Thursday, October 09, 2003
Maggoty sultanas
Wednesday 17th and Thursday 18th September (continued)
Kirsty and I go shopping for beer at the local bar, she chatting away to the gathered men -- only the men spend time in the bars, the women stay at home making injera, doing housework, or preparing coffee. I mumble a few greetings in rubbish Tigrinya but they're happy (amused) with that. The bar is another shack, with wooden benches around the walls that have animal skins draped over them. The bar sells three things: Asmara beer, Asmara gin, and Asmara zibib. The state is the only producer of local alcohol, if you don't count the countless semi-illegal one-woman sewa producers.
Back in the yard, all of us muck in to cook up a really tasty mix of onions, potato, tomato, courgette and pasta under the stars. All around, the sounds of the village and the countryside beyond start to encroach on our conversation. Donkeys bray and dogs howl, replacing the diurnal complaints of the insane chickens. We're all getting slightly drunk on beer and then gin (we drank the bar dry of beer and had to get gin from the local shop, run by the local gossip so I guess she's set up for conversation over the next couple of weeks), and having the type of bullshit conversation that happens in every pub or bar in the world, except here we're sitting in a tiny village surrounded by wildness and strangeness.
I can't get to sleep that night. The crowded room (there are six of us) and the intermittent braying of a nearby donkey keep me awake until the deafening crow of the local cockerel just before dawn. We're all up just after dawn, and a couple of us go for a wander outside outside the compound. In the cool, misty morning air there is a crowd of about 50 faithful gathered in white shrouds in front of the orthodox church. The low sun lights the scene from behind the church, sending long shadows across the ground. Perched on some rocks just outside the compound, Graham and I watch as the congregation respond to the chants of the priest at their head. He, like them, is facing the church and the pink new-born sun, swinging a bell on a chain to keep time with his chants. Their voices are low and hypnotic, the whole scene feels timeless and enchanted.
Breakfast of porridge, laced with chopped fruit and sultanas that may or may not have tiny maggots crawling amongst them (close your eyes and it doesn't matter -- they're too small to taste or be any harm) then off on the aforementioned quest for water.
The minibus picks us up when we get back with the water, and takes us back to Mendefere. At the bus station there is an unexpected queue which we join for a while. Old women blatantly push in front of us -- it's every man and woman for themselves -- placing a rock in the line to save their ill-gotten position while they disappear over to the nearby food stands. A couple of us make the mistake of stepping past the stones until one of the women returns and starts haranguing us in Tigrinya. Eventually we give up and bargain with a local driver to charter a bus back to Asmara.
Friday 19th September -- A.J.s party
A.J. is one of the current I.T. teacher volunteers. He lives on the Keren road, near the edge of the city. The house is on a large plot of land: 3 bedrooms side by side with a yard then flush toilet (the distinction between flush and squat toilets is beginning to become very important to us all) and kitchen off at right angles. The nuildings bound a large garden planted with vegetables. A very atypical volunteer house. Electricity, running water and more than one room are rare indeed.
Almost all the VSO volunteers and staff are gathered for beer, zibib, gin, and a Powerpoint slideshow of photos from the past year, to celebrate the end of the in-country training, and also Susie's (current volunteer) birthday. The current volunteers all look much younger in the photos, it's strange to see how they have changed in just a year. Most of them have lost weight, some of them a lot, but it seems like puppy fat as all but a couple now look lean and healthy.
There's a cake for Susie, in the shape of her beloved bicycle. Miraculously, it was baked over one of the tiny, standard-issue kerosene stoves. It's moist and very tasty.
It's very incongruous, sitting aroung tables in A.J.s garden, watching a slideshow and eating pizza and birthday cake, while outside is red-dust Africa and the local goat market.
Bureaucracy
-----------
Saturday's the day we were all scheduled to leave for our placements and new homes. It doesn't happen, perhaps because we haven't got our resident permits yet although nobody's really sure. In fact, I'm one step behind the others because my work permit application was temporarily lost. They found it on Friday (the photo I'd given them was too big to fit on the card so my file was loitering in a different office to the rest) but the minister wasn't available to sign it so I have to wait until Monday. An unexpected free weekend ...
Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st September -- Another village and a bit of hard graft.
... so, at the party, I committed myself to spending the weekend at the village of an existing volunteer -- Amilee -- to help her paint a classroom before the start of school on Monday.
