Clarion Content

Long time readers know how the Clarion Content has a hankering for good guest columnists whenever we can get one. One of our local Durhamanians, not in the ODDcrew, but inspired by similar call, has filed a piece from abroad. Ethiopia specifically. Without further ado...J Coop. Follow him here on his own site.

I begin my first post from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in a transparent attempt to appear cultured and worldly. Did it have the intended effect, my dears? What's that you say? "Stop being an obnoxious ass, and get the hell on with it." Oh. Right. Very well then.

So as I was saying, I arrived in Addis last night on business with my fantastic employer, Engineering World Health. Things have gone very smoothly with my travels, other than the part where my luggage decided to hang out in Amsterdam for an extra day.  (But it's cool, luggage.  Take your time, it's not like I wanted to change my underpants while I was in Africa.  Hope you enjoyed the red light district, jerk.)  The luggage should be arriving in an hour or so, and I'm staying up past my bedtime to blog about it before heading to the airport to retrieve it.

(UPDATE: So, apparently the bags decided to not show up tonight on the flight from Kenya.  Totally not cool, bags.  I can’t believe you stood me up like this for the second night in a row.  Know what bags?  We’re over.  All I can say is you better not come crying to me, begging me to take you back after I have a sleek new suitcase with a hard body and wheels that ain’t busted.  Oh yeah, one more thing, bags.  You can say that zipper “extends your storage space” all you want.  Let’s quit beating around the bush and call it like it really is: you’re fat.  There, I said it.  I feel so much better now.  I just need to learn the Ahmaric phrase for “how much for these new tighty-whiteys?”)


(UPDATE #2: The bags finally showed their sorry selves around 2am this morning.  They didn't even bother to offer an excuse.  We're still not talking.)

The advantage of getting in on Saturday night is that I had a whole day today to do some sight-seeing around Addis with my colleagues.  First day's impression: Addis is a delightful and charming city.  We visited Mount Entoto, the highest point in Addis at an elevation of around 10,000 ft.  On top there is a museum with artifacts from the founding of Addis Ababa in 1886 by Emperor Menelik II, and Empress Taytu Betul, who named the city Addis Ababa, Amharic for "New Flower".  I wish I could tell you I remembered all of the facts from the previous sentence and subsequent paragraphs from the wonderful tour, but truth be told, I had some help from Wikipedia.

On the summit of Mount Entoto, there was a stown hewn church and surrounded by the emporer's palace, eucalyptus trees, fantastic views of the city, and a Sunday school.  The church and school belonged to the Ethiopian Church, a branch of Christianity related to the Coptic Orthodox church.  The Sunday school happened to be in session as we were touring the mountain, and the most rockin' part of the day came when we got to visit the small one-room school.  There were probably 30 to 40 kids in the school singing, clapping, and playing drums.  The music was beautiful and the kids were adorable.  I hope I'll be able to post some audio and video soon.  The students were around 4-10 years old, with their instructors probably not any older than their late teens.  The instructors led the prayers and songs, and for each song one of the younger girls would take a turn hoisting the huge drum onto her shoulders to keep time for the song.

After the mountain, we drove down to a festival celebrating "honey wine", aka mead.  In Amharic, it's called "tij" with a short "i" sound (not sure on the spelling, but I do have a liter to bring home). At the festival, I also split an order of goat meat with our driver, Elijah. Interestingly, my colleagues who were leery of the goat meat and did not partake were the same ones who gave me grief on Mount Entoto over my reluctance to see a hyena in the wild. Seem logical that one's anxiety over eating an animal would be less than the anxiety about being eaten by an animal, no? During the snack, I was entertained by a view of the man behind the counter using a hatchet to chop the leg off of another goat that was hanging and drying. I’m not sure if this qualifies as entertainment, of if anyone else was enjoying it, but one thing I don’t see much of at American restaurants is butchers who double as food servers. Maybe I just don’t go to the right places.

Labels: Africa, Guest columns, Pop Culture