A Sign That Said “Beltana”

The Merkato had a bad reputation.  Apparently Africa’s largest market had its share of pick pockets and stray faeces and other compromises.  My wife didn’t care.  “I want to see the local spices.”  The driver we had, whom we’d gotten to know fairly well suggested we just drive through.  ”No.” Insisted my wife.  “We want to walk around.” 

In my mind I was thinking of the great market in Bamako Mali.  I visited that market in 1992.  Certainly that market must have been smaller as the population was only a fraction of Ethiopia’s.  But the memory of that market was of something epic that went on in every direction for ever.  I wandered around in that market (without a wife and two daughters in-tow) for hours.  Deep inside I remember wondering how in the world did anyone relieve themselves in this corrugated tin warren.  Clearly they simply did what they had to do, wherever it was they were.  I recall looking for vinyl, my idea of jewels.  I asked one man to find me a copy of Fela’s "Gentleman."  "If you can find that I'll get it."  He ran off.  Later, much later, when I was leaving, he returned, with a tattered, scratched up copy I certainly considered taking it but in the end I passed on the frayed baboon cover and gritty disc inside.

Merkato is clearly huge but the feeling was less daunting perhaps because it was broken up by roads, which we were slowly driving our way through.  Many of these blocks, like this section here, devoted, we were told, to the procurement of scrap, steel was much like my Bamako memory.  But on other side we entered blocks with six story buildings have been constructed to move the little shops into.  All the better, one presumes, for regulation.  Manhattan once had warren-like markets and cart sellers on the streets of the Lower East Side.  They were all moved, into the Essex Street Market. 

Our driver pointed out a sign that said “Beltana.” This he suggested meant spices or vendors of spices.  We were now in the Beltana zone and my wife was in her element. Ahh, but stopping: there were many, many place once could not park a car.  Eventually we were directed down an alley way and into an underground garage.  Upstairs and inside we found a dozen stalls with piles and piles of colorful spice bags.   My wife proceeded to the first stall she saw and began asking questions, which could not be answered.  “. . . and what is this?”  “This.  This is fuffugo”  “Fuffugo – what does this mean in English?” “Um.” The driver didn’t know  No one knew how to transfer any of the spice names  This, did not deter my wife from asking, every time.  Eventually our shop owner began to ask things in Amharic that you did not need a translator to help you with.  They are familiar to anyone who takes too long to buy things on Orchard Street:  “You gonna buy or not?”  I wondered aloud if it was OK to brings pounds of powdery bags marked in Amharic script into back home to the U.S. past customs, but everyone pooh-poohed by concern. We got the spices and snapping some photos as we left, and began the slow drive out from Africa’s largest market.

Saturday, 06/24/17

Was “Ethiopia First”

Addis is a mountainous city.  Africa cannot but conjure images of heat and merciless sun.  But Addis is chilly.  We drive around the city that one begins to understand is really no older than San Francisco, or Hong Kong, despite the fact that it is the capital of another “civilisation masquerading as a nation state.”  We won’t have time to see Axum on this trip, nor Harar.  This the church were Haile Selassie was coronated, this is the church where he was buried.  And in all of them there is an odd mixture of traditional orthodoxy and state propaganda, testifying to the life of Selassie as if here were a saint and not an emperor, responsible for building roads and getting staff paid. 

The city seems a construction site.  Everywhere we drive beside dirty roadside guard walls painted green and yellow that block the traffic views from old fields that are now construction sites.  The people I spy are a mix of Bantu and Somali and Abyssinian and it all somehow immediately typifies the adjective I conjure up as “Ethiopian.”  I have learned how to say “thank you”, “step by step”, “not easy” and “beautiful” as well as a few other pleasantries that I must dig up out of my phone to utter every time I choose.  “Don’t worry, this is going to be worth it.  I have just the word. Let me get my phone out . . . ”

The Museum to the Martyrs of the Red Terror is difficult to take on.  But like Tol Slung and Auschwitz one tells oneself it is important to proceed.  I thought to but didn’t say that China might one day have such a museum were the CCP to be overthrown.  But then, were the Cherokee to ride back into the American south east victoriously, so too might there be just such an accusatory museum illustrating American war crimes in Chattanooga.

I usually tell the guides that their kind services are not needed, but the gentleman who accompanied me around was so sincere and well informed that I couldn’t help but encourage his company.  “You see that helmet there, the slogan of the DERG, the revolutionary committee, was “Ethiopia First.”  “I see.  How appropriate.”  As this poor gentleman showed me the mannequin they had strung up, suspended from a broom handle, he explained that he too had had his fingernails pulled out while suspended in that unfortunate position.  I tried briefly to consider that.  Like Tol Slung in Phnom Penh they have the photos of the faces of the many thousands who died, a fraction of course, displayed on the wall, so that people would never forget all the lives lost.  There was a glass case showing bones and skulls as well.

Outside I noticed my older daughter was crying.  I went to comfort her.  “Hey.  That sure was heavy, huh?  “No.  No."  "What?"  "We just got a video of our cat from the cat hotel.  I miss her.”   Right. 

That night we dined with a local family.  There is a service we found online, Traveling Spoon, which we can recommend heartily.  It allows people interested in learning how to cook and shop with local families to do so on their travels.  We went to Daniel and his family’s house. He picked us up at our hotel and took us to his local market, where my wife pressed him to name all the different spices that were there to be had.  And my younger one and I felt winded and terrible about it until we remembered that we were at approximately eight thousand feet sea-level.  