Emberto is 18Km South of Asmara, an easy cycle along exhaust-choked road, past industrial plants. We park our bikes at a bar just off the main road then walk down a slope into the valley where the village sits. After the road it's a pleasant surprise. A lot bigger than Adi Gual, the village stretches around a bend in a valley, a confusing jumble of houses, bars and shops (it's difficult to distinguish one from the other) edging a broad sweep of crop-packed fields that are almost ready for harvest.
Amilee's house is bigger and more solid than Kirsty's. Still one room plus oustide squat toilet / shower but it has a more permanent feel to it. The inevitable lunatic chickens strut in the yard, and the equally inevitable donkey walks in from time to time, to hoover up the peelings and fruit skins that she throws into the yard. Very little is wasted in a village: donkeys, goats and chickens eat scraps and scrapings, most bought food is wrapped in old newspapers that is then burned with the used toilet tissue and scattered on the vegetable patch. Any packaging is recycled in ingenious ways: plastic water bottles store spices or hold house plants, beer bottle tops clipped around lengths of string make efficient fly deterrent curtains.
Amilee's neighbours -- grandparents to the ubiquitous kids running around -- invite us over for coffee. This will take a while.
They don't speak any English but we get on okay except for a couple of moments where the old woman goes silent, as if we have offended her in some way. Amilee says it happens quite often that she makes some social gaffe, so I shouldn't be too worried. Sure enough, the woman seems to forget the slight fairly quickly and I'm back to making them laugh with my poor attempts at pronunciation.
Early to bed because I'm very, very tired.
Next day, we're in one of the classrooms of the village school, covering it and ourselves with whitewash (evil stuff -- it's lime based so if you get it in your eye, which I did, it fizzes and pops and burns like hell), followed by light green emulsion, with the help of a couple of local lads . We have fun swapping English and Tigrinia phrases, and singing along to the tapes that Amilee brought. It takes all day but it's very satisfying when we're finished.
I leave about 5.30, carrying a present of freshly-picked corn from one of the lads, Iqualo.
My computer has bugs. Crawly cockroaches that hide under the dust cover and scuttle away when I get close. I zapped them with "Hardy Insect Killer" and it seemed to confuse them just long enough for me to stamp on them. Call me Laurel -- my best friend's Hardy :)
Monday 22nd to Thursday 25th September.
People are finally starting to leave. I go back to the Ministry of Laborious Paperwork on Monday to finally organise my work permit. Then off to the Ministry of Irritation with Ergau from VSO to apply for my resident's permit. By Thursday, it's all sorted.
People are trickling away to their placements. It's chaos. We soon realise that the truck never arrives less than an hour after the supposed time. The first day, the VSO van arrived to carry the entire contents of four or five new homes. Piling the roof of the truck with bikes, chairs, tables, trunks, and beds was hilarious. It didn't work first time so off it came to try again. Took ages and the truck looked like it was going to shed most of it's load well before it arrived.
And off they go. It seems strange to lose some of our party after spending two whole weeks in such intense proximity. As the week goes on, it gets stranger.
I'm off to visit Jo in Shimangus Lalay -- near Serejeka -- on Thursday. She left for her new home on Tuesday, so I figure she's had enough time to settle in. A 20Km cycle from Asmara through lovely country. It's the highlands all the way, so it's green and a gentle ride that curls around the customary blunt hills. There are picturesque streams and lovely valleys. The contours are drawn on the hills with stones, that terrace the slopes in an effort to hold on to the precarious vegetation. Heavy rains will easily wash away the precious trees without some measure to reinforce them. As I leave Asmara, past a small bit of forest, a huge bird of prey swoops down over the ground a few metres in front of me. It's wingspan is easily five foot across and it's far bigger than the usual black kites that swoop around the skies of the city.
Through Emba-derho (literally Chicken Hill, but the name is actually a corruption of something else), about 10Km from Asmara. A pretty town piled up the hillside, while the road cuts through the valley. Kids run out from the side and chase my bike for a while. Another 10Km and I'm in Serejeka.
Where's Jo? I walk along the shops lining the Asmara - Keren road, asking random people if they've seen the tiliano woman. Nobody has. I cycle over to the local secondary school and talk to three teachers there, but they haven't seen her either. They point me back to the town, where the sub-Zoba Ministry of Education office is, but by the time I get back it's 1.30pm: siesta time. So I stop in a cafe in town. They're playing Tigrinian music when I enter and there are three soldiers chewing the fat in one corner. We say hello -- me in my limited Tigrinia, they in polite broken English. When the waitress spots me she changes the tape and puts on some terrible American soft rock instead. I call over and say I like Tigrinian music but she just smiles and says "English music" enthusiastically. The soldiers pretend not to be pissed off that their music has been changed.
