araptirop

An extended backpacking jaunt around Ethiopia.

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Location: Washington, DC, United States

I lead a rich inner life, appreciate a good marshmallow, and have been known to indulge in the occasional Wednesday afternoon tryst underneath the linden tree. I am currently between extended trips to East Africa; this is my story.

27 December 2006

A Good Hut is Hard to Find



Pound for pound, the women of Ethiopia's service industry must be one of the most attractive cross-sections of the world's population; my waitress at the confoundedly-named Extreme Hotel was no exception. She had served me a number of national dishes--from spicy Doro Wat to the ground beef staple Kitfo--with finesse and a ready smile. By the fifth night, I felt up to a little small talk and told her that my work as a waiter had financed my trip.

"What was your salary?" she asked.
"Pardon me?" The boundary between r's and l's in English is less-pronounced in Amharic. She repeated the question, and I pondered it.
"Well," I rambled, "on a good night, I probably make $150. On a bad night, I might break $100. So I probably make an average of $120 a night."
She laughed. "I make a 150 birr a month."
"A month?" I stared at her slack-jawed.
"Yes, one month, 150 birr." She smiled and left me to my food.

Back in my 172 birr a night hotel room, I began calculating. At 8.7 birr a dollar (roughly the current exchange rate), she made about $18 a month. Working five nights a week, she could hope to make $216 a year, some $36 dollars more than the newly announced per capita GDP. So, on a really good night--not altogether unusual at Restaurant Magnus--I made more than she did in an entire year. As if to heighten the absurd inequity, she wore a cleaner uniform and carried herself with more dignity than I ever did.

I began pacing and wound up in the bathroom. As the 150 birr a month figure mixed with the day's images of Addis Abeba's poor, I felt an unendurable wave of sorrow. What could I do? The rusty waterworks began churning. I sat down with a ponderous plop on the cover of the toilet and, as my backside burst through it and into the commode's reservoir, I realized that simply feeling sorry for Ethiopia was about as effective as plunging my butt into a bird bath. I also realized, incidentally, why Ethiopians keep their toilet seats up.

Luckily for me, I had met a man by the name of Hassan Nasser a couple of days before. A well-known trader, he inspired me over a round lattes with his rag-to-relative riches story of growing up as a shoeshine boy and using his wits to become an antiquities dealer. He was a scintillating conversationalist loaded with personal histories of Ethiopia, the sort of things I devour. Whenever he recounted miscarriages of justice or, come to think of it, any form of iniquity ever perpetuated by man in the history of the world, a dull blue flame of outrage flickered in his eyes--the mark of a righteous individual. We soon became inseparable and were referred to half-disparagingly as 'The Macchiato Brothers' by the sundry loiterers of Addis--a reference to the components of the de riguer coffee drink, one-half black espresso and one-half white milk.

After telling me how he lost his incisors fleeing forced conscription by the Marxist Derg regime, he mentioned his wife and family across town in Hannah Maryam. I inquired further, and he invited me to see for myself. A kindly man from Canada by the name of Shawn had helped him acquire a plot of land and build a home, some outbuildings, and a hut. He invited me to stay in the latter. It was just the sort of offer I had been waiting for: I could stay with an Ethiopian family outside the diesel-choked commotion of Addis and learn the rhythms of daily life. No more hysterical taxi horns at the gates of the Extreme Hotel inciting the stray dogs into nights of epochal warfare! Here was a way to use my money for the local good instead of putting it in the pocket of a morally decrepit miser of a man who paid his waitresses $18 a month.

We decided on Saturday the 23rd as the move-in day and Meki met me in the morning. We took a series of minibuses, first from the Piazza to Saris, then from Saris to the Ring Road and Hannah Maryam. Built by a joint Sino-Ethiopian workforce (or, if you listen to any Ethiopian, by the labor of their countrymen under cruel overlordship of Chinese taskmasters), the Ring Road isn't exactly a ring yet. The last I heard, it circumnavigated three-fourths of Addis Abeba with the final quarter in some state of abeyance. But that's neither here nor there. What I want to write about are the minibuses.

The minibuses of Addis Abeba form a far-reaching and cheap system of public transport. They are invariably of Toyota-make, the top half white, the bottom half blue. They can hold up to eighteen people, though the limits of comfort hover closer to twelve. These snub-nosed vehicles are perfect for the difficult maneuvers demanded of them: weaving from traffic lane to road's edge for pickup, darting around pedestrians curiously indifferent to their lives. Their dashboards are bedecked with votive images of Christianity, with Mary being the apparent patron of the minibus drivers. On the whole, these guys (always guys) seem less under the spell of a death wish than the taxi drivers who perform the most kamikaze feats of derring-do in the name of shaving 30 seconds of the transit time, only to return to sitting around aimlessly. A spoonful of adrenaline makes the medicine go down.

