Hosed.

Guest contributor J. originally composed this entry as an e-mail message to family and friends. If it sounds familiar to you, let me know, and I’ll tell you what your e-mail address was in 1995.

We had a strange experience yesterday morning (Saturday, August 6, 1995) when a gentleman from the neighborhood association stopped by our apartment. (Note: neighborhood association is a pleasant interpretation of what used to be called Kebele or Peasant Association, the lowest level of civic government in Ethiopia). He did not wait for me to invite him in, but walked right in and made himself comfortable on our couch. I was a bit apprehensive because Sara was in the shower at the time, and the living room lies between the bathroom and the bedroom. He introduced himself as the financial director of the Kebele, and its security chairman, and went on to explain about the Kebele’s sports program and its need for contributions to send a team to competition. He showed me a list of names of those who has already contributed and fully expected me to follow their example. (He took a break from his discourse to greet my discomfited wife as she made a beeline for the bedroom, wearing her green bathrobe and with a purple towel on her head). I caved. I contributed 50 birr and immediately he said, “Make that 70 birr.” We left it at fifty.

Our visitor was preparing to leave when he spotted some highly coveted M&Ms packets. Unashamedly, he mentioned that he had a little boy, and could he have some candy? I was startled. Most of the Ethiopians we’ve met are very reserved but this man was just the opposite. He was not unfriendly or rude, he just took me by surprise. I wondered if he treated all of the apartment tenants this way, or if we foreigners are just considered so rich that we certainly wouldn’t miss 70 birr (Editor's note: about US $11.65 at the time) or some M&Ms. Either way, it is good to be an ambassador for the Mars company.

After our visitor departed I intended to go to the office in order to catch up on some work and write some overdue e-mail. On the way there (it is only a couple of miles) the car blew its radiator hose. I heard a loud bang that sounded as if it came from under the car, so I stopped the car and looked around, but could find nothing wrong. I climbed back into the car to start it up and drive off when some boys – teenagers – who had been observing me cautioned me not to do something foolish. They pointed to the hood and I opened it, and the culprit was plainly visible.

I was less than half a mile from the office and I was in a quandary. I was tempted just to start up the car and drive off anyway, but prudence got the better of me. It didn’t matter, because my indecision lasted long enough for the boys to remove the burst hose. By that time, more than a dozen other boys had gathered – most of them around the front of the car – but one was intensely looking me over; he was so close I felt embarrassed about my long nose hairs.

Not far from the stalled car was a little shop that sold black electrical tape, and I was prompted by two of my companions to buy some. After ten minutes of work, the hose was taped back into place and the radiator was replenished with water. Now what? I hopped into the car, which was quickly surrounded by a dozen boys expecting some sort of payment. The one who had carried out most of the work looked at me and said “Chigger yellem” and walked off. If anyone had deserved payment it was him, but he had just told me, “No problem.” I felt a bit awkward. The voices around me reminded me, “I have not had breakfast!” “I carried the water!” “Pay me!” The unlocked doors of the car were being opened and closed all around me.

In a country where the people are so poor it is difficult not to feel filthy rich in comparison, yet I don’t like being taken for a fool. (Being a fool and being taken for one are two completely different things). I decided to give money to one of the helpful boys and told him to share, then I hastily started the car and it sputtered the rest of the way to the office. I discovered later that the helpful, happy boys had absconded with my brand new hammer while I was not paying attention. Cuisine is a bit different here, but scrambled hammer on toast seems like an awful breakfast to me.

A co-worker met me at our office gate. She smiled and asked if I would need the electricity to do my work – she hoped not, because it was out. Needless to say, I did not write this e-mail at the office. The positive part of the story is that we are driving a Toyota Land Cruiser for the weekend, until our little red Renault is fixed.

We ended the day by taking advantage of an unusual hiatus in the constant rain by playing some tennis with friends. We enjoyed whacking the ball around and getting some exercise. All of the tennis courts come fully equipped with a ball boy, which was a good thing since several balls sailed over or through the fence. Luxury exists in Ethiopia, and it has found us for this weekend.

Back To Work.

Before we finish up with language school, I want to share an anecdote from our friend Wendy, who was in the senior class while we were starting out. Wendy had come to Ethiopia a couple of years earlier to teach at Bingham Academy, the SIM mission school in Addis. She was learning Amharic to prepare for her new role as Bingham’s homeschool coordinator, traveling to remote towns and villages to help missionary families educate their kids at home instead of sending them to boarding school. 

Wendy was living at the Press Compound that summer, so a group of us would often gather for lunch at her little apartment. One Monday, she told us that she had gone with one of the language tutors, Solomon, to an Ethiopian church the previous day, where she tried desperately to follow the preacher’s enthusiastic sermon in Amharic. She was able to recognize a few of our basic vocabulary words, including the repeated phrase “siga menged.” We knew “siga” from our meals at the office, where on Tuesdays and Thursdays we had “siga wot” – stew with meat in it. And we knew “menged” (pronounced men’-ged, with a hard g) from driving directions – it means “road”. Siga menged, the preacher said, and Wendy could not for the life of her figure out what he meant by “Meat Road.” After the service, she asked Solomon, who explained that the preacher was denouncing “the way of the flesh.” Foreign languages make literalists of us all, I guess. 

Spoiler alert: Wendy married Solomon a few years later. 

As we prepared to return to the office full time, there were some changes taking place at FH/Ethiopia. J’s boss, one of the most senior Ethiopians on the staff, had been arrested that summer, accused of participating in the Red Terror in the late 1970s. In his absence, the organizational structure was adjusted and some new staff members came on board. The new guy in charge of administration – and J.’s new boss – was Tesfaye Habtiyimer, a local guy who was trained as an accountant, and who quickly won our respect. The new guy in charge of the program(me) side was Andy Barnes, an American expatriate with a background in forestry, who had been teaching at an agricultural college in Ethiopia. (Ten years later Andy became the Country Director of FH/E, and he still works for the organization. We have, alas, lost track of Tesfaye). 

