Ferenge Addis Blog

The street economy

This morning I walked down to Lime Tree restaurant, in the brilliant sunshine, for some eggs, toast, and free wifi internet. (Besides, I'm avoiding doing dishes on the housekeeper's three-day weekend.) On the way back I stopped at two stores without finding what I was looking for. But I did buy from several street vendors, without really intending to. I bought two DVDs (ETB 30 each) from two of the regular DVD vendors near Friendship Center (a mall near my house). I bought the new Time Magazine (ETB 20) from the magazine guy in front of Fantu supermarket. I bought some asparagus (ETB 8) from the strawberry-and-asparagus guy who is in front of Novus every single day. This is the only place I have ever seen asparagus in Addis in a year of living here. While getting the asparagus I said "no thanks" four times to the keychain-and-necklace guy to whom I've said "no thanks" on every trip to Novus in the last year. Hope springs eternal, and you have to admire the entrepreneurial spirit of the guy, and the rest of the street vendors here. For each one, their store consists of a couple of plastic shopping bags. Their marketing plan is a big smile and a few words of English.

Habesha*/Ferenge Dance Party

Yesterday the streets of Addis were deserted. Walking to the office to pick up a car and do a little work I didn't even have to slow down to cross Bole Rd., let along wait five minutes and make a mad dash for it as I do on a normal work morning. It took me 10 minutes to make the drive from my house to the gym that usually takes me 30 minutes after work.

By contrast the sidewalks were crowded with Bole-ites going socializing last night. As I walked to the end of the dark Marie Stopes Rd and onto the brightness of Bole Rd., there were people everywhere walking in groups, smiling and talking in animated fashion. At 7:00 p.m. all the cafes were packed. The parking area in front of the new Kaldi's was complete pandemonium, with stressed-out parking attendants waving their arms frantically. I walked down the little driveway beside Kaldi's to the Mask Bar to meet K and D for a drink and to decide where to eat. The Mask is a very small, very friendly little West-African-themed bar. Its customers are mainly locals, but it sees enough Ferenges so I don't stop conversations just by walking in. My pals arrived in short order and after a drink we strolled further towards the airport to Amsterdam Cafe for pizza and Ambo.

After dinner, D pled fatigue and retreated back to Bole/Rwanda. K and I walked almost to the end of the rd to Harlem Jazz. On Fridays there's a musician who plays a fun mix of blues, motown, reggae, R&B, and disco. He's a transplant from Washington DC and plays with local musicians. He's extremely popular. When we got there at 10 it was mostly empty and we had our pick of seats. When we left three hours later, there literally wasn't a place to stand. The Harlem Jazz is an old place with low ceilings which make it seem even more crowded. There's an outdoor chill-out area with its own bar for dancers who get over-heated. The customers are a mix of locals and Ferenge. Last night Germany was well represented, with groups of young Deutchlanders arriving in packs.

For someone who rarely sees 10:00 p.m., the 1:00 a.m. walk home was a long one. I was asleep before I had a chance to turn over once.

* "Habesha" is how Addis Ethiopians refer to themselves in terms of ethnicity.

Meskal Bonfire

Yesterday I met K at Bole Novis to walk down to the big bonfire to celebrate Meskal (see previous post). We were both warned to get there very early if we wanted to be able to see the celebrations well. We were both told the bonfire itself would be at 4:00 at the latest, rather than dusk as we assumed. As soon as we took 10 steps it started to sprinkle. By the time we got to Ethio-China Rd. it was starting to come down hard. We ducked under a bus shelter and caught a cab to Meskal Sq. It was pretty much empty, and it was raining even harder so we crossed all 16 lanes of the square and hid out in a cafe, damp in clothing, but not spirits. After a couple of machiatos and some Ambo, the rain tapered off and a marching band was starting to play, so we ventured out.

