A Jamie Rudman Story
A new perspective on a journey across North East, East and Southern Africa
DEPARTING FOR ADDIS ABABA
On the 19th February I'll be flying to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, with little more than a day rucksack, a cotton sleeping bag liner, some rolled up shirts, factor 50 suncream and a phone for a video camera…not to forget a plane ticket for my flight out of Cape Town in South Africa in June, some 4000 or so miles south of Addis. What are my chosen modes of transport? Anything excluding planes…public buses, trains, tuktuks, (on the back of motorbikes after a night out on the town), bicycles, mules, donkeys…regardless of the quality of the road surface or the journey distance What is the purpose of this trip? Why haven’t I decided to travel to New Zealand or Australia to soak up the winter sun, to surf, to party along backpackers trails or to climb mountains?
I have no concise answer to these questions, but let it be enough for now to say that this vast, diverse and challenging continent offers an experience that no other country or continent can. A continent which never fails to challenge an individual’s perceptions of culture, tradition, hospitality, wealth, inequality, poverty, beurocracy, leadership and development in every waking moment.
In short, don’t follow this blog for envy-invoking photographs of Elephants in the Serengeti, African school children learning English or sunsets on pristine Indian Ocean beaches (well…perhaps just a few sunset pics).
Follow this blog for a window on a world in which striking differences- and unexpected parallels- to life in Europe and the West, shape the lives of modern Africans on a daily basis. Follow this blog to hear inspiring yet ordinary tales of individuals who have in one way or another crafted their livelihoods from limited funds and resources in stifling urban jungles, remote and traditional village communities, beautiful national parks and coastal tourist destinations.
Over the upcoming months I’ll do my best to give you an original and suitably ordinary take on a very extraordinary part of the world. Watch this space.
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| Packing light |
TOUCH DOWN
After arriving in to Addis Ababa Bole Airport at silly o'clock in the morning, and having a lazer thermometer thrust in my face (the innovative ebola screening procedure carried out next to a sign reading ‘Ethiopia is officially ebola free’), I patiently queue up behind 50 or so excitable young and prosperous, high heel-clad arab ladies who’ve taken the last flight from Saudi Arabia to Addis at the end of a fruitful shopping trip in Jeddah. I’m ushered to the front of the queue after 5 minutes by an airport official and my visa is immediately stamped (despite the mispelling of my name as JUMIE RUDMAN) and i wait it out in the arrivals building until sunrise at 7am. I get chatting to some rather idle customs staff- recent university graduates- who’ve found the goods declaring desk a good a place as any to do some tricep dips, and whose smartphones I rely on for communication with my first point of contact- the exceptionally hospitable Liyu- who has worked for Volunteer Services Overseas (VSO) in Addis and Hawassa for many years.
LIFT TO TOWN
I stand in the airport car park on a beautifully mild Friday morning, attempting to look awake and purposeful so as to avoid opportunistic general plonkers whose company I’m apparently obliged to be in.
I spend some time borrowing phones from various car park security and taxi drivers in order to get in touch with my ride in to the city. Before long a rather beat up blue and white taxi pulls in to the compound, and I see the friendly, if a little warn face of a man called Million, a taxi driver who ferries VSO volunteers all over the city on a regular basis. He whisks me along the Bole road- a smooth highway lined by billboards advertising samsung smart phones, huge apartment blocks and high rise offices and streets brimming with smart Ethiopian business men and women making their way to the office. We glide past an intersection of East Africa’s first and brand new, Chinese bank funded electric light railway and on to the central Italian influenced Piazza square
At piazza I’m met by the energetic, bubbly
Liyu who receives her dazed and jet lagged guest with a beaming and gappy smile, framed by a mass of curly hair and a colourful headband. Her energy and her laid back persona are sufficient to dissolve any initial fears and concerns I have, leaving in their wake a sense of calm.
We sit and share stories of our experiences as volunteer managers on various programs in Africa, over a breakfast of pancakes and golden layered macchiatos stong enough to fuel a jet engine.
Next we march through bustling, haphazard city centre streets and Liyu organises a room for me at a renown backpackers spot a stone’s through from the sensory overload that is Piazza and De Gualle square. We part ways, but not before Liyu has given me a local sim and a list of useful contacts, and plenty of useful info on bus routes and local prices.
