Celebrity

I strongly recommend Ethiopia to anyone who has self esteem issues as its done wonders for mine. This may hold true in other nations. By being foreign and living in Ethiopia I've joined a select group of people who form a celebrity clique whose actions are closely followed by the people of Gondor. I did not expect everyone in town to recognize me before my arrival, but since coming here most people seem to have figured out who I am. Including a lot of people I've never met formally. Foreigners activities are closely followed.

For example myself and a few other younger volunteers were assisting Kate (who has baboons!) move furniture because she had switched offices. Once everyone got over the fact that we didn't want to pay them to help they just watched us with amused expressions on their faces. After we'd taken a few loads we ran into someone we knew on our way back. He then asked if it was true that we'd been carrying furniture. Apparently a few blocks away this had been the topic of conversation. He had details down to who was carrying which piece of furniture. (I was carrying a chair, so was Matt, Avi and James were carrying a desk).

Simply by being foreign you reach a level of minor celebrity in town. Your doings are reported in great detail among the locals to the point that they'll sometimes report what you've been doing to you more accurately than you can recall it.

Children regularly shout at the sight of you and rush up for the opportunity to shake your hand. Anyhow yeah... I gotta get going to ummm... hang out with Kevin Bacon.

Rained out

So yesterday I was supposed to have hijacked the English club to listen to some "English" music and get them to discuss it, but I was rained out. I got there and everything was going fine there was even a power outlet that I could use which I wasn't sure would be there. I gave a little introduction to myself and what I wanted them to do. I wanted to ease them into things with something a few Ethiopians I had met had heard of, which was Tracy Chapman. I didn't even bring this over, but found it here a few days ago when someone was playing it in the lab and asked if I knew about it. So I ripped a copy of it to play for the English club. I figured some good discussion could come out of this and get them warmed up.

I introduce myself tell them I want to hear them discuss the song after listening to it. What they think about it, comparing it to Ethiopian music, etc etc (I didn't actually say etc I'm just abbreviating). I pick out "Fast Car", press play and literally about 10 seconds into the song it starts to rain.

I don't just mean it rained a little. I mean the sky opened up and it poured down sheets of water. It went from no rain to torrential downpour in about 5 seconds flat.

We were indoors though right? Yep. So what's the problem? Corrugated metal rooves are the most common form of roofing in Ethiopia and they are not quiet in rainfall like what I just mentioned. The raindrops become a constant racket of percussion interrupting everything. You cannot even speak at normal volume and be heard. This was also loud enough that they could not hear the music. I thought this was hilarious, they looked embarassed. I let the song finish up in hopes that the rain might let up. It did not so we post-poned to next week when I'll have louder speakers provided for the purpose of drowning out any rain.

Not so Decent... yet

I must say Decent Pub is going to have to make a big climb uphill to get back to the rank of decent that we thought it had. We arrived there on a Saturday evening only to discover that the owners had thought that this was a good time to be closed. So we went somewhere else. I have vowed to return though.

Shops are unusual in that unlike in North America people don't have a house and a shop. They have a shop and they live in it. With their families and any employees they might have. So if you end up poking around a restaurant, bar or shop and you manage to find the backroom you'll find a room with a few beds where everyone lives. These places open in the morning when people get up for the day and close in the evening when the last customers leave at an arbitrary time. We're accidentally stayed late at a bar and ended up watching a movie with the family after they'd closed. It was Kiss of the Dragon, which is a good movie to watch when you're not paying any attention to it. There's a hotel that we like to go to for food (they have pizza, which is hard to find over here) that has a little hole under the stairs. I popped my head in once and found a mattress where someone must spend the night, every night. Anyhow I'm in a cafe killing time before we head up to market so I'll write more another day.

I will write more about Crambole or possibly Carambola (sp?). It is an excellent billiards game.

Work

It's been busy here on account. So this is the first chance I've gotten to write in awhile. I'm sure you were eagerly waiting for it. So since work has made me so busy I figure now is a good time to write about it.

I am officially titled the Computer Coordinator for the Gondor College of Teacher's Education. I have a few projects on the go which for the most part involve setting up the internet on campus and fixing every computer on campus. Yes, all of them. This is probably a task that I shall not finish before I leave nor is it a problem that I could finish even if I stayed here forever because the damned things keep breaking. There are three jobs I seem to have been sort of assigned sort of fallen into.

