aggienaut: (Default)

   Continuing the travel memoir book I'm working on, with this chapter we're caught up with everything I have currently written. Having just finished the back-to-back Second Nigeria project and Ethiopia:

obv there's lots of airplane window photos that all look the same but I'll have you know this is from this exact trip!

May 12th, 2012, Istanbul Ataturk Airport – “You’ll have to collect and re-check your luggage in Istanbul” they had told me on check in in Addis Ababa. I clearly remember this, as I watch the baggage conveyor go around and around with ever fewer bags on it, none of them mine. Finally I ask a member of the airport baggage staff.
   “No it would have automatically been transferred”
   Just to make sure I walk to the far end of the airport to find some Delta staff to ask.
   “No there’s no transfer agreement between Delta and Turkish, your luggage definitely didn’t automatically transfer”
   And so, rather than get out of the airport or at least relax during my six hour layover in Istanbul, I spend the entire time getting the runaround around the airport trying to find my luggage, ultimately without success. It will eventually be delivered to me back home in California looking like they used the baggage tractor to back up over it repeatedly, pulverizing everything solid, including three honey jars that had been carefully wrapped and cushioned, spreading their contents over everything not already destroyed.

Actually there were two schooners in the marina

Many hours later, but still May 12th, New York – After 36 days abroad, and travel through many airports, which usually have put some effort into ensuring you arrive to a spacious, welcoming arrivals area, –a sort of foyer to the country with public art – I find myself emerging into a grimy underground-garage feeling area. Thick unadorned concrete columns support a roadway claustrophobically just above our heads, heavy traffic on the pick-up roadway fills the semi-enclosed space with exhaust fumes and the sound of engines, and the parking garage just across from it completes the enclosed feeling. And I may be back in the states now, but my checked luggage sure enough is nowhere to be seen.
   These are the days before smart phones (I’d get my first one as a birthday present from my parents in a month), so I ask someone for directions … and the answer comes back in a heavy New York or    New Jersey accent more incomprehensible than anything I’ve heard in over a month of travel … but I suspect it was rude.
   I descend into the grimdark depths of the New York subway system, and ride the snorting, shuddering subway carriage to the grand and airy Grand Central Station, and from there it’s two hours by Amtrak through New York suburbs I barely see because I’ve been traveling uncountable hours by now, to Bridgeport, Connecticut.
   I enter the Bridgeport marina and make out a pair of tall masts looming above all the smaller closer boats. As I walk down the dock, the rubber dingy sets off from the schooner Pegasus riding at anchor.
   “Mr Fricke I presume?” Tarragon says with a smile as I carefully step from the dock into the dingy with my backpack.



May 13th, 2012 – The crew of the Pegasus is busy up-rigging the boat. Over winter the sails and many of the lines had been downrigged to protect them from the elements, but now it’s time to get her ready for the sailing season. I try to be helpful but they ‘re very understanding that I’m still very jetlagged and don’t know the boat at all. Tarragon has been given the task of rigging the head-sails on the front of the vessel, and I’m happy to be her assistant.
   The schooner Pegasus normally only sails with an all female crew, conducting leadership programs for girls, but they're willing to put up with me during uprig and the subsequent shakedown cruise.
   It was just not even two years ago, 19 months, that walking down the dock in Olympia, Washington, to welcome passengers to the brigantine Eos, I had first met a bank teller named Tarragon, walking unsteadily on the gently moving dock. Now here she is with a list of sundry pieces of equipment she needs written on her hand and down her arm in sharpie as she competently sets about her complex task, grease stains on her work pants as she concentrates on tying an important knot.

Korigon drinks coffee

May 14th, 2012 - “Happy birthday!!” Tarragon smiles at me across the table in the mostly empty restaurant. We were lucky to find one that was still open this late –after 9pm– the earliest we were able to get off the boat, what with the long days being spent trying to get her ship-shape.
   The waitress brings us a rich slice of chocolate cake.
   “I got you a present!” says Tarragon excitedly
   “When did you find time to get me a present?” I ask surprised
   She slides a pack of socks and a tube of toothpaste onto the table. I laugh with genuine happiness – with my luggage having been lost I truly appreciate these mundane gifts.
   So here I am, I think to myself, my thirtieth birthday. I’ve just returned from three projects in Africa and am volunteering on a sailing ship – is this where I thought I’d be on my thirtieth birthday? Certainly it’s a lot better than things looked a year ago. I don’t exactly have a career that’s making me rich but, I decide, it’s not a terrible situation, at least it’s interesting. I don’t know what to expect for the decade ahead but I hope it is both interesting and forms some semblance of a career.



May 15th - 22nd – By and by uprigging is complete, we raise the anchor, hoist the sails and set off down the Connecticut coast towards New York City. It’s only about forty nautical miles to the Big Apple, but sailing ships are slow (the world was explored at the speed of smell) and we’re not in a hurry, so it takes us three days to get there. A schooner such as the Pegasus has two broad fore-and-aft sails, which it can swing out on booms to catch the wind, as well as staysails out over the bowsprit and triangular gaff topsails up above the main sails, but not the “square” sails that make a traditional “square rigger” such as my beloved Eos so distinct. Schooners can easily be handled by just a few crew members and are ideal for running in and out of coastal islands and shoals, as we are currently doing. Many of the little islands off the Connecticut coast have historic lighthouses and glimpses of elegant old buildings among the trees.
   We anchor the first night off an island the crew enigmatically refer to as “Tick Island” – we don’t go ashore. Anchor watch is much more peaceful than a watch at sea – one stands watch alone for an hour, alone at night with the stars above and lights of shore shimmering across the gently lapping waves. The metal fairleads on the forestays absent-mindedly tinkle like silver bells. Every fifteen minutes one takes bearing on three points the captain has designated, looking across the binnacle compass at the light and recording the bearing in the log: 130 degrees south-east by east to the beacon that shines nostalgically in the victorian steeple of the historic lighthouse on the nearby island; 240 degrees southwest-by-west to the light that slowly flashes an alternating red and white at the current lighthouse that sticks out of the water like a spark plug about a mile away; 003 degrees north to a light on the mansion on the privately owned “Tavern Island” If the bearing differs by more than an amount the captain has specified, the captain must be woken as that would mean we are drifting. We are not drifting. Once in each crewmember’s hour they descend into the warmth of belowdecks, and as quietly as they can so as not to wake the offwatch crew they proceed to three designated locations where they can lift the deck platings and see how high the water in the bilge is, and record this in the log. The rest of the time, one quietly strolls the deck, alone with their thoughts in the night, until it’s time to wake the next person up.
   The second night we once again anchor off an island with a historic stone lighthouse, surrounded by other islands with private mansions on them. This lighthouse island is rumored to have buried treasuer from the pirate Captain Kidd
   The third night we anchor off Throg’s Neck, the entrance to the East River through New York. Just across the water from us we can see the lawns of King’s Point, where one of my former crewmates attends the Merchant Marine Academy. The next day we sail down the East River, past the infamous prison island of Riker’s Island, and moored to the mainland adjacent there’s a massive cubist hulk of a barge. [obv the book wouldn't have hyperlinks but look at that thing!]
   “What’s that?” I ask a crewmate,
   “Oh that’s a prison barge.”
   It turns out it’s the world’s largest prison barge, the Vernon C Bains. As a history nerd I’d read about the prison hulks used in the 18th century, to find one in current use is disturbingly dystopian.
   We continue our sanding, painting and rust-busting as the endless rows of skyscrapers of Manhattan slide by to our west. After passing under the Brooklyn Bridge, we all look out with great interest as we approach the historic South Street Seaport, eager to see the large clipper ships Peking and Wavertree, along with their smaller consorts. Us tallship sailors always have a great fondness for other historic sailing vessels. The Peking and Wavertree were among the last generation of actual working sailing ships, the latter only retiring from working the tradewinds in 1947.
   We round the south end of Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty holding her torch aloft to our left across the shimmering water, tourist ferries zipping back and forth busily. We continue around up the west side of Manhattan and into the Hudson River, having almost circled the steel-and-glass heart of the metropolis.
   After anchoring overnight near the shore in a broad part of the river we continue up the gently curving river the next day. The sun is bright and warm, and I’m working up near the top of the mast, as on either side the forested banks slide by. Life is good. Having grown up in the urban sprawl of the greater Los Angeles area, I had always assumed the West Coast had entirely filled up with people before California began to – so it’s a marvel to me to see what appears to just be endless forest on either side of the river.
   Around another bend in the river and … it looks like something out of Lord of the Rings on the bank up ahead – A massive citadel of gray stone walls and towers standing straight and proud, stoic and impassive. No one had told me Westpoint Military Academy looks so picturesque.
   As it happens, Westpoint is our destination, and we tie up to a small dock below the stone edifices. It’s not a public dock, but our boat has special permission.
Walking barefoot on the grass field beside the river that evening Tarragon and I marvel at another unfamiliar sight for us – little glowing lights lazily loop around in the gloaming twilight – fireflies! After some fun but unsuccessful attempts at catching them we grow a bit serious, because tomorrow I am leaving. She purses her lips when she’s particularly thoughtful about something.
   “So you’re thinking of going to Australia next?” she asks
   “Well not for a few months, not till the end of summer” I say “the beekeeping seasons are reversed there so when the season is ending here it will be beginning there”
   “And… when will I see you again?”
   “You can come to Australia too?” I ask optimistically
   “And do what?” … “you’re always leaving” she sighs.
   We walk in silence for a moment, holding hands, barefoot on the soft grass, surrounded by the surreal scintillations of fireflies in the gathering darkness.
   “I love you but… I think we should consider ourselves broken up after you leave here – because I have absolutely no idea when I’ll ever see you again,”
   I don’t argue, we’ve been drifting toward this point for awhile.
   The next day she takes me across the river in the smallboat, I’ll catch a train in the town of Garrison across the river. As she casts off from the dock in Garrison, after we’ve said goodbye, she has one last thing to say: “now don’t you get killed in Australia.”

[If you're wondering thats not how the break up happened but over the phone a month or two later isn't as good a scene as among the fireflies, literary license here. Terragon might make one more reappearance in 2017 when I join her for a few days on the ship she is by then first mate of]
[baggage arrives run over would arrive here chronologically but doesn’t really fit]


West Point

June 2nd, Southern California – It’s a warm summer evening, and I’m tired from another ten hour day of beekeeping, but you can’t let that stop you from doing other things or you’ll never do anything, because every day is a ten hour day of beekeeping – unless it’s a 12 hour day.
   So sitting at my desk, under the slowly spinning ceiling fan and a pleasant breeze coming in the window, I open my laptop. It was articles in the American Bee Journal that inspired me to go to Africa, maybe I’ll have my hand at writing an article and see if they’ll accept it. My fingers hover over the keyboard, I need a good moment to begin on, something both exciting and representative of the whole experience…
   “Rows of yam mounds and mud-walled little houses fly past us as we speed along the narrow dirt trail...” tap tap tap 3690 words later an article about Ethiopia and Nigeria, with plentiful serious looking citations to the thesis studies of both my Ethiopian interpreters. Reread it again, send it to my mother so she can tell me all the commas I’ve missed, and go to bed.



June 3rd – Sit down under the fan once again and open the computer, read the news. Headline: “Nigerian airliner crashes into ‘Mountain of Fire’ Church, 183 dead.” A Dana Air flight from Abuja to Lagos had crashed, killing all aboard and many on the ground as well. I double checked my ticket stub, yes I had flown that same airline, that same route, just a month earlier. Dana Air only operates four aircraft, there’s a one in four chance it was the aircraft I was on, there’s a one in four chance each and any of the flight crew I saw that day were in it. I feel a bit shaken, this is as close to a plane crash as I have any desire to get.
   After some delay due to being unsettled, re-read my article. Fix all the commas my mother pointed out as missing, make some other tweaks, email it to the editor.