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| Liyu household |
I put my feet up to thumb through my Bradt guide to Ethiopia for some inspiration on places to visit. In a communal sofa area and wifi hotspot i strike up conversation with a rather intrepid Australian traveller who has recently returned from Egypt to renew his Ethiopia work visa and is about to embark on a journey to the Ethiopian boarder with Sudan to assist in a community led well building project in a remote village. He glows with passion and enthusiasm for off the beaten track travel. He tells me that the only way to experience real Ethiopia is to do exactly that- venture off the beaten track, to escape the con artists and pick pockets and to visit towns and villages where you’d be hard pushed to even pay for coffee or food- which inevitably means putting one’s lonely planet book to the bottom of one’s metaphorical (or actual) rucksack, getting on the neat bus to goodness knows where, becoming acquainted with goodness knows who and learning to trust that a path will be shaped out on one’s journey to wherever. Daydreamer, idealist or pioneer, either way this particular individual has unknowingly assisted me in taking one tiny but important step in the right direction. In beginning the slow process of letting go of my anxieties and need for rutheless planning and overt self preservation, which are all shortcomings of a safe and structured existence in the UK; although this doesn’t imply that realistic and sensible self preservation isn’t needed!
With renewed faith and increased confidence, I stuff a wallet with small denominations of Ethiopian Birr (Ethiopian currency) , step out of the confides of my hotel and in to the stifling and seemingly endless urban jungle that is Addis Ababa, at least a little more physiologically prepared for the unknown than two days previous, boarding my flight in London.
The next few days I spend with an inspiring couple- a long term volunteer and IT technician from Dublin called Mark, and his Ethiopian wife-to-be Eden, staying at their apartment in a large block of flats in a new build ‘condominium’ close to the British Embassy which backs on to a small shanty dwelling. We drive across town and negotiate treacherous but slow moving traffic in a crumbling but fully functioning 40 year old Citroën CV, delivering clothing, toiletry and monetary donations to a well established centre for the elderly and disabled located out in the sticks on the edge of the city.
We stop off for a lunch of njira and wat (porous, spongy pancakes with the lateral dimensions of a bike tyre and topped with a seemingly endless array of spicy veggie sauces and salads) in a modist back street cafe somewhere in the midst of a cluster of half built tower blocks. It’s fasting season for Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, which means meat is not available at most establishments, or indeed in households for that matter. Eden informs me that this two month meat free period is also characterised by fewer weddings, less daytime boozing and a subdued party scene in general. There is no wedding ceremony without the classic raw beef dish, Eden informs me. I’m curious to try this Ethiopian version of stake tartar.
To overcome the afternoon food slump we visit an even smaller coffee shack to share some comical, coffee-fuelled and frequently politcally oriented stories with a small crowd of like minded mid afternoon coffee enthusiasts (including one towering man in a suit who runs marathons all over the world and whose pre workout fuel of choice is coffee). Here, syrup-strength, sugary coffee is brewed in intricate clay vessels and poured from a height in to thimble-like cups arranged delicately on a wooden tray at floor level, and served in this particular establishment by Eden’s friend of old; a lady whose previous business selling women’s clothing and accessories wasn’t bringing in enough Birr to sustain a life in the city. She doubles up with laughter as she shows us her secret bank account and ATM: a wadge of notes and coins concealed under a box on a shelf. I ask if I can pay by Visa, which is received with more giggling, and gets the whole room laughing for longer than is reasonable for such a passing comment. I think the coffee is laced with something a bit stiffer.
AN ETHIOPIAN SOCIAL BREAKFAST
It’s a blissfully sunny Sunday morning. I watch church goers- notably women adorned in flowing white and gold dresses accompanied by men in suit shirts and trousers- returning home from early morning services. Mark and I head to local shops to buy njira and herby Italian style bread for a communal breakfast at his friend Martina’s flat. Martina is a charismatic, cheeky and resilient woman in her early thirties with one very naughty, defiant young son and a polite, intelligent daughter in her early teens. Her daughter spends the morning patiently roasting coffee beans and brewing dangerously strong coffee for all to share.We find space to sit in a living room full of guests- all women- who are visiting Martina during her illness. I’m told she has been discharged from hospital and is now recovering with the aid of stong pain killers, although she’s still not very mobile and shows clear frustration at not being in good health. Despite her illness and physical lethargy, she is a woman of vitality and charm, with her own dark humoured slant on all topics of conversation. Whilst reminiscing about time spent as a teenager living in France, she describes walking around in a mini skirt, being jeered at by men sitting outside cafes shouting ‘crazy African woman’; she describes walking past with her head held high and a smirk on her face, whilst threatening to stick her high heels their asses. In a thick french Amharic accent she describes her observations of the English, the French and the Italians, concluding, respectively, that they are closed off to emotions, they eat too much and they talk to much. When I tell her I’m English, she grins and replies 'I’ll shut up now before I start a fight’. She decides not to persue this topic, but only after giving us her take on 'the Americans’. “They often come to Ethiopia and say, look at this mud on my shoes, I didn’t ask for this”.Mark prepares popcorn on a gas stove to accompany second and third rounds of coffee. It is in this caffeine fuelled setting, where conversation flows freely and people find pleasure in very little more than one other’s stories, that cultural barriers, for a short while at least, dissolve in the ether (or in the coffee!).
