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Ethiopia

How to make a dream come true

May 11, 2020

First: Make a list of things to do before you die. Realize that you are always inching toward death and still haven’t done a single thing on that list. This is the same thing your mom did; she put things off until it was too late.

Decide to do something about it.

Quit your job. Leave home. Book some flights.

Tell yourself, “If I make it to Ha Long Bay, this trip will be a success.”

Go to Peru. Go to Bolivia. Go to Argentina. Check some things off the list.

Meet a couple of Americans and drive around South Africa with them. Live in a village. Learn to carry buckets of water on your head. Go to Uganda. Ride across the country in a minibus with 24 people and a pregnant goat. Find work as a country-western DJ for the local radio station. Learn to harvest rice.

Go to Rwanda. Spend your days teaching English to genocide survivors. Cry. Teach them to play bingo. Laugh.

Fly to Egypt and immerse yourself in ruins. Find out your grandmother died. Find out your mom is dying, really dying. Fall down a tunnel of darkness. Hole up in a yoga camp on the Red Sea.

Go to your mother’s funeral. Wrap yourself in grief. Return to Egypt on the day a revolution begins. Feel yourself unraveling.

Take a boat to Jordan. Leave when protests begin. Go to Bahrain. Leave when protests begin. Get the nagging feeling that you are creating a trail of destruction around the world.

Go to Ethiopia, an extraordinary country, and plod your way through it. Feel like you’re something less than human.

Go to India, where something in your soul clicks. Love it. Embrace it. Drink in every hot day, every fragrant spice, every bit of eye-popping color. Move into an ashram. Pray.

Go to Thailand. Work with elephants. Meet a friend from home in Bangkok. Travel with her to Cambodia. Stay with more friends. Say goodbye.

Take a bus to Vietnam. Battle Saigon’s scooter-clogged streets and get a feel for the city. Slurp down bowls of noodles. Take a bus north. When the bus breaks down for 12 hours, sleep at a bus station. When the bus works again, it’s the hottest part of the day and the air-conditioning is now broken. Sweat. Make an unplanned stop in a beach town just because you desperately need a shower.

Take more buses. Take a train. Sleep in a dirty train car on soiled sheets. Arrive in Hanoi. Ride on the back of a motorcycle with a man even sweatier than you.

Schedule a boat tour. Pack up. Get picked up at 7 a.m.

Go to Ha Long Bay.

Wake up on a boat in a bay where everything is still. Everything is perfect.

Write that story.

Go to grad school to really dig into it.

Write that story again and again, edit it, excavate it. Work on it in scraps of time between your day job, when you stay up late, when you rise at 4 a.m. to have 20 quiet minutes before the baby wakes.

Sell it.

Have the perfect editor push you where you need it. He makes you laugh, he makes you cry, but most importantly, he makes you better. He reminds you to slow down where it hurts.

And then one day, poof. You have a book.

Your story, between two covers.

It comes out tomorrow.

Enjoy.

The ethics of what you share

November 3, 2011

This morning there were five images of starving Africans in my Facebook news feed, and it really bugged me.

I realize that the people who shared these images had the best intentions. I know they’re trying to put things in perspective. I even agree with a lot of the sentiment. This isn’t a personal attack on any of my friends.

I just don’t like it when people are used to further a political agenda. It dehumanizes them. It exploits them. And it’s irresponsible, because such photos often misrepresent the entirety of the population. Africa is not all distended bellies and children covered in flies.

Most importantly, it does nothing to help the very complex issue of hunger in developing countries. Why not use a different kind of image to achieve the same goal and serve that community? Why not show a farmer who achieved success thanks to a microloan? Why not depict a family getting fed? (Along those lines, when’s the last time you saw a photo of a successful African, besides a dictator or Charlize Theron?)

I’d like to think images of suffering aren’t the only things that motivate us to help others.

Also, it still nags at me, this idea of sharing an image of someone because it makes you feel better about your own life. It’s like saying, “At least I’m not THAT guy.” It’s misery porn.

 


 

 

 

 

These photos also perpetuate the myths that all Africans are starving, all poor people are black, and all poor people are miserable. And that’s simply not the case.

Just as a gentle reminder, there’s a lot of happiness out there in this world.

 

There’s a lot of beauty.

 

And there’s a whole lotta fun.

 

 

A donkey story (Or how I was nearly an ass)

March 3, 2011

Maybe I’ve been in the developing world too long and have become immune to suffering — because I didn’t even notice the dying donkey on the sidewalk until I stepped over him.

The donkey’s gray fur was matted with sweat, urine and dirt. Chunks of skin were missing along the length of his legs. His mouth trembled with a large pink lesion, and his eye was weeping fluid. He panted. His ear flicked. He looked about two breaths away from death.