June 4th –Hello Kris,

Thank you for sending your interesting article on your volunteer beekeeping work in Africa. You are certainly to be commended for your wonderful work in helping beekeepers in Africa! I think many of our readers would find this article and your photos of interest. We have published similar articles from volunteer beekeepers in the past and we always like to highlight these efforts in the hope that it will inspire others to do similar volunteer work.

Please select some photos from the many you have for use with your article. That would help me out a lot. On our present schedule, I hope to print your article in one of our late summer or early fall issues that we are working on now.

Best regards,
Joe


   I hadn’t actually been terribly optimistic it would be accepted, the ABJ is such as prestigious publication!


   By and by the summer slips by. I apply for and receive a working holiday visa for Australia, which will allow me to live and work there for a year. I book a ticket for September and put feelers out for jobs, though the visa specifically requires one not to have a job lined up beforehand. My article is coming out in September though, which should make it easy to get a job in the industry that month.

[potential scene where I go camping alone in the redwoods for a week before I leave for Australia but I don't think it makes the cut]






   So that's as far as it currently is written. So far there are 41,409 words, which I think corresponds to about 90 pages. This causes me a bit of existential panic because at this rate I think the entire planned scope might end up far too long! O:

Currently written chapters are:
   Ch 1 California feeling stuck (4,054 words)
   Ch 2 Nigeria I (15,510)
   Intermission California (2,203)
   Ch 3 Nigeria II (2,684)
   Ch 4 Ethiopia I (14,378)
   Ch 5 Stateside (2,580)

Assuming first visits to places will be like Nigeria I or Ethiopia I (which fall very close together in length, around 15,000), and the minor chapters seem to be grouped around 2500 words each, the future chapters planned would be:

2012
   Australia I (2,500)
2013
   Nigeria III (2,500)
   Egypt (15,000) (with some flashbacks to Egypt 2008)
   Stateside Intermission III (2,500)
   Turkey (15,000)
2014
   East Africa I (Tanzania & Zanzibar) (15,000)
   Ethiopia II (2,500)
   Stateside Intermission IV (2,500) (obv every time I'm back home doesn't need a chapter but for example here I was trying to plan and fundraise for the project to the Hadza)
2015
   Guinea I (15,000)
   Not dying of Ebola (2,500) a melange of post-Guinea adventures in France, Sweden, and sailing off the California coast again (until kicked off the boat for suspected of having ebola)
   East Africa II (Hadzabe hunter gatherers and Uganda) (15,000)
   Australia II (2,500)
2016
   Guinea II (2,500)
   Kyrgyzstan I (15,000)
2017
   Guinea III (2,500)
   Kyrgyzstan II (2,500)
   Nicaragua (15,000)
2018
   Dominican Republic with Cristina (2,500) (obv not a "minor chapter" but you can only write so much about three days)
2019
   Dominican Republic with Cristina II (2,500)
2020
   Covid / Australia (2,500)

   Which... okay I'm thinking out loud here in that I hadn't totaled these up earlier but that adds up to 137,500 words, plus the existing 41,409 wordsw makes 176,409, which is about 350 pages which is actually right on target for a typical book length. And obviously all these chapter lengths are just approximations and who knows how it will pan out but with this roadmap I feel a bit better.

   I might try to roll Kyrgyzstan I & II together and Guinea II & III. Some of the other ones can't be combined like that because my own growth through time is an important narrative arc and I was a different person in Nigeria I and Nigeria III.

   The current plan for the end is to kind of meta (I love being meta!) have me start writing a book during the covid year. But then so as to not end on such a depressing note as Covid Year probably the very end will be me flying to Africa for the recent trip or just arriving there -- though that trip is not in the scope here. May recent 40th birthday would be a convenient bookend to the earlier 30th birthday detailed above, especially since it was within a day or two of that that after the long covid gap I got three project proposals in my email in one day.

aggienaut: (Default)

   So I want to jam more Ethiopian history into the book. As I mentioned, I haven't decided yet if I'll try to do that as a dream sequence or fictional book or I don't know maybe just a blatant speaking to the camera through the fourth wall aside. But anyway, I've been plotting out the actual content. I feel like to start at the beginning, one either would point to the discovery of the Lucy skeleton in Ethiopia and note that humanity itself evolved in the area, or start with the queen of Sheba. I'm thinking of starting the historical section about Ethiopia with the latter, specifically, the pertinent bible quote:

When the queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon and his relationship to the Lord, she came to test Solomon with hard questions. Arriving at Jerusalem with a very great caravan—with camels carrying spices, large quantities of gold, and precious stones—she came to Solomon and talked with him about all that she had on her mind. Solomon answered all her questions; nothing was too hard for the king to explain to her. When the queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon and the palace he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robes, his cupbearers, and the burnt offerings he made at[a] the temple of the Lord, she was overwhelmed.
She said to the king, “The report I heard in my own country about your achievements and your wisdom is true. 7 But I did not believe these things until I came and saw with my own eyes. Indeed, not even half was told me; in wisdom and wealth you have far exceeded the report I heard. How happy your people must be! How happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom! Praise be to the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and placed you on the throne of Israel. Because of the Lord’s eternal love for Israel, he has made you king to maintain justice and righteousness.”
And she gave the king 120 talents of gold, large quantities of spices, and precious stones. Never again were so many spices brought in as those the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.

King Solomon gave the queen of Sheba all she desired and asked for, besides what he had given her out of his royal bounty. Then she left and returned with her retinue to her own country. - 1 Kings 1-13

(the ellipses are the excision of the seemingly unrelated 1 Kings 11 about trade goods brought from a place called Ophir whose location isn't even confidently guessed at by anyone.)

   This is foundational both because I think most Christians/westerners will have heard of the Queen of Sheba yeah no yeah no? And Ethiopian tradition holds that the Queen got pregnant by Solomon (read that "gave the queen of Sheba all she desired" again), giving birth to the subsequent emperor of Sheba Menelik I, from whom the Ethiopian monarchs claim descendance on down to Haile Selassie as The Solomonic Dynasty.

   There follows another editorial choice. The Ethiopian holy text the Kebra Negaste goes into much greater detail about this (Wikipedia: " While the Abyssinian story offers much greater detail, it omits any mention of the Queen's hairy legs or any other element that might reflect on her unfavourably."), such that I think one could describe it in narrative scene, and you know how I lorve to be writing historical fiction. BUT I think that description fits better in my second visit to Ethiopia wherein I travel to Axum and come into close proximity to the Ark of the Covenant which the Kebra Negast describes her stealing.
   So what I'm thinking at present, is here in this first Ethiopia chapter, start the historical part with that bible quote (I suppose that would be easy, have me literally find a Gideon's bible in the hotel and look for the Queen of Sheba quote to find out what they're all on about hey. but then again being as Ethiopians are Ethiopian Orthodox and I think their bible varies a bit from the catholic/protestant ones Gideon deals in maybe they wouldn't have gideon's bibles laying around), and some expositive notes on the historical kingdom of Sheba / Saba


   From there I think to move on to the traditional tale of hte discovery of coffee, which is that an Ethiopian shepherd noticed how extremely wakeful his goats were and thought he'd try to berries on the plant they were eating. I'll have to look into if any very specific place and name is associated with that. From that scene, expositive mention of the spread of coffee around the world.

Colonialism:
1885, The Berlin Conference, wherein European powers apportioned Africa amongst themselves, and pertinent at present is that Italy laid claim to Ethiopia and the horn of Africa. Going forward I think I'll have reason to return to the Berlin Conference repeatedly as it pertains to different countries, so I think I'm going to want to really read up on it, so I can set it as a scene and revisit it from slightly different angles every time it comes up again.

1889: Treaty of Wuchale, in which the Italian language version of the treaty made it an agreement to submit as a protectorate to Italy, and the Amharic (Ethiopian) version only said it was an agreement to friendly trade relations. Further background, Italy had just occupied formerly-ottoman Eritrea which lies between Ethiopia and the Red Sea -- this treaty in theory fixed the Italio-Eritrean/Ethiopian border. One can keep diving deeper into these things: the reason the "Ottomans" were pulling out of Eritrea were because it was Ottoman Egypt, which had just been taken over by Britain and could no longer maintain far flung colonial efforts of its own. I think this is interesting but one has to draw a line of simplification somewhere hey.

First Italo-Ethiopian War 1895-1896, the first decisive defeat of a European colonial power by a native African polity.

   Then I think we'll be on to Haile Selassie. I'm thinking a scene of him as a young man as the duke (ras) of the house of Tafari, there are once again some interesting twists and turns leading to his becoming Emperor (he's only like a cousin of his predecessor, the Empress Zewditu, and there's a small civil war against another claimant, and then a kind of bizarre battle where the Empress' husband (Emperor Consort?) "rebels" against the increasing authority of Ras Tafari (by then actually king (negus) Tafari, which sounds grand but is still subordinate to the Empress, the "Queen of Kings"), and the Empress is officially on Tafari's side but really probably rooting for her husband. Byzantine politics it is! Anyway, I've got 17 interstities between days to fill so I should be able to jam a bunch of little scenes in. But yeah so Ras Tafari becomes the Emperor Haile Selassie, is involved in the foundation of the League of Nations, and becomes worshipped as a god by Rastafarians.
   And then setting up the second Italo-Ethiopian war (1935-1937) in time in time to take place just in sync with the mention in my main text of the battle of Dembeguina Pass and Korem.
   Then Haile Selassie in exile and returning to expel the Italians (he could have waited until the Italians were all the way out but he bravely returned just before that so he could be involved in giving them the boot, real good look it was).

   And then I'll end the historical bits of this chapter with the Derg overthrow of Haile Selassie in 1974. The subsequent civil war against the Derg I'll put into the second Ethiopia chapter.


aggienaut: (Default)

   Continuing posting bits of the work in progress book. Here's the last portion of the chapter about the first trip to Ethiopia.



May 7th [2012], Day 31 – We hike up the forested slope of nearby Girakasu Mountain, single file on a narrow trail, under the canopy of pine trees, over little gurgling rivulets, until we come to an open glade filled with rows of yellow hive boxes. A the far end of the apiary as we enter gray furry anthropoid bodies bound away – monkeys! One pauses a moment to look back at us, it has prominent white side whiskers like the muttonchops of some wizened old dickensian miser.
   “Do you know what kind of monkey that is?” I ask Girmay.
   “I think they’re called ‘grivets’”
   “Do they disturb the beehives?”
   “No I don’t think so, maybe only if all the bees have died in the hive they’ll open it up and look for any remaining honey or brood to eat”
   I had at first been distracted by the monkeys but now I look at the view – from here we can see down the far side of Mount Girakasu from Korem – the slope descends precipitously down, down to a savanna down below that stretches off into the distance – the Great Rift Valley! Down below the landscape is a dry brown savanna quite different from the forests up here. Down there somewhere the three million year old “Lucy” skeleton was found. The escarpment continues as far as I can see to the north and south, with white ribbons of waterfalls cascading down into the valley.

   Much to my relief the beekeepers in this area have no aversion at all to using smoke and they immediately light up some smokers and we begin inspecting beehives.
   Holding up a frame I see a small round red mite on a bee.
   “Girmay! Girmay!” I call out, “what is this??” I ask bringing him the frame. It looks to me like the very troublesome bee pest the Varroa mite, which is present throughout most of the world but at this time not yet known to be in Ethiopia, so it would be an important discovery if it was.
   “That’s a bee louse, the braula fly” he explains to me.
   “Oh, interesting, I’ve heard of it but we don’t have it back home.” I examine the bee louse carefully, it really does look a lot like a varroa mite, though perhaps a brighter shade of red.
   One of the beekeepers is admiring my gloves, which aren’t even traditional beekeeping gloves but nitrile chemical handling gloves because they’re cheap and didn’t take up much space in my luggage.
   “They’re only four dollars” I tell him through Girmay.
   “He says he can’t afford that. These farmers only earn about $12 a month you know” Girmay reminds me.
   “Tell him I’ll leave him my gloves when I leave.”