After the inevitable egg sandwich ("panino enquacaho") and Coke, I'm off to find the sub-Zoba office. A sleepy guy there called Turuk shows me Jo's office, says she's gone to Asmara, then points me in the direction of her village. Shimangus Lalay lies on a hill across a large lake from Serejeka. I cycle around the lake on a dirt track until the road gets to steep and rocky and I have to push my bike up to the village. Surrounded by small children, I ask everyone I see about the tiliano but nobody can help until a supremely confident teeenage girl walks up, takes my hand and says "this way". Past wattle and daub huts, donkeys, chickens and two churches and she takes me through into a compound. There I meet Jo's neighbour, Rubka, who speaks some English and invites me up to her place for coffee. It turns out to be "bun" -- the full-on coffee ceremony, which means @I'm in for at least three rounds and maybe as many hours. No problem -- there's still no sign of Jo.
After about an hour, and two cups of coffee, Jo turns up, looking really pleased to see me. She can't believe I've managed to find her place. We sit and chat with Rubka for another three or four coffees. Rubka's house is decorated with photographs of herself and friends, and magazine cuttings of Asian fashion models and pop stars. I've seen this before; Eritreans have a thing about Indian beauties. My theory is this: there is quite a lot of teachers from India, who are subsidised by the U.N. and come over here to earn big money, so maybe they become role models for Eritrean women who grow up seeing them teach in their immaculate saris. Maybe, maybe not.
Off across the yard to have a look at Jo's place, and give her the gin I've been carrying around. She seems very settled, and has even learnt to accept the insane sideboard she inherited from the previous occupant (Stanja -- another volunteer). We chat, then it's photo call time with Rubka on the steps of Jo's house. Then she walks me down past the lake back to the road because I want to get back to Asmara before dark. Kids pester us all the way. One is on a donkey, keeping pace then trotting off in front. The others are trying to jump onto my bike. I start off in good humour but it begins to get annoying and they won't take no for an answer until they spot an elderly man with a big stick approaching. Sticks mean status here, so the kids scatter and we're finally left in peace to say goodbye.
I'm glad I left it so late. I got to see Jo, and the evening light on the way back is gorgeous. The hills stand out in sharp relief -- golden sides shimmer. By the time I'm approaching Asmara it's dark, so I'm grateful for the lights of the city ahead.
Kirsty and I go shopping for beer at the local bar, she chatting away to the gathered men -- only the men spend time in the bars, the women stay at home making injera, doing housework, or preparing coffee. I mumble a few greetings in rubbish Tigrinya but they're happy (amused) with that. The bar is another shack, with wooden benches around the walls that have animal skins draped over them. The bar sells three things: Asmara beer, Asmara gin, and Asmara zibib. The state is the only producer of local alcohol, if you don't count the countless semi-illegal one-woman sewa producers.
Back in the yard, all of us muck in to cook up a really tasty mix of onions, potato, tomato, courgette and pasta under the stars. All around, the sounds of the village and the countryside beyond start to encroach on our conversation. Donkeys bray and dogs howl, replacing the diurnal complaints of the insane chickens. We're all getting slightly drunk on beer and then gin (we drank the bar dry of beer and had to get gin from the local shop, run by the local gossip so I guess she's set up for conversation over the next couple of weeks), and having the type of bullshit conversation that happens in every pub or bar in the world, except here we're sitting in a tiny village surrounded by wildness and strangeness.
I can't get to sleep that night. The crowded room (there are six of us) and the intermittent braying of a nearby donkey keep me awake until the deafening crow of the local cockerel just before dawn. We're all up just after dawn, and a couple of us go for a wander outside outside the compound. In the cool, misty morning air there is a crowd of about 50 faithful gathered in white shrouds in front of the orthodox church. The low sun lights the scene from behind the church, sending long shadows across the ground. Perched on some rocks just outside the compound, Graham and I watch as the congregation respond to the chants of the priest at their head. He, like them, is facing the church and the pink new-born sun, swinging a bell on a chain to keep time with his chants. Their voices are low and hypnotic, the whole scene feels timeless and enchanted.
Breakfast of porridge, laced with chopped fruit and sultanas that may or may not have tiny maggots crawling amongst them (close your eyes and it doesn't matter -- they're too small to taste or be any harm) then off on the aforementioned quest for water.
