Musings on being home

I always knew that coming home was going to be hard. Hard to keep alive the experience I just had, and hard to rejoin my life here knowing that I've been changed in ways I don't fully understand. Of course, after all these years, even after months away, my established life in Seattle is so familiar and so comfortable that it was easy to slip back into routines: teaching, coaching, playing weekend soccer, and spending time with friends and family. The pattern of my first few weeks was recognizable - and predictable: I clung to the world I had just left behind, trying to feel like I was still in Addis. I listened to Ethiopian music, ate Ethiopian food, wore the souvenir soccer jerseys, shared pictures and stories with anyone who'd listen, and actively kept in touch with the community of friends I'd made... and yet, as each day passed, the rawness and intensity of the experiences I had waned. What had seemed so "real" was fading, all too quickly crowed out by the return to this "reality."

That leaves me to sort out just how my time in Addis affected me. I describe the city to people as sprawling, crowded, polluted, chaotic, and yet somehow beautiful (well, not exactly beautiful, but alluring in its own way). Some of it is just how raw and real life feels there; the residents of Addis live a life much more like the majority of the planet's population - a life so much more materially rational and sustainable than the resource-rich, wasteful, and unsustainable life we live here in the U.S.

Living in Addis put me at a distressing nexus of most of the core issues I care about: poverty, equality, and the environment. Ethiopia is, for example, one of the poorest countries on the planet, and yet its population is still growing due to a fertility rate that's double the global average. Further, despite being considered Africa's least unequal country (a sadly low bar), the gap between the wealthy and the masses is considerable - and growing. The country's rapid - and needed - development is also taking a toll on the environment that risks being irreversible as precious water gets polluted and land gets deforested and otherwise degraded. It was discouraging to see the strain that population growth and development are putting on such a beautiful place.

And yet, despite these challenges, the people were, in the main, strikingly generous, kind, outgoing, and hospitable. They were also proud and hopeful, especially the students I worked with. As I've recounted many times, I can't imagine visitors to this country being greeted so openly and treated so warmly. I also can't wait to see the ways that these ambitious young people find to contribute to their society.

So, much like South Africa, Ethiopia is now in my heart. I have had the cliché "Africa bug" for a while now (see #7 on this list of "7 good reasons for avoiding Addis Ababa."), but there is something lingering about what I'm dubbing "the Ethiopia effect." Maria Thomas (who died in a plane crash in Ethiopia in 1989 while on her way to visit a refugee camp on the Ethiopia-Sudan border) wrote the following about the allure of Ethiopia in African Visas:

"If you ask people who have ever lived in Ethiopia, they tell you that you never put it behind you... if you stayed, you never wanted to leave. And after you left, all you wanted to do was go back, and when you couldn't get there, you found Ethiopians on the outside, or they found you, or you found each other across the world like this, as if by magic."

In her story, "Ethiopia," Thomas describes small and large details of daily life in Addis and of its physical setting that I recognize, despite the decades that separate our time there; she touches on both the beautiful and the horrific (and on their seemingly incongruous simultaneous existence), and she also relates experiencing that life through the expat lens in ways that resonate eerily with my own experience:

"It was amazing to me that in this strange setting we could keep the surface of our lives the way we did, days that went on as days do anywhere, in what now, as memory, seems to me like awe."

Awe indeed. Now what?
 

  

Wrapping up an amazing teaching stint

Working with this group of students has been so rewarding and inspiring. It is hard to put into words the connection that I have grown to feel with them and the qualities that they radiate. They are among the most diligent, earnest, polite, kind, generous, funny, hard-working, joyful, and optimistic young people I have encountered in my nearly 25 years of teaching. They have also bonded into a model community of academic effort and intellectual inquiry, of collaboration and play, and of mutual support and care. They are going to make a great founding core of ILAE's first class. School will resume for them in September, and they - and their classmates - will be offered a full grade 9 academic program.   

As cheerful and delightful as these students are, they are also quite smart and savvy and are in no way naïve about the obstacles they face in their lives - both in Ethiopia and in the world. They are not from the privileged class in their own society, and they live in a relatively quite poor and marginalized country on the world stage. And yet they dream, they are proud, and they believe - in the transformative power of education, in their own potential, and in bright future possibilities for themselves and for Ethiopia. I wish I could feel more confident that the forces at work in the world - and in their own country - will in fact afford them adequate opportunity to pursue these dreams. I fervently hope so. If not, I will feel some guilt for having contributed to nurturing these hopes and dreams...   

In any case, I can't thank ILAE enough for the opportunity to participate in this project. I am also grateful for the ever-supportive NWS community. It has also been wonderful to find so many supporters and friends here in Addis, especially the volunteers who have joined the ILAE team as well as so many on the Hope University College campus. As sad as I get looking at this picture of the empty main classroom, I am excited to think of these students once again filling it with their personalities and energy in just a few weeks.

 

Infrastructure part 3, transportation

One striking thing about the visual landscape of Addis Ababa is the sheer mass of people seemingly constantly on the move. One example is the daily tide of white-shrouded worshippers ebbing and flowing, especially in the early morning hours, around the churches. While these crowds move with a peaceful rhythm, it's a different story with the less settled, more frenetic movement of the throngs of people trying to navigate daily travel from point A to point B in this city. Vehicle traffic, as I've described before, chokes many of the keys roads and intersections, and the crowds of people waiting for transportation seem constant. There is also a steady stream of people providing their own transportation by walking. These pedestrians, who decidedly do not have the right of way, must dodge one another, be always on the watch for broken pavement and other obstacles (street vendors, beggars, animals, animal waste, etc.), avoid (during this wet season) the patches of mud and standing water, and weave their way through the cars, trucks, and buses to cross any streets.

Like so many services and resources here, transportation options are largely dictated by how much money a person has. Even though Ethiopia has a relatively less unequal division of wealth (as measured by the Gini coefficient, an inequality index that ranks Ethiopia least unequal on the African continent), even small differences affect what is affordable. There is, then, a transportation hierarchy - as there is for schools, restaurants, medical clinics, grocery stores and other shops. For those not walking (the least expensive option, not considering time, health, or safety), the options are like a ladder, becoming more expensive but also more convenient and more comfortable with each ascending rung.


At the top of this ladder, as with everything here, are the VIPs – government officials, foreign dignitaries, NGO officers, and the wealthy. They drive around in big cars (think Land Cruisers), often with hired drivers, and seem to have (or just claim) road priority and right of way.
The government taxes car sales at nearly 100%, in part to raise needed revenue and in part to mitigate traffic. That latter goal is not working; even though Ethiopia has an estimated mere 3 motor vehicles per 1,000 people nation wide (compared to 809 in the US), they seem to nearly all be in Addis!
Many of the cars on the roads, especially the taxis, are 15-30 year-old Toyotas and Ladas (a Russian model), and even these can cost as much as four times what they would in the US, putting them out of reach for most Ethiopians. Also, gas here costs about the same here as it does in the US.  
Foreigner visitors like us, with some means, occupy the next rung down on the transportation ladder. We can afford to be driven around in contract (or private) taxis. We get taken directly to our desired destination, and we don't have to share our ride. We still jostle through traffic with the rest of
the driving public, and we compete for lane space with trucks, buses, and a huge fleet of min-van taxis.
 

 

These mini-van taxis, the next rung down on the ladder, are ubiquitous and operate along a surprisingly organized and efficient (when you can get on one!) network of routes. They cost about a 10th of what we pay for a private taxi (or less, depending on how far one travels and how many transfers one makes), and they seem in constant demand.

The big city buses, on the other hand, are even cheaper; one ride cost me 2 birr (about 11 cents). Again, the lines for these buses are quite long during peak hours, and they are usually jam packed with riders. As far as I can tell, they are the bottom rung (besides walking): crowded, hot, uncomfortable, and rumored to be unsafe.      

Out here in our neighborhood, two other transportation alternatives. Bajajs and horse carts. The former are quick, affordable 3-wheeled motorized carts that buzz up and down short routes along the arterials. The latter seem an anachronism, but they both reflect the area's recent rural past and offer a very practical and necessary way of moving people and material into the undeveloped fringes of the city.

Visiting Lalibela

 

The historic rock-hewn churches here are a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was remarkable to wander among and between these 800 year-old monuments to faith and engineering. (More info from UNESCO.)