I must reiterate that this aforementioned approach to travel can, but definitely shouldn’t, be practiced without the preparations that any trip of this nature and scale requires; research in to safe and troublesome locations, visa and entry requirements, embassy information, health insurance, currency, transport ect.
If all this initial planning and paper work is carried out with a relaxed approach-which i believe is difficult but attainable- the rest can be fulfilled with the right balance of good faith, cation, common sense, boundless enthusiasm for all things new and interesting and unfamiliar, and lastly the plonker-avoiding instincts and strategies which can only be gained from experience when travelling.
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| Wondo Genet Springs with Solomon and his two children. Natti (right) aged 8 and Hanni (left) aged 5 |
SULUTA WEEK ONE
This is definitely a town for Addis’s wealthy commuters, although it is home to a mix of cattle farmers and pastoralists who live in smaller dwellings, and city folk who live in gated compounds. In fact all the new build houses are gated and Liyu’s residents has a house girl and more than one electronic washer/dryer, not to mention a TV room, fully kitten kitchen electric with coffee grinder and plenty of Samsung - branded gadget. I’m treated like a king here, being fed and watered (as you know by now, Ethiopian water goes by the alias of coffee) on a regular basis. Liyu tells me that Ethiopians find pleasure in feeding visitors, and making them feel very much at home. This kind of all out generosity I’d only previously experienced at my host home in rural Tanzania. Yes, I am mixing with wealthy Ethiopians, but the humility and genuine concern for one another’s well being is there. Liyu texts and calls me when I’m on a long and hazardous minibus ride to check I’m on course to reach my destination in one piece. And she’s by no means obliged to. This behaviour is not born out of a need to please European visitors or to seek approval; it is every bit as sincere as I’d hoped, and believe me I have developed a real sinisism over the past two years when it comes to deciding whether someone is genuine or in some way dishonest or has alterior motives. Once again we beat the afternoon slump, this time by taking a brisk walk through seemingly infinite green playing fields at the edge of town; visible in the distance are the steep Entoto hills which have a thick covering of Eucalyptus. I’m informed that Mo Farra is currently using this space to train with his team for an upcoming championship. Unfortunately there’s no sign of him this evening. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have apparently been spotted in town as well, on a relaxing break from the press (very few people outside of Addis would recognise this celebrity couple- they would receive the same level of attention that any white couple would expect in rural Ethiopia). We spend the evening watching American films and drinking a local spirit called Tej (it’s like a potent, honey-sweet mead). The next morning Liyu and I go on a run through the same fields- about 9km in total- to sweat out the hangover.
I wait for my contact Solomon to meet me from the bus station and decide to seek some peace and quiet in this adjacent car park. The security guard invites me to take a seat next to the security booth, and he tells me about his three grown up children who are working in Hawassa. This guy does 24 hour solid guard shifts with one other colleague; they are given 72 hour rest periods in between shifts. Clearly a wise old soul, he offers me some advice on how to read Ethiopians and how to avoid trouble on my travels. It’s a shame I didn’t catch his name!
ROAD TO HAWASSA
A taste of public transport
HAWASA BUSINESS AS USUAL
I refuse the offer of using the gym and pool at the famous Haile Selassie resort for the extra few hours in bed. Sol uses the facilities early in the morning before office hours. He puts me in touch with his personal tuktuk driver who ferries me around town all day long, and even accompanies me on a boat trip across Hawassa lake and on a short but steep trek to the pinnacle of the misleadingly named tabletop mountain. I observe a film crew shooting some sort of soap opera at the edge of the lake. Women in expensive looking Levis perch on low tree branches exchanging lines and elaborate hand gestures. A man in a trilby and sunnies- clearly a big shot director- facilitates the scene and paces up and down between takes.
Sol’s tuktuk driver and I stop for coffee and later in the day for beer, in some curious local establishments. I know absolutely no Amharic and he speaks very little English but we get by with hand gestures and manage to have some rather interesting half-conversations. Hawassa is a town with a pulse and it is full of budding young self assured Ethiopians with confidence in their strides. Young women in dress suits and full length dresses ride their own motorbikes to the office, conscious not to ruin immaculate hair do’s and so opting out of wearing bike helmets. Groups of university students stream out of coffee shops and in to tuktuks at the end of the lunch hour, and later file in to bars to socialise over draught beer. The male students wear low rise jeans and sun glasses and some have platted hair. The females are sporting heels, slim jeans and flowery tops with exposed shoulders. Elderly muslim women in traditional white robes jaywalk in an orderly line across four-lane roundabouts without a hint of urgency as tuktuks swerve to avoid collisions. It’s like mekka has been relocated to central Hawassa and the pace has not been adjusted to suit the environment. This is the rapidly modernising, self assured Africa that I would like to see trending across the continent.
