05.11.04

Andy woke up and spent the hour and a half before we left for the office in the bathroom on the toilet. He made a gallant effort to get out to the field, but needed to be dropped off once we passed the hotel on the way out of town. Last we saw of him he was running from the Land Cruiser to the public restroom in the hotel.

I had assured him I could handle the kids myself today, and had the kind help from Tadesse and Baileyin when we got to the village we were going to, forty minutes away. We pulled out the electric scale and bottled-water weights and tared the scale. We got the height-measuring stick and head and arm tape measures out. I thought I saw a baby waiting, so I pulled out the
rope and hanging scale, and tared that too, and the "measuing bed"--a board with a perpendicular footboard we press the screaming little kids down on to get their length.

Fortunately, we weren't that busy. There was only one family with two boys, six and seven. They weren't even scared. Unfortunately, as soon as I got done reading their measurements, I saw a funny little fuzzy sparkle right where the numbers on the measuring tape should have been. I watched to see what would happen, but it only got bigger. What a drag. These things always seem to start just as I've gotten into the swing of my day, gotten where I'm going. Usually Layton, this time Gebre's village.

I finally got the guts to tell Alemush that I also seemed to be getting sick, was there a way Tadesse could possibly bring me back to Soddo, and if not, fyi, I'm going to be useless to you today anyway as I can't see. Baileyin asked why I didn't just take some Ibuprofen, since we'd brought some for Wenchet whose jaw was swollen from an infected tooth--a cavity. I
explained I would once it got to the pain stage. Alemush considered for a sec--this threw a loop in the day's plans; thought maybe they could find a school where I could spend the day. I just said, whatever. I'll be here sitting in the car b/c there's not much I can do. Then the car started moving and she poked her head in and said Tadesse was just going to bring me back. We met up with Abayneh on the road, who took me into town. Andy was surprised to see me, and said I had freaked Abayneh out a little--he asked if we needed to go to the hospital. I couldn't think and couldn't talk right, and knew I wasn't making sense.

So then Andy took care of me and I lay down, then I barfed, then I slept. We were both in bed sleeping when at about 4pm Nadew thrust open our window saying, "What has happened! What has happened!" Since we were both lying there in our underwear, Andy told him firmly to please close the window. Nadew's concern would not be put off. Andy said, "Please get out! Close the window!" "Close the window?" Nadew confirmed. "Yes. Go out. Close the window." "Ok." Nadew closed the window and opened our door and came in.
"Andy what happened? Are you ok?" Again, Andy: "Go out! Close the door!" "You want me to close the door?" "Yes. Close the door." Whereupon Nadew closed the door, Andy threw on some pants, and stepped outside. Turns out Alemush called when the team got back to see how we were, and Nadew was the messenger.

I heard Andy tell Nadew he thought he got sick from the goat yesterday, but Nadew adamantly denied it saying, "No, I told you God has permitted us to kill goat like this." Andy thinks its maybe a bug from when he was poking around with the goat innards. My illness Nadew attributes to being scared while watching the butchering yesterday.

When we ran into the road engineers in the restaurant tonight, they also thought we had possibly gotten sick from just watching. The village guy said it happens to him: "I'm serious, when I see something with a lot of blood or if I see a man die in the street, I am very disturbed. I don't like to eat afterwards. It's true." Though they also were pretty astonished that we hadn't seen it before, and thought it funny when we were astonished that they
all had killed sheeps before.

The rules are, they tell us, that the killer can't be a woman, and must be fasting beforehand. This means they must eat no meat for a few hours before the deed. Also, in addition to saying, "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost," when you slit the throat, you must make the sign of a cross over the animal. When I asked how this was different from the way Muslims kill their animals, (they also say, "B'ism Allah") they said Muslims
cut all the way through a goat--will take the head all the way off. Christians don't eat meat from Muslims butchers here, and vice versa probably.

Nadew gave me a copy of the rooster butchering photo and it's hot.

04.11.04

Finally watched the goat butchering this evening.

Events:
Three men and a goat walked over to the far wall. They called for us to come if we wanted to. Andy scrambled on his shoes and scrammed over, calling, "go fast Joh, go fast, you're gonna miss it, this is your chance, grab the camera." When I got over there, the goat was on its back with the two young men, Nego and Abera, each holding a pair of legs, up and tight in the air. The goat was lying there pretty serenely--didn't seem to be struggling, didn't seem to be wild-eyed or desperate the way the sheep at the Barn were that time we tried to load them into a truck to go be shorn. His funny little goat eye and his whole body waited.

