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Published: February 26th 2010
On top of the world
Addis from the Comet BuildingThroughout the two years in Assosa we have been helped round the house by two lovely Ethiopians, Marta and Mulatu.
People here call them "seratanyas" or workers (and to our embarrassment, translate this into "servant" in English).
Of course, some people back home think this is weird and wrong; some sort of throwback to colonial times and indentured workers.
Well apart from the fact Ethiopia was never colonised (6 years of Italian occupation in the 1930s doesn't really count), it is perfectly normal to employ workers both in Ethiopia and across Africa. If you have the money to
Mulatu's first Pizza
He'll need a triple heart-bypass in 5 years... employ someone, then it would be odd, if not rude, not to do so.
Working for Ferengis is also pretty cushy compared to working for locals - when we arrived we had a number of people present themselves as potential cleaners, guards and general workers.
Ferengis pay more and usually take extra-special care of their workers.
We pay for Marta's and Mulatu's medical bills when they are sick, we pay extra to help educate one of Marta's two daughters - without this they would only be able to educate one daughter - and we help pay for Mulatu's school registration and book costs every term.
And over the course of time we become good friends with these people.
You will read stories - if you google deep enough - about female live-in workers being subjected to sexual abuse by the father and sons of their host family and of 18 hour work days.
We have no experience of this but I know my old boss's live-in seratayna was paid just 15 birr/week. Her food was free as were the bills and bed, but even so, that is still a tiny amount.
Marta works
Either Sara ate all the pies...
...or she's pregnant...or both :) an hour or two a day for us and I pay her 20%!o(MISSING)f my 1,650 salary (which some VSOs claim back as a "day guard" salary; we don't).
Besides, I don't imagine many cleaners in the UK get 20%!o(MISSING)f the owner's salary a month?
"Like me, he is from the bush" Mulatu is a 17 year old lad who has worked for the previous two sets of VSO Ferengis in our house. He is smart, polite and speaks excellent English. In fact he regularly scores higher in England exams than Amharic - and Amharic is his mother tongue.
The Amharan people living around Assosa are products of the communist Derg regime's forced relocations during the 1984 Ethiopian famine.
At the time, destruction of forests for firewood and grazing land, coupled with severe drought had caused a famine in the Wolo region of Amhara (north of Addis Ababa).
Beneshangul-Gumuz as a Region had not even been invented then and Assosa was part of the Oromo-dominated Wollega Region. As I have mentioned before in blogs - people who have lived here for years tell me that the area was forested and extremely rural, so
Art gallery at the National Museum
Ah, yes Multau, the Derg Industrialist phase, I believe :P an ideal area to relocate whole families and villages to solve the food shortage.
I don't know the specifics, but I gather the process was controlled by the military and probably quite stressful. Families split up. Villages divided and so on.
53 new "Ambas" (Amharic for village) of 1,000 Amharic settlers in each village were created around Assosa, stretching for over 40km towards Bambasi.
The stories differ depending on who you speak to, but either the indiginous Berta people ran away in fear - or were forced off of their land and villages at gun-point.
Mulatu is a product of these first generation settlers; growing up in Amba Setegn (Village 9) around a two hour walk from Assosa town.
Life for these settlers was undoubtedly tough; and people tell me it got tougher still when Beneshangul-Gumuz became it's own region, thereby according priority (with regards to land allocation and education opportunities) to the local tribes (Berta, Mao, Komo, Shinasha and Gumuz).
As Amharan outsiders in a foreign region they do not benefit from the positive descrimination towards the local tribes. In Amahara Region, as indiginous Amharans, they'd be fine.
Mulatu - along with
Some impressive stuff
Emperor Haile Selassie's first throne (the Italians nicked it in the 1930's) some older Amharans I have met - seem to hold fond memories of the Derg Regime, even though they suffered from forced relocation. Mulatu is too young to remember much, so his Mother must have passed the wisdom on, but he says they had one light bulb and one tractor under the Derg.
Other people tell me things were fairer under the Derg - there was no differentiation between tribes. Everyone was just Ethiopian.
