We Move In.

I mentioned a while ago that we spent our first few weeks in Ethiopia living at the SIM Guest House while we waited for our permanent home to become available. In early May, we made the move.

Our new home was a one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a four story, 16-unit building that was occupied mostly by Ethiopian families. It would be an understatement to say that the building was architecturally undistinguished; made of concrete block, and painted an institutional dingy dark green, it would have fit into any Communist-bloc urban landscape.

License to Drive.

As volunteers, we could never have afforded to purchase and/or operate a vehicle from our own resources so it was a real bonus that FH/E had a vehicle that we were able to use. Our car was a 1980s-era Renault 9 sedan. Here it is, in all its glory:

 

This car had seen better days: it had mismatched headlights and dented fenders and faded upholstery. So it was the perfect vehicle for newbies navigating the chaotic streets of Addis Abeba, and we were grateful to have it. We eagerly embraced the responsibility of transporting ourselves around town.

Of course, before one can legally operate a motor vehicle, one must obtain a driver’s license in one’s country of residence. We had gone to the trouble of acquiring our international driver’s licenses from the AAA office in Eugene but those turned out to be useless in Ethiopia. So we needed to make a pilgrimage to the Ministry of Transportation.

In the western world we complain a lot about government agencies, and the DMV is one of our favorite targets. Our visit to the Ministry of Transportation was our first personal encounter with the soul-crushing bureaucracy that is (or was?) the Ethiopian government. Thankfully we had a navigator in the form of Messay, the ever-cheerful Logistics Officer for FH/E, who guided us patiently through the grinding gears and became one of our favorite people in the process.

You know how, at the DMV, there’s a little machine where you take a number, and then you sit down and wait for your number to be called? And you can read, or daydream, or fret about the time you think you’re wasting? In Ethiopia, once you got past the guard at the gate, it was a free-for-all. First you had to figure out which window you needed (thanks, Messay!) and then you joined the scrum in front of the window, elbowing and jockeying your way forward. Being a foreigner got you lots of stares but no preferential treatment. The clerk could decide at any moment that it was time for a tea break or lunch. Since it was rainy season, it might start to pour – did I mention, this was all outside? Finally you reached the window and presented your documents for scrutiny, and were directed to the next window. And the next.

You know how, at the DMV, there’s a little camera, and when you get your license they take a picture of you and stick it on your card? In Ethiopia, you had to provide your own picture, black-and-white, of particular dimensions, just like a passport photo. Which meant that before you could go to the Ministry of Transportation you had to find a photographer and have your picture taken (and bonus points if there was no hot water for a shower that morning). So: photograph, passport, Oregon driver’s license, international driver’s license, and Ethiopian ID card. And cash, of course. Hand them over and hope to see them again soon. (Not the cash).

It could have been worse: at least we didn’t have to take a road test to demonstrate our skills. By that time we hadn’t been behind the wheel in weeks and the mere thought of driving was intimidating enough. As it was, obtaining our licenses was an all-day process that wore us out with hurry-up-and-wait. But by the end of the day, we were street legal.

I have to confess that I have dragged my feet about writing this because I keep hoping to find our Ethiopian driver’s licenses and include a picture of them. A search of internet images indicates that the format has changed completely in the past twenty years. These days, an Ethiopian driver’s license is a computer-generated laminated card much like the one you get in the USA, but in those days it was a paper booklet printed entirely in Amharic with your photo stuck in there. It seemed so foreign and so official, and also, it in no way prepared us for the actual challenges of driving.

Wisely, Messay did not offer to let one of us drive back to the office that day.

We Get Around.

It’s hard for us to believe, but in 2015, Addis Abeba has a newly constructed light rail system that is due to open to the public at any moment now. Twenty years ago, public transportation in Ethiopia was much more random and haphazard.

The cheapest way to travel around town was via the government-operated Anbessa (Lion) Bus Service. The large red and yellow buses ran on routes throughout the city, with rides costing EB 0.10 (ten cents, equivalent to maybe two US pennies). The buses were crowded and unreliable and, rumor had it, a great place to have your pocket picked; we never once rode on the Anbessa bus. In retrospect I wish we had risked it, just for the experience.

