A hole in the shape of you.

Jesus I miss you. It comes and goes. Most days I can hold the sadness in the palm of my hand, look at it, see it for what it is, and let it flutter off into whatever place it goes to rest. Most days I think I'm getting better. The pain is less, but the emptiness hasn't faded a bit. I walk around every day with a hole in the shape of you. I can feel the longing blowing through the you-shaped empty space inside me, and it reminds me of what I've given up. But most days I stop there, and move on. 

Some days, it's worse. When I'm drinking, when I get the old urge to be something else, to turn the world on its head and live wild, to squelch caution and pull the beating heart of the earth close to my naked skin and feel it quiver... that's when I sink under the dark water that's the memory of you. I feel your eyes on mine. Fuck, I long for anything, everything. I wish I could talk to you. Or sit next to you in a field of grass and clouds, not talking at all. 

I've thought a thousand times of reaching out for you, and a thousand times I've decided that it would be only selfish, only destructive. Am I wrong? 

 I still love you.   

Early season float on the Upper Clark Fork

An early taste of spring today, as the temperature climbed into the 60's and Clark and I took a canoe up to Jens, and floated 13 miles down to Drummond. What a beautiful stretch of river, as it twists along cottonwood bottoms through the Anjelo Cattle Ranch, the snowy peaks of the Flink Creek Range towering above to the south, covered in green pines, and the open grassy slopes of the Dutton Ranch along Hoover Creek climbing up to the Garnets to the north. We saw one beaver and the sign of many more, two or more golden eagles, and scores of geese and ducks heading back north for the coming warm weather. What a surprising treat, tucked away right into the middle of the country's largest superfund site. Super fun!

October 24, 2:00pm, Minneapolis-St. Paul. The Final Chapter (Thank God):
Was still thinking about those Dutch stewardesses. The way they’d announce over the intercom in thick accents:
“Passenger Rothson, flying to Nairobi, you are delaying the flight. Report to gate G6 immediately. We will unload your luggage.” Just like that. So smooth, so coldblooded, so final. It gave me the shivers. Yow.
Enroute to Minneapolis-St.Paul, most all of the passengers on the airplane were white Americans. Geeze, what a shocking difference! Almost everyone has a ‘don’t talk to me’ glare on their face. They all look miserable, almost without exception. Wow, are these my people? I sit next to a particularly sour-looking old woman, who doesn’t make eye contact. I sit thinking for a few minutes about how much friendlier the Africans were, and then decided it just can’t be true. I strike up a conversation, something I usually avoid on a plane in case you’re next to a nutjob in disguise, and discover that the old bag is actually returning from a two-week Kenyan safari. Although not exactly my cup of tea, she does turn out to be nice and fairly agreeable, and I discover that her son was one of the principal researchers who recently discovered those bacteria living in pores in rocks buried hundreds of meters under the earth’s surface. Interesting. So, behind that crabby veneer, perhaps most of these Americans are actually nice people. I think there’s just a general self-consciousness, insecurity, a fear of what other people are thinking about them, or just a fear of everyone else in general, that seems to have appeared over that Ethiopian openness that I’ve become accustomed to. “Please be aware the National Security Administration has raised the Terror Alert to Orange. Be especially vigilant for suspicious looking persons.” Code Orange? What the hell does that mean? I always get pissed off when I hear that announcement. Living in fear, no shit.
Now that I’m back in Anglo-Saxon land, I admit there are some very good looking people here too. But not that many. And those that aren’t good looking are REALLY not good looking. I mean, there’s just a general … physical (and mental?) unhealthiness that was not present on my corner of the Dark Continent. Quickly surveying the facial expressions of all the people sitting around me as I type this, I’m inclined to call this the Dark Continent. Goodness, smile a bit, people. And for the first time in five weeks, I’m seeing people again who are really, and I mean REALLY, into themselves. Didn’t ever see that on this trip. And now, it’s so shocking and stands out so sharply, these people seem wacko to me. Crazier than the raving lunatics who would jog down the middle of Ethio-China Road shouting jibberish with their eyes rolled back in their heads. They may have been completely insane, but at least they still seemed human. Some of these folks wandering around the Minneapolis Airport seem, well… wrong. I mean, what happened to that African humanity they were born with? Now they’re plastic Barbies, spinning themselves tighter and tighter into a stinking web of egotism and insecurity and selfishness and ridiculousness. And it’s scary! I was thinking back to that first night, when I rolled into the airport in Addis, and walked out into a sea of black faces, an unfamiliar city on an unfamiliar continent in an unfamiliar culture, with no idea what Dr. Shimeles looked like or what the hell was going to happen to me. I laughed at myself, looking back on that first step into Africa, at how silly and terrified I was those first days. It had changed SO much in those five weeks there… I had learned so, so very much… including that most of my fears were totally unfounded. But even those first steps into the chaotic Ethiopian night, were nowhere near as frightening as my first steps back in my country. It’s a strange feeling. Maybe there were also demons in Ethiopia, but I just didn’t know how to see them, what to look for. But here, after being away and getting perspective on a few things, I do know what to look for, and it’s like a hard slap in the face. Yes, I’m back amongst my people… and they have some serious issues.
But not everyone here is crazy, you’ll be happy to know. And, in case I was missing my black friends, I discovered that Minneapolis is, strangely, the largest reservoir of immigrated Ethiopians outside of Washington DC… and I think 90% of them work in this airport. Shim told me just to say something to myself in Amharic, and every airport working in the joint will turn and stare at you. And he was absolutely right. Ha! Kind of fun… a bit of a pleasant transition back onto the Planet of the Palefaces.
And other good news: We have a BEAUTIFUL country. Really! We are truly blessed to live on this continent. It could be that it’s spent a lot less time being used and abused by humans, but… I don’t think that’s it. It’s just… well, looking out the window as we dropped down through Ottowa toward the Twin Cities, I couldn’t help thinking that John Adams had been right about this Land of Plenty, this New World Paradise. I was trying not to be sentimental, either, but … this part of the planet is just so amazingly gorgeous. (!!!) And after traveling, and seeing that it’s not like that everywhere else, and understanding that the beautiful continent we’ve inherited is unique, and special, and (I hate to say it, but…) in a lot of ways, environmentally speaking, better than other countries and continents… It just drives it home like a hard cowboy boot up the ass that we cannot fuck this country up the way we seem prepared to. We CAN’T let ourselves come to an equilibrium with the other nations of the world… we can do better because we have something better, we must do better, because… because… if we don’t, it’d be such a bloody global tragedy! I know that my preference for North America is a personal opinion, and plenty biased, but no matter how objective I try to be, looking down on those winding blue rivers and Great Lakes and thick North Woods and golden-scarlet hardwoods and farmers’ fields and ranchers’ pastures and frost-capped hills and the city parks mixed in among beautiful old brick houses and boulevards lined with thick elms and maples, I couldn’t help feeling very, very grateful to have been born in a country that could fit me in and still have room to be wild and clean and scenic and inspirational and… perfect. And a feeling of hope washed over me, looking down out of the smudgy window at all that harmony, city and wilderness, spreading out below me. We still have the chance, we still have the time, we can do it: Americans can preserve what is the best part of their heritage, and live in symphony with it, can for the preservation of our own unique American-ness learn to give up those old ideals of dominance over nature and exchange them for ideals of coexistence… if only we can come to a universal respect for what we have, and for what could become of it if we act shortsightedly and selfishly. Perhaps all of us should travel the world, just a little bit… if not to uncover the mysteries of foreign cultures and distant lands, to reveal the nature of ourselves and our country, to gain perspective on what is right with us and what is wrong… To understand the way that we teeter precariously in the earth’s balance.

