Gratitude (and some pictures)

Though we have settled in, the novelty of everything here allows Julie and me to feel somehow more fully “alive;” each Ethiopian day jars the senses enough so that you have to remind yourself of the basics; the basics, that back in Ivy, we skip right over as our minds rush into the day’s worries and the "agendas.”  From the start, the chants and prayers broadcast at five in the morning sometimes sound like the opening scenes of movies set in Tibet.  You lay there in the dark thinking, “Now, where am I?  Oh yeah, Addis Ababa…now where is that? holy cow!  What am I doing?...”

This resetting of the mind each time forces you to reassemble your life starting with the things most important to you – I don’t ever remember waking up at home and thinking, “phew, the children are safe,” certainly not every single day. There are so many things that in their absence we’ve now discovered we were ungrateful for - clean air, plumbing with gas traps, electricity, roads without trash, school buses, printers, dishwashers, water you can drink, laundry machines, ceiling fans, government codes and regulations that are enforced, and the life preserving, glorious, traffic lights.  While here, I have rarely thought about my financial security and how I am going to pay for my children’s college education (still don’t know) – but back home, if you caught me staring into space, that is exactly where my mind would be.

We have all lost weight without thought or effort.  Maybe it is because we walk a lot, and also because food isn’t always within reach of our hands.  The safety of food that is closest is uncertain – no one wants to “go there” again.    

There is also nothing quite like the feeling we had yesterday sitting in a crowded café (the only westerners) enjoying a Coke watching Al Jazera jubilantly report the Muslim’s world uprising in Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan…surrounded by women in full burkas and men with their hands spinning through their prayer beads.  “er, check, please. May we please have our check?”

As we were changing buses to get to church, we had to walk through and step over all notions of people sprawled across the transit area in a sort of impromptu eBay in human form.  Many just sat down on the sidewalk with a cloth spread before them.  On that cloth might be one kind of thing piled surprisingly high (like screwdrivers, or hair ties, or old magazines, or batteries, or corn, or nails, or pirated DVDs, or soaps, or shoes, or faucets, or pilfered airline eye shades, or Chinese pencils).  The vendors shout over and over the name of that item in an attempt to attract a buyer.  Interspersed between these piles are sitting blind women with maybe their child bundled on their back, or legless/armless men, or severely disfigured children.  In front of them are also blankets or newspapers with small collections of spare change that passerbys have left. As you avert your eyes from one emblem of tragedy you alight on another, and then another, and out of politeness, you start staring at a pile of stuff that it takes you a second too long to recognize - by then you are caught, forced to contend with the seller (your gaze is a clear buying signal).  No, you are not in need of a cell phone charger; not at this point in time.

No matter where you try to get to, and especially through the city streets, there is this constant crush of humanity, this cacophony, bellowing sorrow and scarcity.  Each person is trying their hardest to eke/scratch out enough for passage to another week's existence. Last week we had several days of heavy rains and it got cold (low 50s).  In our apartment it also rained – in the living room over the light fixture (things got shorted out and we lost power for awhile) – in our bedroom, a little in the hallway – but just eye witnessing what was going on the streets around us made such drips unworthy of comment – even amongst ourselves.  There are whole families living in tiny lean-tos against walls.  When it rains, the ground starts to move, and then soften, and then everything sinks.  On unpaved roads, trucks and busses drop to their floor beds.  Heavy machinery can sink completely.

The street’s sewage that had been dried into odorless and hard clumps wakes up quickly and reminds you what it really is.  It then begins to join everything else in slipping downhill into the rivelets, streams and rivers.  Everything gets wet.  People scootch under balconies, national monuments, parked buses, carts and the rare bridge/overpass.  I thought about taking pictures of some of these sights, but despite opportunities, it rarely feels “right.”  Suffice it to say we’ve seen masses of people, clothed in damp muddy rags, covered in filth, staring at us with the fathomless pitch of night in their eyes.

After the rains, Girma tells us, the street people jump into the overflowing streams to scrounge barefoot and with their bare hands for unripped plastic bags, reusable bottles, redeemable clothing, and bits of metal that the children take to Mercado for salvage.  It may take a day to get a torn piece of gutter across town, but one could get as much as 10 Ethiopian Birr (about 60 cents) for a substantive collection of metal. Each day those with the will to survive somehow do and those who do not are swept from view.

There is no clever way to close this entry.  One might be tempted to cope by waxing philosophical – “well, are we really that different?  I know plenty of people in Charlottesville who, in effect, live lives of “quite desperation” – isn’t sorrow and scarcity what we often stub our lives on as we go out and about with our goings and comings?”  It is probably a sin to even suggest such equations.  Whoever coined the term “embarrassment of riches” was likely pointing at people like us.  I walk these streets hiding a terrible secret from these people.  If it were known by them, I can think of no defense that could persuade them not to throw me off a bridge.  The secret?  I have what they are dying to have, and I am often not thankful.

Did I mention we miss 5 Guys?

A woman and three children live here:

Some traffic shots - too bad they are "stills." You wouldn't believe the choreagraphy among the buses, animals, children and trucks.

Lily learns the Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony