Bang-Fucking-on
Monday, August 8, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Lada's and Squat Toilets: My First Week in Ethiopia
Stepping off the plane at Bole International airport in Addis Ababa I set my feet on the ground and said to myself “so this is Africa?” yet I truly had no idea what I was in for. I met Mike, my contact and the reason why I am here, in the baggage claim area where we grabbed my baggage; yes all of it made it some how, and headed out to our cab. The cab was a 1970’s Lada painted white and blue, all the cabs are painted white and blue and nearly all of them are either Lada’s, Yugo’s or Corolla’s from the 1970’s. 
I hopped in and the driver hopped out, the cab wouldn’t start under it’s own power so the driver had to push start the car, he pushed us onto a busy road in the middle of the night with no headlights on, jumped back in, got the Lada to start, we rounded a corner when Mike turned back and said to me “hold your door shut!”!! Before I could grab my door handle it swung wide open almost ejecting me into the street, as I grasped for the door handle we navigated the dark streets, avoiding potholes, piles of rubble, people and ‘Night Flowers” (hookers) all with no headlights to help, I slammed my door shut and thought to myself “no… THIS is Africa”.
To make things easier how bout some quick stats on Ethiopia:
Capital City is Addis Ababa with a population of 9 million
Ethiopia has a population on around 90 million
Ethiopia is about the 3rd poorest country in the world
The majority of people live off of less than $4 a day
For more Info check the Wikipedia page but be warned that not many of the statistics are correct.
Ethiopia is an incredibly diverse country that speaks over 80 languages, has some of the highest mountains in Africa as well as some of the lowest depressions on the Earth. The landscape resembles a mixture of African desert; Tibetan highlands, Jungle, savannah and everything in between,
the people of Ethiopia reflect this diverse landscape in themselves. Ethiopia is unlike any other nation in Africa with its blend of African, Middle Eastern and European influences. Rastafarian culture was born here, as was coffee, well when you think of it we ALL originate from Ethiopia as this was the home to the first humans to ever walk on two feet.
The traditional food of Ethiopia is called “injara” and it is a large crepe like bread that has different “wat” or stews placed on top of it. You tear off pieces of the injara with our right hand only and mop up the wat with it. Some of it tastes good and some of it not so good… My stomach is still adjusting, but there are so many cultural influences here in Addis that you could eat food from almost every culture found in the world to choose from.
Now Addis Ababa is a busy, bustling city that blends the old and new lifestyles of Ethiopia into one insane cluster-fuck of shitty cars, donkeys, goats and people all trying to go somewhere without dying. It is impossible to fully explain Ethiopia or Addis Ababa to those who haven’t experienced it for themselves but it is one of the most amazing places to visit. I love it here, despite the poverty, the garbage, slums and everything negative I could point out this place is beautiful and full of adventure. Addis Ababa is one of the safest cities in Africa, if you’re not in a car, to walk down the street, you have no worries of being mugged, assaulted or even verbally abused and this was very unexpected for me. I didn’t believe it at first when I was told by Mike, but I guess it’s a cultural/religious thing, the people have respect for everyone, they LOVE to laugh and just like to smile and say hello, if you looked around the streets you wouldn’t think that this place is full of happiness and acceptance but it is.
After a couple days in Addis We headed north to the small city of Hayke to map a fresh spring water delivery program, basically I got to go for a hike in the hills of Hayke. All I can say is BEAUTIFUL! The tasks we were there to accomplish were familiar to me, GPS waypoints, and the landscape was also something that felt familiar with: mountains, trees, streams, rivers and steep paths that I had to carefully navigate with both my hands full of $7000 worth of camera gear. In the Hills of Hayke we met with farmers, watched their children heard goats using home made whips of hand woven rope and animal bone handles, and saw farming techniques from thousands of years in the past.
This country is so diverse and so undeniably beautiful; there is magnetism to the landscape perpetuated by the warmth and acceptance of the smiles and interest of the local people.
Back in the city of Hayke we settled into our hotel where I was confronted with more “so this is Africa” moments. We first got a room with no power or running water, which wasn’t going to cut it for tech nerds who need power to do data transfers and uploads, so we argued with the staff until they moved us into another room, where we still had no water. The staff then spent the next hour banging on pipes with wrenches to no avail, so they again moved us into separate rooms where we had power and they gave us buckets of water to flush to toilets with, or so they told us, as I found out the hard way that this wasn’t true… The next night we moved to a better hotel that had both power and running water, where we were quite happy that is until it came the time where I needed to use the running water.
Now I don’t know how many of you have had to use a squat toilet but there is something just so unnatural and uncomfortable feeling about doing so, and in this uncomfort came my next big “this is Africa” moment… In the middle of the night nature called and I had to get out of bed and use the bathroom. I was using the toilet, which was right across the room from the shower, so close in fact that the edge of the toilet touched the edge of the shower basin, when out of no where the shower made a horrible noise then released about a gallon of water all at once… I was squatted over the toilet, in the middle of the night, wearing my shoes, now soaking wet, and thinking to myself “now THIS is Africa”…
On the 9 hour drive back to Addis from Hayke I got to have a fantastic 5 year old personal moment, to sum it up: silly hat, monkeys and huge cliffs. A picture tells a thousand words.