Amsterdam Schipol, 6:15am, October 24:

I’m happy to report that five weeks in Ethiopia have cured me of a bad case of negrophobia which was festering for 24 years in Montana, Land of Diversity. After wandering into the airport alone (with a bit of trepidation and sadness… bye Shimeles! Sniff!) I made it to the departure gate and noticed with no small degree of disgust that the white farenges had completely segregated themselves into one half of the seating area, leaving the smaller group of Ethiopian travelers to do their thing on one long row of benches along the opposite wall. Should I go sit with the sour-faced Frenchies, Germans, Dutchers and pot-bellied tourists from Memphis? Boooooor-ing! I backed up, walked down and around to the far side of the room and along the bench full of happy, chatty Ethiopians, and sat down on the one unoccupied seat. After squeezing all that I could out of my few memorized Amharic phrases, I was cheerfully talking and laughing with several nice women and making faces at the unbelievably cute little girls next to me who decided to sing me nursery rhymes in Orominya. What fun! With immense satisfaction I watched out of the corner of my eye as my milky-skinned counterparts glared at me silently from across the room. I love these people! (Ethiopians) They’re so warm, and beautiful, and good-natured… And where else can you get a marriage proposal after five minutes of pleasant conversation?
As I tried to board, the scanning machine beeped and the woman told me I’d have to have my bag searched. Ok, all my luggage was searched when I entered the airport, and my carry on was searched again when I went into the departure area, but I waited patiently for a guard to come. Well, I noticed that of several hundred people getting on the flight, I was the only one waiting to be searched. Just my luck. Then the guard came up and told me to leave my carry on there and to follow him. Uh-oh. We walked out of the departure area, down the hall, then through a security door, down a long flight of cement stairs, and through another door right out onto the tarmac, and into a chaotic mass of conveyor belts and trucks and shouting security personnel, and over to a scanning machine where I saw one of the big duffels laying on its side. Must be the mast. They already threw a fit about that one at the entrance to the airport. I opened the bag and took out the mast, and was correct in that they wanted to inspect it. Admittedly, I’m sure it looks like some sort of rifle through the x-ray scanner. I opened it up but this time, it was too loud all around me to be able to properly explain the purpose of the mast, and the military guys who were going through the unit looked extremely skeptical. Then they found the case of machined pins which fit into the steel monuments, and I knew right away they thought they were bullets. God, you should have seen their eyes bulge. But I stayed very friendly and non-chalant, and after a bit of scrutinizing my face for signs of terrorist-sympathy, they let me pack it up again and sent me back up to the gate. The flight was actually, I won’t say painless, but not so bad as I’d feared. I was sitting next to a nice Ethiopian girl about my age who was returning to study in Toronto after visiting her family in Addis for a few months. I felt like sleeping almost as soon as we took off, but the seat was spectacularly uncomfortable and I writhed in agony, trying to find some position where I could doze off without experiencing muscle spasms in my neck and back. Impossible. I felt miserable and my eyes started getting puffy from the dry air and lack of sleep. Then my body passed some sort of discomfort threshold and flipped an emergency switch, and I fell into the strangest, deepest sleep. I woke up from time to time, but it felt like looking out at the world from within a coma… my medulla oblongata felt like it had turned to lead, and the dirty motor oil was back and sloshing behind my optic nerves. The stewards served me several meals, but I could only look at them from where I had slumped into my seat… I was physically unable to move a muscle toward it. And had I not been so inclined to give myself to sleep, it would have been a rather scary feeling. However, after slumbering like this on and off for about five hours, I woke up and felt better, and had some food and the next thing I knew we were landing in pre-dawn Amsterdam.
I savored the way the flight attendants in their blue KLM skirts and funny hats made the announcements in rich, thick Netherlands Dutch. The glorious way they gave guttural passion to words like ‘glaamstuumbrringste’ was making me horny, and I decided that if all Dutch girls are as unbearably sexy as the KLM flight attendants, I would turn in my geology texts and dedicate myself to the art of Dutch seduction. Even as I type this, some invisible (but surely delicious) Dutch vixen is announcing in an erotic voice that ‘denterguurning der flichsatch goombinhaanink vis blartinhuusenving’… Ooh, I love it when you talk dirty to me… don’t stop, don’t stop!

