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| Countryside with Meskel flowers |
And so we meet again! This time, I am writing on a Friday morning, but only just. It's almost two am. I have been killing mosquitoes, a near nightly ritual that doesn't usually coincide with blogging, but as the internet was unbearably slow last night, I figured I may as well make the most of things.
It occurs to me that I should probably title my postings. If I were to give a title to this posting, what would it be? Maybe, "I feel for Cersei Lannister", or "Two Ethiopias", or "On Being a Foreigner in One's Home Land", or "Why Can Nothing Here Be Simple?", or "May God Forgive Me For Being Immature, Impatient, Unforgiving, Petty, Vain, Small-minded, Etc.", or maybe just "The value of the goose-chase."
I thought I'd be writing a different sort of blog once I'd been here in Mekele for a month. But the truth is that we're still getting settled, if you can believe it. Something always crops up, or breaks down, or both.
Somehow, in spite of constant shopping trips and appointments, however, we managed to nip out of town last Saturday for a hike to visit a church buried deep in the country-side. Our intrepid leader in all family excursions, Mark, led us boldly until his guide book disagreed with some local shepherds. The book literally said to turn right at the fork, the shepherds said to turn left. We closed the book and followed them. The church, when we found it, was so nondescript and so different than how it was described in the book, that we almost turned around without going in, disappointed and disheartened. I'll explain why we were so disheartened in a minute. But we did go in, and what an incredible treasure awaited us. Imagine a woman taking off a hum-drum overcoat to reveal a priceless gown. The simple church, Yohannes Mekmet, contains an inner chapel whose exterior walls are covered from top to bottom with paintings that date back some 200 years. I wish I could show you all the pictures we took, or give you some sense of the magnificence of these murals hidden within the humble walls of the church. (I have tried in vain to include pictures here, but the internet continues to defy me. If you're reading this, you're definitely my friend on facebook, and have seen the pics.)
No one was at this church but our family, and the men who perhaps kept the church running accompanied us on our short tour within the circular building. The head custodian then told us that we could look at very old bibles, which I kind of didn't really believe could be just...there to look at. But sure enough, we went outside and he laid out a carpet, took off his shoes, and brought out two manuscripts that dated back almost 500 years. It was a strange and awe-inspiring sight, at the same time - these grand and historic documents laid bare for all to see while goats and donkeys munched grass nearby. I felt sad, and yet thrilled that these documents were so readily available. Their pages are so fragile, and should probably be under glass and appropriate lighting. But here's why I'm thrilled. These aren't just artifacts for the believers in this and countless other churches across the country. They are the living, breathing word of God, to be cherished, for sure, but to be
used!
I want desperately to remember that little outing for the beauty of the paintings, the timelessness of the landscape, and the resiliency of the church in Ethiopia. But here is where I struggle with the idea of Two Ethiopias. On the one hand, the history of this place and specifically its unique position in Africa as a country that has never been colonized, make Ethiopia a must-see destination. Its culture, language, food, religions, traditions - all have been preserved in a way that's truly authentic and indigenous. The pride its people display in honoring their traditions is evident. There's absolutely no self-consciousness about it. In much the same way the ancient Bibles were brought out for us to see - no glass cases, no soft museum lighting - people here bring their traditions with them to daily life, in a way; wearing national dress and engaging in widely celebrated rituals with a level of comfort and joy that I don't see anywhere else. We just celebrated New Year here, for example. Everyone was in lockstep; buying sheep and chickens to slaughter, getting hair done, lighting bonfires, declaring it proudly to be 2010! And that's not just a pretend date. That is the actual date here, the rest of the world be damned. So there's much to be admired about this once grand empire and its people.
