What I Saw There

The blog title is taken from Herman Melville’s Typee, which I read last week. It’s a good book, based on Melville’s own experiences in the South Pacific, about a sailor who spends a few months with a cannibal tribe called the Typees. Throughout, Melville’s narration vacillates between an enlightened political treatise that adores the nobility of Typee government, law (or lack thereof), cultural norms, etc. and a rollicking South Sea narrative that gawks at these naked, tattooed, people-eating people. I think part of it might be that Melville, in one of his first books, is still trying to work out how to blend genres; something he does perfectly in Moby Dick. But I also think that this recourse to extremes is a common part of living in and describing a foreign culture. Sometimes I think Ethiopia is the greatest thing I’ve seen since Reggie Wayne caught, then dropped, then caught that pass in the game-winning drive against the Patriots in the 2006 (you might need to correct my date) AFC title game. Other times, I feel like I’m living with a bunch of crazy people who keep trying to fix broken things with broken tools. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

At any rate, I think this blog reflects that tension.

First, some gawking: a few days ago, Danielle and I were buying things at a shop near our home. Danielle was inside picking out tomatoes and yarn, while I stood outside talking to a group of five or six little kids. One of the kids pointed to the bag I was holding and said, “Bag,” so I started quizzing them on their English.

Pointing to my wrist: “What’s this?”

“A watch!”

Pulling out my phone: “And this?”

“A mobile!”

Pulling out a harmonica: “And this?”

Silence—then the oldest kid, probably eight, finally answered.

“A harmonica!”

Pulling out a sucker: “And this?”

“Lick-lick!”

“Carmella!”

“No, no, candy!”

I gave it to the kid who said, candy, again the oldest one, who immediately gave it to his little sister. Then, I was at a bit of a loss. How do you top a sucker? I started greeting the kids in English, asking them their names, and shaking their hands. One of the littlest kids, maybe two, was walking around without pants on (not uncommon) and came up to grab my hand. Some other kid, just barely bigger, started pushing him away, but I broke up the fight, and held the little kid’s hand. “Suffer the little children” and all that, right? Danielle finally came out of the shop, and the little boy holding my hand let go. He then picked up a rock, used it like toilet paper, threw it onto the road, and picked up another square of rock to repeat. I turned, wide-eyed, to the oldest kid who nonchalantly pointed to the stains on the littlest kid’s shirt.

“Ship,” he said, “ship.”

I washed my hands several times.

Now some adoring: Adwa has been in a state of mourning ever since Meles died. That is, during our whole two weeks up here. We’ve had several conversations with gray-haired men who start tearing up when they or we mention the Prime Minister’s death. And people all over Adwa have been wearing black t-shirts with Meles’s name written on them in white fidel. Last Saturday, we accompanied a long procession from the college that walked around the town chanting slogans in Tigrinia like: “Meles, father of democracy! Meles, father of peace!” and several others I couldn’t understand. For the first half of this solemn parade, all the men walked on the right side of the street and the women walked on the left. Separated from Danielle, I didn’t have anyone to talk to in English, and since I can only carry on paragraph-long conversations in Tigrinia, I spent most of the time just walking and thinking.

First, I thought about the way Ethiopians mourn for normal people. First, they hold something like a weeklong funeral. Then at regular intervals after the death—at one week, at one month, at sixty days, at one year (something like that)—the whole family gathers and mourns for the day like the death had happened again. We heard about this from our language teacher, and saw Fikadu and his family practice it. Sometime before we came to Sagure, Fikadu’s young second cousin died in a car crash. A few weeks into our stay, Fikadu seemed very sad and told us in mixed English and Amharic that his cousin had died. We were confused because he made it clear that it was several days ago, but he and Selam and his brothers’ families all left for his cousin’s town to mourn. Then, a few weeks before we left Sagure, they did the whole thing again, with so much to-do that we thought another second cousin must have died in a car wreck, until we heard that it had happened a few months ago. Still, even though the second day had all the same outward hubbub as the first one—the mourning clothes, the sad faces, the trip to meet with the family—you could tell that Fikadu had started to move on.

It’s a fantastic way to mourn. Unlike in America, where people are expected to bounce back from tragedy quickly and aren’t able to, here you’re expected not to be able to bounce back and do. As time passes you mourn the death anew and can’t help but realize that you’re getting along okay and that life is still going on. As you go to the second, third, fourth wake, you can’t help comparing yourself to the way you were at the first one and realizing how far you’ve really come. Things are getting better.

The other thing I thought of as I walked in the crowd of Ethiopian men, was high school football. If this seems odd, it’s because you’ve never smelled either a crowd of Ethiopian men or a high school football locker room—they are indistinguishable to the nose. As I thought about what I liked most about football—pulling up-field in front of a tailback and creaming a few defensive backs who weighed about sixty pounds less than I did—it reminded me of another funny thing in Ethiopian culture. Each elementary school here has an Aesthetics teacher. The Aesthetics teachers are responsible for what American schools normally consider three distinct subjects Art, Music, and Physical Education. At first glance, of course, this sounds absurd. Imagine beefy Mr. Coheap trading in his sweat suit for a baton and coaching a sixth grader through a cello etude. Or imagine dorky Mr. Smith putting down his trumpet and going into the gym—he’d spend his entire tenure as phys ed. teacher cowering under a shower of dodge balls.

