William Hay, Writer: Ethiopia - Addis Ababa

I fell asleep at 7 and am now wide awake at midnight. I did a day of a three day city tour with Lesan Gold Hailu, tour operator ,whose now friends on Facebook. He shared pictures of us. It’s always a surprise seeing oneself in a picture. I loved most Holy Trinity Cathedral but then I’d really loved seeing the bones of Lucy and all the art and learning in the National Ethiopian Museum.

I loved the donkey’s but I’ve been a burrofan forever, since seeing the burro races while living in Mexico. They’re such characters, real personality, tough attitude, but timid about little strange things. Their personality reminded me of my Scotty Terrier, Stuart. The mules are character too. Floppy mutt ears. Quite the competition for the road with mules, donkeys, women carrying great burdens on their heads and shoulders, regular pedestrians, and all manner and age of cars as well as motorcycles. The infrastructure for traffic is congested the same as Italy and Greece. What sidewalks existed have become parking spaces. Unlike Vancouver they don’t have politicians with bicycle lane fetishes. The road constructions going on are for vehicles and pedestrians without political favouritism.

Most of the motorcycles I’ve seen here so far were being used for pizza delivery. The guys have hot boxes they carry on the back. Pizza delivery is as popular and evidence of modern era as anything. There are so many restaurants here and all I’ve read speaks of the exciting night life and vibrant music scene. Naomi, from Langley Canada presently spear heading a campaign to stop smoking (cigarettes and legal weed) in condos, texted me to say her friends who live here were performing a gig several nights a week. What a small world. I’m flying onto Gondar in the next day or two though would have loved to meet one of Naomi’s ball room dance friends.

I had a delicious chicken noodle soup and a couple of cafe au lait at the Best Western outdoor cafe. I asked for injera, on the side. It was delicious. It’s made from a local plant, a kind of rice tasting bread like creation. The Best Western Hotel I’m staying in has this outdoor cafe off from the street so unbothered by passing beggars. They’re here but not nearly as intrusive as elsewhere.

I ate, drank coffee and wrote on my iPad Pro “air dropping” pictures I’d taken from my iPhone. It’s really one of my joys in life. When I was in Gr 3 or 4, Mrs. Glover gave our class the assignment in geography of reading about a place, imagining we were travelling there, then writing letters home to our family telling them what we were seeing and doing. I got so into the assignment that Mrs. Glover told my mother she’d had no other student so enthusiastic. I wrote reams.

Ruth Kozak, our resident travel writer in Vancouver, author of Shadow of the Lion, who I met at a Canadian Authors Association dinner, is still going strong at 85. She loves Greece and wrote a travel guide of Athens at one time. By comparison I’m a ‘travel blogger’. I love photography. My father helped me set up a dark room when I was a teen. We used his plywood ice fishing shack, tar papering out the light and covering over the hole in the floor.. He loved photography too. My older brother got awards for his pictures of birds, his predator photos in a museum in Italy. . Now my nephew Graeme following in the family tradition is a cinematographer with a engineers approach to the whole subject. I admire his stills and films. I recently told him about visiting Scotland in my youth and meeting my uncle then who was a professional Seagull photographer.

I like that a “picture says a thousand words” and enjoy the combination of writing with photography. It’s what I like myself and am not alone as the multimedia production is a going concern with the technical advances in the medium. . Apple has done a fine job of interfacing their tools and formats. I can’t say I enjoy the technical aspects as much as my nephews but I do enjoy finding solutions. “Air drop” and “blue tooth” are great tools. I’m also using a Panasonic Lumix, a sweet little pocket smart camera with Leica lens I picked up in New York a few years back when I dropped the little Nikon pocket camper and needed a replacement on that trip. Mostly I’m satisfied with the iPhone camera, my brother telling me us ‘iPhone camera folk had their own society and competitions.” Right now I’m transferring Lumix pictures with a little chip card, not nearly as much fun as “blue tooth and air drop.”

Lesan took me to the University of Addis Ababa. They have a beautiful Kennedy Library from when JFK visited and left an endowment. If I’d had time I would have loved to have met Abraham Tejera, MD PHD. He’s with the Department of Psychiatry at the Addis Ababa University. I first read about his incredible research when I came across of a paper of his on Khat addiction in the Horn of Africa. Reading Verghese’s , another great doctor’s, novel of Ethiopia, Cutting the Stone I noted that one of the characters, a doctor, regularly used Khat, a mild stimulant. I’ve had a couple of patients now in my addiction practice who have told me about using Khat so it’s making it’s way to Canada. One day I’d love to hear Dr. Tejera present at the International Society of Addiction Medicine conferences as his work is both clinical and academic. He’s obviously a world authority and known by my former mentor Dr. Nady El Guebaly who recently got the Order of Canada for his work in addictions. Dr. Tejera has had broad reaching interests and does really impressive scientific research. His most recent project is Neuropsychiatric Genetics of African Populations - Psychosis. Ethiopia produces great scientific researchers.