Alas, here is where I identify with Cersei Lannister (She's the baddie from Game of Thrones, for those of you who are going, "huh?"), and where I feel like Ethiopia is two places. As I mentioned, I wanted to come away from the outing to the church with a sense of wonder about what we'd seen. But the truth is that when you walk with one white person and three half-white people, especially in the country-side, you are subjected to constant - no exaggeration - constant cries of "Ferenji, ferenji!", or "China, China!" There's a lot of pointing, a lot of laughing, a lot of muttered comments and chuckles that follow you, hound you, mock you, nearly rob you of the joy of walking in the beautiful countryside in the near perfect September weather. It is unbelievably unsettling. Eli revealed that he always wears a cap so that he can pull it low and cover his face while looking down at his feet. Micah says he wants to punch people. Daniel has begun to engage in staring contests. It's hard to describe why it's so depressing to constantly be under such scrutiny, but it's exhausting. Absolutely exhausting. I can't tell you how many times I heard people leave their homes and run to neighbors, yelling, "Tsa'ada, tsa'ada!" (White person, white person!") Here in this proud country, where history is alive and well, to be regarded as aliens from outer space, never to feel welcomed and embraced - well, sometimes it's just too much. Occasionally, I feel a tremendous weight of guilt for bringing the boys here with the encouragement that they are to think of this culture as theirs when all they feel while out and about is that they are laughably different.
As we walked through a village called Sarawat on the way to the church, I won't lie; I felt abused by the stares, calls, laughter, pointing, etc, and could see that the boys felt it, too. On our way back, I knew we would have to walk through that village again, and told the boys, "Listen, maybe you can think of yourselves as pioneers or something, like you're the tough loners in a strange land and you're not scared of anyone. Maybe you can think of yourselves as Clint Eastwood and whistle that tune from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly." I even whistled it for them. But as we approached the town, I didn't think so much of Clint Eastwood as I did of Cersei Lannister. Game of Thrones fans will remember the episode a season or two ago when she was forced to walk naked through a gauntlet of Kings Landings residents, hounded by a single word; "Shame, shame, shame". A bit melodramatic? Maybe. It wasn't nearly as bad as that, but let me tell you, I quickly changed my mind about walking through that town again and we boarded a public van that took us the rest of the way home, hidden behind the little curtains that made us blessedly anonymous.
Our white friends tell us that you get used to it, that maybe there's extra scrutiny directed towards us because I'm Habesha and the rest of the crew is not. Our Ethiopian friends assure us that no harm is meant by it, that people out in the countryside are just provincial, and that Ethiopians are proud, but direct. All this may be true. But the abiding lesson I and Mark are trying to give the kids is that you should never, ever, ever make someone feel like a stranger. When they see immigrants struggling to fit in in their schools and communities, when they see footage of Syrian refugees stranded in camps across increasingly hostile nations in Europe, when they see a kid who's left out and mocked or bullied, we want them to think about what it feels like to be pointed at, to hear snickering behind their backs, to be made to feel different. And we want them to be compassionate. Perhaps, with passing time, we will get used to it. Perhaps in later years they'll see the Ethiopia that stands proud among African nations, preserver of her ways and traditions, unabashedly unique, and not the Ethiopia that still seems so mired in its own Ethiopian-ness that anyone else is an outsider. Until then, may they remember to be compassionate.
What else has been happening this week? Here's where I ask the question, "Why can't anything be simple here?" Every time a need crops up requiring our attention, we laugh and ask ourselves, "What kind of wild goose chase will this entail?" It's often the case that we require something basic, or at least common here; say, a gas canister. Or a large clay pan to make injera called a
mitad. It so happens that we were set to pick both of these items up yesterday (cousin Rahel had ordered the
mitad for us from a high quality place and had told us it was ready for pick up, and the gas canister guy said we should come yesterday as well), and as we set out from the house, I asked Mark what the likelihood of us accomplishing both of these missions was. He said, somewhat skeptically, "Zero per cent." Then he hedged; "Maybe we'll get the gas canister." He said this because getting the correct canister has proven an ordeal that has taken weeks and four separate trips to the shop and he felt that maybe this time we'd get the right one, especially since the guy told us it would be ready. Anyway, long story short, we went on this mission, instantly recognized imminent failure, argued in the middle of the market, and came back separately without the
mitad or the gas canister.