   The frame hives have been manufactured by non-beekeepers and given to beekeepers who aren’t familiar with them, so the beekeepers receiving them haven’t even been able to identify what is wrong with them. The key to frame hives is “bee space” – bees have innate opinions about spacing. Anything less than 6mm the bees will generally block up with propolis, a kind of glue they make from tree resin. A space of about 9.5mm bees will see as a hallway and use it as such. Spaces bigger than 12mm they consider open space and may build buttresses of “burr comb” into it or “cross combs” connecting across it. These frame hives have lots of improper spacing and as a result frequently the comb is built across the frames such that they can’t be removed without breaking it.
   The beekeepers, though very experienced in their own right, follow with interest as I show them what’s wrong with these hives they’re less familiar with. The burden that has been haunting me, of having nothing useful to contribute, finally feels lifted.
   Over the next several days we have lecture and Q & A in our fortress hotel and walks to forest apiaries on the mountain. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it hails, sometimes the weather is perfect in the serene little town of Korem. I usually have an omelet for breakfast (the one universal food), injera for lunch, and spaghetti for dinner (a lingering Italian influence). This is not a coffee producing region so we drink a lot of tea. A cup of hot milk in a tea cup is also surprisingly popular. Girmay tells me there’s another beverage that is unique to this town called “korefu” that is very alcoholic yet only consumed in the morning, but I am unable to find it.
   One day while walking along the main street a pickup truck suddenly pulls to a stop behind me and a uniformed but barefoot Ethiopian soldier hops out of the back, AK-47 in one hand. It occurs to me that if an armed man had jumped out of a truck behind me in Nigeria I probably would have immediately dove into the hedge, but this is peaceful Ethiopia.



May 9th, Day 33 – “What’s with the awnings?” I ask Girmay as we wind our way back up the road to Mekelle. Frequently we see what looks like a temporary awning erected outdoors near houses and people seemingly having picnics there.
   “It’s Mariam gunbot, ‘Saint Mary’s Day,’ traditionally the same group of neighbors celebrate it together every year,” he explains.
   “Oh that sounds very nice”
   “Would you like to come celebrate with my neighbors and I this evening?”
   “Definitely! Thank you!”

   I join Girmay in one of his neighbor’s houses in Mekelle that evening. Many of his neighbors of all ages are mingling and chatting, I’m surprised by the number who speak English (all education from high school level up is in English), and they’re all very friendly. The table is heaped with traditional food – injera and grilled meats and many spices. There’s the traditional honey wine tej, commercially canned beer (Ethiopian brand St George), and even Johnnie Walker whiskey. Any time my glass has gotten relatively empty an attendee I perhaps haven’t even talked to yet appears with a smile and insists on refilling it with a friendly grin.
   Presently I am pulled into a circle forming in the middle of the room, and traditional dancing begins. At first the dancers keep their hands at their sides while shuffling enthusiastically about to the cheery beat of traditional music; later as the night goes on, the dancing morphs into less restrained joyous cavorting.
Now the music is turned down and someone is standing on a chair making a speech.
   “Traditionally people make speeches arguing that they should host it next year and then everyone votes who should do so” Girmay tells me, “I would like to host some time but not until after I’ve married my fiancee and we have a house together to do so.”
   Likely spurred on by the liquid encouragement of my constantly refilled glass, I get up on a chair.
   “I want to thank you all for your amazing hospitality,” I say, “this has been so much fun and I’m so grateful to Girmay for inviting me and all of you for welcoming me.” People cheer, and then cheer again after it’s been translated for them. “And you know, I would love to host next year, but sadly California is very far away.” I think I’m adequately safe from having to actually host anything, but rather to my alarm shouts of “no, you can still host!!” come back at me.
   I dismount the chair and try to withdraw into obscurity a bit until the voting finishes, which seems to occur informally via level of cheering and applause for various names proposed until one is decided upon.
   I Stumble out of the house at the end of the evening, thoroughly drunk. Girmay hails me a passing bujuj auto-rickshaw. About to get in, I remember how the taxi drivers in Egypt used to always try to scam me and, consider: in my obviously intoxicated state I am an obvious mark. So I hurry back to Girmay who is just turning to return inside, to ask him how much it should cost, before getting in the bujuj. A few minutes later, back at my hotel, I was amazed to find the driver quoting me the exact amount Girmay had said he would. What honest people, these Ethiopians.

   I wake up in the night with my hotel room slowly spinning around me. My mouth is already dry and I realize I’d drank heavily the previous evening without drinking any water. If I learned anything in college it was that one must drink water to mitigate having an awful headache in the morning. I desperately need to drink water but there’s another problem – I have no bottled water in the room!
   I have two choices, drink no water and face feeling deeply miserable in the morning, or drink the local tapwater from the bathroom sink and risk everything that comes with that.
   <>I’ve been in Africa for over a month now, I think to myself, I’ve probably been exposed bit by bit to the local water bacteria. I’ll drink the tap water.



May 10th, Day 34 – I stumble down to breakfast in the morning feeling grateful I only have a headache. Miraculously, the tap water does not appear to have destroyed my guts.
After breakfast Goru takes me to tour the Comel honey processing facility. I’ve already met the director of the plant and their head beekeeper at my training, but now I also meet the owner, Daniel. Serious but kind and personable, he reminds me a bit of my own father. The plant itself has state-of-the-art gleaming machinery, homogenizers, filters and bottling machines, arranged in spacious and clean workspaces. They export 70 tons of honey a year throughout the world and win international prizes. I’m thoroughly impressed.
   “I was talking to a government official from the Agriculture Department and he was telling me about all the investment they were making into beekeeping, the 50,000 hives a year they were producing,” Daniel tells me “and I asked what their plan was to facilitate the sale of all this honey. The official just shrugged. So I built this honey processing plant” he says with a smile.

   I’m in the security line at Mekelle airport. The man in front of me has just had honey confiscated from his carry on. I’ve made sure to pack my jars of honey in my checked luggage and no longer have a hive tool to worry about, having given it to Girmay.
   My bag goes through the X-ray machine as I walk through the metal detector. The security woman scowls at it and puts it through the X-ray again. She scowls again and asks if I can open it. She looks inside, takes some things out, puts it through again, and still isn’t satisfied.
   Meanwhile other passengers are also passing through. An older woman with a hand-held GPS has been sidelined by security, who is telling her she can’t take it on the plane.
   “But I was able to take it on the plane from New York to here!” the passenger insists.
   The x-ray technician shows me the display screen on the machine, which appears to show a pen in the backpack which she can’t find.
   “Can you take out this pen?” she asks. I look in my backpack but can’t find the pen. We take everything out and put it back through the X-ray. The now-empty backpack still shows a pen inside in the x-ray image.
   The other woman has come to a compromise with security, they will let her take her GPS if she promises to hand it to a cabin crew member when she boards the aircraft. Trusting entirely to the honor system they let her go. A hassled-looking American in a business suit takes her place at the sidelined inspection table. A cheerful Australian man in skimpy running shorts breezes through security, winking at us as he passes – “mates dress like me and they won’t try to frisk ya.”
   The security woman gives up on trying to find my ghost pen and waves me through.

[end of Ethiopia I chapter]


I really love this picture, though the runners don't stand out well against the dark background, I suppose if one was crafty one could subtly increase the brightness of their yellow and red outfits until they stood out better ... if someone with some photoshop fu wants to have a go at it go right ahead, it would probably be wicked easy for someone who knows what they're doing

   There's a potential further scene where I negotiate buying a drinking horn in a market in Addis Ababa, which is kind of interesting because it wasn't a standard object anyone had for sale but when tehy found out I'd pay good money for one several shopkeepers called friends they knew who had one for actual use. Eventually several examples were rushed to me, which were all actually a bit ugly since they were home made for actual use rather than for display, and I paid way too much for the least ugly one but I kind of like that its an actual made-for-practical-use drinking horn. But this story felt like it didn't fit here as far as pacing and arc.

aggienaut: (Default)
Continuing the book. At this point our protagonist has completed his first two project sites in Ethiopia and now heads to the third. And has been traveling in Africa a month now!M






MEKELLE

May 4th [2012], Day 28, 0600 – I get up bright and early for my 0900 flight out of Bahir Dar. I find my camera battery had failed to charge the night before which is a frustrating start of the day.

0645 – I’m all packed and waiting in the lobby for my ride. Unfortunately I hadn’t had time to eat breakfast, but my ride should be here now to take me the fifteen minutes to the airport, where I’m supposed to be two hours before my flight.
   Time ticks by with no sign of Beide. I try calling him but get a “this user’s phone is currently shut off” message. I try calling Teferi,
   “Oh you want me to send a driver?” he sounds genuinely surprised.
   “Yes, I thought we discussed this yesterday? Please send him as soon as possible my flight is at nine”
   “Okay he’s on his way.”
   I continue waiting, my stomach growling, but I can’t go eat because I’m expecting the driver at any moment.

0800 – Beide finally arrives. I suspect its not his fault, he seems more dependable than Teferi. Anyway, no point crying over spilt milk, he’s here now. We quickly arrive at the airport and find no rush there, and the plane is not yet on the ground. I say goodbye to Beide, he’s been a good friend throughout my stay here. Unfortunately there is no food for my growling stomach in the tiny terminal.
   I call The Organization’s staff in Addis Ababa, where I’m supposed to be from 1100-1450, and ask them if they can change $300 USD I left with them into birr for me, and then my phone dies because the charger I’ve been provided barely works.

1030 – the plane I was supposed to depart on at 0900 finally arrives.

1200 – finally arrive in Addis Ababa. With only fifty minutes until I need to be here for my next flight it doesn’t really make sense for me to go out into the city, and I’m starving – but unfortunately there is probably someone from The Organization waiting for me outside the airport and I have no working phone to call him.
   I find the driver outside, and he’s all about driving me back to The Organization’s office. When I remind him that I need to be back at the airport in fifty minutes this seems to be news to him. He insists the office isn’t far, and in my vague memory it didn’t seem too far, so deferring to his familiarity with his home city I agree to let him take me to the office.

1240 – we arrive at the office, I’m veritably freaking out because I’m supposed to be at the airport for check-in at 1250, and I’m also deliriously hungry, and want to immediately turn around and go to the airport. They don’t seem stressed about the upcoming flight, and haven’t exchanged my money yet, but invite me to go with them to the bank, which we do.

1420 – finally back in the airport terminal and through security. My flight began boarding five minutes earlier, but I’m out of my mind with hunger having not had a bite to eat all day, so I order a burger at a restaurant in the terminal. It doesn’t come out until 1432 as I’m losing my mind, but I then devour it like a shark having a feeding frenzy and run to the gate just in time to catch my flight.

