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.