 

China bashing

I started think about this entry back in my first weeks here. I jotted down a few notes at the time - and since, but it's been hard to feel comfortable with how to approach the topic. Since I'm running out of time, here's what I've come up with. I'm curious what others have seen elsewhere in Africa and in other parts of the world. I'm not sure that China is doing anything different from the earlier imperialists. At the same time, I'm quite wary of the long-term concessions being made here (such as land and other resource access) for what seems like relatively short-term development assistance. Capacity-building for African prosperity doesn't seem to be the priority, as much as "developing" Africa as a consumer market (again, a phenomenon that echoes the continent's colonial history). China's role in Africa is a much discussed and debated topic. I found this short book interesting and informative: China in Africa (2007). Please send along any articles and books that you recommend.

The past few weeks have been plagued with more frequent power outages than usual. From my observation, a definite issue is the rapid growth of the city. Even though the power cuts are not limited to our relatively new area, it seems a lot to ask – at least in such a relatively resource-limited country – for reliable infrastructure and service delivery to keep up with the growth. A recent newspaper article blamed, at least in part, a cut-back in transmission line maintenance. Some power lines (and transformers, etc.) are aging, and others seem to have been of dubious quality in the first place. Here in Addis, nearly everything that breaks down, doesn't work properly, or is otherwise of dubious quality gets blamed on the most common place of origin: China. 
 

This issue of cheaply-made goods and material extends across the Ethiopian economy. Like in other African countries, the markets here are awash in cheap (and cheaply-made) product, largely plastic but metal too. Well-made and durable products are too expensive for most consumers here, so instead they buy the less expensive and poorly-made alternatives: products that break quite fast and then need to be replaced. In our compound, we’ve experienced this short product lifespan quite a few times (a tea kettle, a couple of brooms and dustpans, pots and pans, some cleaning brushes, a power strip), and the waste produced by this cycle is evident in the ubiquitous mounds of trash that plague many neighborhoods here.  

 

Since most of these products come from China, that is where the blame gets placed. “Chinese-made” or “Made in China” are used as short-hand for anything cheap or shoddy or that doesn’t last. This includes many of Addis’s new main roads, since Chinese companies secure most of these construction contracts and thus provide the bulk of the design and engineering, as well as much of the materials, equipment, and even labor. Whether through willful negligence or more innocent inexperience, these roads are clearly not well-designed for the local conditions. They are, for example, buckling or subsiding in many places, and they are rife with potholes. Further, because they are not able to drain off the water that accumulates during the rainy season, entire sections of road all over the city become impassable due to literal lakes of standing water. This is in part due the volumes of mud that clog the drains (mud that the highway department could and should do better at removing), but there are clear design flaws as well. This was evident a few days ago when we drove through deep standing water on an overpass!

Just like with the shoddy household products, the state of the roads frustrates drivers here on a daily basis. It makes an already strained transportation situation that much worse (especially in the rain), and it must put a significant damper on both personal and general economic productivity. At the same time, it’s hard to imagine either Addis or Ethiopia being able to develop as quickly without the considerable Chinese investment. The biggest current such project is the urban light rail network (the cause of – or at least the scapegoat for – the chronic traffic jams in the city’s center). There are also numerous other Chinese construction projects in the city (such as a big new hotel at the AU compound), and I have seen a couple of big Chinese industrial sites on the outskirts of the city.  The Chinese are also rebuilding the historic rail connection between Ethiopia and Djibouti.     

 
Although the frustration here is legitimate and there is a technical truth to the origin of the poorly-made products, the frequency and derisive ease with which the Chinese are blanketly blamed feels both racist and unfair. While policies and decisions at the highest levels of government and business could certainly be more responsible, the masses on both ends of this exchange are pretty powerless. Ethiopians can only buy what they can afford, and it’s hard to imagine that the factory workers somewhere in China have any control over the quality of their output nor any conception of where the products they are making are going to end up. Nonetheless, hardly a day goes by here without someone (Ethiopian or Western visitor) blaming the poor quality of something on “the Chinese.” As a result, despite frequent media images of beaming officials sealing deals and embracing one another, the Chinese people here seem to be somewhat excluded, at the street level, from the warm hospitality that other foreigners enjoy.