Amazing how sad I felt to be leaving Addis when all I did for the past month was bitch in my journal about how eager I was to get the hell out of there and come home. Suddenly, everything seemed so inviting… the smell of shiro cooking somewhere, the friendly girls and laughing black faces, the chaos of the markets and flickering lights, the vast neighborhoods of mud-metal shanties that were pitch dark in the cool highland night air, except for corrugated tin roofs reflecting a bit of moonlight… I thought of Shimeles, and Mimo and Hewit and Root, and briefly felt agonized that I wasn’t back in Shimeles’ apartment talking with them, and sleeping on Shim’s couch for another day of adventure in that crazy capital. But the feeling is fading soon enough. It was high time for me to make my departure. And I’m glad to know I felt that way at the end… it’s true, for the past few weeks, everything had gone so right, and so well… Shim did his very best to insure that I would miss Ethiopia when he left, and (though I was still darn eager to leave) he succeeded, I’m quite sure. I think I’ll be happy to go back, after I’ve had at least a half-year’s recuperation. Ah, silly farenj. Mountains, I’m coming home to you. Wild skies and grey snowy twilight, I’m coming back, I’m yours, if you’ll just embrace me and let me slip into your desolate, unfeeling arms. So blissfully, so joyfully, so much right where I belong.

Now, let’s go tour the Amsterdam Airport! There’s a museum here, did you know that? And cigarette boxes that exclaim it great red letters, SMOKING KILLS YOUR BABY. And Dutch porn. Does it feature KLM flight attendants? I’ll have to check it out. (Just kidding, mom!)
I only wish that my carry-ons were lighter. I packed every heavy item I could into my Kelty so that I wouldn’t have to cough up millions for overweight luggage, and it worked… only a few pounds over, and a manageable $50 fine. But it means that walking around the shops and hallways makes my shoulders ache, and this damn laptop, I’m certain, is if nothing else, the heaviest one on the market. Damn thing feels like one of Moses’ stone tablets, or a block of Danakil salt. It’s supposed to have no moving parts, and thus be very impact resistant, but I haven’t dropped it yet, so I’ve not been able to test that one. However, I’m sure that it is theft-resistant. Any schmuck who tried to snatch this thing from me and run would have his arm drop off before he made it a hundred yards. Wow, it’s seven o’clock and still dark outside. I guess I’m not on the equator any more. I forgot about that part of winter in the northern latitudes. Well, a third of my return trip is over, and I’m in a damn good mood. Hope this lasts. I wonder how bloodshot my eyes will be when I finally stumble off that plane into the cold Missoula night? Oh, that will be sweet! How I miss my family, and my girlfriend, and Mr. Hans and company. It eased a little toward the end, as I made a few friends abroad… but only a little.
Final note: not impressed with the security measures. The mast unit is an obvious security concern. I mean, it looks quite a bit like a disassembled elephant gun. But I easily made it onto the airplane with both a nail clippers and enough anti-worm suspension liquid to make a neat little avaquinone bomb. And nobody even asked to look in my backpack which contains three receivers and two bipods and one sat-phone and by God, if I was in charge of scanning backpacks for suspicious materials, I’ve have the bomb squad interrogating me in the dungeon right now. Not good enough, guys… gotta do better, or one of these times someone’s going to start clipping their toenails at 39,000 feet. Very worrisome.
Maybe one more entry in Minneapolis? If the battery holds out?

