But we’ll blame it on the fact that we haven’t been kicking it near a computer much for our last few days here in E. And alas, the last day it is. So for our rainy afternoon activity (it’s week 2 of the rainy season here so you get a wee monsoon for a couple hours everyday), we’ll try and catch up.
Shout-outs to some of the people who have made this trip….
Emily – director of global partnerships for the UNF and Justin’s long lost sister (check that resemblance!) who we spent a lovely day with in the flower fields. See you in Austin – or sooner in NYC.
Alex – real New Yorker-turned-LAer and talented producer Alex not only helped us with trip prep (read: black boots) but was killer company during our adventures in Addis.
Maaza – brilliant Brooklyn-based author Maaza (check out “Beneath the Lion’s Gaze”) with the infectious laugh and sweet father and uncle. Best to you on your travels - we’ll bring you a bar anytime.
Kassaye – CARE director who organized the 3 most incredible days of our trip to Awash, as well as taught Didi a decent amount of Amharic on the way home.
Rediate – sparkling firecracker Rediate (left with Maaza and Justin) who took us under her wing in Addis and introduced her sweet family. She also drives. And does it well. It’s a big deal. 7 days in NYC is yours when you are ready.
Gary – Haramaya teachin’ homie and fantastic Addis tour guide. The 4th member of our Haramaya stoop crew for the first nights and provider of kickass last nights in Addis. Reckoning a return to Ethiopia will be via konjo meukina.
Janay – Haramaya teachin’ lawyer and the inspiration to come here in the first place. Thanks for everything, hon. Fruit salad party when you arrive in NYC. Duh-dunt nuh.
Hillary Clinton – Even thought you weren’t exactly with us, Hills, you were here in E and we still had to talk about you all the time.
Just a few quirky things we’ve noticed that give Ethiopia character.
1) Every taxi in the country is a blue bottom, white top compact car from 1960 with doors that don’t stay closed. You half expect the bottom of the car to be open so that you can run these suckers like Fred Flintstone would, which would be helpful considering more often than not, these guys need a wee push to get started.
2) The most beautiful people in the world. So we haven’t seen the whole world, but Ethiopia has the most stunning people I’ve ever seen. And Justin’s already found the next top model. Kids are also more adorable than usual.
3) Colors. We both had the misconception that Ethiopia is a dry dusty desert, existing in shades of mostly brown and we couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only do the people wear a spectrum of both colors and patterns (everything matches in E, by the way, which I adore), but every little store / corner / school / is smacked with some eye-widening-even-after-2-macchiatos color. Particularly in the middle of nowhere.
4) Flies are here, in great armies, but not so many cockroaches. And the ones you do see are small and sweet and have nice names like Johnny and Tommy.
5) Goats blocking traffic on streets and highways. We’ll miss you, guys.
6) Everywhere a crosswalk. Makes it really easy to get places faster when you can just cross a four-lane highway wherever you want.
7) Brushing your teeth. There are several Farangi conversations about whether or not you would brush their teeth somewhere (city, hotel, house, etc). The more cavalier peeps get props in outside conversations: “And he brushes his teeth with the water there!”
8) NGO License plates are orange. Even though our schedule had us spending a lot of time hanging with NGOs, they are prevalent. Most NGO vehicles will go unmarked (except for the UN which has a massive logo on the doors), but the tip off is that all NGO vehicles have orange letters on their license plates.
9) Metal detectors at the front of hotels and restaurants in Addis. Not sure if this makes you feel more or less safe.
10) Duel-role shops. Hey, you may as well get everything you need from a multi-convenient store, like a “Cafe and Beezness Senteer” or a “Hotel and Butchery”
11) The Call to Prayer. 5am. Every morning. Hauntingly beautiful, entrancing, and comfortable, as if someone is singing from all the black keys on the piano and one particularly selected white key….
They tell you you’ll get addicted to injera when you first arrive. A sour fermented pancake addiction - sweet! Thing is, it happened. Our first few super-filling dinners of a pile of meat (tibs) and giant injera pancake made us crave something like a salad or pasta a few days later, but suddenly, all we wanted to order was injera and tibs. It’s so GOOD! In fact, we’ve enjoyed sheep, goat, and bull tibs during our time here and our stomachs have actually been kind, even after Kitfo, which is raw meat and butter. We’ll be taking name suggestions for our tapeworms when we return.
Spriss is our other new addiction, which is simply coffee and black tea mixed. You won’t like it until you’ve tried it.
And by the way, they do have the best coffee in the world here. I’ve never drank so many macchiatos in my life, typically more than one in any given sitting. The coffee ceremony is well orchestrated and beautiful, with beans roasted on the spot. A nice smoking pile of beans is passed around before 3 the strongest little cups are served to each guest. I’M AWAKE.
