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Impressions from Ethiopia
by Laurens de Bever
It is two months now that I returned from my second visit to Ethiopia, Lisa has started heading back to Switzerland today and shall be back in a few days. Here are some more impressions from my side, taken from both of my visits.
Water in Dimeka
In Dimeka we were walking on a dry riverbed. At first sight, the place looked completely dry. Then we came across a place where people had dug a hole and were letting their cows drink. We also saw several people who were taking a bath in such a hole. We tried out ourselves: it only took 20 cm to come across water (see pictures). So even when a place looks totally dry, the water may be very near - one just has to know it.
Give me money
Wherever you go in Ethiopia, you always hear people calling "You! You! Faranjii" (foreigner). Their command of English is mostly restricted to three expressions: "What is your name?", "Where are you go?" and "Give me money". At times they have something for sale, more often they just want you to give money or goods. The youth is the most obstinate, interacting verbally. Adults often just hold up their hand and look at one very wearily. In Dimeka, while walking through the riverbed, an old man came walking besides me and said "Brrr". I found this strange since it was anything but cold. He repeated "Brrr". Only then it occurred to me that he was saying "Birr", which is the Ethiopian currency.
The tendency of asking for money is strongly correlated with the number of foreigners visiting a certain region. In the small villages off the main roads, which are difficult to access and thus rarely visited by tourists or development workers, the phenomenon is almost absent. On the other hand, if you stop the car on a main road, even if the place looks completely deserted, people will start popping up from everywhere. Within a few minutes one is surrounded by people, above all young ones. I have wondered several times why this "you you" youth is not attending school…
The perpetual begging is difficult to cope with. Giving money or goods (they will accept your T-shirt, your shoes, your camera, your glasses, anything) is not a solution since this will only reinforce the system. At times one feels sorry since the people obviously have really nothing. At times one would like to discuss and explain them why one cannot give anything. Even if one had a common language, however, I am note sure whether a discussion would be fruitful. Our European mind set may not be able to grasp the Ethiopian reality to its full extent. In return, their mind set may not allow them to follow our chain of reasoning behind the decision not to give anything.
My usual way of dealing with it was just to ignore the people or - when they want to sell something - to politely say "no thanks". They will mostly continue their effort for a while and give up in the end.
In Addis Ababa, while waiting on the street for Lisa and Boniface, I was approached by two elderly men, probably homeless. Here I made the mistake of cursing at them in Dutch or German, a language that they didn't understand for sure. However, I underestimated the power and richness of language. Even when they could not understand the words themselves, they were perfectly able to grasp the meaning of what I said, probably from intonation and body language. They became quite aggressive and starting shouting at me. Also myself I did not understand the words, but I could quite well follow what they were accusing of: being arrogant and not willing to do anything for the Ethiopian people.
Piles of bank notes
For European standards, life in Ethiopia is very cheap. This is well illustrated by the fact that the largest bank note is 100 Birr (CHF 5 or ca. 4.5 euro). The bank notes go down to 1 Birr, i.e. 5 cents. Below that there are coins going down to 10 Ethiopian cents, i.e. 0.5 eurocents, but I haven't seen the coins being used much in practise. In Arba Minch I had to pick up 4'000 Birr. The ATM only had notes of 50 Birr, so I got a pile of 80 bank notes - quite impressive!
As a further illustration: on the way from Yabello to Awassa we had lunch in a place that actually looked quite expensive. We were seven people, everybody had food and something to drink. For the whole group I paid 293 Birr, i.e. CHF 15.
The one thing that is quite expensive - presumably especially for Ethiopian standards - is fuel, one litre of diesel costing 17 Birr (85 Rp.). Since the roads are bad and the car consumes a lot of fuel, a single one-way drive from Dhadim to Addis Ababa costs about 100 euro.
