28.09.04
Writing the old-fashioned way tonight b/c the power’s been out for hours and somehow our computer is out of juice completely.
We just got back from a long weekend in Addis. It was lovely. A nice treat, not something we thought we’d say of it when we left about three weeks ago.
Tomorrow we start our real research--the stuff Andy’s going to get a paper out of. The immediate problems on doing a paper about malnutrition and trachoma around here: there doesn’t seem to be any malnutrition. There are very few kids around here who aren’t chubby or muscular or both--most are probably shorter (chronic malnutrion) than most but not skinnier (acute malnutrition). That’s good news, though different from what you usually hear about Ethiopia.
(The generators are louder and more annoying than the blaring music. Who gets the generator? The restaurant in the hotel? Or the gas station next door?)
We had the weekend off--Saturday to Tuesday--for Ethiopia’s second biggest holiday: Meskel, the celebration of the finding of the true cross. Most people I ask are kind of sketchy about some detail or other--was it Sheba who found it? Was it in Constantine’s time? Where did they find it? But communal wisdom says it was found in Jerusalem around 400-600AD, was recognized as the true cross by the inscription at the top of it, and was taken to Egypt, then brought to Ethiopia by an unknown means at an unknown time. Much like the Ark of the Covenant, people cannot see this cross, though to celebrate it, Addis burns a 50-foot tall pile of sticks and leaves and the president shows up along with the ambassodors from a lot of African nations. This necessitates a peptalk in English about Aids as part of the celebration speeches.
A terrific guy from church, Akawak (more on him later) met us at the Atlas hotel and got us a contract taxi for 60 cents each (we can’t usually get on for less than 20 birr) all down to Meskel Square, essentially an enormous one-sided mud amphitheater built on the side of a hill facing a wide intersection of some of Addis’s few paved roads. They had closed the roads coming in to Meskel Square, so the streets were crowded way more than normal and I saw way more white people than I’ve seen yet. Some were twenty-something women dressed in Ethiopian-style clothing. Some were twenty-something men with curly hair in ponytails. Mostly it was thronging, pushing, pulsing young Ethiopian men. There were probably 200,000 people gathered.
We would look up and see the security was tight--police all around below and snipers on the stone wall to our backs. Once the fire was lit, the president took off in a black motorcade almost immediately. The Orthodox Priesthood etc. who had been there in full regalia, moved back from the fire, but some of them kept dancing and waving their bright fans and scarves in choreographed patterns.
I had an experience I haven’t had before--either a panic attack or a claustrophobia attack--where I felt like I couldn’t get enough air and possibly like I was going to pass out, get a migraine, and barf, all simultaneously. It was odd and I couldn’t think myself out of it. Andy kindly pushed through the crowd with me to a back corner where I could sit on a muddy curb with a woman selling a little mound of oranges. She was surprised when I took a seat beside her, but didn’t pester me to buy anything. I held on to my ankles and tried to get a whiff of fresh air.
Leaving, once we’d all seen the fire pile go up in flames, people seemed to think it was a great game to see how tightly they could pack the exits and how much pushing and pressing and jostling the crowd would take. With our shoes all wet from slick red mud--everyone had it everywhere--we slid toward the gates, down the stairs, trying to catch a surface and moment to scrape our shoes a little.
It’s a full moon tonight and I must go to bed.
We just got back from a long weekend in Addis. It was lovely. A nice treat, not something we thought we’d say of it when we left about three weeks ago.
Tomorrow we start our real research--the stuff Andy’s going to get a paper out of. The immediate problems on doing a paper about malnutrition and trachoma around here: there doesn’t seem to be any malnutrition. There are very few kids around here who aren’t chubby or muscular or both--most are probably shorter (chronic malnutrion) than most but not skinnier (acute malnutrition). That’s good news, though different from what you usually hear about Ethiopia.
(The generators are louder and more annoying than the blaring music. Who gets the generator? The restaurant in the hotel? Or the gas station next door?)
We had the weekend off--Saturday to Tuesday--for Ethiopia’s second biggest holiday: Meskel, the celebration of the finding of the true cross. Most people I ask are kind of sketchy about some detail or other--was it Sheba who found it? Was it in Constantine’s time? Where did they find it? But communal wisdom says it was found in Jerusalem around 400-600AD, was recognized as the true cross by the inscription at the top of it, and was taken to Egypt, then brought to Ethiopia by an unknown means at an unknown time. Much like the Ark of the Covenant, people cannot see this cross, though to celebrate it, Addis burns a 50-foot tall pile of sticks and leaves and the president shows up along with the ambassodors from a lot of African nations. This necessitates a peptalk in English about Aids as part of the celebration speeches.
A terrific guy from church, Akawak (more on him later) met us at the Atlas hotel and got us a contract taxi for 60 cents each (we can’t usually get on for less than 20 birr) all down to Meskel Square, essentially an enormous one-sided mud amphitheater built on the side of a hill facing a wide intersection of some of Addis’s few paved roads. They had closed the roads coming in to Meskel Square, so the streets were crowded way more than normal and I saw way more white people than I’ve seen yet. Some were twenty-something women dressed in Ethiopian-style clothing. Some were twenty-something men with curly hair in ponytails. Mostly it was thronging, pushing, pulsing young Ethiopian men. There were probably 200,000 people gathered.
We would look up and see the security was tight--police all around below and snipers on the stone wall to our backs. Once the fire was lit, the president took off in a black motorcade almost immediately. The Orthodox Priesthood etc. who had been there in full regalia, moved back from the fire, but some of them kept dancing and waving their bright fans and scarves in choreographed patterns.
I had an experience I haven’t had before--either a panic attack or a claustrophobia attack--where I felt like I couldn’t get enough air and possibly like I was going to pass out, get a migraine, and barf, all simultaneously. It was odd and I couldn’t think myself out of it. Andy kindly pushed through the crowd with me to a back corner where I could sit on a muddy curb with a woman selling a little mound of oranges. She was surprised when I took a seat beside her, but didn’t pester me to buy anything. I held on to my ankles and tried to get a whiff of fresh air.
Leaving, once we’d all seen the fire pile go up in flames, people seemed to think it was a great game to see how tightly they could pack the exits and how much pushing and pressing and jostling the crowd would take. With our shoes all wet from slick red mud--everyone had it everywhere--we slid toward the gates, down the stairs, trying to catch a surface and moment to scrape our shoes a little.
It’s a full moon tonight and I must go to bed.
posted by Johanna Buchert Smith at 7:26 AM
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