The best place to sit in a minibus is the front. The panoramic advantages of such seats are somewhat diminished by their certain-death-upon-impact and driver-fondling-your-leg thinking-its-the-gearshift qualities. The worst place to sit is probably on top of the wheel bed due to a hot torrent of dust. Two people operate a single minibus, the driver and the tout. The driver is usually the elder of the two, although it must be said that he might be twelve. The tout, for his part, has to be a born acrobat. At every opportunity he slides open the cargo door and hangs precariously out of the van shouting its destination: Saris! Saris! Piassa! Piassa! Mercato! Mercato! When he perceives an interested party, he slaps the side of the van signaling the driver to stop. Sometimes, inexplicably, the tout gets out and disappears for five or ten minutes until the driver begins leaving in storm of calumny; he then miraculously reappears bounding through the door. The minibus: an uneasy marriage of transportation and entertainment.

In this way, Meki and I arrived in Hannah Maryam's bucolic surrounds. I met his wife, Habiba, and his daughters, Hannan and Labiha; I also took a liking to the halcyon hut where I have been living for the last week and a half, hence my lack of posting.

Stay tuned...

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Yod Abyssinia: Ethiopian Dancing



Photos from Stefan The Swiss' last night in town taken at Yod Abyssinia on Bole Road. Featuring the inimitable Gebre Meskele Gessesse!

Yod Abyssinia caters to a well-to-do Ethiopian crowd, though a considerable faranji contingent is present. The menu represents the entirety of Ethiopia's rich national cuisine; it was here I first tried the mouth-watering tere sega: raw beef spiced to perfection. I ended up at Yod Abyssinia randomly, having run into Stefan constantly over his last two days in Addis. His friend from Mekele (the capital of Tigre), Gebre Meskele Gessesse, kindly drove us.

Aside from my pleasant company and the haute cuisine, I was very impressed by the dancers. I watched four to five of them (depending on the song) sweat to a variety of styles and work it for a full four hours. With the recent passing of James Brown looming large on the airwaves, I can't help but think that these people are the hardest-working men and women in show business. All in all, an enjoyable and highly recommended experience.

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22 December 2006

Addis Ababa Photos



Photos from my first week of rambling around Addis Ababa.

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21 December 2006

The Madness of the Mercato

After four days of outfoxing Addis Ababa's pickpockets, I deemed myself mentally prepared for the Mercato. Perhaps dumb luck accounted for the integrity of my belongings, or perhaps the alarmist tone of the guidebooks had no basis in fact. Regardless, my tally of stolen goods had accrued to one mechanical pencil probably misplaced during a bout of peer pressure between me and a bottle of Scotch.

Gazetted by the Italians in 1938 as a 'Grand mercato indigeno,' this ill-defined area northwest of the city's center has since functioned as its commercial hub. It is said to be the largest outdoor market in Africa, one that suffers a nasty reputation for wallet-snatching and bag-slashing. Its literary status seems to depend on where a given author stands in respect to the wind: some describe it as an intoxicating confluence of exotic aromas, while others call it a stinking cesspool. All seem to agree that the Mercato sells anything and everything, from camels to chat, from silk finery to AK-47's. The time had arrived for me to form my own invalid opinion.

Averse to sparing myself the city's less appetizing sights and eager to let the sun work my doughy flesh into the hardened bronze of disgraced country club ladies, I walked the 6km from Churchill Avenue to the Mercato via the Piazza. It was an unusually hot day for Addis; so hot, in fact, that I considered resorting to disgraceful measures previously unknown to me, namely the wearing of shorts. Fortunately for my dignity, I had read that Ethiopians are modest dressers, and shorts fell outside the purview of propriety. I thus took to the streets attired in a two-tone blue outfit of rolled-up long underwear and jeans. Almost everyone else was better dressed. In my zeal to avoid appearing the Great White Colonizer, I instead looked like a pauper, or more accurately, someone with no self-respect. Like most of my attempts at cunning, my wardrobe betrayed an embarrassing core of malfunctioning self-consciousness. Oh well; it was a worthy effort.

Along Churchill Avenue, Addis' main artery, I grew sympathetic to the accounts of former travelers. Uniformly churlish in tone, they give the impression of a chronically unfinished city. I can't say that this view is wholly inaccurate: the growth of Menelik's 'New Flower' appears more a process of metastasis than blossoming. The sanitation system, at least, hasn't caught up with the population density, if such an amenity can be said to exist at all. At every river's bridge, people hurl sodden buckets of rubbish onto the banks below. Whether purposely, accidentally or inevitably, these piles set ablaze and befoul the air.