Office of Gatieyeh, Addis Ababa, 3:00pm, October 23:
Amazing how time seems to drag on longer and longer the closer I come to my departure date. Wrapping up loose ends: Said most of my goodbyes, finished up swapping and organizing data at the Observatory, wrapped up my money and receipts, photocopied the site logs, ate kifo (raw this time!), ripped some of Shimeles’ CDs (though we’ve listened to them so many damn times I think I’ll scream if I ever hear those songs again)… Only things left are to buy an anti-worm drug (gotta watch out for that raw kitfo) and figure out how the hell I’m going to get home with three full GPS units (I only came with two) plus all my souvenirs and assorted hodgepodge. I think that extra baggage costs about $25 per pound for international flights. Can you believe that?? So if I have a 36 pound box… Shit! My plan: to dismantle all the units, and take the heaviest parts (receivers, satellite dishes, bi-pods, masts) and try to put them in my one little carry-on Kelty backpack. Can I get away with this?? Unlikely. Plus, I’ll probably be stopped at every airport terminal and strip-searched when they find all those suspicious electronics in my bag. But I’d do almost anything to avoid having to cough up $400 (well, I’ve only got $364!) just to send one extra box back with me. Stress, stress. Need to get to the airport a bit early, me thinks. But once I get my fanny end on that plane, I know the euphoria will set in. And then the air sickness, and fatigue, and body odor, and fuzzy-teeth feeling, and the bloodshot eyes… But it doesn’t matter. Becks will be gone for my full first week back, and my Friday class is cancelled, so… Oh Joyous Joy of Joys!!! – I’m going HIKING! And Biking, and Boating, and Camping, and Loafing… (insert gleeful grin here). There’s only the horribly long flight home, and the anxiousness about what chaos awaits me there, that could detract from this blissful moment… but hell, let’s be honest: I’M SO HAPPY TO BE GOING HOME!!!
That’s not to say that I didn’t have a wonderful time here my last two days in Addis: Shimeles and I stayed very busy taking care of our final business, and I spent yesterday morning hanging out with Shim and Dr. Tigistu and Dr. Alias, and Teddy as well, who showed up and tagged along, for which I was very thankful. Dr. Alias is sort of the Anti-Shimeles, Shim’s counterpart from the Observatory who’s working with Ebinger’s team (I really don’t want to call our groups rivals… it’s just that there seems to have been some animosity over who’s ‘turf’ this part of the Ethiopian Rift is… ridiculous really… and I hate to think that Dr. Alias has to watch what he says around me because our bosses are in some sort of scientific tussle.) Anyway, he is a delightful man, and I really enjoyed talking with him over coffee and lunch. Shim took me to a coffee joint in Piazza called Tomoca… my God, what a coffee-lover’s wet dream! Beans of all different shades, from white to black-brown, were displayed across the counter, each from a different coffee region in Ethiopia, each with a distinct flavor and scent. The place smelled heavenly, and the aroma of coffee seemed to have worked itself into the beautiful old carved-oak walls so that they radiated a dark, pungent aura. We bought two kilos of Harar Coffee, from the northern Somali province… cream colored beans which become a strong dark brown when ground up, and smelling almost too strong for me to handle… and rumored to be the very best. Almost makes me want to become a regular addict.
Root called and told Shimeles to drop me off in Piazza to meet her: her mom was preparing dinner at her house, and I’d go with her and then spend the night there. I think Shim was relieved at the opportunity to be rid of me for a night, and made the drop-off, though it felt to me like a bad time to be fooling around in the suburbs… I had SO MUCH to do still, including making a call to Becky, in which I had hoped Shimeles would participate. But much more so, I was thinking ‘Great, now I’ll be trapped at her place far from town, and will have to fend off Root with a stick, all the while pulling out my hair about the things I’ve put off for the last day…’ But I met her on the sidewalk, and she didn’t try to be romantic at all… took me around to introduce me to her friends in the Mercato, and then took me shopping for jewelry as promised. We joined up with her nice friend Cuba (looked Cuban, too), and I really had a fantastic time. The Mercato was a blast… I don’t think I’d go there alone, but only because I wouldn’t get fair prices and would probably be trailing a battalion of beggars and street kids, not because I’d fear for my safety. You can find anything and everything in Mercato… and cheap! I mean, the thing is a friggin’ yard sale about five miles wide, and since I was in the mood to shop, I was having a blast. Cuba and Root were fun companions, and we wandered all over the place just browsing for souvenirs… I didn’t buy too much because I was almost out of money, but Root was wonderfully nice and bought a few things for me to give to Halle when I ran out of Birr… I really had to admire the way she accepted how I felt about her and was a great sport about it. Damn nice girl, I have to say. Walked and talked for a bit, said bye to Cuba, and wedged myself into the back of one of the ‘blue donkeys’ with Root and she took me back to Shim’s apartment and said goodnight, although I could tell she was sad about it. We said goodnight and I thanked her profusely, and she hopped in a bus and headed home, sans Lewis. I actually felt a little pang of regret that she hadn’t protested harder (oh egotistical self!) but I was damn glad that the whole affair had been peacefully averted and knew that her self-restraint meant we could actually continue to be friends, which made me happy.
I felt very good about staying in almost immediately, as I started to attack the pile of things to do. Was well into writing thank you notes, when the key turned in the door, and in walked Shimeles, followed by a good-looking middle-aged woman in an evening gown. The surprised halt. The confused look. Me thinking, oh shit. Shim, ever the gentleman, said, ‘Lewis! Ah, what happened? I thought you’d be with Root tonight?’ …
Pause while I stutter a jumbled excuse.
‘Oh well, never mind! I’m glad you’re here! Did you have a good night in the Mercato?’ I had to bless the man, he didn’t skip a beat and his voice was loud and happy. I could just discern the very well-veiled hint of disappointment in his eyes. I asked if I should make myself disappear for the next few hours, but Shim said, oh, of course not! And sat down on the couch with me and motioned for the woman, who looked extremely put off. They went into the bedroom, but after only about fifteen minutes, she walked out and Shim said she wanted him to take her home and if I wanted to go out with him for a special dinner at a secret place he knew. Datebuster. Oooh, feeling very guilty right now. But, actually, my date with Shimeles was really nice, and we went to a little hidden-away place for doro wat, or something-wat, and it was quite fantastically tasty. Good conversation, and then we went home and chatted and watched Borat for a while and laughed and laughed until Shim fell asleep and Mimi came in with Missee. And I felt actually quite glad that I’d chased that other girl away and had him to myself for our last night together in Addis.

Time is ticking by. I don’t know where Gatieyeh is, (I’ve never met him, he owns a construction firm and is one of Shimeles’s best friends. He was the one we drove all the way into Aftera for, to check on one of his machines) but we’re still in his office and I’m still letting myself worry about the baggage. What if I have no choice but to send an extra box… and maybe one of my bags will be overweight too… and my $364 doesn’t cover the cost? Ooh, Becky will be pissed if I have to leave one of the units here for Shimeles to send. I’d be tarred and feathered. Really should have located the KLM office to check out the details yesterday. Well, I’ll just have to cross my fingers, take my anti-worm medicine, and hope for the best. Will be saying my farewell to Shim and walking into the terminal and living off Clif bars in only about four hours. Five weeks… Four hours. Why does it seem even more now like an eternity than it did at the beginning? Oh lord, for my home, home, home!

Shimeles’ Apartment, 5:30pm, October 21:

