. About twenty-four hours after Bari's banks have refused me, I'm in Greece, having used the ferry ticket that I bought before I learned I had no cash. I figured broke in Greece is the same as broke in Italy. On a whim, I try the ATM in Greece. It works. I have money in my hand. I turn around and hungrily survey the street. I haven't eaten since the day before. Food is not easy to arrange by credit card, and it seemed as though I had two weeks to feed myself with something like fifty euros. I follow my nose to the nearest cafe. Yes: it's cheese pie and cappuccino for me. Now, these cheese pies are serious. Thet take a while to gulp down, even for a starving traveler. And they put cream on top of cappuccinos in Greece. I sit at an outdoor table, and I watch the old men in their Greek caps, the black-haired maidens in discolored jeans, the excited conversations. I chew. I punish my stomach. Crumbs gather in my lap, but I'm blind. Even after the first sensation like lead solidifying in the pit of my gut, I keep going. It tastes so good. The rest of the day is a blur.
Life Lessons
They say we travel to learn, right? Here are a few recent lessons.
First, when you get on a train out of Rome, and you have no definite plan other than to see Sergio in Abruzzo, beware the Argentine girl with milk chocolate eyes and the soft voice who sits across from you. She will tell you all about her travels in the south of Italy and infuse them with sun and wine. Should it happen that Sergio doesn’t answer the phone, as he hasn’t for the last few days that you’ve called from Rome, you are in particular danger. Candelas is her name, and though she gets off the train much earlier than your destination, in order to hike around those tall, snow-capped mountains you’re passing as you cross the spine of Italy, she stays with you. Later, you walk to the beach in Pescara, and you meditate the mellow Adriatic Sea, and she whispers in your ear, "Go! Go!" Your feet unconsciously lead you back to the train station, and in a sleepy voice, you order a ticket to Bari.
Secondly, never second-guess on a ten-euro purchase. I didn’t pack much when I left Ethiopia, planning on traveling light. Now, the clothes I have are getting rank. I’m going to buy some cheap clothes, and, what’s more, I really want to go Euro-trash. I’m enjoying the idea of running around Europe in those sweat pants with stripes down the sides that rustle as you walk. I had my chance on my last day in Rome, at a street fair. I had them in hand, walking to the cashier, but some repressed, misplaced fear and pride rises in my throat, and I turn back. I have regretted it ever since. Fortunately, I’ve had a chance to partially rectify that bad move. The other day, I bought a Euro-trash pullover, complete with the tight middle and stripes down from the armpits. I wear them proudly today. Next, I just need the 80s hairstyle gone bad, the spiked and dyed mullet, and I’m set.
Third lesson is that being out of money produces raised levels of anxiety. It reduces enjoyment in travel. It is distracting. Arriving in Bari, I'm low in cash. I go to the "Bancomat." When it rejects my request, I begin to panic. Last year, when I was in Europe, I was shut out of my account. I was down to about ten euros by the time I could track down someone in the States who could take care of the problem. It took weeks. The most interesting corporate response to that crisis, last year, was dreamed up by my credit card company. When I requested my password for cash advance, they sent it in the mail to my home address. I was dying to learn the logic behind that move, and called them many times afterward to satisfy my curiosity. Anyway, that day in Bari, I run around to a handful of Bancomats, and it's the same story at all of them. Suddenly, I'm facing two weeks of living off my credit card.
Fourth lesson: don't break a fast with cappuccino and a cheese pie, if you can at all avoid it. About twenty-four hours after Bari's banks have refused me, I'm in Greece, having used the ferry ticket that I bought before I learned I had no cash. I figured broke in Greece is the same as broke in Italy. On a whim, I try the ATM in Greece. It works. I have money in my hand. I turn around and hungrily survey the street. I haven't eaten since the day before. Food is not easy to arrange by credit card, and it seemed as though I had two weeks to feed myself with something like fifty euros. I follow my nose to the nearest cafe. Yes: it's cheese pie and cappuccino for me. Now, these cheese pies are serious. Thet take a while to gulp down, even for a starving traveler. And they put cream on top of cappuccinos in Greece. I sit at an outdoor table, and I watch the old men in their Greek caps, the black-haired maidens in discolored jeans, the excited conversations. I chew. I punish my stomach. Crumbs gather in my lap, but I'm blind. Even after the first sensation like lead solidifying in the pit of my gut, I keep going. It tastes so good. The rest of the day is a blur.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Travelogue 73 -- April 13
Oh, Maddalena
I'm spending my time in Rome searching out new sights. It's not as easy as it once was, when the city was new to me, but hey, it's Rome. It goes on and on. My fantasies while I was in Ethiopia about the day I would escape? Food and museums! In between indulging in those, I find new things to see.
The other day, I return to the Lateran to look into a place I've only just heard about. It's across the street: the Scala Santa. Legend has it this is the original staircase from Pilate's palace, the one Jesus climbed and descended on that fateful day that some of you may have heard about. At the top is a chapel once deemed the Sancta Sanctorum, the holiest stop in Rome, because of its relics. All that's left of them now is an icon from about fifteen hundreed years ago, a painting of Jesus that no one ever sees because it's completely encased in silver and jewels and gold. It reminds me of Czestochowa in Poland, with the famous Black Madonna. And it's more than the icon that reminds me of Czestochowa . It's the dictat that no one ascends the stairs except on their knees. I've tried that in Poland. It hurts! Fortunately, there are parallel staircases for the weak. I don't get to see Jesus's blood through holes in the protective wood covering, but I preserve a few precious drops of my own.
I make it to see the graves of Shelly and Keats. Thetwo poets are at rest in what's popularly called the Protestant Cemetary on the southern edge of the city, behind the pyramid of Caius Cestius. I prefer the real name of the place: the "Cimitero Acattolico per gli Stranieri," or the Cemetary for the Uncatholic Foreigners. I've made this trip on every trip to Rome and always found it closed. A tip for the unlucky: you can see Keats's grave through a window in the cemetary wall. I'm happy I made it inside; it's a beautiful place. Apparently, these uncatholic foreigners are a rich lot. The central graveyard is choked with extravagant stones, elaborately carved, adorned with poetry, statues, mourning angels, miniature gothic spires, stately crosses. Shelley's stone is here, a simple, flat one, underneath a crumbling tower in the ancient Roman wall at the back of the graveyard. Keats lies in an adjacent yard that is more peaceful and less crowded, nearly underneath the pyramid. He also has a a simple stone, standing and rounded on top. It bears the image of a lyre and has no name. Instead, it bears the lines that Keats willed: "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water." Next to him lies his friend, Joseph Severn, buried here some sixty years later.
I have a new favorite hangout in Rome, discovered while dodging the Indians with umbrellas who seem to rise from the cobblestones during the sudden spring rainstorms. It's a little piazza just north of the Pantheon. This restaurant has outdoor tables and offers glasses of red wine for 1.50 euros. Of course, it tastes a little like vinegar, but you can call that atmosphere. This is the Piazza della Maddalena -- the attendant church is Mary Magdalene's. It's a pretty little church, high and narrow. The facade is standard Rococo. I've always favored la Maddalena, myself, and I'm happy she gets a church in Rome. Of course, befitting her ambiguous reputation, the facade features in its lower niches two expostulating male saints. Up above, one of the women is only ambiguously Magdalene. There's heavy traffic through the square, fresh from seeing the Pantheon. A shaven-headed man sets up a tiny amp and plays an underwater variation of classical guitar. I notice that part of the slogan above the church door reads, "Quotidiana Perpetua et Defunctis." I don't know what it means in Latin, but it seems an eloquent comment on my life. I grow even fonder of this place. It could be the wine. In that, I have company. At a far table, some loud Dutch girls -- as ubiquitous as Indians with umbrellas -- are flirting in a sloppy way with the waiter. "We like Italian boys," they declare. He smiles for them, but goes on about his work.
Oh, Maddalena
I'm spending my time in Rome searching out new sights. It's not as easy as it once was, when the city was new to me, but hey, it's Rome. It goes on and on. My fantasies while I was in Ethiopia about the day I would escape? Food and museums! In between indulging in those, I find new things to see.
The other day, I return to the Lateran to look into a place I've only just heard about. It's across the street: the Scala Santa. Legend has it this is the original staircase from Pilate's palace, the one Jesus climbed and descended on that fateful day that some of you may have heard about. At the top is a chapel once deemed the Sancta Sanctorum, the holiest stop in Rome, because of its relics. All that's left of them now is an icon from about fifteen hundreed years ago, a painting of Jesus that no one ever sees because it's completely encased in silver and jewels and gold. It reminds me of Czestochowa in Poland, with the famous Black Madonna. And it's more than the icon that reminds me of Czestochowa . It's the dictat that no one ascends the stairs except on their knees. I've tried that in Poland. It hurts! Fortunately, there are parallel staircases for the weak. I don't get to see Jesus's blood through holes in the protective wood covering, but I preserve a few precious drops of my own.
I make it to see the graves of Shelly and Keats. Thetwo poets are at rest in what's popularly called the Protestant Cemetary on the southern edge of the city, behind the pyramid of Caius Cestius. I prefer the real name of the place: the "Cimitero Acattolico per gli Stranieri," or the Cemetary for the Uncatholic Foreigners. I've made this trip on every trip to Rome and always found it closed. A tip for the unlucky: you can see Keats's grave through a window in the cemetary wall. I'm happy I made it inside; it's a beautiful place. Apparently, these uncatholic foreigners are a rich lot. The central graveyard is choked with extravagant stones, elaborately carved, adorned with poetry, statues, mourning angels, miniature gothic spires, stately crosses. Shelley's stone is here, a simple, flat one, underneath a crumbling tower in the ancient Roman wall at the back of the graveyard. Keats lies in an adjacent yard that is more peaceful and less crowded, nearly underneath the pyramid. He also has a a simple stone, standing and rounded on top. It bears the image of a lyre and has no name. Instead, it bears the lines that Keats willed: "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water." Next to him lies his friend, Joseph Severn, buried here some sixty years later.
I have a new favorite hangout in Rome, discovered while dodging the Indians with umbrellas who seem to rise from the cobblestones during the sudden spring rainstorms. It's a little piazza just north of the Pantheon. This restaurant has outdoor tables and offers glasses of red wine for 1.50 euros. Of course, it tastes a little like vinegar, but you can call that atmosphere. This is the Piazza della Maddalena -- the attendant church is Mary Magdalene's. It's a pretty little church, high and narrow. The facade is standard Rococo. I've always favored la Maddalena, myself, and I'm happy she gets a church in Rome. Of course, befitting her ambiguous reputation, the facade features in its lower niches two expostulating male saints. Up above, one of the women is only ambiguously Magdalene. There's heavy traffic through the square, fresh from seeing the Pantheon. A shaven-headed man sets up a tiny amp and plays an underwater variation of classical guitar. I notice that part of the slogan above the church door reads, "Quotidiana Perpetua et Defunctis." I don't know what it means in Latin, but it seems an eloquent comment on my life. I grow even fonder of this place. It could be the wine. In that, I have company. At a far table, some loud Dutch girls -- as ubiquitous as Indians with umbrellas -- are flirting in a sloppy way with the waiter. "We like Italian boys," they declare. He smiles for them, but goes on about his work.