Also adoring? Shiro, a lentil-y tomato chili paste, and burberry, (shown above) a chili / onion / garlic powder you can dip anything in. We’re bringing back a nice amount home, thanks to Rediate and her family, so come bug us for some.
You don’t realize how much you use “okay” until you learn better ways to do it. You know what I’m talking about – the “sure “ or “mm hmm” or “right” or “got it, got it” that people over-speckle in conversations to show they are listening or agree. The Ethiopian equivalent for “okay” comes in 2 amazing flavors:
1st is the word “ashi” which you can pretty much pronounce as a lovely little whispery “shee.”
2nd and my favorite is the short gasp with a healthy injection of surprise. I’m not how long it will take to get used to this without it evoking alarm or making me look around.
“Can we buy a bottle of water?” GASP!
“Thank you.” GASP!
“We had such a great time.” GASP!
A massive blog post! This is what happens when you don’t write for a few days when you are traveling in a country that fills your brain up with details just by looking out the window. We know, we know: reading isn’t cool, so skim if you’d like or check out the other random stuff below. We just had too many details and stories we wanted to include….
On Thursday, we set off from Addis Ababa with CARE in a Toyota 4 runner and headed east toward Awash. The drive was about 380km, partially on dirt, but mostly on a two lane highway used by cargo trucks, which we were constantly having to pass on blind corners. These trucks are jokingly called “Al Qaida” in Amharic, due to their sporadic driving and tendency to get into accidents.
It’s hard not to be taken by the landscape, a vast Savannah spanning hundreds of kilometers that appeared to have been an ancient river bed. Acacia trees spotted the flat, dry brown sand, and low underbrush scattered about made the landscape seem nearly quintessential Africa. Giant piles of black lava indicated a very chaotic prehistoric past. This is the region where the remains of our earliest human ancestor, Lucy, were discovered. We saw wild baboons(!) playing on the side of the highway, alligators in a lagoon, gazelles prancing through the brush, and successfully avoided camel roadkill (apparently a 15000 birr fine if you hit a camel!).
Past Awash, our vehicle approached a mob blocking the road. Women were screaming and people were running from all directions around us. Several young men with machine guns were carrying a man who was bleeding. The young men were not dressed in military gear. Our driver locked our doors of the 4runner and Ahmed, who was part of the clan and our translator, jumped out. We were clueless as to what was happening, but it was the sort of situation where your intuition tells you everything you need to know, and this was not good. They carried victim right in front of our vehicle, a young, maybe 16 or 17, his eyes looked shocked and sedated, and he was bleeding profusely. We waited in the middle of the chaos for our translator to return.
Ahmed returned to the vehicle and urged us to move on with caution, he assured us that we would be safe and that the battle was going on about 10-15km away. I’m not sure that made us feel more safe, but we sortof just had to shrug and go with it. We learned this type of conflict is common and ongoing among different clans in the Afar region, each protecting their own land in a loosely governend system. This particular battle was between the Afari and Somali clans, a conflict which we found out the next day, left five Afari young men dead, one of which we saw.
We went directly to Dekinamo village to arrange the interviews and meetings for the next day. The Dekinamo clan is part of the Afari. These folks are migrant, living in a pastoral community that subsist on livestock, goat and camel milk and sargum bread. Due to the harsh environment they live in, they move locations every three months or so in search of resources to sustain their lives and their livestock. Their peanut shaped dome homes are mobile. They have no access to electricity, water or radio.
We turned off the main road and onto a 4wd only trail through the desert dirt, bouncing bounced deeper into a more isolated desert for another hour. Lions were said to be lurking, but we never spotted one. We did see caravans of hundreds of camels and warthogs darted into the shrubs. Then we arrived at Dekinamo, and we were greeted by men with guns and spears. Luckily, Ahmed grew up in Dekinamo and began explaining our intention. Smiles began to crack, their rigid facades softening and children began putting their hands up to the window. Soon we were shown around the main parts of the community, and hanging out in one of the peanut shaped domes, smiles being the only form of communication.
CARE has been working in this region for four years on a program called the Afar Women and Girls’ Sexual and Reproductive Health, Livelihood and Rights’ (AWGSRHLR) project. The project has just concluded its first cycle, ending in December of 2010, and is anxiously awaiting a second phase of funding. The likelihood is great, as the first phase of the program was very successful. The intervention has had transformable impact on this community in a short time, as the desire to learn about irrigation, small-scale loans, basic education and safe health practice was a running theme in the interviews we conducted.
The next day we got to meet with the girls who are going to the Alternate Basic Education (ABE) center in the village and the Center Management Committee, made up of women leaders from the community who are promoting ABE as well as ensuring that the children complete the three cycles of ABE, and managing all implementation of the best practice training which CARE has been providing. We had a powerful interview with Basu Mohammed, an older woman who was a traditional birth attendant of the Dekinamo village. Remarkably, Basu is a woman who, because of the educational training on the harmful side-effects of FGM practice and medical training she received through this CARE program, has entirely stopped the practice of FGM and is now educating other women on it’s harmfulness.
