Jonah and the Wail

The Ethiopian calendar is 8 years behind the Gregorian, New Year is celebrated in September, and times of day are described six hours differently. 8.30am as I read the clock is 2.30pm here. This all gets remarkably confusing.

Not long after setting out towards the National Museum I was latched onto by two students from southern Ethiopia, and we were together for hours. Jonah (‘like in the whale’), who was a Rastafarian, had phenomenal English and we had thoughtful conversations about religion, atheism, creationism, evolution, poverty, politics and history. Very few people have asked before about what drives me to work in South Sudan. He told me about Ethiopian attitudes to pan-Africanism and the endemic wildlife of the Bale Mountains and how to clean teeth Ethiopia-style using whittled pieces of wood from a street vendor. We’d established no-one needed a guide, that no payment would change hands and that they were practising their English.

Hours later we looked for some food and when I was keen to eat ‘locally’, ended up in a shanty town, in the most random bedroom of an old lady, eating injera with spicy sauce, potatoes and greens. She was brewing some traditional tej, which I had to decline.

I was asked to help financially with their studies, under the guise of friendship. Cross-cultural interactions are a minefield and as I don’t understand the Ethiopian concept of friendship, I felt like I’d been seized on strategically and that being asked for something had been inevitable. My mind was spasming between the fact I have more disposable cash, being wounded that all had been a prelude to a sophisticated version of begging, realising I should help as the benefits to them would outweigh the costs to me, and feeling duped.

This is very easy for me to write from the lofty heights of financial privilege but it doesn’t feel good that the few white foreigners passing through Addis Ababa should be seen as opportunities to harvest cash. It perpetuates a culture of handouts and isn’t a sustainable solution. Mindful visitors are already having a positive impact by buying food and drinks from street vendors, using local transport, learning at museums, and sharing perspectives with friends and family.

As in most other countries, the Ethiopian government must do better to serve its people equitably. I also visited the Museum of the Red Terror, which commemorates the victims (pictured) of the Derg, the brutal regime of the 1970s and 80s. This wasn’t a good place to push general despair from the mind but it highlighted how criminally the government has acted towards its own people, and this has held back sustainable development for decades.

I was embarrassed that I’d been taken by surprise and that I didn’t react warmly to the students’ request and we were all embarrassed at the fact they’d asked after agreeing they wouldn’t. Perhaps because the time to part was nearing, they had thrown caution to the wind and did view it as one friend helping another. In the end they said they really wanted a dictionary to further improve their English, so we had an awkward walk to the bookstore and I bought one out of their price reach. I felt pleased they would make lots of use of it although the act of charity made me uncomfortable.

What is the correct thing to do in these situations? It’s not feasible to do something nice for every needy person, so should those who are able to perform small individual hope that enough others are doing the same? It’s not viable for us all to be Mother Teresa, and for the world’s better-off individuals to sell all possessions and distribute the income to the neediest. This wouldn’t address poverty long-term without real regime change. Currently there are too many people and too much financial and social injustice in the world, and global wealth is such that this absolutely does not have to be the case.

Days like today make me ashamed of the lottery of birth. I’m embarrassed to be going on holiday soon and that I use brain energy on home furnishings rather than going to the shop and buying food for the homeless. I am nervous and embarrassed about popping on a plane to the UK tomorrow where (mostly) the gritty realities of billions are hidden from my life in Cambridge.

The National Museum of Ethiopia has some nice artefacts and a good display about evolution of human forms. Few other countries have unearthed so many fossils that explain evolution of humans and other species. There are large early hippopotamid jaws, mini early horse leg bones and a replica of Lucy, the earliest known hominid, identified as a young adult female. All biology and anthropology students learn about Lucy during their studies.

Sometimes it feels like it would be best if we could go back to the age of Lucy, or possibly to an earlier period when we slithered onto land, and just make a more equal, better world. Where no children sniff glue and a dying old woman doesn’t have to lie on the street, in the lap of her wailing son.