Also, at the beginning of August, I had boldy told the big boss P. that I was not very happy in my role at FH/E. Part of my dissatisfaction was professional, insofar as it didn’t seem like there was enough work to keep both Joy and myself occupied on a full-time basis. Part of it was inter-personal, as by this time it had become clear that my supervisor E. and I were not, shall we say, simpatico. You may recall that the big boss P. was married to my supervisor E., which complicated the matter. As I wrote to my sister at the time, “talking with P. really cheered me up, not because he was extremely helpful, but because I needed to be clear about my frustrations and get it off my chest.” 

So what happened was, I became a teacher.

Happy New Year!

Everyone else is acting like it’s the middle of September, but our Ethiopian friends are celebrating New Year's Day, Meskerem 1, this weekend, on the day we know as September 11. Meskerem is the first of thirteen months in the Ethiopian calendar year – there are twelve months of exactly thirty days each, and a thirteenth month of five days (or six, for Leap Years) to make up the difference at the end of the year. This calendar is the basis for Ethiopia’s uniquely charming tourism slogan, “Thirteen Months of Sunshine”. Ironically, Meskerem marks the end of the long rainy season, at least in the central highlands.

This Sunday marks the beginning of the year 2009 in Ethiopia, a little time warp that’s based upon some arcane early Christian scholarship. Back in the day, circa 400 AD to be somewhat more precise, an Egyptian monk named Annianus of Alexandria determined the date of Creation – the exact date of “In the beginning…” – to be March 25, 5492 BC, and established an Anno Mundi calendar system based on the number of years since that date, “in the year of the world.” About a hundred years later, another monk known as Dionysius the Humble introduced a new system of dating called Anno Domini, “in the year of the Lord,” which should sound somewhat familiar to you. Dionysius thought it would be way cool if the Incarnation of Christ (the Annunciation) took place exactly 5,500 years after the date of Creation, so his system starts eight years before Annianus’ system. As you may already have guessed, the Western world eventually adopted Dionysius’ system, while Ethiopia still uses Annianus’ calculations, which accounts for the discrepancy.

As an aside, Internet research tells me that the name of the New Year’s Day holiday in Amharic is “Enkutatash,” which is a word I cannot ever recall having heard while we were in the country. But I do remember learning about the Meskel flowers, bright yellow like tiny daisies, that bloomed everywhere at the end of the rainy season; it was traditional to gather a bouquet of Meskel flowers to welcome the new year.

Twenty-one years ago, it was 1988 in Ethiopia and we were making the transition from six weeks of language school back to working at the FH office on a full-time basis. Or were we…?

Hello Again.

We were reminded in a conversation the other day about how expressive African greetings can be. The topic of that particular conversation was the Zulu greeting “sawubona” which translates to “I see you”; this greeting can be taken as a statement of physical fact or the recognition of an intimate personal connection.

In Ethiopia, we learned to greet people using the Amharic phrase “tena yistilign” or a variation thereof – it was often pronounced as a single word with the “y” dropped – which literally translates to “May (He) give you health”, where the (He) refers to God. Even though it’s only two words long, there’s a lot to unpack from this little phrase. First of all, there’s a cultural recognition of Count Rugen’s immortal statement, “If you haven’t got your health, then you haven’t got anything.” The closest we come in the Western world is saying “Gesundheit!” to bless someone after a sneeze. Second, there’s an implicit monotheistic perspective that assumes the presence of a (male) divine being but works across religious differences, which is handy in a country split almost evenly between orthodox Christianity and Islam. Thirdly, because God is the subject of the phrase, there’s no need to deal with tricky verb conjugations that depend on the gender and the social status of the person you’re speaking to.

The basic verbal greeting can be embellished in a couple of ways. As in the west, there is usually a handshake, but in Ethiopia the left hand often plays a role, grasping your own right wrist or forearm as you offer your right hand in greeting. A small but respectful bow is an optional but acceptable addition to a formal greeting. (Or maybe we bowed because we tended to be taller than the people we were greeting?)

When you’re greeting people you’re close to but maybe haven’t seen for a while, it’s perfectly acceptable to raise the level of difficulty with the addition of kisses – at least two, often three, and sometimes four or more – delivered on or near alternating cheeks. In this case, the handshake is used to draw you in and position you for optimal kiss delivery. The handshake is maintained throughout the kissing phase, and the kisses are punctuated with repeated questions and comments regarding each other’s health and overall appearance: “Endeminesh? Dehnanesh? Endeminesh?” “How are you? Are you well? How are you?” And of course, here’s the place where you have to pay attention to the status and gender of the person you’re talking to, and conjugate your verb accordingly.

How are you? Are you well? You look well. Are you well?

Hot Weather.

It's hot today and supposed to be even hotter the next few days, and invariably when we comment upon the heat we hear something like "Oh, you must have gotten used to hot weather, living in Africa!" In our little corner of the continent, not so much.

I have mentioned before that Addis Abeba is located at about 7,500 feet above sea level, way more than "mile high". This makes it a challenge to breathe and to bake, but it really mellows out the subtropical climate so that the weather is bearable almost all the time. Located a few degrees north of the equator, the city has the same summer-winter pattern that you would find in the rest of the Northern hemisphere, but there's not a huge difference between the seasons in terms of temperature. In fact, because the summer months are also the wettest in terms of rainfall, the average high temperature is about the same in January as it is in June -- a balmy 74 degrees Fahrenheit.

There isn't a lot of energy dedicated to modifying the indoor environment, which is to say, no air conditioning and also no central heating. We were grateful for the advice to bring our down comforter, which we only took off the bed when the nights warmed up in April and May, and for our warm winter coats on chilly January mornings when our breath hung frosty in the air. We wore long sleeves and sweatshirts far more often than we wore shorts.