The infrastructure stars are aligned

So here are a few photos from the summer session:

All five NWS-affiliated visitors were on the ground together for about 24 hours.   

We're having weekly community meetings to share work from our classes. 

I choose to read these expressions as rapt attention.

Me having a Lorax moment upon return to the mountain top.

Pictures courtesy of Andy and his nice camera.

We decided to drag the whole summer session to the top; they loved it!

 Campus infrastructure update:

 The generator has arrived! It came from the Netherlands in a shipping container and reached Addis a couple weeks ago after spending months stuck in customs limbo in Djibouti. No immediate relief, however, for our frequent power cuts, as the installers/electricians aren't coming until September.

Window of opportunity

Well, yesterday turns out to have been quite a gift – and an anomaly: it was mostly dry, which kept the tracked-in mud to a minimum and allowed the students to play outside a bit after lunch; we had power all day, which was great for the computer lessons we had planned (PowerPoint sharing and an Excel intro); and, for the first time in two weeks, the internet (which came on in the afternoon) lasted into the evening and was available in our living quarters. Wow! Of course, after catching up on some email, photo processing, and school prep work, I saved blog posting until this morning… and now the power is off again –and it’s raining. Oh well. In our group here, we’ve adopted and modified a popular phrase from the African aid community: T.I.A., “This is Africa,” has become T.I.E., “This is Ethiopia.” We use it uncritically (like “c’est la vie” or “ni modo”) as a reminder to just accept and roll with what we get on any given day. We still have all the important stuff – food, shelter, community – and, like so many Ethiopians have said to me so often, each day of life with these basic needs met is gift. I feel the truth of that more viscerally here than I ever have before. 

Posted during the lunch break. More posts and pictures coming... assuming the stars are still aligned after the teaching day.

The Joys of Living with Unpredictability!

The theme of service delivery over the last few weeks (and months) can be summed up in a word: unpredictable. For some reason, the local infrastructure has been particularly challenged in recent days.

An example: on Friday afternoon, at the end of a long week of teaching, a colleague and I sat down at the two office computers to wrap up some work before enjoying an evening out. Just as the computers were booting up… ZAP! The power went out. It came on 90 minutes later, but that’s how it’s been going here; we never know what will work and what won’t, nor how long something will keep working. It makes cooking an adventure (the pasta water may or may not get to a boil, and that egg just might get fully fried, or it might not…), and the daily suspense involved with taking a shower is exciting (will there be hot water or water pressure this morning?). Besides being unpredictable, there never seems to be an explanation for any particular service outage - except for the routine blaming of any such problem on inferior components from China (see next post for more on this phenomenon).

It’s been a good exercise in taking nothing for granted, in being flexible, and in appreciating the simple luxuries and conveniences when they are available. The power goes out 2 or 3 times most days, which mean no hot water, no internet, and low to no water pressure. Sometimes the power stays off for a short time (45 minutes or so), and other times it’s gone for half a day or more. This makes prepping for class hard, since no power means no printing or photocopying teaching materials and no getting the students into the Computer Lab (which we try to do for a period each day – and we’ve had good luck in that goal). At worst, it has also meant not being able to flush toilets or wash hands before lunch – which is a challenge since we eat with our daily lunch our hands!

Independent of the power, the campus internet service also disappears a few times each week (at its worst, we were more than 10 days without service). In addition, the ethio tel cellular network (nicknamed the “not-work”) is very spotty in our area. We often can’t make or receive calls, and text messages can arrive anywhere between 20 minutes and 6 hours after they were sent. Again, unpredictability! 

What’s been inspiring in the face of all this inconvenience is how many people manage to stay laid-back and not get worked up by the service interruptions.Our students are especially resilient and perpetually cheerful. For myself, I feel like I’m doing well at appreciating the days and times that the services all work – and not worrying too much when they don’t. It helps, of course, to know that just outside the college gates people are living in much more challenging conditions, for example with no plumbing and no appliances to use even if the power is on.

Monday morning update:

power? YES

Internet? NO

hot water? YES

water pressure? NO

Monday evening update: all systems off (am posting this, more than 36 hours after writing it, from an Internet cafe with a generator)

Summer session in full swing!

Joel and me with the prep program students.