But there are other amusements: where else can you witness outdated minibuses, cars and donkeys vying for suzerainty of diesel-choked streets? Where else can you see children head-butting crude tetherballs amidst a backdrop of Armenian architecture and Marxist obelisks? Where else can you hear the amplified crooning of Orthodox Churches competing with the Mosques' muezzins for the souls of a city? However much Addis may shock the senses, it still evokes sensibility.

Somewhat inured to shock, it was nevertheless with some surprise that I walked into the Mercato only to see a naked man spreadeagled on the pavement as if it were his private beach. A broad, beatific grin stretched across his face; his dress--ornamental at best--was more typical of a San "bushman" than an urban Ethiopian. I took everything about him to be exceptional, although I haven't any idea what rule such an exception might prove.

The Mercato opens into an endless warren of ramshackle stalls struck together out of dilapidated buildings and corrugated metal. The further you tread, the more you disappear into a dusty jungle of hawkers shrilling their wares. Nearly one third of the men sweat beneath some tremendous burden on their backs, usually a sack of grain. Gaggles of women sing and dance from the waist up; glassy-eyed men sit splayed in the shade ruminating on chat; shifty characters flit across the streets; lumbering trucks drive in virtual assurance of pedestrian fatalities--all to the national soundtrack of florid caterwauling that is Ethiopop.

Keeping in mind Ethiopian piety and modest dress, I was surprised to see that urinating in the middle of the street was not only permissible, but popular as well. I decided not to follow suit despite a distended bladder. I didn't feel that such relief would blend in, even as a man five feet from me loosed a yellow lasso. Just then a boy in brown rags backed into me. I turned around to see him holding a rock with palpable menace. I backed away. A better-dressed boy ran up and kicked him. The ragged one cocked the rock as if to throw. His opponent laughed and ducked under a blow to kick him again, exciting an outburst of laughter. Bystanders began to hoot and holler. The aggressor jogged over to make a final attempt. The poor boy's knuckles whitened around the rock as the well-dressed boy trotted up to him to land a kick. He pretended to throw the rock, caught the foot of the kicker, shoved him away and hurled the rock at him. It landed on the assailant's back with a dull thud. The ragged boy preened for the jubilant crowd while his opponent squirmed groaning on the ground. Justice was served.

Elsewhere, my presence as the lone faranji was taken with amusement, curiosity or hostility depending on the person. Rounding the corner on to the chat street, an adolescent boy ran up to me and wailed, "Why? Why are you here?" He said it with the abject passion one normally associates with Christ's last words on the cross: "Father, why have you forsaken me?" Not much later, a muttering madman caught sight of me and crossed the street to scream spit-flecked words into my face. He stood a shrunken five feet tall and had to tilt his head back to lob saliva at me. My limited understanding of Amharic notwithstanding, his speech didn't conform to any discernible pattern and seemed more a loose concussion of improvised sounds. Then he began beating me with a switch. Naturally, I found this a bit vexing and objected to my shabby treatment.

"Yikarta!" I said, Amharic for "Excuse me!"

He continued beating me undeterred. I didn't exactly have Barry Bonds on my hands; the beating was aggravating but not very painful.

"Yikarta!" I repeated.

I moved away to little effect. I looked around in exasperation only to see the younger boys pointing giddily in my direction. A bemused crowd began to form around us as my assailant continued his anemic flogging. Finally, a soldier broke through the ranks and began waving what looked to be an AK-47 in the air. He yelled at the man and kicked him in the backside. As the loony scurried away, the soldier pointed to his head and said, "Ballagé."

Crazy.

It was a fitting epitaph to the day.

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16 December 2006

American Freedom vs. Ethiopian Poverty

The last television show I watched in Amsterdam was an MTV production concerning a petty teenage girl determined to have "the best birthday party ever." A camera crew followed as she spent $3000--the equivalent of 48,000 meal tickets for starving Ethiopian children--on slutty dresses for her friends and herself. She went so far as to hire a professional French maid to deliver the invitations personally; she also enlisted a team of circus performers to provide entertainment. Her central concern, repeated incessantly, was for her and her friends (comprising two other mentally vacant bimbos) to look better than everyone else. For her, there was no greater moral imperative than the shameless brandishing of her ego; in the end, there was no philosophical difference between her and a baboon baring its red ass at the other monkeys in the canopy.

