The birds have chirped my head awake. Jet lag is a very funny thing. I seem to not be able to sleep past dawn, and before that only it fits and starts, although some of the morning (prior to dawn morning) is nice and deep. Thankfully dawn is around 6 am. The malarial dreams are their wonderful crazy. I wish I could do them justice and record them. The dreams are the love child of Fellini and Dada on a drug binge. I know many people who resent them, fear them, hate them, yet each night as my head hits the pillow I am filled with anticipation. It is like a gift. I get to be at once viewer and player in a fantastical adventure. I never have any fear of waking, which I guess is the source of some of the anti-malarial dream material.
I would think I would sleep more since I got off the plane had a day of work here and then went out to the rift valley. Our first day, we were: my friend and leader Bekele a hydrologist and the leader of the water and sanitation hygiene team; our driver Kasa, whom without we would all be dead as driving is a series of maneuvers to avoid trucks, buses, other cars, motorized rickshaws, people, and animals; an HIV/AIDS program head from Kenya; a software consultant on GIS (global information system) which is a mapping/data software tool that allows you to portray things such as where water points are in relationship to clinics etc.; and my tired self.
We left at 6 am and were immediately stuck in unusually bad traffic. A 2 hour drive became nearly 4. The road from Addis splits at about 50 kilometers south and leads to Kenya, Djubuti, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea, so one is in the midst of a high shipping route for the first hour.
We started by going to Meki slightly south and west of Addis. Its rainy season. The rains had not come yet. Dust was everywhere, as were concerned looks to the sky. The horizon seemed promising, however still in the distance. The highlands were receiving a lot of rain. It was hot.
The Ethiopian country is beautiful. It is the Africa one hears of and one is never prepared for. Mountains and plains, lonely acacia trees, yellows and greens, and people proud and generous. One of our team was definitely not prepared for the generosity. Like many other cultures, Ethiopian would give a guest their last piece of food rather than feel like they were not a good host. They are perhaps the most soft-spoken gentle genuine people on this planet. I have never felt more welcomed anywhere. However, for cultures used to distance and walls of formality, this can be very surprising. Thankfully, the Ethiopian culture is one of humor, which helps to disarm even the most jaded closed westerner. (This can make for very funny eating situations, with the unsuspecting guest actually being fed – wonderful beautiful humanity).
The religious singing has begun, Ethiopian Orthodox and Muslim. It seems like today, Saturday will again be hot, although rain did come yesterday to the area.
Meki is a bustling trade center. It is at once small and large. It is made primarily of the concrete stores and restaurants on the side of the artery that runs through it. After this it quickly turns into the huts and shacks of the farmers and population that makes up Meki. Mostly people subsist. The artery of the town is where those who have managed to work their trade have been able to open what the west would think of as a store. I say this because people often sell from their houses, and are known locally for this, but a tourist would never know. They sell potatoes, injeera, onions, grains, seeds, or cut hair etc. Meki is growing.
They remembered me. I was greeted with welcomes, and questions about my daughters and wife. I had a strange feeling that a year had not passed by. The head of their programs and the women whom I know as Sister greeted us. She is an Ethiopian nurse and this is a common title, but for her it seems something more. She is in charge of much, what her title is does not due justice to her work or the respect she commands. She is very soft spoken, funny, and one of the most knowledgeable people I have ever met. She gave us a short presentation on the status of the many health and social support programs she is running. Then our IT man gave a presentation on how the software he was developing for the team would help link all the data an portray it for the many purposes and needs. Thankfully short, and interesting.
We then went out from the town to a small farming village. Here CRS has drilled 80 meters to find water, built a defluoridation machine and provided water to an area that was in need, no more so than now, it had not rained. The water point is actually broken up into areas, there is a men’s and women’s shower, a cattle trough, and the drinking water. All are separated by a few hundred feet. People pay for the use. It is 2 birr for 20 liters of water. 16.8 birr to $1. The cattle water is also charged and metered. All the money goes back into the system for maintenance and to pay the guard/handyman. He has a lot to oversee. He is in charge of ordering the aluminum sulfate and lye used in the defluoridation process, keeping the generator operational, cleaning, collecting, etc.
The water point also serves as a community-gathering place where sessions are held on sanitation, disease prevention, HIV/AIDS, and other support mechanisms. It is very interesting, and pretty much near nothing. The sudden access to water is … Prior they walked for hours.
