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SEPTEMBER 4 TO 5 2018 – NOKOMIS-MIAMI-PARIS
“But, now you must try the peach…”
Our friend Jacqueline Pons lives in a 16th
century stone house in Paris.
It's on Rue Descartes, in the Latin Quarter, a short walk
south from the Seine and Notre Dame, a half hour from Charles DeGaulle Airport,
and 24 hours from our last sleep in Nokomis.
We climb and turn on the steps up to her roof top apartment, edges footworn
into grooves 400 year deep, and into the Gallic hug of this most delightful
friend.
Daughter of a French governor of Algeria, who reminded her
that the privileges of rank were his by achievement and not hers by
entitlement, she took flight--- literally--- as a ‘air stewardess' and met the
love of her life airborne. Jose Pons was Argentinian, and a musician of great
note to those who know music". Paul Simon knew. There are photos of him in
jam sessions in this apartment. The documentary about Jose and Jacqueline and
their 44 years together is called ’16 Rue Descartes’, this very address.
Jacqueline spins stories and plies us with her home-made
marmalade. Our taste buds ooze memories of the lemon from past breakfasts ‘chez
Jacqueline’. We spread the peach version on toast and watch her favorite film,
Woody Allen's ‘Midnight in Paris'. Some of it was filmed right here on Rue
Descartes
Four hours is all we have with Jacqueline before our flight
onto Nairobi. Goodbye? Get serious. The French get it right. Au revoir is the
only way to go.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2018 – PARIS-NAIROBI-ADDIS -PART 1
“Karibu…Welcome"
We leave Paris in the dark, roll south across the
Mediterranean, down over the thickening waist line of Mother Earth. Eight hours
later Air France flight 814 bounces once, rolls to a stop, silver in the first
light. We are in Africa. For the 8th
time in 6 years.
Nairobi Airport is no one's favorite, a hodgepodge of good
intentions marooned by more pressing needs of a developing country. No
matter. People pour through it in droves
for the chance to walk among the animals in Eden. We have. But not this time.
We leave in 5 hours for Ethiopia. Africa
welcomes us nevertheless with the soft syllables of “Kuribu”.
SEPTEMBER 6 2018 – PARIS-NAIROBI-ADDIS -PART 2
“I am rich”
Abel runs across the parking lot, wraps us in great hugs and
welcomes us with his rippling giggles. We have arrived in Addis.
At Mr. Martin's Cozy Hostel, lovely Ababa signs us in for
our fourth visit. Up in ‘our’ room we unpack the loot donated by friends and
schlepped across 8 time zones for Abel
and company: three smart phones (thank you Jean, Ellen, Richard ) and an IPad (thank you Berys and Earl). Abel just
stares and hugs us. The fun surprise
stuff (tee shirts and a travel shirt in his favorite colors of aqua, green,
blue, ‘hair food’, cologne) gets us more hugs, that spectacular smile, and a
mini-fashion show. ”How do I look?” “How
do I look?”. ”How do I look?” There have
been teeeeeny hints of a pretty classmate hovering about. That third. ” How do
I look?” confirms it…but we don't ask.
Abel hugs us: I am rich!
So are we, son, so are we.
SEPTEMBER 7, 2018 – ADDIS ABABA TO ANDASIBE
We cross the Equator for the third time in 24 hours, this
time with Abel. Our heading is due south from Africa's roof in Ethiopia, to
Madagascar, its breakaway child, for 20
million year sailing eastward across the Indian Ocean towards Australia. Four hours after take-off, window-stuck Abel
semaphores the first landfall.
We are visa-ed, stamped, checked, finger-printed,
photographed, restamped, rechecked through the labyrinthine remains of French
colonial bureaucratic ‘efficiency’ but forgive the French this peculiar remnant
of their years here. They also left baguettes, croissants, and beignets.
Joce, guide and friend from 2016, will meet us in a week.
His brother, Ke, turns us over to bouncy, Nicolas, arranges currency matters in
the front seat, dispensing inches of Malagasy Ariary, 3000 to the dollar. And we're off. Sort of.
Antananarivo was never a jewel
in the Gallic crown of beautiful colonial cities, no Saigon, or Hanoi, or Pnom
Penh, but it has the seductive flavor of Africa and Southeast Asia. The hills
ripple against the blue sky, canvases for the houses, pink, orange, yellow
smudged into cubic rainbows beneath the dust of the dry season. We plan no time
here. The ooze of traffic congeals us, unwilling, but fatalistic. Way behind schedule we round the last hill
and shoot out of the city traffic onto Madagascar’s one ‘highway in the
making’, our last paved road for several days.
SEPTEMBER 8, 2018 – ANNTSIRABE TO MORONDAVA
“In my country we always think all other places are better.
Now I know that is not true.”
It's the dry season. We descend south and west, then
straight west from the green of the fertile central highlands. Rain leaves
fingerprints here, first as drops captured by the cloud- eating peaks, then
trickles, rivulets, streams, then deep ravines slicing downward, gouging the
slopes. The trees that once gave Madagascar its nickname, ‘The Green Island',
are disappearing into the charcoal pits. What’s left is bare red earth
defenseless against the onslaught of water hungry for the sea. Madagascar is now the Red Island', photographedfrom
space as a great red lozenge bleeding red into the Indian Ocean
Down here on the road we descend westward through a
landscape ravaged in spots by the great clawmarks of erosion. It still has a
great beauty. The wet season rains that wash Madagascar into the sea also bring
water to the rice fields, terraced to capture and dispense the rainfall. The
terraces are green now with young shoots, set in the dry yellowed landscape
slashed by deep red gullies, and living off old water, grasping at run off from
the occasional rains, waiting for the rains to return in a few months. But it the dry season. Here in the flats west
of the highlands, it has wrung the landscape dry. There are no fields, no villages, towns, hamlets.
This is not a place for living, and few try, against great odds.
Abel shakes his head. “In my
country we always think all other places are better. Now I know that is not
true.”
SEPTEMBER 9, 2018 – MORONDAVA TO TSINGY NATIONAL PARK
“I am shy.”
Way before ‘0 dark early for us--- and waaaaay before for
Abel---we lurch out of our cabins by the beach in Morondava .
Last night we were grabbed and absorbed with typical
Malagasy ‘there are no strangers'
generosity into a wedding at the beach. We danced to loud surf and much louder
music, proof once again that white people really can’t dance, and certainly not
as Malagasy can.
Abel is quite the hit. A bare nanosecond after his arrival,
a much-voluptuous, very pretty young thing high-jumps the crowd and lands spot
on, eye lashes aflutter, femininity bubbling, to stake her claim. It may be a
burden to be young, handsome, and the new guy in town with a killer smile, but
our son doesn’t notice.
By the end of the night he makes his debut as a nightclub
singer á la karioke. This is proof that looks and that smile can compensate for
a voice best--- and with a big dose of amazed parental generosity--- described
as ‘enthusiastic’.
And just about puts to bed Abel's claim that “I am shy.”
So, this morning comes way too early. Nicola, our
deliciously funny driver, bounces up in the dawn light to load us into our 4x4
with a sly grin carrying the day's travel advisory: “The road is bad".
Even Madagascar’s good roads are refuges for potholes wayward from all the
other roads in Africa, so we prefer not to waste imaginations on what awaits us
on the ‘bad road’ to Tsingy.
