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.