Welcome to Nowhere

This may come as a great shock to most of you but… I like traveling! I don’t just mean seeing the sights, meeting the people, and eating the food of a place that most times had been completely unknown to me mere fractions of my lifetime prior to contact. These are things that define all of the joys that come to the millions of people who enjoy traveling, and I am sure we could all debate the merits, rewards, and even curses of travel for an eternity if we were so inclined. However, even the most seasoned traveler with the most immitigable wanderlust would probably agree that although nothing enriches their lives more than the experiences of a new place, the process of getting there leaves nothing but even the most minimal comforts to be desired. I am also guilty of joining the chorus of vehement complaints and protests aimed at layovers, long flights, lines, and airline food. But in the end, I rather like it!

No matter how many times I’ve endured the arduous and vacuous process of travel, I can’t help but take some kind of strangely bizarre enjoyment out of it. I enjoy it because in some special way, from the time I enter the airport of my departure point to the time that I exit the airport at my destination, I am no one. Sure, we are all anonymous strangers when we walk around in public.  However, when I travel, I can’t help but be acutely aware of the fact that I am no one, and in a uniquely peculiar way, I am NOWHERE.

The other day I was musing, as I had done so many other times before, over some of the states and countries I had been to that I would claim to have visited if only I had ever left airport. This thought came to me after several conversations I had that went something like this: “Donovan, have you ever been to Japan?” “Yes, sort of, I have been to Narita airport…” “Ahh, that doesn’t count.” I had had so many conversations like this at one point that I rhetorically asked my father in law if airports counted as actually visiting a place, to which he replied that they counted only if you had a story to tell about the place. Ergo, I have been to Japan because I have a story about chugging a souvenir microbrew in security when security officers tried to confiscate it.

In some ways, the very process of traveling to a new place (especially by airplane) presents one of the most bizarre phenomena that come along with traveling. As I said before, when I am in an airplane or wandering down the lonely corridors of X International Airport, I am no one and I am nowhere.  When I land in an airport where I know I will not venture out, I am always subconsciously looking for some sign that I am in the Shanghai international terminal as opposed to Detroit for example. The differences are often quite unremarkable if not completely undetectable.  In these places, even though there are hundreds people in your midst that hail directly from at least 50 different countries, there are no cultural norms to be adhered to and no particular platform for displaying national identity. This display of identity only happens if I catch a glimpse of a person’s passport cover in customs.

Even though I believe that I am ‘nowhere’ when I am in transit, I am always surprised to see how homogenous ‘nowhere’ can be, no matter where I am.  Whether it LAX, PDX, London, or Bangkok… Generally, I find ‘nowhere’ often consists of a McDonalds, newsstands, ugly carpet, horizontal escalators for lazy bastards (because we are well represented worldwide), hundreds of rows of pleather seats, and even a distinctive scent that is somewhere between an office building and new car smell.  And if I am lucky (or just the same if I am not) I will meet a new friend in transit with whom I will swap all kinds of information I might not even share with my best friends. And after I exit the airplane, we probably won’t say goodbye or exchange so much as a nod when or if we awkwardly meet again in baggage claim.

These are just a few thoughts that are passing through my head as a currently sit in ‘nowhere’ waiting to board my flight to Doha, Qatar from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. At over 14 hours, this will be the longest time I have ever spent in ‘nowhere’ but Qatar Airways promises to be the best way to spend your time in ‘nowhere’ on your way to somewhere. Endless free beer here I come! And if this chapter of ‘nowhere’ is like everywhere else, it will be Heineken.

-Donovan

 Update:

Just to further illustrate this point, here are 4 pictures from our journey to/from home.  They are in no particular order and were taken in Addis, Doha, Chicago, and PDX.  Can you ID which was taken where?

“RED TERROR” Martyrs Memorial Museum

War, famine, and misery… These were the three topics that generally dominated all conversation that followed within 5 minutes of our announcement that we would be serving in Ethiopia with the Peace Corps.  While some parts of the country still struggle, it doesn’t take a very astute traveler to realize that whether you are in Addis Ababa or a small town off of the main highway, there is certainly no war and there is plenty of injera and beef tibs (tibs: the name given to fried meat) to go around. Generally speaking, war and famine in modern Ethiopia only exists in the memories of the ‘over age 30’ crowd and in the star of this particular blog post, museums.