The road is indeed a imagination stretcher. Everything else
it crunches, backbones, butts, molars bounced, pummeled, mashed, pulverized,
then, mercifully, anaesthetized. Four hours of this and all our solid parts are
mush. The ferry across the Tsiribihina River gives us 45 minutes reprieve.
On the other side Nicola turns and says: “Now begins the bad
road.”
And: “There may be robbers. Hide your money.”
SEPTEMBER 10, 2018 – TSINGY NATIONAL PARK
“You must not lose your photos”
Yesterday it took 11 hours to travel 125 miles (OK, we spent
almost 2 hours waiting for and riding the ferry across the Tsiribihana River).
Today we journey back in time.
Many millions of years before Madagascar broke the surface
of the primeval ocean and then split off from Africa, it lived in beneath the
waters of a shallow warm sea and wore a crown of coral hundreds of feet high.
Long in the sun but still razor sharp, unbowed by eons of tropical rains,
blackened by lichen, the mammoth teeth of Tsingy, canines all, are formidable,
chewing at the blue sky.
We are testing morsels ascending the maw via alpinist
harness, hooks, and cables up shoulder rubbing slits, along butt-scraping
ledges, and across a parabolic sway-backed suspension bridge. It is grueling
work, but great adventure, about at the limit of my vocal knees. Mara, our
guide, is beyond patient, and apparently a shape-shifter. “You must not lose
your photos” he says, then squeezes his husky body into wraith-ness to descend
30 feet down then up a slit to rescue Abel's phone. Neither is worse for the
wear. One gets a juicy tip (later), the other a quick brush-off.
We are however, well worn, and decide to skip tomorrow's
planned ascent of the Small Tsingy in favor of an extra day with the baobabs
and the surf at Morondava. My knees sing hurray. Abel considers which Ethiopian song will
begin his return to the stage.
SEPTEMBER 11, 2018 – TSINGY NATIONAL
PARK BACK TO MORONDAVA
By a few minutes after 6 we are floating down the canyon of
the Manambolo River, silken, brown, dry season ankle-shallow in places. The
early light is soft mango, gently taming the angles of the rock walls. The
pirogue is hollowed from a log two feet across, wide for a tree, narrow for us,
but stable and silent. We walk through the water to a cave. The stalactites are
thin, each ringing a different tone, basso to tinny soprano. Bats flap by,
adding the high notes, up to and beyond our hearing. We return to the dock past
the same cliffs, now differently lit by a higher sun, angular and sharp. Our
journey? Silken.
The ride back to to Morondava begins on ‘the bad road', this
time in tight convoy, armed soldiers sprinkled among the cars. Security
assured, everything else is shaken loose, again, for 4 hours. The guards wave
goodbye and the convoy loosens, is definitely shaggy by the time we get to the
silty Tsiribihana River. where we all stack up again for the ferry to cross
over. To the ‘good’ road.
Nicola has timed the journey perfectly. We get to the baobab
at sunset. Their fingers are holding the sky for us, the massive smooth trunks
framing the colors. Our eyes register the colors, but the transmission to our
tongues fails spectacularly.
There are no words.
SEPTEMBER 12, 2018 – RETURN TO MORONDAVA
A town-spanning convention of white robed and coiffed
Protestants has filled our hotels of choice so we bed down in the moderately
strange Hotel Vezo,, clean and built around a series of staircases designed by
Escher. They don’t lead where we expect them to, but we find and flop into
comfortable beds.
We aren’t there long. At four am we drive to await the dawn
among the baobab. They are holding tight to the night when we get there, then
slowly give the dark to the rising sun. For Dennis and me it is the second time
we have watched the baobab create the day, surely a great gift and privilege.
First-timers Elfie and Abel just stare.
Our new hotel sits right on the beach, here a great sheet of
sand stretching far to the sea. Many beaches on this stretch of coast---including
the one in front of our digs two years ago--have been washed away by high
tides, but these sand flats are protected by a sand bar so wide it supports a
large village. When the beaches disappear the fisher folk have no place to haul
in their nets and catch, so they move to places where the sea is less
greedy. We miss them.
Fenzy, the, big-eyed, and lonely lemur, is a rescue, saved
when his parents were killed. Lemurs are acrobatic, tree-living, social
animals. Fenzy shares his large cage/enclosure with 4 sleepy turtles, short on
all counts. He appreciates a tickle
behind his ears, rubs a soft cheek against my hand.
Our day began under baobabs at
dawn. We end it under black sky, a thin crescent moon and two brilliant
planets, this late bookend to a perfect day no more otherworldly than the
other, early, one.
SEPTEMBER 13, 2018 – MORONDAVA DAY 2
“I can teach here.”
By 9, Jacquie and his crew are rowing our thin pirogue past
mangroves and down the channel separating Morondava from the long wide sandbar
that protects the town from the voracious tides.
It’s a return for us. Two years ago we came with Jacquie and
Morgan, Jacquie's partner, and had one of the best meals of our lives in the
village here, under the palms, sitting on a covered porch behind a branch and
plank house: steaks of fresh caught tuna, and langoustes., grilled by Jacquie
on a wood fire. Our photo printer was
thumbs up for colorful Mama In Charge of the House and her two handsome and
robust sons. Older son grinned widely under a floppy hat for his solo. Younger
brother went for the shirtless Stud Muffin look for his. Mama intervened and added a print of a vapid
blond Jesus for the family photo. We hope to see them again and update the photos,
but they are away in Morondava at the market. Maybe next time.
White sand, swaying palms, thatch houses, endless beach...Abel
is hooked. He points to a ten-foot square house on the sand “I can come here
and teach in the school, and live there.” He has lived all of his almost
twenty-two years 8,000 or more feet into the cool mountain air of Ethiopia. I
don’t remind him that---so far---he is no fan of the heat down here at zero
feet above the sea. His mother, Sisko, has taught him he must help other people
and if they come with palm trees…well, what is a good son to do? He is ready.
Lunch is plump pink fish basted in olive oil and garlic,
grilled, with rice, and tomato-onion-ginger-garlic sauce on the side.…under the
shade of a leanto...on dunes… overlooking a beach and the Mozambique Straits.
We drool still.
SEPTEMBER 14, 2018 -MORONDAVA BACK TO
ANTSIRABE
Dwarfed by the immense mass of its parent, Africa, Madagascar looks narrow on maps, a long
fleck, no more, jetsam in the Indian Ocean. It is huge to us travelers,
crossing it today from west to east, and only halfway.
We leave early, soon after sunrise (but waaay before groggy
Abel would call it a reasonable time for son rise) for slow hours of ascent
from the coast, brown and dry, ironed flat by geology, and into the green,
cool, central highlands again. These stony wrinkles kidnap and hold the rain
clouds born over the Mozambique Straits in the west and the Indian Ocean in the
east. They are not generous to the west coast, but high up they are profligate
with rains. The landscape glows. Eventually. We pay our dues for the highland
beauty with hours on one of the island continent's ‘best’ roads, paved, with
good intentions, pot-holed by the reality of those heavy rains and over-stuffed
trucks.
Halfway to Antsirabe we stop in a small town for lunch. The
restaurant is new, the menu stylish, the offerings surprising. Tagliettelle
carbonara? In the wilds of Madagascar? Surely not. Surely yes! And superb.
The owner asks us to do a review on Trip Advisor. The world
grows smaller.
