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Thursday, September 25, 2003

First taste of village life 

Gin. Asmara gin is a fine liquor. It's quite sweet and slightly oily, and goes well with Sprite -- the only alternative to Coke or Fanta here.

Wednesday 17th and Thursday 18th September

A visit to the home of a current volunteer! I'm on my way to Adi Gual, via Mendefere, South and a little bit West of Asmara.

Mendefere is home to current volunteer Jo. We don't get to see much because we're just passing through, but she makes us a cup of tea and we talk about life in Mendefere.

It's a spacious, airy town. Little vegetation, which is quite a shock after the fecundity of Asmara. Colours are all ochres and sunshine, with two-storey blocks lining wide streets that radiate from a central roundabout. Past the bustle of the bus station, there's very little traffic -- another contrast with Asmara.

Jo's landlord organises a minibus to take us on to Kirsty's village: Adi Gual.

After an hour or so, we arrive in Adi Gual. A tiny village clustered around a short dirt track, it's a jumble of stone huts and concrete shacks. Kirsty lives in a shack, in walled compound who's other inhabitants are the local bar and the village gossip -- an old woman with a sly twinkle to her eye.

The shack is very basic. When Kirsty arrived, she didn't even have a toilet and would have had to go in the fields, surrounded by curious kids, if she hadn't made a fuss. Now she has a squat toilet cum shower cubicle built onto the side of her hut. The estate is completed by a small space outside the hut that serves as garden and patio, through which the neighbour's chickens strut. There's no electricity, and she has to walk a kilometre or so for the nearest clean water. When we go to fetch water, we find that the pump is locked up, so we have to walk three times as far in a round trip until we finally get to a well of scummy green liquid.

There's no bucket, so we improvise with rope and the containers we're carrying. Graham climbs partway into the well to push the container under the water level, nearly slipping and falling in the process. I watch the hilarity from the safe distance of the nearby slope.

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Lying in the sea, staring at the stars 

Friday 12th September (continued)

The food. Injera is a spongy pancake about a quarter of an inch thick. Another new volunteer -- Tom -- reckons it has the texture of a school gym mat, and he has a point. It's made by mixing maize and sorghum flour with water. The mixture is spiked with a piece from the previous batch, which sets off the fermentation process. The mix -- the texture and colour of sick, according to Kirsty -- is then left for a few days to mature. Finally, it's poured into a pan and cooked. The resulting gym mat has a wonderful bready taste with the sharp tang that the fermentation brings. It's this that we use, torn off and pinched between the fingers of the right hand, to mop up the various stews that have been ladled into the middle. Flavours and textures range from the scratchy chick pea paste, through red lentils, yoghurt and spicy spinach to rich, earthy goat meat. I've given in to eating meat and I'm not even past my first week here.

After the meal the tables are cleared away and the music starts. A ropey tape of traditional music gets everyone onto the floor, shuffling slowly in a circle and shrugging our shoulders in the traditional fashion. It's very simple: loping to the rhythm of a drum beating out the seconds with a repetitive string melody. Amanuel is the star. He jumps into the middle and struts his stuff. One of the girls wets a 1 Nakfa note and sticks it onto his forehead -- a sign of appreciation. The restaurant owner's two little girls join in the dance, and I'm mugging like a fool to entertain them. I think one of them likes me because, when the dancing is over, she comes over and perches on the arm of my chair, her hand resting on my shoulder, and doesn't look like she intends to leave.

Asmara
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Long, straight, wide avenues lined with palm trees, around which cluster small grids of crowded streets. At the centre is St Mary's Cathedral: a broad, shallow building in brown stone, with delicate relief highlighting the geometric neatness. Its bell tower stretches to 52 metres, the slender hub of the city. Nearby is the post office. A leaf green box two storeys high, with yellow trimmings seeping from around the centre and top like icing oozing from a cake. Inside, a large open hall bounded by dark wood counters, separating the clerks from customers with plastic screens made opaque by years of smudges. In the centre is a long bench in the same colour wood, Asmarinos writing home on the desk that slants on either side. Like stepping back into the 1930s.

The rest of the city spreads out and curves up at the edges in a shallow dish. It's a great city to cycle around. The major roads are very wide. Cars overtake each other and cyclists, leaving lots of room and signalling their intent with a beep of the horn. They seem especially respectful of us, the "tilianos" (much of the language derives from colonial days). Asmara is the safest city I've ever seen for cycling. The biggest hazard is the pedestrians, who walk out into the road without looking or pausing.

