Sunday in Addis

It’s Sunday, the 22^nd of January as I write, though I’ll post this tomorrow.  This has been the third day of clear blue skies and sunshine—up to about 80 by day, and down to the high 40s at night. Mountain air and being at 9 degrees north of the equator are the causes.  I saw canna lilies, calla lilies, hibiscus trees, vividly colored bourgainvillia bushes, roses on stems/branches about 12-15 feet tall, bright purple morning glories, and begonias of every hue. Seeing and smelling these in January makes me feel like I am cheating by propelling myself into summer early.

I woke at 3:45 this morning to the sound of the neighborhood loud speakers playing the Muslim call to prayer. It goes on for a long time, but eventually I drift off to sleep again. About 6:30 another loud speaker began chants of the Ethiopian Orthodox church. We had seen the Orthodox parade yesterday carrying banners and flags, celebrating Epiphany, which was a national holiday Friday.  The Orthodox dress in white for church, the women with their white gauze skirts and scarves with bright ribbon trim, and the men with white leggings and tunics, often carrying a stick, and with their hair wrapped in a white cloth.  Quite striking in the bright sunshine. These parading folks were singing and chanting in celebration. Kids in similar costumes ran alongside laughing and singing. Many strings of red, yellow and green flags were strung across the roadway. They celebrate the Sabbath on both Saturday and Sunday, and have a different calendar regulating their lives, thus Christmas, Epiphany and Easter are on different dates than we use.

We are settling into a nice house for our stay.  It isn’t an American or European house, of course, but has a serviceable sink, toilet and shower, good kitchen, lights for reading, comfortable beds and living room chairs.  No internet connection, though there is one for us in the office Jim will have at the seminary.  The term starts tomorrow, that’s why I’ll post this then, not Sunday. Classes are supposed to start Tuesday, though they say students float in anytime during the week, so not much teaching gets done the first week.  Jim will teach three course and I will teach Intermediate English, two sessions of two hours each per week.

There is a nearby café we have discovered which makes wonderful macchiatos—espresso with whipped steamed milk foam on top. Yesterday we wandered over there three times, I think.  A café here is generally table and chairs outside under canopies to shelter one from the sun.  All that coffee didn’t set us back much. Each cup costs 20 cents! Sure beats Starbucks, both in taste and cost! We’ll soon get brave and try some of their food. The injera, wat and lentil soup looked good. (And by the way, neither of us has felt at all sick yet.)

The sounds of this city are something you hear only in Africa, I think. We hear trucks rumbling down the nearby road, goats ninnying right outside our house, drummers practicing at the nearby “Music School of Jazz,” the loud speakers singing prayer calls all hours of the day and night, gentle voices talking on the road, a rooster or two crowing, children everywhere laughing and shouting, exotic birds calling,  radios playing, horns honking incessantly, much of it regulated by the rising and setting of the sun.

We heard some great stories today. We met a bunch of Scandinavians at the International Lutheran Church and they invited us along for lunch. Three couples, two Swedish and one Norwegian, had spent 30-40 years each living here and teaching or engineering. They raised their families here, returned to Scandinavia when they retired, but find a way to volunteer their services here each winter. They say they can’t stand the darkness and cold on northern winters anymore. They had all seen and been close to Haile Salassie when he was emperor, and experienced personally the harshness of the communist regime that overthrew him, and the “dirgue” which followed, a military dictatorship which went on killing sprees each night (about 3 a.m. they said) and threw the bodies into the streets for everyone to see on their way to work the next day. Things have been better since 1994, but elections aren’t viewed as fair.

You see scaffolding of bamboo everywhere supporting the glass, concrete and steel that will become modern office buildings.  These construction sites are often right next to hovels of tin and mud. Its hard to tell, really, because there are walls on either side of every street. Many of those walls open up by day to become stands selling virtually anything. There don’t seem to be many stores you walk inside of; rather the commerce is right on the street. As we walked down our nearby street today we saw a stand selling toilets, another coffeepots, another bananas and fruit, another shining shoes, then an internet café (simply tables set out on the sidewalk with cords running inside.

People are very friendly to us. Smiles are frequent as we pass on the street. Children often come up to us with hand outstretched to shake and they say, to show off their English, “Hi How are you, sir?” We live on the seminary campus and students come up and introduce themselves and welcome us. A nice feeling.

Enough for now.  Much more to tell in the next days.