But this entry is about heat, not cold. Even though it didn't get extremely warm in Addis, there is definitely an intensity to the African sun that could seem relentless on a hot day, even to the Ethiopians. During the early days, we noticed that drivers would stop short of the line at a red light if it meant that the car could idle in the shade of a nearby tree, a technique that we now find ourselves embracing on hot summer days in Oregon. It was just as likely in those days to see umbrellas used as protection against the sun as against the rain, which is why I carry an umbrella in the desert -- although Ethiopian sun umbrellas are gorgeous, elaborate objects made of damask fabric and fringe that put my little umbrella to shame.

Of course the best way to deal with heat in the Pacific Northwest is to escape to the ocean, a technique that was never available to us or our friends in landlocked Ethiopia... but one that we plan to put into practice ourselves, this weekend. Stay cool!

A Little Language Lesson.

I was looking through boxes in the garage the other day and I came across a stack of papers from our life in Ethiopia, including some of our books from language school.

Our main text was a booklet called Amharic for Beginners, put together by the Norwegian Lutheran Mission Language School. Here’s a look at one of the basic grammar lessons:

Looks like fun, right? We also had some exercise books to help us learn and practice our vocabulary. These three were produced and printed at SIM Press, where we went to school – they were originally designed to be used by Ethiopian adults who are learning to read and write Amharic.

 

The one in the middle is a simplified version of the Gospel of John. The other two are picture books for learning the fidel. Here’s the page for the “b” sound:

On the left hand page you see the “b” sound in its seven different forms, each associated with a different attached vowel sound. You can tell which vowel sound to used by how the first form character – in this case, the croquet hoop – is amended. So first form is the consonant plus a schwa sound, “bə”, which is used in the word for sheep, “bəg.” The second form, with the little arm sticking out to the right of the croquet hoop, is the consonant plus “oo”, used in the word for coffee, “boo-na”. The vowel sound for third form (with the flat right foot) is “ee”, for fourth form (with the longer right leg) is “ah”, for fifth form (with the circle on the right foot) is “ay”, and for seventh form (with the longer left leg) is “oh”. But what about sixth form you say? The one with the little arm on the left? That’s a tricky one. Depending on context, a sixth form character can be pronounced either with a short “i” sound or as the absence of a vowel sound. It’s used here in the word for money, “birr.”

To make matters trickier, differently shaped characters are annotated in different ways, so the various forms of “b” are not congruent to the various forms of, for example, “r”.

One of our friends helped us memorize the different forms of each character by singing them to the tune of “Camptown Races”:

Bə boo bee bah bay bih boh

Doo-dah, doo-dah

Tə too tee tah tay tih toh

Oh, doo-dah day…

On the right hand page is a series of questions and answers: What is this? This is a house. What is this? This is a sheep. What is this? This is coffee. We practiced these sentences over and over again with our language helpers. Turns out, being able to ask, “What is this?” is very helpful when, say, you are eating something you’ve never seen before.

Photo Phriday.

I thought I'd wrap up this week by sharing a few leftover photographs that I have lying around, so pardon me if I revisit some things I have mentioned before.

Here's one of Joy and E. in E.'s office at FH/Ethiopia, which would become the office of all three of us by the end of the summer of 1995. (Spoiler alert: the reason I'm not using E.'s name is that we ended up having a very rocky relationship, and although I have no intent to slander her, I would prefer that she not be able to find herself here).

Here's J in the process of opening one of the packages that arrived in time for our birthdays. I definitely mentioned this back in August, when I posted another photograph, taken on the same day, where I'm playing with a hand puppet from the same package. The hand puppet ended up going to language school with us for about a week, where we expanded our vocabularies by learning and retelling the story of Little Red Riding Hood in Amharic.

Speaking of language school, here are four of our language tutors -- Zemenay, Genet, Solomon, and Yosef -- posing for an album cover. No, just kidding, they're goofing off during one of our breaks. The other day J. and I had a conversation about whether language school was a half-day or a full-day experience, and we couldn't remember at all. Then I came across an e-mail message I had written to my sister indicating that the hours were 8:30 am to 3:30 pm, just like, you know, school. That made sense because we had recalled occasionally eating lunch with our friend Wendy, a missionary teacher from Canada and senior level language student who was living at the SIM Press compound at the time. A few years after this photo was taken, Wendy and Solomon were married. We hope they are living happily ever after.

Finally, a photograph of J and myself taken outside the Institute for Ethiopian Studies at Addis Abeba University. IES operates a museum in what used to be the Genet Leul Palace, built by Emperor Haile Selassie in 1930. Twenty years ago the museum was pretty basic, essentially a couple of rooms set aside to honor the Emperor's memory. The tour included the imperial bedroom and a couple of cases of artifacts, including a tiny dress uniform -- Ethiopians tend to be small-framed people and Haile Selassie was only about 5'4" tall. IES also had/has a research library and an art gallery, and we were able to view an exhibit of Ethiopian art that had opened in Baltimore in 1993 and traveled around the USA before ending up in Addis Abeba. Poor as we were, we splurged and bought the catalog for the exhibit, "African Zion: The Sacred Art of Ethiopia." Fifteen years later we met the author, Marilyn Heldman, when she came to speak at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem. So how's that for a small world?

Making Progress.

By the beginning of July (nearly Twenty-one Years Ago in Ethiopia, now…) we had gotten our bearings and settled into our new life in Africa.

At language school we continued to improve our communication skills, as I wrote to my sister on July 6, 1995:

We feel like we are making progress in Amharic! When I came into the office today, I responded to peoples’ greetings and THEY DIDN’T CORRECT ME, which means I GOT IT RIGHT! Language school was pretty fun today – we learned numbers and then played BINGO! to reinforce our knowledge. In phonetic Amharic, your age (27) is “haya sabat” (ALMOST “haya simmint”). The numbers are pretty easy: eleven is expressed as ten-one (“asra andt”), twelve is ten-two (“asra hulett”), etc. Amharic doesn’t have words for million or billion so we use English instead. Of course, the only time we hear those numbers is when street kids demand, “Give us one million dollars!”