Saturday, April 09, 2005
Travelogue 72 -- April 9
In Mourning
The funeral was yesterday. This morning, it's raining, and Rome is quiet. Stubborn clusters of tours carry on, setting out for the Forum or for the Fontana Trevi, but by and large, the craziness is over.
I came to Rome via London. Thomas took me out to the Island Queen, our hang-out, our Victorian pub. I arm-wrestled with Kate, my flirtation in this country. We agreed on a draw. I accused her of being unfaithful, and she didn't deny it. I know Thomas and Neal had been doing their best to be the instruments of her infidelity. Tuesday night is quiz night at the Island Queen. I sat rather silently, as most questions were British TV and sports, and I contemplated Amanda's impossibly white skin.
Lots of flags, lots of priests, and lots of helicopters. These were the signs that something was going on in Rome. The airport and the trains were crowded. My flight was delayed in landing at Ciampino Wednesday night because we had arrived at the same time as Air Force One. Lots of speeding motorcades, too, taking over the streets, whizzing by in a blast of sirens. Lots of posters, put up by the city: pictures of John Paul II with messages of thanks and sorrow. On Thursday, I approached the Vatican, looked over the crowd, and turned away.
I didn't go to the funeral. Rather, I took advantage of the distraction to go for a long walk. I walked a ways down the old Appian way, surprised to see how quickly one came to green hills and country lanes, and came back by the enormous Baths of Caracalla. I was so happy to be able to take a walk without being molested. Anyone's approach made me cringe: they're going to stare; they're going to beg. They didn't. I'm in Europe; I can breathe again.
Coming upon the great field of the Circus Maximus, I saw the crowds. They had set up two video screens at either end, and thousands of people had gathered to watch the funeral. They were quiet, somber. They stood at the proper moments -- everyone -- as they were doing outside St. Peter's. There were kids. There were tourists. There were contingents of Poles, standing under their flags. More flags, more backpacks.
You couldn't escape the funeral. Everything was shut for those few hours in the morning. As you strolled around Rome's empty streets, you heard the ceremony, broadcast on screens in piazzas around the city. I stopped a while on a bridge over the Tiber and contemplated that great, grey-blue dome in the distance.
The night before, I had been up late, trying to delay my return to the hostel. I'd been booked into a room with some odd teenagers, whose vacation seemed to consist of staying up all night at the hostel's computers and wandering in and out of the room, muttering to themselves. I stopped at the Spanish steps at about midnight. Kids were strumming guitars and singing. Groups stood around like something might happen. Some Polish ladies with a manic gleam in their eye ran up and down with their flag. They asked me to take their picture. They asked the way to the Fontana Trevi.
I seem to have lost some intangible American-ness. I'm always something else, here and in Ethiopia, too. At one cafe, they were calling me "il francesco." I get asked for directions, and to my great pleasure, I'm able to answer. To some small extent, Rome is mine now. St. Peter's? You'll have to cross the river.
In Mourning
The funeral was yesterday. This morning, it's raining, and Rome is quiet. Stubborn clusters of tours carry on, setting out for the Forum or for the Fontana Trevi, but by and large, the craziness is over.
I came to Rome via London. Thomas took me out to the Island Queen, our hang-out, our Victorian pub. I arm-wrestled with Kate, my flirtation in this country. We agreed on a draw. I accused her of being unfaithful, and she didn't deny it. I know Thomas and Neal had been doing their best to be the instruments of her infidelity. Tuesday night is quiz night at the Island Queen. I sat rather silently, as most questions were British TV and sports, and I contemplated Amanda's impossibly white skin.
Lots of flags, lots of priests, and lots of helicopters. These were the signs that something was going on in Rome. The airport and the trains were crowded. My flight was delayed in landing at Ciampino Wednesday night because we had arrived at the same time as Air Force One. Lots of speeding motorcades, too, taking over the streets, whizzing by in a blast of sirens. Lots of posters, put up by the city: pictures of John Paul II with messages of thanks and sorrow. On Thursday, I approached the Vatican, looked over the crowd, and turned away.
I didn't go to the funeral. Rather, I took advantage of the distraction to go for a long walk. I walked a ways down the old Appian way, surprised to see how quickly one came to green hills and country lanes, and came back by the enormous Baths of Caracalla. I was so happy to be able to take a walk without being molested. Anyone's approach made me cringe: they're going to stare; they're going to beg. They didn't. I'm in Europe; I can breathe again.
Coming upon the great field of the Circus Maximus, I saw the crowds. They had set up two video screens at either end, and thousands of people had gathered to watch the funeral. They were quiet, somber. They stood at the proper moments -- everyone -- as they were doing outside St. Peter's. There were kids. There were tourists. There were contingents of Poles, standing under their flags. More flags, more backpacks.
You couldn't escape the funeral. Everything was shut for those few hours in the morning. As you strolled around Rome's empty streets, you heard the ceremony, broadcast on screens in piazzas around the city. I stopped a while on a bridge over the Tiber and contemplated that great, grey-blue dome in the distance.
The night before, I had been up late, trying to delay my return to the hostel. I'd been booked into a room with some odd teenagers, whose vacation seemed to consist of staying up all night at the hostel's computers and wandering in and out of the room, muttering to themselves. I stopped at the Spanish steps at about midnight. Kids were strumming guitars and singing. Groups stood around like something might happen. Some Polish ladies with a manic gleam in their eye ran up and down with their flag. They asked me to take their picture. They asked the way to the Fontana Trevi.
I seem to have lost some intangible American-ness. I'm always something else, here and in Ethiopia, too. At one cafe, they were calling me "il francesco." I get asked for directions, and to my great pleasure, I'm able to answer. To some small extent, Rome is mine now. St. Peter's? You'll have to cross the river.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Travelogue 71 – April 3
Ethiopia the Movie
It’s one of my last days in Addis, one of my last days in Ethiopia for a while. It’s been beautiful for me, with a stunning sky and cool breezes. And it’s one of those days when the soundtrack is pleasant. You see, Addis has a soundtrack to daily life – it’s the one, government-run radio station. Today, for some reason, there’s a kind of an extended funk riff going. When they aren’t playing their very limited pop Amharic playlist ad nauseum, I’ve noticed that they have fairly good taste in music. I’ve heard funk, jazz, and salsa from time to time. Okay, the occasional Michael Jackson. Today it’s Shaft. I disembark from the taxi, but the radio follows. It plays from the line of shops I’m passing, from each one. It’s flowing from car windows. I enter my café, and it goes on. How can you not feel in the groove of life?
A man sits at my table, though there are other seats in the place. I prepare for the pitch. Maybe it’s for money; maybe it’s for religion. He asks where I’m from, and I tell him, but it stops there. He just nods, opens his newspaper. I’m encouraged. The music is working. He reads; I write. Sometime later, he wants to know what I’m doing in Ethiopia. He has a funny accent, something between French and German. I ask him about that. He says he’s been many years in France, Germany and Austria, studying. He says he came back after post-doctoral work because he wants to help his country, but the university won’t hire him, though they have no one with his expertise. He says it with a laugh. He says, the university president is a party hack, and he won’t hire outside certain political or ethnic parameters. I think of Professor Andreas, whom I’ve met, the old man with the dreamy gaze, who listens to classical music and smokes constantly, holding the cigarette with European elegance.
My friend goes on about the elections coming in May. I’ve had many discussions about these elections lately. A few days ago, the government kicked out some American observers. There are many stories going around about intimidation in the countryside and how the thing is rigged. This government has apparently already rigged a few. Before Bush, I might have felt shocked or superior. My friend’s laugh turns sour. He shrugs like an Italian and rants about the frustration he feels here. I’ve heard all this before from returning Ethiopians. So many resources, so many needs, and the twain never meet. It’s the same all over Africa, he says. Bad governance. He shrugs again. “I may have to go back to Europe.” He returns to his paper.
It’s a melancholy conversation, heightening my melancholy at leaving. I study the university crowd at the café, giving particular attention to the lovely young women, of course. The funk kicks in again. The kids are all laughing, in that strange, relentless Ethiopian way that makes you wonder how anyone became so accomplished a wit here. But the laughter exhibits the beautiful smiles, which is nice. Not as nice as it used to be before that conversation with Kevin on the night of his birthday.
We’re on my terrace at the Mekonnen Hotel in Dire Dawa, looking out over the dusty circle as night descends, looking out between the orange bougainvillea and the satellite dish. “Eighty percent, my friend,” he’s saying over his third or fourth beer. I’m not sure how we got on this topic, but it goes on and on. Some NGO worker gave him this appalling figure, and he latched on with morose fascination. “See if I were you,” he says, “I would back up your program a few years, catch the kids before they’re born.” Offer the prospective parents to pay the kids’ education in exchange for a few concessions. It’s economics: “No American is going to marry their lovely daughter if she doesn’t have all her landing gear.” Meanwhile, I have the perfect pitch to sponsors back home. “I paid for this little girl’s education,” they’ll say. “And I bought her vagina. When she grows up, she’ll have a job in technology, and she’ll have a complete body. I ...bought ...her ...vagina,” he sighs and repeats his slogan with great satisfaction until I eventually agree; it has a ring to it.
And the beat goes on all over Addis. We’re all sharing the movie. The pretty girls are still giggling, landing gear or none. I’ll miss them.
Ethiopia the Movie
It’s one of my last days in Addis, one of my last days in Ethiopia for a while. It’s been beautiful for me, with a stunning sky and cool breezes. And it’s one of those days when the soundtrack is pleasant. You see, Addis has a soundtrack to daily life – it’s the one, government-run radio station. Today, for some reason, there’s a kind of an extended funk riff going. When they aren’t playing their very limited pop Amharic playlist ad nauseum, I’ve noticed that they have fairly good taste in music. I’ve heard funk, jazz, and salsa from time to time. Okay, the occasional Michael Jackson. Today it’s Shaft. I disembark from the taxi, but the radio follows. It plays from the line of shops I’m passing, from each one. It’s flowing from car windows. I enter my café, and it goes on. How can you not feel in the groove of life?
A man sits at my table, though there are other seats in the place. I prepare for the pitch. Maybe it’s for money; maybe it’s for religion. He asks where I’m from, and I tell him, but it stops there. He just nods, opens his newspaper. I’m encouraged. The music is working. He reads; I write. Sometime later, he wants to know what I’m doing in Ethiopia. He has a funny accent, something between French and German. I ask him about that. He says he’s been many years in France, Germany and Austria, studying. He says he came back after post-doctoral work because he wants to help his country, but the university won’t hire him, though they have no one with his expertise. He says it with a laugh. He says, the university president is a party hack, and he won’t hire outside certain political or ethnic parameters. I think of Professor Andreas, whom I’ve met, the old man with the dreamy gaze, who listens to classical music and smokes constantly, holding the cigarette with European elegance.