Although not all is positive about this transition to modern day Africa. I spend the next few days cruising from restaurant to hotel bar, drinking whisky and being approached by very attractive Ethiopian girls dressed like and acting like many UK girls I have seen in Propaganda in Bristol. Which is a great ego boost, but the reality is, it’s not too many steps away from being the north east African equivalent of Thailand. It all seems so artificial. And those who can’t afford to drink black label in a shiny back lit bar stocked to the hilt with imported spirits…well they can find a drinking hole somewhere down the road. Which is probably where the real party is happening anyway. I’ve spent my best moments dancing to reverberating, scratchy Tanzanian pop music in a large chicken-coup-style back yard in the middle of nowhere with toddlers, teens and the elderly all dancing in a circle of dust and sand without a care in the world. And it didn’t cost me a shilling.
The divide between affluent and working class is all too clear, and the void between rural and urban lifestyles is vast. But what’s new? It’s just a little disappointing to see it first hand.
FEELING A CHANGE
I spend another night in a glitzy bar trying to stomach bottled beer. Sol won’t let me spend a penny. This generosity shouldn’t be taken for granted, as it comes from a place of genuine hospitality. And this entrepreneurial social butterfly has received his guest whole heartedly. Nonetheless, I can sense that it is high time to experience Ethiopia from an entirely different perspective. I can’t fail to mention that I spend more time than is healthy searching for a unique experience; to be a fly on the wall in the living room of some ancient grandmother living in a mud hut eating maize meal with our hands, or riding on the back of a farm truck bounding across a rice field in a far flung village. I’ve always suffered the dissatisfaction of not finding that exact thing which isn’t in any guide book. For me, it’s like a mirage in a desert. But I’ve had a revelation. A card i received from my Aunty during a particularly tough period at university reads ‘It’s not the destination, but the thrill of the ride’ above an illustration of a boy in a tiny rowing boat on a vast sea. I’m making a concerted effort to stop searching and to start enjoying the present, whether or not what I’m experiencing is what I was searching for. I am otherwise in danger of missing out on the opportunities and ignoring the possibilities which arrive on my doorstep in the here and now. My experiences living in a very rural community in central Tanzania should have made me appreciate just how fortunate I am to at least be able to leave my own city and my home country and to learn a lot from interactions with people from different walks of life. It really shouldn’t be about going above and beyond this. Ticking destinations off a list, seeing the 'big five’ in the Serengeti or trying to make a statement by going somewhere dangerous, obscure or where the beer is obscenely cheap!
I get to mix with an affluent crowd of business owners, architects, consultants and teachers at Sol’s bar and upstairs fit for purpose relaxation room. Here, men slouch on large cushions and padded floors, sifting through paper work, sending emails and keeping up energy levels with the constant chewing of chat; a widely available leaf which provides a high for weary mid afternoon workers across the nation. Later in the evening we retire to the downstairs bar and drink gin on ice. It’s the same waitress on duty and she mills around constantly taking orders and popping beer bottles. Customer’s faces are lit up by the glow of laptop screens and tablets.
LAST DAYS IN HAWASSA
I get talking to a rotund gentleman with greying hair and slim designer glasses who owns a fire safety company with branches in the UK and Japan. He invites me to stay at his residence in Zawai, a small town home to the large French owned Castle beer brewery. This is the perfect stop off between Hawassa and Addis, and an opportunity for me to be a fly on the wall in another community, albeit one of wealth and affluence comparable to that of Sol and Co. I’ve hardly experienced the full spectrum of wealth and poverty in Ethiopia. But there is still time.
OUT AND ABOUT
I take a stroll through Hawassa town, soaking up all the sights and sounds, observing spectators of a local football match sitting in trees and peering over a fence to get a good angle on the game. I’m in the mood to socialise but don’t want to do so with people lonely or nosy enough to feel the need to frantically call me over from opposite side of the road, wherein I run the risk of being ensnared in a forced and awkward conversation inevitability prompted by such questions as ‘how do you see Ethiopia, and 'how is the environment in your country’. I settle on a compromise situation. A half stumble across a group of idle mid thirties-something men huddled around a postage stamped sized table inside a coffee shack, who eagerly pull up a stool for me and signal to a lady sitting in the shadows to pour me some black tarr-like substance (it might be coffee). Just my sort of social venue. Before long we’re discussing the fate of Lucy, the oldest human fossil on the planet, and these gents proceed to give me a short, bite sized account of the history of the country. We even stray in to the arena of current politics and the sustained hostility between Ethiopia and Eritrea. I make my contribution by giving a Swahili lesson, which is received with curiosity, owing to my seldom encountered enthusiasm for all things East African.