I’m alone in Shimeles’ apartment, and someone has been pounding on the door and furiously punching the doorbell for a good ten minutes now, though I’m determined not to answer… which means I’m also determined not to make the slightest sound to alert the persistent door-banger of my presence. I decided that opening the door was a bad idea: if it was anyone I should open up for, they ought to know I’m here and call “Lewis” through the door. However, they’ve not uttered a word, just continue to pound away in silence. Which is a little scary, actually. But I don’t want to open the door and then have to try to deal with someone who doesn’t speak English, or who perhaps isn’t on friendly terms with Shimeles, or has no idea who I am. Which means, it’s a good time to journal!
The trip seems to be wrapping itself up pretty quickly now: back in Addis around noon today, and Shim was kind enough to offer to let me stay in his apartment instead of going back to the EDSONATRA hotel, which I greatly prefer, in addition to the fact of it saving me at least 600 Birr. That second bit is especially welcome because my money has dwindled now down to about 1500 Birr from the initial 24,000 or so, and I’m trying to conserve as best I can. But there’s also so much more to do in Shim’s apartment, it’s more comfortable, I feel more connected to everything (including Shimeles), and I have a lot more freedom. We dropped off the girls as soon as we got into town. I was getting a bit fatigued of Hewit… Even Shimeles agreed that ‘she’s a bit retarded’… in that all-looks/no-brains sort of way, and I really had to agree. I’d taken quite a bit more of a liking to Root, because she seemed much more intelligent, friendly, fun, and talkative, and we’d been having a pretty good time together for the past three days, chatting and shopping and singing songs, and she was being a real sport helping me with my Amharic. I told her that I’d call her so we could go shopping at the Mercato, Africa’s biggest open market (everyone tells me that I really shouldn’t go there alone), and go to Piazza and visit her mom’s house out in the suburbs, but I’m not sure I will. I like her, but I think I may be done wandering around Addis on this trip, and I think I’d just like to take it easy, take care of all the loose ends, and call it good. Additionally, I’m certain she’s taken a shine to me, and Ethiopian notions of relationships seem to be rather different from what I’m used to: ‘I have a girlfriend’ doesn’t really seem to mean anything, and after a while, retreating from determined advances gets a bit tiring. But it would be a lot more fun to explore the city with her. I dunno, I’ll see if I get bored, or desperate for more souvenirs.
Shim is out on what sounds to be a frantic round of last-minute social engagements, before he jumps back into his professional duties with both feet. The poor guy sounds so horribly busy all the time, I’ll be looking forward to his visit to Montana in December, when hopefully he’ll have enough time of his own that I can show him around and have a little fun.
Addis. A funny place. I was walking down the street in the Bank district on Bole Road, big glass-faced high-rises on either side. I was making my way through a sea of business suits on the sidewalk, and was thinking to myself that in a way, it had a good bit of a Manhattan feel to it, and abruptly I came up behind a smartly dressed fellow with a briefcase in one hand and a wooly sheep riding on his shoulders. Judging by the lack of reaction from the other pedestrians, this was a perfectly normal occurrence, and even the sheep seemed quite content to be carried along in such a way behind the man’s head, and was just looking around, quite contentedly. I walked behind him for a while, just savoring the feel of walking nonchalantly next to a man in a business suit with a sheep, and eventually increased my speed to pass him. At that precise moment, he turned to shout at a taxi, and the sheep and I met in an awkward kiss for a brief instant before I reeled away and the sheep ‘baaaa’d’ in humiliation. Soft lips, though.
Last night was a very nice, Ethiopian-feeling experience. I bring it up, not just because I should, but because Shim brought to my attention that he’d tried very hard to make sure that my experiences here were authentic, and that I saw and lived the real Ethiopia, not a tourist-friendly façade. And he’s quite right about that: from the very moment I stepped off the plane, he steered me well clear of the haunts of the euro-tourists and wealthy vacationers. Throughout, I’ve seen hardly a single other farenj, yet I’m sure the country’s crawling with them. We ate at the same places the locals eat, slept where they slept, mingled and conversed and spent our time with the common lower class folk far more than any big-wigs or hot shots, though to do so would have been quite easy. We’ve snuck down back alleys and given rides to hitch-hikers and bartered and begged our way into places that most tourists don’t even know exist. He’s helped me put my finger on the artery of each of the places we’ve visited, so that I can feel its throb and pulse, and come just a little closer to understanding it… (though falling in love with it, like Shim, is honestly quite another matter)… But he’s been my protector and entertainer and guide and chauffer and coworker and good friend, and for all that I really owe him an enormous thank-you. Which, since I’m still not much good at rolling gurshas, I’m not entirely certain how to express adequately. However, I digressed very far from last night. After a long nap to finally clear what felt like dirty motor oil out of my cranial cavity, we ventured out into the delightfully cool night air of Debre Markos. It was a large small-town… just the right size for me to really enjoy, and after sleeping away the afternoon I was in the right mood to enjoy it. All the constant driving has left me feeling rather under-the-weather most of the time: atrophied muscles, frequent headaches, and a general depression and moodiness which comes and goes (and as you can probably tell, often finds its release in many of my journal entries)… but the general happiness which is a regular feature of my normal Missoulian mood has for the most part evaporated and only comes in little fits and bursts… My mood now for the most part characterized by what I would call my best effort to be good-natured about my struggle to survive the duration of my field campaign. My energy and motivation was at an all-time low on the Bahir Dar trip, and while I can say that I did have a fairly good time, I also struggled quite a bit to keep my chin up. So again, I’ve diverged quite a bit from the story I’m trying to tell, but I wanted to explain the necessity of the afternoon nap to clear that heavy brain-sludge puddling behind my eyeballs. I had talked my way out of lunch yesterday too, and for that my stomach had sincerely thanked me. After miraculously talking my way out of dinner as well, I was feeling really quite good, the food in my stomach having a chance to digest for the first time in a month, and my intestines dealing with what I would consider to be, at last, a normal amount of input. My heartburn cleared up, and that alone brought me enough joy to be a bit giddy.