My friend goes on about the elections coming in May. I’ve had many discussions about these elections lately. A few days ago, the government kicked out some American observers. There are many stories going around about intimidation in the countryside and how the thing is rigged. This government has apparently already rigged a few. Before Bush, I might have felt shocked or superior. My friend’s laugh turns sour. He shrugs like an Italian and rants about the frustration he feels here. I’ve heard all this before from returning Ethiopians. So many resources, so many needs, and the twain never meet. It’s the same all over Africa, he says. Bad governance. He shrugs again. “I may have to go back to Europe.” He returns to his paper.
It’s a melancholy conversation, heightening my melancholy at leaving. I study the university crowd at the café, giving particular attention to the lovely young women, of course. The funk kicks in again. The kids are all laughing, in that strange, relentless Ethiopian way that makes you wonder how anyone became so accomplished a wit here. But the laughter exhibits the beautiful smiles, which is nice. Not as nice as it used to be before that conversation with Kevin on the night of his birthday.
We’re on my terrace at the Mekonnen Hotel in Dire Dawa, looking out over the dusty circle as night descends, looking out between the orange bougainvillea and the satellite dish. “Eighty percent, my friend,” he’s saying over his third or fourth beer. I’m not sure how we got on this topic, but it goes on and on. Some NGO worker gave him this appalling figure, and he latched on with morose fascination. “See if I were you,” he says, “I would back up your program a few years, catch the kids before they’re born.” Offer the prospective parents to pay the kids’ education in exchange for a few concessions. It’s economics: “No American is going to marry their lovely daughter if she doesn’t have all her landing gear.” Meanwhile, I have the perfect pitch to sponsors back home. “I paid for this little girl’s education,” they’ll say. “And I bought her vagina. When she grows up, she’ll have a job in technology, and she’ll have a complete body. I ...bought ...her ...vagina,” he sighs and repeats his slogan with great satisfaction until I eventually agree; it has a ring to it.
And the beat goes on all over Addis. We’re all sharing the movie. The pretty girls are still giggling, landing gear or none. I’ll miss them.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Travelogue 70 – March 28
The Hills are Alive
It’s my last day in Dire Dawa. We successfully managed to get Kevin onto the train to Djibouti, despite a fluid, minute-by-minute schedule for its arrival and departure. To pass the time while the train is delayed, we take one last hitch out of town, arriving in a village along the train tracks. Veiled women sit with their children in cleanly swept dirt yards. The children run from us. On the way back, we stop quickly to watch for a few moments the group of old men in skirts carving up a camel. The beast lies like it might be sleeping, its neck stretched forward, but its mid-section is all sliced open to reveal pink meat. We get back to board Kevin. He wants to ride in cargo so he can lie down and sleep. Hours after he’s boarded, the sad old train lurches forth toward his 118th country or so.
The next afternoon I’m to fly. I spend the last hours of that day strolling straight out of town, toward the north. I love desert landscapes, and I’m dying to be alone, out of cities. I follow dirt paths through the cactus. I steer away from the few collections of houses – the suburbs – and toward a long, flat, uninterrupted plateau on the horizon, sort of like you might see driving through the American Southwest, except for the unbroken length of it. I wonder if I’m looking at the other side of the Rift Valley there. Beyond it is a distant, blue mountain. Sunset approaches; big white clouds above the plateau glow with day’s end. I reach a dry riverbed, where men are mining for stone. Several see me, and momentarily they’re all waving. It would be a beautiful river: lots of white water.
My flight home is a nightmare. I should say the eight-hour delay for the one-hour flight is a nightmare. I arrive home at midnight. My servant, Bakalech, has hung a picture of crucified Jesus on my wall. I contemplate it for quite a while before I retire. He looks like a sweet child sleeping. The sky is green. Jerusalem in the background looks like a Hopi village at the base of purple mountains. John looks like a girl; but then, he always does.
I’ve moved back into the school building since then. I’m back in bed with the bugs. By the end of the first week, my body looks like I’ve got the pox again. I take an afternoon to lacquer all surfaces with bug spray. It slows them down a day or two. I’m back to cold showers. I’m back to waking to the sound of little children, but with the added element of Jack’s yapping. She gets chased around the yard a lot now. The kids alternate between fear of the dog and an impulse to crowd in and touch her. “Jack, Jack, Jack,” they chant. Or they say, “poochie,” which I think is funny -- to find a word like that crossing languages.
I’m back to waking early to the chanting from the church up the hill rather than to the off-key muezzin in the last neighborhood. It’s a much nicer experience. Themezmur, or hymns, the priest sings over the loudspeaker are very beautiful. They are haunting -- even more so floating among the valleys up here.
There are a lot of churches up this way. I get many opportunities to catch a little blessing. It’s a tradition here to genuflect whenever you pass a church. The extent of the devotion, of course, varies with each person. Some just nod three times. Some stop and face the church and bow and do full genuflections. I like standing in front of the church and bowing back. They don’t get it. It’s an odd tradition. Apparently, there’s no rule on the range of your genuflection. I’ve seen people stop at the sight of a church a mile away, on another mountain or across broad fields. Sometimes I don’t even see the church they’re aiming at. I figure that’s why they must be late all the time. There’s always a church somewhere.
The Hills are Alive
It’s my last day in Dire Dawa. We successfully managed to get Kevin onto the train to Djibouti, despite a fluid, minute-by-minute schedule for its arrival and departure. To pass the time while the train is delayed, we take one last hitch out of town, arriving in a village along the train tracks. Veiled women sit with their children in cleanly swept dirt yards. The children run from us. On the way back, we stop quickly to watch for a few moments the group of old men in skirts carving up a camel. The beast lies like it might be sleeping, its neck stretched forward, but its mid-section is all sliced open to reveal pink meat. We get back to board Kevin. He wants to ride in cargo so he can lie down and sleep. Hours after he’s boarded, the sad old train lurches forth toward his 118th country or so.
The next afternoon I’m to fly. I spend the last hours of that day strolling straight out of town, toward the north. I love desert landscapes, and I’m dying to be alone, out of cities. I follow dirt paths through the cactus. I steer away from the few collections of houses – the suburbs – and toward a long, flat, uninterrupted plateau on the horizon, sort of like you might see driving through the American Southwest, except for the unbroken length of it. I wonder if I’m looking at the other side of the Rift Valley there. Beyond it is a distant, blue mountain. Sunset approaches; big white clouds above the plateau glow with day’s end. I reach a dry riverbed, where men are mining for stone. Several see me, and momentarily they’re all waving. It would be a beautiful river: lots of white water.
My flight home is a nightmare. I should say the eight-hour delay for the one-hour flight is a nightmare. I arrive home at midnight. My servant, Bakalech, has hung a picture of crucified Jesus on my wall. I contemplate it for quite a while before I retire. He looks like a sweet child sleeping. The sky is green. Jerusalem in the background looks like a Hopi village at the base of purple mountains. John looks like a girl; but then, he always does.
I’ve moved back into the school building since then. I’m back in bed with the bugs. By the end of the first week, my body looks like I’ve got the pox again. I take an afternoon to lacquer all surfaces with bug spray. It slows them down a day or two. I’m back to cold showers. I’m back to waking to the sound of little children, but with the added element of Jack’s yapping. She gets chased around the yard a lot now. The kids alternate between fear of the dog and an impulse to crowd in and touch her. “Jack, Jack, Jack,” they chant. Or they say, “poochie,” which I think is funny -- to find a word like that crossing languages.
I’m back to waking early to the chanting from the church up the hill rather than to the off-key muezzin in the last neighborhood. It’s a much nicer experience. The
There are a lot of churches up this way. I get many opportunities to catch a little blessing. It’s a tradition here to genuflect whenever you pass a church. The extent of the devotion, of course, varies with each person. Some just nod three times. Some stop and face the church and bow and do full genuflections. I like standing in front of the church and bowing back. They don’t get it. It’s an odd tradition. Apparently, there’s no rule on the range of your genuflection. I’ve seen people stop at the sight of a church a mile away, on another mountain or across broad fields. Sometimes I don’t even see the church they’re aiming at. I figure that’s why they must be late all the time. There’s always a church somewhere.
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Travelogue 69 – March 19
Trip East, Part Four
Kevin and the Isuzu
It’s our last day in Harar, though I don’t know it yet. We eat pastries and drink tea, and lazily we decide on a course of action. I want to get out of the town, see some countryside. Girma decides on a tomb/shrine on the hillside just out of town. We take a taxi; we hike a little ways. We enter the peaceful compound there, and encounter another blue little beehive. This one honors Ali, a Persian sage and missionary. The view is lovely. This is where I get the view of the whole walled city, green and white – the former shade means faith, apparently, and the latter means purity.
“Let’s go in,” Girma says, and I think he means inside the tomb, but he walks away. That’s when I realize we’re in on a family’s small plot of land. These are the descendants of Ali. We enter the mosque, a small, dim room that the chickens keep stalking into. The walls are hung with various rugs and tapestries, quotes from the Koran, depictions of the K’aba. There’s a small platform at one end, and a big drum. An old woman welcomes us in. She invites us for some coffee, and she sits on the floor on the other end of the room, among the paraphernalia for the coffee ceremony. She begins to speak in a chanting sort of way. She welcomes us. She blesses us. She tells us (all via Girma’s translation, of course,) about the many good spirits and angels that abide in Harar. She goes on chanting as she prepares the coffee, her hands working without guidance, it seems. As she chants she stares out the door. I assume a lot of the rest is Koranic. Girma tells us she’s revered around here as a healer and counselor and even fortune-teller. “Wow. Thank you, mama,” Kevin keeps saying, with that charming informality that only an American can pull off. The woman’s daughter enters, a tall, beautiful woman. Kevin is flirting, even after we find out her wedding is a few months away. No one is offended. We stay quite a while, and afterward, climb further up the hill. I certainly feel healed. Kevin waves to the daughter from above.
Back in town, we have lunch: goat meat and beer. We eat a lot of goat meat on this trip. Kevin is heading back to Dire Dawa. He says I should accompany him; his birthday is the next day. I’m game. “But we travel my way,” he says.
We pick up my bag at the hotel, which is on the road to Dire Dawa. We walk up the road a ways, and we wait. He studies the passing traffic with an expert eye. The taxi vans pull over, and we wave them on. Finally, a pickup stops. Two old men are in the front. The back is full of bags of mangoes. They want to bargain. Kevin is obdurate; we have to pay less than the van fare. “You don’t have money?” “No, it’s for the fun, boss!” Kevin exclaims. “For the fun!” Baffled, they finally agree. They invite us into the cab, but we prefer the back. The bags make comfortable cushioning. It’s a great ride, waving at the astounded people we pass. We make it about halfway before the old guys stop, in a village. The clouds ahead are menacing. One of them bustles off in search of a tarp. The driver tells us he was an air force pilot. He tells us he admires Bush’s philosophy. “No, boss. The Bush family, they’re all about control and money.” The driver smiles uncertainly. Kevin keeps a nervous eye on the gang of kids that has gathered. He says he saw a kid get squashed by a bus a month or two before, in some other country, maybe Kenya.
