Saints and Martyrs

            I think movies trained me to cry at standing ovations. Every film that has a standing ovation also has that accompanying music that reaches its peak the very moment the two loyal, standing clappers are joined by three, four, ten others who decide yes, yes, we should stand for this too. This ploy leaves your tear ducts no choice, I’ve realized. As a new arrival to College Church last summer, I remember feeling silly needing a handful of tissues when we celebrated Pastor Steve’s 10-year-anniversary at the church. Why am I crying? I’ve been here a month. These people celebrating have been here all ten years. But there’s something incredibly beautiful about a church standing for her pastor, about an audience standing for Mr. Holland, about a café full of men standing for their country.

            Daniel and I were quite lucky to “shay-bunna” (perhaps our new favorite verb?: “tea-coffee”) at Harar Hotel last Sunday, at just the right time. Tiku Gelana was running in the women’s marathon in the Olympics, and our usual hang-out spot was packed. We caught only the last thirty minutes or so, and we watched respectfully as three Kenyans, a Russian, and our Ethiopian led the race. Daniel pointed out how neat it was to recognize the woman as an Ethiopian—and how easy this would be even if she were in another uniform. Ethiopians are beautiful, and have very distinct features. Watching her run, we saw our neighbors in her face, and we delighted in knowing her home was twenty minutes away from us at that second, her family and neighbors likely huddled around a TV just like that scene in Cool Runnings. And as the kilometers dwindled down and the Kenyans slowly fell away, our fellow café patrons rose, clapped in beat, and chanted her on. We believe the word they were chanting was “hid” (pronounced “heed”): hid, hid, hid, with claps and hip-shakes mixed in. “Hid” means “go,” which we know because of our host mother’s communication with Elsabet and the cat. Two men were curiously dressed in red jumpsuits, one of whom pumped his red ballcap in the air in beat with the “hids.” (We have some of this on tape, Igzyaber yimeskin, thanks be to God). Needless to say, Gelana took first place, and the whole place was in an uproar. What a beautiful and genuine celebration. We were so thankful we could share in that win with our neighbors.

            After the race, our host father Fikadu approached us, explaining such a celebration warranted his buying our drinks. What we thought would be a quick shay-bunna (avg. length 30-45 minutes) turned into a four-hour event with four Ethiopian men, and eventually Joel, another volunteer. The men, whom Joel now refers to as “The Council of Fathers” had much to drink; it was so entertaining to see what this did to their English and their enthusiasm. It was one of those time spans where you’re consciously aware of how odd and how lovely it is, and how you wish it could stretch on. You think, We should be recording all of this, Daniel’s dad would love this, my grandpa would love this, anyone would love this, why didn’t I bring an easily hidden tape recorder to Ethiopia? every few minutes.  So far, this sort of thing happens several times a day, which is how I’ve been measuring our happiness here.

            Joel, the volunteer we’re closest to in proximity and relationship (he will be in Axum, only 15 minutes from us) likes to talk. He’s a funny guy. But, with the exception of Joel’s host father Abbiot, The Council of Fathers were most intrigued and confused by his eloquent waxing. This is something else about Ethiopians: they like to size you up, compare you with others, out loud. It is culturally appropriate to say, “You are fat, but he is thin,” “You are clever, but she is not so clever,” etc. There is one girl in town (one of our students) whose common greeting to me is: “You are thin (pronounced “teen”). What do you eat?” and once a border-line crazy man in town rated two other girls and me in order of beauty. It drives us nuts. So at the table with The Council of Fathers, Getacho asks me as Joel is talking: “Why so long? This is a short program. This one talks long.” I was hoping he would keep it between us, but then he, and then Fikadu decide to point this out to Joel: “Why to talk so so much? Ethiopians we talk short. You are history man. In Ethiopia we say if you talk long you are history man, because history lasts hundreds of years, and so does your talk.” How awkward. And yet it’s so funny, because they don’t see it as awkward.

            On the flipside of the Olympic spectrum, the American side, we are noticing we feel a bit more patriotic out of country (this is likely to happen if you leave “commercial paradise” for a third-world country; you realize how much you have, what with hot showers and stores stocked with powdered sugar and vanilla extract). We’ve considered teaching the kids to, instead of yelling China! when we pass, chant U-S-A! U-S-A! We tried implementing this a few times, but sadly, it didn’t stick. But the night an American girl won gold in Judo? or some other sport I can’t spell, we Americans in Sagure were at the same café (Harar Hotel). After hearing those first few bars, most of us stood, put our hands on our hearts (Joe removed his hat), and sang the anthem. Yes, it was beautiful. The café staff and patrons were tickled, staring at us (like normal) and smiling. We all clapped afterward, thankful for this girl and her sport and the opportunity she gave us. Ironically, just as it’s more exciting cheering for the Ethiopian athletes while in Ethiopia, it’s somehow more special celebrating your homeland when away from your homeland.