Then again, other people tell me that this 'Ethiopianisation' was not a good thing.
It was more of an 'Amharanisation' where everyone had to speak Amharic. Local tongues (including Oromifa) were not tolerated and if children were named with Oromo (not Amharic) names, the parents could be accused of supporting the OLF (Oromo Liberation Front) and end up in jail.
This is how I often meet Oromo people today with clearly Amharic names (remember: Assosa was part of the Oromo-domiated Wolega region before Beneshangul-Gumuz was formed).
As an aside - the rise of protestanism amongst Oromo people is seen by some as a deliberate rejection of
the Amahara-domainated Ethiopian Orthodox church; though an earlier blog suggested other reasons too.
Many Amharans in Assosa are farmers and remain farmers. Travelling in to Assosa town twice-weekly to sell produce and buy provisions.
I am told by a Ferengi who has lived in the region for 12 years that the Amharans often work on Berta farms, not owning the land. And the streams of poorly-dressed people struggling in and out of Assosa with unfeasibly huge loads on market days include a significant percentage of Amharans.
My counterpart Debebe's friend, Akele, was one of the earliest Amharan settlers and is chairman of the Amharan Council of Ambas.
He tells me that for many poor Amharans, the only possession of value they have is their brain; and many kids from the Ambas work hard at school - harder than the wealthier town dwellers, some of whom expect to live off their families money.
Mulatu is one of these hard workers.
He left his home in "the rural" at 13 to go to live and work in Assosa with two of his brothers (he comes from a "small" family of five children, though has 3 half-sisters
from his father's first relationship). His mother was returning to Amhara region as her mother was ill and he would have to fend for himself.
Plus the school in Amba 9 did not run classes up to grade 10 (O-Level/GCSE equivalent) and he'd have to be in Assosa to continue his education.
Delivering on a promise By luck Mulatu met an earlier volunteer - Mr David - in the market; and an offer to carry some bags led to employment with not just him, but our predecessors, Jerry & Mura and now the pair of us.
We had found Mulatu to be a great help running little errands, shopping at the market for us and paying the bills. To have an Amharic-speaker to translate into English has been so useful for interactions with electricity/telephone and water workers - as well as with the assorted visitors who knock on our front door.
It has also been an education for us to listen to Mulatu talk about his life, his schooling, his aspirations and to explain many of the local customs and traditions that otherwise would confuse us or pass us by (Bu-hey, Addis Amet or New
Addis Ababa museum
Visit it now [before the termites finish it off] Year, Timkat, Meskel, Gena and Fasika).
Both Sara and I have been planning for a long time to take Mulatu for a weekend in Addis Ababa - his country's capital. It's been a case of finding the right moment and for a long time we were waiting for him to get his Kebele Identity Card.
We didn't want to tell him our plans in case they fell through, so trying to encourage him to register for an ID card was somewhat of a challenge as he could see no reason to do so.
Finally, with Sara in Addis and our days left in country dropping into double figures, we broke the news and told him to find out if his school ID was enough to fly with.
Fortunately it was; and with a short hiatus resulting from my attempt to give him some ownership of the project - he returned from the airline office with two outbound flights to Addis; but no return flight to Assoa - we were good to go.
Luckily VSO were flying me to Addis for the one-day leavers workshop on the following Monday, so I booked to fly early on
A rainy Meskel Square
8 lanes of vehicle line up for the wacky races (middle right) the Thursday with Mulatu. We would have Thursday-Tuesday in Addis, the pair of us flying back to Assosa on Tuesday morning.
Bernouli's Principle Apparently this is the physics behind why aeroplanes stay airborne. Luckily Mulatu - a keen scientist and prospective MD (Doctor, not Director) - had had this all explained by Jerry & Mura. If he'd asked me, I'd have had to lie or say something like "it's..er..magic" 😊
After an unexpectedly short wait on the bamboo pole bench at Assosa airport (flight only 25 minutes delayed) we were crammed into the Ethiopian Airlines 4x4 for our bumpy short hop to the runway and rugby scrum for free seats and space for bags in overhead lockers.
