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.

Speaking the Language.

I believe I have already mentioned that the national language of Ethiopia was Amharic, which is the language spoken by one of the larger ethnic groups, the Amhara. I say “was” because, while Amharic was and still is still the working language of the national government, there has been an effort in the past decades to allow all ethnic groups to use their mother tongues in regional government business and in primary education. English was (and still is) the medium of instruction in secondary schools and universities, which means that any Ethiopian who had some secondary education could speak at least a little English, in theory. In practice, it was helpful for us, as guests in their country, to learn to communicate in the local language. So in June of 1995, we enrolled full-time in language school.

Before we went to Ethiopia, we had splurged on a cassette tape-based language learning course, the same one the State Department developed to teach Amharic to American diplomats. And when I say we splurged – that course cost the equivalent of a month’s rent, which was a lot of money to us, back in our grad student days. Unfortunately, while the course was designed to help us gain fluency, it didn’t help at all with literacy – which is to say that we learned some vocabulary and a few useful phrases but we didn’t learn how to read.

Also, a little aside here: one of the cassette tape lessons taught us the specific phrase “feet-le-feet” which literally means “face-to-face”. Here it is, used in an actual sentence from the lesson: “The American Embassy is ‘feet-le-feet’ (face-to-face with or right across from) the train station.” Now, there’s only one American Embassy in the whole country of Ethiopia – the one in Addis Abeba. And there’s only one train station in Addis Abeba (at least, there was only one before the days of light rail). And the American Embassy was most definitely NOT feet-le-feet with the train station! To this day I don’t know why they couldn’t have created a phrase that both demonstrated proper usage and reflected the actual geography of the country. For your information, the American Embassy is ‘feet-le-feet’ with the university, and the train station is ‘feet-le-feet’ with the stadium. For heaven’s sake.

Anyway, the challenge of Amharic is that it doesn’t use a western alphabet. It’s a Semitic language closely related to Arabic and Hebrew, and it uses an ancient and unique script in which each character is actually a syllable, usually a consonant plus a vowel sound. So my name, Sara, uses two characters instead of four, equivalent to the syllables “sa” + “ra”. Here’s what it looks like written down (although I personally would use the other “sa”):

ሳራ

The collection of syllabic characters is known as the “fidel” (pronounced exactly like Fidel Castro) -- a total of 242 unique symbols, all of which we learned to recognize and to write in the first week of language school. Here’s what the whole thing looks like:

And I have to say, learning to read in Amharic was pretty rewarding from the first moment. We never became super-fluent but it was a thrill to be able to read basic words like “hotel” or “taxi”, which were particularly easy because they were transliterated directly from English to Amharic.

More about language school next time.