1630 – Finally arrive at the Mekelle airport. I was expecting a small shack of an airport terminal like there had been in Bahir Dar – Bahir Dar is one of the major tourist destinations of Ethiopia after all. Instead I find a large and modern looking airport building. It reminds me of some grumbling I’d heard, that Tigray exerts a disproportionate amount of influence in the federal government.
   Stepping out of the terminal I see before me a broad valley of pale rocky ground and sparse shrubs. The air is thin, because these are the highlands at 7,400 feet. The sky is broad and blue, and the temperature comfortably in the upper 70s.
   I’m concerned that my driver might once again have forgotten me and my phone isn’t working, but I quickly find a man holding a sign with my name on it. His name is Goru. Middle aged, friendly, full of energy, his skin is covered in jigsaw shapes of pale color – the skin condition known as vitiligo.
   Goru explains the sparse landscape around us as we drive away:
   “No one is allowed to build on this side of the hill around the airport for fear they could fire on the airport.” I quietly wonder to myself if this is a common practice    I just haven’t noticed or a uniquely Ethiopian thing.
   We crest a low ridge and the town spreads out before us in a low valley. It’s a decent sized town of 300,000 with a handful of five story buildings, mostly hotels, a stadium under construction, a monument on a hill looking like a stylized arm holding a ball aloft, and a large concrete plant looming at one end in a tangle of silos, pipes and smoking chimneys. As we descend into the town I’m struck by the ubiquitous use of stone. The roads are smoothly cobbled rather than asphalted, the walls and buildings are made with blocks of stone. Traffic is only very light, but we must stop and wait for a group of camels to cross the road. Goru turns to me:
   “I’ve heard there’s different kinds of camels, are these the same camels you have in America?”
   “Well, actually, we don’t really have camels” I explain.
   “What?? Really?” Goru is incredulous



May 5th, Day 29 – I’ve just finished a delicious and leisurely breakfast at the pleasant outdoor eating area of the New Axum hotel when Goru shows up again. The day before he had said we were lacking a car to make the drive down to Korem where the training would take place, the usual vehicle being under repair. But now he tells me he has found a car and driver and we’ll leave just as soon as he finds a translator. And he’s off again!
   A few hours later he’s back with a car and translator. I notice that of the cars in the hotel parking lot, several are white UN landcruisers with the international “NO” sign on the back windows with an AK-47 in the circle. Someone has written “I love you” with their finger on the dust on the back window of one of these UN cars.
   During the hours of the drive south, I get to know the translator, Girmay. He is a pleasant beekeeping graduate student at Mekelle University. We drive through empty highlands and flat shallow valleys divided by low jagged hills. The villages look neolithic, rough stone and thatch, and then suddenly around a rise we are driving past the towering bone-white masts of a modern windfarm, and then the landscape is flat and barren again. After an hour, the road begins to weave up into mountains. The landscape becomes greener. Blueish woodsmoke curls above clusters of huts perched on mountain saddles, surrounded by terraced fields of tef, the millet-like grain Ethiopia lives on. As we slow to avoid hitting the wandering chickens and goats of a village, children see me in the car and excitedly shout “Ferengi!” and “China! China!”
   “Ferengi” because it’s the Amharic word for “foreigner,” “China” because usually the only pale skinned people they see are Chinese engineers, and don’t we all just look the same?
   After a very long series of switchbacks up a steep slope we reach a mountain pass.
   “This is Dembeguina Pass” Goru tells me, his eyes glowing with pride, “here during the Italian invasion in 1935 Ethiopian forces surrounded an Italian force and defeated it.” I look around the windswept lonely pass and imagine the tired and slow moving column of troop trucks and tanks being overwhelmed by screaming warriors, and share his pride, for a love of Ethiopia is quickly growing in me.
   We descend down the other side into green valleys, and more hidden little towns. Finally we come to Korem town strung out along the road in a green mountain valley. The hotel we check into here has solid concrete walls with narrow windows and a dark cavernous bunker-like interior, the rooms inside opening to a central – what would be called an atrium except it isn’t open at the top. Getting suspicious I walk around the outside and the building is shaped like a star. Like, perhaps … what one might call a “star fort.” This might very well be the very fortification from which Haile Selassie commanded his troops in the last major battle of the 1935/1936 invasion of Ethiopia – where the brave Ethiopian warriors proved no match for mustard gas bombs dropped by aircraft.



May 6th, Day 30 – I’m not optimistic we’ll be able to start the project today since it’s Sunday. I’ve never seen work proceeding on a Sunday in Africa, and Ethiopia is a particularly religious country. But no all the trainees are gathering in the morning outside our hotel-fort. We take our seats in the narrow banquet hall adjoining the main building. Two of the attendees wearing a sort of white turban stand up and lead the group in some short prayers – we have the priests among us!
   After the morning lecture, Girmay and I walk down the quiet mainstreet –cars are actually rare on this road– to a little restaurant with a nice outdoor eating area overflowing with leafy foliage. While eating our injera based lunch it begins to rain, so we move under the roof overhang. The temperature remains pleasant and the water sparkles as it drops off the many leaves around us.
There’s no internet here, not on my phone, not in the hotel, not even an internet cafe in town. If I can possibly get internet I always find a way but when it’s simply not an option as is the case here, it’s kind of a relief. The noise of the outside world is severed and there is nothing but the here and now, and the here and now is nothing but drinking milky tea after lunch while watching the rain dripping from the plants.
   Back in the lecture hall in the fortress after lunch, lightning flashes outside the windows and thunder rumbles in the distance. The light flickers. This place is like a haunted castle. These beekeepers are among the most experienced I’ve encountered yet, asking in-depth and insightful questions – and unlike some of the participants in the previous two locations they’re not just trying to “show up the Ferengi” but taking the opportunity to learn.
   After our afternoon session is over Girmay and I and three other young men stroll around town again (there is, after all, little else to do). The others with us consist of an accountant from The Organization, and two young men from the Comel honey processing business (the head beekeeper and the director of the honey processing plant). The rain has stopped, though everything is still damp, and the air is imbued with a combination of the smell of fresh rain and wood smoke which hangs, bluish-white, wispily in the air over low parts of the valley.
   We come across what looks like a bar – young fellows are loitering in front drinking something and loud music can be heard reverberating within. Girmay approaches the patrons and asks if the place has tea, but they say the place only has milk. What I had assumed were barflies drinking beer were in fact lads drinking milk.






   I'm thinking of coming back and adding a sort of dream sequence story (though it might not be "as a dream" and it may be more expositional then scene setting) between every day like there had been in Nigeria I, with the history of Ethiopia up to Haile Selassie's overthrow (with future Ethiopia chapter dealing with the overthrow of the Derg and current war), paced so the Ethiopian invasion events mentioned here fall in the appropriate place in that story. I've noted that the current book I'm reading (Congo Journey by Redmond O'Hanlon) deals with this problem of wanting to introduce added context, by having himself read a book during the journey, and I think I've seen that elsewhere. Maybe I should invent myself a fictional book.

aggienaut: (Default)

   Continuing the book -- the first training location in Ethiopia has finished, and felt unsuccessful as they never allowed me to demonstrate the use of smoke on beehives. Now we head to a second location!

blue pin to the north-east is, spoiler alert, the next project site

FINOTE SELAM

April 30th, Day 24, Monday–
Teferi, Beide and I drive three hours south of Bahir Dar through undulating countryside. Plodding oxen pull plows through fields. We pass thick rows of eucalyptus trees in plantations – the bluish tint of the younger leaves identifying it as blue gum, a quick growing straight timber favored for building. Crews stack the cut logs on trucks. I think regretfully about the natural habitat being replaced with this non native tree.
   We drive through villages of mud daub houses, and past smoldering mounds of charcoal production. Occasionally we have to slow for herds of goats or cattle.
   Just as I’m preparing to take a photo out the window of an ox plow, something else eclipses it in my view finder – the crab-like curves and mottled green-brown carapace of the rusty hull of a Soviet era T-54 main battle tank.
   “It’s probably from the war against the Derg twenty years ago” Teferi says, “Have you lived through a war?”
   “Technically yes, I suppose, but the United States only fights them on other country’s land”



   “Finote Selam means ‘Pacific Road’” Teferi informs me. It’s a town on the road between Bahir Dar and Addis Ababa, but I point out to Teferi that it’s nowhere near the Pacific Ocean which one would have to travel east from Addis through Somalia to reach.
   “Pacific as in ‘peaceful’” he laughs, “Haile Selassie named it this during the Italian invasion because there was fighting all up and down the road north of Addis to Tigray but it was more peaceful here.”
   We arrive at one of two four story buildings in the small town. I think I’m being shown up to my room but instead we enter a banquet hall full of men facing the front table. I had not been forewarned that I would start the training the literal moment we arrived!
   I don’t get stage fright but jesus one wants to compose oneself and plan out what one is going to say before very unexpectedly finding oneself presenting to several dozen people.

   Several people in this group describe their occupation as “bee expert,” and they seem very restless with the more basic stuff I begin with to lay the groundwork for more advanced lessons later.
   “And thirdly there are the males, the drones, any unfertilized egg will become a drone” I am saying when I’m interrupted by someone near the front urgently raising their hand. “Yes?”
   “When you smoke a hive, how do you prevent the smoke from drifting to the hive next to it and making those bees angry?” he asks.
   Shortly later I’m explaining “new queens develop from female eggs laid in peanut shaped ‘queen cells’ such as pictured here” when I’m again interrupted by an urgent question. I prefer the sessions to be interactive so I generally don’t outright ban people from asking questions in mid lecture.
   “But doesn’t smoke kill the bee larvae?” the questioner asks.
   The restless bee experts also ask several times “just tell us how you produce so much honey in the United States” until I finally say “look it’s not any one magic thing we do, it's a thorough understanding of everything I’m going to explain to you over the next three days.” This doesn’t seem to be going particularly well and I’m feeling very stressed and anxious.



May 1st, Day 25 – After lecture, at the end of the day, we go to look at some beehives in a nearby village. It's the by-now-familiar set up of reddish-brown mud-daub cottages, wicker fences, hives hanging from eaves, hay stacks. The weather is a bit cool and the sun is getting low in the sky though it’s still sunny. The owner of the hives we’re to look at shows us to some square yellow frame hives in a half shed.
   “Can we open the hives now?” I ask, hoping not to get into another argument about waiting for the sun to set. Kerealem consults the owner and then says “yes.”
   “Can we use the smoker?” I ask hopefully, though by now almost certain the answer will be no. Again Kerealem consults the owner, and then, much to my surprise, says “yes.”
   Some dried leaves and corn cobs are provided and we get them smoldering in the smoker. I approach the hives fully suited up, smoke the entrance, wait a few seconds, crack the lid, puff some smoke in, lift the lid. The bees go about their business, ignoring me.
   Using my hive tool, I pull out a frame and examine it. It looks pretty good, there aren’t even any of the hive beetles that were pervasive in Nigeria. One by one I look at more frames. The bees tend to run off the frame as I remove it but don’t become aggressive. Seeing that the bees aren’t buzzing angrily at all, I take off one glove. And then the other, and finally remove the veil and continue inspecting frames. By the time I finish looking at all the frames most of the bees are on the outside of the hive, which is fine they’ll go back in later. I look up at my audience, they’re standing in a semi circle around me about twenty feet distant, with no protective gear, I grin at them and they grin back and applaud. Finally.

   The beehive owner invites me to eat with him in his house. Cow hides are laid on the dirt floor for us to sit on, and a table, woven like a basket, is brought in by his wife and placed in the middle with a piece of injera on it. She places grilled meat in the center and some piles of various spices around it. Kerealem and I and the farmer and two more men all partake of the meal by ripping off a piece of the injera nearest ourselves, and using it to grab a piece of meat and dip it in the spice of our choice. Glasses of what looks like pond water are brought for us.
   “This is tela, local beer,” Kerealem informs me. It doesn’t taste as bad as it looks, it's completely flat of course and tastes a bit like hay flavored water. Again fearing for the future of my gastrointestinal tract, I gamely drink my tele. As a thank you I leave one of my several hive tools with the farmer.
Fortunately, as it happens, neither this nor the raw beef earlier upset my stomach at all.