THE NEW GENERATION
I meet Sol’s children in the evening. His daughter Hanni, aged 5 and his son Nattie, aged 8. Sol’s personal tuktuk driver collects the kids from school at 3:30pm and ferries them to the house. They are fantastic, full of energy and infinately patient at my lack of Amharic. They greet me by holding my hands and skipping down the drive to the front door, with pastel pink and blue lunchboxes in hand. The boy asks after Seb and I tell him that he’ll definitely be coming back to Hawassa to visit. They run around the front and the back of the house with my binoculars (yes, i know what you’re thinking, and no I’m not ashamed to own them), spotting birds in the trees and trying and failing to give one another a fair share of the viewing. Solomon spends little time with the children during the week, and he is seldom at home in the evenings. I’m pretty certain he’s made no adjustments to his routine on my behalf , but I’m easy going and it’s just up to me to adjust or to move on. This is by no means a criticism of Sol, in fact I sense that he adores his wife and children.
I do eventually make it to the Hailie Selassie resort and I have the privilege of swimming in an infinity pool which appears by some trick of topography to flow directly in to lake Hawasaa. A real stunning site in the early morning hazy sunshine. A morning of luxury to savour before I hit the road again.
BIG MAMA'S COFFEE SHOP SOCIAL CLUB
This has to be the highlight in a series of random coffee shop encounters: I wander through the cobbled backstreets of Hawassa, past endless rows of cafes, shoe shops, barbers and bakers, with no particular destination in mind. I walk past a dingy looking cafe with a tin roof and a tarpaulin draped over a wooden frame for a shop front and I take the chance and duck my head in. I see some friendly faces and a pot of coffee on a charcoal stove steaming away and so I decide to take a seat. And it was a good choice, because the lady running the place- going by the name of big mama- is a one woman show. She’s singing, dancing and having comedic conversations with a large ceramic coffee pot; but she is not bonkers, just rather eccentric, and a great host. She eyes up my Kenyan villager sandals and says i have beautiful toes, and frequently refers to be as ‘sweetie’, which is one of the only English words besides 'big’ and 'mamma’ which she knows. This is somehow not an awkward experience at all. Infact, I have had very few awkward experiences since arriving in the country, despite the obvious pontential for many. Mutual misunderstandings and mishaps have, up until now taken the natural course of humour. Before long big mamma is frying up various vegetable 'wats’ on a miniscule gas stove, ordering in the draught beers and local 'tej’ (a sweet alcoholic drink not dissimilar to cloudy cider), and, joined by a group of family and friends, we are soon bent over double laughing at the silliest of observations, which as a result of the language barrier become all the more obscure. On more than one occasion someone passes me a phone and I end up talking to so and so’s friend from America who is apparently living in Hawassa. 'Hi, this is Jamie’ I say with a straight face, 'nice to talk to you. I’m here with your friend at Big Mamma’s Cafe’ to which there is an eruption of deep belly laughs. Most definitely an over reaction to my attempt at comedy, but I go along with it anyway, and before long the next round of beers is being delivered by a boy running backwards and forwards from a bar accross the street and glasses are clinking. One girl hand feeds us all, and I find my mouth being stuffed with spicy injera, beyond the point of satiety. But as a guest I’m not really in a position to say no, and wouldn’t really have wanted to either. Another lady crunches unashamedly on handfuls of refined sugar, and the grains which miss her mouth are scattered across the coffee table. She smiles to reveal a mouth of teeth blackened from excessive chat chewing, but somehow retains an unconventional beauty which I can only attribute to bold self assuredness, and the unquestionably charming intonations and deep rolling r’s which are the signature of spoken Amharic. To the untrained ear these sounds are poetic and playful. All this is occurring a few buildings down the street from the main compound of the UN world food program and we regularly spot big white 4x4s rolling past our shack. I can’t help but rate the two contrasting experiences: a morning of exclusive luxury in a spa resport, or an afternoon sitting on a rickety wooden stool in the company of giving, caring strangers. In conclusion, they were both great and in spite of my drive to always seek new experiences, I would happily repeat this day all over again tomorrow.
GOODBYE HAWASSA
It’s a day of mixed emotions. I’m sad to leave my new found niche in this curious new environment. I’ve also been acquainted with a community of non assuming entrepreneurs whose every waking moment is about networking and socialising; supporting one another by means which are equal parts subtle and distinct. I’m always astounded- and a little exhausted- by the relentlessness of this social and communal existence. I feel as though I have adapted some extent, and have found this to be a very rewarding experience. Next stop: Lalibela by bus.