We saw some seats and photographers under the big grandstand. Surely this was reserved for VIPs? "Just walk over like we belong there" K said. So we did, and sure enough we were in a prime location for viewing the entire event.

To boil down a four-hour epic of DeMille proportions and a cast of over 4,000 (in the cold and wet) to a paragraph: Orthodox Church dignitaries from all over the world (Greece, Armenia, India, Russia, etc) arrived via limos, all in black. The Pope (of Ethiopia) arrived in maroon and gold robes. Then rank after rank of white-clad priests performed a drum, chant, and marching number. Next came a two-hours-long parade of parishioners representing all the churches in Addis Ababa, church by church. Each congregation had its own color of gown: purple, dark blue, light blue, black, green, and so on. Each group paraded from east and west alternatively, and performed some small act in front of the grand stand. Many of the acts involved forming some shape by the arrangement of the groups members, kind of like the 1/2-time show at a US football game. Many of the themes were as nationalistic as religious, celebrating the Ethiopian millennium. One group formed the HIV/AIDS red ribbon. After the church groups came a float representing the globe, from which a woman and then a priest emerged, each releasing a dove/pigeon, both of which fluttered to the ground and started looking for food before being chased off by the handlers around the float. At one point priests on the float uncovered a cross fitted with incandescent bulbs, from the top of which they shot fireworks flares. No kidding.

Finally, at 6:30 or so, the Pope and other dignitaries crossed the square and lit the bonfire. The material was mostly greenery, and given that it had been raining for four hours, it was a little hard to start. Some extra petrol cured all and it made a lovely fire, accompanied by an impressive fireworks display. We were pressed up against the fence watching all this when a group of priests mistook our section of fencing for the gate and we almost got mowed down by a phalanx of white- and gold-robed holy men wielding crosses the size of squash rackets.

We left via Bole Rd., which was closed to traffic and filled curb-to-curb on both lanes with pedestrians making their way south. Being cold, wet, leg tired from standing for four hours, and hungry, we ducked into the new Zebra Grill for burritos.

The overall impression left by the event was a realization of how much the Orthodox church is tied in to the national identity.

See more photos at the Flickr site, here.

Headline: EEPCo to Export Electricity to Yemen

Now I just wish they would export some to Bole, as the daily long-duration power outages are becoming the rule rather than the exception. (EEPCo=Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation)

Meskal Holiday weekend coming

This Friday is another important holiday: Meskal, or the finding of the true cross. You can get the whole story here, but here's a synopsis: The holiday celebrates the time when Queen Eleni (Saint Helena) burned some stuff (incense or a bonfire depending on what you read) and the smoke lead her to find the true cross. Pieces of it are still housed in Ambo Geshen.

For us it means we get 1/2 of Thursday and all of Friday off work. There's a big bonfire and celebration at Meskal square on Thursday at sundown. I missed it when I was here consulting in 2004 because the concierge at the Hilton mistakenly told me it wasn't safe for foreigners. I missed it last year because I was coming back from a field trip. This year I'll try again, and if it doesn't rain too hard, will post photos and a report. Stay tuned...

Saturday morning grocery shopping

I've already written about how nice it is to have the housekeeper do the daily marketing: I just leave a list, and poof! stuff appears in the fridge. Still, there are some things I like to pick out myself. This must be the case for lots of ferenge here too, because the supermarkets that cater to us are packed on Saturday mornings. There are a few such markets around town: Shoa, Novis, Fantu. But the real weekend ferenge mecca is Bambi's. At 11:30 this morning you had to wait for a parking place. The lot was stuffed to the gills with Land Cruisers, Rav 4's, and imported duty-free Mercedes, most with yellow diplomatic, or orange NGO plates.