Cycling in Ethiopia
While driving around in a car all the time, I developed the desire to travel the country on a bicycle. There will be several difficulties, e.g. the heat, the language, the long and steep climbs in the mountainous landscape, but I'm convinced that it can be done. The one issue that I am mostly concerned about is in fact the "you you" youth. I estimate that one round trip from Addis Ababa via Arba Minch, Dimeka, Yabello, Awassa and back to Addis Ababa would take about 3 weeks, covering on average 80 km a day.
One the road from Dimeka back to Arba Minch we saw a foreigner on a bicycle with luggage. Unfortunately Boniface was not aware of my wish to talk to this man, hence we left him behind at 65 mph. We didn't see a second cyclist during the rest of my stay in Ethiopia. I will look out for him on my next visit.
If someone feels like joining me on this adventure, please feel free to contact me. But be prepared: this will be challenge squared!
During our second visit, I managed to speak to an irish guy on a bicycle. He has started in Egypt and was on his way south to Kenya and probably further down. He confirmed that the youth in Ethiopia could be very annoying, even the worst he had ever encountered. Something to take into account, but no reason not to try it.
Stuck in the mud
Philly and myself visited Dhadim over the Easter weekend. It was rain season, meaning that the weather started mostly very nice in the morning and thunder storms would build up in the afternoon or in the evening. On some days those resulted in heavy rainfall, on other days in moderate rain or none at all.
Friday, 29 March. We had to pick up some people in Yabello for the big celebration for Abba Iede (40 years in Ethiopia), that was going to take place tomorrow in Dhadim. Kilimpe had loaded the choir - around 15 young women - on the back of his pickup. The girls were singing and swinging merrily and Kilimpe headed off towards Dhadim. Boniface still had to buy some bread so we departed a little later, the car also loaded with more than 15 people. The rumour had already reached us that it would be raining heavily in Dhadim, so Boniface was a little nervous. On the asphalt road the sky turned black and we could already see the heavy rainfall in the direction of Dhadim. Shortly after turning onto the sand road to Dhadim it started pouring. In the meantime we had caught up with Kilimpe but Boniface was unable to pass him on the narrow and slippery road. The girls were by now hiding beneath a sheet of plastic.
When we came to a river crossing, Kilimpe, not being too familiar with the road, chose the wrong spot to cross the water and got stuck. Boniface managed to get to the other side, but he could not drive backwards far enough to get close to the other car and pull it. So everybody had to get out of the cars, take of their shoes and help pushing the car while standing knee-deep in the flowing water. The girls also had to get down from the pickup and were standing with their beautiful cloths in the pouring rain. It took us about one hour to get Kilimpe's pickup out of the mud again. Unfortunately, I had left my camera at home this very day…
Kindergarten
Tuesday, 2 April. Philly and myself visited the kindergarten to witness Lisa assisting Sr. Ancia at teaching English and Maths. The children are very charming, lively and always very happy to welcome visitors. On this Tuesday, about five children were absent and a few others came late. Some of the children are living at the other side of the valley, which is separated from the mission compound by a river. During the rain season, this river may become impossible or too dangerous to cross, preventing the children from attending school or kindergarten. A few of the children that had made it to the kindergarten were completely wet. One of the boys told that he had had to wade through the water reaching up to his neck. Lisa lent them some dry cloths from the pile that we had brought from Switzerland.
Struggling with the water
Monday, 1 April. One of the main rivers passes directly besides the mission compound. Since Boniface is fearing that it may change its direction and threaten the mission, he hired some men to correct part of its flow by shovelling sand from one side to the other. The agreed payment was 30 Birr (CHF 1.50) for one day of labour.
On the first day, Boniface was not able to supervise the work a lot due to other obligations (among which walking the sleeping lion with some useless visitors - one of whom even wanted to make him repeat this walk because he would have lost his wallet on top of the hill). By the end of the afternoon it became clear that the workers had not done a great amount of work, so Boniface changed his strategy, dividing up the sand bank into sections, one for each worker.