Our culture is a decadent one that enshrines this godless hogwash. How far we've come from lettered Jeffersonian democracy to a television nation of MTV Cribs and Pimp My Ride! From gentlemen farmers to worshipers of Bling! $30 billion a year in pornography sales (the same amount as our foreign aid), rock n' roll glorification of drug abuse, Girls Gone Wild, American Idol: our cultural offerings read like a rap sheet of vice in the seventh circle of Hell. And still, we sanctimoniously adorn ourselves with "What Would Jesus Do?" bracelets as if we had ever dared to ask the question.

If it sounds like I'm shell-shocked by the scale of poverty in Addis Ababa, it's because I am. In America, at least, we console ourselves with the belief that the poor lack a proper work ethic--even when this consolation is everywhere threatened by historical precedents that divvy our wealth along racial lines. In Ethiopia, this thinking has failed me entirely. The idea that individual greed will somehow result in greater social good just doesn't hold when you see a brand new Mercedes zipping past children so famished they can't even beg. On any major road in Addis Ababa, the full menagerie of human suffering confronts you: elderly women with their eyes gouged out; motionless bodies dying, if not already dead, from starvation; snot-nosed AIDS orphans walking the broken pavement without any shoes; contortionist cripples, their limbs ravaged by polio, throwing themselves at your feet in the name of God. The odd trickster and sob-storyteller cannot alleviate it: there is nothing, simply nothing, that justifies your privilege. No national myth, no American dream, no benevolent God or Invisible Hand can comfort you. And that, I think, is why most of the foreigners I've seen are driving by, not walking through, Addis Ababa.

Meanwhile, in the National Museum, tourists arrive in droves of taxis to gawk at the 3.2 million year old remains of Lucy, the first unearthed example of Australopithecus afarensis. (Funny how a dead ape excites more interest than a dying child). Lucy represents an ape-faced species taking its first, faltering steps toward modern Homo sapiens. As such, she constitutes the probable ancestor of the Homo genus to which we belong. Her ability to walk upright freed her hands for the creation of tools, the first such examples having been discovered in Ethiopia's Gona Valley and dated at 2.5 million years old. The fossil record continues: Australopithecus africanus appears around 3 million years ago, followed by the larger-brained Homo habilis; Homo erectus, with its 1000 cu. centimeter brain, shows up at 1.5 million years, and finally Homo sapiens evolves, found in Dire Dawa 60,000 years ago--not geographically far from Lucy. With its 1300 cu. centimeter brain capacity, Homo sapiens created superior weapons and technology. By 2006, it was the most successful species on the face of the earth.

Upstairs, the archaeological artifacts of Aksum--an ancient kingdom in northern Ethiopia--give insight into the genius of our species. Metal bells, elegant statues and ceremonial trinkets stretch back 7,000 years, most of them inscribed with mysterious alphabets. Slowly, a consonantal Sabean script evolves into the vowel-inclusive Ge'ez; then comes the widely-spoken Amharic of today. Syrian monks arrive with monotheistic religions in the 4th century, revolutionizing the highlands--while today's Europeans were slogging through the Dark Ages, pillaging villages and being eaten by wolves, Ethiopia lived under a devout Christian kingdom that minted its own currency. Traditional history holds that a line of Solomonic kings ruled the empire for nearly 2000 years, a tradition borne out by the museum's collection of regalia. Beautiful, gold-filigreed vestments, towering crowns and colossal thrones trace a noble line through the centuries, culminating in His Majesty Halie Selassie--otherwise known as Ras Tafari. The emblems of royal power incite awe and demand reverence.

My thoughts turn back to Ethiopia's mind-numbing poverty. How could anyone live in such contemptuous pomp surrounded by the stinking, starving masses? The answer, perhaps, lies downstairs with Lucy. Many modern biologists--using the same DNA evidence we summon to dole out the death penalty--believe that were it not for a certain species-chauvinism, we humans would fall into the same genus as chimpanzees. Chimps are, after all, our closest living relatives. Anyone who has been to the zoo or watched the Discovery Channel knows how distressing this is. In turns masturbating and slinging shit at each other, the life of a common chimpanzee is a depressing spectacle, a meaningless quest for domination leavened by the occasional moment of extraordinary compassion. A powerful male uses violence and intimidation to unite a group that wars against others for resources. Social rank arises, determining who gets the largest share of the booty. As we humans band together under the banners of nations, races and religions, it becomes difficult to brush off the suspicion that our enlarged brains work to the same ends as apes. Just like them, we all need food, sex, shelter and another group of us to hate. Christian kingdom or not, the poor suffer while the powerful stroke themselves; that's nature for you.

I enter another room to find my passage blocked by a throng of schoolchildren. I cannot move; I'm stranded against a wall. Soon they surround me in curiosity, giggling in their brilliant blue uniforms. One of the bolder girls walks up to me.