We were lucky, the short delay meant we were on a direct flight to Addis - no stop off in Jimma and our ETA was bang on time.
Mulatu settled into his window seat and waited in trepidation for his first experience of aircraft flight. I'm not sure what he expected and I can't even remember my first flight, but I noticed his hands had become sodden, as though they had just been dipped in water.
As
Ethiopian
They are; and he is we picked up speed and finally lifted off I gave him a smile and told him to look out for Bambasi, the nearest town to Assosa.
"I have never been to Bambasi" he said and I realised that for someone who had never been 40km to the next village, almost 700km to the capital was something of a big deal.
I tried to remember my first trip to London; but all the McDonalds I scoffed pre-21 years old (when I became a veggie) must have contained enough BSE prions to rob me of those particular memories 😊
A day of firsts Apart from a grab of my knee when a sudden lurch disturbed the gradual ascent to 19,000 feet, Mulatu quickly took to this new means of transport. I explained that turbulence was common
and to be expected - particularly in a plane the size of a Fokker 50.
Perhaps, too, I should have modified the tone of my pre-departure conversation.
When I asked "why do I want to sit at the back of the plane?", I explained to Mulatu - and immediately wished I hadn't - that "statistically you stand a better chance
of survival in an accident..."
Again I probably shouldn't have joked as he read the safety leaflet that you are better off reading the bible than the safety leaflet if we have an accident at 2 miles above sea level!
Fortunately he couldn't see the guy directly behind him who spent the entire flight with his head in his hands, looking on the verge of being sick.
Mind you, flying does funny things to people. On these little tiddly planes - and on some of the big ones - Sara has a curious habit of falling asleep as soon as the plane begins it's descent!?!
Enjoying the view from the heavens, Mulatu quizzed me and Teeyay (an Ethiopian UNICEF employee who I had met over a year ago and knew Sara) about the rivers we were flying over; he saw three between Assosa and Addis.
One was definately the Dabus, which you cross as you leave Beneshangul-Gumuz Region and enter Oromia. The one close to Addis was the Awash, but the other was a mystery. Certainly not the Blue Nile (Abay) as Mulatu suggested.
As Addis came into sight Mulatu strained to see the
Skyline Cafe in the Edna Mall
Warming up for Ninja Assassin in Cinema #2 hills surrounding the urban spread of H-block style housing condominiums, industrial factories and storage silos.
I wasn't sure then - and I'm not sure even now - that Mulatu can picture or visualise the entire expanse that is Addis Ababa. OK, it's not even as big (geographically) as Bristol. In fact it is about the size of Bath, but it has 3+ million people (officially) living in it.
At times over the weekend he would point along a road and ask "is that the edge of Addis?".
I guess it is strange that someone who watches TV (in his local coffee shop) and therefore sees news reports daily still has trouble coming to grips with visualising the size of a city.
Disembarking at Addis airport is somewhat different from Assosa. Addis is an international grade terminal verses a tin hut and bamboo seats. And you have these strange electronic stair devices called 'escalators'.
Luckily the power was on so Mulatu got to hone his escalator skills with barely a wobble.
Sara was waiting for us in the carpark and off we headed to Hiya Hulet after some half-hearted bargaining with the greedy yellow
Outside VSO
Budget cuts mean new volunteers take a donkey to their placements now airport taxi-cab drivers over the fare for the 10 minute drive.
We dumped our stuff and our plan was to take Mulatu to Marsilla's Pizza on the top floor of the Comet Building on Haile Gebre-Selassie St. Not only are the pizzas good, but the view of Addis (either day or night) is exceptional. You can just hang over the roof watching the line-taxis, cars and pedestrians doing their thing outside the Get Fam building.
At the base of the Comet building was another first for Mulatu. A lift (or "elevator"; most of the people here learn American English).
We pushed the buttons and chatted and within 10 seconds the door opened and we were on the 5th floor. Mulatu's sense of reason missed a beat and he asked us what just happened?
