One Week in Addis

One Week in Addis

One week in Addis Ababa Ethiopia and I could easily stay another, and another, and perhaps several more. Life for me here is very very comfortable, and it’s not only because of the perfect climate, delicious food, and shockingly beautiful women everywhere I turn. Ok so the latter has a lot to do with it but what I’m really blown away by on a daily basis is the ease with which people relate to each other, including me! Never have I witnessed a culture with such frequent displays of affection and generosity. From the warm greetings, hugs, handshakes, and holding hands between and within all the demographics, rich, poor, male, female, to the continual invitations of food and drink, I have never for more than a few moments felt distant from anyone.

After my life in New York, this is the most refreshing place I’ve ever been. Whereas in New York it was a rare and beautiful occasion to have the time and wherewithal to stop and talk with people on the street including in my own neighborhood, here in Addis, I spend my days walking down a single street and unavoidably meeting more people than I know what to do with. My little address book is literally filling up too fast. For example, today I headed down to the Sudan Embassy for the fourth and last time to quickly pick up my passport with freshly affixed visa. I arrived at 2:30 and was told lunch hour wasn’t over until 3, so I meandered down around the corner into a somewhat out of the way neighborhood primarily dedicated to auto parts stores. I checked out the few cafes interspersed between until I found what looked like a nice enough restaurant that would serve injira and vegetables. I walked in through the outdoor patio and straight up to the women sitting behind the cash register who greeted me with unmistakably clear American English. Turns out this Ethiopian woman had recently moved back to her home country from the illustrious state of Missouri where she still has four teenage children and a husband. We spent the lunch hour talking about her experience as an African immigrant in the Midwest and her perspectives on walking two worlds. After lunch, she introduced me to a group of her friends seated out front drinking macchiatos, and of course they proceeded to invite me to sit down and join them. Without my small touristy plans of each day and the ongoing hassle of waiting at the Sudanese Embassy, I could quite easily spend all my days in this manner, spontaneously stopping to talk and then following the conversation wherever it leads me.

Other highlights of my time here included my visit to the Ethiopian Ethnological Museum which is located in Haile Selassie’s former palace. In addition to the many cultural exhibits that fill the main rooms of the palace, the emperor’s bedroom and royal bathroom are preserved in their original state minus a few bullet holes in the mirror from the abortive 1960 Coup attempt. It wasn’t so much the content of the museum however that grabbed my attention as much as its setting and historical significance. After being occupied by the Italians for four years, the palace and grounds hosted Selassie’s royal family and most government functionaries until it was taken over by the student led revolution of 1974 and became what it is today as one of several academic buildings of the Addis Ababa University Campus.

The ethnological museum and library are maintained and curated by the university’s Ethiopian Studies Department. I knew this beforehand because on my way over to the museum, I happened to ask directions from a group of three Ethiopian Studies grad students who were on their way to their afternoon class in the adjacent building. Then of course when I walked out of the museum 2 hours later, who did I see but the three grad students studying in the former palace’s sunny courtyard. I was extremely fortunate because not only did they all speak perfect English but they more than willing to spend their afternoon answering all my questions about Ethiopian history. We spoke of the Selassie’s forty year emperorship and the subsequent forces leading up to the 1974 revolution. After they’d provided a book’s worth of perspective and nuance, we launched into an entraordinary conversation on contemporary politics, the relationship between the Bush administration and the current prime minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi. Incidentally, this happens to be a classic example of Bush’s with-us-or-against-us policy, in which no matter how poor a country’s record of human rights and democratic participation, US military aid and DFI will continue to flow in so long as that country’s head of state proclaims an offensive stance against Islamist fundamentalism and war against the evildoers.

The political discussion wasn’t however nearly as fascinating as what they told me regarding the content of their classes and the mission of the graduate program. The Ethiopian Studies Program offers a unique interdisciplinary approach that seeks to categorize and comprehend the ultra diverse traditional ethnology of Ethiopia and at the same time define the new face of the country. What was so fascinating and uplifting for me was to hear these women speak so passionately about the complexities and inherent challenges involved in actually creating the modern Ethiopia. That the concept of nationhood is ever evolving, and in a country as richly endowed with indigenous culture as Ethiopia, it is really quite radical to consider the ways in which the traditional structures of governance and conflict resolution become assimilated into the framework of a quasi-democratic republic.

One of the women spoke of such an example from her own family and home town, in which a neighbor of hers had killed another in a dispute over land ownership and farming rights. The murdered man’s family decided to resolve the situation using the arbitration of the local council of elders. Without the legitimacy of courts or the threat of prison, it was mutually decided that the killer’s family would pay a fine of 4000 birr (about $45) and the killer would himself be obligated to sufficient agricultural labor to replace the familial contributions of the murdered son. In the end, the families were satisfied, but the grad student’s brother in-law become so enraged at what he saw as illegitimate justice (mainly that the life of the murdered man, his friend and neighbor, was being sold for a few dollars and some farm labor) that he developed a heart condition and died a month later.

Perhaps this is not the clearest example, but what I came away from this discussion with was an overwhelming appreciation for the country and its future. These women spoke with the nuance and vision that comes from seeing oneself and one’s background in the full context of the modern world. They had come from middle class backgrounds, learned English the hard way, and had somehow managed to reach the stratosphere of global perspective, a realm in which all illusions of escapism fall away and one realizes the interdependence and downright sameness of all places called home.

Maybe I’m romanticizing, but this is exactly what Ethiopia has said to me. There is only one world. We can feel at home anywhere, but in the end we must live up to the obligations of our birth. I feel very fortunate to have been invited into the lives and homes of so many brilliant and thoughtful people in this country. I am appreciative of every person I met here in Addis that actually took the time to listen and share unconditionally. From my grad student friends, to the neighborhood kids I played soccer with, to my multinational community of internet café regulars, to my sixteen year old student/friend who calls himself Abraham the hero because he has his sights set firmly on going to college in the US to study political science so that he may one day return to Ethiopia (heroically) to save the government from corruption and totalitarianism. There are many many more and really I’d like to use this blog to personally shout out to all of them, but alas, the journey itself calls and so does my 3AM wake up call to catch the minibus shuttle to Gonder. So as they say here, ciao – literally, your humble servant until we meet again.