The minibus picks us up when we get back with the water, and takes us back to Mendefere. At the bus station there is an unexpected queue which we join for a while. Old women blatantly push in front of us -- it's every man and woman for themselves -- placing a rock in the line to save their ill-gotten position while they disappear over to the nearby food stands. A couple of us make the mistake of stepping past the stones until one of the women returns and starts haranguing us in Tigrinya. Eventually we give up and bargain with a local driver to charter a bus back to Asmara.
Friday 19th September -- A.J.s party
A.J. is one of the current I.T. teacher volunteers. He lives on the Keren road, near the edge of the city. The house is on a large plot of land: 3 bedrooms side by side with a yard then flush toilet (the distinction between flush and squat toilets is beginning to become very important to us all) and kitchen off at right angles. The nuildings bound a large garden planted with vegetables. A very atypical volunteer house. Electricity, running water and more than one room are rare indeed.
Almost all the VSO volunteers and staff are gathered for beer, zibib, gin, and a Powerpoint slideshow of photos from the past year, to celebrate the end of the in-country training, and also Susie's (current volunteer) birthday. The current volunteers all look much younger in the photos, it's strange to see how they have changed in just a year. Most of them have lost weight, some of them a lot, but it seems like puppy fat as all but a couple now look lean and healthy.
There's a cake for Susie, in the shape of her beloved bicycle. Miraculously, it was baked over one of the tiny, standard-issue kerosene stoves. It's moist and very tasty.
It's very incongruous, sitting aroung tables in A.J.s garden, watching a slideshow and eating pizza and birthday cake, while outside is red-dust Africa and the local goat market.
Bureaucracy
-----------
Saturday's the day we were all scheduled to leave for our placements and new homes. It doesn't happen, perhaps because we haven't got our resident permits yet although nobody's really sure. In fact, I'm one step behind the others because my work permit application was temporarily lost. They found it on Friday (the photo I'd given them was too big to fit on the card so my file was loitering in a different office to the rest) but the minister wasn't available to sign it so I have to wait until Monday. An unexpected free weekend ...
Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st September -- Another village and a bit of hard graft.
... so, at the party, I committed myself to spending the weekend at the village of an existing volunteer -- Amilee -- to help her paint a classroom before the start of school on Monday.
Emberto is 18Km South of Asmara, an easy cycle along exhaust-choked road, past industrial plants. We park our bikes at a bar just off the main road then walk down a slope into the valley where the village sits. After the road it's a pleasant surprise. A lot bigger than Adi Gual, the village stretches around a bend in a valley, a confusing jumble of houses, bars and shops (it's difficult to distinguish one from the other) edging a broad sweep of crop-packed fields that are almost ready for harvest.
Amilee's house is bigger and more solid than Kirsty's. Still one room plus oustide squat toilet / shower but it has a more permanent feel to it. The inevitable lunatic chickens strut in the yard, and the equally inevitable donkey walks in from time to time, to hoover up the peelings and fruit skins that she throws into the yard. Very little is wasted in a village: donkeys, goats and chickens eat scraps and scrapings, most bought food is wrapped in old newspapers that is then burned with the used toilet tissue and scattered on the vegetable patch. Any packaging is recycled in ingenious ways: plastic water bottles store spices or hold house plants, beer bottle tops clipped around lengths of string make efficient fly deterrent curtains.
Amilee's neighbours -- grandparents to the ubiquitous kids running around -- invite us over for coffee. This will take a while.
They don't speak any English but we get on okay except for a couple of moments where the old woman goes silent, as if we have offended her in some way. Amilee says it happens quite often that she makes some social gaffe, so I shouldn't be too worried. Sure enough, the woman seems to forget the slight fairly quickly and I'm back to making them laugh with my poor attempts at pronunciation.
Early to bed because I'm very, very tired.
Next day, we're in one of the classrooms of the village school, covering it and ourselves with whitewash (evil stuff -- it's lime based so if you get it in your eye, which I did, it fizzes and pops and burns like hell), followed by light green emulsion, with the help of a couple of local lads . We have fun swapping English and Tigrinia phrases, and singing along to the tapes that Amilee brought. It takes all day but it's very satisfying when we're finished.
I leave about 5.30, carrying a present of freshly-picked corn from one of the lads, Iqualo.
My computer has bugs. Crawly cockroaches that hide under the dust cover and scuttle away when I get close. I zapped them with "Hardy Insect Killer" and it seemed to confuse them just long enough for me to stamp on them. Call me Laurel -- my best friend's Hardy :)
Monday 22nd to Thursday 25th September.
People are finally starting to leave. I go back to the Ministry of Laborious Paperwork on Monday to finally organise my work permit. Then off to the Ministry of Irritation with Ergau from VSO to apply for my resident's permit. By Thursday, it's all sorted.