The avenues and main streets are paved with small tiles, patterned with little squares. They are remarkably even and well-kept except where they have been dug up to make way for cables or pipes. It seems nobody ever quite gets around to replacing dug up tiles, so there are long stretches of rubble. In some places, the rubble has been around for so long that it has been incoroporated into the earth as if it is a natural rock formation. Occasionally the run of grand buildings is interrupted by a small park: manicured and lush with palms and huge cacti through which a skein of paths weaves.

At night the street lamps and warm air create a romantic atmosphere through which the Asmarinos stroll. The main thoroughfares are crowded with teenagers and middle-aged couples. There are very few young adults: almost all are away at Sawa, the military training camp, or "in the field" -- the Eritrean euphamism for active service.

Asmara is rich in restaurants and bars. Most are fairly good, not exceptional. Pizza and pasta are everywhere, injera less so. The best injera I've tried so far is at Top Five Hotel. The pasta's good in most places unless it's locally made when it tends to be gluey. Eritreans don't use pepper. There are pepper trees everywhere around the city. Grab a handful of the berries, rub them around in your hands to release the frangrance then pop a couple into your mouth: the warm, sweet taste of fresh pepper, much milder than when it is dried. They have the trees but they don't think of using it in their food.

Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th September: the trip to Massawa.

Massawa. Port on the Red Sea, looking over to Saudi Arabia. It's about a hundred kilometres from Asmara. Horizontally, that is. Vertically, it is about 2400 metres down. The temperature rises about a degree celsius each 200 metres descent. That means that we are to travel from the cool 27 degrees of Asmara into about 40 degrees and the stifling, treacly air of sea level.

Most of us are cycling down as far as Ghinda'e, so we make it through the traffic fumes and dust that ring Asmara to the start of the escarpment that will take us down to the desert. The road is steep so it's mostly freewheeling, past little clusters of habitation who's children run out to give us high-fives and scream "tilianos, tilianos". Lots of "hello, how are you?", "I'm fine, how are you?" -- the conversation never gets any further. For the most part the kids are cute and great fune but there is a point where some older kids, perched on the hillside, start lobbing beles -- cactus fruit, or prickly pear -- at us as we cycle past. Actually, I'm not sure if they are aiming for us but one hits me on the shoulder and I get needles in my fingers as I brush it off and cycle on.

The scenery is beautiful: tiny villages punctuate the road as it winds through the terraced hills. Lush greenery gives way to scrub, then yellow sand and bare rock, as the temperature rises and we descend.

There are hair-raising hairpins on this road. Lorries and buses sound their horns as they approach but don't show any sign of slowing down. As in Asmara, they leave a courteous distance but when they overtake each other on the bends ...

Only two casualties amongst us. Tabby slips on some shiny tarmac on a curve and skids along, badly grazing leg and arm. Mel jams front wheel in a train track and somersaults into a cut lip. I'm fine, and loving the exhilirating ride down.

Guava juice and an egg sandwich in Ghinda'e then onto the bus for the final stretch across desert to Massawa. When we get there, our clothes are soaked with sweat. The heat is unbearable. A vicious sun reflects off the white sand and no shade is cool enough. Fortunately, it is late afternoon, so the sun is due to set soon.

By sunset, we're in the town, sitting at a fish restaurant. They cook whole fish -- red snapper -- and chapati-like bread in clay ovens. The skin of the fish is coated in a peppery spice and the whole meal is delicious. It's good to be outside now because the air has cooled down a little. It's still hotter than daytime in Asmara.

Massawa is built on an island, connected to the mainland by a causeway at either end. We end with a few beers at a hotel, looking along one of the causeways over shallow, steaming sea, then set off back to our own hotel at Gurgussum beach. Now is the time to get into the sea. In the daytime, the sea offers no respite. It is as hot as a bath, and you can't sweat underwater, so I felt hotter in the sea than out. At night, the sea is about the same temperature as the air, which is very pleasant. It is also very salty, so very bouyant. We mess about in the water, skinny dipping and drinking Asmara-brand gin with the ubiquitous Sprite. The best thing, though, is lying on your back, star-gazing, while the water supports you completely. Millions of starts stretch on forever and the flas of shooting stars interrupts at regular intervals. After a shower, A.J. (one of the current volunteers) leads a game of cards in the beach bar, over more gin and Zibib (Eritrean pastis).

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Monday, September 15, 2003

A week later . . . 

Friday, September 10th

We've had a week of in-country training now. The language lessons are hard work: we're learning phonetically which I find really difficult. Tigrinia's based on the ancient language of Ge'ez, and shares roots with Arabic and Hebrew. As such, the alphabet's completely different to Roman, having about 100 different letters! We're not being taught the grammar, so we have to figure it out as we go along.