By this, our fourth or fifth stay in Antsaribe, we know the
way to our stone bungalow through the gardens of Green Park Hotel. In the evening, next door at Chez Jennie, funny
Nicola turns us over to our old friend, kind Joce of the sweet smile. Hugs of
welcome and thanks and farewell all around clutter the tight space in Chez
Jennie. Nicola leaves us with his daily mantra: Life is good.
Yes.
SEPTEMBER 15, 2018 - ANTSARIBE TO
AMBALAVAO
We have 500 miles and two long days on the road ahead of us
to get to the cattle cart waiting to carry us through the surf to the boat that
will take us down the Mozambique Straits to Peter Pan.
But, first, cappuccino, croissants, pain au chocolat , and
fresh pineapple juice for breakfast, and chocolate madeleines for the road, at
Croustipain down the road from Chez Jennie. Once again, “merci bien” to the
French.
We set out southward staying up in the cool Central
Highlands, Madagascar's green bread basket. The houses here are angular, two-storied
brick rectangles, supremely proportioned, balconies draping under high pitched
roofs with decorated gables. They cluster in villages on hilltops, Tuscan like.
The golden light seems Italian, Renaissance even, but its low angle flattens
the shapes, updates the view to a proto-cubist landscape by Cézanne. In the
valleys, bent figures, dots of energy, plant rice seedlings. Way above,
remnants of the great forests hang on. We share the road with splay-horned Zebu
cattle, some bicycles, and a few motorcycles, still rare even in this most
fortunate part of the country.
Madagascar is famous for its textiles. Abel finds a scarf,
hand-woven of silk harvested from silk worms gathered in the wild, ‘wild silk',
perfect for his mother, and dyed with natural dyes to a deep green, her
favorite color.
In Ambositra, our favorite town from our first trip, it is
market day. This is Hat Central for hat crazy Madagascar, and the narrow
streets sprout great crops of straw and raffia hats, clôche to sombrero, sunhat
to beanie. Through them, a line of women walk balancing great heaps of straw
and raffia on their heads, fetal fedoras.
At the edge of town, we cross a bridge. Below, laundry
covers the river bank, great flat flowers in the sun.
Fianaratsoa’s supermarket is closed, so we create our picnic
lunch from street stalls: fresh baguettes, warm peanuts, apples juice, sardines
(for Joce), and strawberry cookies. The chocolate madeleines are long gone.
It is a long day, but the best comes now, in the late
afternoon. All around us, there are a dozen Ring-tailed Lemurs, most with
wide-eyed babies riding piggy-back. The adults are used to visitors in this
preserve and ignore us, ground-stuck big things without stripes and beautiful
tails. The babies are new to this and watch us with that befuddled “whaaaaat?”
expression of all baby primates.
By Ambalavao we are many hours
from Antsirabe, but 200 miles closer to Peter Pan… and very ready for bed.
SEPTEMBER 16, 2018 – AMBALAVAO TO TOULEAR
It's 300 more miles to paradise on the beach at Peter Pan.
We leave Ambalavao too early for breakfast at the hotel, but
on time to catch the gilt of the low sun on the mountains and fields. This is
rice country. The terraces of this most painterly of crops lay upon the
template of the land with lapidary intricacy and precision. This is landscape
by Fabergé.
We drive south-southwest long enough for our empty tums to
protest that missed breakfast. Joce’s timing is once again perfect. The new
Tiana Hotel, alone on this empty road, serves a platter of fried eggs so fresh
they cackle, warm baguettes, café, plus fresh fruit salad. We are the only
guests. The setting is royal: stone bungalows, gardens, a pool-to-be, in a wide
flat valley close (by the standards of this huge mini-continent) to seldom visited
national parks and wilderness promising surprises to science and trekkers.
The lobby of Tiana has a surprise for Abel: a fossil egg of
the giant birds that were the largest creatures on the island when humans
arrived here 2,000 years ago. Nine feet tall, they had no natural predators, so
easy prey to the efficient two-legged predator without feathers that washed up
on their shores. Some survived into the 17th Century, witnessed,
drawn, and mythologized by European, Indian, and Arab visitors. They may have been the inspiration for the
flying ‘roc’ in the tales of Sinbad the Sailor, though at 9 feet, they flew
only in imagination and fiction. The egg is real. Abel cradles it and laughs
his great laugh, barely sputtering “Picture! Picture!” It fills his arms and is about the size of 6
ostrich eggs. That's about 6 dozen hen fruit.
We stick with 2 of the latter, ‘oeufs sur plat' (sunny side
up), for breakfast. And count on 2 more when we pass here again in a week.
We head more west, leaving the highlands. The land dries,
flattens and stretches, the rice fields long gone, into almost African-like
savanna. The road begins to ripple. From down in the dips, we look up to
leafless scraggles of trees, dry sticks against a sky abandoned by clouds for
wetter climes, but so blue. Far to the east and north, the flat wrinkles up
into mountains smoothly purple in the haze. As they grow closer they are rough, cracked
in the dry air, crumbling to boulders, pebbles, dust.
Few people live here. The land is harsh, punishing, offering
little but dust and the broken promise of rain, but…beneath it are riches. For
some. This is sapphire country. The ugly strip town of Ilikaka collects
Malagasy willing to work in tunnels below the dust, troglodytes, and the Indian
and Sri Lankan jewel merchants who live off them above ground, parasites,
offering gems from obscenely large and ugly concrete Taj Mahal never-bes. In
between and behind, the stick and straw real town bakes. From racks along the
road red, blue, green elephants wave, captured on sarongs, Sri Lankan imports,
even more improbable here than those 9-foot super-chickens, but a bit of color.
Still, it's an ugly place no matter how we look at it…and we don't look at it
for long, passing through as quickly as we can.
Joce passes thus way often. He slows by a woman sitting in
the dust by the side of the road. “Her
house burned down. She lost everything. I will bring her something on the way
back.”
“Is there a husband?” Joce shrugs. “The men come, she has
baby, they go.”
We drive on. Dennis and Abel play a word game, seeing how
many words they can make out of a mess of letters. “I have a retentive
memory" says our son. No kidding! He likes ‘yen, ‘apt’, ‘deed'...and uses
them.
Ten hours after leaving the highlands we breach the
congestion of Tuliara and reach the sea and Chez Alaiin. We remember Alain and
his tenuous grip on sobriety and consonants from 2016. He is not yet fully
tipsy, or slurry, so the language of his welcome is semi-recognizable. Our Bungalow Nombre 11 is just across the
garden from our Nombre 8 of 2016. The beer is cold. All is well. For us. But…the woman by the
road?
Abel is very upset.
With the Internet comes news of
fighting in Addis. The people of Oromia, largest ethnic group of the 80 in the
country, and with the strongest grievance against the previous government, have
used the more open policies of the new Prime Minister, who is from their tribe,
as an excuse to redress those grievances. “They don't understand freedom",
says Abel. “They think they can do anything they want.” “They can't kill
people. We must respect people who are different. I am very sad. I want to do
something. What can I do?” Abel feels things deeply, and, like his mother, he
wants to help people. There is little we can say.
SEPTEMBER 17, 2018 – TOULEAR TO ANAKAO AND RETURN TO PETER PAN
“Many salts"
Bovine minds do not run much beyond grass and the munch
thereof. They do not run to things oceanic. And they certainly do not run to
morning dips in the Mozambique Straits. Salty water up to the udders. Hauling
wooden carts. Loaded with large foreigners. Out to speed boats.
The cows are not happy.