The next level up was a shared taxi. These blue and white vehicles also ran on set routes but with a smaller number of passengers, and the price of the ride depended on how far you were going, maybe up to EB 1.00 (about 17 US cents). One could hail a shared taxi by standing on the side of the road and flagging one down, but there were also set transit stops where one could wait for a taxi going in the right direction; there was no timetable so it was imperative to plan ahead during busy commute times, as a full taxi would pass by without stopping.

What He Was Doing.

J was the reason we ended up in Ethiopia, specifically.

When we signed up to go overseas, J was a newly minted Master of Science in Computer and Information Science. His skills would have been in demand anywhere, and they were particularly desirable to Food for the Hungry as the organization worked to update technology in all of their international offices. He was initially offered a position in Mozambique, in southeastern Africa, but there was a fairly unstable political situation at the time and I would not have been allowed to accompany him, so it was easy to turn that down. Ethiopia had also recently wrapped up a civil war but was quiet enough that we could be there together; and FH/E was eager enough to have J there that they agreed to cover the cost of our housing, which meant we could get there sooner.

(It was actually pretty common for expatriate employees to have 100% of their living costs covered by the organization, which was a pretty sweet deal -- but since we were technically volunteers we were resonsible for raising the bulk of our own financial support.)

So when we arrived, J's first order of business was to assess the technology situation. Not surprisingly, most work was still done with typewriters and ledger books, with paper copies saved in row after row of standard black binders. There were a few desktop computers in the building, used primarily for spreadsheets and word processing. Those were the days before Windows 95 so we were using DOS-based programs like Lotus and Word Perfect. It goes without saying that PCs were the norm at FH/E and everywhere else in Ethiopia, which was a real adjustment for those of us who were (and are) Mac users. Electrical service was no completely reliable, so unsaved documents might be lost without warning when the power went out. There was no network in place and only one or two printers -- so whenever one needed a hard copy, one had to save the file to a floppy disc (!!!), upload it onto the secretary's computer, and manually print the document.

J has spent the past fifteen years co-owning a business that specializes in data networking but back then it was all new to him. He turned to his buddy Paul to help him figure out how to set up a local area network and to work up the order for specialized tools, cables, and network cards -- and a few battery-powered backup systems, also a new-to-us concept. He took some time to map out the attic, a maze of eucalyptus rafters, corrugated metal, spiders, and rodent corpses. And then -- the wait. For the order to be processed and shipped. For the shipment to travel thousands of miles to Ethiopia. For the packages to be cleared through customs and delivered to his care. A process that took weeks, if not months, from start to finish.

So it's good that there were plenty of things to keep us busy in the meantime.

At the Office.

I had worked various part-time jobs during college and grad school, but FH/E was my first “real” office job, so it was all new for me in a lot of ways.

By far my favorite part of work was interacting with our co-workers. My office mate, Joy, had arrived at FH/E just a few weeks before us, but she was way ahead of us in cultural adjustment. Joy's parents lived in Addis Abeba and she was a graduate of the International Community School of Ethiopia, where her mother taught chemistry. Joy had recently finished college in the United States and was interested in a career in international development, so she had returned to Ethiopia to get some real world experience before starting a graduate program. She was (and I am sure still is) a very smart and very sweet person, the perfect co-worker. She was living with her parents in their newly constructed house, and I remember her struggling with the lack of a shower curtain in the small bathroom – everything got wet, including the toilet paper!

An Excursion.

We culture-shocked our way through that first week in Ethiopia, spending our days at the office and our evenings hanging out at the SIM Guest House. Without a valid driver’s license or access to a vehicle, we were extremely limited in our ability to get around town on our own. We were far too timid to venture far on foot or – heaven forbid – to wrestle with the intricacies of the public transit system. So we were excited when our co-workers, P. and E., proposed an excursion for us and our new friend Joy, on our first Saturday in Addis.

(We were quick to notice that all of the seasoned “expats” we met referred to the city as “Addis”; only newbies like ourselves ever used the full name).

The plan was to visit Mount Entoto, which rises almost 1,000 meters above the city. Back in 1881, Entoto had become the military base for Menelik II, the ruler of the Showa province who was at that time still fighting for political power among a number of regional kings. In 1889, Menelik became the Emperor of Ethiopia, the King of Kings; he is credited with the creation of the modern political state of Ethiopia. Along with a fortress, Menelik and his wife Taitu established two Ethiopian Orthodox churches on the mountain, one of which, Entoto Maryam, was our destination.

