Mayoli to Addis Abeba

---

Ethiopia

Often I wonder what would remain if magically all the foreign influences were removed from East Africa. Pull the imposed NGO’s western concept of development, the meddling of the missionaries, slavers and merchants; carve out the sleazy modern culture of bitches and gangsters along with its older ideals of individualism and free markets. Good bye to the Arab aristocratic types and Indian businessmen and the public education transplanted from Europe. What is left? Certainly it is Africa. But what is it? I can’t see it. What is the African method, religion, culture, economics that is adapting or resisting the outside influences? Where there is no development there is poverty, no education there is ignorance, no markets there is stagnation. With no foreign born or educated business men, educators, politicians, aid workers, priest….. you get the “village.” And what the hell is that? This is something I can’t work out.

But Ethiopia it is not so. This place is deep, old and dense. A country with its own food, culture, dance, music, religion, language, script, independence, history……

This country has a lot that I like. Coffee is “Ethiopia’s gift to the world.” And here it is very good and of course cheap. On every block one can find a café serving it along with a fine selection of pastries. The short Italian occupation also left behind spaghetti. Possible my third favourite food after coffee and pasteries. The more indigenous fair is injera an flat spongy bread made of teff that is topped with blobs of various toppings. The beer is good and cheep. The music that is broadcasted from restaurants and busses is often local and traditional, quite pleasant. A welcome change from the blasting hip hop/R&B south of here. The road from the boarder to Addis Abeba is paved. So two out of three of my eating/sleeping/sleeping obsessions are nicely catered to. Sleeping has not improved the cheap hotels maintain a standard that is low for even east Africa. Camping is a bit elusive as the population density is so high and locals are big into hassle. Used book stores abound. People dress nicely and the girls look really nice.

The far south of Ethiopia was a pleasure to cycle. The afternoon heat was blunted by quick light showers. Hundreds of kilometers of savanna brush interrupted by a few small villages. Sadly in this African travels these settlements are settlements are seldom a desirable place to linger. I stock up on provisions as efficiently as possible and move on. I’ve developed the habit of buying lunch, packing it up and cycling a short distance out of town where I am able to eat, rest and relax. Free from the stares, shouts and hassle. Much of these “hassles” is mere friendliness, but the constant and unchanging inquires of:
“where are you go?”
“where you come now?”
“you are American?”
“Obama!”
“by bicycle? It is too far”
“you eat local food? Ha ha”
“give me money”
were moved from the folder of “interesting cultural exchange” to that of “minor irritation” within the first week of my trip.
If I choose to eat in a restaurant by criteria of a good eatery is that it is on the outskirts (maybe a bit cheaper). It should has outdoor seating or a patio of some type so I can haul my bike right up beside my chair and that it is empty but for the server.
Further north the terrain became hilly and higher elevation. Fine agricultural land of: coffee, khat, teff, mangos, bananas, false bananas, avocados and more. The land is generous in the Awasa region and people looked after it. In Awasa I met Mr. Abebe (as I call him). And spent a day with him and his family. He is a contractor or building constructer who used to work for the government as a civil engineer. He has done well for himself by Ethiopian standards. He has a sold house with things such as a dishwasher, computer and TV that so few have. I think he would be categorized as something like upper middle class here if not simply “rich.” By Canadian standards he would be working poor. A problem for civil society. He is extremely generous, sharing tasty meals, a spare bed and coffee with its accompanying ceremony. The ceremony essentially being the process of transforming the unroasted beans into a dark thick brew in a small cup with a charcoal stove, roasting pan, pedestal and mortar, aluminum pot and an odd clay pot thing. The coffee tastes even better since I have had so little and when I did is was usually a ¼ of a 1 serving packet of Nescafe. From there Mr. Abebe and I agreed to meet in Addis as he too would be there in a few days to fill out some forms and file a request with the government so he could buy concrete. Due to a shortage of building materials and perhaps surplus bureaucracy.

For some reason the general concept of 3rd world poverty has never really unsettled me. Maybe it is because of my conviction that wealth isn’t strongly liked to quality of life and happiness. Regardless, had Mr. Abebe been operating in Canada or France rather than Ethiopia he would be very “comfortable.”
Further on from Awasa the route flattened and the concrete turned into some of the best tarmac I have seen in Africa. Soon I dropped back into the arid savanna and the poverty that seems unavoidable to those who live in such inhospitable, infertile places. And here the hostility began. Ethiopia is famous for its stone throwing children and I started getting introduced. Previously there had been a lot of beggars and general shouters, sometimes it is even comical as just about anyone in this country seems disposed to giving it a shot. A man seated at a restaurant behind a huge beer and plate of food seeing me adopted a miserable expression and started moving his cupped hand back and forth from his mouth.
Christ I have become cynical, irritated and even laughing at the fact that people ask for food in Ethiopia. If these situations didn’t occur every day perhaps I would think about the situation more and not brush it of as an annoyance.