At the apartment, we had managed to set up our bare-bones household, though we were still waiting for delivery of that duty-free stove. We had acquired baking supplies and a 1962 Betty Crocker cookbook from a longtime missionary couple who were retiring and heading back to the USA, and I was looking forward to baking a carrot cake for J’s upcoming birthday. Funny thing about the cookbook was that it relied on a lot of prepared ingredients that simply weren’t available in Addis Abeba, like canned beans, cream of mushroom soup, and packages of Jell-o. It also didn’t have a recipe for carrot cake. We did the best we could with what we had, and were unreasonably happy when we found a source for bay leaves and cornstarch.

It took us a little time, but by the beginning of July we had found ourselves a church home at the International Lutheran Church of Addis Abeba. Most of the young expatriates we had met attended the larger International Evangelical Church, but the one time we went there it reminded us a little bit too much of an American mega-church, a format that had never appealed to us. It took a little encouragement (thanks, Steve and Beth) and effort for us to find ILC but it felt like home as soon as we walked in the door, in large part because we had attended a Lutheran church during our student days in Salem. The liturgy sounds the same, even when it’s spoken with a Norwegian accent.

By the beginning of July, it had also started to rain. Addis Abeba is dry for most of the year, but as I have mentioned before, there’s a no-kidding type of rainy season that runs from late June to August. Unlike the Pacific Northwest, it isn’t cloudy and gray all day long with constant precipitation. Ethiopian rainstorms are relatively short but intense, a heavy downpour usually accompanied by thunder and lightning, with bright sunshine before and after. It wasn’t uncommon for drivers, ourselves included, to pull over and wait out a rainstorm since windshield wipers often couldn’t keep up with the demand.

I remember one evening when there was a huge storm. We were already at home when the rain started lashing against our apartment windows – and it’s a good thing we were. The living room windows were sheltered by an overhang, but our bedroom window bore the full brunt of the weather, and began to leak. A lot. The windows were just pieces of glass in a metal frame with absolutely no seal or weather stripping of any kind, so water poured in through the seams, over the windowsill and onto the bedroom floor. We pinned our makeshift window curtain (formerly a blue-checkered tablecloth) up out of the way and deployed towels and cooking pots to catch most of the water. We listened to a Harry Connick Jr. cassette tape until the power went out, then we made dinner by candlelight, read a little bit, and fell asleep. We woke up a few hours later to the light of the full moon shining in through our curtain-less window and it all made sense: “Oh, he’s smiling, ‘cause he’s in love. The man in the moon is smiling ‘cause he’s in love with the girl in the world.”

Vintage E-mail, With Endnotes.

From: j-----@padis.gn.apc.org

To:     ohsu.wpo2 (deppmeie)

Date: 6/30/95 6:24 am

Subj: tomato and cheese omelet

Hi Sis,¹

Thank you for the doily! Did you know that I have been coveting the doilies you’ve made for Mom and others, and now you are helping me not to break the tenth commandment.² Doesn’t that make you feel good? It is gorgeous, and we are pleased to have it in our home. It’s really perfect, because not only does it look nice, but it reminds us of you and it will be easy to pack and bring home. So, thanks again.³

We were very happy to receive the package⁴ from Mom and Dad this week. (Obviously we got it, since that’s where the doily was). It was like Christmas and my birthday⁵ all rolled into one. Of course we were thankful to get some of the things we had asked for, like sponges and Kool-Aid⁶ and twisters⁷, but the surprises really pleased us – dried fruit and OAT SQUARES⁸ and wheat germ. Thanks for your part in making the audio tapes. It was really nice to hear some familiar music! J was listening to Jackson Browne while making breakfast Thursday morning.⁹

It’s only 11 am and already it has been a very happy day for me. J made breakfast for me (tomato and cheese omelet in our new frying pan), and I opened my doily and birthday cards. J brought out from hiding our half-kilo chocolate bar – but now that we have Hershey’s Miniatures we can wait on the chocolate bar for a while. He also gave me a silver cross pendant, a very beautiful Ethiopian design. We need to buy a chain before I can wear it, though.¹⁰

We came into the office today to check e-mail and do a little work, since we don’t have language school. (The last Friday of each month is prayer day for SIM, the mission that runs the language school). My friend and co-worker Joy brought me a gift from Kenya, where she was for a conference last week – it’s a woven bag like the ones that were popular in high school, but this one has a drawstring at the top.¹¹ After lunch today we are planning to go to an exhibition on Women in Development. Some of the FH/E nurses are participating in the exhibition and have brought some handcrafts made by FH/E women’s groups to sell.

Learning Amharic has been challenging so far! Last week we learned the alphabet and this week we started on simple sentences like “My name is Sara” and “I am a student.” I’m sorry I can’t write those for you in Amharic on the computer, but I’ll send you a handwritten sample of fidel soon.

I hope you have a good time celebrating Mom’s birthday¹² this weekend. I think I sent her postcard too late for it to get there by Saturday, but it’s coming. Eat a piece of pizza for us! We will be eating pizza tonight with a group of friends in celebration of three birthdays – mine, J’s¹³, and Renate’s (she’s a German veterinarian working with the Southern Baptist Mission). We’re also going to the Hilton to play miniature golf, though I’m pretty sure it’s going to rain on us.¹⁴

Wow, I just found out that we have a package¹⁵ waiting at the post office. Guess we’ll have to add that to our list of afternoon activities.¹⁶

Enjoy yourselves this weekend!

Love, Sara (the old lady)¹⁷ and J

OKAY, WAIT! I just got your e-mail from earlier in the week, and sadly it is too late to reply. I was thinking of calling Mom and Dad today, but J suggested that it would be easier and cheaper to have you call us sometime next week. So, how about if we set a date for early next week? How about if I say call us at 6 am your time, 4 pm our time, on Tuesday? The problem with 8 am our time is that we have to be at school at 8:30, and it’s across town; we have school until 3 pm,¹⁸ but we can get to the office by 4. We’ll check our e-mail on Monday, so if you have an alternative suggestion let us know!¹⁹

**********

¹ Lisa.

