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Candle arranging in Assosa
Those long winter nights without power just fly by.Oh dear this one has been brewing for a while so it's likely to be a long one. Sorry.
So it has been one month since we returned from the field trip and life has settled back into a routine of sorts. Usually one that involves activities with power and activities without power, depending on whether we can turn the bedside lamp on when we wake up or not.
Guessing which days we will have and will not have power has become a little game, as has side bets on what time the power will really return.
In theory, a day of power rationing starts with a power out at 7am (usually pretty promptly) with a power up 13 hours later at 8pm (not very promptly at all). We have, after weeks of predicitions, counter-predictions, statements from 'authoratative' Ethiopian sources, alleged messages in the Ethiopian Herald (the English language government newspaper) and notices pinned to bureau walls, realised that, well, none of us actually has a clue at all. Wake up, test the lights; if they are on work to plan A, if not, engage plan B.
Kerosene Stove
We like to burn things. Plan A usually involves work, Internet, laptop operation, fixing computers, hot food, coffee, lights, movie/TV show on laptop at nights. Plan B usually means lazy mornings, sitting in a quiet office twiddling thumbs, shai (tea) not coffee, maybe an hour of frenzied laptop activity before the batteries go and then candles and guessing what time between 8pm and 11pm the lights will come on.
The problem is with the rain. Although it has come early there is not enough water in the hydro-electric dams so the entire country is suffering from power rationing. We have just heard that it will probably go on until June and will be 'one day of power/one day without'. Allegedly.
The first few days of power cuts were admittedly quite frustrating. Sitting there listening to the iPod because it is the only electrical device that still works. Just for the hell of it. Then after a while you start to get used to it and (dare I say it) quite enjoy the 'no power' days. No need to rush to work, no pressing appointments, time to visit the Post Office, review some Amharic lessons, go shopping and paint the house. I guess
Sad Cat Eyes
Puss in Boots would be proud. we are both guilty of filling our weekends with so many appointments and plans that they stop feeling like rest days and a genuine unplanned "ahhh, so what shall I do today?" day is a real blessing. Sometimes Monday comes and you feel like the weekend wasn't long enough and hey! what a result! No power on Monday so no work! Woo-hoo, long weekend! Doh! I'm slowly turning into Homer Simpson (SARA!!Get-me-a-BEER...).
Another bonus from the lack of power is that the mornings are
so much quieter. No early morning call to prayers, dualling holy MCs on the mike and 5am services broadcast across the airwaves 😊
.
Going to Addis (yep, to get fat) My blogging strategy is going to have to be this: finally completed the Addis-Assosa entries and added a field trip taster entry but have not really said much about the 6 weeks before the field trip and 4 weeks afterwards. We will try to do a couple of roll-up entries for the previous month before we head off to Addis in 10 days for an HIV/AIDS VSO workshop. When I get back
will start the field trip entries and roll-up the first 6 weeks in Assosa. I will also badger Sara into posting another entry as I realise not everyone wants to read my updates. She has been busy getting involved in the Ethiopian Global Awareness group that a bunch of Ethiopian VSOs are setting up and has been keeping people up to date via email, rather than by blog. Personally I prefer blog as I can invest my energies in one entry and anyone who is interested can read it. And I can add pictures 😊
Anyway, we are off to Addis on Saturday 17th, flying back on the 25th. The workshop is on the 22nd but we are taking some extra holiday to have a break in Addis, drink jambos, eat ferengi food and get fat. We also want to spend a few days in Addis in the company of "AT" (Antennah), our Ethiopian buddy who is flying to the USA on the 22nd to start a 2 year post-graduate course. He is from Addis and he has promised to show us a few of his favourite places in town - the sort of places that you would never
Oh dear
Sara, you sucker! find out about if you just visit as a tourist. As luck would have it our other good friend (my counterpart) Bekema is also going to be in town for an IT course. He, too, knows Addis pretty well, so we hope to spend some time with him.
Of course we also want to catch up with our fellow VSOs and given there is a Cluster (teaching) workshop and a ELIP (English Language improvement) workshop happening at roughly the same time then we expect to see a few old friends from ICT in February.
