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.