"Tadyass? How are you?" I ask.
The children erupt in laughter at my lamentable Amharic.
"Tadiyass," she says pedantically. "Where are you from?"
"America."
"What city?"
"Milwaukee."

Not a single look of recognition in the sea of faces.

"Near Chicago," I add. A flurry of approval ensues. One of the boys bursts out, "Michael Jordan! Chicago Bulls!" Everyone begins cheering. The girl asks me another question; I can't understand her English. Not wanting to embarrass her in front of her peers, I pretend I can't hear for the crowd.

The teacher approaches. "They want to know what you think about Ethiopia," he offers.

"I like Ethiopia very much. It all began here; there is very much history. My country is not even one quarter as old as yours."Everyone is still looking at me so I continue, "I enjoy learning about your country. It is good to be a student. It is good to study hard."

One of the younger boys rushes over and hugs me around the legs.
"Can I take a picture of you?" the teacher asks.
"Yes, of course."
At this, half a dozen little girls run up and start hugging me, clinging to my arms and legs. We all smile for the camera, together, as one mass of black and white.

Later that night, I smile at the memory. Perhaps it's not all power, glory, and lies. Perhaps we aren't deluded creatures mistaking our desires for virtues, our domestic bliss and base materialism for piety, our suffering for godliness, our chimp creations for civilization. Perhaps there is hope somewhere for Ethiopia's poor; maybe a Kingdom of Heaven awaits.

I'm in bed, but I can't sleep. A huge dog fight breaks out in the shantytown. One of them is being torn apart, yelping madly while the attackers snarl and the onlookers bark. Before long, the humans join in, yelling from their hotel rooms: Shut up! Be quiet! Fuck you! I decide to write about the poor from the comfort of my double bed, to purge myself to sleep.

Somewhere in the cacophony over Addis Ababa, between the Hilton and the ghetto, among the dying animals and men, I can hear the Birthday Girl laughing at the meek who are supposed to inherit the Earth.

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13 December 2006

First Night in Addis Ababa

In Amsterdam, I resigned myself to the fact that my ridiculous number of books was unsupportable by a frameless burlap sack. I went to an outdoors store and bought a smart Osprey bag on wheels. The price: 150 Euros. Prior reconnaissance revealed this to be the base price for such a convenience. A credit card sealed the deal.

The next day I boarded a KLM flight for Ethiopia. It was still light out when we crossed the Sahara en route to Khartoum. The view was bewitching: an endless sea of sand extending into the blue yonder. On the horizon, a rusty bar of red oxide split the difference. The colors shaded into each other, mimicking a Rothko painting. And so, from the window of seat 37A, one could contemplate eternity.

I looked over my notes on Ethiopia, and it occurred to me that the average Ethiopian's salary was little more than half the amount I paid for my new luggage. (In 1997, per capita GDP hovered around $137.) It was a snappy figure, one that said something. But as I tried to comprehend its true meaning, I found myself dumbstruck. Imagination has its limits. In America, where I have watched several times that amount poured into one night's drinking, it is simply impossible--even through the most strenuous intuition--to translate one hundred thirty-seven dollars into a year's pay. The mere thought of it invited paralysis.

The flash of a camera reanimated me. A Frenchman five rows ahead pantomimed to a couple behind me. I had seen them before, a maudlin tourist group of eight individuals anxiously zipping and unzipping their safari pockets between photo-ops. As they played hot potato with the camera, I began to wonder how many group photos would prove necessary. First they took them in the departure lounge, then the airplane, the exit terminal, the immigration line (photography not permitted), the bureau of currency exchange, and as my taxi screeched into traffic, the arrival lane outside Bole International Airport. They must have lived in mortal terror of returning home to a gathering of themselves only to find that all recollection of their groundbreaking transit had catastrophically vanished.

"And then we transferred to KLM flight 553."
"Yes, yes! And then? Summon the picture!"
"Then we sat in a wacky flying machine!"
"Zut alors! Now I remember! And then?"
"Then we walked off the flying machine!"
"Mon Dieu! We were so crazy!"

At customs, they stood in line with the frenetic excitability of children entering their first day of Kindergarten; they had the new clothes and supplies to match. Mint-condition North Face gear abounded alongside pressed pants and spotless khaki vests. As off-putting as I found all of this, the most distressing part of the picture was the ghastly mole on the ear of one latter-day Napoleon. I had noticed the monstrosity earlier and dismissed it as an unfortunate earring. But as I stood behind this perpetual motion machine of a man, it dawned on me that the earring was a horrendously huge--and hairy--mole. It peered from the lobe of his ear like a wet dog nose. It was so repulsively large that I came to wonder whether it was of the ear or whether the ear was of it. Would not such a mole strike fear in to the hearts of African children? Would the Islamic insurgents of the east behead it and march the mole around on a pike to the cheering of Ogaden masses? Why was it still there? Did he mistake it for a beauty mark?

