Her Name Was Lola

I've been putting off writing this post, mainly because I'm still thinking through a lot of things. But basics:

I spent just under two weeks in Mekele, volunteering at an orphanage called Lola Children's Home. It is filled with twenty-eight of the most adorable, cheerful, and in so many ways, typical kids on the planet. They sing and joke and make messes and love playing with cameras and shriek and whine when things don't go their way. They love kisses and hugs and can always use more attention. The older ones go to school during the day and there's a kindergarten at the home for children of that age, while the ones younger than that have activities that they do with the caretakers during the day. And every child is HIV positive. Thanks to medical advances, that diagnosis is no longer the death sentence is used to be, and if you didn't know that about the kids in advance, you probably wouldn't ever guess.

There are eleven staff at Lola, and you can tell that they all love and care about the kids so much. The director extraordinaire, Abebe, was an orphan himself and started off as a social worker at a well-known orphanage in Addis before moving to Mekele a few years ago to start Lola. You can tell watching him with the kids that he loves them and what he does.

My main conclusion so far has been that spending time in Mekele, at Lola Children's Home, was so good for me. Selfish as that sounds (and is), being there, and seeing other things here in Ethiopia have made realities out of things that were previously only abstractions to me. I won't claim that now I want to adopt an Ethiopian baby or that I now recognize my life mission is to move here permanently and take care of the poor, needy, and sick, because neither of those are true, but I am trying to figure out how my experiences here will impact decisions I will make in my life. Right now, I'm still not sure. I'm also not sure that me being there did any significant good for the kiddos- I think it would be both presumptuous and erroneous to assume that spending a few days with them made any lasting impact on any of their lives, and I don't know if having a long string of adults who are only in their lives for a short time is really all that beneficial. There are a lot of questions I'm still wrestling with and I'm not anticipating finding answers to them anytime soon. 

That being said, I am so so so so so glad to have been able to spend that time there and get to know the kids, even just a little bit. And, if you're interested in learning more about Lola or sponsoring one of these delightful chilluns, thanks to the wonders of the twenty-first century and the world wide web, you can visit http://www.lolachildrensfund.org/, read the occasionally updated blog, or find them on facebook. Amazing!

Free Market

The Ethiopian government may control the cell phone network, the water, the electricity, as well as almost everything else imaginable, but, luckily for my friend Menelik*, they haven't figured out how to control the love market.

Our friendship started out innocently enough; my cousin, henceforth known in this story as Romeo (he'd gotten tired of explaining to people that his name is not Roma, the well-known female name in the Tigray region and perhaps elsewhere in country, so he figures Romeo is close enough), and I were sitting in one of his friend's shops, chatting for a while before heading home for the evening. Every few minutes someone would pop in to buy toilet paper, or a phone card, or some such. One of these people, Menelik, stopped in for a quick purchase, then stayed for a few minutes talking before he had to go finish his game of pool.

We ran into him again not too long after that night, he and Romeo exchanged numbers, promising to get together for drinks, which they did a couple of nights later, the same evening as the more exciting of my bajaj trips.

Maybe two days later, I was walking around the city about to get lunch when I hear a car pull up along side me and call my name. You can take an educated guess on exactly who that might have been. Menelik invites me to go get tea, and considering my distinct lack of plans for the next little while, I agreed. We talk the normal getting-to-know-you chatter and then ...he brings up his first girlfriend. She just might have been from England, and he just might have declared that he'd never loved anyone else like he loved her, and he just might have said that he really wanted to marry a ferenji and “If you are going to marry habesha, marry me!” He might have sensed that I was less than wooed, at which point he brought up his very beautiful cousin who also wants to marry a ferenji, knowing that Romeo often waxes (less than) poetic on how magnificent habesha girls are.   

Let me mention at this point that I haven't exactly figured out how the gender dynamics in this country work, but that for the most part, at least in Mekele, the men drive the cars, are more likely to have attained a higher degree of education, and women do all the cooking and cleaning. I fit in PERFECTLY.

At some point in this situation that I was still laughing about on the inside, Romeo calls, and glad for the distraction, I invite him along to the lunch that Menelik had invited me to. I thought I was safe.

Little did I know.

We're waiting for lunch to be ready when Menelik brings up his beautiful cousin to Romeo, and then goes a step further. He proposes a trade. Not only does he propose a trade, he spends the next ten to fifteen minutes explaining how he believes the relationship between women and men was intended to be, biblically. Let's just say we read those verses very differently. Romeo is laughing and going along with the whole thing, and I'm very, very interested in the men jumping off each others shoulders on the TV. Menelik has to get back to work, so he leaves us to finish the meal on our own, and Romeo bursts into laughter, while I try very valiantly to hold my tongue.

