My good friend Tom is an anthropologist. He's living on Zege
peninsula, which is about 30 km by land (or 15 km by boat) from Bahir
Dar, studying religion and culture there. Tom's been encouraging me
for ages that I need to get out to Zege to meet his friends and to see
what his life is like there. Monday was a religious holiday (a saint's
day for the local church/monastery), so I took the opportunity to go
for a visit.
The whole thing worked out perfectly, and left me (a) impressed with
Tom and his work, (b) loving rural Ethiopian, and (c) simultaneously
pretty glad that I live in a city.
I took the ferry over to the peninsula on Monday morning. At the port,
the nurse from the Zege Health Center took me under his wing. He
bought my ticket, found us a place to stand on the very crowded boat,
and we listened to Teddy Afro (the immensely popular and currently
imprisoned Ethiopian pop star) on his mobile phone. He had worked with
Doctors without Borders when they were in Ethiopia and had a lot to
say about the state of health in this country. It was also really
interesting to hear what it's like to practice medicine in an
under-stocked, over-burdened, but also really enthusiastic, committed
health center.
We arrived at Zege, and the crowd was herded up the dock toward the
monastery where the holiday celebrations were happening. The nurse,
having bought it, of course had my ticket, so there was a bit of a
hold up at the gate until I could sweet talk my way past the guards
(sometimes speaking a little Amharic goes a long way). I found Tom
amid the melee, and we headed out for a walk along the lakeshore to
let the crowd die down a bit. The peninsula is mostly covered in
coffee forest, and is incredibly beautiful. We walked out to where
Tom's friend has a coffee plantation, but Menelik wasn't around.
Asking some kids where he had gone, we were shuttled through the
coffee up a big hill on narrow rocky paths through the forest to
another friend's house, which was tucked away in the hills above the
lakefront. It's incredible to think what life must be like there. No
electricity, water only that you've hauled from the lake (see my
previous post about hauling water: it's no fun).
Menelik took Tom and me back to his own house, where a bunch of
friends had gathered. The whole day seemed to revolve around T'ella
(moonshine beer), food, and relaxing with friends. This is my kind of
holiday. We chatted with friends at Menelik's place for most of the
morning, then went up to the church to check out what was happening.
Came back to Menilik's during mass (we couldn't go in because it's a
fasting period and we'd eaten that morning, and anyway, 3 hours of
mass in ge'ez might have been a little much), then went back to the
church again. Got temporarily lost on the winding paths around the
church, but picked up an entourage on the half hour walk back to town.
Afaf town (it means hilltop or clifftop) is on a little cove
overlooking the lake back toward Bahir Dar. Perhaps about 3000 people
live in town (no one seems quite sure). It's a small place, but is
also the market hub for all of the surrounding countryside, so it's
pretty lively. It has its own post office, a couple of pharmacies
(including a couple of veterinary pharmacies), and a smattering of
barbers, tailors, and all-purpose souks. It also has perhaps the
nicest collection of people I've ever met (or perhaps it's just a
credit to Tom that he's on such good terms with everyone that they
treated me so wonderfully). We had coffee (and more T'ella and of
course more food) with his close friends Tomas and Haregua at their
grandmother's house. I got to hold a three-month-old baby. Most of
Zege life, at least on a holiday, seems to consist of socializing, and
it was fantastic. It becomes easy to see why social relationships are
so important, and why it's so important in Ethiopian society to
preserve those relationships above anything else. And I think that I'm
finally at the point in my Amharic learning that I can enjoy just
chewing the fat with people. It also didn't hurt that Tom was there,
and is fluent. It would be fun (and hard, of course) to go live in a
rural village for a few months to give my Amharic a kick-start.
Tuesday morning we went back to grandma's house for a doughnut and
more T'ella (and more time holding the baby of course), and then
stopped by the health center. Seid, my new friend from the ferry, took
me around and introduced me to everyone. I'd love to go spend a week
working there to see how different the health center is from the
referral hospital. I found out that their lab can run a malaria slide
and an HIV rapid test. That's it. They're about to get TB microscopy,
but not until they receive the supplies from the Ministry of Health.
They can give injections, deliver babies, and treat malaria. That's
really about all. And this isn't even the most basic health care
delivery unit—there are five health posts attached to the health
center with even more rudimentary services. It makes you think.
And then yesterday I went with my friend Saul to Dagi. To get to Dagi,
as Saul said, you "go to Merawi [a medium-ish town about 35 km from
Bahir Dar on the main road]. Then you go past it a little bit, through
a tiny town called Wetet Abay. Then you go, um, left." Which is pretty
much exactly what we did. An hour later, having traveled along
impossible "roads," forded a river in the Land Cruiser, and passed
about a hundred donkey carts hauling firewood the 18 km to town, we
arrived in Dagi. This is the kind of place where folks haven't seen a
white person before. It's small enough not to have a post office or
electricity. It does, however, have a single (miserable looking)
hotel, called, hilariously, "Sheraton." Saul and his team from the
Carter Center are doing trachoma (bacterial eye infection) surgery and
research, and they did their exams by the sunlight coming in through
the open window and door in the (mud) health post room. It was
ridiculous watching patients getting weighed—the scale was totally
foreign and mysterious (and a bit scary) for them. Saul told me that
the first time they came to Dagi, patients didn't know how to open the
door if it was closed; they'd never seen a door handle. He also said
that the chairs confused some of the patients; they'd only ever sat on
mats or stools. Incredible.
I amused myself for about a half hour in Dagi by making faces at and
teasingly scaring a group of 15 or so kids who were staring at me.
What's impossible to get my mind around is this: but by an accident of
birth, I could be living in Zege or in Dagi. But for coincidence, I
could have been one of those kids, and she me.
The world's a pretty crazy place.