ROCKS (even in this day and age, sometimes the natives aren't friendly)

I can’t prevent myself from being negative and defensive when this starts occurring. Once when I was spotted by 20 or so people playing football they all without hesitation abandoned the game. Screaming and shouting with delight they ran to the edge of the road and started hurling broken concrete. Cheering when I was hit, the incident was just more sport for them. I am told that things will get worse as I continue north. Which leads me to further…

WINEING

Now in Addis I have checked into the smallest hotel room yet. I was working on a few lines for free places to stay but none of them have panned out. While roaming for beds I struck up a conversation with a soft spoken young man who said he could take me to a safe and cheap place. It would be a ways out of the centre on foot so we had the opportunity to talk. He clearly is an old hand a “guiding” tourist. He, as usual, pulled out some semi official documents testifying to his certification and training for employment in the tourist industry. Like always, he told me of his friends in Germany, France, Australia…. He said he wasn’t after money rather he admired that I was cycling around east Africa and I did look rather tired. The flow of conversation was very familiar. Before long we reached a hotel, he negotiated and then turned to my and suggested we go. Apparently they were bumping up the price on account of my whiteness. This occurred a second time and at the third we had success. 50 Birr was seemed a bit steep for a room that could barely contain by bike. I was grateful for the company though and he seemed genuine, so I offered to by him a beer. He then ordered him self dinner after I told him I didn’t want to order food. He crossed the line, we were no longer friends, the relationship being more business orientated. I, the sucker he, the cheat. It such a small thing but I wish this crap didn’t ruin 2/3 of all my clumsy attempts at establishing relationships with Africans.
The above mentioned incident with my guide friend occurs, if I bother to interact, almost daily. A destructive and stunted mentality has developed in defense, where all locals are guilty of ulterior motives until proven innocent. And the trial can be lengthy, often incomplete by the time of parting. As an example, entering the famous stoning grounds. Now when approaching people on the road, and there is always people on the road, analyze for threats and nothing else. How many are there? What are their ages? Any sticks or rocks in hand? Any one stooping for stones? Or are their faces contorted with glee or anger? Both being a bad sign. I then choose my responses available to me: speed up, stop, slow, smile and wave, glare or wave my own stick as menacingly as I can. If they start to finish wave and smile I don’t regard them, they are a non issue. I am slowly blinding to the good and sharpening my focus on the bad. This of course isn’t good and something I must struggle to overcome. Because if the shit is all I notice, shit is all there will be.
Fortunately, I have met a fellow who studied journalism and speaks passable English. We are hanging out quite a bit and tentatively I think this is one rare relationship of mutual respect and interest. Things are going well and he is single handedly preventing me from going bonkers in a city of people who seem to have s esoteric skill at making me lonely. But, not to stray to long to the positive I feel compelled to mention that when we were at a tej house drinking a honey wine he jokingly told the server jokingly that I was the husband of his sister. She wasn’t convinced rather she asserted that I was just being “guided.” Why a black and white man can’t be simply friends I’m not sure but I assume is rooted in the tension and distrust that always exists between the Have and Have Nots. Regardless things are going well here although he’s clearly hoping I can bang together a quick flight and green card for the land of milk and honey, America. Out of interest I will go to the Canadian embassy and find out what a “African” has to do to emigrate to Canada or the USA. I’ve been asked dozens of times.

In my few days in Ethiopia many people have lamented their lack of freedom. I am not to sure what this means but I hope to find out. Usually when someone wants to emigrate from here to the fabled America it is for the certainty of riches. In Ethiopia many express a desire for the “freedom” of America. I am not by putting freedom in quotation marks implying that the USA is in some way not free but I am not sure what they imply when freedom is invoked. This all interests me more that the desire for material gain. The Ethiopian government is corrupt, favored and unaccountable as all the others but people have a sense of a high culture. Maybe the golden age of Haile Sallasie.


Any ways I hope that largest load of person musing had the making of a semi respectable blog entry. For the last week I have been languishing in Addis waiting for my Egyptian tourist visa so I can in turn wait for my Sudanese visa. I recon I will be here for at least another week. I have gotten a share of errands done. My hair is cut, I now posses a new mirror, note book, pen, T-shirt, bandanna and toy cap gun that looks sort of like the real thing from a distance. I will experiment with this among the little bastards. Of course I have seen the requisite churches and museums and such. Other than that I have mostly been drinking coffee and beer, eating a lot of pastries, walking about and reading old paperbacks.

---