We got together with Menelik a couple more times before leaving Mekele and while we joked about the trade, some of us thought it was funnier than others, and some of us mentioned how women are not goods to be traded, but actual human beings. I'll leave you to figure out who said what on that one.  




*Name has been changed to protect the semi-innocent. Menelik is a big figure in Ethiopian history/mythology; as the son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, he is credited with bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Ethiopia where it now resides in Axum.

On the Road Again: Gonder

We left Axum on Saturday the 16th, bound for Shire (She-rye, among other pronunciations) to crash for the night before on to Gonder, our real destination . The ride was absolutely beautiful- mountain views like you wouldn't believe, decently paved roads, and a couple of goats baa-ing loudly for much of the hour and a half trek.

 

A window shot on the way.

The next morning, we found our way to the bus station, got on the right bus, and settled in for twelve hours of sweaty, coughy, sneezey, pukey, stuffy, smelly, unpaved, mountainous, broken bus delight. If those adjectives don't make you want to hop on a trans-Atlantic flight so you can experience the wonder yourself, nothing will.

Upon arrival, we found a decently priced hotel with hot showers thanks to the assistance of one of the many young men who hang out at the bus station, grabbed some grub and crashed for the night, ready to see the sights in the morning.

Gonder was founded in 1635 and served as the capital of Ethiopia for 250 years. The most popular tourist attraction is the royal enclosure, a park in the middle of the city with six castles built by various rulers. We didn't shuck out the hundred or so birr for a guide to explain what it was we were seeing, so I only have a vague idea of what I was looking at, but the trade-off of a couple hours meandering by myself without anyone staring or asking for money or talking in my ear the whole time was worth the ignorance of names and dates that I wouldn't remember anyways. 

 I had so much fun with all the gorgeous doorways and the amazing views from them.

 When don't you need another gratuitous landscape? This is looking out over some of the ruins and the city.

One of the larger, more intact castles of the enclosure. 

Unfortunately, I picked up some sort of bug on the bus the day before and my American immune system took more than a few hours to knock it out, so after the Royal Enclosure, we bought our plane tickets to Addis for the next morning (instead of another twelve plus hour bus ride), and I spent the rest of the day back at the hotel, contemplating seppuku as a viable option to relieve the pain. Clearly not thinking ahead, I'd left my handy-dandy set of samurai swords back in the US, silly me. By the time our taxi showed up the next morning, I was almost entirely capable of regular movement, and definitely by the time we made it back to Addis. 

Fifteen words I think I know.

Language in Ethiopia is a curious thing. The country is made up of over eighty ethnic groups, which, you guessed it, means there are also over eighty languages used in country. Amharic, or Amarinya, is the official language, and Ethiopians who speak different languages will generally use it to converse with each other. The exception is with those from Tigray, the northern region that includes Mekele, who speak mainly Tigrinya and don't learn Amharic in schools. Amharic and Tigrinya both use the Ge'ez alphabet, which, to the uneducated eye, looks a little like a mix between Arabic and Hebrew, mainly because they're all Semitic languages. As far as I know, all the other languages use  the same alphabet that you're reading now.

Having spent my first couple of weeks in Mekele with a cousin who has worked hard at the language in his three months here, I've picked up a tiny bit of Tigrinya, and there are some overlaps between it and Amharic. So, without further ado, I present a very limited and quite possibly flawed list of fifteen vocabulary words for your polyglotinous delight.  

