Sandals, Sodere, Sunburns, and St George Beers

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What do these things have in common other than the letter ‘S’?

The last week.

Thursday (Jan 28/2010) was another rough day as my highest hope for permanent accommodation at the guesthouse was officially shattered. I really wasn’t surprised by the information, but it was nonetheless disturbing, tantamount to me remaining ‘homeless’ for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, this bad news coincided with a day of celebration. Two of my colleagues finished a series of continuing education exams on this day so we decided to drown our stresses together in a few St. George beers and some shiro (spicy) at Habesha Restaurant.
En route to meet Z & F at Kaldi’s Coffee, a man pulled over along side of me to deliver a proposition: “Hey sista! I will be a good friend to you!” I tried to ignore him, but evidently, I cannot casually out-pace a moving vehicle. Hmm… Anyways, I managed to convince him that I was in no need of a new ‘friend’ (when actually the exact opposite is true) and carried on to Kaldi’s where I grabbed a table along the front window. When I looked outside, as luck would have it, there sat my new friend! He claimed it was fate that brought us to the same place; I on the other hand think it was fate that Z & F showed up minutes later with some delicious Macchiatos and a table far away from that window.
We carried onto Habesha (equivalent to ‘Abyssinia’ meaning Ethiopian/traditional/local) and took a seat in a few chairs modeled after the monument at Axum, positioned around a straw table (used to store fermenting seeds for injera), in a room lit only by candle light through a haze of burning incense. Z ordered a meal of beef tibs and shiro to share and just before it was brought sizzling to the table, another server came by with a metal basin for us to rinse our hands in (customary to do this before a meal). As we ate a series of dancers performed the traditional dances of Ethiopia from the South, through Oromia, to modern Amhara, all the way to the northern Tigrayan-influenced regions. In Ethiopia, the more southern the population, the lower the portion of the body that is used in a dance. This same sort of progression is exemplified all over Africa as a whole. As G explained last night, in South Africa, stomp, using only the feet, started in the mines; the rhythms were used to communicate a chain message to other workers all the way to the surface. During Apartheid the same tactic was used as a covert method of communication. As you move north through Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malawi etc. the dance similarly moves upwards to the hips - heavy on the bum-shaking! By the time you reach Addis, people dance almost solely with their shoulders and head in such a was that it looks as if they are dislocating multiple joints per second to create a movement that matches the drums beat for beat.
This was the night I learned not to make eye contact at Habesha restaurants. I seem to be a target for dance lessons.

Friday (Jan 29) was a fairly uneventful but entertaining day, at least for everyone around me. I was enjoying my sunlit walk to work around 8:30am (2:30 Ethiopian time), thinking about my Habesha experience and how much there is to do here in Ethiopia when: “SNAP!” Just as mum told me it would, one of the pair of my favourite flip flops broke right at the thong. I tried to make-do and sort of, swing that leg around with each step, but it was useless - so I lost the sandal altogether. F later told me that walking barefoot through Gerji brings me a big step closer to losing my ‘forenj’ status and becoming ‘habesha’! haha! A few dozen steps later, a nice young man noticed my glistening bare foot and brought me over to a young shoe-shiner (shoe-shining stations can be found at intersections all over Addis) who expertly reattached the frayed fabric to the show by threading thick twine right through the shoe! When the other one snapped later that very same day, much to the amusement of my coworkers, I tried to thread it back together myself. Here is a pretty clear indication of just how successful my attempt at shoe repair was: I walked home that afternoon in a pair of borrowed pink sparkly shower sandals.
Friday night, the Toronto program manager and regional manager both turned up in Addis. We drove to an area in Addis nicknamed ‘Chechnya’ for its tendency to get unruly and chaotic after dark to have some dinner at Elsa’s, a popular outdoor restaurant/beer garden. While yet again, sharing some tibs and shiro (everyone is stocking up on meat right now because Lent starts soon marking the beginning of 55days of fasting), we came up with a plan to bust out of Addis for the weekend.