These past two weeks (the first of six in the summer session) have been a wonderful - and exhausting - whirlwind! The best parts have been: one, seeing the students every weekday for six full hours of classes and activities and, two, having a growing team helping out with the program. It was particularly fun to get to teach alongside Joel, a former student of mine. He brought great energy, creativity, and enthusiasm - and he also did a much better job than I did at persevering with his blog postings despite our busy schedule and the many power outages. Here's a link to his blog, JTrek.

Sprucing up the campus.

With the longer class days, we added daily
cleaning assignments (modeled on the Northwest School's

Dawit running the Computer Lab session.

Environment Program), and we also started pitching in with campus landscaping (in addition to helping alphabetize the HUC Library's donated fiction collection (much of which is sitting in the basement un-shelved and even still in boxes). 




Other highlights from these first two weeks of the summer included hearing from two American medical students who are spending the summer working in Addis, introducing the students here to the idea of Ultimate Frisbee as a sport (they caught on fast and are enthusiastic to start playing!), and celebrating Joel's birthday with a large group of ILAE friends - both American and Ethiopian.

By the time we said goodbye to Joel this weekend, we'd welcomed three more arrivals from Seattle, including Ellen (ILAE's Executive Director) and two more teachers from the Northwest School. Ellen will be focused on planning for the school's opening in September, and the two teachers will welcome additional students on Monday.

Finally hiking to the church on the hill...

      

Our group.

...and beyond! After looking up at that church and hill for more than two months, I finally made the trek. It's a steep climb, but not too far. I had been warned a lot, however, not to go alone due to the risks of getting lost, running into the hyenas that live up there, and getting mugged. Fortunately, Joel (the NWS alum here to help out) was up for going and a friendly taxi driver offered to guide us. It wasn't a terrifically clear day (will have to go again!), but it was warm and dry enough - even at 6:30 a.m. when we headed out - and the contrasting views of the sprawling city on one side and rural villages on the other were impressive enough to be worth both the climb and the early start on a weekend.

Heading up from Lebu.

The city below.

Rural villages on the other side.

Home (Hope University College) and the condos from the hill.

Spring prep program wraps up

ILAE News

After a nearly two-week break, campus internet access has been restored (yea!). Just in time too because full-time summer class days begin on Monday, July 1st. Our teacher crew (pictured to the right as we decompress after a long day's work today) has been bolstered by the arrival yesterday of a NWS alum who will help out for two weeks. We are eager to welcome back the ILAE prep program students. They successfully completed the spring phase of the program and are now enjoying a well-earned break, during which they took and corrected a set of national exams. (These take place at least at the end of both grades 8 and 10.)

Some highlights from the spring (besides the scintillating reading selections and grammar lessons!) included regular learning sessions in the computer lab, a soccer scrimmage with a local youth team, and some interesting guest speakers (including the  woman pictured here who spoke on Ethiopia's environmental challenges).

For the summer session, we are looking forward to expanding the range and depth of our classes. We will, for example, use some theater games to promote confidence and spontaneous speaking. We introduced this approach at the end of the spring session - with some boisterous and hilarious results. One skit group drew "at a medical clinic" as their prompt, and a dubious doctor was soon checking a forehead with his pantomimed stethoscope and prescribing an unconventional treatment. We will also investigate environmental issues (global and Ethiopian) in more depth using curriculum from Seattle-based Facing the Future. Also, after reading a variety of African short stories, the students will be tackling their first novels.

A quiet milestone

Reggae at the Alliance earlier in the month.

Last Friday marked the halfway point in my "deployment" here. It was my first "free" weekend since Easter and the mid-point of a few days off between session. I continued to take full advantage of the offerings at the European cultural centers and actually went to the Alliance éthio-francaise three times that week. Monday for the closing night of the European Film Festival ("A Royal Affair"), Thursday for the screening of a Sengalese film (Ousmane Sembène's "La Noire de..." - followed by a free buffet dinner!), and Friday for a concert of English-language rock covers (Dire Straits, Beatles, Counting Crows).

Even though the rainy season is beginning here, it's still warm for part of each day (usually the morning). Missing my frequent summer dips in Seattle's Lake Washington and Greenlake, I twice tried to get a swim in during my days off. The first attempt, a trip to the pool at the fancy Sheraton Hotel, was foiled by hard afternoon rain. The second was part of the impetus for a road trip to an area of lakes about 50 kilometers southeast of Addis (Debra Zeit, see the map in the May 7th post).