Abe- Where? As in “Abe ferenji?” for a sassy response to the hourly reminder that I am clearly not Ethiopian. When they understand what I'm saying, it's usually repeated and chuckled at.
Ai- No.
Amesetganalo- Thank you in Amharic. I start out strong and usually mumble by the third syllable. It's the thought that counts, right?
Bajaj- Also known as tuktuks or rickshaws in other countries. Covered tricycles with engines that run on diesel fuel and the prayers of the terrified ferenji passengers. Should you happen to travel to Israel, the word is apparently a vulgar term for breasts, which my Israeli friend was glad to inform me of after I'd told him we were going to grab one. 
Buna- Coffee. A huge part of Ethiopian culture. If you're lucky and stop at a place with fixed prices, or that doesn't do foreigner pricing, you can get a cup for 5 birr, or about twenty-five cents. Comes in tiny cups, but is apparently stronger than American coffee, not that I would know. I'll probably write a post at some point about it.hn
Ferenji- Foreigner. If you visit, expect to have this shouted at you, mostly by children or young adult males, many, many, many times a day, especially in tourist towns.
Habesha- Ethiopian, or the yin to ferenji yang.
Hambesha- Local bread. Chewy, circular, about three inches tall, and absolutely delicious. Add a couple of muz in and you have the breakfast of champions. ...or lazy volunteers who don't want to stop (or pay) for anything else.
Injera- Spongey, slightly bitter crepe-like food, present at a large percentage of meals, serves as plate and utensil. The other parts of the meal are piled on top and you rip off pieces of injera to pick up and transport nutrients to your mouth. I have probably eaten my weight in injera by this point.
Ishi- Okay. The most used/useful word in my vocabulary. Don't know what to say? Just mutter a short “Ishi.” and almost everything will turn out ishi.
Kunde- How much? Tigrinya. On the rare occasion that I understand the answer, more often than not my response is an appalled face, accompanied by “Ai!” because they've quoted the incredibly inflated “We-think-you're-dumb-enough-to-pay-this-ferenji-price.” Example: The bus ride from Axum to Shire officially costs 24 birr, and someone thought they'd see if we would pay 400.
Mai- Water. Another good one to know for future Israeli travel, as it means the same thing in both languages.
Muz- Banana. You can get a kilo for twelve birr, or about 1 birr per banana at basically any store you pass. Smaller and generally sweeter than the imported Costa Rican bananas we usually see on the mainland, but a little bigger and softer than the apple bananas of  Hawaii.
Owa- Yes. The word can also be replaced with a sharp intake of breath that in the US would be taken as a largely involuntary expression of surprise.
Shai- Tea. Not to be confused with chai, which I have yet to encounter.
Yakanele- Thank you in Tigrinya.

On the Road Again: Axum

After just under two weeks in Mekele, I said good-bye to the kids at Lola, spent my last evening giving the new volunteer a quick introduction to the city, and hopped on a six hour, six am bus ride to Axum, the first stop on our tourist itinerary.   

Let me just say that not even two weeks of acclimating to city transit could prepare me for the adventure that is inter-city, long distance bus rides in Ethiopia. Being the only ferenjis in the crowd outside the station at five in the morning did have the advantage of having a couple of kind souls take pity on us and help us find our bus in the chaos that occurred as soon as the doors opened, otherwise, we might still be in the Mekele station, wandering around hopelessly lost, getting pushed back and forth between buses. Once we finagled our way into seats that didn't require strangers elbows or shoulders embedded in our bodily mass for the duration of the ride, we were off!
...but not for long! It seemed like we stopped seventeen times in two hours. The first time wasn't even fifteen minutes in for some kind of security checkpoint where everyone disembarked, guards with large, intimidating arms (not talking about biceps here) took quick peeks into baggage and glanced briefly at IDs. We'd pause occasionally at no regular interval for even more people to wedge themselves into the bus, and then be on our way, until the next one, where once again, everyone would unload and we'd be sitting there confused and tired. Thank goodness for the multitude of caring, English-speaking people who could tell by the looks on our faces that we had no idea what was going on and would clue us in.   

Eventually, we did arrive in Axum, and with the help of  a man sitting outside a cafe and a horde of street children, found our way to the Africa Hotel, our cheerful, yellow, two-story, price-is-right, home for the night.

Axum is the holiest city of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and the acclaimed home of the Ark of the Covenant, making it in many people's minds the spiritual center of Ethiopia. It also functioned as the capital of a significant empire as early as the second century AD, and was home to the first Ethiopian king, Ezana, to convert to Christianity in the early fourth century AD. There's still an immense amount of archeological research to be done in the area, but some archeologists found catacombs in nearby hills that date back to the fifth century BC. Needless to say, it's pretty old school.

For the non-Orthodox visitor, the main attraction of the city is the granite stelae, or carved obelisks similar to the obelisks found in Egpyt. How these ancient people were able to move the stelae, the largest of which is 33m (108 feet) tall, is still a mystery. Generally, the stelae are attributed to a specific king, but like much of Ethiopian folklore, there's little historical backing for those attributions.

After dropping our bags in our room, we spent the afternoon wandering, and the next morning rented bicycles so we could see more of the sights in less time, at the same time avoiding the people selling unwanted souvenirs or children trying to engage us in stories about how they need us to spend 300 birr on a football from their father's shop. Have I mentioned that Axum is a serious tourist town? I got spoiled by Mekele, where there are few tourists and fewer people trying to make a chunk of change off of them. Let's just say the two cities, and my experiences with the locals there, were very, very different. 

I'm tired of typing, so have some pictures. 

Most of what people seemed to think of whenever Ethiopia came up in conversation back home is desert and famine. That's mostly based on the big news surge about it from 1985, four years before I was born. Needless to say, that's not an accurate view of the country.

