Black market stamps

In May, I spent a week in Ethiopia. The flight price from Dar to Addis Ababa is almost the same as the flight from Dar to Delhi, so when I realized I could stop over on my return to Dar from India without an extra fee, the decision to visit was easy. 

My expectations were high.  Without exception, everyone I know who has traveled to Ethiopia has raved about it.  An ancient civilization where Orthodox Christians carry out rituals in churches that have stood for almost a thousand years, the professed home of the Arc of the Covenant and the birthplace of coffee, what isn’t there to love?  Perhaps it was because I had just come from India, or because my expectations were so high, but my trip was not easy.  I know that many of my stories on this blog recount awesome times on the road.  Quite honestly, most of my travel experiences have been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, many things during my short stay in Ethiopia were remarkable.  But as we all know, nothing can be perfect, not everything works and sometimes what we expect to be enjoyable isn’t.  So here’s my authentic accounting of my northern circuit trip: Axum, Gonder and Lalibela.

Traveling as a single woman has some advantages.   Besides the luxury of doing exactly what you want, being alone makes it far easier to make connections with new people.  But it also makes some things more difficult.  For example, in conservative societies, local women are almost entirely absent from daily life.  Even in non-conservative places, since women are usually charged with maintaining their households, they are frequently behind the scenes.  This means that streets are often filled with idle and leering young men, seeking any number of things.  Some are innocuous, like employment as a guide or information about your home country, while others are less so, anticipating encounters with what they perceive are loose and lonely Western women.  Usually they can be dissuaded by avoiding eye contact or a terse response and seldom does their presence invoke actual cause for alarm.  But when every corner, storefront and restaurant echoes with their exhortations, it becomes frustrating and exhausting.  Unfortunately, this was my experience in several of the towns I visited in Northern Ethiopia.

So while I visited places that bore witness to an ancient, powerful and undeniably sophisticated African civilization, I seldom escaped constant haranguing.  When I arrive somewhere new, I like to walk around, keeping an eye out for landmarks (I’m directionally-challenged) and interesting food stalls while taking in what the people on the streets are doing.  The joy of wandering was sapped as I struggled to adjust to the idea that my every movement required chaperoning, even though I recognized that most only sought to help me.  Having spent most of my time in India in an area catering to tourists, I also had forgotten one of my key travel strategies: accepting I cannot understand many nuances of the culture around me and choosing my objections wisely.  As a consequence, daily transactions became more frustrating than necessary.  Lapsing yet again one morning, I asked the clerk at the airport gift shop why I was charged 40% over the face value of the stamps I purchased.  Her response: ‘they are black market stamps’.  At the airport.  Remembering my rule, I dutifully returned to my seat, recognizing the futility of the obvious follow up questions and eager for the arrival of my flight, which was already 4 hours late.

I began and ended my trip in Addis and thankfully, my experience there was much different.  My arrival was a homecoming to the continent and a reminder of the staggering beauty of Eastern Africa.  Walking along the streets, I was repeatedly mistaken for Habesha (Ethiopian) and rarely approached. My final night was spent having dinner with an American couple living in Addis who I’d met in Gonder and who had generously invited me into their home.  

And so, while I was genuinely relieved to leave Ethiopia, I wholeheartedly recommend visiting it.  Why? First, because as my experience and those of my friends suggest, everyone experiences a place differently.  And because it reminded me of the rewards of the effort of traveling in a difficult place.  Now, long after my irritation has subsided, I still can still conjure the memory of cool morning air penetrating the white shrouds of hundreds at a rock-hewn church in Lalibela.  I can taste the bittersweet heat of berbere (a local spice) and feel the welcome of the teacher who asked me the time in Amharic and ended up buying me a macchiato.  The pages of my journal capture lunch with a restaurant proprietress who had an extended, translated conversation with me about the nature of love in response to her daughter’s question ‘how do you know?’ Human brains are hardwired to remember the best experiences and I’m thankful for that -- these are memories worth keeping.

Open windows

Increasingly I prefer walking around to the prescribed stops in guidebooks.  This is only partly because I’ve begun to schedule many outings around the delicious things that I plan to eat.  In an earlier post, I wrote about how the extensive Swahili greetings reflect a cultural concern for the well being of both the individual and the community.   Much like language, I think that street life can give you glimpses into a national psyche.  What people are doing on the streets is a clue about what is important to the people who live there.

This idea came to me over and over again during my recent trip to the Netherlands.  First, it seemed like every street was home to buildings from the seventeenth century.  And most of these buildings were in use.  How could I tell? Because almost every building, new and old, had an expansive picture window, all unfailingly showcasing the contents of the building.  Faux finished metallic vases with stark white flowers and blue and white china patterns were the most common window ledge decorations, with the occasional serene Buddha head or potted orange plant breaking up the clean lines.  Astonishingly, most residential dwellings were on full display – immaculate sitting rooms and kitchens, with views clear through to matching picture windows at the back of their homes.  Literally, people had put their lives on display. 

My naturally curious inclination adjusted quickly to this voyeurism – how do people live in such an organized and stylish way?  Does everyone live this way?  Arriving on a Wednesday, I grew accustomed to glimpsing into each home that I passed.    Each was the starting point for a storyline: the young family whose daughter was obsessed with pink princesses, the epicure with an addiction to stylish multi-coloured kitchen gadgets, the wholesome couple meeting each evening over a sturdy reclaimed wood kitchen table.  Soon I came to believe they wanted me to look in their windows, to speculate about who and what they were.   

And so I obliged – until Saturday rolled around.  My gaze suddenly began to meet the eyes of the people living in these pristine homes.  Unfailingly, I was the one who always looked away, embarrassed to catch them spending time with their families or reading their newspapers and drinking coffee.  No one seemed concerned that their daily activities were essentially a form of street theatre.  I was floored when my friend and guide pointed out that some homes have what is essentially a rear-view mirror mounted outside, so that the goings on of the street can be viewed from the comfort of one’s living room – two independent dramas, each being witnessed by the opposite party.

I couldn’t help but wonder about the significance of this.  In North America, we build fences and draw our shutters and even the famous beg for their privacy.  I acknowledge that it would be foolhardy to make any meaningful conclusions about an entire culture after only six days.  But maybe there is a connection between the liberal attitudes that the Netherlands is known for and its ubiquitous open windows.  The sacredness of privacy reduced in exchange for the opportunity to sate a basic human curiosity about each other’s banal daily lives.  Does this duality of being both the performer and the spectator result in being satisfied by seeing some and not all?  Does it foster a cultural sentiment of living and letting live?

And so, a trip that I intended to be defined by a visit to a dear friend and copious amounts of beer and cheese inevitably became yet another about the ideas of living.