Watch Out for part two
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| Security guard for Ethiopia Electricity Board Office-Hawassa branch |
ROAD TO HAWASSA
A taste of public transport
I spend the rest of the day travelling rough from north to south across the capital, to a modern, expanding lakeside town 200km south called Hawassa. I experience for the first time how everyday commuters travel. I walk with purpose in to overwhelmingly busy bus depots, shaking off over interested bus touts, seeking out honest looking shop owners who happily guide me to the right bus in a mass of minibuses and coaches whose conductors contend for passengers by squabbling and leading potential passengers by the arm to their bus. I find myself squeezing my tall frame in to packed minibuses which blare out upbeat, fast paced Ethiopian pop music and overtake lorries as they overtake cars which are in turn swerving to avoid hitting horse drawn carts, swathes of school children and hawkers which dwell at the side of the road. It’s hot, it’s cramed, it’s definitely dangerous, but I love it! The interesting people i meet and the conversations which inevitably take place on these journeys, along with the breathtaking scenery, are perfectly valid reasons not to choose to travel by air across Ethiopia. Journeys inevitability take much longer than expected, as bus drivers often do circuits of large towns en route in order to pick up as many passengers as possible. This means arriving at a bus station, having a tour of the backstreets and the houses, before arriving back at the bus station to continue the onward journey. You have to laugh about it, because to become impatient or to take offense is pointless. This is the way public transport works here, and if you leave Addis at 10am for a 3pm meeting in Hawassa, you should already know to ring ahead to preempt your lateness or absence from said meeting…unless you have a car or you choose to fly!
I arrive in Hawassa, making a quick escape from the bus station and waiting with some friendly security guards in the car park of the national electricity grid main office. My first point of contact Solomon- my good friend Seb’s host father on the discontinued VSO ICS program- meets me in in his white UN/ NGO style Toyota pickup. He informs me he’s driven straight from the bar and I sense he’s had a few for the road, not because he is driving recklessly; in fact he is one of those obscure people who can drink and drive and party all night long whilst holding down two business, renting out two flats and sustaining a marriage. A true man about town, Sol grins at me revealing teeth stained from years of chewing chat and living the high life. I know immediately that in his company I’ll be living it up as well. This quickly comes to fruition as I’m surrounded by business men endlessly taking calls on oversized smart phones, as our tiny round table becomes littered with empty beer bottles. These are rapidly replenished by a graceful and efficient waitress, at Sol’s own bar and restaurant. Before long I’m drunk, full of njera and meat and thinking of nothing other than sleep. But the night is young and there’s time for one more before we drop off various staff members- the chef and a waiter- at their respective houses across town and then head to Sol’s own guarded household within his office compound. Here I meet his devoted wife, a beautiful woman in a white wrap around headress, who is still cooking at 11pm. The children are in bed so we sit in the living room eating homemade sweet bread and watching quirky music videos on TV. A row of women in white dresses with braided hair jerk their shoulders and heads back and forth rhythmically to rapid beats: an odd blend of ska, afrobeat and cheesy pop, all filmed in a backdrop of luscious rolling highlands and crumbling churches. When I finally head to bed (in Seb’s old room), the ceiling is spinning a little and I’m asleep before my pead hits the hillow…wait, that’s not what I meant.HAWASA BUSINESS AS USUAL
I refuse the offer of using the gym and pool at the famous Haile Selassie resort for the extra few hours in bed. Sol uses the facilities early in the morning before office hours. He puts me in touch with his personal tuktuk driver who ferries me around town all day long, and even accompanies me on a boat trip across Hawassa lake and on a short but steep trek to the pinnacle of the misleadingly named tabletop mountain. I observe a film crew shooting some sort of soap opera at the edge of the lake. Women in expensive looking Levis perch on low tree branches exchanging lines and elaborate hand gestures. A man in a trilby and sunnies- clearly a big shot director- facilitates the scene and paces up and down between takes.
Sol’s tuktuk driver and I stop for coffee and later in the day for beer, in some curious local establishments. I know absolutely no Amharic and he speaks very little English but we get by with hand gestures and manage to have some rather interesting half-conversations. Hawassa is a town with a pulse and it is full of budding young self assured Ethiopians with confidence in their strides. Young women in dress suits and full length dresses ride their own motorbikes to the office, conscious not to ruin immaculate hair do’s and so opting out of wearing bike helmets. Groups of university students stream out of coffee shops and in to tuktuks at the end of the lunch hour, and later file in to bars to socialise over draught beer. The male students wear low rise jeans and sun glasses and some have platted hair. The females are sporting heels, slim jeans and flowery tops with exposed shoulders. Elderly muslim women in traditional white robes jaywalk in an orderly line across four-lane roundabouts without a hint of urgency as tuktuks swerve to avoid collisions. It’s like mekka has been relocated to central Hawassa and the pace has not been adjusted to suit the environment. This is the rapidly modernising, self assured Africa that I would like to see trending across the continent.