The first job I have is dealing with viruses. The people here all know that viruses make bad things happen to their computers, but this knowledge does not seem to extend to how to remove them or prevent them from showing up. A large portion of my job is carefully explaining to people the need to keep their antivirus software up-to-date, and then installing some. Viruses are rampant and I haven't found a single computer that hasn't been infected with at least an innocuous keystroke logger. I'm getting to know all sorts of viruses by name which is something I hadn't really paid much attention to. I can tell you detailed descriptions of the Brazilian Banker, Redlof, Brontokk, Timese and a number of other viruses with equally fanciful names. I could tell you, but I won't because I don't want to bore you dreadfully and if you are particularly interested you can always send me an email or wait until you next see me. I assure you though that unless you are computationally inclined the names are the most interesting part.

The second job I have is fixing computers. Most people don't really know anything about this. A computer breaks, and it's sort of put in a pile labelled broken and then they try and get a replacement. They are just starting to realize that a broken computer can be fixed. This job would be quite easy for me except that there is a monumental process to purchase any new parts. I can fix things quite quickly, but the swathes of red tape that must be cut through in order to do this take up most of my time in this regard. There are a few people who want me to train them, and I really want to train them because I won't be here forever. The problem is that I say I want to train them and they say that they want to be trained, but then when I ask them to pick a time and place they say they'll get back to me and haven't yet. I'm sure they will eventually, but I may have to crack a whip to make them pick soon.

The third job I have is the Keeper of the Internet. All of the Internet. I am supposed to fix the internet that's broken, make it faster, supervise peoples, usage setup as many computers as I can on it and pretty much do everything in my power to move the campus towards being fully online. Everyone loves the internet here and everyone wants it yesterday. This is probably the most challenging job and the most ambitious, it's something that could be worked on for years at this campus and probably will be. For the most part I'm setting up a plan to put some buildings on a "broadband" connection. (It's not really that fast only relatively).

So now you know all about my job, I'll go into more detail about it at a later date. If I don't get distracted by writing about other things, like Crambolo and Decent Pub (which I'm going to tonight!)

Jordie out

Music

While I've certainly had trouble keeping up on the latest in music while over here I have begun more creative writing projects with regards to music. I will certainly link to a piece I'll be doing for Streethawk on the lack of certain genres in Ethiopia, which will involve the inputs of a local "English club" who I've commandeered into helping me. A benefit of being foreign in Ethiopia is that people are even more inclined to want to talk to you about anything than a tiny indie band desperate for publicity. More on that later though.

For now I would like to talk about a traditional Ethiopian folk band that I saw. They didn't have a band name as such a thing seems unusual only for bands of wide popularity. In fact they were more of a house band, but what is particularly interesting is the style of music, which may have had a specific Ethiopian word for the genre, but I can only remember that it was called Habesha music, which refers to the local culture in the region I'm in.

The music consisted of a very talented 10 year old drummer banging out African rhythms that went completely overlooked by the locals who were more interested in following the antics of the vocalists. There was usually two vocalists a man and a woman, but sometimes just one of them would sing. What makes this music interesting is in how it is sung. The singer picks a person in the audience and improvisationally makes fun of them for a verse or two and then moves on to a new person, sometimes they pull the person they're making fun of up to dance. At this point occasionally you push a bill into their forehead to show your appreciation, I thought this method of payment weird, but went with it. Now to be honest I didn't find the translations of what had been said particularly funny most of the time, but it's entirely possible that there was a lot of punnish wordplay that was lost in the translation. The locals thought it was pretty funny most of the time though. There was usually a man playing a unique instrument that was like a violin with one thick string, I'm not sure of the name of it. I didn't pay a lot of attention to it because even though the instrument was unusual the people who were playing it weren't particularly good at it. I stayed for a couple hours and it was nonstop while I was there, but I had tired of it by then. Before leaving I tipped the little boy who was holding it all together for them.

Still it was the best Ethiopian music I'd heard since arriving as it was something other than Ethiopian pop which I have quickly tired of.

One month anniversary, Pi Day

I'd almost forgotten that Pi Day means more to me over here in Ethiopia than it normally does. Aside from celebrating one of the more significant numbers in existence and a good excuse to eat pie (if I could find any) it marks my one month anniversary in Ethiopia. I just checked my email and though I doubt she knew it was Pi Day she has offered to bake me a pie upon my return, it's like she read my mind or knew about the holiday. Yes, that's right it was Valentine's Day, the most romantic day of the year that I flew in to Addis Ababa International Airport, lost my luggage and my driver and then had to coerce a friendly cabby into helping me out (then he extorted me, which was about what I thought would happen)

Anyways there's been some requests in email form about A) my house and B) my job, which I originally put off writing about because I didn't want to fall into the rut of writing about my daily routine, but it's true I should at least write about these things once. I will start with my house.

