New Years' Day

You all know it as 9/11. Here it is the first of September or 1/1/2002. Everywhere preparations for the holiday have been growing: Goats, sheep and cattle are being herded to strategic points along the major roads along with the inevitable basket-loads of chickens, street vendors are selling new year cards along with plastic flowers. This year the said livestock and birds “enjoy” a one-day reprieve. Today is Friday. Those of you who have been paying attention will already know this to be one of the fasting days. The only day to trump the fasting day is Epiphany; hence the preparations are still in full swing for the feast tomorrow.

As if to signal the start of the new year it was a pleasant sunny day with one very light sprinkle, just the day for a walk into one of the hills that almost surround Addis. From a viewpoint overlooking my current abode the city looked every bit as sprawling and ill defined as it feels travelling around.

Saturday

Given the piles of goat/sheep skins around in the market this morning few escaped the early morning carnage. But then I would be hypocritical to condemn this slaughter having just enjoyed both sheep and chicken dishes, along with homemade tej, with my landlord’s family.

Edited and posted by Elspeth, who is still a vegetarian.

There's a Bathroom on the Right

No prizes for guessing the origin of the above regularly corrupted line. It does, however, aptly describe the behavior of the male population around here. Having become somewhat inured of the minimal privacy offered by the average French urinal I didn’t expect to be taken aback by other community facilities. Most of the streets here have gullies running alongside them, some are no more than ditches others are small stone waterways— indispensible anytime it rains. They also double as urinals. No matter the place or who is around one can often see grown men – “Pissing in the Stream”(1)

(1) Elton John – Honky Cat

Posted by Elspeth

Ethiopia GEQIP

Excerpt from a World Bank (Ethiopia: General Education Quality Improvement
Program (GEQIP) report of November 7, 2008:

Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa (estimated around 80 million, of which approximately 12 million are pastoralists and 80 percent of the population live in rural areas), and has a decentralized government structure. Having invested heavily in physical infrastructure and human resources over the past decade, the economy has achieved impressive growth (averaging 11.8 percent annually in the period of 2004-07). Despite recent growth and an abundance of natural resources, it is one of the poorest countries in the world with per capita income of less than US$180 in 2007 and 39 percent of the population estimated to live below the poverty line in 2004/05.1 Ethiopia is ranked 169 out of 177 countries on the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index. Under the highly centralized Derg regime (1975 to 1991), Ethiopia’s regional and woreda governments were marginalized. After the fall of the Derg, GOE adopted decentralization as the cornerstone for building a multi-ethnic democratic country. Combined with a commitment to fiscal decentralization, this signifies the Government’s intention to give local governments more direct and transparent control over public spending.

Posted, unedited, by Elspeth who is in graduate school and has read way too many articles like this lately.

Navigating Addis

The Lonely Planet describes Addis as “massive and incoherent” going on to liken it to a sprawling 250-sq-km injera. Injera— the ethnic bread on which most dishes are served— with its pockmarked surface, certainly does provide an excellent metaphor for the state of many roads. At the same time, there are significant road improvement projects, courtesy of the Chinese. This causes its own problems, as most drivers feel liberated to travel at totally inappropriate speeds given their driving skills and the state of the vehicles.

Gender equality, or lack thereof, is a significant issue in many walks of life here. That said there do seem to be a surprising number of women drivers. Relax, this is no segue to the usual comments about women drivers; to the contrary they do generally exhibit more tolerance toward other road users. Neither group demonstrates much patience, and as many roads don’t have serviceable pedestrian pathways the major “road users” are pedestrians; the mix puts Ethiopia at the top of the road casualty table, at least in Africa.

The city transportation system is equally as complex as the city itself: The few remaining decrepit government buses, which run along a limited number of traditional routes display numbers, but no destination indicators, and have no defined bus stops. The private buses display no information of any kind relying instead on the ticket collectors calls. Then there are the “line taxis” aka matatus. Again the only way to determine the destination is to interpret the auctioneer-like calls of the fare collector. There are “contract taxis” or “Lada-taxis” (for the obvious reason) aka regular taxis are everywhere! All “taxis” for some unknown reason are painted dark blue with white roofs. Most taxis are communist era Ladas with a very occasional pre-communist Peugeot; line taxis are almost exclusively Toyotas as are the vast majority of other cars and trucks.

Edited and posted by Elspeth, who LOVES Ladas.

What's in a name?

The work week begins with the standard staff meeting. In the main it is filled with the usual office minutia: confirming the emergency duty officer for the week, discussing trips scheduled, upcoming meetings etc. Nonetheless, it is brief and to the point. One agenda item followed closely by all, however, is the weekly “security/political briefing”. These run the gamut from tribal cattle rustling and resultant unrest, to fighting following border incursions. The weeks since my arrival have seen “increased incidents of Acute Watery Diarrhea (AWD)” with steadily increasing confirmed deaths. The difference between AWD and cholera? Politics.