But they slosh us out to the speedboat. We share it with
other Pilgrims to Paradise. Alex and Maite, a Basque couple from Spain, explode
with Latinate energy and charm. “This is Will Smith", and Alex introduces
us to an embarrassed French guy who does indeed look like that ‘Fresh Prince of
Bel Air, ‘Men in Black’, ‘Independence Day’ hero, only younger and even better
looking.
Abel just grins at the colors of the water. This is his
first close-up of the ocean…and now he is on it, shaking his head, maybe trying
to shake out some adequate words for the colors. There may not be any. We sure
don’t have them.
An hour and a half later we jump into the water and walk
ashore at Peter Pan. Dario greets us, hair now yellow and spikey. I miss the
purple eye shadow, but I know there are sartorial surprises to come with his
evening plumage. Signor, the cross-dressing resident canine greeter, wags her
tail, plops onto the sand, and resumes her morning siesta. We have returned.
Dario and his business partner, Valerio, have created
improbable Peter Pan, a place for road-sore travelers to rest, and a place for
themselves to have a life free of prejudice. (“Life is hard here. They have
more to worry about than what I wear”.) They’ve built a school, installed some
hygienic toilets, brought income to the village, and trained staff, especially
super-efficient Gabriel, who can know chat in French, Italian, and English, and
cooks who produce superb Italian food, described in Lonely Planet as ‘the best
food in the southern half of the country.’ Ditto that!
Two years ago, we printed tiny photos for the crew that took
us sailing in the Straits. This year we bring 4x6 enlargements of the same
photos for them. Captain Gado simply beams. He may, however, be remembering my
supremely ungraceful post-snorkel reentry into his pirogue, a corpulent
maneuver that earned me the nickname ‘Balena'…whale.
Elfie moves into Ruth's bungalow, with veranda, and
semi-resident geese below. Abel takes
the second floor of V1, ‘our' stone bungalow from 2016, the view of the water
colors upstaging his negative review of the temperature. Floating lessons in the
shore breezes put his weather reports out of business. Maybe they even clear
his mind of the news from home. But, the water is “many salts.”
Like life.
SEPTEMBER 18, 2018 – PETER PAN DAY 2
“I want to do something….”
Last night Dario joined us, sartorial promises fulfilled,
with black tights and lemon tank top, ruby red lipstick and dark mascara. He
pulls it off. If Abel notices (uh, Helen Keller couldn't miss that lipstick) he
doesn’t mention it. Dario has a gift for him: a copy of ‘Diary of Anne Frank’…
in Amharic, left by a previous guest. For you language buffs, the Amharic is
‘Anne Matosha'. Maybe Abel will see again that other places are not better than
Ethiopia, just different, even much worse in their awfulness.
Today, Gado takes Elfie, Dennis, Abel, and me, Bobby Balena,
the Great White Whale, out to see the real thing, Humpbacks migrating up the
Mozambique Strait.
He pushes our pirogue from shore in front of Peter Pan at 8.
The sun is well up behind us, the village too. Fishermen have been up for
hours. Their sails are squares of color moving with the wind right to left
across the horizon. Whales don’t travel with the wind. Our pirogue has a motor,
so we can travel with them, no matter how the wind blows. Riiiight. Ten minutes
from shore, but not far, the motor sputters the mechanical equivalent of
"Not today". Gado waves a long
oar in the air, woody semaphore for ‘Plan B'. The replacement is putt-putted
out so fast we suspect ‘Plan B' is Standard Operating Procedure.
We are on waters and under a sky so entrancing that our
whaleless morning is of no consequence. Lunch of fresh fish, rice, and tomatoes
under a leanto on pristine sands leads inevitably to sleep. “Look for whales?”
asks Gado, as we stumble awake.
The Madagascar whales may not be AM Behemoths, but they are PM
Performers, appearing on cue at 2, first a warm-up act rolling through the
waves, then a lead-in duo in a tandem ‘ Balena Ballet’, then the headlining
trio in the extended finale. They
arrive, driving the swells, parting the sea, wearing headdresses of great Las
Vegan geysers, A-List Stars all, Cetacean Chers. We applaud wildly. They exit,
flipping and waving tail flukes, diving deeply, and are gone, perhaps to sing.
These are Humpback Whales, legendary singers, but they sing in the deeps, only
for themselves. We putt-putt eastward to
shore, feeling very puny…and grateful they let us share their home, even if as
only flotsam on the surface, in the cheap seats, without songs.
Abel gets bad news. Sixty people have been killed in Addis
and women have been raped. His 4 sisters are safe. “I want to do something, but
what can I do here? His tears are real,0i
SEPTEMBER 19, 2018 – PETER PAN DAY 3
Dario swaps Bob Dylan for yesterday’s Bruce Springsteen.
Abel is off on a pirogue with the band of 4 30-something women (Aussie, Brit,
Spanish, and Dutch) who arrived yesterday. Moroccan---via California —Tariq and
Marta are off doing whales with the Basques, Alex and Maite. The Dutch guys
have wandered down the beach. We’re left in our hammocks with Signor below,
snorting canine dreams, Yoda, chewing on the leg of the piebald puppy from down
the beach…and Bob. The day mellows. The view across the sands to the Strait,
the islands, pirogues sailing the horizon, melts the hours. The breezes blow
them away.
Sometime late in the afternoon whales breach off shore,
improbable black missiles from the deep, splashing eruptions against the sky.
Even Dario is impressed. Signor snores. Whales don’t drop tasty tidbits a paw
snatch away. Another of Mario’s spectacular meals journeys from table to
tongue, nary a morsel Signor-bound. We lose points in the canine set.
The moon and companion planets keep the celestial dark away
until the other stars arrive, first a few brilliant spots then a wash of light,
gauze around the moon. Below a guitar
sends music out over a bonfire. Drowsy from an indolent day, Dennis and I exit
quietly.
Abel wakes us. “I am afraid. My head has black thoughts. My
heart is running. There are things
crawling on my arms. I am afraid". We don't know what was in the joint
passed to him by firelight. He “tasted
it only once”. Fortunately. We have no skills for this., but he tells us what
to do. “I am afraid. I want to be here
with you.” Dennis goes up to Abel's bed. Abel crawls onto our bed, shivers,
scratches at his arms, cries out, runs to the bathroom, vomits, then again,
then again, then again, then is abed, silent, asleep, deeply, his breathing
normal. I watch him sleep.
Then it is morning.
SEPTEMBER 20, 2018 – PETER PAN DAY 4
I’m up by 6 to watch the pirogues head out. Abel is sleeping
soundly, twitchless. By 9 it’s “I`m fine, Dad. What's for breakfast?” By 10
he’s off down the beach with two of his 4 women buddies one stays flatly
hammocked. The other never appears. Too much fireside entertainment for these
30-somethings without Abel's 20-something resilience?
Fresh water is not native to Anakao. There is brackish
liquid, slightly briny, lightly salted on the tongue in the shower, but no
clear, fresh H2O. No fresh water…no
mosquitos, but ultimately no life at all.
It comes by speedboat from Tuliar, then by Zebu cart or , this morning,
by sinewy arm and leg power from surf to
Peter Pan in yellow jerry cans, 20 liters, 44 pounds each. We take our liquid
by the plastic bottle, but mostly repackaged as our Beverage of Choice,
Madagascar's excellent THB, Three Horse Beer, equally non-native to Anakao, or
Abel’s preferred Coca Cola, ditto.