Whatever the case, the mole was to the sense of sight what raw sewage is to the sense of smell. I determined to rid myself of it, and I took the first taxi into town; or, rather, the first taxi made available to me. A motherly woman with a laminated badge around her neck noticed me mindlessly scanning the airport. It had been a bit confusing. The procedure after getting a visa wasn't well demarcated, and I had stood in another line for twenty minutes only to find that I could have walked right through to customs.

"Taxi?"
"Yes, please."
"Follow me."

She walked me to an unlit taxi depot about 300 meters away. She spoke in Amharic to a man standing next to an unmarked car with, as it turned out, no meter. Before I had a chance to bargain over the fare, he wrested my new bag from me and tossed it in the hatchback. Not wanting to cause a scene, I followed suit with my backpack and hopped in.

"How much for Plaza Hotel? 30 birr?" I asked. The maximum fare for anywhere in town should be no more than 40 birr.
"Ha ha, 30 birr," he replied.
"So, 30 birr to the Plaza?"
"Ha ha 30 birr. You have reservation?"
"Yes."

And then he pressed down on the accelerator.

Less than a minute later, I began to grasp the reality behind the inscrutable income statistic. Under a bridge on Bole Road lay bodies wrapped in dusty rags. One of them sat slumped against a pylon clutching an infant. Her eyes wearily followed the taxi.

"Plaza Hotel, yes?" the driver asked.
"Yes."

Along the street stood lean, attractive women tapping their feet and casting goo-goo eyes in my direction. Polio victims hurtled themselves across the road one crutch at a time. Younger, luckier couples walked hand-in-hand between bars. Under the cover of midnight, Addis seemed as mysterious to me as it had on the airplane five hours before.

The taxi zoomed into the Plaza Hotel compound, and the driver accompanied me to the reception desk. After what seemed like an unusually long period of time, a lovely young lady behind the desk noticed me standing there.

"Hello, I have a reservation for tonight. First name, Dallas."
She looked at me as if I had just said, "Hello, I am an axe-murderer. Please ready yourself for a massacre."
"We have no more rooms!" she replied.
"I made the reservation last night. Could you check the book, please?"
She apathetically paged through it. "No, no reservation!"
"This is the Plaza Hotel, isn't it?" I inquired.
"Yes, Plaza Hotel."
"And you have no record of the reservation I made last night?"
She shook her head.

The driver and I returned to the taxi. He seemed more worried than me.

"How about the National Hotel?" I asked.
"No! Full!"
"Ghion Hotel?"
"Full!"
"Extreme Hotel?"
"Full! All full!"
Befuddled I asked, "Why are they all full?"
"There is African football conference."

We sat silently in the dark for a couple of minutes. The driver lit a cigarette despondently. He offered me one; I accepted. After a couple of puffs, his face lit up. He said something that sounded like a place to stay.

"Is it good?" I asked.
"Yes, very good."
"How many birr?"
"Same as Plaza."
"What did you say the name was?"
He repeated himself. It sounded like "Mariot," a hotel I knew to be near the airport, back where we came from.
"Okay."

We headed back down Bole road toward what I thought would be the Mariot. I began feeling a bit vulnerable, alone in Ethiopia with only the kindness of an unmarked taxi driver to see me through. I had no bearings, no friends, no Amharic. We turned abruptly onto an unpaved road; a sign read "Midi Pension". The driver honked furiously until, five seconds later, the gate opened.

At the reception desk was another beautiful, young woman. I asked for a room, and she smiled, "Yes, we have a room for you. Would you like to see it first?" I nodded, "Yes, please."

We walked up two flights of stairs to the room. Given the price range, I expected something similar to the promises of the Plaza: DSTV, a plush double bed, perhaps even wall-to-wall carpeting. Instead, there were unconnected cables hanging from the ceiling, a cruddy tile floor, and a box of condoms on the bedside table.

"I'll take it."

Having less than four hours of sleep in the last forty-eight, I didn't want to lallygag anymore. I went downstairs to get my bags. I asked the driver how many birr I owed.

"70 birr."
I hesitated. Crossing the entire city would have cost less, but I was in no mood to argue. I withdrew a 100 birr bill. Seeing this, the driver added,
"30 birr for waiting."
I was being had. As I learned later, the primary occupation of the Addis taxi driver was precisely this--waiting. If five minutes' waiting cost 30 birr, then taxi drivers would make more in an hour than the average Ethiopian could hope to make in a month.
"Fine, 30 birr for waiting and the cigarette."
He took the bill morosely. I watched as my guardian angel turned around, got in the cab and drove off.