Still, mulling over high school sport as I walked in a crowd of smelly men, the system (theoretically, at least) made sense to me. Sport, properly understood, is an art as well, concerned with putting things in their proper place and with doing things at the proper time and with doing things in the proper way. Surely, the discus ring or baseball diamond or football field is as close as many a big, awkward boy like high school me will ever come to painting or singing or dancing.

Epilogue

Because my husband is a brilliant writer, I have little to say in addition. Except a brief account and a family tree of our neighbors:

Brief account: Yesterday Daniel and I met with Gush, the hotel receptionist from our first week-long visit in Adwa, for coffee. When we met him by accident in the street this week, he told us he was moving to Axum, so we better come see him. And we did. When he greeted us at the hotel, with full smile, he exclaimed: “According to your promise!” I love that there is sometimes little difference between the elegant English I am reading in our Adwa living room of Jane Austen’s Emma, and say, the English Gush was taught. Though often rough or disconnected, the English we hear is also often very proper: According to your promise!

While meeting him for coffee, and a friend of his who joined later, we spoke of America. They were trying, in twenty minutes, to give us the run-down of her differences from Ethiopia, and how we should behave here—the best way to bargain (informing us of the fair price for tomatoes which we haven’t been getting); how to respond to the children who call us Money! (they were both so ashamed of this); and they were so curious if we cooked like Ethiopians (they mimicked a standard U.S. oven, and explained, we would now be doing without that, and instead cooking like their mothers). Talking more about America, Gush’s friend then said, “Sometimes we feel…we feel…now, we don’t read these in any books. No one teaches us this. But in our heads we think, ‘Where is God? He must be in America, with them, not with us. They have packaged food, and the best juices, and mineral water. God must be with them.’”

            Gush joined him in this reverie: “Yes, even on the postcards. On the postcard God is white, he is like you. God is a ferenji. So he must be with you.” They laughed through all of this, assuring us they know it’s silly, but still they believe it sometimes. “Until,” Gush said, “There are the winds, or the disasters, the flooding, in America, and then we think, ‘Okay, God must be with us now.’” Listening to this in awe, and trying to interrupt their laughs to argue against such words, I was also caught off-guard by the “blessings” he named. Packaged food? Juices? (I wanted to ask him if he’s tasted the juice in Adwa; America’s version pales, beside this). As far as the packaged food is concerned, if there is any part of an Ethiopian’s health that tops an American’s, it’s the diet. We are cooking and eating so well and so healthy here. I couldn’t put a block of cream cheese into a casserole here if I tried. No casseroles allowed either. But if he were to mention the emergency services, or the economy, or the freedoms in the government, or health services, or education—he would have nearly been right on. If only we could wear shirts to inform them: Most Americans aren’t happy in this wonderland. Yes, we may live in a wonderland. We’ve been thinking lately about the Ethiopians who move to America; we compare their initial thoughts to what we may think if arriving to a world from the future. Flying cars, and robots, etc. But while it’s a fantastic land of provision, it’s full of many unhappy people obsessed with their own wants. We’ve heard tell of another volunteer explaining this to an Ethiopian, and the look of shock on their faces. What, not happy? Americans not all jumping and smiling, with the blessings they have? But, there’s such bounty! What is there to be sad about?

It is difficult, to put an end to the suspended disbelief—to explain it may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Meanwhile, they are all striving to be more like the Western world. “But we are developing, we are developing. We are getting better,” they explain, as if they need to make excuses for themselves, ashamed of what they call their country’s “backwardness.” Yes, development is good, and that’s what we’re striving for. But it sometimes feels that their driving force, their light at the end of the tunnel, is a bunch of smiling, ecstatic, contented faces beaming over…packaged food. Some Ethiopians need coached on what is development and what is the “flesh pots of Egypt.”

That wasn’t as brief as I intended.

The family tree:

Girimkil married to Misilal.

Their four children: Sammy, Luam, Teddy, and Meron

And four or so pet pigeons

We’ve told you about Gentle Sammy and his pigeon pets. Meron, an adorable 4-year-old with ears that jut greatly beyond her tiny bald head, whose name means Myrrh, likes to take her midday naps in our yard, on a burlap sack, in front of our back gate, her favorite spot. She is normally clad in only a long, dirty T-shirt. Luam and her mother Misilal make the best black coffee I’ve had in Ethiopia, this coming from a girl who can’t take coffee without milk. I drank all 3 cups of the first ceremony—4 cups in our second bunna ceremony—and loved it. Teddy we don’t know as well yet. More to come.

But this family—especially our two security guards, Girimkil and Sammy, loves to knock on our doors. On average four times a day. For several reasons: to see if we know how to make their flip phone shut, to ask us why we came home late, to tell us to close our shutters, to show us the tablets they received from the clinic. And each time making us smile and chuckle. We’ve not only been placed in a gorgeous yard, but we have incredibly gentle, sweet, beautiful neighbors.

In closing, Girimkil once called Daniel “Teacher Man.”