The next morning, Boniface spent most of his time at the "construction site", and as a result the progress was larger. After lunch, Lisa and myself also had a look at the work. Our presence attracted a great number of the local youth, who found it quite amusing to see the foreigners shovelling sand. Never mind, the result was that by the end of the day the work had been completed, and the youth was rewarded with some of the cloths out of our collection from Switzerland.
Upstream the mission compound, another river has changed its flow and is now developing a new river bed directly towards one of the main school buildings (cf. the pictures taken from the top of the sleeping lion). For this problem, which is very worrying, Boniface had no solution in mind yet… The best solution might be to build a stone wall, but this is very costly and it is extremely difficult to get funding for this kind of project.
A broken light bulb
At our last night in Dhadim, Boniface told us that there would be light in the evening in principle, running on batteries charged by solar power during daytime. The problem were that a switch were broken. He had organised a new switch and asked Lisa and me to change it. Of course, this only occurred to him after the generator had shut down, so Lisa and myself were struggling with the switch at the light of a torch. We managed to change it, but still no light. To my question whether the light bulb was still ok, Boniface answered that he was absolutely sure about this, but that he did have another bulb. So we exchanged it and … there was light. We had been sitting in the dark for two weeks because of a broken light bulb!
A bottle of milk
On our way back from Dhadim to Addis Abeba, I noticed a plastic bottle containing a white fluid in the car. It turned out to be a bottle of milk that Boniface was taking from Borana land to the brother of a student of his in Addis Abeba. It was given to him by the boy's mother. I found this bewildering: transporting a bottle of milk for two days over 600 km. It clearly shows the different meaning of time versus money in Africa as compared to the western world.
I experienced another example of this during my fist visit, while visiting Yabello together with Anthony. He had to buy some bottles of mineral water. Easy enough one would think. Not in Ethiopia. Anthony drove the car through Yabello town, stopped at several places and discussed with shop owners from within the car. Some didn't have the water he wanted, others asked too much. In the end it took half an hour, about 5 stops and a lot of negotiation to buy two or three sixpacks of water.
Funding of projects
I discussed with Boniface the various projects that he is pursuing. Things are not always easy. If something needs to be repaired, they need to bring in a technician from Yabello, 30 km away. This means sending a car from the mission to Yabello to pick up the guy, and once again to drop him again - 120 km in total. This makes everything very time-consuming and costly.
Boniface told me that it is comparatively easy to get funding for solar panels. Those are needed to run schools in the evening - which is in rural areas the only time of the day to be able to get the people into the school. During daytime, they are all out in the fields with their cattle. Much more difficult to finance are walls to protect schools, churches and other building from the floods during the rain season. Also investments in cars are very hard to get funding for, even though reliable cars are absolutely essential for the development work that the mission is doing.
Culture shocks
What about the infamous culture shocks? Well in Ethiopia I didn't have too many. I coped well with the heat, the food, the dirt, the toilets and even the smells of the people. What is unusual for a European is the slowness and inefficiency of the life. Even simple things can take a lot of time. This is not necessarily due to culture or mentality, but often also to seemingly trivial difficulties like poor communication infrastructure, problems with the car, flooded or broken roads etc. For me, however, the most difficult thing to cope with was the continuous begging of the people, combined with the inability to communicate with them.
The bigger culture shocks I experienced when I was back in Switzerland. In a supermarket, a woman was complaining to a cashier that a certain brand of suntan cream was out of stock. She was really upset and wanted to speak to the manager of the supermarket to deposit an official complaint. On another occasion I needed to have the periodic safety check done on my car. I was stunned to be sent back because a little decorative piece was slightly loose and had to be tightened before I would get the official safety approval.
- comments
sylvia Nice to read, well done Laurens! Switserland didn't change but certainly your mindset will never be the same!
Lisa Haha, Papa, jou cultureshockes in Zwitserland zijn geweldig, mischien moeten we maar naar Africa verhuizen, daar heb je dus zo een problem met de auto niet... hihi
Laurens Wacht jij maar tot je weer terug in Zwitserland bent, dan zul je nog de ene of andere kultuurshock gaan meemaken!