Ok, sorry, I just have to give you a taste of what imminent failure actually sounds like. I picked up the phone to let the
mitad people know I was coming. I said something like this;
"I am Marta. My family member who is called Rahel, called you five days ago. Maybe four days ago. I don't know. She ordered a
mitad. You told her it was ready today. I am Marta. I will come and get it. Where are you?"
Here's the response I received initially, or at least what I heard;
"Huh. Do you want the wrap, too, or just the dress?"*
After a while, they understood that I wanted a
mitad, not a dress, because how can you make injera with a dress? But their lack of understanding of who Rahel was in relation to me and what kind of
mitad I wanted and who the heck I was frustrated them and they hung up on me. Twice. Meanwhile, back at home, Azeb (house help) had made the injera batter in anticipation that she could bake injera today with the brand new
mitad, and the batter - having fermented for three days already - could go bad. Mark and I decided to try to get the gas canister while we waited for Rahel to call the
mitad people and explain that my ignorance of language should not bar me from receiving the
mitad that she had ordered on my behalf. So we get to the gas place, and the very gentleman who told us to come that day looked at us and asked why we were there. I told him he'd told us to come. He said, "Why didn't you call? The delivery truck is on the road, come back tomorrow."
I won't bore you with what happened after that, but suffice it so say when the gas guy looked at me tenderly and asked "Aren't you tired of coming here?" (The gas canister mix-up has always been our fault, actually, not his). I actually turned away from him so I wouldn't cry.
So I came home, as did Mark, with nothing to show for our hours downtown but a headache from the shame of not knowing the language well enough to just get the most basic things down, or the understanding of how things work here (when I told cousin Rahel about the gas canister, she asked "Why didn't you call first?"
Because he said come back Thursday, dagnabbit, so that's what we did!). But here's the thing; I came home to find cheerful boys who had gone out to buy injera for dinner, and who had a wonderful conversation with a total stranger at the kiosk. Micah, the most sensitive of the boys, said that yeah, there were some boys who laughed and pointed and commented (perhaps the same boys that jumped he and his brothers in the first week and stole some pastries right out of their hands as they walked home one day), but that he ignored them, and kind of enjoyed the outing. I came home to that, and to a dinner that was prepared by Azeb, ready and hot on the stove. Everything that you could want to put on injera - a full day's labor not done by me. I came home to electricity, and water, and warmth. I came home to my favorite soap opera, an episode of which I missed last night, by the way, because we had gone out to dinner with friends. So now Hazal has been in a car accident and is trapped under a car while her mother Gursulan strokes her hair and screams for help. How did this happen? Why were they in the car together when everyone knows they haven't been speaking for months?
But I digress. See? God has been merciful if that's what I'm thinking about right now. In spite of my frustrations and failures, here we are. What an amazing thing to be thousands of miles away from home, from our jobs and incomes, and still be able to sit here and worry about a
mitad, or the right gas canister. As if all around us the toughest people in the world aren't surviving with infinitely less. Yes, I've been up at least three times to kill mosquitoes since I started writing, but I'm warm, well-fed, and have almost a year ahead of me to grow into this place. A year to hold my head high and teach my boys to do the same. A year to grow into the language and not clench my fists in frustration at being so inept. A year to get the gas canister issue down pat.
A year to appreciate what you find along the roadside when you're on a wild goose chase.
*I have since learned that the word I heard - "netela" (which is an Amharic word meaning a wrap for an Ethiopian dress) - was actually the Tigrinya word "netsila", which means one. As in, "Do you want one mitad?" We did successfully pick up the mitad today, and Azeb translated that word for me, amidst much laughter. Oh, and we got the gas canister, too.
p.s. Why the cries of "China, China"? The Chinese have a huge presence in Ethiopia, and are involved in numerous infrastructure and construction projects.