Although not all is positive about this transition to modern day Africa. I spend the next few days cruising from restaurant to hotel bar, drinking whisky and being approached by very attractive Ethiopian girls dressed like and acting like many UK girls I have seen in Propaganda in Bristol. Which is a great ego boost, but the reality is, it’s not too many steps away from being the north east African equivalent of Thailand. It all seems so artificial. And those who can’t afford to drink black label in a shiny back lit bar stocked to the hilt with imported spirits…well they can find a drinking hole somewhere down the road. Which is probably where the real party is happening anyway. I’ve spent my best moments dancing to reverberating, scratchy Tanzanian pop music in a large chicken-coup-style back yard in the middle of nowhere with toddlers, teens and the elderly all dancing in a circle of dust and sand without a care in the world. And it didn’t cost me a shilling.
The divide between affluent and working class is all too clear, and the void between rural and urban lifestyles is vast. But what’s new? It’s just a little disappointing to see it first hand.
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| Exploring Hawassa and its environs with Solomon, Nattie, Hanni & friends |
I spend another night in a glitzy bar trying to stomach bottled beer. Sol won’t let me spend a penny. This generosity shouldn’t be taken for granted, as it comes from a place of genuine hospitality. And this entrepreneurial social butterfly has received his guest whole heartedly. Nonetheless, I can sense that it is high time to experience Ethiopia from an entirely different perspective. I can’t fail to mention that I spend more time than is healthy searching for a unique experience; to be a fly on the wall in the living room of some ancient grandmother living in a mud hut eating maize meal with our hands, or riding on the back of a farm truck bounding across a rice field in a far flung village. I’ve always suffered the dissatisfaction of not finding that exact thing which isn’t in any guide book. For me, it’s like a mirage in a desert. But I’ve had a revelation. A card i received from my Aunty during a particularly tough period at university reads ‘It’s not the destination, but the thrill of the ride’ above an illustration of a boy in a tiny rowing boat on a vast sea. I’m making a concerted effort to stop searching and to start enjoying the present, whether or not what I’m experiencing is what I was searching for. I am otherwise in danger of missing out on the opportunities and ignoring the possibilities which arrive on my doorstep in the here and now. My experiences living in a very rural community in central Tanzania should have made me appreciate just how fortunate I am to at least be able to leave my own city and my home country and to learn a lot from interactions with people from different walks of life. It really shouldn’t be about going above and beyond this. Ticking destinations off a list, seeing the 'big five’ in the Serengeti or trying to make a statement by going somewhere dangerous, obscure or where the beer is obscenely cheap!
I get to mix with an affluent crowd of business owners, architects, consultants and teachers at Sol’s bar and upstairs fit for purpose relaxation room. Here, men slouch on large cushions and padded floors, sifting through paper work, sending emails and keeping up energy levels with the constant chewing of chat; a widely available leaf which provides a high for weary mid afternoon workers across the nation. Later in the evening we retire to the downstairs bar and drink gin on ice. It’s the same waitress on duty and she mills around constantly taking orders and popping beer bottles. Customer’s faces are lit up by the glow of laptop screens and tablets.
LAST DAYS IN HAWASSA
I get talking to a rotund gentleman with greying hair and slim designer glasses who owns a fire safety company with branches in the UK and Japan. He invites me to stay at his residence in Zawai, a small town home to the large French owned Castle beer brewery. This is the perfect stop off between Hawassa and Addis, and an opportunity for me to be a fly on the wall in another community, albeit one of wealth and affluence comparable to that of Sol and Co. I’ve hardly experienced the full spectrum of wealth and poverty in Ethiopia. But there is still time.
OUT AND ABOUT
I take a stroll through Hawassa town, soaking up all the sights and sounds, observing spectators of a local football match sitting in trees and peering over a fence to get a good angle on the game. I’m in the mood to socialise but don’t want to do so with people lonely or nosy enough to feel the need to frantically call me over from opposite side of the road, wherein I run the risk of being ensnared in a forced and awkward conversation inevitability prompted by such questions as ‘how do you see Ethiopia, and 'how is the environment in your country’. I settle on a compromise situation. A half stumble across a group of idle mid thirties-something men huddled around a postage stamped sized table inside a coffee shack, who eagerly pull up a stool for me and signal to a lady sitting in the shadows to pour me some black tarr-like substance (it might be coffee). Just my sort of social venue. Before long we’re discussing the fate of Lucy, the oldest human fossil on the planet, and these gents proceed to give me a short, bite sized account of the history of the country. We even stray in to the arena of current politics and the sustained hostility between Ethiopia and Eritrea. I make my contribution by giving a Swahili lesson, which is received with curiosity, owing to my seldom encountered enthusiasm for all things East African.