My house has two bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom and a large extra room which is for storage and is used as such by the landlord's family. I have no use for storage as I don't even have enough stuff to fill the one bookshelf I have for storage. The house has electricity, tiled floors, some big red sofas and a lot of furniture that looks like it came from a school, because it did. I'm borrowing two tables and 6 chairs from the school I work at while I'm here. In fact, that's where the bookshelf and bed came from as well, but they don't look like they came from a school. There is no hot water, but if I shower in the evenings the water is luke warm at least to start the shower so if I wash in under a couple minutes it won't get freezing cold. Showers in the morning are scary and I don't take these anymore. The downside of showering at night is that I tend to have wet hair when I go to bed and I wake up with interesting hairstyles, some people were laughing at my hair this morning because I couldn't be bothered to get it under control and it sort of poofs out anime style. This is the secret to anime hair, showering before bed.

I live by myself in the biggest house with the least stuff on a gated compound with two families of indeterminable size who both own more things than I do. I recognize that one is the landlord's family and one is his servants family, but I can't figure out whose children are whose or in fact whose living on the property and who is only visiting. I would probably be just as happy staying where one of these families are living, but I'm not paying my own rent so I don't mind having more space and they seem to think that it's the appropriate arrangement. I could perhaps learn more about the families I lived with if I could communicate with them, but this is impossible. Those of you who have met Kit (my landlord in Kerrisdale) will know that he has a thick accent that makes him difficult to talk to, my current landlord has a thicker accent and less of a grasp on the English language. His English is the best amongst all of the people I share the compound with and my Amharic is well almost nonexistent. As a result I have resolved to not really knowing who lives here.

Jordie out

Names

Names are a different sort of concept here. They're not just names they usually mean something, so most people end up with names like Wise or Beautiful City or something really literal along those lines. I haven't been asking the meaning of everyone's name, but a number of people have offered the meaning of their names. Admittedly this literal naming system exists to some degree in English with the flower related names being relatively common and I do have a friend named Moss. I think it's more common in not-English languages to name things in a more literal manner.

For example let's all go to our favourite Engrish example which are probably Japanese products which tend to have names like Happy Delicious Cookie. This exists in Ethiopia mostly with regard to businesses who like to describe what they are with their name. There is Tiru Pub (which literally translates to Good Pub), Best Supermarket (it's apparently ironically only second best), Gorgeous Cafe (which is apparently terrible), Fantastic Restaurant and my personal favourite, Decent Pub. Myself and some British English teachers plan on going to see Decent Pub this weekend in the hopes of having the following conversation:

Us: I went to Decent Pub last weekend.
Someone: How was it?
Us: Decent.

There's something appealing in its modesty and simple honesty in that it's only decent. As long as it lives up to the claim of this vaguely positive word I will be more than satisfied with the advertisement as most other places that name themselves in this manner tend to be lying.

Food

So there's a lot of cafes all over the country and all of them claim to have a variety of pastries and cakes. This is completely 100% untrue. There is no such thing as pastry or cake in Ethiopia. They have things that look like donuts, but have no glaze or sugar. Their cakes are bland and dry containing just enough sugar to remind you what a cake is supposed to taste like. This is in fact common of most sweets you can get at an Ethiopian cafe, they look like they should, but they are missing several key ingredients that make them taste like they should. They also claim to have croissants, but they're really croissant shaped lumps of heavy dough that have a lot more in common with bread than their French namesake.

There is redemption for Ethiopian cafes though in the form of juice, which I should clarify is not what you would call juice. You would call Ethiopian juice a blended drink similiar to a smoothie, but only containing fruit. They are delicious and easily the best thing about Ethiopian dining. You can get them in the flavours of pineapple, advocado, papaya, mango, and guava, but the best way to get them is spris, which is apparently the Ethiopian word for "all different types of fruit layered deliciously together". I try and have one as often as possible, in fact I think I'll go have one now.

Animals: Big and Small

Animals are everywhere here. Not just when you go to the countryside do you see them. There's a pair of cows that live in my neighbourhood and seem to graze regularly from the dumpster. (I try not to think about this when I'm eating any meat here) When some of my furniture was moved into my house it was done so by a horse and cart. In the streets of the city it is normal to see people herding groups of goats, donkeys, sheep or cows around, and there's also an unhealthy population of chickens, cats and dogs. I say unhealthy because most of the animals here are not well fed living mostly on a diet of food they scrounge up for themselves with wealthier animal owners feeding their creatures occasionally (mostly the horses though).