May 2nd, Day 26 – We begin in the morning with discussion of the previous day’s practical session. Several people share with everyone else, in impressed tones, how I had used smoke, opened a beehive during the daylight, and without a veil, without being stung. As I give the day’s lessons, the “bee experts” are no longer interrupting and questioning everything I say – it’s clear I have earned their respect at last.
   One thing that is missing however is Teferi and Beide. They have apparently stolen away this morning without telling me. Not that I terribly need them, though Teferi is supposed to be my support, but between this and not telling me I was beginning the moment I got here I am in general unimpressed with Teferi’s level of communication.
   In the evening we visit a small honey processing center, just a few rooms in a small brick building. It has a spinning extractor that can spin the honey out of comb honey, but not one made for spinning frames. So far, with all the frame hives I’ve seen, I have not yet seen an extractor suitable for harvesting the honey from them. Several beekeepers had cited a lack of access to these machines as an impediment when I had asked obstacles they were facing.



May 3rd, Day 27 – As we’re driving back north or Bahir Dar I almost do a double-take as I see a very large bird standing not far from the road, almost ostrich sized, but with short legs and red plumage on its head. It’s gone in a moment, I’m almost tempted to ask Beide to stop the car.
   “What bird was that?” I ask excitedly
   “It’s called a jigra or Turkish type” he explains
   “Will we see another?” I ask hopefully
   “No it’s quite rare”
[This paragraph probably to be deleted: "" Googling later, the best I can discern is it may have been a particularly large type of guinea fowl. Interestingly, the word “turkey” for the large bird in English is believed to have come from the large birds imported to Europe via the Turks in Constantinople, the origin of which the Europeans didn’t know but they may have been these large guinea fowl from Ethiopia, hence the “turkish type.” "" because as you'll find in the following paragraph I no longer think it was a Guinea fowl, but maybe these Turkey facts are interesting?]
   The type of bird I had just seen would remain a mystery of me until over ten years later while reading up on vervet monkeys I was shocked by an incidental bird picture on a page, it looked like the unidentified bird I had seen all those years earlier – an abyssinian ground hornbill apparently.
   This evening back in Bahir Dar I go to another of the nicest restaurants in town with Woinshet and Tsion and splurge once again on dinner for us all for $13.





   I have a feeling flash-forwards (as opposed to flashbacks) such as in the second-to-last paragraph won't go over well, as well as how meta they are. Feel free to tell me you hate it so maybe a preponderence of you can convince me to see reason but for the record I happen to like my meta flashforwards.

   Not currently mentioned but my hotel room in Finote Selam had the fanciest shower I've ever seen, it had so many knobs and levers it looked like a time machine, and water would suddenly shoot out of the most surprisingly places as one tried different levers on it. Might be amusing to fit in.
   There was a moment here which I just wrote and inserted back into Nigeria -- sitting on the rooftop lounge of the hotel one evening there was a hollywood movie on the television -- Tears of the Sun -- in which Bruce Willis goes on a guns-blazing hostage rescue in Nigeria and the protrayel of Africa is very hollywood cliche (which is to say just helpless people in villages and people shooting constantly). Moved the seeing of the movie back to Nigeria since it seemed more fitting.

aggienaut: (Default)

   Continuing the travelogue-book -- previously the daunting task of training Ethiopia's already-very-experienced beekeepers in modern beekeeping methods had been laid out to protagonist-me and he-I-we had arrived in the Ethiopian lakeside town of Bahir Dar, where the local coordinator seemed a bit shifty and had said there was no budget for field visits.



April 26th, Day 20 – I sit at the head table in the hotel’s elegant banquet hall. At tables covered with rich velvety cloth about fifty local farmers face me. They’re mainly wearing collared shirts that wouldn’t look out of place in the U.S., and light jackets, though a few wear traditional undyed white wool cloaks. As they had come in this morning (as much as half an hour after the official start time of course) some of them had admired the luxurious furnishings as if they’d never been in such a nice room before.
   I click to the next slide on my powerpoint. A beekeeper’s smoker is projected on the wall behind me: a metal canister with wispy smoke curling out of the tapered top, and a bellows on the side.
   “You’ll need a smoker to smoke your hives,” I say to the group, as part of my initial coverage of the basics, “how many of you have a smoker?”
   My translator this time is a graduate student in beekeeping at the local university named Kerealem. He translates. No one raises a hand. Sometimes it takes awhile for classes to get comfortable enough for enthusiastic participation, they probably have smokers, they’re probably just not raising their hands.
   I advance to the next slide, a picture from the first Nigeria project two months earlier: one of the beekeepers is holding a pronged stick under a beehive. There’s a coffee can secured in the fork of the branch by wire and smoke is billowing out of the can’s open top.
   “Without a smoker, you can make smoke like this but it’s not as effective. Smoking the bees is very important because it makes them calm so you can work the hive without them getting all stirred up. Even if you have a good suit you still don’t want to stir the bees up because they could sting other people or animals.”
   Kerealem translates, it only takes a moment. Then an old man in the back raises his hand. Kerealem calls on him, I’ve encouraged them to ask questions. The old man begins speaking. And speaking. And speaking. Finally I have to ask Kerealem what he’s saying.
   “He disagrees with you and he’s telling them his own opinion”
   “Disagrees about what?”
   “He says smoke will make the bees upset and the only proper thing to do is to open the hives at night.
   I have several problems on my hands. I’m practically the youngest person in the room, and I’ve been brought here to tell these people how to do what they’ve been doing all their lives as passed down from generations immemorial. I’m going to have to earn their confidence. I’m ready to listen and learn from their experience on many things, but to make the development progress expected of me I’m going to have to push back on some long held beliefs such as this one about smoke. When disagreeing with people such as the older gentleman currently holding forth against smoke, I’m going to have to be diplomatic and strategic.
   “Smoke is used to calm bees throughout the world,” I say to the room when he’s finally finished, “your bees could be different though. We’ll experiment together by using smoke on some hives in the evening just before the sun goes down and see how it goes.”

okay this pig isn't black but there was one that was I swear!

   After training that afternoon Terefe, Beide, Kerealem, about a half dozen of the trainees and I travel to a farm just outside of town. Cottages and outbuildings are made of wattle-and-daub – a plaster of mud over walls made of a wicker of branches. Low walls made of rough stones surround some garden plots, perhaps to keep the owner’s large black pig out – the sweet beast follows him like a dog, gently oinking.
   “Raising pigs isn’t a strong tradition in Ethiopia but it’s becoming more common.” Kerealem explains to me.
   Traditional hives hang from the eaves of the houses. I eagerly approach them, and observe the bees busily coming and going from a small hole in the smaller end of the tapered cylinder shaped hives.
   “The back is removable see,” Kerealem draws my attention to the back which is composed of a circular piece like the top of a basket, “the bees tend to put the brood towards the front and the honey in the back so by opening it from the back like this they can take the honey without disturbing the brood.” Traditional beekeeping methods in Nigeria had required destroying the hive, but I am impressed to see here the traditional method is very well conceived and preserves the hive.
   Around a corner we come upon a row of hives under a rough shelter. They’re a mix of traditional cylindrical hives and square frame hives freshly painted a bright yellow.
   “Alright,” I say eagerly “let’s suit up and fire up the smoker!” There’s an anxious flurry of discussion around me in Amharic and then Kerealem informs me
   “The owner says it’s not an appropriate time to open the hives, we must wait till dark, and not use smoke.”
   I look at the owner and note that he wasn’t even one of the attendees of the training in the afternoon so he hasn’t heard my presentation on using smoke and how to inspect the hive. I feel trapped in an impossible situation, I have been brought here to teach how to use frame hives, but you can’t make use of them without doing daytime inspections with smoke. But if they won’t let me even demonstrate that that is possible how can I accomplish anything at all?
   “You can open a beehive now, but you can’t use any smoke or take out any of the frames” the owner finally concedes, through Kerealem’s translation, after some discussion. This is a terrible idea, very likely to stir the bees up … but I’m very reluctant to merely look at the hives from the outside, and they’re all looking at me like they expect me to do something. Okay I’ll see how far I can get at this but I’ll stop as soon as the bees seem to be getting riled up.
   I suit up and approach the hive, as the others watch from twenty yards away. The bees don’t react as I put my gloved hands on the hive. Using the hive tool I pry off the lid – the bees have, as expected, used the glue they make from tree resin, known as propolis, to secure the lid. I pause for a moment to see how the bees are reacting but there’s no reaction. My audience retreats to to thirty yards as a precaution.
   I carefully lift the lid off, moving my arm slowly, in fluid motions, the way a branch might blow in the wind. I hold my breath – the carbon dioxide one exhales can easily trigger bees as they immediately recognize it as the breath of a predator.
   Under the lid the tops of the ten frames are covered in bees. Many of them stand alertly, raising their abdomens defensively, like little striped missile batteries preparing to fire. A sort of warning buzz ripples through the hive, but they do not attack. The rush of bees into the air I had been dreading does not occur.
   I carefully place the lid back on the hive. Then, while still standing just beside the hive I remove my veil and gloves and turn to smile to my spectators. They come back to about 20 yards away and seem a bit impressed. I let out a deep breath of relief.

   In the evening Teferi, Beide, Kerealem and I go to a hotel in town that’s known for its tej. Tej is Ethiopian “honey wine,” or mead. In addition honey and water, the other signature ingredient of tej is the root of the gesho plant, a local shrub. Gesho acts as a bittering agent, the way hops do for beer. Kerealem talks to the owner to make sure to get some real tej.
   “It used to be commonly drunk throughout Ethiopia but nowadays people often make tej with sugar instead of honey, and it’s not as good, so people have gotten out of the habit of drinking it.” he explains.
   Presently the proprietor brings out glasses shaped like scientific flasks – a round lower section and narrow neck, and then fills them with the golden amber tej from a larger bottle.
   “Traditionally tej is drunk from these glasses, called berele,” Kerealem explains, “because the belief has been that it’s the smell that gets you drunk but from the narrow neck you don’t smell it.”
   It’s delicious. Sweet, but balanced by the gesho root. It compares favorably to most meads I’ve had.



April 27th, Day 21 – I carefully follow my two guides through the farmer’s house, feeling uncivilized to be walking through someone’s house in a bee suit. The floor is just packed earth, there’s some low home-made looking chairs, some woven baskets, a low bed in the corner. We go out the back door and enter a sort of shed, only accessible through the house, in which sit a dozen yellow beehives. Horizontally along the whole width of the shed wall there's an opening about a foot wide, about level with the beehives’ entrance, for the bees to come and go. This is an arrangement unlike anything I’ve seen before.
   “Okay, where’s the smoker?” I say to the two young men with me. But they look at me blankly through their bee veils. They don’t speak English. I make smoker-using hand gestures but they still don’t make any sign of understanding.
   It had taken some arguing to even look at hives during the day, again. With Kerealem and Terefe once again saying we couldn’t look at hives until after dark. Finally they had relented and I thought they’d agreed I could use the smoker we’d brought, but here I am in the bee enclosure without a smoker or anyone who speaks English. I look back at the door, but the ground is a bit muddy in here and I don’t want to go back and forth through the house multiple times.
   Finally I relent and carefully put the hive tool against the lid of the hive and begin to carefully try to open it. Immediately the pitch of the bees increased to the heavy angry hum that denotes bees that are not about to brook any tomfoolery.
   I look at the two young men again in their bee suits, they’re looking at me like they expect me to do some beekeeping. Its frustrating for me to come out to a bee yard and get fully suited up only to do nothing, but there’s nothing that can be done without creating a fiasco. I make a shrugging gesture to them and say “well let’s go then I guess,” gesturing with a palm down motion that we’ll leave the hives alone and to the door to indicate that we’ll leave. Just from our brief activities bees are zipping around angrily. Outside I argue with Kerealem and Terefe again. They’re convinced smoke will make the bees angry. I am anxious that I will have no improvements I can report to the project planners and sponsors if we can’t get past this.