Anyway, on with the update...
Alas, poor "squeaker".. One of our 3 kittens has unfortunately passed away. It all happened so quickly and we never even gave him/her a name. It was the skinny little runty kitten that had no appetite, refused to drink, stared at you and squeaked. I guess it was not unexpected. His bigger brother/sister was much healthier and active. Squeaker had been the first kitten to brave it into the house and although we agreed this was *not* a good idea, three pathetic squeaks later and he was up on our laps purring.
Two days after his
Ickle Puddy Tat!
(V-e-r-y funny; now just put me down and feed me) adventure indoors he reappeared with gammy eyes and a miserable silent mew. Being soppy cat lovers we took him in, cleaned his eyes with salty warm water and made him a bed for the night in the kitchen. Unfortunately he got worse the next day and having googled for possible catty diseases/cures we realised he probably had cat flu and in most cases it is a kill or cure. For weakling kitties it usually means death and we made him as comfortable as possible, tried feeding him water using a syringe, fed him a last special meal of tinned tuna and wiped his eyes and nose clean with warm water. Unfortunately he died in the afternoon and we buried him in the garden. I put a mound of stones on his grave and planted 20 sunflowers around him so hopefully his skinny little bones will help the flowers grow.
Of course everyone thinks we are stupid. Our Ethiopian buddies laugh and say why not just get another cat off the street? "Look, I will bring you another tomorrow and when that dies another" they say. My old work and Arsenal buddy Neil already suggested that I was already staring
Um...
How did that get in there?? down the barrel of a £9,000 UK repatriation bill per cat after 2 years, so every cloud has a silver lining I guess. I have just saved £9,000.
The reality is that there are plenty of human kids with illness and disease and although it is sad, its not a fraction as sad as a human dying. In fact I am always amazed by the fact that more money is donated annually in the UK to animal charities than to every (human) mental health and old age charity combined.
You must kill something! So the big event over here in the last few weeks has been the Ethiopian Easter celebration. For 55 days prior to Easter most of the country has been fasting - which means no meat, no egg, no milk, no alcohol an no sex (side note: don't try and book a hotel the night before Easter fasting starts: they are packed out with husband and wives getting in their last sins of the flesh before fasting starts!).
For us vegetarians this has been fantastic! Plus if and when we get some chocolate we don't have to share it - because chocolate contains milk
OK watch this..
...the fools will build us a house ---> 😉
That said we have been told by our Ethiopian buddies that "at Easter you must kill something". There are a number of festivals during the Ethiopian year that require something to be killed. The more important the festival, the bigger the animal, and Easter is the BIG one. If you are loaded you kill an Ox (about 3,000 birr or 2 months of our salary to buy). If you are wealthy you kill a sheep (350+ birr). If you are middle class you kill a goat (150-200 birr) and if you are an average household you kill a hen or rooster (more expensive). If you are poor you cannot afford to kill anything. And if you are vegetarian like us, well, I guess you can take the suggestion of our friend Antennah and kill a cabbage!
There are variations. You may chip in to buy a animal. You can get 100 birr "lumps" of Ox and if you cannot afford a 100 birr lump, if you can find 5 mates you can all pitch in 20 birr for a 100 birr lump and slice it up 5 ways yourselves. Some offices have little schemes to club together
These ferengi are a pushover
They'll be feeding us tuna next! and buy an Ox. Everyone pitches in and come the last working day before Easter, the representatives of your 'meat syndicate' head off to the market or the villages with a wad of cash and come back with the doomed beast. There are guys who can slaughter and gut the animal for about 10 birr on site and everyone goes home with a bag of beef.
There is an element of 'keeping up with the Jones's' about all of this slaughtering activity. For the weeks leading up to Easter families head off to the market and return with a goat or sheep on a piece of string. The animal is then tied up in your garden to fatten up on the grass, trees or bits of injera you may toss it. A bit like having the biggest 4x4 on the driveway in the UK, here you score points by the size and vocal pitch of the ruminant in your garden.