THB goes very well indeed down the beach at Pascal's with
platters of wood-fire grilled lobster and sweet potatoes, white rice, and fresh
tomato-onion- garlic sauce, with a chaser of green chili paste. A dozen of us
from Peter Pan fill his shop, a patchwork of flotsam, jetsam, branches, slices
of tin, elbows banging down both sides
of a long table littered with charred crustacean corpses. Four lobster tails downed, I decline a fifth,
content to lick my fingers, anointed with heaven.
We toast the crustaceans, and Alex and Maite for finding the
place. Owner Pascal asks us to write a recommendation he can show on the beach
to attract customers. We do so in Basque, Spanish, German, Arabic, English
(both Yankee and Aussie). Happily. And grateful.
The day seeps away into the sunset. Abel and village kids,
inhabiting silhouettes, play soccer against the sun, a shadow play of effortless
grace.
The evening THB washes down perfect al dente rigatoni with
chunks of fresh tomatoes and snips of basil. None reaches ever-hopeful Signor
and Yoda.
SEPTEMBER 21, 2018 – ANAKAO -DAY 5
“We want to get married.”
Click, click, click…three guys sit in the sand chipping
rough rectangles of stone into the even blocks that will become the walls of
new bungalows, round ones, tall towers with roof decks and views forever across
the Straits, where whales may frolic. One is completed, lovely, but a bit substantial
feeling for this place of evanescence. I like beach structures to feel
temporary, guests, as we all are at Peer Pan.
We leave tomorrow. Today we say goodbye to the Bouncing
Basques, delightful, charming Alex and Maite, collecting addresses and putting
the Basque country waaaayy up on our bucket list.
In their honor, we remnants pile once again around the table
at Pascal's. Marta snaps open our THBs
with a crisp downward jerk against her incisors. Tariq flips out. She shrugs,
does another. There are no toothy bits among the lobster shells, so all is well
mouth-wise. Pascal, wide-eyed at the first bite-o-beer, is still staring, shaking his head. We ‘vazo'
are most entertaining, Is it one way we pay back our hosts for putting up with
us?
Two days after his horrible night, Abel talks about it. “Now
I know how strong the mind is.”. “The things I saw, the feeling in my veins
were not real, just made by my mind.” (As I write this he leans over from his
middle seat in the car, reads it, and says “Did I really say that? I remember I
was very confused.”) He doesn't say and
I don't ask if he will ever do it again. Perhaps we both know the answer to
that.
“We have been together 7 years. If anything happens we want
to be able to care take of one another.” Dario is frustrated and angry. “That's
the only reason we want to get married. We can in Italy, but Claude can’t get a
visa. There is no Italian Embassy in Madagascar, so we have to go to the French
Embassy, those #$$××****$$ French bastards. They don’t do anything,
##$%÷×=/**** and !!!!.”
Dario and his Claude deserve better. He is kind, very smart,
knows very well who he is and what he wants. He has helped this village,
building a school, and creating jobs. We like him. We like Peter Pan. We will
return…with a wedding present.
We want to give a tip to the staff, especially to Gabriel,
and ask Dario to explain they must ‘partager’ equally. They applaud. Dario
thanks us, invites us back, once again to Paradise, to live in a tower.
He's Italian…a hug seals it all.
SEPTEMBER 22, 2018 – ANAKAO/PETER PAN TO TULIARA TO RANOHIRA
We are in no hurry to leave Peter Pan, but at 7:30 our bare
feet touch the sand, then the Strait of Mozambique, one last time, and we haul
into the speedboat.
The cowkids who meet our Anakao Express want to race their
Zebu Carts to shore. The Zebu want none of it. They may moo against morning
salt baths, but they are udderly against doing anything faster than a slow chew
of cud.
Joce helps us prepare a parcel for the burned-out lady. Abel
hands him a grey hoodie: “I want to give something”. We 3 contribute a ‘loanga'
(sarong), and tee shirts. Between us and Joce we have collected about a dozen
water bottles and filled them with water to give out in the dessicated flats
ahead. There is water seeping there, but it is far from the villages and
“sometimes not clean”. If they must drink it, they can carry it in these water
bottles. We add more pure, treated water to our pool every few days---to
evaporate in the sun--- than the Malagasy here in the drylands may see in a
lifetime.
Joce nudges us through the ebullient chaos of market day in
Sakahara. Madagascar roads, like many across the Straits in Africa, are not the
car-focused arteries of the West but human-centric spaces adjustable to human
need, available spaces running through the middle of the village, just,
straighter, wider, flatter than the others.
This one has been squeezed into an alley of goodies, an arm’s reach
through the car window: used clothing, pots, plastic shoes in unnatural colors,
fruit in natural ones, plates of ‘mi
sao’, Malagasy take on chow mein, hot dumplings of chives or bananas, hub caps pineapples,
hats, and my two favorites: ‘auto pieces’, and ‘Coiffure Ferdinand: Swag Cool’.
Ferdy has staked a permanent claim to the road, his ‘Swag Cool chewing up and
swallowing the right edge.
We skirt a ‘pousse-pousse’ (pedicab) draped with bouquets of
upended chickens, living feather dusters eating up the dust of the road and go
on, eating our share. And on. And on. Abel, newly discovering that he is not a
fan of long car rides, and especially not of those starting at dawn, sleeps
through most of this one, revives when he spots the pool at Hotel Orchidée ($22
for a triple) in Ranohira.
The town is tiny, a stretched blip thinning to nothing a
hundred yards in all directions from the crossroad. Even a blip in Madagascar
has a roadside Chive Dumpling Lady and a Warm Peanuts Lass. Primed with both we
down cold THBs (one beer, 3 glasses, s`il vous plait) in a café where the roads
cross and swell into THE place where ‘It’ Ranohira-style Is Happening. ‘It’ is
a card game that involves slapping some cards down hard onto the table and hoarding
others, then switching players, except for the Head Slapper, who collects money
from the other players, a combo 52 Pick-up, King of the Hill, Go Fish, and
Musical Chairs. Or… it's a Guy Thing, unknown territory, but, like so much of
Madagascar, a mix that works for those that know the rules.
SEPTEMBER 23, 2018 – RANOHIRA TO AMBOSITRA
“We must buy him food and shoes.”
It will be a long drive up into the Central Highlands.
We leave Ranohira as the sun rises, mountains to the east
backlit, purple against orange until the sun loses shape and color to the day.
It is an empty landscape. The few fields look abandoned, the hills dry and
cracked. A few sprout cell towers.
Then, green rice fields nibble at the hills, gift of the
rains. Above them, rivulets, still only thin scratches on the hills, are hints
of the rain-spawned wreckage of erosion to come.
Still, it's hard to resist the beauty of the alchemy of
rice, seducing sunlight, converting the gold to green.
At Hotel Tiana we are
again the only guests, the eggs still fresh, just shy of cackling.
Nine hours after leaving the quiet of Ranohira we sidle
through the bustle of Ambositra, ‘Amboost’ to the in crowd. The Malagasy
language rich in long words on paper, mislays letters and syllables between eye
and mouth. Many seek refuge in the place names 15, 20, 25 letters long, cargo
trains of alphabets, chugging across road signs, only to be lost again in
speech. I have no clue what residents of Ambatofitorhana or Ambatofinandrahana actually call their
villages. Residents of the capital, Antananarivo, make do with Tana, so
anything is possible, shortcut-wise.