April 28th, Day 22 – “Use of beeswax products is not in the scope of work” Teferi had told me. Fortunately, Kerealem had sided with me on this and on this the last day of training in Bahir Dar we melt down and render beeswax.
   We try finding a suitable mold to pour wax into to make candles but can find nothing suitable at hand that works. Instead Kerealem shows the trainees and I how to make a candle the traditional Ethiopian way by dipping. While familiar in theory with this, I had never seen it done myself before. One might imagine one simply dips the wick (in this case locally made wool string) in melted wax, but that would require a very deep pot of melted wax and by extension a huge amount of excess wax beyond what is used to make the candle.    Instead, while one person holds a stick above the pot of melted wax from which the string wicks hang, Kerealem uses a ladle to pour wax repeatedly down the wick. Slowly the candle comes into being and gets thicker. The final candle is long, narrow and slightly curved. It has a rounded bottom that has to be sliced off to make it flat so that it can be set down.
   “They use these candles in the Ethiopian church” Kerealem informs me.
   “Very nice, I’ve heard the Catholic church only uses 51% beeswax candles anymore as a cost saving measure” I respond, “I really think they could afford to support beekeepers by using 100% beeswax candles but, what can you do” I say with a shrug.
   The candles are lit later during our closing session. As is common with pure beeswax candles, they burn brightly, without flickering, and with a pleasant aroma. I’m not sure I’ve changed the way anyone here does beekeeping but the attendees seem cheerful, and at least I’ve educated them about a lot of more scientific bee behavior details they probably didn’t know. I hope the two remaining training sessions in Ethiopia will actually involve some beekeeping.



April 29th, Day 23, Sunday – Beide meets me in front of my hotel in the morning and we get on a “bujuj,” the ubiquitous auto-rickshaw consisting of the front half of a motorcycle and the back half seating for two in a semi-enclosed cabin. We have no car because it isn't a work day, but he has generously volunteered to take me to see Ethiopian church on his day off.
   We travel a few blocks across the city, as always the roads don’t have a lot of traffic. We pass donkey carts loaded with goods, and other bujujs, including one in which the passenger is transporting a bundle of sugarcane stalks that obviously don’t fit within the cabin, so he holds them out the side of the bujuj like a knight with a (bundle of) lances. At this slower pace and through the open side of the bujuj I can feel the fresh air and see the city better. We pass an acacia tree full of vulture headed marabou storks perched with macabre dignity.
   We disembark the bujuj next to an overgrown field on the edge of town, a steady flow of people in white robes are walking along a path through the field to where the dome of the Church can be seen over the trees at the far end. We’re not wearing white robes ourselves but nice slacks and collared shirts and no one looks askance at us as we join the procession. Within the grove of trees we find a large crowd of berobed church attendees gathered in the open space around the church building. The church itself is circular, surrounded by a veranda, with entrances facing the four cardinal directions. At the top of the steps of the entrances priests holding red parasols address the crowds. As far as I can tell the church service seems to be relatively unstructured, attendees arriving and staying as long as they feel like. The morning light seems to make the simple white wool robes of the churchgoers glow amidst a background of the vibrant green leaves of surrounding trees fluttering in the wind.



   After taking a bujuj back downtown, Beide, and I have breakfast on the balcony of a restaurant. I have a plate-sized flatbread drizzled with honey, he has some meat and vegetables in injera. From there we walk a block to his own restaurant, slowed by the fact that every ten feet he seems to run into someone who is very happy to see him. At his restaurant we drink coffee and chat for two hours along with others who come by, such as his brother, and his young son climbs on him like he's a jungle gym. After awhile he says with a grin that he has a special treat for me. The serving girl brings out a plate with several chunks of raw beef glistening on it, as well as several different spicy powders in little cups.
   When I’d first heard of tere siga, the Ethopian delicacy of raw beef, I swore I’d never try it. Raw meat sounds like something to avoid in a first world country, and tenfold in a third world country. But perhaps I’m not as immune to peer pressure as I thought I was – it turns out when a friend is smiling expectantly expecting me to try raw beef that’s exactly what I’ll do. I spike a morsel with my fork, dip it in some of the spice powder, and apprehensively bring it to my mouth as Beide beams at me. As I sink my teeth into the tender meat, I find it's juicy and tender and the spices give it a good flavor. There's nothing objectionable about it at all really ... other than my certainty that I'm signing my death warrant, which makes it a bit hard to enjoy.
   When I get back to the hotel I and internet access, I google “I ate raw beef will I die now?” but it turns out the only outcome of any likelihood would be to get tapeworms but “prevalence is not well studied since there are usually no symptoms so it is often underreported” … which is a relief, but I still don’t terribly want a tapeworm.



   In the early evening I meet the hotel manager Woinshet and her friend, the hotel’s accountant, Tsion, by the lake. We get into one of the small motorboats, Tsion stepping in carefully in her high heels. We take the boat across the bay to the outdoor dining and events area of another hotel, located on its own peninsula surrounded on three sides by the gentle lapping of the lake water, and shaded by some enormous fig trees. One portion of the outdoor area is being set up for a wedding to occur later in the evening.
   “It must be a very expensive wedding” Woinshet comments, 'at least $300!'”
   Over our multi course meal we discuss our plans for life. Woinshet wants to emigrate to the United States, she knows someone in Las Vegas. Tsion hopes to join her sister in South Africa. Woinshet has a bachelor degree in law and is the manager of a hotel, and earns about 1.8% as much as I do, and I don’t even get paid that well by Western standards.
   Tsion orders a glass of Ethiopian wine and I decide to follow suit. Woinshet, whose name means “wine,” declines because “the bible forbids it.”
   “Aren’t they always drinking wine in the bible?” I ask a bit incredulous
   “That’s a mistranslation” she assures me “it’s just grape juice.” I let her think I believe her though I sincerely doubt her claim. Meanwhile this Ethiopian wine tastes pretty decent to my wine-ignorant palette. The final tab for a multi-course meal with wine for three at probably the nicest restaurant in town is $15, which I’m happy to cover entirely myself.
   The girls call a friend of theirs to drive us home. After he drops the girls off at their homes he takes me to my hotel and I try to pay him but he refuses to take any payment, insisting it was a favor for his friends.



   So there you have it. We're in the real meat of the project now. And 60% of the way through the Ethiopia chapter now. As always, very interested in any feedback

aggienaut: (Default)
Continuing "the book." Any and all feedback to be yes plz.
 
(Previously)




BAHIR DAR

Wednesday, April 25th
[2012], Day 19, 6:30am – I realize at once my mistake. The severe-looking woman manning the airport baggage x-ray machine has just pulled from my bag a flat six-inch-long by inch-and-a-half-wide piece of stainless steel, bent ninety degrees at one end and sharpened at the other.
   “What is this?” she asks coldly.
   I sigh and make a dismissive gesture “Sorry I meant to put that in my checked luggage, you can take it I guess.”
   “What is it?” she repeats.
   “Oh, it’s a hive tool – for opening beehives.”
   “Are you a beekeeper?” she asks, while examining it, testing the sharp edge on her finger.
   “Yes, I am.”
   “Okay.” she says, and, much to my surprise, hands it back to me.

   I haven’t moved that hive tool since Nigeria, I think to myself, which means the Nigerian airport security completely missed it even though they found and confiscated my nail clippers! Remembering the confiscation of the nail clippers leaves me irritated all over again, how can you possibly hurt someone with nail clippers? Clearly Ethiopian airport security is both more thorough and more thoughtful about what they do or do not confiscate.



   The small Fokker 50 turboprop aircraft buzzes through the morning air over Ethiopia. Far down below brown land divided up by rocky ridges and rugged gullies glides by. Occasional patchwork clusters of small squares of different shades of green denote fields around villages. After about forty minutes the land becomes flatter and more covered in fields, laid out in concentric circles around low hills topped with thick groves of trees. As we bank around on final approach to the airport I see blue water stretching off to the horizon – Lake Tana.
   The outskirts of the airport sweep past as the ground comes up to meet us and was that the distinct shape of a Soviet Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship sitting defanged and impotent without its rotors, in the corner of the field like a discarded shoe?
   A gentle bump and we decelerate down the runway, with bright red airport firetrucks immediately rushing out to meet us. I’m a bit alarmed, is there something wrong with our aircraft? But no one else seems concerned, and the firetrucks merely come to a stop surrounding where the aircraft comes to a stop. Just a standard precaution? I’m pleasantly surprised to find we aren’t about to die, but is this… often necessary here?



   Outside the small terminal there is a small crowd waiting for the passengers, but I once again look in vain for my name on a sign. The gaggle of other passengers quickly disappear into the cars that have come for them and disappear, until there only remains myself and two men who were waiting for someone. One is short and kind of shifty, wearing an ill fitted suit, while the other is taller, looking comfortable and unconcerned in his slacks and collared shirt. In fact the taller one looks just like an Ethiopian twin of the actor Jean Reno. Around us, beyond the round-about at the terminal curb, I only see bushland of low shrubs. The airport seems to be in the middle of nowhere.
   After everyone has left, the shorter man approaches me and asks hesitantly, “are you Kris Fricke?”
   “Yes I am”
   “Oh…. we expected someone older.”
   He introduces himself as Terefe with OCAV-ODCA, and the other man as Beide, the driver. We get in a white landcruiser and proceed into town. After just a few hundred yards the shrubbery around us gives way to a broad savanna of cultivated fields – evidently a no trespassing security zone exists around the airport, which allows the extensive shrubbery growth there.
   Its a very short drive and after just a few minutes a big red billboard declares “WELCOME TO COCA COLA Bahir Dar” and the fields give way to buildings of town.
These buildings look very modern – hotels and office buildings standing four or five floors high on either side of a broad palm-tree-lined road with very little traffic. Other vehicles on the road seem to mostly be little three-wheeled blue and white auto-rickshaws and the occasional donkey cart.
   We pull in to the drive of one of the buildings – “HOMLAND HOTEL” is emblazoned on the sign. I’m shaking my head at the egregious mistake by the sign maker as I enter the lobby and see that “Homland” is in fact the name.

   “What do you mean we’re not doing field visits?” I ask of Terefe after, in discussing the planned training, he’s informed me I’m just going to be lecturing.
   “It’s not in the budget!” he says defensively, avoiding eye contact.
   “Well we need to find a way to make it happen! We can’t do beekeeping training without field visits!”
   “I’ll, um. Look into it. In the mean time, you can rest, we start tomorrow”
   v“Oh… it’s not even 9am, we can’t do something today?”
   “I’ve got other work to do” Terefe responds a bit peevishly.
   “I can show you around” Beide volunteers.
   “Great, I’ll put my bags in my room and be right back down!”