Relaxing on a lake-front hotel's deck.

Here, despite getting quite close to the water on a warm day, I was undone by a combination of factors (all compounded by having forgotten my suit at home!): crowds, access restrictions, cost, and the comfort levels of my chaperones with what they saw as a wild and risky impulse on my part. In any event, it was restorative to get out of the city - and to breathe some fresh air! The benefits of the excursion almost withstood the traffic and pollution that greeted us as we returned to Addis.

Table-side "fishing" in Debre Zeit

A few photos from June

Though still not a regular coffee drinker, I have embraced the serving of coffee as one of the ways that Ethiopians offer friendship and hospitality. When invited to people's homes (which is happening to me far more often here than I have experienced anywhere else - and far more often that I imagine visitors to Seattle experience), the sharing of coffee involved a "coffee ceremony" (as pictured here). The beans are roasted and brewed over charcoal, and then the coffee is served in three tastings - and with a popcorn accompaniment. Here, a friend prepares coffee for our group after running the Coca Cola 7k.

I get interviewed after the run - likely not aired due to the big soccer win.

The guys try to get a clear picture of the soccer game.

Some sightseeing... 

At the Institute for Ethiopian Studies for a special AU exhibit.

The church at Emperor Menelik's home in the hills north of the city.

The painted gate of Menelik's church.

The facade of a stone church carved into a ledge.

stay tuned...

Technical difficulties continue to impede active posting. For now, check out this interesting story on how an increase in construction projects is driving change in Ethiopia. It ran on CNN's "Marketplace Africa" over the past weekend. 

More running, soccer mania, and Internet connection woes

Our "team" prepares to run.

It's now day four of no Internet connection on campus, which - along with the multiple daily power outages has made it quite hard to keep up with work tasks, news, email, and blog posts. The tech department says that the problem is off-site with the provider's infrastructure (this blog's new official word) and that it may be next week (or longer) before we have service restored. It's also been hard on the contents of the fridge! 

Mass start.

Haile Gebreselassie.

Anyway, a couple of updates: Sunday was a big sports day - building on the success of the "Run for Hope." The morning started early (6:00) as I taxied to the other side of town for a 7 km road race that I was invited to run with a few friends. It was a challenging course - a bit longer than I've been running and with a lot more elevation change than our flat course near the college. The air was also heavy (it had rained overnight), but I had fun and enjoyed how supportive the group of runners I found myself with was. Running is very popular here, and it was exciting to have celebrated Ethiopian runner Haile Gebreselassie on hand to pump up the crowd and then sound the starting horn.

Me with the goalie after the game.

That afternoon, a double-header at the European Film Festival lost out to watching Ethiopia play South Africa in a World Cup qualifying game. Tickets to watch the match live here in Addis were in short supply, so a group of us watched on tv. Ethiopia won - thus winning their group (with one game left to play) and earning a berth in the final round of play for one of Africa's spots in Brazil.* One of the guys watching with us works at the hotel where the team was staying, so we ended up heading down there to join the festivities and greet the team. The whole city was celebrating; flags were waving, horns were honking, and everyone was waving and screaming. This enthusiasm is a sign that Ethiopia's football (soccer) team is enjoying a resurgence. They made it to the Africa Cup of Nations for the first time in 31 years, and they are looking to get to their first ever World Cup.

* After Sunday's exciting victory, it came out that an ineligible player (due to yellow card accumulation) had been fielded in an earlier game against Botswana. FIFA fined the Ethiopian Federation and took away the three points from that win. Still leading the group, Ethiopia must now win that final game, September 6th against the Central African Republic, to advance in qualification. Needless to say, there has been a lot of disappointment and frustration among fans here. 

It's funny to find myself a regular runner here when I'm a rare, even reluctant runner at home. I also have hardly kicked a soccer ball in my two months here, which is odd since I'm such an avid soccer player at home. Then again, my daily life and habits are different in lots of ways: I also consider it normal to see donkeys and sheep every day now, I drink bottled water, I almost never wear a seat belt (because they're broken), I shoulder bump as part of greeting people, and I eat at least one meal a day with my hands.