A culture evening tonight at an Asmarino restaurant. Two long wooden huts adorned with pictures of Eritrea and the nine tribes, and scattered with cooking utensils and coffee pots. At the end, in the yard, is the kitchen: a couple of elderly women, one poking at the burning wood beneath a pot of popcorn, the other cooking meat under a corrugated iron roof. The smell of popping corn makes me impatient for the meal but first, the coffee. The coffee is lovely, and accompanied by the popcorn and three varieties of bread: a type of stiff popadum, a thick cake made from the inevitable injera, and a brown wholemeal-type flatbread. Delicious.

Next, we file into the restaurant and are treated to a presentation on Eritrean culture by Amanuel, the Tigrinia teacher, Eden and Sunait, VSO officers, and a local English teacher called Ma'lo. Apart from Ma'lo, they are all in traditional Tigrinia costume: white robes for Amanuel, simple elegant dresses with shawls for the women. Then there is the meal ...

(to be continued)

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First few days 

Sunday 7th September 2003

It's 6.30am and I'm sitting cross-legged in the corridor of the Selam hotel, Asmara. I've been lying awake for most of the night but the muezzin call to pray was my cue to get up and write. The mournful cry of the mosque competes with the plaintive call of the crickets, both urging the faithful to attend.

My first night in Eritrea. Off the plane at last after ten hours of anticipation. Talk of Africa and subtle bonding passed the time. Stepping onto the tarmac with a high-five to Graham and a grin that touches my still-popping ears. Terje's waiting for us -- he's managed to get thois side of customs with his diplomat friend Lynn to brief us on the mechanics of smuggling in computer equipment. Lynn the diplomat will carry the bags through, problem solved.

It's a long wait to get through then we're in assorted vehicles on our way to the hotel. The hotel: clean and tidy without any fuss, a bright sign on the wall lights up a map of the world above the legend "May Peace Prevail". Our bags are piled in the middle of the lobby while Eden attempts to negotiate our rooms.

I get chatting to Lynn and her husband Charles. She works at the British Embassy while he enjoys the pleasures of Asmara. We talk about the book I've just finished: "Ciao Asmara". Neither of them managed to get past the first chapter. "Utter rubbish", says Charles. We're talking over bottles of Asmara -- née Melotti -- the "worst beer on the planet" according to the book. I can testify that that part at least is utter rubbish.

There's a problem with the rooms. There aren't enough. Some of us will have to share three to a room. Which means that they have to find an extra bed to fit in my room. There are no beds, so I come up the stairs to see a guy sitting in the corridor with hammer and screws, trying to build a bed from spare parts. Eventually he gives up and we decide that a mattress on the floor will do just fine. It's not as if I actually get to sleep anyway.

Wednesday 10th September 2003

An early night because my stomach's very dodgy, so I'm back typing for a little while. It's been a chaotic, hectic few days.

Sunday at Casa Dell' Italia for lunch. Asmara wears its Italian heritage proudly. The Italians built most of the infrastructure here. The British and Ethiopians dismantled a lot of it but they left the beautiful buildings and a taste for pizza and pasta. So we gather round some plastic tables in a pretty courtyard, new volunteers mixing with mid-term volunteers to swap experiences and advice. They're a nice bunch -- easy-going and confident which is really encouraging for the rest of us. Most of them were in the same position as us a year ago.

There's a guy there called Alex. He's a Scottish guy who's been living in Keren for the past 6 years. VSO evacuated their volunteers in '98, when the most recent conflict with Ethiopia started, but Alex stayed. He had to resign from VSO to stay and help out during the conflict, so that VSO were no longer responsible for his well-being. He joined up again as soon as VSO returned a couple of years later. He could be a great mentor for me when I get to Keren, although I get the impression he's enjoying being the sole volunteer there at the moment. I said I'd meet him at Aragai's coffee house in the town when I got there. Aragai's plays a part in "Ciao Asmara". It'll be interesting to hear the story from one of the main characters.

Afternoon and evening we trek around the city with a couple of the current volunteers -- Brendan and Adrienne. They point out the main buildings and useful shops then take us up a hill in the hope of a coffee at the "Panorama Café". It's closed, and the hill's occupied by soldiers, lounging in the sun, guns draped across their legs. They're not agressive but they don't want us to go up to the top. Brendan persists: we're new to the city and we only want to have a look at the view. After much conversation they let us past. There's a great view of the city from the top: ordered commercial and upper residential to one side, chaotic shanty town on the other. On the way down we try some "sewer". It's home brew made from fermented injera (itself made from fermented flour). Not sure I like it -- it tastes like gone-off cider. It's the stuff that's served at special occasions however, so I'd better get used to it.

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