The neighbourhood echoes to the bleat and baa of tethered 'tibs' and woebetied any family without their own fluffy quadraped in the social pecking order. To alleviate such social indequacy there is even a rent-a-goat system. For a
fraction of the cost you can rent an animal for a few days, before returning it to its owner, claiming, when your garden falls silent and enquiring neighbours ask, that either the goat escaped or must have been stolen by some unscrupulous villan not fortunate enough to have their own animal for Easter...
So the days leading up to Easter are characterised by bleets, baars and clucking from all quarters until come Sunday morning...
...then...
...silence.
The blood letting has begun and everyone indulges in a day long carnivourous feast, 55 days in the waiting. There are strictly NO vegetarian options and it is p-a-r-t-y time. The normal 3 hour church services are extended to a full-on six hour marathon festival. The loudspeakers go beserk, vans with big boom-boxes bolted to the roof park in the streets banging out prayers, sermons and hymns, everyone cranks up their ghetto blasters and eats and drinks themselves to a standstill.
The following day - Easter Monday - is not *actually* a bank holiday in Ethiopia, however we were told "the day after a holiday is a quiet day. Many people are tired and have eaten so much they
Squeaker (R.I.P.)
Pushing up sunflowers just sleep". Obviously without a fridge or freezer and an entire sheep to get through in one day you are going to have to tuck a lot of food away in a short space of time.
I went into work and - admittedly it was also a 'no electricity' day - but it was as quiet as a graveyard. A few stout souls had ventured in and a couple dozing peacefully at their desks. You are told that if you need anything done on Easter Monday, find a Muslim, as the Christians will all be too hung-over or sleepy to help 😊
Of course, its not only the humans that like Easter, the cats that have had to endure 55 days of vegetarian scraps suddenly strike it lucky. Everywhere there are bits of dead animal just lying around asking to be munched. We didn't see our cats for 3 days after Easter. They were clearly lording it up on fresh giblets. No need to beg for porridge and bread off them damn ferengi vegetarians any more...
Krumptat'be (the summer is coming!) The rains have started, though the pretty violent downpours we have seen so far are
Krumptat'be
The flying termites brushed off as 'not really raining' by the locals with a knowing smile. One side effect of the increased rainfall is the increase in the size, numbers and downright weirdness of the bugs, particularly at night. The overnight orchestra of chirps, clicks, buzzes and beeps has ratched up a notch, so that my cotton wool earplugs are more useful for warmth than any noise-dampening functionality.
Not only do the bugs sing all night, but where there is light, there are bugs.
Traditionally the start of the rainy season - called 'summer' by some people and 'winter' by others - is marked with a sudden overnight appearance of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of flying termites known as "Krumptat'be" or 'the summer is coming'. My first experience was coming out of the DSTV place having watched Man U score a penalty and free kick against Arsenal to effectively end Arsenal's title challenge. The night sky was full of these big buzzing earwig type things with wings. Attracted to light they swarm around the streetlights before falling earthwards, wings dropping off, to live the second stage of their lives as wood-munching termites. The rains cause the eggs to hatch
and you have one, maybe two nights a year where they hatch and fill the sky like a snowstorm, littering the roads and pathways with broken wings the following morning.
Krumptat'be days are Easter all over again for the birds, who spend the morning pecking away at the carpet of termites; and the cats who spend the morning pecking away at the birds.
So the people are happy, the birds are happy, the cats are happy and boy are the plants happy! With full bellies and plenty of water everyone and everything is happy!!
The Feds Well ok. Not everyone is happy.
I will not go into details on the blog as I don't want to unduly worry people and I promised to avoid all political shenanighans as part of the VSO T&Cs of blogging. There have been one or two 'incidents' in Beneshangul-Gumuz which has always been a relatively peaceful sleepy-hollow of a region.
All I will say is that every government has friends and enemies amongst its neighbouring countries. And if you have an enemy and that enemy does not actually want to start a war, he might just suggest to another
enemy of it's enemy that it might want to take this money, buy a few guns and cause a bit of mischief. The enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of thing. And we are close to a border.