Amboost is hilly, congested, memorable two years ago for its
hat market. It creates a very different memory this time.
A little boy, wrapped in adult-sized trousers and shirt tied
on with rope, grins at us, then follows us, clopping the road in red high heels
way too big. His eyes wander independently, each trying to make sense of a
world forever behind his reach. He is simple. He is sweet. And he reeks.
“We must buy him food and shoes” says Abel, and we do.
People know him. The shoe seller picks the right size of plastic sandal, in
black, at first try. He kicks off the
high heels, slips into the new shoes, and stands still while I squat and roll
up his pants. He smiles. We walk on. He follows, holding our hands, one by one.
Abel wants to go back to the hotel. “It is so poor here. It
is difficult for me.”
We walk on, passing our hotel, up the hill, past the huge
church. Street musicians hail us, ask for photos. They also know the boy. “We
say he is ‘fou’, not normal.” The boy watches, smiling, while we exchange
contact info so we can send Razafindrabemalo Rory Jackson and his buddies their
pictures.
The boy pulls us forward, pointing, but we turn back. We
leave him at the door to the hotel. He is not smiling.
Neither are we.
SEPTEMBER 24, 2018 – AMBOSITRA TO ANTSARIBE (AGAIN)
This
is Madagascar's heartland and rice basket.
We
snake through the narrow valley of the River Mania (emphasis not on that first
syllable, for sanity's sake). Terraces begin right at roadside, step up
steeply, so from down here we see only brown muddy brown edges, summits, blue
sky. Then the valley widens and flattens, stretching the terraces out on
both sides. The landscape unfolds, green origami. Two-story brick houses tumble
onto the steep hillsides, sharp edges against the sinuous sweep of the rice
terrace borders, perfection.
The
rusted wreckage of a bombed out bridge over the river is from ethnic strife,
perfection, but rare here.
Zebu
crowd the road. The human ideal for your basic Zebu is black with white
forehead dot, or the other way around, but in any case solid with a
‘little dab will do ya” to add that ‘je ne sais quoi’ to the bovine
closet. The zebu, however, have other tastes, going more for color scheme by
Holstein and Guernsey, your basic black, white and brown, and a
dappled/dabbled/dripped design by Jackson Pollack, all hodgepodge , ‘no two
same outfits in the same pasture'. In short, human intentions aside,
they’re a colorful lot. They are also big, and give way on the road only
grudgingly, tails swishing.
With
only a 2-hour drive today we left Amboost at nine, well fed, but easy marks for
road side ladies waving baskets of fruit. These are tangy berries hidden in
what we call ‘Chinese Lantern Flowers’, light on the tongue.
Antsaribe is Joce’s hometown. We share cookies, photos and laughs with his wife, Liddy, tall, handsome son, Tony, and lovely newly-wed daughter, Michelle. “When you come back, maybe I'll have a baby!” “And maybe Tony will have a car.” (She already has one…car, that is, and rubs it in.)
We
watch Paper Guy turn ground reeds into a fiber-rich slurry that dries into
rough textured paper. He adds flower petals and dribbles a light wash of slurry
to seal his work. The flower paper is stunning, tempting. Horn Guy heats,
bends, cuts, trims, sands, polishes Zebu horn into a graceful set of
salad tossers, a Madagascar ‘thank you' for the neighbor who donated an old
laptop to Joce.
Silk Lady’s wares glow. Abel chooses two scarfs, rivers of soft color, for his sisters, the same two I would have chosen of the many, many. I buy a multi-colored semi-sombrero, a bow to Madagascar's love affair with snazzy head gear, hours of work tying tiny knots in miles of wispy raffia. It costs three dollars.
Silk Lady’s wares glow. Abel chooses two scarfs, rivers of soft color, for his sisters, the same two I would have chosen of the many, many. I buy a multi-colored semi-sombrero, a bow to Madagascar's love affair with snazzy head gear, hours of work tying tiny knots in miles of wispy raffia. It costs three dollars.
“Malagasy
food for lunch?” suggests Joce as we pull into Le Reve Restaurant. Malagasy
food?? The menu offers chicken pizza, double chicken burgers, fruit salad, and
fruit smoothies. We all go for the mango/pineapple/passion fruit version.
Good choice.
‘Ee
I, ee I, O, Old MacDonald…” croaks out of loudspeakers, followed by
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star…” leaving me to, indeed, wonder where we
are.
Joce
is home with his family for dinner, but points out a good place (Chez Jennie is
closed) as he drops us off at Green Park. Dinner is Zebu in green peppercorn
sauce, both actually Malagasy, followed by ‘mousse chocolat’, and ‘ananas
flambé’…bless the French. The waiters are lanky, big smiles topped with rolled
rim fedoras, stylish, and panache-rich. It is our last night, so we grasp
memories.
This is a lovely one.
SEPTEMBER 25, 2018 -- ANTSIRABE TO TANA TO ADDIS
“We are family now.”
Today is goodbye, but 3 hours after leaving Antsaribe,
Antananarivo is gripping us, holding us here. We have 20 kilometers (12 miles)
to go to the airport, and two hours to do it in. It will be close.
The motor traffic has gelled, solidly encased in fumes. We
wait while all of Antananarivo’s other traffic, on bikes, pushcarts, foot.
passes us. Even for the motorized mess that is normal Tana traffic, this has
reached new depths of turgidity. Joce is resourceful. “Out, please.” We empty
the car and he does a bumpy but efficient u-turn arabesque over the high and
wide cement barrier between lanes. We pile back in, detour to the fast
lane---the one speeding at 10 miles an hour---and lurch on, breathing fumes. I
prefer dust.
The airport farewells are short. Elfie has more days here.
We will meet her at the pyramids of Giza in 2 months. There are plans afoot for
a return to Madagascar in 2 years, to go up to the far north, unthinkable
without Joce. Hugs all around, then he drives off with Elfie. In five hours,
we'll be across the Equator in Addis, and Indris will be singing their sad
lemur song to them way across Madagascar in Andasibe.
Abel's sweet brother-in-law, Bisrat, piles us into his 4x4
at Bole airport, smiling that inescapable Ethiopian smile, and sweeps us off
for a pizza chaser to this day of endings and beginnings. We thank him. He
smiles. “We are family now.”
Yes.
SEPTEMBER 26, 2018 – ADDIS ABABA DAY 1
“She is good at making people happy.”
Abel is over the moon. We are welcomed into his family, now
ours, at sister Heaven’s house.
We have been eating delicious fasting food and drinking
coffee all afternoon at his sister’s house. All four beautiful sisters (Frae,
Heaven, Titi, and Tigist ), handsome brother-in-law, Dev, of the killer smile,
tiny niece, and cousin are there. Missing is other brother-in-law, Bisrat, and
everyone's favorite, Sisko, mother of the clan.
Dev sums it up about Sisko: “She is good at making people
happy.” And she does when we call her. Her ululations and peals of laughter
wash the room with smiles. “Thank you, thank you, amasigenalu” are deeply felt,
humbly received.
The food is wonderful. It's special for the two weekly
fasting days, purely vegan: ‘shiro', a thick smooth, bean porridge, lentil
stew, chopped greens, the perfect astringent and savory kick to placid beans,
and fresh lettuce and tomato salad, all icing on the spongy, sourdough
‘injera', Ethiopia’s national food, sorely missed by Abel these weeks away. We
haven't quite the hang of the ‘smooshed
by fingers, shoveled by thumb’ eating style, but most of what we smoosh and launch gets to our most
appreciative mouths. Most.