The next part, in the end, I turned away for and didn't actually even watch after all this. The older man, also the entrance guard, leaned over the neck and with no fanfare, only a few words in Amharic--"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,"--slit open the soft skin with his big sickle knife. Then his part was finished and he went back to the hotel
entrance.

There was a wide gaping slit between the chin and the chest now where you could see the vertebrae of the goat's neck. Nego and Abera let go of the legs. The goat was on it side and its legs kicked and ran. The blood pumped out of the carotid arteries in wide orangish belches and sank into the grass. The eye looked a little more desperate now, and its mouth opened and closed though no sound came out.

When it looked like the goat had pretty much stopped moving, Abera grabbed one of the rear hooves and slit the skin inside the leg down across the rear. He did the same with the other rear hoof, meeting in the middle. Please oh please oh please let it really be dead by now. With a slice across the anus area, he had a beginning peeling point. He started a slit from the
rear end towards the throat, separating the skin tissues from the muscle tissues with quick practiced whacks of the curved knife. When the skin was off the stomach so that the two hindlegs were just bare meat, (he had already sliced and broken off the hooves at the ankles) he strung them up on a rope and he and Nego carried it over to the tree by the laundry shed. They threw the rope over one of the branches and hoisted it up. With the back legs and stomach free, all they had to do was turn it around and give a yank and the skin came off the back. "It is a coat," said Nadew, who had joined us later. Only tricky part left was cutting around the ears.

Skin was off. Next they cut off the head. It sat on the cement block beside the skin and metal kitchen pan. Then they cut open the stomach to get the innards out, which they left in a pile, except for the stomach, for the birds and cats to eat--"It is their dinner, you know? It is like a gift." After they gave us an anatomy lesson. The stomach was HUGE. Seems like most
of the goat was stomach. There's just not much meat on these things. (I guess. I mean, what do I know? I only see meat in lumps.)

The lungs they threw up on the wall for the cats who had shown up, along with two pearlescent testicles the size of large roma tomatoes. Off came all the different parts till all that was left was a long, not-so-meaty, spine. The last thing to do was to disconnect the stomach and clean it out. Its just this big stretchy bag, so Abera flipped it inside out and dumped the contents--lots and lots of chewed up grass--and then took it over to the
water barrel spout to rinse, scrubbing and squeezing and juicing all the green out. On the inside, it is a grey-brown color with all these little knobby pills, like the inside of an old cotton sock. It looks very much like a stained old cotton sock on the inside. The outside is smooth white skin looking. It's very very stretchy. This is what tripe is. They cook it with peppers and spices.

And then that was it. The pan of meat went inside, the head I don't know what happened with it (though they assured me they don't eat it--they only do that in villages), and the skin gets sold. Finished.


Thoughts:
The guys were confused why we were so excited to see this. Haven't you ever seen an animal butchered before? We tried to explain that in our country, you just don't see farm animals the way you do here, and that all our butchering is done in factories. Factories, you know, like the places where they make clothes. I think it might have translated. "But what about in rural areas?" With limited language, it is impossible to explain to them what a Western grocery store is like and what "rural" means in most of America. Though there are exceptions, it doesn't mean self-sufficient/kill your own meat. Andy says this is actually a pretty cruel way to kill an animal--sure the blood may be drained, but the brainstem is still intact the whole time. You don't know what the animal is still feeling or thinking the
whole time.

Funny how quickly something goes from being an animal to being meat. When I said this only confirms my disinterest in meat, Andy said I should be excited about this; this is my dream meat. If I'm going to eat meat anywhere it should be here: this the freshest I'll ever see it, it's locally grown, range-fed, and free of antibiotics and growth hormones. True. I suspect
there would be a way to prepare it that would make it worth eating it. But with so many other things tasting so much better, why?

I've been making my first effort at reading the Old Testament while we've been here, and seeing a goat actually be killed makes much of the incomprehensible Mosaic law and symbolism throughout it a little more real. Suddenly, blood sacrifice is not an abstract. Makes me respect and like the fact that someone says something over the animal as it is being
killed--shows respect for the animal, for life. Add that to my list of musts for perfect slow-food meat: Fresh, locally grown, range-fed, free of antibiotics and growth hormones, and killed in a properly appreciative spirit.