On my own, I took a walk from my Best Western Hotel and found I’m located on a major hotel ,restaurant and night club strip. Also all around are these vertical malls I first encountered in Hong Kong. They have a main entrance where there’s a guard who checks each person for weapons. Maybe it’s not every person but me, because in my Tilly kkaki coloured jacket and poor imitation of Steven Segall, one of my all time favourite martial arts movie stars, I get checked. One poor guard was shocked to feel my hard leather camera pouch, thinking I was packing. . After that quick frisk part is over the Malls open into these central atrium with the shops all around the 5 to 6 floors above. In Hong Kong the buildings tended to focus on electronics or fashion but here the shops are everything, jeweller, next to high end fashion, next to computer store, then restaurant, and next a tattoo shop and a stationary store beside a liquor store. The organization is disturbing to Hudson Bay ordered Canadian mind.

My brother, Ron, who’d lived in Hong Kong and loved the Chinese culture and I, would talk about the different thinking that would put a bathroom supplies beside toys. He’d noticed the same but loved the adventure of the search for things which made him think an afternoon at second hand stores or garage sale was fun. I like a different types of mental organization. I see this ‘messy’ treasure hunt experience as common too in Saipan.

There really is such a variety in the stores here and the fashion reaches right to high end. I had an Americano coffee in one of these vertical malls watching the shoppers as well as the people below entering from the street. Evening was coming on and the girls really were beginning to sparkle. It’s such a youth culture with so many in their 20’s. Lesan, my very bright guide, had studied hospitality and had his guide license and developed a tour business. I was surprised to learn he was only 22.

There’s such an entrepreneurial atmosphere here with the evidence in the markets, business and trade everywhere. Reading the history of Ethiopia, it’s always been an agricultural power house. The emperor saw Addis Ababa as a major trade centre. The Emperors in the past moved their residence around the country rather than having everyone come to a central location. Lesan told me agriculture is still central to the economy of Ethiopia. Landowning and farming are so important. Ethiopian Coffee, sought after the world over, and one of my all time favourites, is a major export from Eastern Ethiopia.

Ethiopia is also resource rich in minerals but is vastly under developed if only because of the wars, Muslim Invasion and two Italian Invasions , Somalia invasions and the 20 year horror and disaster of the Communist take over by the DERG , followed by the civil war Liberation to ouste the “Red Terror”. Aethest communist socialist have always killed millions whenever they gain power. Now with a little space of peace these Christian Ethiopians are back to being a powerhouse of production. St. Paul was a tent maker and sales man and the Jews have always been admired for their business sense. Ethiopia has always been on the trade route for Eastern spices and western guns. It once was along the Arab slave trade until Christians the world over began the move to outlaw slaves. Ethiopians and the Coptic Church were early against it but the slave trade continued for sometime flowing north to the Arab nations out of sight.

People talk of St. Paul 2000 years ago writing about slaves minding their places but everyone had slaves of all colours and races the world over especially aboriginals and pagans back then. The great works of modern civilizations were often built with the aid of slave labour. The movement against slavery began in 1823 with the first Anti Slavery Society in England followed by Royal Assent for the Abolition Act 10 years later. King Louis X of France had abolitioned slavery in France first in the 14th century. America fought a Civil War over slavery, it’s abolitionist movement being inspired by enlightened Christians. Amazing Grace, that wondrous song was written by a former slave trader who converted . The American marines fought the slave trading Muslim pirates of North Africa to put a stop to their attacking American ships and selling off all the mostly whitecrews and passengers to slavery. .By contrast the Muslims and Arabs were a centre of slavery until very recently. It was only in 1948 that slavery was declared illegal under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Islamic Republic of Mauritania in Northwest Africa was the last country to abolish slavery in 1981. Ironically the Democrats in the US forget their party was for slavery while the Republicans were the principal abolitionists through history. Today’s it’s ironically portrayed to often as a ‘racist’ when slavery was never solely racial but always economic. The white European Christians were the first to outlaw it and the Arabs Muslims last. Mostly it had more to do with economics and politics. Despite the outlawing of ‘chattel slavery’ much slavery persists today in African countries and countries around the world. The aetheist communist countries have been particularly central in the sex slavery industry.