For similar reasons it is “resettlement” and not ethnic cleansing. Hence the report was that some 10,000 Amharans are being “evacuated” from the Southern Nation and Nationalist’s Peoples Region (SNNPR) and are being resettled in Amhara. Ethiopia is divided into eleven autonomous regions, each with a president and a parliament. The Amharans had been resettled in the region now designated as the SNNPR during the previous regimes. With over 50 different languages spoken in the SNNPR (over 80 in the countrywide) the region could hardly be considered ethnically united. Haille Selassie, an Amharan, imposed Amharic as the national language. The leaders of the communist regime that deposed him, also Amharans, engaged in a wholesale resettlement program. The only surprise is probably that it didn’t happen earlier.

“Declaring a famine is a political decision. While it can galvanize public opinion and bring millions into aid programs, it is widely seen as a political failure. President George Bush challenged his officials to avoid the word, a policy known as "No famine on my watch". Ethiopia's Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission is charged with preventing famines of the 1984-85 type, the sort that bring down governments, argued Tufts University academics Sue Lautze and Angela Raven-Roberts in a 2004 paper. Dismissing the warning signals, Ethiopia's Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, said earlier this month that there was no danger of famine this year. And Berhanu Kebede, Ethiopia's ambassador to Britain, said at the weekend: ‘We are addressing the problem. Food is in the pipeline.’”

The above piece is excerpted from an article in the UK newspaper The Independent, which can be found here.

Edited and posted by Elspeth, whose father needs to learn to use quotation marks (inverted commas, whatever) better, and to leaven his stories of death and disease with chicken sightings.

Feast or Fasting?

Fasting appears to be an Ethiopian Orthodox congregant’s lot in life. There are a total of six periods of fasting, in addition to every Wednesday and Friday. Fasting takes the form of abstaining from eating meat, fish or dairy. One result is that restaurants serve excellent vegetarian dishes. Conversely, on the feast days the menus are a veritable carnivore’s delight. This weekend celebrated the end of one of the two-week fasts. The reason for the fast/festival is obscure enough that no one I asked could explain its origin. This weekend also saw college graduation ceremonies; evidence the number of parties in the restaurant wearing graduation gowns.

I know it will surprise some to learn that since arriving, my diet has been wholly vegetarian. Not that I am complaining. That, however, was fully rectified on Sunday with a helping of kitfo, a form of Ethiopian-style steak tartare – delicious! Washed down with a generous, albeit the smallest they serve, glass of tej honey wine. A brewed concoction bright yellow in color and slightly syrupy in consistency with a slightly earthy taste and higher-than-average alcohol content, honey wine completes the traditional feast.

Elspeth, who is a vegetarian, edited and approved of this post.

Michael Jackson?

14th August

Today is our day to observe the blackout. The timing and allotment of power has shown some flexibility in the past few days, particularly when matters of national pride are involved. National pride in Ethiopia can be summed up in two words – distance running.

The one sporting event to challenge the supremacy of Manchester United or Arsenal (yes Arsenal) in TV audience ratings is any major athletic event featuring Ethiopian runners. No surprise then that electricity might be available for everyone to be able to see the 10k event at the athletics world championship last weekend. This, especially following a TV announcer’s observations during the last world championships, following a rout by the Ethiopians, that it was a pity that half of the country was unable to witness the event due to the lack of electricity. The federal government and the power company apparently took that to heart over the weekend. And, yes Ethiopia did prevail in the men’s 10k. It will be interesting to see if there is sufficient capacity when the marathons are contested this weekend. But, back to Michael Jackson.

One of the few establishments in the immediate neighborhood with electricity, courtesy of it’s own generator, is the local bar. Nothing grand here but with light, cold beer, edible samosas and satellite TV it is quite a draw, especially as it is dark by seven. Away from any form of artificial light, on a moonless evening it is dark. Thankfully I remembered to take a flashlight. My bobbing light signaled my approach to a bunch of kids halfway along the road/track, and had them serenading me the remainder of the way home. The song and dance routine, accompanied by beating time on a concrete slab with long sticks, was continued outside the gate; a performance somewhere between raucous Christmas caroling and trick-or-treat. Obviously I had no idea what they were singing about, with the exception of a regular reference to Michael Jackson – go figure. All in all, the performance was well worth the 40 cents they were delighted acquire. They slowly disappeared into the almost total darkness singing and dancing some tribute to Michael Jackson.

Predictably the occasion for the outburst of singing had nothing to do with the recent demise of said pop singer but was related to a religious event having something to do with a saint and a mountain. The connection between the two and the singing was not clear, but then try explaining Halloween aka All Hallows Eve to someone unfamiliar with the ritual.

”Today” is now almost three weeks ago. Since when the internet has either just not been available or so unreliable as to make a blog entry impossible, meaning Elspeth had to post this for me, blame editing mistakes on her.