The old man seems to have disappeared on his errand. Kevin flags down an Isuzu flatbed truck. He’s happy. He says these are the best rides; they dominate the highways in Ethiopia. They’re fast. We climb into the back, into the muddy, stinky remnants of the cows they had transported. We’re off. We hit the long curves that descend into the Rift Valley. The boys in front are having fun, cruising at the vehicle’s limit. I’m admiring the miles of desert hills, and the huge, dark thunderheads that have so far missed us. The wind in our faces is cool and moist. We stand in the back and look out over the cab. Sitting in the back is impossible because of the flying dust from the bed. I point out to Kevin how all the hills are terraced. Who knows how ancient that work is. The rain hits, just outside of Dire Dawa. The boys stop to let us in front. There are three of them. We squeeze in. The cab is made up fairly elaborately, with pictures, decorative cloth, and tassels. Kevin chats them up with nonsense and everyone’s smiling as we roll into town.
Trip East, Part Four
Kevin and the Isuzu
It’s our last day in Harar, though I don’t know it yet. We eat pastries and drink tea, and lazily we decide on a course of action. I want to get out of the town, see some countryside. Girma decides on a tomb/shrine on the hillside just out of town. We take a taxi; we hike a little ways. We enter the peaceful compound there, and encounter another blue little beehive. This one honors Ali, a Persian sage and missionary. The view is lovely. This is where I get the view of the whole walled city, green and white – the former shade means faith, apparently, and the latter means purity.
“Let’s go in,” Girma says, and I think he means inside the tomb, but he walks away. That’s when I realize we’re in on a family’s small plot of land. These are the descendants of Ali. We enter the mosque, a small, dim room that the chickens keep stalking into. The walls are hung with various rugs and tapestries, quotes from the Koran, depictions of the K’aba. There’s a small platform at one end, and a big drum. An old woman welcomes us in. She invites us for some coffee, and she sits on the floor on the other end of the room, among the paraphernalia for the coffee ceremony. She begins to speak in a chanting sort of way. She welcomes us. She blesses us. She tells us (all via Girma’s translation, of course,) about the many good spirits and angels that abide in Harar. She goes on chanting as she prepares the coffee, her hands working without guidance, it seems. As she chants she stares out the door. I assume a lot of the rest is Koranic. Girma tells us she’s revered around here as a healer and counselor and even fortune-teller. “Wow. Thank you, mama,” Kevin keeps saying, with that charming informality that only an American can pull off. The woman’s daughter enters, a tall, beautiful woman. Kevin is flirting, even after we find out her wedding is a few months away. No one is offended. We stay quite a while, and afterward, climb further up the hill. I certainly feel healed. Kevin waves to the daughter from above.
Back in town, we have lunch: goat meat and beer. We eat a lot of goat meat on this trip. Kevin is heading back to Dire Dawa. He says I should accompany him; his birthday is the next day. I’m game. “But we travel my way,” he says.
We pick up my bag at the hotel, which is on the road to Dire Dawa. We walk up the road a ways, and we wait. He studies the passing traffic with an expert eye. The taxi vans pull over, and we wave them on. Finally, a pickup stops. Two old men are in the front. The back is full of bags of mangoes. They want to bargain. Kevin is obdurate; we have to pay less than the van fare. “You don’t have money?” “No, it’s for the fun, boss!” Kevin exclaims. “For the fun!” Baffled, they finally agree. They invite us into the cab, but we prefer the back. The bags make comfortable cushioning. It’s a great ride, waving at the astounded people we pass. We make it about halfway before the old guys stop, in a village. The clouds ahead are menacing. One of them bustles off in search of a tarp. The driver tells us he was an air force pilot. He tells us he admires Bush’s philosophy. “No, boss. The Bush family, they’re all about control and money.” The driver smiles uncertainly. Kevin keeps a nervous eye on the gang of kids that has gathered. He says he saw a kid get squashed by a bus a month or two before, in some other country, maybe Kenya.
The old man seems to have disappeared on his errand. Kevin flags down an Isuzu flatbed truck. He’s happy. He says these are the best rides; they dominate the highways in Ethiopia. They’re fast. We climb into the back, into the muddy, stinky remnants of the cows they had transported. We’re off. We hit the long curves that descend into the Rift Valley. The boys in front are having fun, cruising at the vehicle’s limit. I’m admiring the miles of desert hills, and the huge, dark thunderheads that have so far missed us. The wind in our faces is cool and moist. We stand in the back and look out over the cab. Sitting in the back is impossible because of the flying dust from the bed. I point out to Kevin how all the hills are terraced. Who knows how ancient that work is. The rain hits, just outside of Dire Dawa. The boys stop to let us in front. There are three of them. We squeeze in. The cab is made up fairly elaborately, with pictures, decorative cloth, and tassels. Kevin chats them up with nonsense and everyone’s smiling as we roll into town.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Travelogue 68 – March 15
Trip East, Part Three
Kevin and the Jib
I’m looking for a guide in the central circle of Harar. The few I’ve seen don’t inspire confidence. That’s when I see an American guy pass in the company of a young Abasha man, whom I correctly guess to be a guide. Girma is a serious young engineering student with big, soulful eyes, and a careful mode of speech. The American is Kevin, tall, lanky, and blonde. If anyone deserves more than Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes to be called “Bright Eyes,” this is the guy. He gushes about Girma and about Harar, says I can take Girma from him when he’s done. They were about to go ancient knife-hunting in the shops. We resolve to go to lunch first.
Kevin’s about my age. He’s from Maine. He began five months ago in South Africa and he’s been traveling through Africa ever since. When I marvel at that, he dismissively says he’s traveled seven months of the year for twenty years or so. He’s coming up on 120 countries that he’s seen. He works on church steeples in New England those other months. Next year, it’s Antarctica, and then he’s ready to settle. He’s in the market, ladies – he’s looking for a tall Cancer. Much of the afternoon, while Girma meekly guides, I eagerly listen to stories of Kevin’s adventures.
One stop in the afternoon is the shrine/tomb of Emir Nur, the man who allegedly built the walls. The tomb is walled off itself inside a white-washed courtyard. I find it mentioned in my guidebook. “It resembles a spiky beehive.” Yep. That’s it. It stands about a man-and-a-half tall, pointed at the top, and it’s turquoise. We sit in the courtyard a while, watching a man with green teeth grinding ch’at in a traditional wooden mortar that stands about two feet tall. Apparently, it’s for the eccentric old attendant, whom Kevin met on an earlier visit. The old man has no teeth.
Maybe this is the time to describe ch’at. It’s an unremarkable looking leaf that one chews for a mildly narcotic effect. You buy a handful of twigs from the plant and you chew. We’re in the heart of ch’at country, here in eastern Ethiopia, where it’s grown, and where everyone chews. There are different types, according to where it’s grown. I try a little nibble from the pile that the man is making in the mortar. Kevin advises budding leaves as the most potent. It has a sweet, cloying taste. No buzz. A few days ago, I sit down to a formal ch’at session with Diana, Eman’s sister, and a few of her friends in Addis, after lunch. The lunch was a wonderful relief, by the way. It’s a Muslim family, and so we ate meat and rice. Orthodox Ethiopes are in the midst of their version of Lent, in which they proudly outdo the Catholics, with 55 days. During this fast, I’ve found that even some restaurants won’t serve anything but the plainest, meatless sauces. Anyway, I take my handful of twigs, and I graze. The taste is sickening. And my stomach rebels because I find it hard to keep the remnants of the leaf in my cheek, as you’re supposed to do. We recline on our pillows. The boys make piles of leaves; Diana just bites them off the stalk. I get a few twigs-worth down, but I stop, buzzless and disenchanted. I suppose you have to choke down a whole plant to feel anything. Ergo, the green teeth and the green ooze in the mouths of the boys in their ch’at circles on the street.
At sunset, Girma leads us down to the edge of town. At a break in a secondary city wall, we meet the young man who, every evening, plies his version of an ancient trade. He walks out beyond the wall, yelling, summoning. And before too long, they come. They come from the hills below, come out of the scrub brush out there, come out of the night as they have for centuries: the jib. They lope around the dusty clearing, eyes gleaming. The young guy and his assistants bring out the meat, and the jib begin to circle. Most animals have some beauty, but it’s hard to find it in hyenas. Hunch-backed and short-legged in the back, they have a peculiar gate. Their faces are something between a raccoon’s and a monkey’s, with round ears and a short, black muzzle. The dominant one among this group is a big female. She is the one who gets most of the meat. She is the one who approaches the young man most often to snatch the meat hanging from a stick he holds in his teeth. And once we get up the nerve to sit next to him on the blanket, she’s the one who snatches the meat from in front of each of our faces. She doesn’t have bad breath, I’ll report. For Kevin, it’s like an exorcism. Camping his way up eastern Africa, he’s lived in mortal fear of the jib, and heard all kinds of horror stories about their atrocities. He gets the special treatment, a juicy rib held up before his eyes, a view into the maw of the beast. We stroll back up to town with a boost of adrenalin in our systems. Beats ch’at any day.
Trip East, Part Three
Kevin and the Jib
I’m looking for a guide in the central circle of Harar. The few I’ve seen don’t inspire confidence. That’s when I see an American guy pass in the company of a young Abasha man, whom I correctly guess to be a guide. Girma is a serious young engineering student with big, soulful eyes, and a careful mode of speech. The American is Kevin, tall, lanky, and blonde. If anyone deserves more than Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes to be called “Bright Eyes,” this is the guy. He gushes about Girma and about Harar, says I can take Girma from him when he’s done. They were about to go ancient knife-hunting in the shops. We resolve to go to lunch first.
Kevin’s about my age. He’s from Maine. He began five months ago in South Africa and he’s been traveling through Africa ever since. When I marvel at that, he dismissively says he’s traveled seven months of the year for twenty years or so. He’s coming up on 120 countries that he’s seen. He works on church steeples in New England those other months. Next year, it’s Antarctica, and then he’s ready to settle. He’s in the market, ladies – he’s looking for a tall Cancer. Much of the afternoon, while Girma meekly guides, I eagerly listen to stories of Kevin’s adventures.
One stop in the afternoon is the shrine/tomb of Emir Nur, the man who allegedly built the walls. The tomb is walled off itself inside a white-washed courtyard. I find it mentioned in my guidebook. “It resembles a spiky beehive.” Yep. That’s it. It stands about a man-and-a-half tall, pointed at the top, and it’s turquoise. We sit in the courtyard a while, watching a man with green teeth grinding ch’at in a traditional wooden mortar that stands about two feet tall. Apparently, it’s for the eccentric old attendant, whom Kevin met on an earlier visit. The old man has no teeth.
Maybe this is the time to describe ch’at. It’s an unremarkable looking leaf that one chews for a mildly narcotic effect. You buy a handful of twigs from the plant and you chew. We’re in the heart of ch’at country, here in eastern Ethiopia, where it’s grown, and where everyone chews. There are different types, according to where it’s grown. I try a little nibble from the pile that the man is making in the mortar. Kevin advises budding leaves as the most potent. It has a sweet, cloying taste. No buzz. A few days ago, I sit down to a formal ch’at session with Diana, Eman’s sister, and a few of her friends in Addis, after lunch. The lunch was a wonderful relief, by the way. It’s a Muslim family, and so we ate meat and rice. Orthodox Ethiopes are in the midst of their version of Lent, in which they proudly outdo the Catholics, with 55 days. During this fast, I’ve found that even some restaurants won’t serve anything but the plainest, meatless sauces. Anyway, I take my handful of twigs, and I graze. The taste is sickening. And my stomach rebels because I find it hard to keep the remnants of the leaf in my cheek, as you’re supposed to do. We recline on our pillows. The boys make piles of leaves; Diana just bites them off the stalk. I get a few twigs-worth down, but I stop, buzzless and disenchanted. I suppose you have to choke down a whole plant to feel anything. Ergo, the green teeth and the green ooze in the mouths of the boys in their ch’at circles on the street.