Shimeles was leading us to a ‘secret’ location, and we had a nice walk through the evening streets of Debre Markos, past the women crouched over little glowing beds of coals and roasting ears of corn and various types of grains and barleys. We sampled all of them, and laughed and joked as we made our way off the main drag and deeper into a residential neighborhood, the street lit occasionally with the light from a little grocery stall or music shop. We enlisted the help of a 10-year-old girl to help us find our desired location, (I thought at the time it was a restaurant) and I was a bit surprised when she finally led us through a darkened doorway in a stick fence on a dark and seemingly abandoned street. In through a door to a little shabby parlor, quite empty except for two narrow benches and an even narrower table down the length between them. Peeling pink paint on the mud-brick walls and the whole room dimly lit by a single flickering bulb.
We sat down and the hostess, a young girl probably around seventeen or eighteen brought us strange and wonderful glass beakers, obviously homemade, with rough engravings of the Lion of Judah, and narrow and variously tilted necks… roughly the size of a grapefruit and looking a bit like something that would be found in an alchemist’s laboratory a few centuries earlier. The serving girl (quite shy, I thought, until Root informed me that she was in fact a literal servant girl, and was forbidden to talk to guests unless directly spoken to) filled our beakers with a honey-colored liquid from a big metallic kettle, and Shimeles invited me to drink. Tejj, an ancient local specialty, a honey-wine which, in the days before the revolution and the Derg, was often kept in a family for several generations while it aged, much like wines in old Italy. A toast! To a completed campaign, a job well-done, and a wonderful time! I drank- glug, glug, glug came the liquid through the neck of the flask… and goodness, it was quite delicious! Not really anything like anything I’ve tasted before (which is something I can say about most of the food and drink I’ve tried here in Ethiopia) but for a curious readership, I’ll say that it most closely approximated a good hard cider, with a bit of fermented bite and fizz, and more of a honey taste than apple… but nothing really at all like the mead I’ve had at home. I liked it quite a bit (a lot more than the ground-corn moonshine Arake of two nights previous, or the liquorice liqueur (Cuho) I tasted in Robe) and found it fairly light and easy to drink. The owner of the bar came in, an older woman with faded ceremonial tattooed bands around her neck, and though conversation was slow at first, Shimeles’ never-failing humor eventually warmed everyone up into loud laughter and conversation, of which I was occasionally a part when someone filled me in or made me the butt of a joke… but it was very pleasant just to sit there and listen to the rise and fall of the Amharic phrases bandied about, and the loud laughter, which was contagious and filled the room with a nice warmth that was added to by the mellow tejj. After three flask-fulls I was feeling a bit tipsy, and we paid (virtually beans!) and exchanged goodbyes and goodnights, and headed back for the hotel. I gave Root a short piggy-back ride which resulted in the entire neighborhood coming out onto the street to watch us in disbelief and laugh hysterically. I guess it is pretty funny to see an Ethiopian riding a farenji home, and we both laughed along. Even with Root’s help, my Amharic was still atrocious, only a step above non-existent, and I was thinking about how so many of the interactions I’d shared with local villagers, in every part of the country, had been conversations between them and Shimeles, carried out in Amharic and for the most part un-translated and uncomprehendable to me. Yet it rarely made me uncomfortable, and I enjoyed just being allowed to be privy to that sort of friendly connection, listening to the way the language was spoken, and watching the faces interact though expressions that I’d never paid all that much attention to before. It was rather how I imagined a handshake would start to feel to someone who became blind. It was fun to experience communication in a new way… and yes, occasionally Shimeles would translate some part of the conversation for me, and I would make an attempt to speak in Amharic and for a few brief seconds be a part of it all, before moving resignedly back to the sidelines again.
You know, I never mentioned about how, in Debre Markos two days before last, northbound on our way to Bahir Dar, we also went out and found that little house which served the Arake, and that was really an interesting glimpse into the local culture. I guess almost every home in the city (and the region, for that matter) brews their own alcohol… clear or golden, depending on whether the corn or grain is toasted first… and sells it in the home at night for a tiny bit of supplementary income. I don’t think this is something that tourists ever do, or know anything about, for that matter. But if you walk off the main drag and into the poor (i.e. real) part of town after dark, you’ll notice that almost every little mud and sheet-metal shanty has the door thrown open and the family is sitting inside chatting quietly under a flickering lantern or candle, a little homemade shelf of various glass bottles behind them filled with their very own homebrew distillate available to any passer-by who desires a drink. And though you’re served veritable shots (we even went so far as to light ours on fire) which are, though greatly different in taste, quite similar in quality to whiskey… the price is only about 0.30 Birr per shot… or about 3 American cents. It was really just this: we walked right into a family’s home, (these weren’t business people and this wasn’t a business) though we could have chosen any home to enter, as they were all open, and asked them to serve us for a tiny fee. As we were about to leave, two other fellows came in and asked for some Shiro, and the hostess dutifully prepared it for them, and I bet it cost them about 1 Birr. But this was just the reality of a place where everybody has to do anything they can to make a little money. Every home is open to visitors, every night, though of course no one may visit for several days… simply because there is the chance that someone will come in and spend one or two Birr, and thus it’s a service that no family can afford not to offer. But I sort of liked the way that, well, every house was open to you. Perhaps the reason was monetary, but still, it gave the whole village a very welcoming feel. If you want a cup of tea, no door is closed to you. But yeah, damn that moonshine burned going down. Shimeles swears it’s a medicine for about 36 different ills, including a cure for every kind of stomach worm. Not much of a surprise there, considering the way my belly felt scorched for a few hours afterward.