We hung out on the roof of the hotel for a bit. You'll notice there are no railings between us and a two story drop. Ain't no thang.

 The largest stelae built, which fell shortly after being erected, probably because the base wasn't large enough to support it. You can see some others in the background. The one with the supports is King Ezana's, and the one closer to us was semi-recently returned to Axum after a stint in Italy, courtesy of the

And the famed Queen of Sheba pool. Dates back quite a while, but historicity of it actually being associated with her is questionable.

I have another post scheduled to go up in a couple of days, and I'll be working on a couple more about my final days in Mekele and travel adventures to be shared whenever I internet again.

'Round, 'round, 'round, I get around.

Color me nerdy, but I think the differences in transportation between here and home, or here and everywhere else I've ever lived, to be more accurate, are fascinating.

Generally, I prefer to walk pretty much everywhere. On the mornings that we're not exactly on time, or we're feeling a little lazy in the afternoon or evening, we'll usually hop in the taxi to take us down the hill. If it's after 9:30 or so, the taxi stops running, so we'll grab a bajaj.

I've mentioned before that walking tends to mean getting stared at, which I'm halfway in between getting used to, and getting annoyed with.
It also means that on occasion, guys, because I have never had a girl start a conversation on the street with me, will decide to stroll along and talk, which is sometimes fun and sometimes not as fun, usually depending on how much English they speak. (Which makes me in my English-as-my-mother-tongue-ness feel all kinds of guilty for not being able to communicate effectively with the locals.) Oftentimes, the conversation starts off with them saying “Are you fine?” which is the direct Tingrinya translation of the typical greeting, to which I smile and respond “Yes, I am.” and then they laugh a bit and keep on walking or staring, whichever activity they were involved with before I came along.
In reading the guidebook I stole from my cousin, and in conversations with other ferengi, it seems like in a lot of places in Ethiopia, the kids are so used to begging that it can be a challenge to get from one point to another without hordes of them asking for money or getting a little more demanding in their begging. Luckily, Mekelle is mostly off the beaten tourist track, so it's not as much of an issue. More often, kids will run up with their hands extended for a handshake, or they'll ask what my name is (one of the phrases I do recognize), walk a little while and then say good-bye. The little girl at the store a few houses down from where I'm staying will now say “Hi Liza! I love you!” whenever she sees me walking by.
Besides the stares, I love being able to really see what I'm passing while I'm walking, which is harder in a taxi, and pretty much impossible in a bajaj.

Taxis are not the yellow sedans that they are in the US. Instead, they're blue and white ten passenger vans, usually festooned with various pictures of Jesus, the cross, or Ethiopia paraphernalia, depending on the driver's preference. They run set routes and have a young man shouting out the route name or destination hanging out the window. He is also the one responsible for collecting the 2 birr (approximately 10 cents US) fare, as well as shuffling the passengers to maximize profits. I use the term “ten passenger van” loosely; I've made it a bit of a hobby to count heads on the ride, and it's usually somewhere around fifteen, but I've seen up to twenty people and a rooster. If I'm trying to grab a seat in the taxi during high traffic times, it becomes of bit of a pushing match to get in and secure a seat. I had dinner with a couple of friends last night, and they said they saw me playing American football trying to get into the taxi. Hey, it worked!

Bajaj are crazy. They call them tuktuk in India and are covered, motorized tricycles, basically, but that description doesn't clue you in to the terror of climbing up a rocky, dusty, unpaved road while the driver is pulling on the string that the windshield wiper is attached to with one hand and using his phone with the other, all while softly serenadinig his shaking passengers with one of the Tigrinya songs that is played on the radio all the time. I've only used a bajaj twice, mostly because it's significantly more expensive; the honest drivers will charge between 25 and 30 birr ($1.25-$1.30), while the unscrupulous ones will quote a price of 100-200 birr for the same ride. It also requires being able to communicate where you want to go, which can be a neat trick. The first time it mostly worked out, with the exception of nearly crashing into one of the many piles of rocks that line the route between the main road and the guest house, but the second time, was a bit more of an adventure. There were a couple of girls staying at the guest house for the night before heading out on a four day trek into the Danakil, and I was awarded the privilege of accompanying them home. To make things even more interesting, we needed two bajaj for everyone and their backpacks, and they separated from the get-go. In my previous bajaj experience, we told the driver “Medriginet condominums” and he took us to the bus stop and we directed him from there. Not so luckily for us, this didn't happen and we ended up somewhere in the vicinity of our destination, but I didn't recognize exactly where we were. Our driver didn't speak any English, so it turned into a comedy of errors, with phone calls going out to a friend of his who we could communicate with, my cousin who was still down in town hanging out with some friends, the girls in the other bajaj, and the director of the orphanage/guest house. Somehow with all of that happening, we did miraculously make it home, the other bajaj arrived shortly afterwards and both drivers got almost double the agreed upon payment for their troubles.
This experience, combined with a multiple hour New Years Eve taxi adventure in Budapest has convinced me that late-night adventuring that involves two parties that don't speak each other's languages is a bit of a Russian roulette. Sometimes you wind up at your destination safely, if a little late and with a few less birr in your pocket, and sometimes you end up stranded at a strange bus depot with an angry taxi driver yelling profanities at you as he drives away.