² You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s. Including, I suppose, her doily.

³ We still have the doily.

⁴ Our first package!

⁵ It was actually my birthday.

⁶ Fruity flavors help you drink more fluids when you’re not feeling well.

⁷ I… have no idea.

⁸ My all-time favorite cereal.

⁹ He still does this.

¹⁰ Purchased chain, have worn, still love. A+ gift.

¹¹ Sorry, Joy. I still have a bag like this that I bought for myself, but I'm not sure what happened to the one you gave me.

¹² The day after mine.

¹³ Ten days after mine.

¹⁴ I’m pretty sure our miniature golf plans were rained out, as I have no recollection of that outing.

¹⁵ Our second package!

¹⁶ We had to pick up our packages in person at the main post office. More on that later…

¹⁷ Seriously? I was 26.

¹⁸ Nice to know, as we couldn’t quite remember the hours.

¹⁹ I do not miss being ten time zones away from my family, or trying to set up international phone calls by e-mail.

Monday Morning.

The morning of Monday, June 26, 1995 was as ordinary as any morning could have been for us, two months into our extended residence in the capital city of a developing country. J had returned home after his short visit to the north and we were starting our second week of language school. We were probably humming the little mnemonic tune that helped us memorize the characters of the fidel as we ate breakfast and prepared to leave the apartment. Once in the car and out of the gate, we turned south towards Bole Road, on our new morning route to pick up Joy.

We… didn’t get very far. Even from our gate we could see that Bole Road was blocked off, the intersection packed with people. So we reversed direction and headed north on our street, the route we would normally take to the office. We thought if we could reach a main road in that direction we could work our way around to Bole Road, and from there continue on our familiar route to the other side of the city. But that… did not happen. Try as we might, we could not find a way across Bole Road to the south and west of us. Police and pedestrians blocked every intersection; our Amharic wasn’t good enough to ask for details but the message was clear: get away from here.

Keep in mind that there’s no radio in the car to tell us what’s happening; there’s no app to provide us with an alternate route around the congestion. We had little to no concept of how the city was laid out and had barely even seen a street map, let alone have one with us in the car.

After about half an hour of trying to get across Bole Road, we decided to change tactics and head for the FH/E office. Once there, we thought, we could call Joy and tell her to find her own transportation to language school – we’d catch up with her later in the day. (Remember, we couldn’t call her from home because we didn’t have a phone at home, and we didn’t know anyone in our building who did. To be fair, we didn’t know anyone in our building). But even that plan was optimistic, because we also couldn’t find a way to cross Asmara Road to the north of us, to get into the Kazanchis neighborhood where the office was located. At one point, frustrated and dumb, we parked the car on a quiet side street and tried to make our way to the office on foot, only to be stymied by a small waterway – in retrospect, probably the Kebena River – that we couldn’t get around or across.

So, we turned around and went home. I’d like to think we spent the afternoon studying; I know we didn’t waste hours watching tv – because we had no tv; we didn’t goof around on the Internet – because there was no Internet; we didn’t even have a short wave radio to distract us.

On Tuesday morning, we got up as usual, and went to language school.

It is hard to imagine now, but our isolation was so complete, we didn’t know until we got to school  that there had been an attempt to assassinate the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, as he arrived in Addis Abeba on Monday morning for a meeting of the Organization of African Unity. The ambush had taken place on Bole Road, somewhere between our street and the airport, which was about a kilometer away. Though his car was riddled with bullets, Mubarak himself escaped unharmed; his driver turned around and went right back to the airport. By the time we were out in the car, the focus had turned to locating the perpetrators who were, presumably, contained in the same cordoned-off portion of the city that we were attempting to navigate. Two Ethiopian policemen were killed along with five gunmen; a Muslim militant group called the Islamic Group in Egypt later claimed responsibility for the attempt. For more information, you can read this vivid report of the incident from the Los Angeles Times.

I suppose that was our first experience with terrorism, and it was our closest brush in terms of physical proximity, and at the time we probably weren’t as freaked out by it as we should have been. We took it more seriously later on, when it became more personal.

Finding Our Way.

One of the challenges about attending language school was its location. If you think of Addis Abeba as the face of a watch, our apartment was located at about four-thirty, in the southeast quadrant of the city, very close to the airport. The FH/E office was only about a ten-minute drive away, a fairly convenient commute unless there was a lot of traffic around St Ourael church. But language school was held at the SIM Press compound, across town at about eight o’clock on the AA dial, and we had to pick up Joy on the way, so learning to navigate the streets of Addis was also on the summer syllabus.

The south half of Addis Abeba. Scale: ???

I say “summer” because we were in the northern hemisphere, but the months of June, July, and August are the “big” rainy season in Ethiopia; it wasn’t cold by any means but it usually rained hard at least once a day and the bad weather exacerbated the challenges of driving. By the end of the season, there were potholes on the road large enough to swallow the Renault sedan, or at least do serious damage to its suspension. And other drivers – especially taxi drivers – would swerve unexpectedly to avoid potholes and other road hazards, which added an element of excitement to the daily drive.

In this era of Google maps, it’s difficult to convey how challenging it was for us to find our way around Addis Abeba twenty years ago, when our only resources were sketchy tourist maps and word of mouth. The vast majority of people walked or used public transportation, which meant there was literally no need for road maps. Drivers relied on landmarks: turn left at Olympia, for example, or go straight at the tukuls; there were no street signs but most of the streets weren't known by name, anyway. The closest main road to our apartment terminated at the airport about a kilometer away and was called Bole (bo-lay) Road after Bole International Airport. Other main roads led out of the city toward Debre Zeit, Jimma, Ambo, and Asmara, or up to Entoto, and were known by their destinations. One of the few streets everyone knew was Churchill Avenue, the main drag that connected the lower portion of town with the train station and post office to the uphill Piazza neighborhood.