            Girma Café recently hired a young man who loves to practice his English with us. Gosa. He is the one who says, “What is your command?” when asking our order. After only a week of serving us, he had all our names memorized. When some of us are missing, he lists us by name: “Where is Ashley?” His second week on the job, he puts my bunna be wetat (coffee w/ milk) in front of me and says, “Danayit, what is that letter?” and points to the foam atop my coffee. Beautiful and foamy, outlined in brown coffee foam against the white, there sits a capital letter “D.” I look up at Gosa, beaming, and realize that the heart I had in my foam the previous day was no coincidence.

            Gebre is another Ethiopian gem in our daily Sagure life. About our fathers’ age, he is well-equipped for teaching us Tigrigna, the Cookie Monster language, with his smoker’s cough and giddy attitude. Gebre likes English clichés and slang, so I find it appropriate to keep a Gebre page in my Tigrigna notebook, on which I jot down some of the things he says:

            “So…you enjoy very much imagining things that do not exist?”—Gebre, on Joel’s re-telling of a dream

            “You have to dance the dance of the prevalent times”—Gebre’s translation of “When in Rome…”

            “It is very hotty”—Gebre, on the weather

            And I realize I’ve been neglecting to mention Zinash. She is a girl who sometimes fills her jerry can with water from our family’s compound faucet. A ninth grade student, brimming with fresh English, Zinash took to us quickly. She, like many others, asked me to teach her English. “Okay, tomorrow,” I said. “Come tomorrow at one, and I will teach you.” I prepared a lesson on colors/fruits, and she didn’t show.

            But what’s significant about Zinash is our abruptly short relationship. Upon returning to Sagure from our site visit to Adwa a few weeks back, she welcomed me in our compound with a note.

            “It’s a poem,” she said. And just to emphasize again our family/our community/any Ethiopian’s confusion at my and Daniel’s name similarity, the poem is addressed in the margins like so: Welcome Back to Dalio, or Other Name. Thankfully, this is just the beginning. The lengthy poem goes on to tell me things like, “Let not the grave touch you or the earth eats you I am ill tired and I like a remedy.” I do believe that the line, “your two beasts are saints and martyrs” was intended to be “your two breasts....” A bit disconcerting. But the Bible themes aren’t over. The last line of the poem? “I am like Uriah and you like David.” Well, awesome. My young friend in-country views me as the seducer and murderer of her spouse. Is this perhaps why she didn’t show up to our one-on-one English class? Maybe. After she had me read this poem aloud, she instructed me to write one for her. Which I did. And, siga adday (“I swear by the flesh of my mother,” in Tigrigna), it was a sweet, short poem. But since that day, our biggest fan Zinash has barely looked at or spoken to either of us. A mystery.

            But the coolest teenage girl in Sagure is, by a long shot, Timkat. As I write this, we’ve already left Sagure. Yesterday we said our goodbyes to our host families to head to Addis and then our new homes. I was a sloppy mess, crying all over our family’s cheeks, and Timkat’s devotion to us is perhaps the main reason. What a hard worker, what a sweet girl, and what a difficult situation. A few weeks into our stay in Sagure, I asked Timkat about her family. What’s so eerie is that, much like our use of Amharic, Timkat’s subject/verb agreement is almost always off—each time she means to say “I” or “my,” she instead says, “you.” So it is startling when she says to us, “You mother, konjo konjo (beautiful). You mother, two degrees. You mother dead. You father two degrees. You father dead. You baby dead. You brother dead.” And the more she uses her hands to explain, the wetter her eyes become. “You why? why? why?” She begins a mime to demonstrate what happened to her family; it takes about ten minutes for us to reach understanding. She demonstrates a person spraying something in the air; then she takes us outside our bedroom window to point in at the roach spray in our room; then she demonstrates pouring something into a glass. “You mother, dead.” 

           With our Amharic/English mixture, what we came to understand is: the “best” friend of Timkat’s father poisoned her mother in a drink, then shot both her father and baby brother. She would have been around eight at the time; it seems she survived because she was visiting family in Addis when it happened. Suddenly she has no family. She is forced, by circumstances, to live with her father’s sister, Selamawit, and family. From her story and gestures, we also gathered that Selam, our host mom, was (at least beforehand) friends with the murderer. Timkat then showed us beautiful photos of her young family and explained that the remainder of her photos of her family were burned and tossed down the shint bet, along with her mother’s computer and other possessions. For such reasons, Timkat not only suspects foul play and maliciousness (and towards herself), but she has to suspect these absurdities against the people she lives with, her own relations. Whether or not the understanding of an eight-year-old girl during a traumatic time was accurate, the reality is she believes herself to be waiting hand and foot on a woman (and her husband and unruly toddler) whom she believes is bad. What a miserable thing. And what an ache to watch for weeks after, as she tangibly sets aside her childhood for this family, for the four to six tasks she juggles at once, throughout each day, running and panting almost always for our sake. Maybe the best reason we no longer live in Sagure is not that we finally get to live on our own after 8 months of being others’ guests, but rather that Timkat may get an extra hour of sleeping in, since the ferenjis in her house no longer need an early breakfast.