Back in my threadbare room, I opened a duty-free bottle of scotch. Having read about the legion difficulties of importing liquor into African countries (most notably in the works of the Naipaul brothers), I bought it expecting to have some trouble to write about. No such luck; when I showed the customs officer the liter of booze, he simply waved me through. As I took a deep draught of Johnny Walker, I despaired that absolutely nothing had gone according to plan. I fell back into the bed on the brink of sleep after a couple more gulps.

Minutes later I was aroused by the sound of platform shoes clanking up the stairs. The door of the room next to me opened, and the sounds of love-making commenced shortly thereafter. This wasn't out of the ordinary; amorous grunts had been a regular feature of the hotels in Amsterdam. But here they took on a quality closer to the rapture of Arabic singing than the desperation of coital competition. They began to weave in and out of a broader nighttime chorus of throbbing music, incessant car horns, the occasional braying ass, and an agonizingly nocturnal rooster. When I could no longer tell who or what was making which sound, I put on my headphones and listened to Sleeping in the Aviary.


I fell asleep on my first night in Ethiopia listening to Wisconsin.

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08 December 2006

More Amsterdam Photos



Here's a slideshow of yet more photos sniped between Centraal Station and the Leidseplein.

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07 December 2006

The Red Light District



Here are some photos from the notorious Red Light District of Amsterdam, taken amid threats from touts who promised to break my camera. An entry is on the way.

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04 December 2006

Zwarte Piet

While the permissiveness of Dutch society can give you a contact high, one learns quickly that tolerance does not equal acceptance. Less Dutch smoke marijuana than Americans (6% vs. 8%), and prostitution is the furthest thing from most Amsterdamers' minds. Before long, the panoply of vice spewing forth from Damrak and the Red Light District fades into oblivion, much like the tourists who flock there.

Once the glitzy filth loses its luster, the city reveals its true treasures. But those are for another entry. What I want to talk about here is the only thing that still raises one of my eyebrows: Zwarte Piet.

While combing the Leidsestraat and other commercial avenues, I kept coming across the same picture. There were many variations, but they all included a Santa Claus crowned in a papal hat. Attending him were boisterous black faces with plumed kangaroo hats, enormous golden earrings and inflamed red lips. It was a caricature of the most minstrel variety, the sort of thing that would give Spike Lee a cerebral aneurysm (see below).


Flabbergasted, I asked Natasja van de Weg--one of my gracious hosts--what was going on. She explained that in the Netherlands, Sinterklaas comes from Spain in a steam boat. But Sinterklaas isn't Santa Claus--he's actually Saint Nicholas. When he arrives, an army of so-called "Black Petes" deliver the presents on his behalf. (The famously pragmatic Dutch are not so incredulous as to believe that St. Nick could deliver all the presents himself). Black Pete is a trickster who delights in passing judgment on the children. The good ones get presents; the bad ones get thrown in a burlap sack and shanghaied to Spain. And that, my friends, is St. Nick--Dutch style.

I protested: everyone knows that Santa Claus resides in the North Pole and drives a team of flying reindeer. Then I realized that the American Santa Claus is perhaps even more absurd; besides, this was Saint Nick we were talking about. But the more I learned about Black Pete, the worse it got. First of all, it is problematic on a number of levels to have a horde of black men indentured to a fat white guy. It's not culturally sensitive. There is, apparently, some less loaded historical resonance: Piet is black because he is Moorish, and the Moors conquered Spain which, in turn, conquered the Netherlands. But he is also black because he climbs down chimneys. As we know, Dick van Dyke wore a permanent smudge as a chimney sweep in Mary Poppins. This knowledge has inspired legions of Dutch people to daub their faces with black grease and take to the streets in a riot of racially-charged Yuletide cheer.

I asked around for Zwarte Piet hot spots on the 5th of December, the day of gift-giving. It turned out that these festivities are mostly private and children-oriented. Plus, Black Pete is most in evidence in late November when he arrives by boat.

Dejected, I returned to my hotel room and turned on the television. For a moment I thought I was hallucinating: there on the screen was a swarm of children in black-face and harlequin dress doing gymnastics. Some walked precariously on balance beams, others vaulted through the air. One pranced around with a ribbon the color of his obese crimson lips. The scene changed; now they were climbing jungle gyms and gallivanting on grassy fields. "This is just messed up," I said to myself. As if in response, the audio track switched to obscene giggling. The camera panned out, and now the politically incorrect children were gadding about on the belly of the purple Teletubby!