Several main roads came together in the center of the city at Meskel Square and at Mexico, a traffic circle named in honor of the historic friendship between Ethiopia and Mexico. (Apparently, Mexico has been dismantled and rebuilt in recent years due to light rail construction). It was rare enough for an intersection to have traffic signals of any kind and rarer still for them to be functional. Here’s a video clip of traffic going through the west end Meskel Square; Bole Road is one of three main roads that meet at the other end of the square so we had to navigate this intersection on a regular basis:

We could avoid Meskel Square, Mexico, and some of the worst traffic by skirting the city center on our way to language school. Here’s how it worked:

1. Turn right onto Bole Road.

2. Turn left onto the Acropolis Road. According to the map, it’s actually called Ethio-China Street, but we never knew it by that name; we called it the Acropolis Road because that's where our favorite Greek restaurant was. Continue on this road until you reach the intersection with Debre Zeit Road.

3. Go straight across Debre Zeit Road. Try not to get crushed; there’s a lot of traffic and no signal.

4. Continue on Slaughterhouse Road until you get to the tukuls. The official name of Slaughterhouse Road is Alexander Pushkin Street. I don’t know what crime the father of Russian literature committed to have the smelliest street in Ethiopia named after him: enormous piles of bones with bits of rotting flesh basking in the sunlight, and the odor to match. Plus vultures. Ugh.

5. Go through the roundabout at the tukuls (still there!) and continue on Old Airport Road aka Seychelles Street, past Le Petit Paris (…we used several restaurants as reference points) and the Ethio Telecom building.

6. Turn left onto Victory Road, aka South Africa Street. A slight detour here onto unpaved neighborhood streets to pick up Joy.

7. Get back onto Victory Road and then turn left to continue on Old Airport Road, known here as Mauritania Street. There's a shorter way to go but it isn't paved, and that could be risky in rainy weather.

8. When you reach Save-More, turn left onto Jimma Road. Go over the bridge at Akaki, then turn right at the intersection where if you were to turn left you would arrive at Alert, the leprosy hospital.

9. Take the next right onto the unpaved, rocky side street that leads to the SIM Press Compound. Honk your horn as you approach the gate, and wait for the guard to admit you.

This commute took about 35-40 minutes on an average morning, though there were several days where traffic jams made us late for language school, and (spoiler alert) at least one day where we didn’t make it to school at all.

Where Is Gandalf When You Need Him? (Part Three)

This is the third and final installment by guest contributor J, who wrote this e-mail message describing a business trip with Walter the consultant to the FH/E project sites in South Gondar in mid-June 1995.

The new tire arrived and by 8:30 that evening we were in Nefas Mewcha, enjoying our special ferenj dinner of spaghetti and deep fried potatoes. We slept well that night and were awakened by a bright crisp morning. A breakfast of scrambled eggs and homemade local bread was waiting for us. That day we were to travel to Arb Gebeya, 26 kilometers across the mountains. The Land Cruiser’s tires were patched – with holes still clearly visible – and off we went. The hour-long drive gave me new ideas for roller coaster rides at Disneyland. The landscape was simply incredible. I could describe it as beautiful – because it is – but the extenuating circumstances diminish its apparent beauty. The major crop grown by the farmers in Tach Gayint and Lay Gayint (two weredas, like counties or administrative zones in South Gondar) is rocks! It is unbelievable that anyone would try to plow, plant, and grow crops on such terrain! Centuries of farming on the steep hillsides has caused massive erosion and consequently uncovered a great many of the rocks. The people are hard working, plowing their fields by hand or with oxen. They travel one or two hours by foot from their villages to their fields and work there all day. Young boys of six and seven are grazing the scrawny cattle and sheep from dawn to dusk. It would all make for a great documentary, but the story seems different when you have seen it firsthand.

The project staff at both base camps were unbelievably generous and hospitable. During my two days at Arb Gebeya (the capital of Lay Gayint wereda), I even enjoyed a shower from a tank filled with water fetched by the women working at the camp. In the evenings the staff gave us Amharic lessons to make up for the language school I was missing in Addis. The experience of seeing the project sites and some of the development work happening outside of the metropolitan area was worth the inconvenience of the travel. This is especially true in retrospect.

The adventure of getting from one place to another did not end with our arrival. One more flat tire and several hours of waiting at the Bahir Dar airport came before my safe return to Addis. All in all, that’s just Africa. I wonder, though, since I was on my way to Gondar shouldn’t I have expected some help from the wizard Gandalf?

The purpose of my visit to Gondar was to set a baseline survey in motion. The survey is conducted with many villagers in the rural areas. In all, 380 households are asked a series of questions to help FH establish a set of general characteristics for a certain area. It is a surprisingly scientific undertaking and Walter was instrumental in randomly selecting weredas, villages, and households for surveying. We expect the data to provide useful information about the needs of the people and where our resources are best allocated. Furthermore, many of the funding agencies (e.g. US Agency for International Development aka USAID) are requiring a rigorous analysis of the impact of our projects. This initial survey will give us data to compare against subsequent surveys. The survey will address issue of food and food security via crop production, household income and expenditures, family health, sanitation and access to water, etc. Each interview is expected to take one-and-a-half hours. Enumerators, or survey takers, are hired from each community and trained during a three-day session. I was there to observe and to help with the training. After the surveys are completed the data will be entered into the computer for compilation and statistical analysis. I hope to be involved with that process as well.

The next few weeks will consist mainly of language school for Sara and me. Although I missed most of the first week, Sara is doing a good job in helping me catch up. I hope to be able to converse enough to be able to understand the next guard who is sent to protect me.

Where Is Gandalf When You Need Him? (Part Two)

This is the second of three installments by guest contributor J, who wrote this e-mail message describing a business trip with Walter the consultant to the FH/E project sites in South Gondar in mid-June 1995.