Saturday (Jan 30) morning, Anna (AM), my PM from Toronto (who it turns out is the sister of a good university friend of mine -- its a SMALL freakin' world!!), and I rolled out of our beds, grabbed some breakfast, and packed up our backpacks for an overnight trip to Nazaret and Sodere. Nazaret is located in the Great Rift Valley about 100km south of Addis; Sodere is a hot springs resort located just on the outskirts of Nazaret. I would compare the area to Wasega Beach - a hot waterside town frequented by families during the day and youths at night. AM had not anticipated needed a swimsuit during her two work-weeks here in Addis so before getting underway we grabbed a taxi to the Friendship Center on Bole to do some shopping! Side note: right now, a cab to Bole SHOULD cost about 40Birr, not 60. Expats beware. Anyways, the stores had a wonderful selection of swimsuits (haha) most of which we mistook for dresses as they as they had layers of ruffles attached to the bum. One we located a modest one-piece with no bum-ruffles we made a quick beat back the Guesthouse to meet Gizaw, the regional director, and his friend Alem who is here for a few weeks to visit her family.
By noon we were on the road. Another note: most of the roads south were surprisingly well constructed and smooth, though you cannot say the same for the traffic which we decided operates on the premise of two clichés: “every man for himself” and “if you cant beat ‘em, join ‘em!” It is said that the shoulders of Ethiopia’s highways are littered with carcasses; the ‘carcasses’ to which travelers refer are not just ‘road kill’ in the typical sense, but also to vehicles that have been run off the road and abandoned. On our way we stopped for lunch where we had, you guessed it, tibs and shiro! Alem, bless her, ordered another dish of stewed lamb (as opposed to roasted) to bring some variety to our diets which was incredibly tender and delicious.
We carried on for another 20minutes to Sodere passing a steady stream of elderly women draped in scarves to shield themselves from the sun, which is particularly scorching in the Valley, standing along the road with their palms outstretched. As G said, nothing can demonstrate to you more clearly the massive gap between the rich and the poor than the traffic that whips passed the pleading destitute en route to a weekend getaway at the hot springs.
I can’t seem to find an appropriate segue after that statement…
Saturday afternoon at Sodere was beautiful. The long road trip left us with no other option than to use the squat-hole toilets. There is nothing quite like a squat-hole toilet to really make you want a shower. Fortunately, that is one of the big draws of Sodere. The STEAMING hot spring water is channeled down from the hills into pipes which open up into communal showers. It would be very easy to be grossed-out by the act of bathing with handfuls of strangers or to criticize the less attractive displays of nudity, but the whole experience was really enjoyable. Grandmothers relaxed on the stone benches with their feet in the hot water, mothers washed their daughters, daughters washed their sisters, and everyone got a kick out of the two fair-skinned girls whose legs turned a vibrant shade of red in the knee-deep pool.
Alem spent the afternoon getting a “Special” massage. I’m sure this masseuse - whose name is actually Special - has been the butt of many jokes in her life, but after an hour of relaxation, Alem told us that her name is nothing short of a description of her talents as a masseuse. AM and I spent the rest of the afternoon, entertaining a few little boys by doing tandem cannon balls into the spring pool; in the evening we came back together for dinner and an ice cream then headed back to Nazaret to find a place to stay for the night.
We landed at The Palace in two rooms for which the price was determined by the level of noise from the street and/or the chirping cricket in the stairwell. We left our bags and walked down the street for a drink. On Alem’s recommendation, I tried whiskey and Ambo (a local tonic water) and listened as G told us stories from CPARs early days working in Gondar and Tigray during the “Great Ethiopian Famine” (roughly 1984-89). To this day, “blood feuds” still exist (traditionally can be carried over 7 generations); G told us of one he had unfortunately witnessed while working in the region (sensitive readers skip to Sunday): the son of a man who had been viciously crippled some years prior, stormed into the attacker’s village killing 18 of his family members single handedly. After reaping his vengeance, he and his tribe members lined up to face the villagers who had gathered to collect their grain rations. He announced what he had done and why, daring them to react. His people then crowded around him, and swept him away into hiding. Generations down the road it is possible that some members of his own family may pay in kind for his actions.
Frustrated by this story, we returned to our cockroach infested rooms where AM struggled with the effects of jet lag until about 5am and I, enjoying a full nights sleep, got mauled by bedbugs - 11 of them to be exact. In light of the story we had just been told the night before, and having witnessed a young girl with scabbed knees singing and begging in the street outside our window first thing in the morning, AM took her bloodshot eyes and I, my spotted arms, in stride.