The isles of Bambi's were a cacophony of European languages: German, Italian (a lot), English, French, Swedish, and many I couldn't place. I've rarely gone to Bambi's without seeing someone I know. And it's packed with every kind of imported food needed to make expats feel at home: high-quality imported cheese of every kind, Italian and French wine, American whiskey, Kellogg's corn flakes, Swiss Muesli, Tabasco sauce (three kinds), Greek olives, Alpo pet food (!), Washington-state apples, Knorr soup, California jam, tofu (no kidding), and two isles of European chocolate. The list goes on and on. Of course the prices are the highest in town, but they carry things you simply can't get anywhere else, so you happily fritter away large chunks of your weekly pay to get that small taste of home.

September is the cruelest month

In The Waste Land, T.S. Elliot wrote that "April is the cruelest month." Growing up in Michigan it was certainly true: sick of snow after six months of it, we would see sunny days with warm temperatures, followed on closely by a one-foot snow fall.

September is like that here. Just when I'm thinking that if we get one more day of solid rain, the pets are going to mildew, I see the sunshine and everything starts to dry out. I put on my shoes, look for the dog's leash, and get ready to stretch my legs finally with a nice dog walk down through the Turkish compound. But by the time I'm ready to go, the black clouds are blowing up behind the house. So I wait for a minute, and the temperature drops 10 degrees, the wind picks up, and it hails. Two hours later it's sunny again and we get ready to make a break for it, only to repeat the process. One time I just said to heck with it and headed out. It gave the locals one more stupid-ferenge story to tell: the soaked white guy who didn't know enough to come in out of the rain.

The greeting cadence

There's a lovely conversational convention here in Ethiopia involving greeting people. While it has to be heard to be appreciated, it's a kind of question-and-answer, or call-and-response cadence involving two people who meet up. It goes something like

Abebe, selam!
Temesgen, selamno?
Selam, endatnah?
Daynah, denana?
Exavier eemesgen, endemena?
Exavier eemesgen

But can go on for a very long time, depending the friendship level and the time between greetings. It's of course accompanied by hugs, shoulder bumps, and kisses. At first I thought it was a sequence of questions, perhaps about one another's families or something. I know just enough Amharic to know that essentially it's just greeting again and again in different forms. Maybe something like:

Steve, how you doin?
Joe, I'm great. How you been?
Been doing all right, what's new?
Not much, what's new with you?
Not much, you feelin' alright these days?
Yeah great, you?
Pretty good...

You get the idea. What I can't write is the sound of the lovely and warm up and down cadence, always accompanied by big smiles.

In conversation topics, the internet is the new weather

Some old-time humorist (Mark Twain?) said "everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." The weather, while boring, is a perfect conversation topic because it's not controversial, and everyone shares it, at least those who live in the same city. The rain that I experienced, you did too, and we have something in common to talk about.

The internet is like that here. Because there's only one internet service provider (the government), everybody experiences the same slowdowns and outages every day. So you hear things like "man, the internet was really slow today, wasn't it?" or "I hated that the internet was out for so many hours, but I got a lot of reading done." In stead of saying things like "yeah, there's a big cold front coming down from Canada" you hear "yeah, one of the two fiber optic lines coming in to Ethiopia was knocked out all day."

My little yard (garden)

One of the first things you notice when you start looking at houses around here is that the yards ("gardens" to you English as opposed to American speakers) are really really small. There are a few notable exceptions, but at most houses, there are just little patches of grass. Most of the area inside the walls (the "compound" which in the case of my little house is way too high-falutin' a word) is paved. I asked about this and the real estate broker, acting like it was a silly question, said that it was so you could park more cars. How many cars can you have in one little house?

Anyway, when I arrived my yard was rough dirt with two old dead trees. I hired a gardener for ETB 200 a month, and he's transformed my little postage-stamp of green into a beautiful garden. Coming to tend and plant a few times per week, the yard is lovely to look at now when you're sitting on the front porch rocking chair. The gardner got sick a while ago and can't work, so someone else has been coming in his place. I worry about the original person: if you don't work, you don't get paid. What will happen to him? I hope he has family in Addis.

There are before and after photos on my Flickr site, here.