   After dropping off Terefe at his office, Beide and I proceed to a wooden dock that extends from between two buildings not far from my hotel out onto the lake. For about fifteen dollars we were able to hire a motor boat and driver to take us out to one of the monasteries located on islands in the lake.
“There’s actually eight island monasteries on the lake, we’ll go to the closest one, it’s not far” Beide suggests. As we motor through the flat blue-green waters I see a few fishermen paddling along on kayak shaped boats made from bundles of papyrus.
   “These are called ‘tankwas,’ they are the traditional boats used by local fishermen. They can easily make them themselves.”
Beide speaks decent English. He teaches automotive engineering at Bahir Dar University (gosh he’s overqualified to be my driver!), for which he gets paid a decent-by-Ethiopian-standards wage of $50 a month. He also gives driving lessons, and as in the current case works as a driver for hire for organizations. I’m interested to learn that all education from high school and beyond in Ethiopia is conducted in English. I find this a bit puzzling since Ethiopia was never a British colony (nor anyone else’s) and was a Soviet ally during the Derg regime in the 80s. There are numerous regional languages in use throughout Ethiopia but the official national language is Amharic, the language of this the Amhara region.
We are cutting across a bay in the southern end of Lake Tana. To our left the lake stretches out of sight, and to our right buildings of Bahir Dar line the shore line, each set back amid the palm trees of its own little piece of the lakeshore.
   “Bahir Dar” means “Sea Shore” in Amharic” Beide informs me.
   “But this is just a lake”
   “Yes but we don’t have a sea shore” he laughs.
   Across the bay we follow parallel to shoreline reed forests for about another kilometer and enter a channel between an island and the shore. The boat pilot points out another channel leading into the reeds to our right and says something to Beide in Amharic.
   “That’s the beginning of the Nile river there.”
   “Just right there?” I ask amazed.
   “Yes the Blue Nile, which joins the White Nile in Sudan, but most of the water, 85% I think, comes from this side. Look there’s hippos,” he points.
   Sure enough the little ears of several hippos can be seen, fidgeting like birds on their barely visible bodies just breaking the surface near the reeds. A few fishermen paddle tankwas along the channels, giving the notoriously dangerous hippos a wide berth.
   Shortly we pull up to a short dock on the island across from the beginning of the Nile. We walk past three tankwas that have been pulled ashore beside the dock and about a hundred meters along a smooth dirt path through tropical trees, past a few rough-stone outbuildings and through a gateway to arrive at the monastery grounds. The dominating building, like all Ethiopian churches, is a large cylindrical building. The conical metal roof of this building is a rusty mint green.
   One of the monks, in white robes and a white turban greets us in Amharic and seems happy to give us a tour. “The monastery was founded here in the 14th century” Beide translates.
   He ushers us up the steps of the church. There is an outer walkway around the building, and through a heavy door we’re led to another inner walkway around the inside. There’s another heavy door leading into the very interior but I’m told only the monks and priests are allowed in the inner sanctum. Along the walls of this inner walkway there are some ornate old tapestries and some other interesting objects, such as a large brass bell for calling the monks to prayer and a very large drum that Beide pretends to play.
   The monk shows us to another building beside the church, which is set up as a little museum with various things behind glass on shelves. Books he says are 900 years old and about ten ornate metal crowns with little plaques identifying them as having belonged to Ethiopian Emperors from as early as the 1500s.
   He opens one of the books to show me the perfect lines of hand written script written in the angular ge’ez alphabet.
   “Ge’ez is a language only used by the Ethiopian church now, but it’s an ancestor of Amharic like Latin is to Italian” Beide explains.
I look at the smooth only-slightly-yellowed paper, I don’t believe it’s actually 900 years old, but I’m not sure what to think of these crowns behind the glass. They’re not exactly solid gold or jewel encrusted but they’re more intricately bedizened with delicate metal work than anyone would be likely to make just to fool with tourists. If these really are the crowns of nearly a dozen past emperors of Ethiopia this little shed is an incredibly unprepossessing place to find them. [seriously though check these things out. Real historical crowns or someone has a serious crown making hobby what do you think??]



   We return to town, Biede’s wife runs a restaurant off a side street in the center of town. The buildings in this part of town have an elegant old world style, with vines climbing plaster building facades and balconies fronted with metal latticework. The medians of the main roads are planted with trees and works of art.
   The restaurant has a nice little outdoor foreyard under a mango tree where we sit and they serve me a earthenware bowl full of delicious chunks of cooked beef –derek tibs-- accompanied by two pieces of the crepe-like injera rolled into scrolls. As I’ve seen locals do, I tear off bits of the injera and use it to pick up the pieces of meat in lieu of using a fork. Meanwhile one of their employees, a young woman, roasts some green coffee beans by holding the pan over a fire, then grinds them in a home made pestle and mortar of which the pestle appears to be part of a drive shaft. Beide works in automotive engineering after all.
   I’m having a great time already and it’s only lunch time. Would I like to go see the large waterfall on the Nile that appears on the 1 birr note? Yes absolutely.
After lunch we drive 30 kilometers south through rural countryside of small fields and clusters of mud-daub houses, big rounded haystacks sit amongst the houses and at one point we get caught in a traffic jam of donkey carts loaded high with hay. We park by a “Welcome to Blue Nile Falls” sign and as we’re walking to the river a young man matches pace with us. He speaks english and has a laminated “official guide” badge. He only wants a few dollars to be our guide so I tell him he’s hired.
   We board a small wooden boat that’s just pulled up to the shore to disgorge a few Ethiopians, and the standing boatman takes us across the river using a pole like a Venetian gondolier.
   Our guide points to a series of triangular hills a short distance off and points out that they look like pyramids, and further points out that there has always been a cultural continuum up and down the Nile and there’s more pyramids in neighboring Sudan than further down the river in Egypt. Be this as it may, I’m not sure these hills have anything to do with pyramids.
   “Right now we’re actually crossing the artificial ‘headrace canal’ for the Tis Abay hydroelectric dam.” the tour guide tells us, continuing proudly “Ethiopia produces so much electricity from hydroelectric that we export it to countries such as Sudan.”
   On the other bank we disembark the boat and walk a few hundred meters until we arrive at the top of the waterfalls. The waters of the Nile roar over a 400 meter broad waterfall to fall 140 feet. Plumes of spray billow up from the crashing waters.
   “Tis Abay’ means ‘Great Smoke’” the guide informs us as he leads us down a trail into the broad gully below the falls “because of the clouds of mist.” From a vantage point below the falls we can see them just as they are pictured on the currency note.
   “You are actually very lucky” the guide says “when the hydroelectric turbines are running the waterfall is just a trickle because all the water is being diverted, but today they’re off, so the waterfall is turned on.” It strikes me as a bit of a shame that something like this, a national emblem, can be “turned off” to make electricity. The sacrifices and tradeoffs a country must make to modernize.
   We are able to pick our way up the increasingly slippery rocks until we’re close to the waterfall and can feel the spray. It had been a warm day but down here under the constant spray it’s actually a bit chilly. The guide offers to take some pictures with my phone and Beide and I clownishly pose with thumbs up.
Following a trail up the ridge just opposite of the waterfall we find a girl of maybe twelve seated patiently with a set of coffee cups on a small box, the traditional coffee making set up. Would I like coffee, yes of course. She immediately begins the familiar process of roasting green coffee beans, which I surmise we grown within a kilometer of here, and grinding them in a mortar and pestel before brewing them into coffee in a traditional clay coffee pitcher – a “jebena.” An older woman (her mother?) is nursing a baby just a few meters away and framed between them from where I sit I can see the Tis Abay Falls. Could there be a more Ethiopian image than this?






   I'm a bit worried my habit of putting facts and exposition into the mouth of whomever happens to be at hand is making it sound like everyone around me is getting possessed by the same tour guide djinn.

   Original entry describes this day in 368 words, here expanded to 2483 (:

   But yes plz to be giving me your feedback.

aggienaut: (Default)

   Continuing with The Book, recall that last time we had the first two days in Ethiopia, introducing the reader to Ethiopia and establishing the goals here. Let us continue with the third day!


Haile Selassie, looking a bit like Steve Carell here I think?


Tuesday, April 24th, Day 18 – “So what are the best museums in town, and how do I get to them?” I ask Addis the receptionist in the morning.
   “Are you going by yourself, where are your colleagues?”
   “They are busy today, I am just sightseeing by myself.”
   “I get off in an hour, do you want me to show you around the city?”
   “Yes that would be delightful”
   “Okay in an hour meet me about one hundred meters down the road that way” and she points to the left of the front door.”
   “Okay great!”

   Just as I’m beginning to think I’ve gotten her instructions wrong, I see her walking towards me on the sidewalk ahead, looking pretty in a simple green skirt and black top, with her hair in a bun atop her head. We walk a short distance to where the road overlooks the African Union headquarters buildings just a few hundred meters away – one tall narrow highrise attached to a lower building with a metallic dome like a giant silvery hamburger bun. We are close enough that we are able to connect to their wifi, which is good – I have no phone service and want to google something.
   “Excuse me, what’s the password for the Africa Union Wifi?” Addis asks a passing man in a suit.
   “‘We are all Africans!’ Capital W and A, and an exclamation point at the end” the man politely explains before continuing on his way. Clever I think to myself, a password that someone like me can’t honestly type.
   “Hey Addis could you type that for me?”

   Next under Addis’ expert guidance we catch one of the taxi/bus minivans that drive set circuits around the city. I’m not sure how someone not thoroughly familiar with the city would be able to get around. We change vans twice, to get onto vans traveling a connecting circuit, until we finally arrive at the campus of Addis Ababa University. From there we walk a short distance through beautiful gardens and lawns towards a two story building situated regally at the culmination of the lawns and fountains.
   “The Ethnographic Museum is in Haile Selassie’s former palace” Addis explained, “well, one of his palaces anyway.”
   The palace has a grand entrance approached by a set of steps, flanked by statues, with the sort of balcony one would address a crowd from directly above it, but other than that the palace doesn’t look overly grand – mostly bare brick with some sections painted pale yellow or grey, with toothpaste colored trim. [Seriously, I'm trying not to insult Ethiopia's cultural heritage here, but between you and me it looks like a run down apartment building from the 70s to me really]
   Just across the drive from the entrance a freestanding spiral staircase stretches up about a floor and a half to nowhere. Fourteen steps, topped with a gold painted crouching lion.
   “The italians built this stairway during their occupation, one step for each year of the reign of Mussolini. When they were kicked out the Lion of Judah was placed on top, representing the Ethiopian triumph.”
   “I wonder how the Italians had planned to finish it.”
   She smiles and shrugs.



   We stroll through the ornate rooms of the museum, filled with artifacts of Ethiopia’s rich history and culture. I admire the interesting musical instruments and farming tools. There’s even a traditional beehive – a woven cylinder slightly tapering to one end, covered in a plaster of mud, dung and ash. Similar hives are easily recognizable in depictions on ancient tapestries.
   I am fascinated to learn that right up until the 1980s Ethiopia had a feudal society. In lieu of the counts and dukes of Europe they had aristocratic titles like dejazmach or ras. And at the top of it all they had the King of Kings (“Negusa Nagast”), the emperor. As a history nerd who has always been fascinated with medieval Europe and a cynic towards modern society, this intrigues me, but the reality of the institutional inequality I find unenjoyably grim. The tone of the displays about the monarchy seem to balance a pride in the reputation of the last emperor, Haile Selassie, as a globally respected statesman, with an un-nostalgic criticism of the feudal system.

[I wish I could remember more specific details about the exhibits but the fact is I really just remember my general impressions at this point]



   After the Ethnographic Museum, we have lunch in a nearby cafe. I let Addis order for me since the menu is all in amharic and there’s not even an easy translation for most of it, it’s all uniquely Ethiopian. The server sets an earthenware bowl of mouthwatering spicy ground lamb in front of me, as well as a cup of peanut tea and a square dense peace of bread, lacking the big holes I am accustomed to bread having.
   “The bread is made from the ‘ensete,’ the ‘false banana tree’” Addis explains.
   "That’s a tree that grows here?” I ask. “My girlfriend Tarragon would find this so interesting” I continue, feeling a bit guilty for using the old gratuitous-mention-of-significant -other technique to ensure there’s not misunderstandings. Addis doesn’t miss a beat, or perhaps, was that just a fraction of a missed beat?
   “Yes, it looks just like a banana tree but the fruit aren’t edible” I stop mid bite of the ensete bread. She laughs and continues “the bread is made from the root actually.”
   I find myself wondering if Tarragon would ever come here with me. She certainly doesn’t lack for adventurous spirit – she is presently sailing off the US East Coast after all – but sometimes an adventurous spirit is not enough…

[I inserted this lunch scene to try to dial in a reminder to the reader of the current state of things with Tarragon, and/or without this I felt the reader might be wondering "hey I thought the protagonist had a girlfriend why's he's traipsing about with some other girl." How well does this fit / work here?]

