I arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia a week ago today, and I’ve been inspired, exhausted, amazed, and frustrated by the city, the people, the language, the culture and the country. Often I feel all of this at once.
Ethiopia uses the Coptic calendar, given up by most of the world for the Julian year, and after I departed from the US on September 5, 2007, I arrived in Ethiopia in 1999. Our September 12th marked the first day of the new millennium for Ethiopia and this occasion has been evident in every part of life in Addis Ababa. Driving from the airport, the buildings were covered in red, yellow and green lights, the colors of the Ethiopian flag. Busses pass me on the sidewalk, filled (and I mean filled, some passengers are only holding on to the door with their bodies outside the bus) with Ethiopians singing and clapping to new year’s songs, despite the fact that the bus is at four times capacity. The streets, sidewalks, underpasses and everywhere else were full of sheep brought to the city for millennium. Today, vendors sell fresh sheep skin, the only remnant from this week’s celebrations. As I walked to the bus stop yesterday, I passed a man trying to figure out how to load his sheep, very much alive, into the front-trunk of his old VW bug.
Many Ethiopians have a great deal of faith that this new millennium will bring new growth and prosperity for the country and most celebrate with a great deal of national pride. Around the city, new buildings are being built and new roads are under construction. Except for a few areas in the city, modern buildings are surrounded by much less developed cafes, restaurants and kiosks—a sign of the change and the dichotomies which mark this city. The streets are filled with blue and white taxis that go from point to point on set routes around the city. The most common taxi is a mini-bus/van that is built to accommodate 10, but which often carries over 20. Brave pedestrians weave between cars and trucks on eve the city’s busiest roads and accidents are, apparently, quite common.
In only a week, I have seen the beautiful and disturbing. I have met incredibly kind and generous people who would willingly give more than they have. I have eaten delicious food such as the Ethiopian ingera flat bread, torn to pick up spicy meat and vegetables. I have seen Ethiopian traditional dance performed by a dancer awarded as the best in Ethiopia (I later saw him in a music video on Ethiopian Television). The most common form of dance is to put your hands on your hips and move your shoulders up and down to the music, but this dancer could do things with his shoulder that no man, woman or beast should be able to do. But I have also experienced things that were much more difficult to process. I visited an orphanage where 400 HIV positive children live. The orphanage also provides dignity and care to the dying. Today I sat with an AIDS patient weeks away from death, who was unable to communicate in Amharic though I don’t know what I would have said even if I could have spoken. Earlier this week I was riding home on a taxi and witnessed an 11 year-old taxi worker fall from the back of a moving truck. He eventually was able to get up from the pavement, but it was a sobering reminder that some children don’t have a childhood.
I don’t know what to expect over the next year, but I do expect more of these moments. This is a wonderful place at a critical point in its history—I feel lucky to have this opportunity, and I will continue to share stories of my life in this new Ethiopian millennium.
