You've Disappeared

"Hanni, tafash." This is perhaps the most frequent sentence I hear in
Amharic. You've disappeared. It's akin to "long time, no see," but
stronger. Similar to "I've missed you," but more accusatory. And
Ethiopians use it all the time. My favorite shop owner told me I had
disappeared one afternoon, when I'd been at his shop that same
morning. A friend in Addis told me I had disappeared, despite my
having talked to her on the phone once a week over the past three
months. At the hospital, if I'm out doing something else for a half
day, every member of the staff feels the need to remind me that I have
"tafash"-ed when I come back.

I'm beginning to see the meaning of this phrase as it works in
Ethiopian culture. As I spend more time here, I'm realizing how much
of every activity in Ethiopia is directed toward preserving and
strengthening social relationships. We talked about this a little bit
in training—about Ethiopia being a collectivist society in
counterpoint to America's individualism—but it has taken more than a
year of actually living here to realize how deeply held these values
are. My Ethiopian friends actually feel like I've disappeared when
they haven't seen me in days or hours—relationships are that central
to the way of life here. Nearly everything about this culture hinges
on other people. You have to maintain relationships with people here,
because you rely on them. Particularly in smaller communities (though,
still, I think, even in a city like Bahir Dar or even Addis), you
can't get by without other people, and so relationships are sacrosanct
and conflict between individuals is rare and very quickly smoothed
over.

I've seen time and again (despite my lingering awkwardness at showing
up uninvited at someone's doorstep) that hosting makes people happy,
and that they're pleased that I value their friendship enough to stop
by their homes. I'm beginning to understand the many (at first
perplexing) phone calls when people have nothing to say; they just
need to check in and make sure that I'm still here. Other things too:
hierarchies at work are about preserving social relationships, about
not rocking the boat. So too is the focus (obsession?) with respect
(or as it's occasionally called here, "respection"). Conflict is
avoided as best as possible. Communication is indirect…but is subtle
and constant and of paramount importance. Ethiopians have
communicatory finesse, to be sure. I still certainly miss lots of the
subtext and undercurrents of what people say.

It's enlightening and at the same time disorienting to start figuring
these things out about the society I'm living in. It's certainly
helpful to start reflecting on the way things work here, and is
incredibly interesting in the academic sense. But it's also tricky,
acknowledging how different my own culture is from the Ethiopian, and
trying to navigate how I fit in here. I'm beginning to think that I
would enjoy being an anthropologist, though it would also, obviously,
be hard work.

The more I live here, the more I realize how little I understand about
this place. It's incredible to finally get how complicated a culture
really is. Lots to think about…

By the way, I have indeed disappeared from this blog, for which I
heartily apologize, and will try to remedy in the future.