   I want to go to the Red Terror Museum, which was also among the top rated museums in Addis Ababa and Addis concedes with a heavy sigh that it is important. We find it near a broad and dirty concrete square overshadowed by an overpass.
   “You can go in, I’ll wait out here,” says Addis, looking serious. “I’ve been there before and it’s very depressing,” so I go in while she sits on a bench outside and takes out her phone.
   Inside the exhibit once again begins with the feudal system under Haile Selassie, with the same mix of pride and condemnation in the tone of the exhibits. This museum focuses on the end of his reign, and how resentment of the medieval inequality led to a revolution in 1974. A communist dictatorship called the Derg took over and Haile Selassie was arrested and secretly strangled. The Derg then embarked on a repressive campaign to consolidate its power, known as the Red Terror.
   The museum is somber and quiet. The docent, a gentle and dignified man of about fifty with thin grey hair approaches and stands companionably by me as I look at the newspaper headlines, photographs and artifacts. He helpfully elaborates on the context of some of the earlier exhibits, and seeing as I don’t find this unwelcome he continues with me through the galleries explaining the exhibits in the manner of a skilled university professor, neither over explaining nor leaving me confused. Soon he’s telling me of his own experience. He was arrested at the age of 15, for reasons he didn’t understand (“I don’t know why … what had I done??”), and imprisoned and tortured for the next eight years. I try not to look at his fingers, twisted by torture. By the time he was released, his family and friends were all dead and gone, he had missed out on receiving an education, and still no one wanted to hire or befriend him for fear he was still being watched by the government.
   We walk into a dimly lit gallery in which one wall is entirely shelves of skulls exhumed from a mass grave. Next to each skull in its cubicle are a few personal items found with it, shoes, a watch band, a little wooden Ethiopian orthodox cross necklace, a smudged wallet sized photo of a little girl. We stand in silence for a moment.
   Arriving back in the lobby, the docent explains how the civil war finally resulted in the overthrow of the Derg in 1991. For the first time he seems close to tears as he tells how the top leaders of the Derg fled to Zimbabwe where they live free to this day.
   I walk out into the grey afternoon with a lump in my throat, and hug Addis. Grim indeed. As we walk to the nearest taxi stop, she explains, having been born just after the Derg was overthrown, her parents had named her “New World” -- Addis Alem.




   I'm in a constant philosophical battle with the advice of people who say "don't let the truth get in the way of a good story" and my inclination to cleave strictly to what happened exactly how it happened. In this case I've taken an unusually big liberty -- I wanted to front load the Ethiopian chapter with Ethiopian history so I took this visit to the Ethnological museum that actually occurred on a second visit in 2014 and inserted it here in the beginning of the first visit in 2012. But then it's brought with it a string of problems ... because I went with Addis, and so in order to write her in I need to put her and her hotel in here in 2012. Which isn't really a big problem except in 2014 I was single and it was fine if I was cavorting with cute hotel receptionists but in 2012 I was not, so you can see my inserted lunch to try to patch that.
   And then her and her hotel being here in 2012 means they'll be missing from 2014. We'll see how we can fix that problem when we get there I guess.

   I wonder if I can/should insert more about Haile Selassie's life in this section? Such as his title of Ras Tafari giving the name to the Rastafarians who worship him as a god; and his exile from Ethiopia during the Italian occupation in WWII and his subsequent return.

Original post from the day I went museum hopping with Addis.

   And in reality I didn't go to the Red Terror Museum with Addis, though that was also in 2014. I think the local I went with had indeed declined to go in with me though.

   So yeah, the purpose of this section is obviously to insert some Ethiopian history. How well does it do that? Should there be more or less history?


I could have sworn I had a picture of me pretending the lion was biting my hand but I can't find it.

aggienaut: (Default)

   So I've been working on a book about my travels 2012-2022. Well I've spent I think nearly two years now just on the first year, which is not a very promising pace to ever finish but I think it's accelerating now a bit. In other news, writing a book length memoir is an interesting endeavour with entirely different challenges from the usual short story writing, and I assume even from writing a fiction novel, as it requires a lot of introspection to identify the plot arcs and to portray the protagonist as going on a fully fleshed out character journey.
   Anyway I had posted the first three chapters here, and if you missed them and/or fancy reading everything up to this point all in one place, please to be seeing this google doc; and if you do read it, any feedback is always appreciated!

   And now, the first draft of Chapter IV: Ethiopia I, is complete and so I'll proceed to post it here in bite sized chunks (or you can read the whole thing here, which I'm always grateful if someone wants to read it all in one go so they'll see it in the context of itself as intended)

   Pictures won't necessarily go in the final book since novels don't usually have pictures, but then again, if it proves feasible to include some pictures why not. Art should stretch boundaries after all, not rigidly conform to established norms.


[In the immediately prior section I was just finishing the Nigeria project]


[if I could somehow re-create this image from the in flight map without all the blur it would be a good illustration for right here]

Sunday, April 22nd, 2012, Day 16 in Africa – In the dark of night, from 30,000 feet above, southern Sudan is a vast expanse of darkness with just a few faintly flickering orange specks. Then as one crosses over into Ethiopia one senses the ground below rising up in an endless series of mountains. Finally the plane clears one last ridge and reveals a galaxy of blueish electric lights twinkling like stars reflected in a pool – Addis Ababa.
   I breeze through the airport passport control and the baggage claim, emerging from the terminal expecting to find a someone holding a sign with my name on it, but I look around in the chilly night air in vain. Presently, seeing me looking flummoxed, a young woman who has been booking people into her hotel asks me if I need help.
   “There’s supposed to be people here to meet me but I don’t see them” I explain
   “Can you call them?” she suggests
   “I have a number for them but my phone has no service in Ethiopia”
   “Here use mine”
   “Are you sure? I don’t have any money to pay you with” I have cynically learned that in some places (*cough* Egypt *cough*) nothing is free to tourists.
   “Haha yeah no problem at all” she answers laughingly. I call the contact from the Organization and he informs me the driver is just running a little late. I chat with the woman for a few minutes until the man from the Organization shows up. What friendly people they are here.
   Arriving at my hotel, the porter, a young man named Addis, takes my bags, and in the lobby, under an ornate chandelier, an attractive female receptionist named Addis checks me in. Welcome to Addis!
   The porter Addis shows me to an elegantly appointed room and flits around the intricately carved wooden bed frame to turn on all the light switches and TV, as seems to be the custom when showing a guest to their room throughout Africa. When he leaves I look for all the switches to turn half of them off, especially the TV, and then finally have a moment to marvel at how elegantly appointed this hotel room is, and it costs less than a Motel 6 back in the States.

[There's a few more foreshadowing remarks about Egypt before eventually the storyline will actually arrive there]



Monday, April 23rd, Day 17 – Complimentary breakfast in the hotel is a buffet, which is normal the world over, but where in other places coffee might be available in an urn, this is Ethiopia, and coffee is serious business, so it’s made to order and attractive waitress Samrawit brings it out to me just as I’m about to dig in to what I mistakenly believe is scrambled eggs.
   Just as I take a big mouthful of what is not in fact scrambled eggs but a sort of scrambled version of injera, the national dish, Samrawit informs me rather nonsequiturly that I’m very handsome. Injera, when not diced up to resemble scrambled eggs, is like a large crepe, and often, as is the present case, quite sour, and not at all like what one expects scrambled eggs to taste like. I nearly gag from surprise at both the flavor and the unexpected compliment.

[the above paragraph is included both “because it happened,” but I’m worried this may be taken as like I’m trying to portray myself as a lady magnet which isn’t a good look, what do you think?]

   I have a meeting with the Organization’s staff at “4:00 this morning” on this date in 2004, which is fine because I traveled back in time whilst hurtling through the darkness last night in a pressurized tin Ethiopian Airlines tube with wings. Ethiopia, you see, doesn’t use the same (Gregorian) calendar the rest of the world does, and by Ethiopian reckoning it is not April 23rd 2012 but 15th of Miaziah, 2004. I’ve posted on facebook informing my friends that I’ve traveled to 2004, and they are commenting that I should buy stock in Apple while I’m there..
   And time itself runs differently here: they don’t consider the clock to start counting from midnight till noon and again from noon to midnight but rather from dawn (standardized as what we’d call 6am) to dusk (standardized at what we’d call 6pm). So my meeting at 4 is actually at what I’d consider 10.
[is this date / time stuff too confusing? I definitely want to note their different date / time system but maybe there's a better way to go about it? Even deleting the "15th of Miaziah" but leaving the time and year difference might streamline it?]
   The staff of the Organization take me to their office which isn’t far from the hotel, and after we’ve gone over some things there we drive across town, which takes an hour in the city traffic, to meet with the Other Organization they are partnering with to put on this conference. The sky is grey and threatening to drizzle, and the air is chilly. At 7700 feet Addis Ababa is on par in altitude with American ski towns such as Mammoth and Aspen. It seems to me every fourth lot in the city is a construction site (and every fifth lot appears to be a bank), and I note a surprising number of women in dresses splattered with grey mud pushing wheelbarrows of concrete at the construction sites.
The Other Organization has the extremely creative name of OCAV-ODCA. In their office I meet Mr Mulufird, who may represent the Other Organization in Ethiopia, or is high up in the Ethiopian ministry of Agriculture, or both. He goes over the plan for the project:
   “Ethiopia has a long tradition of beekeeping” Mr Mulufird explains to me, “the Ethiopian government has organized unemployed youth to produce 60,000 frame hives per year. These are sold at a subsidized price to farmers throughout Ethiopia, but their traditions and knowledge are for traditional hives, not frame hives, and this is why we’ve organized this training.”
   “How much are they sold for?” I ask, pen hovering eagerly over notepad
   “800 birr” he says, and seeing me struggling to make sense of the 17.5 birr to 1 USD exchange rate he continues “that’s about $46. Which is a problem since the farmers only make an average of 200 birr per month, or around $12. But frame hives can produce twice as much honey as a traditional hive and Ethiopia has a very strong potential in beekeeping.”
   “With a frame hive of course you need a spinner to extract the honey, do they have spinners?” I ask
   “There’s some co-ops and NGOs that are making spinners available to them” he explains. I’m wondering just how easily accessible these resources are, but I guess I’ll find out.
   “For this project we’ll hold three different training sessions in different parts of Ethiopia. Bahir Dar and Finote Selam in the Amhara province to the northwest, and in the town of Korem in the Tigray province in the highlands of the northeast. In addition two other volunteers will be doing beekeeping projects in the mountains of the West and southern forests.”
   The ambitiousness of this project makes my head spin a bit. The projects in Nigeria had turned out alright but they weren’t expecting me to help revolutionize an industry on a national scale. I smile at Mulufird with a confidence I don’t feel.






   So there you go. Hopefully these two scenes bring the reader to Ethiopia without too much exposition, mention the time thing without too much confusion, and established a sense of narrative tension in the project's goals.
   This chapter lacks the historical-fiction flashbacks that Nigeria I had, partly because they didn't seem to play well with readers over at scribophile.com, though I suspect they may be a bunch of philistines. Experimenting with doing a few little things a bit different in the different chapters to get a feel for what works best and then maybe in the end I'll bring them all in concordance with eachother.

   Original entry covering these days.

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