My friend Tanya stopped, pressed her hands against her heart and made sympathetic noises.

Then we walked on. There was nothing we could do.

After lunch we walked past the donkey again. I shook my head and turned away. He looked dead. We were too late.

But Tanya whipped a plastic grocery bag and a bottle of water out of her backpack.

She situated the bag underneath the donkey’s snout, careful to avoid covering his nostrils, and poured a small bit of water inside the bag. The donkey’s eyelid fluttered ever so slightly.

The donkey no longer had the energy to move his head, but the side of his mouth tried to slurp the water. Slowly, slowly, he emptied the bag.

Again, Tanya filled the plastic with water and tipped it enough to drain into the donkey’s mouth.

By now a small crowd had formed around us. People who were hurrying to catch the bus, vendors from local stalls, women with babies in their arms, taxi drivers, businessmen on their way home from work — they all stopped. One man said the donkey had been there for three days, but this is the first time anyone paid any attention to him.

My friend Deborah started on water duty, while Tanya and I carefully hoisted the donkey’s head and neck up a few inches to give him a better angle for drinking.

One leg kicked. Then another.

“Water makes donkey strong!” said a man on the street, who stopped to watch the commotion.

Another man walked along the sidewalk and picked handfuls of grass and weeds. He brought these greens to the donkey and laid them beside his head.

Two more men lifted the donkey a few inches off the ground, then positioned him a few feet away on flatter, less rocky ground.

“It’s better,” one man said, nodding to the donkey. “More comfort.”

The donkey guzzled nearly four liters of water and looked remarkably better. He still didn’t have the ability to stand, but he no longer looked pained. Tanya looked up the number for a donkey rescue organization and told them how to find the dying animal.

It was a valuable lesson for me. When I thought there was nothing I could do for this poor donkey, there actually was. And it also demonstrated how action becomes inspiration, and inspiration becomes further action.

I don’t know if Tanya saved that donkey — but she certainly made an impact on every person who stopped on the street and witnessed her compassion. And that includes me.

 

Ethiopia’s daily grind

March 1, 2011

Thomas was someone I met on the street — an Ethiopian man who was so kind, I was certain he had an ulterior motive.

But if there was a sinister side to Thomas, it never emerged. Instead, he was just incredibly nice to my friends and me. He showed us around town. He took us to a famous restaurant for authentic Ethiopian food. He helped us navigate the minibus system throughout town. He negotiated a price for our bus tickets down south. And in a whopping show of hospitality, he invited us back to his cousin’s house for the coffee ceremony.

After all, Ethiopia is the place where coffee was born, and this is the place that does it best.

The coffee ceremony takes place every afternoon in just about every home, restaurant and cafe in the country. This is the main social event of the day.

First, long wisps of fragrant grass are spread across the floor. Hot coals are fanned with a piece of cardboard. A round metal pan is placed on top of the coals, and fresh coffee beans sizzle and pop as they roast.

When the beans are ebony black and shiny with aromatic oils, they are ground into a fine powder using a mortar and pestle.

Meanwhile, a kettle of water has come to a rolling boil over a squatty pot of coals. The grounds are combined with the hot water inside a black, clay pot, where the brew soaks and steeps for several minutes. When the coffee is complete, it is poured into espresso-sized china cups.

After the first round, the pot with the coffee grounds is refilled with more hot water. After the grounds steep for several more minutes, a second round of coffee is passed around.

Then there is a third round, completing the ceremony.

Really, it’s just about as far from instant coffee as you can get.

In contrast, my typical coffee ceremony involves me sleepy-eyedand grumpy, spilling grounds all over the kitchen counter and shouting “@#$%!!” when the Mr. Coffee drip machine takes too damn long.

I prefer it the Ethiopian way. It’s a slow process, but it is satisfying. As the coffee is prepared, there is time for conversation. The coffee is shared and enjoyed. The taste is richer, evoking chocolate and caramel.

It is coffee the way it was meant to be savored. It is a ceremony.

Beyond the coffee ceremony, the regular Ethiopian brews and the soy macchiatos (yes, soy!) are reason enough to visit this country. Check out this gorgeous coffee.

 

 

The #1 reason to visit Ethiopia

March 1, 2011

Juice. And lots of it.

It is, by far, my favorite thing about this country. For around $1-2, you can get a vitamin-packed glass of freshly squeezed and blended juice.

I particularly enjoyed this lime-mint drink, which would totally beat lemonade in a cage match.

Ethiopia is also famous for these layered fruit juices. Here I’m having a superhero combination of mango, strawberry, papaya and avocado.

Sounds weird, but the combo is fantastic, especially on a hot afternoon in the brutal Ethiopian sun.