My first week came to a close with 12 hour days of work in the office, getting ready for the next week of teaching, and a dinner with all sorts of foreign government officials from places like Sweden, Germany, Canada, Australia and Korea. In these long days at the office I was able to mentally process the days past and came to terms with the fact that I will likely have many more “this is Africa” moments which will all probably put me in some amount of discomfort, and all I could think was bring it on!
To make things easier how bout some quick stats on Ethiopia:
Capital City is Addis Ababa with a population of 9 million
Ethiopia has a population on around 90 million
Ethiopia is about the 3rd poorest country in the world
The majority of people live off of less than $4 a day
For more Info check the Wikipedia page but be warned that not many of the statistics are correct.
Ethiopia is an incredibly diverse country that speaks over 80 languages, has some of the highest mountains in Africa as well as some of the lowest depressions on the Earth. The landscape resembles a mixture of African desert; Tibetan highlands, Jungle, savannah and everything in between,
the people of Ethiopia reflect this diverse landscape in themselves. Ethiopia is unlike any other nation in Africa with its blend of African, Middle Eastern and European influences. Rastafarian culture was born here, as was coffee, well when you think of it we ALL originate from Ethiopia as this was the home to the first humans to ever walk on two feet.
The traditional food of Ethiopia is called “injara” and it is a large crepe like bread that has different “wat” or stews placed on top of it. You tear off pieces of the injara with our right hand only and mop up the wat with it. Some of it tastes good and some of it not so good… My stomach is still adjusting, but there are so many cultural influences here in Addis that you could eat food from almost every culture found in the world to choose from.
Now Addis Ababa is a busy, bustling city that blends the old and new lifestyles of Ethiopia into one insane cluster-fuck of shitty cars, donkeys, goats and people all trying to go somewhere without dying. It is impossible to fully explain Ethiopia or Addis Ababa to those who haven’t experienced it for themselves but it is one of the most amazing places to visit. I love it here, despite the poverty, the garbage, slums and everything negative I could point out this place is beautiful and full of adventure. Addis Ababa is one of the safest cities in Africa, if you’re not in a car, to walk down the street, you have no worries of being mugged, assaulted or even verbally abused and this was very unexpected for me. I didn’t believe it at first when I was told by Mike, but I guess it’s a cultural/religious thing, the people have respect for everyone, they LOVE to laugh and just like to smile and say hello, if you looked around the streets you wouldn’t think that this place is full of happiness and acceptance but it is.
After a couple days in Addis We headed north to the small city of Hayke to map a fresh spring water delivery program, basically I got to go for a hike in the hills of Hayke. All I can say is BEAUTIFUL! The tasks we were there to accomplish were familiar to me, GPS waypoints, and the landscape was also something that felt familiar with: mountains, trees, streams, rivers and steep paths that I had to carefully navigate with both my hands full of $7000 worth of camera gear. In the Hills of Hayke we met with farmers, watched their children heard goats using home made whips of hand woven rope and animal bone handles, and saw farming techniques from thousands of years in the past.
This country is so diverse and so undeniably beautiful; there is magnetism to the landscape perpetuated by the warmth and acceptance of the smiles and interest of the local people.
Back in the city of Hayke we settled into our hotel where I was confronted with more “so this is Africa” moments. We first got a room with no power or running water, which wasn’t going to cut it for tech nerds who need power to do data transfers and uploads, so we argued with the staff until they moved us into another room, where we still had no water. The staff then spent the next hour banging on pipes with wrenches to no avail, so they again moved us into separate rooms where we had power and they gave us buckets of water to flush to toilets with, or so they told us, as I found out the hard way that this wasn’t true… The next night we moved to a better hotel that had both power and running water, where we were quite happy that is until it came the time where I needed to use the running water.
Now I don’t know how many of you have had to use a squat toilet but there is something just so unnatural and uncomfortable feeling about doing so, and in this uncomfort came my next big “this is Africa” moment… In the middle of the night nature called and I had to get out of bed and use the bathroom. I was using the toilet, which was right across the room from the shower, so close in fact that the edge of the toilet touched the edge of the shower basin, when out of no where the shower made a horrible noise then released about a gallon of water all at once… I was squatted over the toilet, in the middle of the night, wearing my shoes, now soaking wet, and thinking to myself “now THIS is Africa”…
On the 9 hour drive back to Addis from Hayke I got to have a fantastic 5 year old personal moment, to sum it up: silly hat, monkeys and huge cliffs. A picture tells a thousand words.
My first week came to a close with 12 hour days of work in the office, getting ready for the next week of teaching, and a dinner with all sorts of foreign government officials from places like Sweden, Germany, Canada, Australia and Korea. In these long days at the office I was able to mentally process the days past and came to terms with the fact that I will likely have many more “this is Africa” moments which will all probably put me in some amount of discomfort, and all I could think was bring it on!