Sunday (Jan 31) we got an early start back to Sodere from Nazaret (entrance fee 32Birr, approx 3$), bought a bar of soap from a boy at the entrance for 6Birr, and once again, enjoyed a hot shower. Alem, G, and AM discovered over the course of the previous day that I had never had a massage before so they signed me up for my first full body massage from Special. It may have been the best $7CAD I have ever spent; I was nearly comatose by the end with not a single knot left in my body. The only downside of this massage, that I really should have considered before spending the next hour in the pool, was the combination of massage oils + equatorial sun + freckled skin…
Aside from the burn, by noon it was a joke that I had had a wonderfully relaxing morning while AM had been attacked by a monkey, shot, and evangelized. There were dozens and dozens of monkies swinging and lounging about the resort and some of the more playful younger ones liked to make a game about grabbing your sandals while you walked. As we walked by a particularly aggressive looking monkey AM felt a sharp pain on her neck which, based on her recent experience, she assumed was a monkey punching her in the throat. It turned out to have been a cap from a young boy’s BB-gun. He thought the whole series of events was absolutely hysterical and I couldn’t help but to laugh right alongside him.
We left Sodere with a plan to stop for lunch on the way back to Addis. G asked us what we would like to have and, knowing that Nazaret was famous for its Kurit (raw meat), AM and I both requested to have anything BUT. Of course, we ended up at the Mereb Butchery, a popular butcher/restaurant where you can buy meat to-go or enjoy a variety of meals including Kurit. So G ordered us 2kg of meat which was sliced from the hooked slab of beef right in front of us and served on a plate with some spicy sauce. Protest would have been futile, so I picked up a chunk of red meat, cut a piece for myself, wrapped it up in injera, dipped it in the sauce, and chewed it down. I repeated this two more times because it is proper etiquette to always have more than one bite of what you are being served in Ethiopia. To be honest, it tasted good - the texture wasn’t even that bad - but on that day, my mind did not win over the matter.
We took a brief stop in at G’s friend’s family’s home in Nazaret for coffee (at this point each of us had 4-5 caffeinated beverages) to let the sun go down a bit before carrying on. Here we met an 8-year-old boy we nicknamed ‘Doctor’ because he is incredibly smart and aspires to be a doctor. Not long into our visit, he took out a toy laptop that his lovely mother had purchased for him before school and showed us all of the different lessons and games you would play on it (mimicking musical tunes, matching up letters of the English alphabet to the ones being sounded out, typing), all of which he was incredibly proficient. We took a family photo to send to G’s friend, now living in Uganda, and cautiously got on our way, dodging traffic (cars, camels, donkies, dogs, horse-drawn carriages, 3-wheeled taxis) and stopping to collect some treats (sugar cane, tangerines, watermelon) from the side of the road.

Monday (Feb 1) was again, largely uneventful until the evening when AM and I met G and his crazy cousins, all brothers aged 21-23 years (oldest to youngest): Eby, Al, and Peter. We ended up at a restaurant called 2000 Habesha which is clearly the “it” place to go if you want to experience Ethiopian cuisine and culture in Addis. We actually ate dinner about 15ft from Jeffrey Sachs (director of the UN Millennium Development Goals project and author of The End of Poverty) and his entourage! A similar style to Habesha Restaurant (described above), I again got to witness some very talented people perform back-breaking dances while with G’s sneaky cousins taught me bad words/insults in Amharic whether I was aware of their true meaning or not.

On that note...
NEW AMHARIC WORDS! (good ones, though the last two immediately following SOUND bad to say)
Anbesa - literally, lion; used as a word of encouragement, to describe someone who is brave, or to describe the head honcho/leader be it of a business or a house
Egziabher Yimesgen - response to Indemneh/nesh (how are you?), meaning Thanks to God; essentially, very well.
Hyiwet qonjo new - Life is Beautiful
Feqr - love
Shetah - frangrance/perfume/smell

Inné: I, me
Ante: You (male) Anchee (female)
Yane: My, mine
Yante: Your(s)

Siddist - 6
Sebbat - 7
Simnt - 8
Zettegn - 9
Asir - 10
Haya - 20
Selassa - 30 (that’s as high as the calendar goes so that’s all I know for numbers!)

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“A good friend will pick bugs off your butt.” AM, watching monkeys groom each other

Love,
Troy

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Photos

Habesha
Amhara dance at Habesha Restaurant

Miracle Worker
This is the talented young man that stitched my favourite sandal back together on the side of the Gerji road

Jinjero Love
Family of monkeys grooming each other and mum being very protective of the little one in her arms

Kurit
AM and I trying Kurit for the first time

Doc
'Doctor' showing AM how to learn the English alphabet on his battery-operated laptop

Watermelon Stop
Stop for watermelon on the side of the road -- I think that cow in the background had a heist planned!

Truck Carcass
Truck Carcass N of Nazaret -- there is no means available to get it out of there. Wrecked vehicles get pillaged and left to rust.

Love
Meaning: love knows no distance
Painted by G's friend's friend to remind her family of their daughter off in Uganda