CARE’s Alternate Basic Education (ABE) is a program set up in mobile classrooms which have three cycles. Each cycle lasts one year, and once a student completes the third cycle, they are eligible to enter into a formal education center at grade 5. We got to learn more about the experience at ABE in Dekinamo during a conversation with Bula Abrahim, a very shy, strong, and giggly 10 year old, attending the school.
Bula’s got a lot going on in her day. She wakes up and her morning starts by cleaning her house and sometimes other neighbor houses. The next task involves preparing the morning meal, which generally consists of goat or camel milk and sorgum bread. She will milk the goats, prepare the fire and begin to bake the bread before 7:00 a.m. Once her family is fed she will go to the ABE center to attend class. This school consists of a tiny classroom with dirt floors, a few long wooden desks, one chalk board, and a thatched roof hut. In school, she is taught English, Math, Science, Amarenya and Afarenya. She attends school five days per week, but said it is very important for her to have two days to rest, because there are many other tasks to be done. Math and Afarenya language are Bula’s favorite subjects in school.
After school, Bula must go directly to fetch water and care for the goats and sheep. In the Dekinamo village, livestock is the most important commodity, used both as payment and the primary food source. By this time, the sun is setting and Bula prepares dinner for her family. With no candles or electricity, studying is difficult, but Bula’s dreams certainly don’t let her rigorous and tiresome schedule get her down. She aspires to be a health worker or doctor. When we asked Bula why, she answered, “there are no health services in my community and I want to bring the solution to this problem.”
Bula is in cycle two of the ABE program and plans to finish cycle three. Once children complete the third cycle they are able to enroll in grade 5 in the formal education center, which is nearly 45 km away. Bula faces two primary obstacles to fulfill her dream. The first, formal school is too far. Most likely, without the re-implementation of the CARE program and the construction of a formal education center closer to Dikanamo, Bula will never attend formal school. Girls carry so much of the daily weight of maintaining the home, that to be absent for such length on a daily basis would result in the entire community suffering. Bula told me, “I want to continue, but it’s too far for the other school. I wish there was a school here.”
The second obstacle is that Bula will most likely be married within one or two years. The pastorialists’ deep rooted tradition has girls being married generally before the age of 14. Once a girl becomes a wife, she is not able to attend school. Kassaye, the program Manager from CARE said the immediate solution to keep girls in school is to scale up ABE, to provide ongoing training for these children. With time, perhaps they can begin to educate the community on ways to fulfill the daily tasks, without relying so much upon the young girls, allowing girls the opportunity to be able to attend formal education.
Leaving the Afari both nights, we enjoyed a lot of goat tibs for dinner. One certain meal, the waiter brought us the “best parts” of the goat… after we had eaten our 1st round. We felt horrible since we were so full already, trying to politely eat (and not waste) these best parts, wondering exactly it was that we had consumed prior to the best. A lovely round of WWF wrestling was playing on a TV set up outside, which made it all the more surreal to hear some fakey announcer voice carrying on, while we chewed goat (have I sufficiently grossed out all the vegetarians here yet?).
Back in Addis now for a day, we met up with some of the fantastic folks from 10x10 for beers at the aptly named “Bier Garten” last night and enjoyed some kielbasa and spaghetti. Every restaurant here has spaghetti, which was a nice change to our goat.
It’s crazy that just one week ago (just one week!), we were cautious, anxious and unassuming. Now we are numb, adjusted, but still fascinated. Ethiopia is complex and hopeful, heartbreaking and heartwarming, beautiful and expressive. Most of all, Ethiopia is growing. And we can’t help but think that we are, too.
-d + j
An upside down video for you! (don’t ask - i’ve tried everything…)
Kassaye teaches me how to brush my teeth with an Ethiopian toothbrush! I’ve been hella jealous of all the peeps chewing sticks around town, and I’ll admit that I chewed on my brush for a good portion of the drive home. A little Googling says that these toothbrush contains chloride, various antibacterial agents as well as vitamin C. Peace out, Colgate!
Special ending: goats on the road!
A few photos from Afar. Justin and I just spent the last few days in Awash and the Amibara district, chatting with the most beautiful children and chair people in the Dekinamo clan, a nomadic pastoral community, with dedicated 10x10 partner, CARE Ethiopia. CARE has just completed a 4-year program focused on alternative education for children and health awareness training to encourage the “abandoning” of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a practice that affected 99% of females here until this program began. Since completion in December 2010, the program has gathered a lot of data to show the affects that both education and awareness of FGM complications has had. While its still early to see the long term affects, all signs are pointing towards good things: the kids are finishing their new alternative school programs, going on to more formal schooling, and stories of abolishing the FGM practice are beginning to emerge.