Root accompanied me to the Debre Markos market yesterday also, and we found a fabric stall I liked a lot, and I entertained the young owner of the shop for about half an hour while I made him pull down just about every blanket and scarf from the front of his shop and agonized over which color of blanket looked best with which pattern, before finally dropping 180 Birr on what I figured was about 200 dollars worth of nice fabrics. I know I could have gotten much fancier ones at the Entoto Market in Addis, but it would have at least doubled or tripled the price, and more so, I wasn’t sure I’d find the time to visit the market in Addis on my last two days. Root also had some fantastic silver earrings, which she swore were extremely cheap if you shopped in the Mercato in Addis, but if I don’t end up wandering there with her, I think I may just check out a place I heard of in the Piazza. There was one set, with beautiful engraved-silver peacocks, that were admittedly huge, but very beautiful.
I was just thinking (I’m scouring my brain now, trying to write about any old thing that’s happened, before I wrap up this journal and publish it for general consumption) about a little schoolboy in Bahir Dar who, seeing me stalled on the street, walked up and quite bravely and confidently asked me in good English where I was from. I replied America, and he asked me my name, and I asked his, but was reluctant to continue the conversation because I knew that all interactions like this end in some demand for money, and there’s something about that which still rankles me, even after five weeks here, even in the knowledge that it’s really a cultural standard: if any service is given, including conversation or advice, repayment is expected. Anyway, he was cute, in tattered purple school pants and dirty little backpack, and spoke incredible English for someone his age. He also maintained that he spoke Somali, Sudanese, and German.
“Have you ever been to Sudan, Mister?”
“Ah, yes, Khartoum…” I exaggerated the airplane’s layover, and then stepped into an internet cafe after Shimeles, hoping to lose the kid. The café was packed, though, and we came back out. The kid asked Shimeles if we were looking for a good internet café, and they launched into Amharic, but I followed that most internet cafes charged escalated farengi prices. He sounded very authoritative, and led us into a tall building and up several flights of stairs and through a bank office to a little copy center with computers, and then sat and waited in a chair while Shimeles and I checked our email… and indeed, it was probably the cheapest internet in Ethiopia. Shim then whispered to me that he wanted to repay the little fellow, but that he hated to give kids money, so we’d take him for cake and a soda at the snack café next door, and the kid seemed completely satisfied with this arrangement… in fact, it seemed like business as usual to him. We sat down, and I asked him to get me another of whatever he wanted. Yellow cake. And I ordered a coffee. Shimeles became engaged immediately in a conversation with a couple who turned out to be the owners of the café (always making connections, that’s Shimeles) and meanwhile I chatted amiably with the little guy, found him quite agreeable, in second grade and full of big ideas and new knowledge… and was a little sad to see him go when we wished him well and drove off.
Lots of stories like that…
Such friendly people in every town, if you can just relax a bit, let down your guard, give it a little effort. Wish I could speak a bit of Amharic, so I wouldn’t be such easy prey for someone with bad intentions… But then, I’m not sure I met anyone with bad intentions on this whole trip, er, outside the Afar… Crime and scam just doesn’t seem the norm in this country. Which has been a wonderful discovery. I feel incredibly at ease around the Ethiopians now, a huge change from when I stepped off the plane clutching my bags, expecting to be hustled like at the Tangier port.
In a few months time, what will my impressions be? Will I be missing the chilly green highlands, with the shepherds wrapped in their woolen shawls, the snap of whips, men trotting by on ornamented horses and mules, chilly grey rain clouds… Or sweet southern bananas, boars and zebras, Nile Perch, kids swarming the car crying ‘farenji, farenji!!’ Hot springs, snowy mountains, pretty girls, honey wine? Cheap food, cheap clothing, strange vegetation, smiling gap-toothed faces, mud huts and candlelight under the stars? So many little joys to take away from here… Yet somehow, it seems there’s something else, some… connection, some sort of critical interaction with the people or the place that’s been missing from my trip, and I don’t know that it will appear to me with time. But maybe… I can see myself making better friends on the following visits. Shimeles, Teddy and Root, I’ve become quite close to… and there are other potential friends as well, friendships which only need a bit more time and perhaps some improved language skills on my part to develop: Doctor Tigustu, Ingdiyeh and Helen, Barukat, Brookeh down at the Robe Observatory, Hewitt at the Jovial hair salon, Kestet and Daniel at the Edsonatra… who knows what others?? Is that what was missing? Or is there something even more basic, something that’s grown into me as I’ve grown in a certain place all my life, that I can no longer be happily separated from? Questions, questions… we’ll see.
While we were taking those sharp corners today on the way back to Addis at kamikaze speed, I was squinting down the highway until the road blurred into a grey river, and I was imagining myself plummeting down it in my kayak, boofing off the big drops, punching through those lateral waves slamming in from the side, getting worked upsidedown in the big holes and waiting it out before rolling upright… What a nerd.
There was another knock on the door a few paragraphs back, and this time it was accompanied by my name, so I got up and answered it. Hewit and Root. Should have guessed. They already ate burgers without me, but we walked to a nearby restaurant that seems popular with the young crowd and met two other girlfriends, and I thought, ‘Shit, why did I open the door? Now I’m stuck in Girl’s Night Out, right when I thought I was rid of these two…’ Fought down the antisocial feelings, but couldn’t force myself to get in the mood to party. I just washed my clothes and am wearing my chacos and swim trunks. Don’t get much dorkier or whiter than this… If we went out, how would I get back to Shimeles’s? Would Root try to take me home and make a scene? Bought three cakes to make myself feel better, but as I hadn’t had dinner or lunch, sweets wasn’t the best idea. Took to stealing pizza crusts off a nearby table. After we left, though, it was better… just had fun being my silly self with Hewit and Root, and they seemed to reciprocate in kind. Walked around for only about half an hour, and then Root said she wanted to go home and they wished me goodnight and said to call them tomorrow or Tuesday when I want to go shopping in the Mercato. Felt better about the whole thing. Maybe I’m making up the tension with Root. Realized that I was actually quite honored that those two came all the way across the city just to hang out with me for an hour… nice to have someone in another country actually like you as a person. Feeling much better until I went for a burger at the Bole Mini. Mistake. Should have kept starving myself, or living off Clif Bars. Ouch, stomach ache. New rule: eat as little as possible from now until back home.
Enough writing for now… giant moths have invaded the apartment, and I feel like kicking back with my book, The Last King of Scotland… or watching one of Shim’s pirated DVDs. Wondering about what’s happening back home, and what the winter has in store for me there. Ciao for Now.