The same lines, guards, waiting, checking and rechecking occurred on Wednesday morning. The plane left four-and-a-half hours late, and the Bahir Dar airport came into view at noon, twenty-six hours after our trip began. All this for a 35-minute flight! Bahir Dar and the surrounding countryside are quite breathtaking. Situated on beautiful Lake Tana, the tourist town is very close to the Blue Nile Falls, Ethiopia’s most famous natural wonder. After eating a good lunch and arranging a return flight for Saturday, we hopped into the Land Cruiser and sped on our way to Nefas Mewcha.

With the exception of a one-mile stretch, the road was lined with rough stones and gravel. A significant portion of the road was built by the Chinese, when Ethiopia was still communist, with careful engineering. The mountainous passes were skillfully carved out and bridges were strategically placed. Small ditches hugged the road to prevent the annual rainfall from eroding the infrastructure. Ironically, this engineering feat may have influenced the fall of the Derg regime in 1991; the road was strategic during the war and as many as 21 burned-out and abandoned military vehicles were scattered among the stones and rocks along the roadside. According to the Gondar Project forester, Yohannes (who was also our driver), Mengistu lost a lot of soldiers and equipment in the hills and valleys served by the Chinese road.

It took us only one-and-a-half hours to reach Debra Tabor, the capital of South Gondar. There Yohannes took care of some project business at the hospital, and 75 minutes later we were on the road again.

It was only 75 kilometers from Debra Tabor to Nefas Mewcha, but the remainder of the trip took us almost five hours. The roughness of the road had taken its toll on the tires and in the course of 60 kilometers we had two punctures. Unfortunately, the Land Cruiser was only equipped with one spare. Yohannes parked the vehicle on the side of the road and left Walter and myself alone among the tukuls (grass huts) and villagers while he went off to try to contact his colleagues at the project site. It quickly grew dark and cold (the elevation there is about 3,000 meters) and we decided to climb back into the Land Cruiser with the key in the ignition in case we needed it.

As dusk became darkness, a figure slowly approached the vehicle. At first we thought nothing of it, and many folks had passed us carrying water, herding their sheep or cattle, or hauling plows and yokes. This figure eventually took the shape of an elderly gentleman carrying a gun. Not noticing the gun, Walter rolled down his window and inquired (in English) what the man wanted. He replied in clear Amharic, to which we shrugged our shoulders and I awkwardly replied “Amarinya yellem” which means, very roughly, “Amharic there is none.” We all laughed, but I remained a bit nervous. Walter rolled up the window and the elderly man walked around the Land Cruiser and sat at the side of the road. We kept an eye on him and after several minutes we agreed to let the man join us in the back of the vehicle. We had understood just one word he had spoken: “Yohannes.” We reasoned that our driver must have asked him to be our guard and that if he had any hostile intentions, an inch of glass probably would not stop him. At the same moment a group of four men walked toward the “guard” and greeted him. The men handed us a note from Yohannes stating, “Don’t worry, I sent a guard to protect you and our base camp has been informed of the situation.” We were safe.

As the men continued to talk among themselves they decided they all wanted to come into the back of the Land Cruiser. It did not seem unreasonable, since it was cold, yet my mother’s warning about talking to strangers was in the forefront of my mind. I expected to additional four men to return to their homes after delivering the message, but they weren’t going anywhere. What to do? I tried to reason with them. However, after one day of language school I was in no position to strike up a conversation in Amharic. I said to them, “and, hulett, sost, arat, amist zebunya?” and shrugged my shoulders – pointing out to them that “one, two, three, four, five guards?” for two people and a vehicle seemed a little ridiculous, don’t you think? They laughed (mostly at my Amharic) and continued to reason with me. Then a breakthrough: I heard one of them say “FH”. I quickly inquired what FH was an abbreviation for, to get further confirmation that we were talking about Food for the Hungry. No luck.

Finally, Walter decided that it was time to let the guard with the gun inside the Land Cruiser. The guard refused to climb in without his cohorts and proceeded to offer his gun to Walter as a sign of friendship. Neither of us had ever held a gun and we both quickly refused. But the tension seemed to have broken and the five men persuaded us to let them in out of the cold. It turned out that we were paranoid “ferenj” (foreigners) and the men were guards for an FH nursery and forestry project site a couple of kilometers up the road. Yohannes returned twenty minutes later and his translation cleared up any misunderstandings and potential hard feelings. Rural Ethiopians are very friendly folks and we were embarrassed not to have trusted them.

Where Is Gandalf When You Need Him? (Part One)

This is the first of three installments by guest contributor J, who wrote this e-mail message describing a business trip with Walter the consultant (remember him?) to the FH/E project sites in South Gondar in mid-June 1995.

The phrase that I always need to keep in mind while I am here is: “Well, that’s just Africa.” I am kicking myself for not tattooing that on my right arm as I travel to and through the province of South Gondar. Walter, a consultant from Kenya, and I embarked on our journey to Nefas Mewcha at 10 o’clock Tuesday morning. Our flight was to leave at noon for Bahir Dar and from there we would travel three hours by car to our final destination. Unfortunately, no one had warned me about the Ethiopian airport experience.