I also say unhealthy because the majority of these animals have fleas and this translates to fleas being all over the place. Ride in a vehicle and you'll find a little ring of bites around your waist. I think this is because people don't hesitate to use most vehicles to transport animals. They get in your clothes and ride around with you. Most volunteers regularly dose all the fabric they own with flea killer on a weekly basis and put their bedding out in the sun for awhile for the same reason. I have adapted this policy myself. I take my clothes off as far from my bed as reasonably possible to prevent transporting them into my bedding and so far this has worked. All these preventative measures though don't really help as much as you'd like because no matter what you do unless you regularly spray yourself with fleakiller (not a particularly healthy idea) you're going to get flea bites. Lots and lots of flea bites, most volunteers seem used to it, but I'm not yet, and I feel like my flea bites have flea bites. I guess it's something I'll accustom myself to, but it's not something I want to accustom myself to.

The Blue Nile Falls & Public Transit

So the next day me and Nileka (one of the Dutch volunteers) wanted to go see the Falls as they are supposed to be fairly impressive. To get there we took public transit, which was an adventure unto itself. On the way there we got on in the back of and proceeded to wait for it to leave. When we thought the bus was full because all the seats were taken we expected the bus to leave. We were definitely wrong after all the seats were full more people were crammed into seats we thought were full and then the aisle got filled up with people willing to stand during the trip.

So the bus was about as full as it could possibly be and we went on our way. The Blue Nile Falls (or Adis Abai sp?) are located 30 clicks out of Bahir Dar down a dirt road. Which you would think would be a short trip, but it's an hour and a half on an incredibly bumpy road with a bus incapable of going faster than about 20km/hr. On the way you could see rural Ethiopia, and it's Rural with a capital R. Huts made from sticks and thatch, and acres of farmland and small herds of goats, cows and sheep on the side of the road, donkeys carrying people's goods to market. We were sort of fascinated by this whole countryside, but the only thing that excited the other bus riders were us foreigners and when we saw a couple dogs killing a goat at the side of the road, which was admittedly startling.

When we got to the falls we encountered a rather helpful guy who seemed to have a part-time job saving seats for ferenji's so they were guaranteed a good seat on the way back (we took him up on his offer after that ride stuck in the back as it was fairly cheap). Then we were hassled by a lot of guides who I've decided are essentially annoying and mostly useless. It's quite easy to find your way to the falls as it's the only way people are walking. You can also tell how close you are to the falls because the guides offer you their services for less money the closer you get. It's like playing a game of hot and cold that starts around 70 birr and ends desperately when someone offers you 20 birr to show you where the final bridge is. (It was around the next corner). I guess it's a way of generating income from tourism but it tends to be people who are well off (as they could afford to go to school long enough to speak fluent English) who are making the money.

The falls themselves were amazing although not as big as they apparently used to be. Giant waterfalls 50m high spanning huge cliffs and generating a thick mist at their base. Very impressive although reportedly they were bigger before they were harnessed for electricity and apparently they'll be smaller still in a decade or so as an expansion on the hydroelectric dam will cut them even smaller.

The trip back was comparably quite pleasant on the front of the bus. The driver bought us banana's because... well I guess he was just a nice guy, and a child practiced his English with his Mom's help.

I'm alive despite a monkey attack

So I recently spent our long weekend (we had one to celebrate the victory of the Battle of Adwa) in the nearby town of Bahir Dar after being invited by some Dutch volunteers who seem lonely to meet other ex-pats. It was a lot of fun and the town is a little bit more touristy than Gondor. It was neat to see a different city.

In Bahir Dar we proceeded to see some of the monasteries on Lake Tana which are incredibly old. We got there by boat because they are located on a number of small islands in the middle of the big brownish lake. The lake is populated with flocks of pelicans which drove home how different the lake was.

The monasteries themselves sat on top of the islands and were small round buildings, with no shoes allowed. The best monastery (the one with the government funded museum) I saw was in fact no girls allowed so the girls in the group had to stick around in the garden outside and eat papayas from the passing papaya salesman who had picked them on the island that morning. I saw some really ancient artifacts crowns from old kings who had donated them to the monastery in their time, ancient crosses in a variety of Ethiopian styles, and 13th century bibles written on goat skin. What was a little shocking was that they weren't kept under glass and were pulled out by the priests who tended them to flip through them. They even asked if I wanted to touch these really old pieces which if they were in Canada (or anywhere in the Western world) would be under glass alarmed and likely under guard. I guess they don't think of things the same way here.

When we got back we went out for juice and I saw a monkey. It was overtop of the bathroom when I left the table on my way there. By the time I got there it had moved down in front of the doors. We stared at each other as I didn't want to provoke it and it didn't want to move so we were at a sort of Mexican standoff until it decided to take matters into it's own hands and rush me. I lifted my foot up to fend it off and it backed off before getting close and took off (I guess it saw my karate skills). So I survived a monkey attack although not a serious one. One of the Dutch volunteers got a picture of the monkey in question so I'll upload it when I get the chance. The next day we went to the Blue Nile Falls which I'll write about later.

Jordie out