Rooftop respite

Exploring Addis was not as I thought it would be. I should learn to have no expectations of a huge, dynamic city of several million. It was hardly going to mirror pedestrian Cambridge or provincial South Sudan. In the latter whilst I get a hell of a lot of staring, in Yambio I can generally move around pretty unmolested, with the occasional over-excited cigarette seller asking whether he can marry my sister.

In Addis I was unprepared for the level of street hassle. I was constantly latched onto by beggars, self-appointed guides or money-changers or shouted at by passing motorists or taxi drivers. One man launched at me down the street hollering ‘I hate you, I hate you’. Toddlers crapped on the pavement by my feet, people came into a café to beg food from the plate I’d just been served, street kids got into fights with lepers, pleading homeless mothers sent their toddlers to me with arms outstretched, gangs of youths surrounded me in well-practised attempts to pickpocket, and countless people slept through the day on the streets with no possessions other than a thin blanket and a devoured head of corn.

I was staggered by how few non-Ethiopian people I saw as I had thought Addis Ababa city was more diverse. But it explains the level of attention.

None of this is a complaint. I like to think my roaming has given me a good degree of acceptance and understanding. But I couldn’t help observe how confronted I was most of the time today; whether by people accosting me physically, the sight of people in need, and the smells and sounds of millions of inhabitants. I recognise my own privilege in that I could retreat to my hotel room at the end of the day. But Addis is overwhelming.

The rest of today’s brainspace has been spent shuffling and re-shuffling my attitudes and approaches to poverty and cultural assimilation when visiting somewhere as a tourist. I can’t remember other places giving me such food for thought, except perhaps India, which I visited in 2011, and because of the need to process those experiences, vowed never to go again without a travel buddy.

In Addis Ababa the fortunate must feel compelled to help people in need such as by buying regular food for the groups of disfigured old men that have turned to begging. If I lived here I don’t know how I could otherwise get through the days without the greatest guilt and shame for closing my eyes. As a tourist here I feel pathetically helpless.

One person latched onto me for hours, seemingly to chat about Ethiopian tribal politics, football, athletics and Brighton, where his sister works as a medic. I only realised later he had decided to act as my guide, which I hadn’t asked for, couldn’t ask him to leave me alone, but was required to pay money when we finally parted. He termed it an ‘agreement between friends’. I did explain that I hadn’t asked for any guiding and that I didn’t believe this was a genuine friendship. ‘Yeah, if you can just give me my money I can go’.

As European visitors, against all our instincts we have to put aside any outrage in these situations and realise we are minorities, and just go with the flow.

As makes sense from the geography, Ethiopia seems to be a blend of North African, Middle Eastern and sub-Saharan African people, religion and culture. The food is vastly superior to South Sudan. Apart from a brief and confusing colonisation by Italy, Ethiopia has fallen under less European influence than every African country other than Liberia (which avoided colonisation because its founders were slaves returning from the southern US and Caribbean). I spotted spaghetti being eaten on huge platters alongside traditional Ethiopian fare, and I had a delicious macchiato. Traces of Italian influence are there, but accusations of colonial oppression and destructive legacies should hold less sway here. Therefore the guilt of being British in South Sudan, which muddies some issues, shouldn’t apply so much to Europeans in Ethiopia.

The picture is taken from a rooftop in the Merkato, a massive open-air marketplace, rumoured to be the largest in Africa, where porters balance sacks of coffee on their heads, donkeys cart wicker baskets full of oranges and wheelbarrows push the largest tomatoes I’ve ever seen. Up a very dubious metal ladder from the café on the top floor, this was the only moment of solitude all day.

Actually, I forgot a brief sojourn in the Ethiopia-Cuba Friendship Memorial Park. That was also quietly devoid of people.