Needless to say, we, VSO, the UN presence and the NGOs in the region are monitoring the situation and if things ever get hairy they get us out. Peace is essential for progress and development so we hope it remains of course.
Anyway, I had my first experience of a full-monty African VIP cavalcade last week. Just crossing the road on the way to the Regional Administration buildings where I work and check it out! Here comes a column of 4x4s with blacked out windows, the front and rear vehicles packed with soldiers toting shades and machine guns. The gates of the Admin buildings open and in go the vehicles. Troops jump out and take up positions dotted around the compound. I walk past 6 in the 50 yards to my office. These guys are mean looking dudes. Not the smiley, happy private guards or local policemen. I engage full nodding, cheesy-grin, grey man, smiley mode. This tactic
Local tip
Put a bucket under the light works as at time for chai/buna I have to walk past them again and the captain (very expensive shades) is doing the rounds. He catches sight of me for the first time and inquisitively but with a hint of menace shouts "fereng?" (foreigner?) to the nearest soldier. "Chiggerellum" (no problem) says the guy close to me, remembering me from earlier.
It is said that Ethiopians make good priests and good soldiers and these dudes certainly meant business.
Later in the day, walking home I see they have taken up positions across the compound and around our housing complex. Apparently Mr Big is staying for a while in the neighbourhood.
We soon discover that these are not soldiers, they are the federal police and Mr Big is a federal minister from Addis. Ohh-kay. These guys are these blue army camoflaged federal police that we have been told about. We are told that if these guys say 'jump' you say 'how high?'. There is a joke, on second thoughts make that advice, that people tell about the Feds.
It's a hot busy day in Addis and the the traffic has ground to a halt. A herd of donkeys
Good at eating fences
Not so good at swimming have decided to sleep in the middle of the main Bole Road. The donkey-herd and then various irate motorists have tried to move the animals on to no avail. The sun is burning down and the queues are getting longer when the traffic police turn up. The donkeys lie there oblivious to the traffic police as they try and goad the beasts off the asphalt. The traffic police are exasperated and call the local militia (who call the army for good measure) and a squad of heavily armed, combat-booted heavies show up to clear the blockage. The closest donkey opens one eye. Closes it and go back to sleep. Just then a federal police car joins the back off the queue and after 5 minutes sitting motionless the two federal police get out and walk to scene of the commotion. One of the feds strolls up to the nearest donkey and whispers in its ear "the Federal Police need you to move". Without a sound the animals pick themselves up and skitter off the road...
Unusual Weather Pattern No: 438 - Hail in Ethiopia Yep.
Took out two sides of our termite-munched fencing.
Almost spiked myself,
Hail?
In Ethiopia? Van Helsing style, trying to right the sagging bamboo (note to self: don't do anything remotely dangerous in a rainstorm wearing flip-flops).
The fencing in Assosa is typically bamboo sticks, either mounted horizontally (sturdier) or vertically (discourages thieves and vampires). The termites take a liking to the supporting poles and roughly every two years the whole lot falls down like a row of dominos. Usually in a rainstorm. Fence-rebuilding in Assosa is good business. There is none of that metal cladding that you sink the base of the fence poles into, so the best termite protection is to paint the bases of the poles and wrap them in plastic bags. The termites like a challenge 😊
The neighbours fence also took a hit at the same time as ours. He decided to stop messing around and called in the boys with the corrugated iron. Ugly, expensive and spoils the view but totally termite proof...
..or is it?
Changing Rooms So life in the fast lane that is the Regional Capital of Beneshangul-Gumuz has been, well, glamorous. We have painted the house, put the fence back up, lit candles, buried a cat, boiled water, chased mosquitos,
changed the curtains and contemplated our tax returns. Not really the stuff off intrepid African adventure.
Until the night we discovered the duffle bag stuffed full of dollar bills and the note written in blood..
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melkamu
non-member comment
thanks
i am pleased to say you a little bit , i realy appricate you for your promtion of bg