03.11.04

Took Mamush to dinner tonight and got him his own plate of injera. Andy and I usually split one. We all lined up at the water bucket off to the side to wash our hands, and he scrubbed and scrubbed until a guy behind us finally told him, "bekka"--enough. He scarfed most of his meal and drank a whole bottle of Pepsi. He also insisted on feeding each of us some of his "potato chips," and shared his aleecha with Andy. I was already too full. Each of our plates came with a full, long green chili on it. Mamush took a bite of his and then hucked it over the wall to his pals who were waiting without. We gave his ours to do the same with, but it was a bad aim and it landed inside. We split the popcorn that arrived after the injera, with Mamush
discreetly licking the plate when we'd already stood up and passed him to go pay. At that point I foolishly pulled out the 100 birr note we had, crisp and clean and new. It was all the change we had. He wanted to hold it, inspect each side, hold it up to the light and look through it.

We had Wynerg wrap the rest of his rolled-up injera and sauce in newspaper for takeaway. While we were waiting for the change, Mamush picked off pieces of the newspaper wrapping with his teeth and mouthed them into spitwads which he projected a considerable distance in the air. He also kept pointing to my shirt, I thought. I tried to figure out what he was motioning. The words on my shirt? The colour? No and no. He finally touched me where he had been pointing: my breast. What? I withdrew in weirded out surprise. Andy pulled down Mamush's shirt and pointed out his tiny little black nipple as if to say, "It is this." What in the world? Mamush may not speak, but he's an eight-year-old street kid and this is certainly not the first time he's seen a woman's shape. I of course assume he's indicating the same whatever the Misrak girl felt she had to indicate. It was weird. Like he wasn't laughing or embarrassed, and he poked them in front of Andy and this other guy in the restaurant. What was going on?

Mamush doesn't talk around us. We thought he couldn't talk for a long time. He doesn't seem to know any English except Come on!, as unlikely as that is for a street kid in Soddo. (I mean they should at least know mother, father, one birr, feenuts (which they sell unshelled by the handful), and at least one unpleasant directive.) So he only uses gestures around us, like a mute mime. He gets pretty elaborate with them, which can be amusing. We did have
qualms about the precedent we were setting with him, and the fact that we didn't bring in the other two kids with us. And then I pulled out that 100 birr note. Oy. It's difficult to know. Anyway, it's over now. As Andy says, Mamush has a special relationship with the Orbis feuringes.

The director at the school we were by today crossed the road to where we were doing exams and approached Andy and I. Andy exits when he smells a solicitation, so I heard him out myself. He explained their need for money to support the school's HIV club, etc. They could use anything. Even tires for the bikes they use. Would we give some? I told him the line I've
rehearsed to myself, to Andy, to other people who have asked us. My husband and I have decided while we are here that we are only supporting the organization we are with, as we are unable to support every worthy cause we come across. Half valid, half lame. He continued to be very polite and asked if we were with the Lions club. No, I told him, this is a research project from an American university, not a charity organisation unfortunately. Did I
have contact with other organisations? he asked, and if possible, could I let them know about their need. I asked how I or they would contact him. Was there a telephone number? Or PO Box? He sort of laughed/snorted and explained carefully that this was a remote area, there are no telephones, duh. So how would they contact you? I asked. If they will come to the
school, they may come into my office and we can talk, he said. I will try I said. Then he thanked me and left. It was so polite and formal and sincere, it made my heart ache. I watched him walk away and thought of the all the different things we waste, of all the budgets wards and other orgs. have for plastic tableclothes and doughnuts and crappy ice cream. It just isn't fair. Abundance may never be equally distributed, but at the very least we have to realise that abundance is no excuse for waste.

Lots of people ask us for money, but this man was different. He wasn't begging. He was filling out a grant application.

02.11.04

There was a light rain early this morning that plinked on our tin roof and woke me up about 5:30. I decided to get up and out at 6:00 when the birds also got up and the sky was beginning to lighten. I walked out front and sat on the patio for a bit. Not long after, Genet popped her head out the front door and asked how the election went. I said I didn't know. She asked if I wanted to turn on the TV and watch. I ran to get Andy, whose last words to
me last night were, "I wonder if I could pay them to let me sleep in the bar and just watch CNN all night." He was lying awake in bed. He hadn't been able to sleep either. When I told him they'd opened the bar an hour early for us to watch, he sprung (really, I know that's cliché, but he did spring) out of bed and threw on clothes and grabbed the papaya I bought yesterday, to share with everyone up there.

