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The Master
TaeKwanDo TeddyIt is early morning. I feel like I have been asleep for a total of 20 minutes. My head is thumping.
Not because of a large quantity of rather nasty, on-the-turn, cheap red wine - mixed with white wine when the red wine ran out - that passed my lips the night before; but because our neighbour has put on her holy drum music yet again.
BONK-BONK-BONK (pause)
BONK-BONK-BONK (pause)
bink! (pause)
bink! (pause)
bink-bink-bink (pause)
BONK-BONK-BONK (pause).....
This goes on over and over again for hours. During the run up to easter it was on every day, starting about 5am and would appear randomly during the day at equally high volume.
Our house is adjoined to a mirror image with a thin (I guess) single-brick wall. There are no carpets or soft fittings to absorb the noise and our windows are half thin glass and half anti-mosqueto wire. If a goat farts on it's way past our house it knocks plaster off the wall 😊
I have my ear-plugs in and a t-shirt wrapped around my head - which is buried under a pillow.
Mangology
Guarded by the statue of two Imperial Lions and an Imperial, er, goat!?! To no avail.
All I can hear are the drums. The drums. THE DRUMS!
Sara is completely oblivious to this. She could sleep through a volcanic eruption and dose whistfully as global thermo-nuclear war detonated outside.
I twist and turn fitfully. Cursing to myself and imagining the unpleasant things I could do to a certain someone's cassette player. I try to relax and tell myself this is all part of the experience; it's Ethiopian culture and who am I to judge?
My thoughts move to sneaking out to the electrical junction box up the road (I know where it is) and flipping the fuse.
But no. Probably kill myself and that's worse.
What about playing my favourite anodyne - Bat Out of Hell (Meat Loaf) - at an equal and opposite volume? No. I'd be out of bed and awake and goddamit, she will have won...
Curse. Toss. Rationalise it. Curse. Toss. Rationalise it...
Bring the Noise A visitor to Ethiopia may well be forgiven for thinking the inhabitants suffer from some from of acute hearing loss - which of course they may do come middle age - as everything
Looks interesting?
Watching me watching you is conducted at full volume.
TVs are on full, radios radiate noise at maximum volume, music shops (holy or unholy) and video rental places blast out samples of their wares, often drowning each other out. Hotel TVs vie with sound systems for decibel percentages while you eat your food.
People shout at each other. People shout down their mobile phones. Cars toot their horns relentlessly. Computers at the office discharge tunes via Windows Media Player until the tinny computer speakers crackle and shudder in objection.
Churches and mosques fix massive speakers to their roofs and power-rant the good news 24x7. The mosques briefly and several times a day; the churches all night and all day on religious festivals and holy saint's days.
There are even minibuses with outrageously huge speakers strapped to the roof that tour slowly round the town playing hymns and recorded sermons, sometimes cheekily parked up outside a church of a different denomination, drowning out the service happening within.
It's just the done thing.
One of the nicest ways to spend an evening with friends used to be eating on the open air balcony of the Bamboo Paradise Hotel. Call it
An army of millions
Can't hold them back Bamboo Pergatory now. A holy music shop has opened up directly opposite and you cannot talk for religious chanting and drum music all evening, even up to 11pm.
Does anyone mind? Not that I can tell.
Holy Wars? So just what is my problem with the holy music?
The problem lies with the Orthadox music. By all accounts a saint decreed in the late middle ages that only 3 instruments can ever be used for making Orthadox music. Animal-skin drums, a penny whistle and some stringed intrument. This kind of limits the range of sounds that Orthadox music can generate, which is why all you can hear from a distance are the penetrating animal-skin drums, over and over again.
This restriction on music style has been cited - amongst other things - as the reason so many Orthadox Christians are moving to the Protestant religion. Although Protestants are not supposed to dance, drink alcohol and can only ever listen to religious music (unholy music is, well, unholy) at least the Protestant music is played using modern electrical instruments.
The Ethiopian Orthadox church is also seen as a mainly Amharic church, so many parts of
Ethiopia outside of the Amhara region are now Protestant. I am sure western missionaries have helped this relatively recent and rapid conversion, however I am also told that the youngsters feel the Protestant religion is more in tune with their needs and lifestyle.
Orthadox services can be 6 hours long. Protestant services last a couple of hours.
Orthadox followers must attend church before something like 6am every day. For Protestants, Sunday morning, once a week is cool.
Orthadox priests are (allegely) more aloof and tend to quote scripture at you if you come to them with a problem, assuming you are granted an audience. Protestant priests are more open and accessible.
Of course Orthadox followers fast twice weekly and then several times a year - including the recent 55 day fast prior to Fasika (Easter). Protestants fast in Lent but not for long. Maybe on Good Friday?
Are there any problems between Protestants and Orthadox followers? Not that I can detect, bearing in mind that we are not fully integrated into the local community - language issues prevent this - and we are certainly not integrated into any of the local religious communities.
What
Picking up tips?
Even the Feds are enjoying this one about the Muslims?
Again there is no real problem that I can detect. My counterpart recently went to China for IT training with representatives from all over Africa. He spent one month there and had some eye-opening conversations.
He said the representatives of the Arab countries of North Africa refused to call themselves African, which was a surprise to him.
People asked him why Ethiopia had sent its troops to Somalia - was it because Ethiopia is a Christian country and they were going to attack Muslims on Somalia at the behest of the United States?
Here Bekema was amazed that people would think Christians would deliverately attack Muslims and expressed to us afterwards his surprise that Muslims and Christians didn't live together happily like they do in Ethiopia!