Afterwards, Tigist, wrapped in one of the wild silk shawls
Abel picked out in Antsaribe, does the coffee ceremony slowly so we can record
it for our Florida friends’ new coffee shop. She roasts the beans slowly in a
pan over charcoal. The aroma of the fresh toasted beans captures the air in the
room, stops conversation, as is expected. She passes the roast around the room,
graceful as the smoke. We gather the smoke with our hands, pull it close. Chips
of frankincense crisp, then become ash, then perfumed air on the charcoal. It
drives the coffee deeper into our senses. Tigist crushes the beans in a mortar,
adds the crushed beans and water to an earthen ewer, heats it, and decants the
thick liquid into tiny cups. She drops a sprig of fresh rue into each, adding
yet another layer to this velvet seduction of our senses. She adds water and
decants twice more. We drink three cups, as is the custom. We may never sleep
again.
It's family story time, catch-up for us. Dev is of the Gurage people famous for hard
work and business smarts. He speaks excellent, content-rich English and travels
frequently to China, importing consumer goods. Heaven and Tigist share shifts
in Dev's pharmacy. A baby is on the way. He and Heaven hope for a girl. Frae
and Bisrat live a bit out of the city, have 2 kids. Their saucy 3-year old
daughter kisses us both on the cheek.
Sisko, all 5 of her children far away here in Addis, has
taken in a homeless boy of 13 she saw in the market. He has never been to
school. He will live with her and she will send him to school. He starts first
grade soon. Abel says it is not unusual for older kids to start school.
Abel is proud of his mother. “You are helping me, and she is
helping him.”
And…he likes the idea of a brother.
“She is good at making people happy.”
So are her children.
SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 – ADDIS ABABA DAY 2
“Mistah. One hundred”
She has a face that ought to be strutting class on a Paris
or New York catwalk, not purring propositions outside a cathouse on a dusty
street in Addis Ababa. 100 Birr is less than four dollars.
It's just shy of noon, 6 on the Ethiopian clock that starts
counting the hours at our 6am, but noon nonetheless, the sun high. And not
flattering, even to her beauty. She and her sisters look a bit rumpled in the
bright light, in tee shirts, stretch pants, house coats, hardly ‘business
suits'. Their business is slow, probably over until dark. I wave a ‘no thanks'
as we walk by, silently wishing them safety…and good health.
Nobody is doing business today, a national holiday. The
banks are dry. We try a half dozen banks before the ATM rumbles and delivers a
stack of crisp 100 Birr notes, enough to pay Mr Martin's Cozy Hostel.
Lunch, easier to come by, right next door to Mr. Martin's,
is crispy sambusas, deep-fried triangles stuffed with veggies, and perfect with
a fresh, thick papaya smoothie.
We spend the late afternoon laughing with Birhanu, friend
since our first trip to Ethiopia 4 years ago when he set up that trip and
hooked us on his country, and our second 2 years later that confirmed the
addiction. We were with him way off in far southern Ethiopia on his birthday 4
years ago when his wife, Herane, old him he was to be a father. There are 2
kids now, their beauty astonishing even by the high standards of Ethiopia.
“Pictures, pictures" we demand. Daddy has thousands. Pseudo-uncles ooh and
ahh, and mean it.
A year ago, the US Embassy rejected his application for a
tourist visa. He doesn’t blame the Embassy. He didn’t prepare his documents
well. So, we plan other travels for him,
to neighboring Kenya, with giraffes and elephants instead of Grand Canyon and
Yellowstone. It's a long way for a guy born to a farm family in this country.
I wish an equally happy journey for the beauty on the
street.
SEPTEMBER 28, 2018 – ADDIS ABABA TO DIRE DAWA TO HARAR
The hyena opens its jaw 8 inches from mine….
Arms and grin wrap around us. Bear-hugged and beamed into welcome, we
submit. Abdula has arrived.
One of our best
memories from our last trip to Harar, he keeps in touch via mini-posts on
Messenger. Hearing impaired from birth, and very bright (friend Biniyam says if
Abdul could hear…and thus speak, he could run the town), he can write in a
creative combo of English, Babylon Translation software, and Social
Network-ese. In person he is explosively, irresistibly charismatic, his
acrobatic gestures, sun-bright eyes, and handsome face as effective as
speech. He knows we arrive today, so
guessed we would be here in our favorite beer place overlooking Harar's ancient
main gate. And we are. He tells us our friend Biniyam knows we're here and will
contact us later, shows us a wedding ring, flips to a photo of his wife,
signaling that she is also hearing-impaired, and is off again to materialize
somewhere else in the city. We know he will pop into our lives again and again
in the two days we're here. I suspect he is one of a set of identical quintuplets hired by the Tourist
Bureau to make Harar even more unforgettable than do its history and color.
We flew an hour just after dawn, over high plateaus and deep
gorges, almost to Ethiopia's eastern border with Somaliland, then took a
rattling ‘experienced’ cab from the modern airport to Dire Dawa’s chaotic bus
station, and shoe-horned and tidily folded into a mini-bus (Seats? 10.
Capacity? Apparently infinite.) for ride southwards to the ancient, walled city
of Old Harar. Unfolded and retaining some sensation after an hour and a half,
our legs lurch us out of the bus and into the stream of New Harar's main drag.
By this third visit in 4 years, they know the way to and around the Old City
inside the huge stone gates ‘thataway’, but not to our new digs. A map and a
passer-by get us to Anisa's Traditional Guesthouse, deep down many turns
through the painted narrow alleys, past the coffee roaster, through the air
almost brown with the aroma of Harar's dark roast, a half hour walk at the far
end of the Old City.
Biniyam finds us at Anisa's. Hugs and updates done, he unwraps
our lodging conundrum. We are booked in 2 places. When we emailed Bini that we were coming he
booked us at Hajeera's Rowda Guesthouse, our digs for 9 days in 2016, and
‘home' for us in Harar. Hajeera remembers us, he says, because she nursed me
with hot tea through a nasty cold.
Because he had booked us, Rowda was ‘filled' when we called. (If we had
mentioned my name, all would have been clear.) In fairness to Anisa we stay a
night and buy out our second night at discount, so we can have a night at Hajeera's.
The hyena opens its jaw 8 inches from mine…It’s the most
powerful bite of all mammals. It can sever a human thigh. My hyena bypasses
this bent thigh for a tastier morsel, my offering of a tiny scrap of meat
hanging off 8 inches of stick that Hyena Man has stuck in my mouth. It avoids
my eyes, wide open, gently takes the scrap and scoots. A dozen other await
their turn, almost invisible, reduced to shadows and green eyes reflecting the
headlights of our tuk-tuk. When the meat
is gone, the dark takes them, even the eyes. Later, as Harar sleeps, they'll
come inside and clean the streets.
Famous for their ecumenical dietary choices, they have their limits.
“It's good”, says Bini. “Too bad they don't eat plastic.”
We hear their high-pitched staccato calls in the early
morning dark, closer in, no threat to human…or plastic… adding their voices to
the music of the night, welcoming us back to Harar.