It was all too much. I changed the channel. In front of a Swiss mountain backdrop stood the most Aryan-looking German possible. A scarf wrapped around his neck and a twinkle in his eye, he was singing what else but "What a Wonderful World."

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03 December 2006

The First 24 Hours in Amsterdam

During my first two days in Amsterdam, I ranged far and wide through the city, mostly on account of misfortune. No sooner was I expulsed from the hubbub of Centraal Station did I find myself confronted by Damrak's gaudy array of sex shops, tacky curios, English style breakfasts and careening trams. A steady downpour lent the cobbled streets a dour air. I wanted nothing more than to abscond to my hotel and swaddle myself in a down comforter, but check-in wasn't until 2pm. It was seven in the morning.

Still, there was a spring in my step. Coming from three straight years in the insular state of Wisconsin, here I was in a real, cosmopolitan city. It was a decidedly non-American city--not a loose patchwork of ethnic neighborhoods; from the gabled roofs to the lapping canals, it was unmistakably Dutch, owing in no small part to an historical advantage of some five hundred years. And it was conspicuously cosmopolitan: every variety of human being is abundantly present in Amsterdam where less than half the population is ethnically Dutch. French, German, English, Arabic and Nederlands coursed through the air of Damrak along with heavy plumes of hash smoke.

It was not long before I became acquainted with the inner-workings of this city reclaimed from the sea. The latticework of canals and dams that keep Amsterdam afloat contributes to an irregular network of streets. As I was to find out the hard way, the avenues of Amsterdam radiate from the Ij River so confusingly that they are utterly incomprehensible on the ground.

It was into this incomprehensibility that I wandered. Neurotically loath to ask for directions lest I mark myself a boorish American halfwit, I pigheadedly marched into the unknown--and the unknown I certainly found. My morbid self-awareness multiplied with the sight of every immaculately dressed European, as did my taboos. Soon I refused to even glance at my map, and soon I was despicably lost. I had only my camera with me, and I used it with the desperation of a man destined for the gallows, taking refuge in scribbling his final thoughts (see below).

One moment I was in the lovely plaza of De Spui (pronounced De Shpye). The next found me stranded between canals. Soon I was wandering through a warren of markets, then over what appeared to be a highway, an industrial zone, a park, an alleyway saturated with marijuana smoke, a gay bondage shop, an upscale shoe store, and finally the same park as before.

7am turned to 6pm as I stumbled hysterically back to the Centrum. My otherwise reliable Vasque boots were in tatters with the left one now bereft of a sole. My feet were blistered and throbbing, my mind mishmashed, my dignity stripped and my confidence crippled. As a fortuitous turn brought me to the facade of Hotel Luxer, I felt a kind of spiritual rapture known only to the religious pilgrim who, after a journey of great peril, throws himself madly to the ground and passionately kisses it. I finally had my hotel, my bed, and my sleep.

I woke early the next morning for the free "continental" breakfast. The fecundity of the continent is such that it circumscribes a full two types of bread, sandwich meat, hard boiled eggs, and donuts. Eager to sate myself, I found the entire self-serve counter blockaded by a scrawny white boy with a brain-fried look on his face and a Nike shirt--my first American! Though there was ample seating available in the form of twelve empty tables, my compatriot stood at the counter shoving donuts into his mouth.

"Excuse me," I said.

He turned to me, his mouth ringed with crumbs, a strand of spittle suspended to a withdrawn donut, and replied,

"Uhh."

I collected my food and sat down. I glanced at him periodically as my disbelief gave way to expectation--surely the present donut would meet the same fate as all the others: half-eaten and redeposited on the counter.

Suddenly, a maid appeared to replenish the supplies. She looked askance at the Braindead American. He turned to her. Slowly, he lifted his donut-hand with zen-like disinterest. Their eyes met. I sat riveted as he blubbered,

"What's this?"
"Dat," she replied, "is a donut."

He looked satisfied, then frightened. He pointed to the coffee-maker.

"What's this?"
"Eet is making the koffie."
Then he pointed to a specific button.
"What's this?"
"Dat is the button for the koffie."

Improbably, he continued:
"What's this?"
"Dat is the button for cappuccino."

He pointed to each of the twelve buttons--clearly marked in English and Dutch--and asked the same question. Satisfied with his mastery of the bewildering coffee maker, he turned his attentions to a pitcher of orange juice, then milk. The maid, exasperated, said,

"Dat is milk, the same color in America, no?"
"Uhh."
"Why don't you sit down?"

I finished my breakfast and left. One last glance confirmed my suspicions: a pile of half-eaten donuts lay scattered on his table.

I have never felt less patriotic.

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