At sunset, Girma leads us down to the edge of town. At a break in a secondary city wall, we meet the young man who, every evening, plies his version of an ancient trade. He walks out beyond the wall, yelling, summoning. And before too long, they come. They come from the hills below, come out of the scrub brush out there, come out of the night as they have for centuries: the jib. They lope around the dusty clearing, eyes gleaming. The young guy and his assistants bring out the meat, and the jib begin to circle. Most animals have some beauty, but it’s hard to find it in hyenas. Hunch-backed and short-legged in the back, they have a peculiar gate. Their faces are something between a raccoon’s and a monkey’s, with round ears and a short, black muzzle. The dominant one among this group is a big female. She is the one who gets most of the meat. She is the one who approaches the young man most often to snatch the meat hanging from a stick he holds in his teeth. And once we get up the nerve to sit next to him on the blanket, she’s the one who snatches the meat from in front of each of our faces. She doesn’t have bad breath, I’ll report. For Kevin, it’s like an exorcism. Camping his way up eastern Africa, he’s lived in mortal fear of the jib, and heard all kinds of horror stories about their atrocities. He gets the special treatment, a juicy rib held up before his eyes, a view into the maw of the beast. We stroll back up to town with a boost of adrenalin in our systems. Beats ch’at any day.
Friday, March 11, 2005
Travelogue 67 – March 11
Trip East, Part Two
Harar
You follow the guide book’s map to the “bus station” in Dire Dawa, with a lot of help from locals, and you find it’s just a fenced-in lot where the white vans congregate. They shuttle out of there every day, stopping along the road, like normal taxis in Addis, to pick up travelers. I’m there early the second morning of my trip, ready for Harar. I’m picked up right away by an affable, rotund driver who has a golden tooth. We’re on the road. There’s one other passenger and the wayala, the boy who collects money at the van door. We’re climbing as soon as we’re out of town, and the driver is not shy. The faranj sits up front and gets the full adrenalin shot. The driver has the engine screaming all the way up, about twenty minutes of sharp curves, passing other vans and trucks, dodging pedestrians and donkeys on the sides. It’s a pretty ride through desert mountains of peach-colored stone. As you arrive at the top, you expect to go “over”, but instead, in a strange transition, you pass into fertile and populated red-earthed hills. The trees are back, with the farms and the muddy crossroads. What you’ve done is climb out of the desert basin in this corner of Ethiopia, back into the predominant highlands.
Up top, the real traffic begins. We’re stopping at every little juncture for passengers; that is, until the weary engine gives way. The deflated driver shakes his head a while over the machinery, and we all pile out. I walk on a little ways, until another taxi stops. I squeeze in among the stares. An army man wants to talk, though his English is nil. I pull my usual joke when asked where I’m from, replying, “China.” It doesn’t seem odd to him, and a discussion ensues among the passengers about what Chinese look like. Fortunately, the army man disembarks before too long. Just past the abandoned Russian tanks of the socialist regime, you approach fair Harar. I jump out just short of town, at my hotel. After checking in, I walk down to tour.
This entry does no justice to the town, as I discover the next day, when we go climbing the hills on the other side. From there, you can see just about the whole town, spread over a round hill, surrounded by its ancient wall. Little blue domes and minarets abound. This is the heart of Ethiopian Islam, as it was for centuries the capital of an independent Muslim kingdom. When Menelik II (founder of Addis Ababa) moved in in the 1880s, he took over the central mosque and converted it into a church, which it remains today, strange reminder of internal African imperialism. Menelik’s cousin took over the district. This cousin’s son spent a good part of his childhood in Harar. His name was Ras Tafari, later King of Kings, Haile Selassie. You can still visit the house where they lived, now inhabited by a prominent local healer.
Another notable personage in Harar history is Arthur Rimbaud. Fed up with bohemian Paris and with poetry, Rimbaud set off into parts unknown, to end up here, only thirty years or so after Richard Burton became the first white man to sneak into Harar. He arrived just about the time Menelik’s forces were kicking out the emirs. He settled in this area to become a respectable businessman, an arms merchant, that is, and worked all through old Abyssinia and Yemen. Harar was one of his bases. There are two sites associated with him. The first is the shabby old Harar Hotel that still stands in the Feres Magala (Horse Market,) the central circle, where said church stands. He is said to have lived there briefly. This circle is a crazy location, swarming with life, surrounded by dilapidated little buildings. One corner of it is devoted to a bustling ch’at market. All roads in the town lead to this nexus, and all of them are more attractive. It’s a small town, and everything about it is small: narrow, white-washed alleys, those tiny mosques and shrines of Muslim saints sprinkled among mud stairways and mud houses. Mosques inside the walls are said to number 82, and shrines 300 both inside and outside the wall.
The second Rimbaud stop is the “Rimbaud House,” a museum rather arbitrarily chosen to honor his presence. It’s very unlikely he ever even visited this luxurious dwelling, which in reality was built and owned by an Indian merchant. It’s a beautiful old house with three floors. It commands a wonderful view of the city from the top floor. The highlight of the museum is a collection of photographs from that era, a few even of Rimbaud – that is, two of them that he took of himself. And he did a rather poor job of it. They’re blurred and blotchy. But there are some remarkable scenes from Harar a hundred years ago, some portaits of Ras Tafari and his father, portraits of warriors. Worth badgering the attendant to put down the ch’at let you in.
Trip East, Part Two
Harar
You follow the guide book’s map to the “bus station” in Dire Dawa, with a lot of help from locals, and you find it’s just a fenced-in lot where the white vans congregate. They shuttle out of there every day, stopping along the road, like normal taxis in Addis, to pick up travelers. I’m there early the second morning of my trip, ready for Harar. I’m picked up right away by an affable, rotund driver who has a golden tooth. We’re on the road. There’s one other passenger and the wayala, the boy who collects money at the van door. We’re climbing as soon as we’re out of town, and the driver is not shy. The faranj sits up front and gets the full adrenalin shot. The driver has the engine screaming all the way up, about twenty minutes of sharp curves, passing other vans and trucks, dodging pedestrians and donkeys on the sides. It’s a pretty ride through desert mountains of peach-colored stone. As you arrive at the top, you expect to go “over”, but instead, in a strange transition, you pass into fertile and populated red-earthed hills. The trees are back, with the farms and the muddy crossroads. What you’ve done is climb out of the desert basin in this corner of Ethiopia, back into the predominant highlands.
Up top, the real traffic begins. We’re stopping at every little juncture for passengers; that is, until the weary engine gives way. The deflated driver shakes his head a while over the machinery, and we all pile out. I walk on a little ways, until another taxi stops. I squeeze in among the stares. An army man wants to talk, though his English is nil. I pull my usual joke when asked where I’m from, replying, “China.” It doesn’t seem odd to him, and a discussion ensues among the passengers about what Chinese look like. Fortunately, the army man disembarks before too long. Just past the abandoned Russian tanks of the socialist regime, you approach fair Harar. I jump out just short of town, at my hotel. After checking in, I walk down to tour.
This entry does no justice to the town, as I discover the next day, when we go climbing the hills on the other side. From there, you can see just about the whole town, spread over a round hill, surrounded by its ancient wall. Little blue domes and minarets abound. This is the heart of Ethiopian Islam, as it was for centuries the capital of an independent Muslim kingdom. When Menelik II (founder of Addis Ababa) moved in in the 1880s, he took over the central mosque and converted it into a church, which it remains today, strange reminder of internal African imperialism. Menelik’s cousin took over the district. This cousin’s son spent a good part of his childhood in Harar. His name was Ras Tafari, later King of Kings, Haile Selassie. You can still visit the house where they lived, now inhabited by a prominent local healer.
Another notable personage in Harar history is Arthur Rimbaud. Fed up with bohemian Paris and with poetry, Rimbaud set off into parts unknown, to end up here, only thirty years or so after Richard Burton became the first white man to sneak into Harar. He arrived just about the time Menelik’s forces were kicking out the emirs. He settled in this area to become a respectable businessman, an arms merchant, that is, and worked all through old Abyssinia and Yemen. Harar was one of his bases. There are two sites associated with him. The first is the shabby old Harar Hotel that still stands in the Feres Magala (Horse Market,) the central circle, where said church stands. He is said to have lived there briefly. This circle is a crazy location, swarming with life, surrounded by dilapidated little buildings. One corner of it is devoted to a bustling ch’at market. All roads in the town lead to this nexus, and all of them are more attractive. It’s a small town, and everything about it is small: narrow, white-washed alleys, those tiny mosques and shrines of Muslim saints sprinkled among mud stairways and mud houses. Mosques inside the walls are said to number 82, and shrines 300 both inside and outside the wall.
The second Rimbaud stop is the “Rimbaud House,” a museum rather arbitrarily chosen to honor his presence. It’s very unlikely he ever even visited this luxurious dwelling, which in reality was built and owned by an Indian merchant. It’s a beautiful old house with three floors. It commands a wonderful view of the city from the top floor. The highlight of the museum is a collection of photographs from that era, a few even of Rimbaud – that is, two of them that he took of himself. And he did a rather poor job of it. They’re blurred and blotchy. But there are some remarkable scenes from Harar a hundred years ago, some portaits of Ras Tafari and his father, portraits of warriors. Worth badgering the attendant to put down the ch’at let you in.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Travelogue 66 – March 8
Trip East, Part One
Dire Dawa
I waste no time diving into my first new town, my first trip outside Addis Ababa in nearly five months. My bag stashed at the hotel, I start walking. This is Dire Dawa, (DRE-dwa) due east and almost to the Somali border, train town established to accommodate the French as they built a railroad to Djibouti. Look at a topographical map of Ethiopia, and you’ll see why. Harar, ancient city with the better claim to a train stop, is over a ridge of mountains, while Dire Dawa lies on the edge of that triangular flatland that spreads toward the Red Sea, a stretch of desert that becomes quite desolate and protects all kinds of secrets about the beginnings of our species.
The town is divided into two sections by a spooky dry riverbed -- spooky because it is about as wide as the Mississippi in Minneapolis. You wonder what kind of crazy torrent comes crashing down from the mountains in the rainy season. But today, it’s a span of glaring sand that townies cross, lazily and reluctantly. I stop on the main bridge crossing it to take a picture of the impressive Italianate government center on a wooded hilltop, but I’m yelled at by the police lounging on the other side in their green uniforms under sparse green cover. No pictures. They direct me to a spot below them on the river shore. I oblige them. I continue along the riverside. The short retaining wall there serves as backrest to scores of ch’at chewers, circles of men with idiot grins who shout invitations. The lane becomes increasingly hallucinatory as I advance. Teetering young toughs approach with green ooze dribbling from the corners of their mouths. Proud old men with hennaed beards and colorful skirts pass. Boys play on the ubiquitous Ethiopian foosball and ping-pong tables. Women leer. “You! You!” they all shout.