SEPTEMBER 29, 2018 – HARAR DAY 2
“The goats are stoned”
Bini picks us up at 9 for his grand tour, the one with a
stop to visit his Auntie, the Spice Seller, free tastings included. This time
we're hangers on. He does it in Amharic for Abel, thoroughly glued to the
narrative of a millennium of explorers, invaders, Indian and Egyptian
merchants, misguided italians, British adventurers (Richard Burton, the ‘Sir'
not the guy who sailed down the Nile with the Dame, Elizabeth Taylor and her
asp), and French poets (Rimbaud, not Rambo).
Two things stick to him: the color, and the huge Moslem
population living in harmony with Christians, often in the same walled
compound, neighbors and relatives. Thus, its designation as a UNESCO World
Peace City, ‘the fourth holiest city in Islam (after Mecca, Medina, and
Jerusalem) by local definition. And while few outside the city would rank it
that high (or at all), it does have the highest number of mosques per area of
any city on the planet, so the claim has serious street cred among the locals.
It also has the best coffee, beer, and chat. Two of those 3 are forbidden to Moslems, but
this is African Islam, not Arabian Islam, and wider of latiitude. Chat is human
catnip, irresistible, but non-productive. Once the high energy boost goes
south, morning chat chewers become afternoon sidewalk sleepers. Goats, most opportunistic of the barnyard
set, are chat chewers, too, but less inclined to the horizontal. Ours line up
single-file, lean against the colorful walls, blank-eyed, ovines transformed
into bovines.
Abdula, clearly not into somnolent afternoons, materializes
twice in ours, once as a waving arm and broad smile hanging out of a tuk-tuk,
and later as a bounce of energy on a street corner.
Abel need a food fix after all this history. His lunch is
tender chunks of raw beef, dusted and dipped in chili powder, and much better
(OK…better) than it sounds. We take ours minced and well sautéed.
Falafel (“best in Harar”) and sambusas (“almost as good as
Miss Sambusa's at the main gate”) are our first evening munchies. Abel heads
back to Rowda for a shower and a walk on his own. We head to the balcony of a
favorite place to spoon avocado smoothies so thick that they stay put when up
ended. Below us, the tuk-tuks
bounce-bounce, and the ancient cars rattle-wheeze into Feres Megala, main square of Harar, whirl
around the monument at the center and chug out again. Around the edges, women,
clusters of rainbows, sit by piles of chat, shooing away the goats, avid but
non-paying. The color is monumental. Who needs chat?
SEPTEMBER 30, 2018 – HARAR TO DIRE DAWA BACK TO ADDIS
At 4 am the last of the hyena arias and duets, all high
notes and coloratura gargling, fade away. The churches take over the music of
the night, droning away the night, then the mosques begin, calling in the dawn.
Outside our room, Nadeera adds the whisk-whisk of straw broom against concrete.
I wait for timpanis, or trumpets, and get bird song…and puff pancakes lacquered
with honey.
Bini stops by for goodbyes and with a gift for our friends’
new coffee shop in Florida. Abel is worried that ID checks along the road to
the airport might create problems for him because his name links him to an
ethnic group not popular in this region. Bini arranges for a private car, (less
likely to be stopped if hauling foreigners). Then, shoulder bumps, and hugs
seal plans for a reunion in 2 years when we return to Ethiopia for Abel's
graduation.
Abel has a surprise behind that big grin: brother-in-law
Bizrat will *pick us up at the airport and take us to spend the night with his
family in the hills of Entoto outside of Addis.
We never do figure out how many people live in this compound
of small houses rambling over the hillside around kitchen gardens, stands of
‘false banana' (details on request), rocky paths, bee hives, a fw chickens, and
one very sleepy, and non-committal, dog. No matter! Bizrat's brother could be
one of my Garguilo cousins, full of pizzazz, and great fun. Frae makes a great
fasting meal, and the beer is cold. The company?? Unforgettable.
Family.
OCTOBER 1, 2018 – ADDIS ABABA
“I miss you very much.”
Bird song and chanting open the day again, this time up
above Addis in the cool hills of Entoto. Honey from the bees down by the ‘false
banana' gilds the hot fitira, puffy pancakes. Real bananas and a tuna omelet (a
surprise for breakfasts and very good) are preamble to Frae's hand roasted,
hand-ground, home-brewed ‘bunna'. Elfin sprite, 3-year old Sipara, and her
chunky 11-month brother, ‘Baby', upstage the wedding photos and videos. We
don’t linger, because Bisrat has another surprise.
An hour later we meld into a wave of white-clad celebrants
climbing the road to the Church of St. Mary on the other side of the Entoto
Hills from the family house. Sixty percent of Ethiopians are under the age of
25. Those 60 million kids make Ethiopia the youngest country in Africa. They
are all on this road. They sweep us up the hill, now totally white, to the
church. The Arch Bishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church speaks. We don’t
understand the words, but the devotion is palpable, so we absorb it. Bisrat
finds a path to the fence around the church. He kisses it. And we leave. We
tell him that in the USA the young don't fill the churches. He almost believes
us. Maybe he hopes his brother, 14 years a nurse in Minnesota, still remembers
the way to church.
By lunch he has made us promise that we will wait for him at
the airport when we come back. How else will we find our way to the family?
At 3 Menge arrives at Mr. Martin's, wrapped in two bouquets
of roses, beautiful, but less so than his “I miss you very much.” And the hugs
that mean it.
We drive off in his Blue Cab to see ’Mama' and their 3
daughters. Mama has made a luscious
meal. The girls have gifts for us---traditional straw plates, and huge coffee
mugs with pictures of our first trip together 4 years ago. Eight-year old Tison
throws a pout that we're not sleeping over. Yordannos, much grown in 2 years,
is still shy. Meron is the family star, super bright like her older sisters and
a bit of a showstopper. This kid knows how to work a room. And we love being
worked. Mama, 7 months pregnant hopes for a boy. Menge, totally besotted by his
three daughters, says a boy would be fine…and we can hear the ‘fine…too' and
the smile in his voice. He promises to
Message as soon as the baby is born
It's a wonderful day.
OCTOBER 2, 2016 - FAREWELLS-ADDIS-NAIROBI-AMSTERDAM-ATLANTA-MIAMI
Menge comes at 2 (8am) to take us to ‘Mama's Shop’ on the
fifth floor of a shop-stuffed high rise right in the heart of business Addis.
Mama has style and smarts. She doles out ‘coffee to go'---an innovation in
coffee-centric Addis---in her white chef's toff and jacket. She rolls us
another innovation, her invention of an Ethiopian taco: spicy meat mixture and
a sweep of mayo in a tortilla-like wrap, easy take-away fast food to go.
“Mama's” is, small, maybe, 8x10, and a huge hit. Menge is so proud if her:
“Mama is very creative. She has new ideas every day.” They obviously work.
Abel comes by with our Harar Gold coffee beans, now pungent
grinds, hand-roasted and ground by Frae. He's had a haircut and a trim of the
wispy beard that is the current style among the millions of young guys in Addis. He has taken a pass (so far)
on the ‘blond' tips that turn handsome Ethiopian heads into spongy chocolate
layer cakes topped with precarious, puffy, orange frosting. And as for pants
drooping way below narrow hips? ”Never”!
These days have been wonderful. We know him now as a
sensitive young man with a strong social conscience, deeply affected by
unkindness, injustice, violence.
How have we been so lucky?
Our goodbye is brief,
intense, the hugs not enough. Then, he is off. It will be two years until we
see our son again, when he graduates.
Menge tears up as he leaves us at the airport. This is a
wonderful man, deeply part of our life.
The human family began in Ethiopia a few million years ago.
It has room for us here still.