EID MUBARAK! October 14, 2007

Hi Friends,

Well, our first week in Ethiopia has now gone by. Time and perception thereof are totally skewed, as is the norm on these missions. Here, however, the notion of time is even more acutely confusing for the Faranji (foreigner). You see, Ethiopia works on a thirteen-month calendar, in which 12 months have 30 days and the thirteenth month has 5 or 6 epagomenal days depending on whether it is a leap year or not. The first day of the year is September 11 of the Gregorian calendar (12^th on a leap year). The Ethiopian calendar is also 7 years behind its Gregorian counterpart, which means that Ethiopia just celebrated its Millennium this past September 11^th.

The reference points for time are also different here. The still work on a 12-hour basis, but 7am Western time is known as 1 o’clock and 6 pm is 12 o’clock. And the counting begins at 1 again with 7 pm Western time.

All this to say that I don’t know what’s going on. I travelled back in time 7 years, just in time to avoid my 30^th birthday! I was thrown into the turn of the century and millennium all over again in a city where every building is still adorned with multi-coloured Christmas lights and neon signs declaring “MILLENNIUM 2000!” Apparently, the event will be celebrated for the entire 13 months!

Addis has grown like crazy over the past year, since I was last here. Buildings and tall condos are popping up like tulips in springtime. And every new establishment is appropriately named the Millennium something (Millennium Gym, Millennium Stadium, Millennium Restaurant, Millennium Hotel).

Work has of course been intense, but satisfying. We have already held two two-day participatory workshops with local NGOs working in some very impressive intervention areas. I continue to hear that no funding agency ever invests time in meeting with local partners to discuss ideas and project ideas in depth. Through our very human approach to project development, an intercultural dialogue is inaugurated, personal connections are made and incomprehensions are nullified right at the inception of a project. I will write more about this at a later date.

There are two adventures of note. Last Friday or Saturday was to be EID, the day that marks the end of Ramadan for the Muslims. The actual date is not confirmed until there is a verification of the moon. You see, Islamic dates are based on the lunar calendar. Ramadan can therefore be either 29 or 30 days long, depending on when the naked eye can detect the new moon. So as of Thursday night, every Muslim in town is holding their breath that someone will see that moon cause they are all waiting to break their month-long fast. At 4:56 am on Friday morning, the phone company sends out a text message to every cell-phone user saying “EID MUBARAK!”, confirming the holiday on the Friday. I think it means Happy EID.

We had scheduled a meeting for Friday morning with local partners, who kindly agreed to give up their day of rest to work with us. Everyone failed to mention that the streets of Addis would be filled with 3 million Muslims praying and that it would be impossible to get anywhere. We were, surprisingly, totally blocked into our hotel that morning as the oceans of people stretched for miles around the Stadium, which, coincidentally, is across the street from our hotel. It was such a gorgeous sight to see the women covered in the spectrum of colourful head scarves praying in waves of synchronized movement.

The other event of note was our debaucherous night of Ethiopian poker. We assembled at Mimi’s house, in a smokey room where Whiskey was the sustenance of choice, and laughter and joy its manifestation. Our friends pulled out the two decks of cards, amalgamated into one and said with great severity, “Now, girls, it is time for B’BANKO!” We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into. I’m not sure if I won or lost a lot of money that night. All I know is that it’s a good thing that 1Birr (the smallest bill) is only worth 9 cents.

Today I’m thinking of my two good friends who got married yesterday and whose weddings I missed. Brad and Patrick, congratulations to you both and to your lovely wives!

I’m off to walk down the famed Bole road. I send love and joy to you all.

Back in Ethiopia! October 8, 2007

I suppose I needed to come back to Ethiopia in order to find inspiration to begin writing this blog again. I know the length of my absence was outright shameful. I have no excuse. I have only apologies. One diversion will get honourable mention for having sucked my attention away from this blog, namely Facebook. But for those of you bloggers who were pressured into Facebook by the socially starved in hopes of finding community and connection within the faceless world, you will know that soon enough you will boomerang back to the Blog—not only a praiseworthy and reputable medium for social connection, but also a forum for meaningful dialogue. Facebook does have its place in cyber world, but the almighty Blog will transcend the virtual, root itself in collective memory and rival only the grandest of libraries.

Ok enough of my rant. I just needed to stroke the ego of this website a bit, lest it eject my latest entry in contempt of my disregard.