I cross the river and enter the more European side of town again, where streets are wide and follow a geometrical plan, where there are occasional circles with dry, plaster fountains like children’s ceramics. One has a couple of rudely realized duckies on top. From anywhere, the desert hills are visible, and I wrestle with the vivid impression that I’m in a California desert town run amok. The hills are alluring, reminding me of my home state. Reaching the town’s southern extremity, I don’t hesitate, but climb right up into the hills, passing stone and mud hovels perched on the steep sides. Kids stare and giggle, the type at home being shyer than the ones in the street. I stop to talk to a few. Even these know a little English. Up I go, among the thistles and the blooming cactus so like the cactus in our Southwest, the kind with the multiple flat heads. Everything is like home, except for that occasional horizontal, bristly evergreen that is so emblematic of Africa. That and the hump-backed cattle clinging to the incline.
Back on the ground, I amble through the bustling Kafira market in the “old town” side of the river, dodging camels and the two-wheeled, wooden buggies drawn by tired horses. The alleys here are narrow and confusing. I’m suddenly at the center, where stand some handsome old portals to the original market, crenellated tops and those Arabian arches so popular here: broken into two parts, square on the bottom and circular on top. Boys accost me. Everyone’s a bit more Somali here. By that I mean loud and brusque. I’m familiar with this interpersonal style from the Somalis in Minnesota. The only way to respond is with the same bravado and a lot of joshing. I take their pictures and bargain rowdily over the price. They guide me among the beautifully aromatic spices arrayed in bags in stall after stall under improvised canopies of plastic and cloth.
I’m staying in the Makonnen Hotel opposite the train station. It’s a classic spot. The station is set on a broad, dusty circle with a dead, silver caboose as the centerpiece. The station looks like an abandoned relic of the early twentieth century, yellow as corn flour and every portal closed and barred, a stylized DE high in its face. But it is still in use, as I’ll have occasion to describe later. The hotel itself is a quirky piece of Italian colonial era architecture. You enter by way of cafe and bar. The way to the rooms is a funny cornered passage the width of one’s shoulders behind the bar. I have the premier room, overlooking the circle and almost the size of my school’s classroom. The bare walls are two shades of avocado, and the ceiling fan from “Apocalypse Now” adorns the ceiling. I have two balconies, one above the circle, and another above the adjoining avenue. The bed is super king-sized, and at midnight I lay watching the blades of the fan in the sultry heat.
Trip East, Part One
Dire Dawa
I waste no time diving into my first new town, my first trip outside Addis Ababa in nearly five months. My bag stashed at the hotel, I start walking. This is Dire Dawa, (DRE-dwa) due east and almost to the Somali border, train town established to accommodate the French as they built a railroad to Djibouti. Look at a topographical map of Ethiopia, and you’ll see why. Harar, ancient city with the better claim to a train stop, is over a ridge of mountains, while Dire Dawa lies on the edge of that triangular flatland that spreads toward the Red Sea, a stretch of desert that becomes quite desolate and protects all kinds of secrets about the beginnings of our species.
The town is divided into two sections by a spooky dry riverbed -- spooky because it is about as wide as the Mississippi in Minneapolis. You wonder what kind of crazy torrent comes crashing down from the mountains in the rainy season. But today, it’s a span of glaring sand that townies cross, lazily and reluctantly. I stop on the main bridge crossing it to take a picture of the impressive Italianate government center on a wooded hilltop, but I’m yelled at by the police lounging on the other side in their green uniforms under sparse green cover. No pictures. They direct me to a spot below them on the river shore. I oblige them. I continue along the riverside. The short retaining wall there serves as backrest to scores of ch’at chewers, circles of men with idiot grins who shout invitations. The lane becomes increasingly hallucinatory as I advance. Teetering young toughs approach with green ooze dribbling from the corners of their mouths. Proud old men with hennaed beards and colorful skirts pass. Boys play on the ubiquitous Ethiopian foosball and ping-pong tables. Women leer. “You! You!” they all shout.
I cross the river and enter the more European side of town again, where streets are wide and follow a geometrical plan, where there are occasional circles with dry, plaster fountains like children’s ceramics. One has a couple of rudely realized duckies on top. From anywhere, the desert hills are visible, and I wrestle with the vivid impression that I’m in a California desert town run amok. The hills are alluring, reminding me of my home state. Reaching the town’s southern extremity, I don’t hesitate, but climb right up into the hills, passing stone and mud hovels perched on the steep sides. Kids stare and giggle, the type at home being shyer than the ones in the street. I stop to talk to a few. Even these know a little English. Up I go, among the thistles and the blooming cactus so like the cactus in our Southwest, the kind with the multiple flat heads. Everything is like home, except for that occasional horizontal, bristly evergreen that is so emblematic of Africa. That and the hump-backed cattle clinging to the incline.
Back on the ground, I amble through the bustling Kafira market in the “old town” side of the river, dodging camels and the two-wheeled, wooden buggies drawn by tired horses. The alleys here are narrow and confusing. I’m suddenly at the center, where stand some handsome old portals to the original market, crenellated tops and those Arabian arches so popular here: broken into two parts, square on the bottom and circular on top. Boys accost me. Everyone’s a bit more Somali here. By that I mean loud and brusque. I’m familiar with this interpersonal style from the Somalis in Minnesota. The only way to respond is with the same bravado and a lot of joshing. I take their pictures and bargain rowdily over the price. They guide me among the beautifully aromatic spices arrayed in bags in stall after stall under improvised canopies of plastic and cloth.
I’m staying in the Makonnen Hotel opposite the train station. It’s a classic spot. The station is set on a broad, dusty circle with a dead, silver caboose as the centerpiece. The station looks like an abandoned relic of the early twentieth century, yellow as corn flour and every portal closed and barred, a stylized DE high in its face. But it is still in use, as I’ll have occasion to describe later. The hotel itself is a quirky piece of Italian colonial era architecture. You enter by way of cafe and bar. The way to the rooms is a funny cornered passage the width of one’s shoulders behind the bar. I have the premier room, overlooking the circle and almost the size of my school’s classroom. The bare walls are two shades of avocado, and the ceiling fan from “Apocalypse Now” adorns the ceiling. I have two balconies, one above the circle, and another above the adjoining avenue. The bed is super king-sized, and at midnight I lay watching the blades of the fan in the sultry heat.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Travelogue 65 – March 1
The Hode and Humanity
Nothing enhances that special Long March feeling you get from living in Ethiopia more than the recurrent fit of the hode chigirs – stomach problems. More precisely, that’s diarrhea. It’s become a more or less permanent condition with relapses into good health. You launch into your day’s interminable errands and travels with a map of acceptable bathrooms securely in mind. You break up the taxi rides. You plan on places to sit and allow the intestines to compose themselves. You start the day with mineral water, and superstitiously taste everything you plan on ingesting, testing for a twinge in the gut that may caution you.
The hode chigirs do not help your attitude in dealing with the hordes of crazies and beggars you will face. Today, it’s a man with hides of small animals over his shoulder and a walking stick. “No money,” you say as a reflex to his approach on your periphery. He laughs and begins to shout. He shouts at passing cars about you. He follows alongside and harangues with a great smile. Eventually, he tangles with a taxi at the roadside. It runs over his stick, and you make your getaway. Yesterday, it’s the boy of about sixteen who follows you all the length of your walk toward home, chattering good-naturedly about “No mother, no father,” and how he arrived from Shashemene recently. “My big problem, my big problem is clotheses. Clotheses. You buy nice clotheses for me. God gives me small,” he says cryptically. You are stuck with him because you’ve begun to cross a wide field, intending to enjoy the nice day. Your lower intestine has quieted, and you think you might make it home okay. God knows, a long walk can be easier to handle than the jostling of the taxi. You are regaled for almost an hour about the state of the young lad’s clothes. On the other side, you make a detour and duck into a hotel where you know security will stop him.
There’s a philosopher on the taxi today. He’s in terribly frayed clothes. His hands are rough and dirty. He says hello. “How are you?” you reply. He seems to take the question quite seriously. He rambles on in answer, but his English is so broken, you can’t make it out. Something about the system and challenges and work. “It’s hard,” you venture, that being a safe reply to most any comment from an Ethiopian. He carries on. The theme is definitely “challenges.” “It’s a challenge,” you say. He heartily concurs. Amid the next strophe, you hear “work.” “It’s good to work,” you essay. This doesn’t go down so well. He has some words about that. And suddenly, he’s speaking clearly. “In this system,” he says, “work is dangerous. For the man outside, in nature, work is necessary. Yes.” He descends into obscurity. Something about psychology. More about the system. He sinks into a sullen spell. Before your stop, he emerges from his reverie to ask your name. You answer; he falls still.
The hodes all seem in working order at the concert last weekend. There are lots of faranji sitting peacefully. It’s a benefit. A German NGO has flown down four mop-top cellists for the occasion. They have worked up a program with the university’s music program. Apparently, many of these students had never seen their instruments before they arrived at the university. They handle themselves just fine. Some of them form a choir with beautiful voices. They perform simple songs about Jesus. The mop-tops, after a first set of classical pieces, play some American jazz standards and Michael Jackson. “Michael Jackson in a church!” Sophia and her friend marvel. It’s a German church, so I figure God understands.
Before the show, I need to make my safety trip to the restroom. I ask an Abasha lady at the ticket table where they are. She asks me, “German or English?” I tell her whichever one flushes. No one finds that funny. She explains, “Actually, I was asking so that, etc.” The musicians are meandering about the yard, practicing. The sky is rosy with the sunset. The men’s room is marked with a picture of John Kerry shielding his eyes. Somehow, again, it all makes perfect sense.
The Hode and Humanity
Nothing enhances that special Long March feeling you get from living in Ethiopia more than the recurrent fit of the hode chigirs – stomach problems. More precisely, that’s diarrhea. It’s become a more or less permanent condition with relapses into good health. You launch into your day’s interminable errands and travels with a map of acceptable bathrooms securely in mind. You break up the taxi rides. You plan on places to sit and allow the intestines to compose themselves. You start the day with mineral water, and superstitiously taste everything you plan on ingesting, testing for a twinge in the gut that may caution you.
The hode chigirs do not help your attitude in dealing with the hordes of crazies and beggars you will face. Today, it’s a man with hides of small animals over his shoulder and a walking stick. “No money,” you say as a reflex to his approach on your periphery. He laughs and begins to shout. He shouts at passing cars about you. He follows alongside and harangues with a great smile. Eventually, he tangles with a taxi at the roadside. It runs over his stick, and you make your getaway. Yesterday, it’s the boy of about sixteen who follows you all the length of your walk toward home, chattering good-naturedly about “No mother, no father,” and how he arrived from Shashemene recently. “My big problem, my big problem is clotheses. Clotheses. You buy nice clotheses for me. God gives me small,” he says cryptically. You are stuck with him because you’ve begun to cross a wide field, intending to enjoy the nice day. Your lower intestine has quieted, and you think you might make it home okay. God knows, a long walk can be easier to handle than the jostling of the taxi. You are regaled for almost an hour about the state of the young lad’s clothes. On the other side, you make a detour and duck into a hotel where you know security will stop him.