Being here I don’t think of myself as ‘white’ because I’m mostly among Christians. I suspect others see me as such since when I pass a window I see my minority status but I think as Christians we consider higher considerations of relationship. I think the Ethiopians think more of themselves as their land and geographical location like my aboriginal priest colleague Rev. Vivian Seegers who began the Urban Aboriginal Ministry in Canada.

I asked a Catholic Colleague how his mother had responded when he married his lovely but “different” wife. He put me on the spot for a minute funning me as only the Irish would asking me seriously straight faced ‘what do you mean by different.” Fearing I’d made a major faux pas I was stammering for a while before saying “I mean your marriage is ‘inter racial’, nothing wrong with it, just less common.”

“My mother didn’t see it as such,” he responded,”She’s catholic. That’s all that matters.’

Reading Traditional Society by the famed anthropologist Diamond it’s important to see how any difference was a threat to people. The stranger is as likely to be an enemy as a friend so caution has always been considered ‘healthy’. Marx divided the multi variate world into us and them fearing any differences. Islam still a religion state not having experienced the Magna Carta of England or the Jeffersonian Principle of separation of religion and state promised a ‘religion of peace’ only when that had conquered or assimilated everyone to Islam. The Ethiopian Coptic Christian Church by contrast has this interest inclusive nature of the New Testament of Jesus coupled with the Israeli exclusive old temperament nature.

Ethiopians, reading their history don’t seem to care about colour or race having fought off blacks and white, muslims and aetheists. Some of that has to do with their highland identity which after the fall of the Axum empire had them separate and apart in the highlands and often without a seaport to join them more forcefully with the rest of the world. This has contributed to their distinct identity which they obviously hold highly. Also they have a strong sense of morality..

Seeing the beautiful young Ethiopian women dressed up to kill heading out to the night clubs I was confident for the future of the country. All day long I’d seen pretty and sometimes stunningly beautiful women in the attractive blue and grey cammo uniforms casually holding Ak 103, the favoured assault rifles of the Ethiopian defence forces. Older even more beautiful and stylish women walked with their husbands and well dressed and well behaved children as proud family units. Such strength, resilience and obvious love of men, women , children and family.

Knowing I’m trying to look like Steven Segal to ward off pick pockets and con artists I’m still surprised to see looks of female appreciation of my being a man as catch a glance in a crowd. By contrast I’m not even shocked by the ladies strutting their stuff in the latest fashion, short skirts and high heels, wearing war paint, obviously intent on taking no prisoners.The young men, like young men the world over seem ready and willing to sacrifice and take a fall for their country. Marriage with family and all the ritual is a tremendous orthodox affair here.

I feel I’m relaxing again after the experince of Canada where so many are “offended” by sex and family. The war on men is such that Hoff Summers, wrote the seminal book called War on Boys white a whole political party in the US, the Democrats, celebrate the murder of unborn babies in their last trimester. Here Ethiopian and the Church celebrate life whereas in the US while the President speaks out against third trimester abortion a Democrat politician already promoting euthanasia for Children. The Trudeau family have always been pro abortion and euthanasia except of course for themselves, as the privileged elite so often are. As always the dead don’t get a vote.

I love the Chinese respect and so often loving care of the elderly. On the plane I watched the hilarious comedy, Crazy Rich Asians emphasing family and relationships. Here I’ve seen the young caring for the elderly and couldn’t help noticing how Lesan the guide was pacing himself and caring about me as we climbed a little hill. As only a man can have I had mixed feelings about his solicitiousness, regarding my age. He offered to carry my pack as we climbed stairs in the museums, I believe that’s the care for young and old is connected and leads to a multidimensional respect so different from the narcissists. Narcissists focus solely on power and believe like paranoids that others think like and feel like they do but are disguising it to gain advantage. I’m thankful for the choice that has allowed me to travel whereas my friend prefers their house though it’s left them like farmers whose properties are worth so much, land rich, money poor, It also ties them to their work. I’m more of a sailor.

Travelling we really see ourselves as much as that which is foreign. Transference and Countertransference become more apparent at the group levels. Lesan showed me a peculiar board game favoured through history by the herders and traders. “Once you start playing it it takes hours to finish” It was perfect for people watching their herds or waiting for deals. Having nothing to do for long periods they played it to pass the time.

Enough musings. I’m actually feeling like a nap before breakfast and church. This hotel has 24 hour room service but I think I can wait for the great spread again I encountered this morning which comes with the room.