 

Life is beautiful.

Technology isn't exactly my best friend right now, but  I went to bed two nights ago without running water and woke up the next morning with sunshine coming through the window, donkeys braying outside and water coming out of the faucet when I turned the handle, so life is still so good. I am always amazed by how ungrateful I am for things I have when I have them, and how quickly I revert back to taking it for granted when it returns. Imma work on dat.

And now to share some of the beautiful things I see every day.

Blogger is hatin' and I can't move the text above the first picture, but it's a picture of the juice of heaven, no joke. I have no idea what they do to the mangoes here, but I could (and practically do) live off the stuff. Even having a piece of roof with rusty nails fall right between my cousin and his friend, and having two different birds share the contents of their bowels with us (do birds have bowels? I would assume so, but my aviary anatomy is a little lacking) will do nothing to deter us from our habit.

Just some cattle hanging out in the foundation of a building. Y'know... the normal thing.

On our way to juice one day, there was a huuuuge crowd waiting for this bike race to start. Sadly, I think cycling is even more of a man's game here than it is in the US. Lamesauce.

 Donkeys! Two doors down from the guest house where I'm staying. They were only there the first day, but we see dozens of them on a daily basis.

One of the views on the long way to the orphanage. The specks in the distance are goats.

Another on-the-way shot.

 These are genuine, pure-bred Ethiopian street dogs. I want to take them all home with me.

 Another view of the city from the longer walk.

 And the scaffolding! The houses here are all built out of cinder blocks or concrete (cement?), so I am continually amazed that this is how they get it all done.

Another beautiful view of the city.

You is "I love you" me?

There is nothing to start your day off better than walking in a door and having a whole horde of children run up to hug and kiss you and ask sweet questions.

After spending two days hanging out in Addis, I hopped on a quick one hour flight north to Mekele, where my cousin has been hanging out for the past six weeks or so volunteering at an orphanage. My plan is to be here for two weeks-ish, and then explore a bit of northern Ethiopia before heading south for my training, and I can already tell that leaving here is going to be sad.

That being said, Mekele ranks approximately ninety seven places higher in my book than Addis does. The traffic is less crazy, the buildings are more likely to be in a state of construction instead of falling down (and the scaffolding is enough to give an OSHA inspector a heart attack, but I'm mostly amazed by the ingenuity of it), I feel like I can actually manage to find my way around, the air is clearer, and I have something productive to be doing. Oh and there are about a million horses pulling carts, donkeys loaded up, and herds of cattle and goats being directed through the streets by men with long sticks.

Being a white girl here is definitely an interesting experience as well. Walking down the streets, it's more likely that a person will stare as I walk by than not, the children will call out "Ferenji!" (foreigner) or wave or walk up and shake my hand. The shy ones will stand where they are and maybe smile if I wave and smile at them first. Walking around yesterday late afternoon, a guy walked by and grabbed my hand quickly and kept on walking, which isn't a huge deal, but my personal space as an American was definitely "under attack" and I've been conscious of keeping my hands in my pockets or not anywhere grabbable since then. Really though, this is a safe area and just like anywhere else, stay smart and 99% of issues just won't exist for you.

Another fun thing: language! Here in the north people speak Tigrinya rather than Amharic, so I've been trying to pick up words where I can, recognizing that my vocabulary when I leave will probably still be less than fifty words. Luckily, the people I interact with most have the most important words ("Up!", Mama! You, me, etc.)' down pat.

Few places have wifi around here, so I'm relying mostly on internet cafes to send out emails and update ye olde blogge, but I'll try and run up to the Axum hotel that does have wifi in not too long to upload pictures. And, just so you can get a feel for how different things are, walking around trying to find an internet cafe, we had to walk ten minutes down the street and check in a few different places because the electricity is out on a large part of the street. Luckily, these folks handle it with a lot more calm than we do back in the states.

That's all for now, folks!