There’s a philosopher on the taxi today. He’s in terribly frayed clothes. His hands are rough and dirty. He says hello. “How are you?” you reply. He seems to take the question quite seriously. He rambles on in answer, but his English is so broken, you can’t make it out. Something about the system and challenges and work. “It’s hard,” you venture, that being a safe reply to most any comment from an Ethiopian. He carries on. The theme is definitely “challenges.” “It’s a challenge,” you say. He heartily concurs. Amid the next strophe, you hear “work.” “It’s good to work,” you essay. This doesn’t go down so well. He has some words about that. And suddenly, he’s speaking clearly. “In this system,” he says, “work is dangerous. For the man outside, in nature, work is necessary. Yes.” He descends into obscurity. Something about psychology. More about the system. He sinks into a sullen spell. Before your stop, he emerges from his reverie to ask your name. You answer; he falls still.
The hodes all seem in working order at the concert last weekend. There are lots of faranji sitting peacefully. It’s a benefit. A German NGO has flown down four mop-top cellists for the occasion. They have worked up a program with the university’s music program. Apparently, many of these students had never seen their instruments before they arrived at the university. They handle themselves just fine. Some of them form a choir with beautiful voices. They perform simple songs about Jesus. The mop-tops, after a first set of classical pieces, play some American jazz standards and Michael Jackson. “Michael Jackson in a church!” Sophia and her friend marvel. It’s a German church, so I figure God understands.
Before the show, I need to make my safety trip to the restroom. I ask an Abasha lady at the ticket table where they are. She asks me, “German or English?” I tell her whichever one flushes. No one finds that funny. She explains, “Actually, I was asking so that, etc.” The musicians are meandering about the yard, practicing. The sky is rosy with the sunset. The men’s room is marked with a picture of John Kerry shielding his eyes. Somehow, again, it all makes perfect sense.
Friday, February 25, 2005
Travelogue 64 – February 25
When the Lions Lie Down With the Bugs
It rained again last night. We had a long stretch of beautiful, sunny days that became increasingly hot and oppressive and hazy, so the hills were like mist. Then the clouds started coming. They arrive in the afternoon. When you wake, the sun is streaming your window, like it has for weeks. About noon, the first clouds appear, white and harmless. By four, a grey mass of them is hanging over the mountains, and with darkness comes the lightning.
I leave the house during rush hour in the morning, while the sun is bright and cheerful. The big dirt roads are peopled with the workers, walking to the asphalt road, where they’ll catch their taxis. An old woman shouts, “Bene!” Many of the elderly here are proud of their Italian. The kids find me and crowd around. They know my name. A while ago, I graduated from “faranj” to “faranju” in my neighborhood: THE faranj. Then my name leaked, and the children shout “Dana!” When they see me at the end of the block, and run to mob me and giggle and ask for cookies.
I don’t mind kids. They grow on you. The other day, I went to the school to take pictures of our kindergarteners. I wanted individual shots, so someday I can “sell” them back home, get them sponsorships for later education. These ones also like to mob me. And they know my name now, too. There, I’ve graduated from “Mister.” I tickle them. I toss a couple of them on the slide. I turn a couple upside down. Kids like this sort of thing. The teacher establishes order. I test the camera. This isn’t the first time I’ve come by on this mission. Last time, my new camera refused to work. I have to resort to the old one I left here last year, the one you have to tape shut once the film is in. The spirit of this place is strong. It invades foreign machinery. It isn’t happy until there’s a bit of chaos and improvisation to the simplest activity. We have a good laugh at the kids as they come up in single-file to pose. They aren’t used to it. “Smile,” I say. “Saki,” the teacher says, and they form charming little grins, thinking about saki.
I pay homage to our poor pet sheep in the back. This sheep was a gift from the board, sent via some agency that sends congratulations from afar, with a live sheep, cakes and flowers. I fought for the school pet idea, but it was a lost cause. His skin hangs on the back wall now. Apparently, he made for a good lunch for the school one special day. I lay a twig of grass below the hide, and reflect how he did, after all, have a shabby coat.
I went to see the lions the other day. I was in the neighborhood, waiting for a concert, so I ventured in. They reside in a small zoo, right by the university, down the hill from our school – the lion zoo. They’re the only animals in this little urban complex. They live in a circle of concrete, in wedge-shaped cages, a mom and dad per wedge. The cubs live in a separate facility. The ladies pace back and forth; the men hold their manes high. Or the two of them lie on their sides at the back of their condos. It wouldn’t be Ethiopia if someone weren’t at your elbow asking for money. In this case, it’s one or two of the staff photographers. Most of the Abasha are game. They pose in front of the sneering lions. I try to get away, find some peace with the kings and queens. They are huge. Their tawny hides are sleek and beautiful. They look down their wide noses at me, as they should. “Stranger,” they say. “Commoner.” The head photographer is shouting at us. “Nu, nu, lijjoch!” Come on, kids, he’s saying. It’s closing time. I sigh. The royalty looks away haughtily. I’m off to the concert, which I’ll describe next time.
When the Lions Lie Down With the Bugs
It rained again last night. We had a long stretch of beautiful, sunny days that became increasingly hot and oppressive and hazy, so the hills were like mist. Then the clouds started coming. They arrive in the afternoon. When you wake, the sun is streaming your window, like it has for weeks. About noon, the first clouds appear, white and harmless. By four, a grey mass of them is hanging over the mountains, and with darkness comes the lightning.
I leave the house during rush hour in the morning, while the sun is bright and cheerful. The big dirt roads are peopled with the workers, walking to the asphalt road, where they’ll catch their taxis. An old woman shouts, “Bene!” Many of the elderly here are proud of their Italian. The kids find me and crowd around. They know my name. A while ago, I graduated from “faranj” to “faranju” in my neighborhood: THE faranj. Then my name leaked, and the children shout “Dana!” When they see me at the end of the block, and run to mob me and giggle and ask for cookies.
I don’t mind kids. They grow on you. The other day, I went to the school to take pictures of our kindergarteners. I wanted individual shots, so someday I can “sell” them back home, get them sponsorships for later education. These ones also like to mob me. And they know my name now, too. There, I’ve graduated from “Mister.” I tickle them. I toss a couple of them on the slide. I turn a couple upside down. Kids like this sort of thing. The teacher establishes order. I test the camera. This isn’t the first time I’ve come by on this mission. Last time, my new camera refused to work. I have to resort to the old one I left here last year, the one you have to tape shut once the film is in. The spirit of this place is strong. It invades foreign machinery. It isn’t happy until there’s a bit of chaos and improvisation to the simplest activity. We have a good laugh at the kids as they come up in single-file to pose. They aren’t used to it. “Smile,” I say. “Saki,” the teacher says, and they form charming little grins, thinking about saki.
I pay homage to our poor pet sheep in the back. This sheep was a gift from the board, sent via some agency that sends congratulations from afar, with a live sheep, cakes and flowers. I fought for the school pet idea, but it was a lost cause. His skin hangs on the back wall now. Apparently, he made for a good lunch for the school one special day. I lay a twig of grass below the hide, and reflect how he did, after all, have a shabby coat.
I went to see the lions the other day. I was in the neighborhood, waiting for a concert, so I ventured in. They reside in a small zoo, right by the university, down the hill from our school – the lion zoo. They’re the only animals in this little urban complex. They live in a circle of concrete, in wedge-shaped cages, a mom and dad per wedge. The cubs live in a separate facility. The ladies pace back and forth; the men hold their manes high. Or the two of them lie on their sides at the back of their condos. It wouldn’t be Ethiopia if someone weren’t at your elbow asking for money. In this case, it’s one or two of the staff photographers. Most of the Abasha are game. They pose in front of the sneering lions. I try to get away, find some peace with the kings and queens. They are huge. Their tawny hides are sleek and beautiful. They look down their wide noses at me, as they should. “Stranger,” they say. “Commoner.” The head photographer is shouting at us. “Nu, nu, lijjoch!” Come on, kids, he’s saying. It’s closing time. I sigh. The royalty looks away haughtily. I’m off to the concert, which I’ll describe next time.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Travelogue 63 – February 15
Conversation
Until you know a little of the language, you’re amazed at the stream of verbiage between acquaintances and friends in the street. They launch themselves at each other, kiss cheeks or shake hands and embrace, and release upon each other a cascade of words. The warmth is genuine, and wonderful to see. One American passing another may say, “Hey,” and the other, “What’s new?” If it’s been a while, they may stop. A few condensed items of news, and then they shove off. Here is a people, you think, who knows how to converse. A few months of language, and you realize the conversation runs something like this: “How are you? How’s everything? Is everything well? Are you well? How are you? Are you well? How’s work? How are you? Is everything all right? How’s the family? How are you? Are you well? You disappeared. How are you?” Maybe an occasional answer, like, “I’m well, thank God. How are you? Are you fine? Is everything fine? How are you? Okay. Okay.”
Putting two and two together, you solve the cell phone quandary. E.g., it’s the weekend and a couple enters the café. They sit together in silence, clutching cell phones. One rings, and he or she jumps on it. Such sudden animation: “How are you? Are you well? Is everything fine? How are you? Where have you been? How are you? Are you fine?” The partner soon gets his/her chance. After a few cellular conversations, they pay up and leave. You realize that everyone on the other end of the line is at some other café, desperate for “conversation.” There are only so many how-are-you’s you can exchange with a spouse with any real enjoyment.
My landlord and I emerge at the same late hour in the morning, a coincidence I do my best to avoid. He offers me a ride. I know I’ll end up somewhere far from my destination, but it’s a gesture so magnanimous here it’s difficult to refuse. This should be an interesting guy to speak to. He runs a hotel in Kasanchis, a neighborhood known for its seedy hotels. He works strange hours. He looks like a gruff capitalist, with a protruding belly and heavy brow. Apparently, he has a good sense of humor, despite the stormy countenance, because he always makes the servant girls giggle. With me, he’s got one topic. “Did you forget what I asked you to do?” he begins as we pull away from home, in a tone to match the J.P. Morgan stare. I sigh. Ever since I brought Jack home, he wants Jack’s twin. I’ve told him in a variety of ways that Jack was a chance deal. I’ve seen the shepherd boys now and again, but they’ve had nothing to match Jack for cuteness. And it’s only occasionally I see them. This time, J.P. tells me the circumstances behind this obsession. He had a cute puppy once. The vet gave him a solution for fleas that basically sizzled the poor animal alive. “My God, did you go after this vet?” “Yes, I was very annoyed.” “Right. I think I would be annoyed, too.”
The cell rings. He picks it up, stony stare on the road. He growls in Amharic, “Yes? Hello. How are you? Are you well? What’s new? Where have you been? You disappeared. How are you? How’s work? Are you well? What’s up? What’s going on? How are you? You’re fine? Everything’s fine? How are you?” I watch the road, and the strange dance they call driving here. On large, asphalt roads, traffic resolves into three “lanes,” weaving in an ancient braiding pattern. The next time we drift to the curb side, I tell him this is fine. I can catch a taxi. He slows and stops. “How are you? How’s it going? What’s happening?” he continues as I disembark.