Located at the corner of Bole Road (the road leading to Addis Ababa’s posh district) and Meskel Square is the “RED TERROR” Martyrs Memorial Museum. I had driven by this museum countless times in a line taxi, probably on my way to a foreign market to buy maple syrup and BBQ sauce before guzzling a liter of delicious beer at the German beer garden as quickly as possible before returning to Fitche.  We finally decided to visit this museum while in Addis waiting to go to the airport for our ‘first year down’ capstone trip back home.  Having visited several crimes against humanity museums and memorials around the world, I felt it would be worth viewing, as much of Ethiopia’s 20^th century reputation, which lingers strongly to this day, is largely based on the contents of this museum.             

The museum is free to get into and very accessible by foot from Meskel square.  The museum is very much a snapshot in an era. There is not much in the way of context provided to the casual visitor who does not know much about the military regime known as the ‘Derg’ that ruled Ethiopia from the time that Emperor Haile Sillasie was deposed until about 1991, as atrocities of this regime and time period for which Ethiopia is unfortunately best known are the primary focus of the museum.  If you are like me, and did not know much beyond a few little facts or less about this time period, I highly recommend doing your homework before visiting. I feel the museum was very much aimed at locals who already know the history, and are simply there to mourn.

           

Upon entering the museum, I expected to do a lot of reading.  In many museums I tend to superficially wander around, glance at the displays, and maybe half read a few signs and captions by pictures that look interesting.  However, as I really do know almost nothing about the Derg regime and I really wanted to remedy that, I came prepared to do some reading.  However, this museum offers more of a history in pictures. There really are no lengthy plaques or literature on the walls. Mostly, there are pictures of victims, historical photographs of the Derg leaders, war atrocities, and translated documents.

           

In light of this photographic approach to memorializing this time period, I realized that in order to get anything meaningful out of this visit, I needed some more information to go with what I was seeing. Luckily, there was a U.S. Embassy family taking a free tour provided by the museum that was led by a former political prisoner.  To me, this part was absolutely essential to fully appreciating this museum. Normally I am a very independent visitor. I don’t tend to take audio tours or hire guides. In this museum, that approach would truly be a mistake.

           

I don’t want to go into too much detail about the contents or the tour guide’s stories, as it is not a big museum and even slowest visitor can expect to make it through the museum in less than an hour. The place reminded me a lot of the S21 Teolsleng prison museum that I visited in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in terms of its approach to recounting the violence.  While S21 in Cambodia was the actual scene of the crime as it were, the museum is similar in its feel as it has hundreds of individual photographs of people who were executed as political dissidents, as well as the general sense of macabre highlighted by the detailed torture methods and displayed bones of anonymous victims of the Derg’s “RED TERROR” which was aimed at brining legitimacy to the regime by crushing any kind of suspected resistance.  

           

By the end of the exhibit, there is a conspicuous lack of resolve.  There is no build up or much background provided in the beginning, and there is no resolution in the end. As I said in the beginning, the museum offers more of a snapshot rather than a holistic and exhaustive approach to the topic. While it is clear that the days of the Derg regime are well behind Ethiopia, the visitor is left with the task of interpreting his or her own ending to the story, as there is very little in the way of a conclusion to this definitive time period in the display itself.  It is as if the museum was created with a sense of conflict as to how exactly the events of the 1980 should be explained, whereas I felt S21 in Cambodia was certainly aimed at foreigners and the lack of international action taken towards the Khmer Rouge during the genocide of the late 1970s. There was also a great emphasis from the point of view of the victims as to the lack of justice that was ever pursued, as evidenced by the hitherto lack of arrests of Khmer Rouge officials.

This sense of conflict that I mentioned and even further parallels between the two museums boiled to the surface at the end of the tour when the tour guide mentioned that most of the former Derg war criminals were actually still walking around Addis Ababa freely to this day. Although they spent some time in jail, they were recently freed for what he ambiguously explained as “political reasons.”  Although these are two very different events on two very different continents, the aura and circumstances of the atrocities are nevertheless strikingly similar, just as they are presented. 

-Donovan

Actually, I’ll have my steak raw.

“Ok, this one will certainly make me sick, won’t it?” This was the first thought that passed through my mind when I first became aware of Ethiopia’s culinary tradition of eating raw meat. In the last few years I have eaten all kinds of strange foods like snake ribs, fermented skate, fried scorpions, wriggling octopus, poisonous blowfish, boiled bat, and so on. Absolutely none of these foods ever made me sick, and surprisingly, raw meat has been no exception.

Why exactly do Ethiopians eat raw meat? Where does this tradition come from? While I have not yet been able to pin it down to any time period in particular, the most common explanation I have heard for eating meat raw came from times of war. Apparently, during war times in Ethiopia, the soldiers would consume meat raw so as to not alert the enemy to there position. It turns out that cooking meat not only smells delicious but that the scent also carries quite far.  While Ethiopia is not currently at war, nor has it been for over 25 years, the tradition of eating raw meat remains a staple of any restaurant in Ethiopia (provided it isn’t fasting time).