Then he spent SIX hours watching CNN International's live feed from CNN USA headquarters with Larry King and Wolf Blitzer etc. While I write this it's 5:42am on Wednesday morning in Salt Lake, barely even the day after Election Day there, so actually, he did get to watch the election all night. Slowly, slowly, as results came in, his excitement dulled, his anticipation evaporated. He is depressed but philosophical about it. What this makes clear to me is just how much of a bubble I've been living in for the past six months, bizarrely, in one of the most Republican states in the Union. It just seemed so sure that Bush's record wouldn't recommend him to people. I've never paid so much attention to an election, and so never felt like so much was at stake, and so never felt so disappointed at the results. This election has, along with the dialogue between family and friends, been good
for making me figure out how I decide to vote for someone and how I stand on different issues. And granted, Andy's take has only been one, his interest in the manoeverings and "politics" as much as the issues, has also been an education.

I suspect it was better for him to be a continent and an ocean away for this election, with very limited information about it. "I wonder," he says, "if this is the begininng of the slow decline of America as the strongest country in the world." But he catches himself. "Its not that bad. It's not like we're going to become North Korea in four years."

01.11.04

Tomorrow is election day. Ironically, Andy's not even casting a ballot this time around. Although we had our absentee ballots sent to the Orbis office in Addis, we never received them. Even if they did arrive, we'd have to get them down here, then back up to Addis, and then FedExed to the States all within about two weeks. We haven't heard anything about them arriving in Addis. First thing Wednesday morning though, Andy will be in the hotel bar
watching CNN.

We leave Soddo in a week, which in a funny way suddenly makes it dear. Even when it's frustrating or annoying, it's dear. I find myself trying to memorise details and learning words and making mental connections that I wished I'd made seven weeks ago. The layered tableclothes in the diningroom. The tomahto sauce that comes out hot in two stainless steel chalices. The stale bread that comes out of the cupboard, and how Genet and Nado slice it
on the crumby cutting board under the tablecloth. The cupboard that houses the silverware and salt and limes and unrefrigerated ketchup. When we first brought it back from Addis, Genet asked if she could have the bottle when we're through. She's reminded us about it once.

The path out to the trash pile and laundry shed. Always negay when we ask when they're going to butcher the next goat. The tall scented geraniums the turtle always levels instead of eating grass. The pastry shop across the street . . .

Ugh, the pastry shop across the street. "Misrak Pastrey." It was my favourite eatery until the young staff got a little too familiar. I have no idea where it came from. I don't feel like I do anything obnoxious or attention-getting or different than anyone else. Except maybe we're less demanding because we don't know how to insist like everyone else does. Anyway, at one point we ended up waiting about 35 minutes for breakfast and finally I went in and cancelled and said we didn't have time to eat anymore, at which point they handed it to me right there. The waiter, this cute young guy who I generally like, invented a story about how we ordered something and refused it so the kitchen had to make us two breakfasts, when Abaineh showed up and we told him what was going on. Then the next day, not wanting
to completely sever ties with the closest breakfast alternative to the hotel, I went in to get some bread. The whole place pivoted and watched, nothing unusual. But then whole staff started laughing, the waiter guy looked at me and ran out of the room, and one of the counter girls, the one who always gets right in my face and says, "I love you," and laughs, asked
in front of the entire watching café, why certain parts of my anatomy were so small, while gesturing to her own, the whole staff laughing their heads off.

Come on. The last time that was an issue was in grade seven at Aweres school. Stupid girls chased each other in front of the boys snapping each other's bra straps to prove they had them. I stood with my back to the brick wall and wished I lived on a different, puberty-less, planet. (At Aweres school I also learned I didn't know how to make a fist--only someone who had never swung one would tuck their thumbs in.)

I rolled my eyes at the Misrak people and turned my back and walked out. And walked across the street to our room and raged at Andy for the idiocy of some people.