Only passengers are allowed beyond the airport parking lot into the terminal building. So at every juncture, policemen and guards ask you for your plane ticket and your passport. The airport is quite small and the number of passengers that travel through there on a daily basis would be dwarfed by the traffic at the Eugene or Boise airports. Nonetheless, everywhere you go there are lines – lines to check your baggage, lines to pay your airport user tax, lines to check your passport (again), lines to use the phone, etc. So it was a good thing that we arrived two hours early for the domestic flight. By the time it was 12 o’clock, there was no indication whether our flight had already left, was about to leave, would ever leave, or was actually scheduled. There are no monitors, no information desks, and no airline officials; only guards. At ten minutes to one, the fun actually started: our flight was announced and we were all herded toward the x-ray machine and metal detector. Forty minutes later it was my turn to brave the ominous machines. Only minutes earlier I had witnessed one poor woman removing her hair pins from underneath her head covering so as not to displease the shrieking metal detector. I was poised and calm: after all, I am a seasoned international traveler. The machines posed no problem, but it quickly became clear that the machines were the least of my troubles. A set of small chambers, divided by curtains, awaited unsuspecting travelers. Women and men were guided into separate rooms, one at a time, and searched thoroughly. Apparently, I was let off easy – I only emptied my pockets, removed my shoes, and was frisked all over (I mean ALL over). In addition to such thorough searching, my companion was also asked to explain his camera (Photography 101) and to remove its battery. All lighters, matches, keys, pocketknives, fingernail clippers, etc., were confiscated and kept for safe keeping. Many Ethiopians spent as much as ten minutes in the tiny chambers. It was not until ten minutes before 2 o’clock that all passengers had passed inspection and we were ready to board.

One busload of passengers at a time was driven across the tarmac to the waiting plane. There we identified our checked luggage and watched the baggage handler load it onto the plane. I thought, “Finally we are getting somewhere!” until I noticed another line forming at the bottom of the airplane stairs. Every single passenger and every single piece of carry-on luggage was being searched, again. Men’s shoes were coming off, attaché cases were being opened, women’s purses were overturned, back-packers’ tents were unfolded, and everyone was searched ALL over, this time without the benefit of the privacy curtains. I was quite amazed at the calmness with which the Ethiopians accepted this invasion of privacy as part of travelling. Finally, at 2:30 the plane rolled onto the runway and we were off.

The steep climb afforded tremendous views of Addis Abeba. You could clearly see the entire sprawling city and the surrounding mountains. The captain, in perfect English as well as Amharic, informed us that the flying time would be 35 minutes, and invited us to sit back and relax. However, halfway to Bahir Dar we banked sharply to the left and seemed to be covering familiar territory.: the plane was returning to Addis due to mechanical difficulties.

Back on the ground, the time flew. I had met a young gentleman who was on a yearlong tour of the world, and we shared impressions and chit-chatted until 4:30 when the plane was again ready for departure. Working with Food for the Hungry, I was well aware that most people had not eaten anything since breakfast, including me. After all, we had expected to be in Bahir Dar (which means “near the lake”) by 12:30. Ethiopian Airlines had graciously provided a bag of peanuts and three tiny Danish butter cookies to stem our hunger.

This time we only flew about seven minutes before returning to our departure point. By this time everyone’s patience was exhausted. Back inside the terminal building, an official apologized for the delay and assured us it was all beyond the control of the airline. I reminded Walter that, in fact, it was Ethiopian Airlines who employed all of the mechanics. Nevertheless, all travelers were sent away for the night to return at six the next morning. We were assured the problem “will be fixed by tomorrow… hopefully.” The airline refused out-of-town travelers any hotel or meal compensation; luckily, I went home to my wife and my own comfortable bed just a short drive from the airport.

"I Am A Student."

I’m sure there was more than one language school in Addis Abeba, but the one that we (and every foreigner we knew) attended was operated by SIM, the same mission organization that hosted us at their guest house during our first weeks in the country.

Fun fact #1: back in the olden days, circa 1893, SIM stood for “Sudan Interior Mission.” Sudan was on the global radar at the time because British colonialism had recently come into dramatic conflict with the notorious Muhammad Ahmad (aka The Mahdi) and his jihad against the Turks and Egyptians who governed the Sudan at the behest of their colonialist cronies. SIM was established by two Canadians and an American who “had a vision to evangelize the 60 million unreached people of sub-Saharan Africa” (according to their website; the American and one of the Canadians died of dysentery in 1894). By the 1980s SIM had joined up with missions organizations on other continents, so SIM stood for “Society of International Ministries,” and that was how we knew the organization. Nowadays, apparently, SIM doesn’t stand for anything but their slogan is “Serving In Missions.” So.

Fun fact #2: when we were first planning to go overseas, we met with some people who were recruiting us to work at SIM's Rift Valley Academy in Kenya, a boarding school for missionary kids from all over Africa. But I digress.

My point is that SIM had been in Ethiopia for a while, and had turned a lot of non-Amharic speakers into Amharic speakers via their language school, so they knew what they were doing. I mentioned last time that we spent the first week learning the fidel, the collection of characters that are used to write Amharic words. We also spent that time getting to know the instructors and our fellow students. Our cohort, which started classes at the beginning of June, had only four students: the two of us, our friend and co-worker Joy, and a woman named Yvonne who worked for SIM as a nurse instructor. There was also a senior class, students who had started language school in January – I am sorry to say that I honestly have no recollection of who was in that class – they would have been long-term missionaries who were in Addis to learn Amharic before being settled out in the countryside.

In my defense, part of the reason we didn’t know the senior students well was that we had very limited interaction with them even within the school environment. Each day started with the whole school, maybe 25 students and staff in total, together for a short devotional led by one of the language tutors. Then the seniors had a grammar lesson while the juniors met with the language tutors for about an hour; there was a communal tea time; then the juniors had a grammar lesson while the seniors met with tutors.

The language tutors were young, engaging, extremely patient native Amharic speakers who conversed with us, coached us, and encouraged our language development every day. I can’t quite recall how we were matched up – there were more tutors than there were junior students – but we usually had a different tutor from day to day, and even though our skills were lacking we learned a ton about Ethiopian culture from our daily interaction with them.

Here’s a photo of the junior class and most of the tutors from the summer of 1995. Back row is Zemenay, Gennet, Joy, Mulat, Almaz, and Sara, the tutor who was in charge of the school for that summer session. Front row is J, myself, Solomon, Yosef, Yvonne, and the housekeeper.

I cannot imagine how many times these lovely people had to help a student learn to spell her name or count to ten or say, “I am a student” but they were so gracious and good-humored toward us. Amharic is a difficult language to learn and we never got very good at it, but we have very fond memories of our time in language school.