He also managed to correct the ignorance of these other African questioners who claimed Ethiopia is a completely Christian country. At least 50% of the population are Muslim, which was news to them.
Do we see any problems between Christians and Muslims? Again no.
We are told that the nearest you get to inter-religious bigotry would be something like the jovial greeting of a
Backrow boys
Teddy and Mentasnot Muslim to a Christian,
Muslim: How are you?
Christian: I am fine, thanks be to God, who made Allah. How are you?
to which the Muslim replies
Muslim: I am also fine, thanks be to Allah, who made God...
Play it again, Samirah Although I will reserve another blog entry for a dissection of Ethiopian music styles I will at least add two further observations that contribute towards my restless soul-searching, early of a morning.
Now I am sure that whereas teenagers in the UK or wherever are guilty of playing a favourite song over and over again, it is clearly quite commonplace over here. Got a good tune on your mobile phone? Play it again and again. And again. And maybe once more..(enough, enough!)
Two weeks ago - as we were on the car trip to Arba Minch and Awassa - one of the great Ethiopian singers called Tilahun died. I guess he would be a bit like Frank Sinatra. Appealed to an older generation, maybe a bit middle class. Anyway, he died on the Monday and had a Lady Diana-esq state burial on the Friday in Addis. For the entire week
Herbie looks embarassed
Well he has just reversed into a mango tree the state radio played nothing but Tilahun tunes!
As I think I pointed out in an earlier blog, the music here is a kind of cross between what you might call African, Arabic and Indian music. It seems to have this beat (is it three/four time?) that sounds like something is missing. When you first hear it you wonder how anyone can take pleasure from such a cacophany, but as time goes by it grows on you.
Apart from being good to Ethiopian dance too (great fun - imagine being plugged into a 240 volt wall socket for 2 repeated second bursts and just go with it) some of the tunes are quite catchy and you often find yourself humming away as you sit in a bar, shooting the breeze.
It maybe that familiarity breeds enjoyment when it comes to music? Certainly it is the rare tune that immediately grabs you. Most take a play or two to be convinced.
Anyway. Familiarity or not I can assure you that there is one format of Ethiopian music that I will never get to grips with - and that is the female artists. Talking to other VSOs would
"Did you spill my Pepsi Cola?"
Kids show the adults how it's done indicate that I am not unique here...
I am not sure why, but many of the women I work with, overhear in conversation, live next to etc, seem to have quite high voices. There are of course some who do not, but even these seem to raise the pitch a few octaves in certain social contexts.
I am not a expert in the, er, science of voice-styles-in-a-cultural-context or whatever, but maybe because of the clear demarcation in Ethiopian society between male and female roles, it serves to highlight "femininity" when required? Who knows.
Bottom line is that the typical female music artist has a certain kind of high-pitched warbling style, which when listened to from afar could easily be confused as the noise of a hungry kitten lamenting the passing of it's road-killed mother.
As you can see; adding lamenting kitten to a slow animal hide drum beat and putting it on a loud loop at 5.30am is kind of, well, damaging to one's calm.
You are probably thinking "why don't I just ask the neighbours to turn it down?".
Well there are two problems here.
Firstly I can't speak the language and
Make yourselves at home
Er, ok, looks like you have already... if I could ask someone to translate they would probably refuse because (a) it would be considered rude and (b) what's the problem?
I have tried to suggest on occassion to Ethiopian friends that maybe someone is playing their music too loud?
To which I get a cocked ear, a smile and an enthusiastic nod. "Yes, yes this is
good music, it
must be played loud..."
😊
TaeKwanDo Ted So back to the pictures.
Our friend Teddy's hobby is TaeKwanDo - the Korean variant of a Chinese martial art that evolved into Karate in Japan.
He is very good at it - second dan black belt and runs two or three clubs in Assosa. In fact I think he has trained up a few guys who have opened up their own clubs in places outside of town.
We have attended a training session and been amazed at the dedication and quality of his students. They train early in the morning as well as in the evenings. He always seems to be attending a class somewhere around town.
Teddy, like a surprising number of Ethiopians, is very keen on all martial arts.
In fact he tells me there are moves to make one of the martial arts the number two sport in Ethiopia, after distance running.
Anyway, earlier this year Teddy invited us all to a passing out ceremony for his students, many of which had moved up to another belt. The ceremony would involve demonstrations, speeches and music.
The ceremony was held at Mangology - a kind of privately-owned park full of mango trees that doubles as a resturant and bar every night. It was great! Lots of Bruce Lee type demonstrations - blocks of wood being chopped by hands and kicks, 'muggers' getting duffed up in mock street attacks.
At one point Teddy lept over 6 people lying on the floor and smashed a piece of wood with a high kick. All good stuff!
I was drinking a few beers and enjoying from the back, when my name was called. "Mr Alan? Where is Mr Alan". Jeepers, they wanted me to present some of the belts!
I sheepishly made my way up as a surpise guest of honour - wishing I had shaved and not been drinking beer - and waited my turn to hand
Cat hug
Cuter and less dangerous than a bear hug out the belts and certificates to the students.
It was a great privilege and a big compliment from Teddy to Sara and I. Hopefully I didn't blow too much beer breath over these finely honed atheletes!
At one point the young children came on stage to do a demonstration.
Another one of my Ethiopian friends, also called Teddy, leaned over casually halfway through the demonstration.
"They will make good soldiers.."
he smiled and whispered conspiratorially to me with a wink,
"for the next war with Eritrea..."
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