Two days earlier we were walking down one of the side roads to get some fruit, and an insistent begging woman I had passed by ran up behind me and caught hold of me through my shirt by my bra strap. She was quite strong, and let it snap back when I turned to see what was going on. It's hard to describe the kind of attention you get on the street here. I mean, its not hard to describe--its hard to imagine unless you've felt something like it.
EVERYONE is watching you. Everyone you look at you make eye contact with. Everyone saw the lady snap my strap. Probably only many of them, but it seemed like all, laughed. (Ok, as did I, but it was still embarrassing. Jeez.)

This has maybe been sounding a little negative. Every moment seems like a conflict between inflated expectations for helping/giving/fixing things and at the same time being a helpless (unless you speak more language than I do) target. My dignity is often lost. I don't like that. I'm lonely for people who don't want something from me and who don't want to laugh at me.

There's a cat in heat on our doorstep. She makes noises like I've never heard before.

28.10.04

The road men moved out because they hadn't had water in 20 days. I think it partly has to do with the fact that they're at the top of the slope, and we're at the bottom, so their water pressure runs out before ours. It had been 4 for us, though longer for hot water. Because we hadn't had a shower on the last day before it went away, I probably went 6 days without one. I finally stopped waiting and washed my hair over the sink with a pitcher of water. When the water came back, and then hot water a few days after that, it was like a spa, even though taking a shower here is like taking a shower back home in faucet drips after you turn the shower off.

There are three of the road guys in particular that we usually see at mealtime in the restaurant. One is getting white hair. He's this funny, goofy guy who grew up in a village in north-western Ethiopia, probably a lot like the kids we see everyday. He makes us laugh and complains about the food. "Meat, meat, meat, everything is meat. You think I'm a hyena or something?"

Their project is a new road between here and Addis, and the big new sign about it on the corner says it's supposed to be 93 km long, and take until 2007. These guys are the Ethiopian engineers who have been hired by the international contractor based in India, who was hired by the government in Addis to be in charge of the project. The people who will do the actual road
building are a Korean firm who won the bid. The actual labourers, the people who get sunburned and sweaty, will be south-east Asians, not Ethiopians, even though labor is so cheap here. The engineers say the Koreans don't like to work with Ethiopians because they don't put up with abuse and intimidation the way, say, Bangladeshis do. It's horrible.

This is where the whole "voting with your feet" thing gets complicated for me. It's easy enough to say, "I don't support something or other about such and such a company, so I'm not going to shop there or invest in it, etc. etc." And my first instinct when I hear about labour and abuse and intimidation is to say, "I'll never use that road." But honestly, (not, "Does it really matter?" No, of course it matters. It would still matter if only three of us in the world decided something like that and acted on it) is that kind of rule for myself anything less than a superficial act? Can I
really feel like I'm standing for my principles when I refuse to use that road, but use the old one every day without knowing what kind of labour and abuse and intimidation made it?

What I realize is that it requires that I either change my standard of morality in this kind of thing, or that I at least acknowledge the limitations of this standard. How can I live in the world and not of the world in this sense? I can't. My life is too inextricably woven through things that I don't stand for, both ideologically, and hopefully, practically. Who made the computer I'm writing on, and under what conditions? Do I support everything Dell does or supports? Is that a
requirement for me supporting them with my purchase? (Besides the point is the fact that Andy bought this computer almost seven years ago, before I even knew he existed.) Who made the plastic bottle I'm drinking bottled water out of? As I look around me, I realize there are very few items in our room that would qualify for me to have them in good concience, under this
rule.

Its like the Atonement: it's not enough to just have your virtuous acts outweigh your vile ones, and its not enough to just want to be or believe you are virtuous. The most you can do, and this will have to be acceptable to you and hopefully the rest of the world, is the most you can do. You can't stop trying, even if you know you'll never completely achieve the synchronicity between how you would like to be and how you are. With the Atonement, the beautiful thing is that with that kind of effort, it is enough. Or, what is not enough, becomes enough because the Saviour makes up for what you lack.

(I think the Atonement parallel is apt, because these kinds of decisions--to use this road or not, to shop here or not, whether they be for human-rights reasons or environmental reasons--in the end they're all about moral choices and moral attitudes. This is what (well, among other things) the Atonement deals with as well.)

Even Wendell Berry, who writes with a pencil and farms with horses, still uses airplanes and telephones and recognizes he can't be completely independent from what it is he has dedicated his life to change.