Dignity, Pride and Poise arise out of Poverty in Ethiopia


    I went to Ethiopia in 2004 as an English teacher and stayed for three years.  I experienced numerous frustrations and challenges, but the important lessons learned surpassed my frustrations.  I was humbled by the people and the culture and impressed with their strength and character.  I was impressed with their great patience and persistence.  I was impressed with their sense of normalness and non-despair as they walked out of shack-like houses with heads held high.  I was impressed with their sense of togetherness and spirit.
   
    I first began to appreciate the beauty in the ritual of eating.  Food doesn’t come by so easily, so when it is there, it is blessed by one’s dignified manner.  Eating is a communal gathering rather than an individual one and a sacred silence is usually kept.  Children receive their bread or dinner with two hands and give a small bow.  Making and drinking the coffee can last over two hours and the beggars are always given the leftovers.  In a country where jobs and Western style entertainment are scarce, eating and coffee ceremonies add grace, elegance and meaning to life’s daily struggles.  It is certainly a contrast to eating fast food in front of the television.
   
    I lived and taught English in Bahir Dar, a small farming town, for two years, and later moved to the capital for a year.  In Bahir Dar, my students were the most respectful that I have ever taught.  Other than tending my small garden, there wasn’t a lot to do in my free time.  Eventually I met some other ex-patriots and found a local recreation center and tennis courts.  I met the young tennis coach, Minichel, who would later become my close friend.  I played tennis two to three times a week and it was a sure method of ending boredom.  Minichel, whose name meant, “one who can carry a great burden” was a semi-professional tennis coach and I was first struck by the intensity of his face when he played.  I guessed he was dirt poor like everyone else, but when he played, he was a Jimmy Connors, Boris Becker, or John McEnroe.  He didn’t speak much English but one day I invited him and his mother to a tea party I was hosting.  Also attending the party were my wealthy neighbors who were also quite large.  I later learned that weight and wealth are generally synonymous in Ethiopia.  If one is fat, one must be rich.  I noticed Minichel and his mother looked terribly uncomfortable amongst my neighbors.
   
    Eventually I was invited to Minichel’s humble home.  Mud and dung covered in plastic served as the walls and tin sheeting as the roof.  Minichel’s mother was hovering over a cooking pot while her six children happily played around the house.
    That evening we ate injera.  Most Ethiopians eat injera three times a day, it is a type of bread made from the grain teff.  It looked like a round bath mat to me.  Shiro Wat (crushed chick-pea sauce) was placed on top, full of berberaye, which contained a mix of spices.  I learned the many rules and etiquette when eating:  Only use your right hand.  Don’t lick your fingers.  Don’t talk.  Don’t reach across the plate.  Don’t take large handfuls.  A child poured water over my right hand.  The food was blessed and the adults ate from the same plate.  We each tour off a piece of bread and scooped up the sauce and put it in our mouths.  It was delicious.  Minichel’s mother then took her bread, scooped up some sauce and placed it into my mouth.  I later learned that was called gursha and it’s done only when there is a special affection for someone.  Extra thick bread and nuts were given to the children who received them with two hands, giving a small bow of graciousness.  
   
    After dinner the whole family gathered together inside the house.  Two chickens  sat above us on a perch.  The incense was lit and then the coffee was made.  The beans were washed and roasted on an open fire.  They were pounded with a mortar and pestle and added to boiling water.  Sugar was added and we drank our coffee while the children sat quietly.  The father told stories and jokes and everyone laughed.  Then the rain came in bucketfuls.  A stream of mud began to flow in front of the door.  Everyone got under a blanket and cuddled.  All of a sudden I felt terribly ashamed about my tea party, my house, my fat neighbors, my possessions, my trivial concerns and worries.  I went home in a confusing bout of depression.
   
    As our friendship developed, Minichel told me stories about his childhood.  Like when he shined shoes as a young boy, making 20 cents a day to buy bread for his mother.  And his father who taught him how to swim.  Not for recreational purposes but in case he had to avoid soldiers.  His father was shot in the leg by soldiers but hid in the Nile River.  This was during the Derg reign of terror (1974-1991) in which 100,000 Ethiopians were killed. 
        
    He told me how his aunt and uncle both died of AIDS.  His family immediately took in their only child, a girl aged five.  When she was seven, she complained of stomach pains.  The neighbors gossiped and said she must have caught the terrible disease that her parents had.  Minichel eavesdropped on these conversations.  They thought he didn’t understand but eventually he put the pieces together and took his young cousin to a health clinic, in secret from his parents.  He saved his money from shoe shining and spent a huge amount on the test - $2.50.  She was tested negative and afterwards they spent hours in the Church, thanking God.
       