It’s a short but steep drive, straight uphill, from the center of town to Entoto – past Addis Abeba University and the American Embassy. At Shiro Meda, an outdoor marketplace where one could purchase locally made cloth, delicate hand-woven cotton shawls gleamed white in the sunlight.

As we left the city behind we drove through forests of eucalyptus trees that had been planted by Menelik and his successors in these hills and all over the countryside. Eucalyptus is known locally as “bahir zaf,” the foreign tree, and it is valued in large part because of how quickly it reaches a mature size; when it is cut to the ground (or coppiced), several new stems grow from the original stump. We passed dozens, or maybe hundreds, of women who were shuffling down the hill, bent double under weighty bundles of eucalyptus that they were planning to sell as firewood to support their families. J and I will never forget the sight of these women, our first experience of desperate poverty. Although it was illegal to cut the wood without a permit, these women had limited choices, and the penalty for getting caught was worth the risk.

I shouldn’t be so surprised to find that one can now read reviews of Entoto Maryam on Google and TripAdvisor, and watch video tours on YouTube. A Google image search returns hundreds of results; you will have to look there and forgive our oversight in not having taken any of our own pictures of the church on that day. It’s a distinctive building, an octagonal plan that was (and still is) brightly painted in the national colors of Ethiopia. I don’t recall going into the church itself, and even if we had we wouldn’t have been allowed to take pictures inside. We did visit the adjacent museum to view artifacts from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, including ornate imperial robes, and shields made of hides and trimmed with the manes of (now endangered) black lions.

Along with the churches, Entoto is known for its amazing panoramic views of Addis Abeba. And we did take pictures of that, shown here from east (upper photo) to west (lower photo):

We drove along the ridgeline for a few minutes, then parked the Land Cruiser on the side of the road and tramped through the underbrush to find a beautiful view of the countryside to the north.

Probably the first photo of us in Ethiopia.

On the way back into town we stopped at Blue Tops Café, the only place in the country where one could get soft serve ice cream.

J and Joy at Blue Tops.

Two years later, Blue Tops would be the site of a terrorist grenade attack that injured nine people, mostly foreigners. But on that first Saturday, we were just starting to discover the complexity of the country in which we found ourselves.

A Digression.

As I've been writing over the past few weeks, I have encountered a couple of challenges that I would like to address up front, before I continue with our stories.

First, I would like to (re)emphasize that all of the stories I write are based on my (unreliable) memories from twenty years ago. When it’s possible, I am trying to corroborate my recollections with J and/or with other friends who were in Ethiopia at the time, but I am sure there will be details we misremember, for better or for worse. So please enjoy this blog for what it is – a personal memoir, written for my pleasure and for yours.

Second, Ethiopia is home to a very diverse population made up of many different ethnic groups (there are as many as 90 languages spoken in the country, here's a list), which have, until quite recently, had little contact with each other.

Language map of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti; image from www.silethiopia.org.

So regardless of our strong Western preference for narrative structure, there’s really no such thing as a cohesive “Ethiopian” history or culture, which makes it difficult for me to generalize. Our stories about Ethiopia are by necessity connected to the specific Ethiopian people we met – people who were fairly well educated, relatively wealthy, largely urban, and fluent in English. As I write, I am trying so hard not to make sweeping statements about "Ethiopian" culture, so please forgive me if I forget.

(Everything we knew about Ethiopia, in those pre-Internet days, we knew from one of three sources: 1) individual informants, by which I mean, people who had lived in Ethiopia and were kind enough to share their information with us; 2) the encyclopedia, seriously; and 3) the US government, by way of State Department and CIA publications. The individuals were by far the most useful sources, and it’s thanks to them we brought our duvet and winter coats.)

Finally, some observant readers may note that I use the spelling “Abeba” instead of the more familiar “Ababa” in the name of Ethiopia’s capital city. I'll explain later in more detail, but the former is a more accurate transliteration of the Amharic spelling of the word; it is more commonly used within Ethiopia, and it’s the spelling we have used for the past twenty years. "Ababa" isn’t wrong, but it’s like pronouncing the “s” in Paris – you wouldn’t do it in France. Spelling is just one of the many ambiguities that will feature in this memoir.

All right, now back to the stories...