People are trickling away to their placements. It's chaos. We soon realise that the truck never arrives less than an hour after the supposed time. The first day, the VSO van arrived to carry the entire contents of four or five new homes. Piling the roof of the truck with bikes, chairs, tables, trunks, and beds was hilarious. It didn't work first time so off it came to try again. Took ages and the truck looked like it was going to shed most of it's load well before it arrived.
And off they go. It seems strange to lose some of our party after spending two whole weeks in such intense proximity. As the week goes on, it gets stranger.
I'm off to visit Jo in Shimangus Lalay -- near Serejeka -- on Thursday. She left for her new home on Tuesday, so I figure she's had enough time to settle in. A 20Km cycle from Asmara through lovely country. It's the highlands all the way, so it's green and a gentle ride that curls around the customary blunt hills. There are picturesque streams and lovely valleys. The contours are drawn on the hills with stones, that terrace the slopes in an effort to hold on to the precarious vegetation. Heavy rains will easily wash away the precious trees without some measure to reinforce them. As I leave Asmara, past a small bit of forest, a huge bird of prey swoops down over the ground a few metres in front of me. It's wingspan is easily five foot across and it's far bigger than the usual black kites that swoop around the skies of the city.
Through Emba-derho (literally Chicken Hill, but the name is actually a corruption of something else), about 10Km from Asmara. A pretty town piled up the hillside, while the road cuts through the valley. Kids run out from the side and chase my bike for a while. Another 10Km and I'm in Serejeka.
Where's Jo? I walk along the shops lining the Asmara - Keren road, asking random people if they've seen the tiliano woman. Nobody has. I cycle over to the local secondary school and talk to three teachers there, but they haven't seen her either. They point me back to the town, where the sub-Zoba Ministry of Education office is, but by the time I get back it's 1.30pm: siesta time. So I stop in a cafe in town. They're playing Tigrinian music when I enter and there are three soldiers chewing the fat in one corner. We say hello -- me in my limited Tigrinia, they in polite broken English. When the waitress spots me she changes the tape and puts on some terrible American soft rock instead. I call over and say I like Tigrinian music but she just smiles and says "English music" enthusiastically. The soldiers pretend not to be pissed off that their music has been changed.
After the inevitable egg sandwich ("panino enquacaho") and Coke, I'm off to find the sub-Zoba office. A sleepy guy there called Turuk shows me Jo's office, says she's gone to Asmara, then points me in the direction of her village. Shimangus Lalay lies on a hill across a large lake from Serejeka. I cycle around the lake on a dirt track until the road gets to steep and rocky and I have to push my bike up to the village. Surrounded by small children, I ask everyone I see about the tiliano but nobody can help until a supremely confident teeenage girl walks up, takes my hand and says "this way". Past wattle and daub huts, donkeys, chickens and two churches and she takes me through into a compound. There I meet Jo's neighbour, Rubka, who speaks some English and invites me up to her place for coffee. It turns out to be "bun" -- the full-on coffee ceremony, which means @I'm in for at least three rounds and maybe as many hours. No problem -- there's still no sign of Jo.
After about an hour, and two cups of coffee, Jo turns up, looking really pleased to see me. She can't believe I've managed to find her place. We sit and chat with Rubka for another three or four coffees. Rubka's house is decorated with photographs of herself and friends, and magazine cuttings of Asian fashion models and pop stars. I've seen this before; Eritreans have a thing about Indian beauties. My theory is this: there is quite a lot of teachers from India, who are subsidised by the U.N. and come over here to earn big money, so maybe they become role models for Eritrean women who grow up seeing them teach in their immaculate saris. Maybe, maybe not.
Off across the yard to have a look at Jo's place, and give her the gin I've been carrying around. She seems very settled, and has even learnt to accept the insane sideboard she inherited from the previous occupant (Stanja -- another volunteer). We chat, then it's photo call time with Rubka on the steps of Jo's house. Then she walks me down past the lake back to the road because I want to get back to Asmara before dark. Kids pester us all the way. One is on a donkey, keeping pace then trotting off in front. The others are trying to jump onto my bike. I start off in good humour but it begins to get annoying and they won't take no for an answer until they spot an elderly man with a big stick approaching. Sticks mean status here, so the kids scatter and we're finally left in peace to say goodbye.
I'm glad I left it so late. I got to see Jo, and the evening light on the way back is gorgeous. The hills stand out in sharp relief -- golden sides shimmer. By the time I'm approaching Asmara it's dark, so I'm grateful for the lights of the city ahead.
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