On to the adventures! I left for Ethiopia on Friday with Emily. This will mark my longest stay in Africa since 2005. I will be here for a total of 2 months—6 weeks in Eeth, 1 week in Senegal and 1 week in Ghana. If I could, I’d stay in Ethiopia forever… But, shhhhhh! Don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret!

We left early on Friday in order to get the only West Jet flight to Toronto that would get us to Pearson in time to catch our flight to Amsterdam. Our layover was 8 hours. Totally ridiculous. By the time we boarded the KLM plane, it felt like we should have at the very least already been in Europe. Alas, we were far from it.

The 8 hours at Pearson were not uneventful. Most of the excitement revolved around my two suitcases whose cumulative weight was well over the 120 lb limit… (That, and the moment when my work computer crashed to the floor and ejected its underbelly all over the floor. Luckily it’s working now. No harm done.) Well, honestly, I was going to be away for 2 months on business. I couldn’t possibly shove all my power suits into a backpack. Plus I wasn’t at all organized enough to get all my documents onto my jump drive. So here I was pulling two gargantuan bags through the airport, while Emily carried my guitar and her one, moderately sized bag. She’s a Cancer—need I say more?

As we waited in the queue to check in, we decided to be smart and redistribute some of my weight into Emily’s bag and our carry-ons. Needless to say this caused a huge commotion in the line-up, where human spirits are middling at best and patience is hard to come by. I had flipped open both my suitcases, was straddled in between the two, balancing the passing of items to Emily and the sliding of the bags up the line. Of course, by now, we had attracted more than a modicum of attention. The giant burly man, two people up from us, was laughing hysterically. The elderly lady behind me wanted nothing more than to be my chatting partner and thought that if she assisted in pushing the suitcases, I may bite. Unfortunately, I was on a mission and was far too occupied to indulge her cute, yet intrepid, old-person stories. The guy just in front of us was, luckily, a young man looking for travel partners and friends. He was also, providentially, highly resourceful and a bit of a scammer, just like us. He partook in the movement of clothes and books, diffused tensions around us and provided general moral support and comic relief.

By the time we reached the front of the line, all bags were closed up and we thought we had outwitted the system. Oh no. I underestimated how much crap I had packed. Emily put her bag and the now clothing-wrapped guitar on the scale. She was well below the weight limit. Mine, however, were still a good 10 kilos overweight. Before the agent could say “overweight baggage fee”, Kyia, our new friend, had unzipped the bags, redistributed the contents all over again and forced those bags under the weight limit like it was his job. As punishment, Emily and I were assigned THE worst seats on the plane. Only fair, I suppose.

Two flights and 20 hours later, we landed in Addis. It took us an hour to find Messay, mostly ‘cause I’m an idiot. He commissioned two of his friends and their respective cars to come to pick us up since I had already warned him of the excessive luggage. We made a brief stop at the hotel and then headed out for dinner. It was 11:30 pm. We had now been travelling for 33 hours in total and yet, we were craving injera and adventure. We went to one of the new traditional restaurants, Habesha 2000, built for the Ethiopian Millennium celebrations, held on September 11 this year. These traditional places offer the gamut of delicious Ethiopian dishes, and a variety of dinner entertainment, including lively traditional dancing and singing to the music of a live band composed of a drummer, a Masinko player and a Cra player. These two latter are both traditional string instruments. The former is a five-stringed instrument, played somewhat like a guitar, but not really. The latter is a one-stringed instrument, played with a bow.

You need to know that one of my favourite traditions of Ethiopia is this thing they call “Asmari”. It is a highly comical form of entertainment wherein one man plays the Cra and sings songs about the members of the audience in exchange for well-deserved tips. The songs are very punchy since he will sing in short stanzas of four rhyming lines, where the first three provide a buildup and the last line, a hilarious punch line. Basically, he will go around the bar pick people individually, select physical or other characteristics and make up very sarcastic yet comedic songs about them. As the night goes on they may border on vulgar, but it’s always in good fun.

Last night, for whatever reason, I was often the chosen subject. I got one song, in particular, that made us laugh for hours. Usually they sing in Amharic, but when the Faranjis are around, they may throw in some “English” words. My song went something like this:

Tirunesh oh Tirunesh

Your nose is Straightly

Your Eyes are Bigly

Your Hips are Size Eightly

Your stomach is Mediumly

Tirunesh oh Tirunesh

Your teeth are Whitely

Whitely like Icely

Your tits are round like Papayee

And your Figure is Nicely

There is obviously some confusion between the adjective and the adverb. English is not an easy language.

That was the end of day one in Addis and the beginning of what I know will be an excellent adventure.