7am, October 20th, Something or Other Hotel, Bahir Dar:

This Ethiopia tour has become remarkably easy, and yet exhausting in its monotony. On the shores of Lake T’ana, the headwaters of the Blue Nile, in the city of Bahir Dar. Yet I’m not really excited about anything except counting down my last malaria pills and stepping onto that KLM jet Tuesday night. Should it matter that Bahir Dar is supposed to be the most beautiful city in Ethiopia? Or that we’re only a stone’s throw from the fabled island monasteries which have been floating in rocky isolation in the lake’s center for hundreds of years? No, it doesn’t matter at all. When you feel like this, the tourist crap seems horribly trite and ridiculous.
I was thinking about going back to tell you the stories about the “Revitalized Water Man” and “Mimi’s Run in with the Afars” … but these will just have to be wrung out of me at a dinner party. I’m not going back in time again. So here we are. The present. We’re traveling with Shimeles’ 28-year-old ‘girl friend’ Hewit, and her friend Ruth (pronounced Root) who I like a good bit better. They’ve been decent company: Root speaks excellent English, and they’re young and somewhat lively and have given our trip a bit of youthful vigor that perhaps it was lacking before, both with Protestant Teddy in the Afar, and with just Shimo and Me down in the south. Yet I can’t help being a bit exasperated: They’re young, and pretty, and Root is talkative and a little goofy, but I’m not actually interested in them at all: they lack imagination, philosophy, drive, or… character. Which brought me to consider that I have yet to meet someone in this country who I would pursue as a friend back home. A little depressing to think about. The past two nights, we went out ‘partying’… huge dinner, beer, walking around, buying street food, finding a little liquor house that serves the local moonshine (Arake), and watching Ethiopia TV while sipping determinedly on several shots of roast corn distillate with a rather stomach turning taste, and a habit of burning like DrainO as it goes down. Last night, a bar with several Bedele Beers (Shim’s favorite, but honestly, nothing great folks… we’re spoiled with our Montana Microbreweries) and an aborted attempt to dance before deciding that Bahir Dar really doesn’t have any sort of a worthwhile nightclub. I share a room with Root, and Shimeles raises an eyebrow, hinting… But it’s all so worthless! I don’t want to hang out with Root. I want Halle, and Hans and Clark and Sean and Kendra and Walker, and Kahl and Keinitz and the myriad other friends back home who I adore, who really offer me something, who are worth hanging out with, who understand me, who know how to live, and who I miss so very terribly.
Should I stop bitching and look on the bright side, just for the last four days? Or should I mention how desperate I’ve become: outlining in my notebook all the ‘classic trips’ I want to do as soon as humanly possible upon my return… daydreaming, constantly. These aren’t even creative, but God how I miss them!
I wonder how home will live up to my inflated expectations. I’ve built it up so much in my head… Ah, of course it will! Funny that of all the things this trip has denied me for five weeks: American food, music, friends, orderliness and sanity, a shared language, movies, a familiar culture, family, cultural entertainment, school, the freedom to make my own schedule… I have missed my wilderness the most, almost to the point of insanity. It wears on me every day, and rarely an hour goes by this past week when I don’t find myself drifting off into some sort of fancy about places I’ve been, or will go, or will return to… solitude, freedom, joy. Can you hear my head exploding? Aaaarghhhh!
Ok, I KNOW, this is not what you want to read about. You’re all still thinking, ‘Damnit Lewis, we don’t CARE about what you miss at home… tell us more about Africa!’
It’s not as easy as that, though, anymore. My impressions have become scattered, my stories too many and all blending together, my experiences tainted by boredom and fatigue and loneliness. Would you rather hear that I watched ‘Capote’ at Shimeles’ house and loved it? …No, I’d imagine not, but it’s so easy to explain to my American readers, so easy for them to comprehend…
Why am I shying away from delving into this place? From writing like I did when I first arrived in Addis, when everything was frightening and new and incredible? Is it because I’m afraid that my final analysis of Ethiopia, once I put it all together, just doesn’t add up to what I had hoped to find here, and I think I can avoid forcing myself to that conclusion if I just keep mum? Well, I just made that up on the spot, but it may be correct.
I must try, I must try: The high plateau north and northwest of Addis is really quite beautiful: rolling hills and valleys and rounded mountains and eucalyptus forests, and everything so green green green! At 9000+ feet, the air is thin, and the population much sparser than the south. Here and there at regular intervals, those same grass huts sprout and bulge up from the ground… There’s something wholly organic about them: they don’t look as if they’ve been built, but rather that they swelled and popped up out of the dark soil in the night, like mushrooms… it is easy to forget that they were created by human hands, yet when considered, something about their design seems so right and so healthy. The rounded walls, the conical roof, the way a fire can be built right in the middle of the hut and the smoke just seeps and slips out of the roof-thatch like fog slipping up off the top of a mountain. These little rural scenes are my favorite: small cherub-faced boys and girls in green shawls and green shorts and green caps, like little Robin-Hoods, wander about pastures casually herding a few sheep along in front of them with flicks of a eucalyptus branch. Everywhere, everywhere in this country, people are with their animals. Always. It’s a sort of union that I think has been largely forgotten in developed countries: people and their domesticated animals, always together, dependent on one another, living every day side-by-side and in constant contact… until one day the human co-part decides to slaughter his friend for a dinner of mutton, and move on to new company. Yet there’s something in it that makes you consider the duality of the counter-dependency. That’s an all-too-fancy way of saying what I mean, which is that you understand that the people are wholly dependent here on the well-being of their livestock, which in a strange way subordinates them to their domesticated animals. It’s an odd concept, but somewhat pleasant as well, in an old-times pastoralist sentimental sort of way. I like watching men plowing their fields by hand, walking behind two oxen yolked to the plow, itself a handmade affair of twisted wood and rough-pounded iron… plodding through newly churned dirt with wrinkled black bare feet, peach-pink on the bottoms.
The small villages are the most pleasant: you know how it goes… in an agricultural society which has persisted unchanged for hundreds of generations, everyone has their place and their station and they fill it unquestioningly. Without the concept of money or riches, no one realizes they are poor, and thus no one really is poor… Happy faces greet you, children are playing, or people are working seriously but with that satisfied look of people who do not know to crave for more than they have. Also, the place looks quite appealing: the western notions of garbage, homelessness, and sheet metal have not yet been introduced, which is much more than can be said of the larger towns and cities where our glorious ideals of modernity and development have begun to take their first awkward and perverted steps toward the First World. Uck.
Well, Shimeles just came in with a bright and friendly good-morning (I love how he asks me, “Did you sleep well, dear?”) that cheered me right up, and I’d better go and get ready to drive back to Debre Markos to collect our LAST mobile station (yay!!)… But before I forget, I have to record my two favorite Shimeles-isms thus far:
“Lewis, you should maybe like to order a tasty caesarian salad…?”
And, “Yes, there were many Jews in San Paolo, in Brazil. I saw them many times and once even visited with them to one of their seen-o-googies… You know what is a Jewish seen-o-googie?”