Now, I am aware that there are several ways that raw meat can be prepared. The one with which I have the most experience is beef that is cut up into bite-sized cubes over injera (a staple Ethiopian starch that is fermented and made with teff flour). However, as some of my Peace Corps colleagues know well, I am injera’s #1 NOT FAN, so raw meat with bread will always suffice.  The raw meat is placed in chili powder, wrapped in injera and eaten.  Another common way of consuming raw meat is in a dish called ‘kitfo’ which is simply finely chopped raw beef that is sometimes topped with butter and a feta-like cheese, which for me stoked the most fears for my health. After all, in America I was usually quite careful not to cook my hamburgers with much or any pink in the center. Now, in just a few months I have taken to eating ground beef RAW! 

           

While the Peace Corps medical officers strongly advise against eating raw meat, one quickly finds this kind of abstinence to be an exercise in futility for anyone but the most staunch and steadfast vegetarians, as raw meat is consumed during most holidays. Even if you are strictly against eating raw meat, most people cannot resist the raw meat ‘gorsha’ which is when you are simply hand fed raw meat. This act is generally quite affectionate, and it would be rude to turn it down. In fact, 99% of all the raw meat that I have eaten in this country was given to me in this way by my local butcher Gurum, who is pictured below.   

The time when you are most likely to consume raw meat is after the 55-day Easter fasting season, which ends on Easter Sunday or “Fasika” as it is known here.  During the 55 days leading up to Fasika, strict followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox faith do not consume eggs, meat, milk, or other animal products. Unfortunately, for those of us who choose not to fast, many of these things aren’t even available for sale during this time. However, Fasika marks the beginning of a 55-day period of no fasting (during most of the year fasting occurs on Wednesdays and Fridays) which ensues with a veritable orgy of meat eating.

Perhaps my favorite experience with eating raw meat was in the city of Harar, Ethiopia where it is possible to eat raw camel meat.  In Harar, the meat was served to me in cubes, lean with very little fat. The taste is actually quite delicious. The cut I had was tender and had a texture that reminded me of the tuna you eat at sushi bars. Instead of chili power, the meat is dipped in a local spice called ‘kondo’ which is spicy likely chili powder but has a rather smoky flavor to it. The raw camel meat is dipped in the kondo spice to which you can also add lime juice. Typically this is also eaten with injera, but as usual, I will pass on the injera.    

-Donovan

Zap

The power went out in our compound last Wednesday, and it had not been on for even five minutes since then.  Again, this was only in our compound, not throughout the town.  Looking up at the wire that connects our house to the grid, Donovan observed it sparking and arcing a few times, which was extra worrisome given that it was doing this above our 100% corrugated sheet metal fence.  It almost looked as if a squirrel had been chewing on the line (impossible, I know), leaving it frayed, but still alive, but not alive enough to give us even a lick of power over the last 5 days.

This was somehow extra annoying, as the whole of Fitche seemed to be abuzz with electrical vibrancy like never before, and we were being left out of the party.  There had been rumors of an “unofficial fee” that needed to be paid, but that never came to fruition, thankfully.  A man showed up today before noon to fix the line, which left me with an image that I feel the need to share.

Donovan once remarked that the electrical poles here are affixed to the ground with about the same level of security as candles in a birthday cake, a quote that I appropriated for my previous post “The Rains Return.”  This idea was further backed up by what we saw when the man was fixing the line.  Instead of using a ladder, the repairman had simply climbed up the pole.  He was fastened to it by a rope around his waist and was wearing spikes on his shoes akin to those that Jon Snow and the Wildlings used to climb the wall in Game of Thrones.  At the bottom of the pole was one man ramming his shoulder into the base of it like a linebacker with a tackling dummy.  One of our neighbors had just thrown a rope around the pole and was standing in the middle of the road pulling on the line to keep the pole from buckling under the weight of the fairly svelte and small repairman.  Sincerely, I wish that either of us had had a camera, because this image was pretty much priceless.

When our neighbor saw us, he gleefully exclaimed that they were ”Finally fixing the light.”

Donovan said, “That’s great!” Then, noticing that all of the buildings around us seemed to still be under power, he asked, “Did they shut off the power first?”

Still with the same delight in his voice, our neighbor replied, “I have no idea,” as he continued to tug on the line to keep the pole from falling over into our yard.

We walked away at that point, not wanting to see if anyone was going to wind up crispy-fried from this repair job.  It seems to have done the trick, though, and power has once again been restored.  Now, I wonder how long it’ll be until the grid crashes for the entire town and leaves us all in darkness for two days or so…

~Jessie