That night we learned to properly roast coffee and properly eat a large plate of injera with a dozen lovely dishes.  And most importantly we learned how to make injera from teff flour.  It struck us all as not particularly different from how you make a jianbing back home.  My wife is considering how best to transfer this knowledge to all the mothers she works with back in Beijing.  We'll need one of these injera cookers.  

Friday, 06/23/17

Outside Were the Birds

Sometimes they make it hard. The guy we dealt with upon check-in had us sitting in four completely different seats.  "Yeah, but I pre-booked so that they were all together. " "Yeah, well that’s not what I’m seeing. " At 11:50PM this has me ready to throttle the guy.  But with no time remaining before we should get on our flight and with no assigned seat numbers at-the-ready to insist upon, we reluctantly surrendered our bags to the check in and made our way to immigration.

On the way I called Ethiopian airlines.  “Yes.  You should have seat 12 A, B, C, & D.”  “Well.  Is that right?  Thank you.  How do I make sure that these are seats I actually sit in then?”  “Just tell them that those are your seats.” I practically knocked the security apparatus over en route through, threading my belt back on, twisting the buckle once and then twice, I packed up my things and newly empowered with this updated info, I rushed off to the gate, leaving my family trailing behind and stormed up to the counter insisting that 12 A, B, C, & D were mine!  The lady took this in and went to discuss.  Everyone else had been boarded but finally, in the end someone must have been moved, as we were then shown to our proper seats.  

  

On board my wife and daughters had the three seats together and me sitting beside in the adjoining aisle.  The gent next to me was from Djibouti.  He helped to clarify that ethnically there was a great deal of similarity between the people of that French colony and the people of Ethiopia and Eritrea.  I did what I could at 1:00AM to dust off my French and soon I was manifique’-ing and fatigue-ing with the best of them.  I can’t say why, but the rather implausibly funny meme of K.C. and the Sunshine Band’s “Shake Your Booty” and its undeniably rhyme to the word: “Djibouti,” played in a loop during my late night flight.  The Djiboutian gent and I agreed that the music available on Ethiopian airlines was wonderful.  I looked for the oldest CD’s they had.  And we crossed the Himalayas, traversed the Arabian Desert and the Gulf of Aden and somewhere down there now must be Somalia.

The first thing I noticed when we walked outside were the birds. I couldn’t name them and I couldn’t see them but their songs were tropical.  So too the songs that evening of Mulatu Astatke!  After a dinner with good traditional music upon a stage where we dined, we headed to the venue he was supposed to perform at.  We had a lovely evening of thumping traditional music on what I assume was begena, but folks were getting tired.  I commented on the way out that we’d thought Mulatu was supposed to be here tonight.  “He’s downstairs.”  “OH?”  My daughters were strictly continuing on fumes only as they labored to stay awake but I think they picked up on some of my excitement and their mom’s encouragement:  And I listened to the father of Ethio-jazz and thought of all the times I’d heard this song before coming out of speaker I shook my head to the beautiful melody, feeling as though I’d fought hard to secure this precious moment with my family. 

Thursday, 06/22/17

Retrofitted a Castilian Stereotype

I must extend a particular nod of civilizational gratitude to our friends at the French Embassy.  Thank you.  As described in an earlier post, I was most fortunate to find a doctor at the French Embassy who would help us with the Yellow Fever vaccination.  And, as described the MMR we’d taken earlier in the month meant we’d need to return here to this clinic the day before we flew off to Africa.  So.  Here we are. 

He saw us straight away.  And after a professorial chat about some of his studies in the region with matters such as tetanus and typhoid we soon had ourselves punctured and ready to roll.  A German doctor, my general practitioner, had recommended this Doctor, and certainly his name  sounded rather German.  But when I asked him where he’d spend his summer he told me “home.  In Madrid.” “Ahh, you are Spanish?” I asked in Spanish.  “Si.”  In seconds all the attributes I’d assigned to him; his thoroughness, his attention to detail, his adherence to the rules that clearly cast him as Teutonic were wiped away as I retrofitted a Castilian stereotype in its place. 

We had the standard anti biotic “Doxycycline” to use as an anti malarial I told him.  But my wife needed a course.  “Oh, but in that case you shouldn’t use that.  You, as the guy can use it.  But for the ladies it will not only kill any potential malarial infection, it will also upset the balance in the vaginal area” He said, pronouncing the word with a hard G which made it sound less improper, somehow.  I imagined a trio of women with vaGinal infections half way through our safari and thanked him for the suggestion, once and then twice.  “It’s more expensive, Doxycycline but its preferred for use in women.” 

I can remember a few years back, the last time China had its thin skin irritated by the Japanese near the Diaoyu / Senakaku island.  People were driving their Toyotas and Hondas up to up to Toshiba and Sony stores to protest.   I remember the Canon store at SLT Soho, near where I worked at the time, took to hoisting redder-than-thow Chinese national flags out in front of their showroom.  'If you’re gonna trash this store, you’re trashing a patriotic Chinese store', the flags suggested.  I thought of that showroom today, as I headed over to my former office to get my daughter a charger for her Canon camera.  Business seems to have done what protestors could not.  The show room has closed now.  They've moved on.  I made my way off to get contacts instead.  We’re leaving soon and there still so many things to do.  

Wednesday, 06/21/17