THE NEW GENERATION
I meet Sol’s children in the evening. His daughter Hanni, aged 5 and his son Nattie, aged 8. Sol’s personal tuktuk driver collects the kids from school at 3:30pm and ferries them to the house. They are fantastic, full of energy and infinately patient at my lack of Amharic. They greet me by holding my hands and skipping down the drive to the front door, with pastel pink and blue lunchboxes in hand. The boy asks after Seb and I tell him that he’ll definitely be coming back to Hawassa to visit. They run around the front and the back of the house with my binoculars (yes, i know what you’re thinking, and no I’m not ashamed to own them), spotting birds in the trees and trying and failing to give one another a fair share of the viewing. Solomon spends little time with the children during the week, and he is seldom at home in the evenings. I’m pretty certain he’s made no adjustments to his routine on my behalf , but I’m easy going and it’s just up to me to adjust or to move on. This is by no means a criticism of Sol, in fact I sense that he adores his wife and children.
I do eventually make it to the Hailie Selassie resort and I have the privilege of swimming in an infinity pool which appears by some trick of topography to flow directly in to lake Hawasaa. A real stunning site in the early morning hazy sunshine. A morning of luxury to savour before I hit the road again.
BIG MAMA'S COFFEE SHOP SOCIAL CLUB
This has to be the highlight in a series of random coffee shop encounters: I wander through the cobbled backstreets of Hawassa, past endless rows of cafes, shoe shops, barbers and bakers, with no particular destination in mind. I walk past a dingy looking cafe with a tin roof and a tarpaulin draped over a wooden frame for a shop front and I take the chance and duck my head in. I see some friendly faces and a pot of coffee on a charcoal stove steaming away and so I decide to take a seat. And it was a good choice, because the lady running the place- going by the name of big mama- is a one woman show. She’s singing, dancing and having comedic conversations with a large ceramic coffee pot; but she is not bonkers, just rather eccentric, and a great host. She eyes up my Kenyan villager sandals and says i have beautiful toes, and frequently refers to be as ‘sweetie’, which is one of the only English words besides 'big’ and 'mamma’ which she knows. This is somehow not an awkward experience at all. Infact, I have had very few awkward experiences since arriving in the country, despite the obvious pontential for many. Mutual misunderstandings and mishaps have, up until now taken the natural course of humour. Before long big mamma is frying up various vegetable 'wats’ on a miniscule gas stove, ordering in the draught beers and local 'tej’ (a sweet alcoholic drink not dissimilar to cloudy cider), and, joined by a group of family and friends, we are soon bent over double laughing at the silliest of observations, which as a result of the language barrier become all the more obscure. On more than one occasion someone passes me a phone and I end up talking to so and so’s friend from America who is apparently living in Hawassa. 'Hi, this is Jamie’ I say with a straight face, 'nice to talk to you. I’m here with your friend at Big Mamma’s Cafe’ to which there is an eruption of deep belly laughs. Most definitely an over reaction to my attempt at comedy, but I go along with it anyway, and before long the next round of beers is being delivered by a boy running backwards and forwards from a bar accross the street and glasses are clinking. One girl hand feeds us all, and I find my mouth being stuffed with spicy injera, beyond the point of satiety. But as a guest I’m not really in a position to say no, and wouldn’t really have wanted to either. Another lady crunches unashamedly on handfuls of refined sugar, and the grains which miss her mouth are scattered across the coffee table. She smiles to reveal a mouth of teeth blackened from excessive chat chewing, but somehow retains an unconventional beauty which I can only attribute to bold self assuredness, and the unquestionably charming intonations and deep rolling r’s which are the signature of spoken Amharic. To the untrained ear these sounds are poetic and playful. All this is occurring a few buildings down the street from the main compound of the UN world food program and we regularly spot big white 4x4s rolling past our shack. I can’t help but rate the two contrasting experiences: a morning of exclusive luxury in a spa resport, or an afternoon sitting on a rickety wooden stool in the company of giving, caring strangers. In conclusion, they were both great and in spite of my drive to always seek new experiences, I would happily repeat this day all over again tomorrow.
GOODBYE HAWASSA
It’s a day of mixed emotions. I’m sad to leave my new found niche in this curious new environment. I’ve also been acquainted with a community of non assuming entrepreneurs whose every waking moment is about networking and socialising; supporting one another by means which are equal parts subtle and distinct. I’m always astounded- and a little exhausted- by the relentlessness of this social and communal existence. I feel as though I have adapted some extent, and have found this to be a very rewarding experience. Next stop: Lalibela by bus.
Watch Out for part two
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