    Sometime later this young girl found a sponsor from Germany who sent money each month for schooling and clothes.  This was done through an organization in the Church.  Unfortunately, corruption is everywhere and later it was discovered that from the $50.00 the kind German man sent monthly, she was only getting $10.00, with the organization pocketing the rest.  This went on for three years before anyone knew.
        
     After a year in Ethiopia, I went to the States for a month of vacation.  Culture shock hit hard when I looked inside my friend’s closet and saw how many clothes and shoes she had.  Then the neighbor’s kid talked relentlessly and complained during dinner.  Then I heard how much my relative paid to go on a birding expedition across the country.  These incidences upset me not because of their explicit purposes but because of their indications of how self-absorbed American culture is as a whole, myself included.  Why are we so determined to tell everyone who we are?  Why are we so forcefully, almost unnaturally independent and individualistic, myself included?  Why are we so wrapped up in ourselves?
   
    I realized I had been away from the US for too long.  In Ethiopia I lived in an ancient civilization where ox and plow are still used, where great dignity arises out of great poverty, where the eating ritual is sacred, where women and men go to Church at the crack of dawn, every single day of the year, where great blessings are given when the rains come.  And where the farmers still make 50 cents a day.  I sighed and told myself again I had been away for too long.
   
    After vacation I came back to learn my neighbor had died.  They said she lived a long life.  She was 43.  I lived near a community center where the shared chairs and tables were stored for funerals, weddings, and other ceremonies.  The chairs and tables didn’t collect dust.  They were moved from house to house as someone was always dying.
   
    Over the next year, I found my greatest difficulties were not the water or the bugs but the complexities of bureaucracy throughout the country.  Dealing with bureaucracy in any country is no piece of cake, but in Ethiopia it was immense.  Months went by before my work contract was stamped and signed.  University salaries were terribly late.  Withdrawing money from the bank or getting a phone installed was like attempting to climb Mt. Everest.  These requests consisted of a process that lasted for an indefinite amount of time and hundreds of trips to the telecom.
   
    It was extremely difficult for me but I often wondered, how in the world do Ethiopians do it?  I had seen them stand in long lines, be yelled at by officials, declined the smallest of requests.  I would leave in a few months but they were there for a lifetime.  Someone explained to me “you have to be in the right political party.  To get anywhere or anything in this country, to get land, to get a job, to pass a University exam, to get your birth certificate, to get the electricity connected, you have to be in the right party.”   Some would say this is an exaggeration; others would say this is no exaggeration at all.
   
    Ethiopia was the only African country that was never officially colonized, though there was a brief occupation by the Italians in 1936.  Unfortunately, it was also one of the last to experience any type of democratic rule and the first democratic election took place in 1995.  My greatest shock came during the post-election violence in November 2005.  Everyone expected some post-election rioting and violence.  But what was surprising was afterwards, thousands of people throughout the country were picked up by the police without question.  People spent weeks hiding in their house, in fear of a police raid.  Young men were taken to detention camps and questioned.  Sometimes they were free to return home; other times they were forcefully signed into the army.  On the news, the media showed footage of the thousands of young men talking, exercising, and relaxing but nurses told other stories of terrible conditions where outbreaks of every disease were soaring.  Huge numbers of people have spent time in prison at one point or another usually only because someone accused them of something.  People are guilty until proven innocent and even popular song-writers are thrown in prison for their subtle anti-government lyrics. 
  
    Regardless of the difficulties I experienced in Ethiopia, the beauty of the culture and people stands out more.  It is forever ingrained in me that the Ethiopians I knew walked everyday out of their shack-like homes with heads high, securely wrapped in white shawls, off to work or the market or a funeral.  They made coffee by hand, though their houses were falling apart.  The children bowed when receiving bread, though they had another spell of malaria.  The beggars blessed me when I gave them a dime, though they had no shoes.  Such grace and dignity and pride surrounded horrid living conditions.  Living conditions without birding expeditions or designer shoes.  It is a lesson for us all.

Katherine Carter, Ph.D.

Dr. Carter completed her doctorate at the University of Debrecen, Hungary, with a dissertation entitled 'Batuku Dance and Creole Proverbs: Cape Verdean  Women Respond to Economic Globalization' in 2007. After two years teaching English courses at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia she is now lecturing in Sociology at Addis Ababa University.

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