CRS and the Meki Catholic secretariat has also worked to convince people to build the ArborLoo. In this area it has really worked. Many people have built their ArborLoo. One family proudly took us around and showed us the 4 mango trees they had planted in old sites. It is a good start.
This site visit took several hours. We then got lunch. Nothing special. Some tibs, cooked for those of you keeping track. IT was then decided that the regional rep would go an visit an HIV positive woman who was selling her vegetables in the market. It was market day. The rest of us would wonder on the other side of the market to limit the stigma that would be attached if we were to all show up at her blanket. The market was huge. Spices, clay pots, the usual plastic stuff, lots of vegetables, wood for burning, dogs, goats, cloth, very colorful and full of people. Bekele bought a clay pot from a women he thought charming. He is a complete crack up. Always a funny comment, always working the crowd. He had this woman’s entourage in fits of laughter by the time we left.
We now had one more place to go for the day. We went to a young woman’s house, not more than 25. She has a daughter of 10 and one of 6. Her husband died of AIDS, she is positive, but with a CD4 count that keeps her from needing the full drug regimen. Again this is a positive woman who has every reason to give up but has turned her situation into a small business selling injeera and cutting hair. I spent the time quietly listening while she told the health workers how the last few days had been. She has a small house her brothers built for her. The walls were adorned with Brittany Spears. She had a little garden. There are just not words for the feelings that were sitting quietly inside me while I sat on that couch. We laughed as her kids showed off for us. And while I was inspired by her beauty and perseverance against all the odds, I was happy to leave. I have no tools for this, and I am sleep deprived. I will get the tools, but it is a world until that visit I only knew from an academic side.
We spent the night in Nazaret, now known as Adama. The names change a lot due to complicated cultural and historical issues. So as in streets so do towns become confusing. I find myself wondering where we are talking about as people often refer to the same place by different names in the same sentence. I spend the time only 70% sure of where I am headed, thankfully my friends know.
We visited Wonji which is outside of Adama. Again I saw an old acquaintance and was greeted with such enthusiasm. It is a wonderful feeling. I only hope it is deserved. I was immediately able to give them the pictures from last year and a film or two. The Priest of the area was there also. I had taken a picture of him with one of the local Muslim leaders looking in awe at the newly turned on water. When he saw that he was effusive with his thanks.
Moudi the head of the district project took us to a place we visited last year. The rains are long over due. The contrast was stark. Although it had finally rained that night people are very scared. Wonji is much more desert than Meki. Meki is closer to the highlands, and Wonji is the beginning of the steep decline in the Rift Valley. One literally leaves Adama over a slight rise and then desert. The farms were tilled, yet nothing was growing. Trees that last year had big lush leaves, were crisp and brown, water catchments, nearly dry. Hopefully the rain continues.
I returned to Addis Friday night. I contacted Niko a journalist I met last year. We went for tibs and beer. Then we went to a traditional dance house, Fandika. This is a place that is very small, much like a large living room. The walls are adorned with the traditional rugs and weavings- a very dark and smoky place without the smoke. The seating is along the walls, benches, woven chairs, and cushions. One enters literally through the dancing, which is at once awkward and captivating. The dancing is often two pairs of women and men facing each other doing shoulder thrusts and head weaving impossible to describe gyrations of sexuality and coyness, like nothing I have ever seen. They are fully clothed in white gowns that have two colored patterned vertical stripes.
There was also a musician, who played a singled stringed instrument. At times there was no dancing, just a musician (they changed as the night went on). Each of the several musicians we saw would sing or accompany a single female dancer. When it was just the musician, he became a master of ceremonies, he would sing a phrase that would introduce a theme, and then pick out a person or persons, and perform some sort of satirical description with a pause and then punch line. We were often the focus. But Niko is known, and he has picked up a lot of Amharic and seems to have no fear. When the first phrase was sung, Niko would burst in to the crowd’s pleasure and come up with his own rhyming series of Amharic phrases and punch line.
I danced. People were pulled up to dance all the time. Niko had a male friend who pulled me up to give me a lesson on how to isolate shoulders, play of each other go down to a squatting position, holy crap was I sore the next day. There are parts of the shoulder and neck one is not supposed to feel. I won’t forget that night. The simplicity and beauty of it all.
The weekend was spent recovering from something I ate Saturday.