It’s pineapple season. I didn’t realize pineapples had a season, but here they are all of a sudden, piled high in wheelbarrows pushed around town by venders. For twenty cents, the guy will slice a bit off for you. Delicious. I’m transported by the taste into a sunny mood to match the skies.
Speaking of dogs, Jack’s latest trick: she’s in the well-known fabric stage of growth. She yearns for fabric to sink her teeth into. We grab opposing ends of a rag and I swing her around as she growls. It’s great fun, particularly when she lets go and is sent sprawling across the tile floor. She bounds right back again, flattening her ears and yanking that rag back and forth for all she’s worth.
Conversation
Until you know a little of the language, you’re amazed at the stream of verbiage between acquaintances and friends in the street. They launch themselves at each other, kiss cheeks or shake hands and embrace, and release upon each other a cascade of words. The warmth is genuine, and wonderful to see. One American passing another may say, “Hey,” and the other, “What’s new?” If it’s been a while, they may stop. A few condensed items of news, and then they shove off. Here is a people, you think, who knows how to converse. A few months of language, and you realize the conversation runs something like this: “How are you? How’s everything? Is everything well? Are you well? How are you? Are you well? How’s work? How are you? Is everything all right? How’s the family? How are you? Are you well? You disappeared. How are you?” Maybe an occasional answer, like, “I’m well, thank God. How are you? Are you fine? Is everything fine? How are you? Okay. Okay.”
Putting two and two together, you solve the cell phone quandary. E.g., it’s the weekend and a couple enters the café. They sit together in silence, clutching cell phones. One rings, and he or she jumps on it. Such sudden animation: “How are you? Are you well? Is everything fine? How are you? Where have you been? How are you? Are you fine?” The partner soon gets his/her chance. After a few cellular conversations, they pay up and leave. You realize that everyone on the other end of the line is at some other café, desperate for “conversation.” There are only so many how-are-you’s you can exchange with a spouse with any real enjoyment.
My landlord and I emerge at the same late hour in the morning, a coincidence I do my best to avoid. He offers me a ride. I know I’ll end up somewhere far from my destination, but it’s a gesture so magnanimous here it’s difficult to refuse. This should be an interesting guy to speak to. He runs a hotel in Kasanchis, a neighborhood known for its seedy hotels. He works strange hours. He looks like a gruff capitalist, with a protruding belly and heavy brow. Apparently, he has a good sense of humor, despite the stormy countenance, because he always makes the servant girls giggle. With me, he’s got one topic. “Did you forget what I asked you to do?” he begins as we pull away from home, in a tone to match the J.P. Morgan stare. I sigh. Ever since I brought Jack home, he wants Jack’s twin. I’ve told him in a variety of ways that Jack was a chance deal. I’ve seen the shepherd boys now and again, but they’ve had nothing to match Jack for cuteness. And it’s only occasionally I see them. This time, J.P. tells me the circumstances behind this obsession. He had a cute puppy once. The vet gave him a solution for fleas that basically sizzled the poor animal alive. “My God, did you go after this vet?” “Yes, I was very annoyed.” “Right. I think I would be annoyed, too.”
The cell rings. He picks it up, stony stare on the road. He growls in Amharic, “Yes? Hello. How are you? Are you well? What’s new? Where have you been? You disappeared. How are you? How’s work? Are you well? What’s up? What’s going on? How are you? You’re fine? Everything’s fine? How are you?” I watch the road, and the strange dance they call driving here. On large, asphalt roads, traffic resolves into three “lanes,” weaving in an ancient braiding pattern. The next time we drift to the curb side, I tell him this is fine. I can catch a taxi. He slows and stops. “How are you? How’s it going? What’s happening?” he continues as I disembark.
It’s pineapple season. I didn’t realize pineapples had a season, but here they are all of a sudden, piled high in wheelbarrows pushed around town by venders. For twenty cents, the guy will slice a bit off for you. Delicious. I’m transported by the taste into a sunny mood to match the skies.
Speaking of dogs, Jack’s latest trick: she’s in the well-known fabric stage of growth. She yearns for fabric to sink her teeth into. We grab opposing ends of a rag and I swing her around as she growls. It’s great fun, particularly when she lets go and is sent sprawling across the tile floor. She bounds right back again, flattening her ears and yanking that rag back and forth for all she’s worth.
Friday, February 11, 2005
Travelogue 62 – February 11
A Thin Line
The Marley wave has just about passed. There are still some scruffy faranji wandering about town. Some appear frighteningly blissful. Some have reached the stage of forcing their smiles. No doubt some of them are returning from Shashemene, where there was supposed to be the party to end all parties. I still get shouts from street kids of “Ya, Rasta!” There’s still an excess of reggae on the radio. I would have thought I’d be grateful for the break from Abasha pop. But I’m eager for the wave to finally pass.
There are some truly ugly aftershocks from the whole affair. A day or two after the concert, I go to a café. A couple of Germans have bullied their way into conducting a video interview there, taking up half the place. Our subjects are a couple “Rastas” from somewhere – France? Brazil? Portugal? I’m not close enough to tell. It’s a mother and daughter. The mother has some fraction of African blood. The daughter is about as white as can be, with rosy cheeks and clean, neatly braided dreads. They’re dressed in beautiful gowns a la Africa, straight from the boutique downtown wherever they live, perfectly pressed. The college-age girl beams, starry eyes and gleaming teeth. The two sing a cute duet, some homespun, sunshine song about moving mountains with good cheer.
Not all was in poor taste this Marley season. By the night before the concert, Meskel Square was looking sharp. The trees on the hill behind the stadium – a very wide bowl with many shallow steps, topped by an old stone wall to what must have been a palace once and now is a museum – the trees are lit green, an appropriate color for an affair of this sort, I think. The wall itself has a line of blue lights attached. The steps have been decorated with fancy street lamps with multiple lights in white globes. Hundreds of people mill about the night before, pleased with the transformation. It feels like Christmas Eve.
And the concert? When I ask Sergio about it the next day, his reply is, “Merda.” He was fine, though. He got to shake Bob’s mother’s hand as they wheeled her out. I stopped by for five minutes or so. It seems the usual concert fare: impressive for a moment, with its sea of humanity, the boom and echo of the music, the festive spirit in costumes, banners and smiles; banal for the remaining moments, when boom and echo is all you get, and the festive spirit becomes the mercantile spirit. You watch the tiny figure strut back and forth on stage. He shouts, “Are you ready?” a half dozen times. The Abasha in the back row practice their characteristic mirth that’s simultaneously for and against you. I’m never prouder of them. I walk away from the event with a shrug. How do you measure a thing like this? Horribly self-serving? Maybe, but it brings in tourism and money for Ethiopia.
Not long after, I’m trooping around Addis with my own video man in tow. I’m preparing a video presentation for marketing the school when I get back to America (see tesfa.org). We’ve taken a group of kids out of school, and we’re tramping around their neighborhood, visiting their homes. It’s another gorgeous day. We walk under brilliant skies. And this neighborhood, so poor, is so pretty, nestled in wooded hills. We arrive at the first house, of mud and grass. The boy’s feeble grandmother invites us in. She kisses my hand. There’s one room for all the family, with a dirt-floor and one old bed. Pots and pans litter one corner of the floor. Cheap poster representations of Jesus and Mary hang from the walls. She has us sit on low, crude benches covered with threadbare cloth. The video man’s assistant sets up the glaring light. The video guy focuses, gives us a cue. He pushes the big, black lens forward. The old woman blinks meekly. After the interview, the video man takes long, sweeping shots of the dark, little house. The grandmother stands by, rubbing her hands together. I feel ashamed. I leave her with a little money, and she kisses my hand again. I feel more ashamed. It’s all for the good, I tell myself, to little effect.
A Thin Line
The Marley wave has just about passed. There are still some scruffy faranji wandering about town. Some appear frighteningly blissful. Some have reached the stage of forcing their smiles. No doubt some of them are returning from Shashemene, where there was supposed to be the party to end all parties. I still get shouts from street kids of “Ya, Rasta!” There’s still an excess of reggae on the radio. I would have thought I’d be grateful for the break from Abasha pop. But I’m eager for the wave to finally pass.
There are some truly ugly aftershocks from the whole affair. A day or two after the concert, I go to a café. A couple of Germans have bullied their way into conducting a video interview there, taking up half the place. Our subjects are a couple “Rastas” from somewhere – France? Brazil? Portugal? I’m not close enough to tell. It’s a mother and daughter. The mother has some fraction of African blood. The daughter is about as white as can be, with rosy cheeks and clean, neatly braided dreads. They’re dressed in beautiful gowns a la Africa, straight from the boutique downtown wherever they live, perfectly pressed. The college-age girl beams, starry eyes and gleaming teeth. The two sing a cute duet, some homespun, sunshine song about moving mountains with good cheer.
Not all was in poor taste this Marley season. By the night before the concert, Meskel Square was looking sharp. The trees on the hill behind the stadium – a very wide bowl with many shallow steps, topped by an old stone wall to what must have been a palace once and now is a museum – the trees are lit green, an appropriate color for an affair of this sort, I think. The wall itself has a line of blue lights attached. The steps have been decorated with fancy street lamps with multiple lights in white globes. Hundreds of people mill about the night before, pleased with the transformation. It feels like Christmas Eve.
And the concert? When I ask Sergio about it the next day, his reply is, “Merda.” He was fine, though. He got to shake Bob’s mother’s hand as they wheeled her out. I stopped by for five minutes or so. It seems the usual concert fare: impressive for a moment, with its sea of humanity, the boom and echo of the music, the festive spirit in costumes, banners and smiles; banal for the remaining moments, when boom and echo is all you get, and the festive spirit becomes the mercantile spirit. You watch the tiny figure strut back and forth on stage. He shouts, “Are you ready?” a half dozen times. The Abasha in the back row practice their characteristic mirth that’s simultaneously for and against you. I’m never prouder of them. I walk away from the event with a shrug. How do you measure a thing like this? Horribly self-serving? Maybe, but it brings in tourism and money for Ethiopia.
Not long after, I’m trooping around Addis with my own video man in tow. I’m preparing a video presentation for marketing the school when I get back to America (see tesfa.org). We’ve taken a group of kids out of school, and we’re tramping around their neighborhood, visiting their homes. It’s another gorgeous day. We walk under brilliant skies. And this neighborhood, so poor, is so pretty, nestled in wooded hills. We arrive at the first house, of mud and grass. The boy’s feeble grandmother invites us in. She kisses my hand. There’s one room for all the family, with a dirt-floor and one old bed. Pots and pans litter one corner of the floor. Cheap poster representations of Jesus and Mary hang from the walls. She has us sit on low, crude benches covered with threadbare cloth. The video man’s assistant sets up the glaring light. The video guy focuses, gives us a cue. He pushes the big, black lens forward. The old woman blinks meekly. After the interview, the video man takes long, sweeping shots of the dark, little house. The grandmother stands by, rubbing her hands together. I feel ashamed. I leave her with a little money, and she kisses my hand again. I feel more ashamed. It’s all for the good, I tell myself, to little effect.
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