Now some of you may be reading this and thinking "wow - he's never seen a lift?". And some of you are probably thinking "stop making a fuss about him not seeing these things before!".
The reason I mention them is that (as I have said before) Ethiopia is a very hierarchical society. People will laugh at other people's stupidity to make
Fruit juice cocktail
Recommended drink at New York, New York cafe themselves feel "higher" and therefore make the subject of the fun feel "lower".
This is why we find people reluctant to speak English to us. They are paranoid we are going to burst out laughing (of course we would not, we are ashamed we cannot speak Amharic better).
We want Mulatu to succeed; and as a boy from "the rural" he will face even more challenges from city kids when he goes to University. We want him to be unfazed by escalators, lifts and aeroplanes and be able to say he has been to Addis and seen this, done that.
(Before we came I asked Bekema to advise Mulatu what to wear in Addis so he wouldn't be accused of being a farmer; and I know that his Amharic accent gets laughed at by Addis people as being from the country - in the same way a boy with a broad Bristolian West Country accent would get laughed at in London).
Having navigated the lift we took a walk around the roof to see Addis by night as the kitchen prepared our (and Mulatu's first ever) pizza.
As a strict Orthodox Christian Mulatu is fasting
This stuff is good!
Even if it is non-alcoholic :) for 40 days before Gena (Ethiopian Christmas on 7th January).
This was kind of sad as it meant that his food choices throughout the stay would be limited as he could not eat meat, eggs, cheese, milk or fish.
Fortunately the pizza place provided fasting pizza so Mulatu was in luck and could sample the food that has launched a billion heart attacks.
I explained that it was no wonder so many Ferengis were fat as we had hardly used our legs at all to get to Addis (4x4, minibus, flight, escalator, taxi, lift) and were now eating pizza and fries!
Having stuffed our faces (in true Ferengi fashion) we took the lift (in true Ferengi fashion) and waddled back home for a cup of hot chocolate (except the fasting Mulatu) and then hit the sack.
Freaky Friday Was an action packed day!
Mulatu experienced his first line taxi (up to Arat Kilo) before spending a long an interesting time at the Ethiopian National Museum. One floor is dedicated to historical Ethiopian artefacts, another to Ethiopian Art and photography; and the basement is the famous home of Lucy - the first homo sapien
Our friend Samira
Mustapha's wife - once of Addis but now moved to Assosa (or cousin once removed).
Leaving Arat Kilo we both headed (as Sara had been working all morning) back to Meskel Square - a chaotic assortment of vehicles vying for the racing line - and the Addis Ababa Museum.
This is another great museum, even if the building has seen better days. Focussed entirely on Addis history it traces the journey from hillside camp of tents to modern mid-seventies capital - home of the African Union.
The rain provided a constant backdrop to the day and we ducked in and out of cafes and bookshops before heading to the Pride Bar to partake in Friday evening traditionals with other volunteers and a rendevous with Catherine to pick up a matress for Mulatu.
Saturday, wait The rain continued.
Completely out of season it was not doing the jacket-less Mulatu any favours.
And even the locals were grumbling as out of synch rain can ruin farmers crops.
Today we visited Shola market.
Compared to Assosa market? Bit like Poundstretchers vs Sainsburys. We let Mulatu head off on his own as the mere presence of our Ferengi faces would have doubled his shopping costs.
Mulatu feels a part of it
at the New York, New York cafe on Bole Road He returned beaming with a pair of trousers and his eyes on some shoes.
Next up Bole Road and Haile's building.
Fruit shake in the Skyline Cafe in Edna mall, rubbing shoulders with the wealthy kids, abandoned at the mall for the day with more money to burn in a day than Mulatu earns in a year.
The film we planned on seeing - the latest girlie vampire flick - was fully booked (deep sigh of relief - it is possible to get too much of topless male teenage werewolves, Sara).
Plan B (beautifully timed) was a trip to the Stadium in Addis to see St George (originally the brewery workers) play Adama (town about 1 hour away by bus).
As a Man U fan, Mulatu naturally became a St George fan (Arsenal fans traditionally support Buna - the old coffee workers team).