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Impending Culture Shock
Airports can be amazing places, with people from all corners of the Earth brushing shoulders and rubbing elbows in the security line, washrooms, and cafe's, trading languages and currencies, traveling far away as well as coming home. I like to imagine the international wing of airports as being like the trade-route markets of centuries past where the crowds barter and interact and you can sit and watch all these exchanges first hand.
While using the restroom I witnessed an elderly man from the middle east try to use the bio-hazard, needle disposal box as a hand dryer, I chuckled to myself while trying to maintain inconspicuous composure yet this got me thinking. Thinking about how many times over the next month people will laugh at me while I struggle to interoperate the small, subtle cultural differences that I am bound to clash with. Im currently writing this over Greenland en route to Amsterdam, where I'm sure that I will be confused with the small cultural differences that I will encounter during my short layover before my flight to sub-Saharan Africa. Europe is for the most part, a fully developed, westernized nation, they have luxuries such as indoor plumbing, bank accounts and well food-water-shelter. So the cultural differences that I may struggle with for the most part will by small and insignificant.
On my next flight I will cross an invisible boundary, a sort of "Mason-Dixon" line, into a continent where the simple things that we take for granted as a developed culture (food-water-shelter) aren't necessarily cultural norms. As I sit here writing this I am drinking a Dutch brand of bottled water from the Swiss Alps and I am wondering that when I get to Ethiopia what kind of water will I be drinking? will it give me diarrhea? or will there even be clean drinking water? These are more significant "cultural differences" then I will in counter while struggling to order food from Dutch menu in the Amsterdam international airport.
My next month will be spent curiously wandering though east African cultures all while entertaining the locals with my inability to understand even the most simple of cultural tasks. The real cultural interests for me are ingrained deep in the 'cradle of humanity' where we are all descended from. How did we evolve into being a developed nation of people who drink clean water, served on an airplane over Greenland, sold out of the Netherlands and bottled in Switzerland? Where I'm going some people will walk 5 km's everyday to fill their daily supply of murky, parasitic drinking water. We were all "born" in Africa yet we as citizens of a "developed" culture seem so detached from the culture that spawned us. So as the locals laugh at me I will laugh as well, but I will never give up trying to understand the cultures that I will be immersed in, as we are the distant children of these cultures after all.
While using the restroom I witnessed an elderly man from the middle east try to use the bio-hazard, needle disposal box as a hand dryer, I chuckled to myself while trying to maintain inconspicuous composure yet this got me thinking. Thinking about how many times over the next month people will laugh at me while I struggle to interoperate the small, subtle cultural differences that I am bound to clash with. Im currently writing this over Greenland en route to Amsterdam, where I'm sure that I will be confused with the small cultural differences that I will encounter during my short layover before my flight to sub-Saharan Africa. Europe is for the most part, a fully developed, westernized nation, they have luxuries such as indoor plumbing, bank accounts and well food-water-shelter. So the cultural differences that I may struggle with for the most part will by small and insignificant.
On my next flight I will cross an invisible boundary, a sort of "Mason-Dixon" line, into a continent where the simple things that we take for granted as a developed culture (food-water-shelter) aren't necessarily cultural norms. As I sit here writing this I am drinking a Dutch brand of bottled water from the Swiss Alps and I am wondering that when I get to Ethiopia what kind of water will I be drinking? will it give me diarrhea? or will there even be clean drinking water? These are more significant "cultural differences" then I will in counter while struggling to order food from Dutch menu in the Amsterdam international airport.
My next month will be spent curiously wandering though east African cultures all while entertaining the locals with my inability to understand even the most simple of cultural tasks. The real cultural interests for me are ingrained deep in the 'cradle of humanity' where we are all descended from. How did we evolve into being a developed nation of people who drink clean water, served on an airplane over Greenland, sold out of the Netherlands and bottled in Switzerland? Where I'm going some people will walk 5 km's everyday to fill their daily supply of murky, parasitic drinking water. We were all "born" in Africa yet we as citizens of a "developed" culture seem so detached from the culture that spawned us. So as the locals laugh at me I will laugh as well, but I will never give up trying to understand the cultures that I will be immersed in, as we are the distant children of these cultures after all.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
i tripped down memory lane
My mistake
As the seasons change I hear them laugh and say
that they “got the best of me”
One more warm season has come and gone
Left with nothing to remember
Why can’t I fill my head with those chemicals?
I guess that’s just the way it goes
When in every season It snows
Someway or another
The sirens come blaring straight out of the station
Coming to scrape another body up off the street
The blood mixes with the snow
It’s that sharp contrast that reminds me
to watch where I place my feet
I’ve made small mistakes
saying I love you forever is usually all it takes
And I’m on my back in the middle of the street
With medics rushing to try and fix me
I’ve made huge mistakes
And my blood is mixing with the snow
With my one last breath
You will hear me say
“yeah, you got the best of me”
Friday, March 5, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
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