We paid the full monty price for the best seats in the house (50 birr) and Mulatu thrilled his way through a 4-1 victory - engineered mostly by a grossy overweight and laughably biased referee (he even gave one team a goal before they had scored it) and Adama's failure to
hit the target when presented with gift-wrapped opportunites.
Nevertheless the game was enjoyable. Probably on a par with mid-level non-league, refeering aside.
The fans certainly got into it and Mulatu even managed to by a St George football shirt and take a pee in the toilet next to an Ethiopian pop star!
The chanting seemed to amuse Mulatu. I could understand the "one, two, three, four....seven, EIGHT" shouts to indicate the current league position of St George's great rivals - Buna - in the league.
On our way home with Simon - who had joined us for the game - we stopped off to watch Aston Villa beat Man U at a cafe on Hiya Hulet. Mulatu's football exuberence tempered somewhat.
Sunday always comes too late...
After a quick stop off at Edna Mall to reserve tickets for Blue Moon & vampires for Sara and Ninja Assassin for Mulatu, Kellie and I, we heated to a posh cafe on Bole Road called New York, New York.
There we met Mustapha and Samira, our neighbours and friends from Assosa, who were in Addis - Mustapha on government business (designing the School Net website) and Samira to train for her upcoming new job at the Federal Bureau of Statistics in Assosa.
Back on the line taxi to the cinema so Mulatu could experience the joy of big screen entertainment (he loved coming round to watch the movies at the Assosa Showcase) and then to Kasanchies for a highly recommended resturant cum museum made of wood and still surving since the early 1900's, tucked off the main street up to the Palace.
Our first trip there had been amazing. Hospitable owner, guided tour of the museum, great food.
Things had changed.
The women cooks had been relegated to dish-washers (we could see them tut-tutting from afar) and the owner's relative - an Ethiopian rastafarian who had clearly travelled and even spoke English like a Jamaican - had become "head chef".
Our man had spent the best part of the day indulging on his own Tej (honey beer) and maybe something herbal in his pipe and was in no fit state to cook weetabix with
Sara, Samira, Al & Mustapha
Our neighbours from Assosa (but with work commitments in Addis) milk, let alone a meal for 3.
Attempt one of a bayonetu was picked at by Sara and Mulatu; and as he had ignored our order completely, serving up whatever came into his head, I complained.
This resulted in him frying up some aubergene and giving me the rice he had been saving up for himself for later.
Best cut our losses and run...
Blue Monday We had to leave Mulatu to his own devices (he went to the excellent Ethnographic museum in the grounds of the University at siddist kilo) to attend the VSO leaver's workshop.
It was kind of sad to see many of the faces we knew, both those who were leaving after just one year, but also a couple who had come out with us, almost two years prior.
The workshop was in the ground floor meeting room of the Country Director's house near Amist kilo, where we had all been for the cultural evening at the end of ICT in February 2008.
With Mulatu to think about we couldn't dwell on the past and met up with him on the way back (he had been buying books
The VSO Leaver's Workshop
Warming us up for the long goodbye in the various bookshops around the University).
After a nostalgic pint with a couple of those volunteers who would be off back to placements for the final month or so, before heading home, we paid a visit to Road Runner and prayed the owner was too busy to try and engage us in his usual best-buddy banter.
Tuesday's grey Up early it was back to the airport and Mulatu's second flight, this time via Jimma, with the company of Unni, our volunteer friend and expert neonatologist. He is working at Jimma Hospital for 6 months and saves children's lives every day....and watches those pass away that he cannot save. A tough assignment indeed.
So Mulatu's adventure was ending as it started - at Assosa airport.
Hopefully next time he's in Addis it will be as a bright-eyed student off to University to study medicine...with a head start on his peers through his knowledge of the capital.
Did he enjoy it?
Most definately!
But he won't be telling his friends from school - he says they won't believe him 😊
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anonymous
non-member comment
A fabulous entry! Funny and touching. Great stuff. I hope that one day Mulatu will be writing his own blog about his experiences of university and his work as a doctor.