A WHOLE NEW TAKE ON "TIME DIFFERENCE"

IN JULIA’S WORDS

10 September

As residents of Hotel Time on this very auspicious date in the Ethiopian calendar, it’s a particularly right moment to write about what to me are the vagaries of Ethiopia’s version of time.

Firstly, like “Swahili time”, their clock works differently. “European time” (as they call the way of working out time that I’m familiar with) ends at midnight and so 1am is the first full hour of the new day. In Ethiopia (and Tanzania, although not Kenya), the first hour of the new day is European’s 5am (I think they call this “0 o’clock”). So my usual 6am is their 1 o’clock. I suppose that this is because it’s the hour when the day begins for many. They are therefore 6 hours ahead of us, so my midday is their 6 o’clock. 
This has led to many confusions: check out time is said to be 4 o’clock (ie my 10am); the actual time a ferry’s due to leave is extremely dependent on the version of time the person you’ve asked is using.

Then there are the differences in the calendar. 
The Ethiopians are (I think) 5 days behind us – so today is their 5th of the month. Also, they have 13 months in a year – 12 months with 30 days each. The 13th month, Pegume, the one we're in now, has just 5 days. 

Today is the 5^th of Pegume. In Ethiopia, this is New Year’s Eve – tomorrow is the first of the New Year. And the year they will be going into is 2006.

So haaapppeeeeee 2006, everyone! Or Melkam Addes Amet, as they say in Amharic.

Hotel Time In Dessie is gearing up for revelries. The staff are all fabulously bedecked in colourful, fancy clothes and the women with wow braided hairdos; one of the men is draped in that fine white cotton Ethiopian cloth and has his herder's long stick as his all-important accessory – he’s reminiscent of a holy shepherd. 
Long fronds of fresh grass are scattered about the floor of the dining room and bar area, a multi-course menu is on offer, a DJ comes later.

Rehana and I are also doing our bit. Yesterday Rehana had her first haircut since leaving SA, much needed since she was starting to look like Marc Lottering’s sister (quite lovely actually), but especially because putting such a terrible experience as she’s just come through behind her requires a fresh start. 
She looks so very beautiful with her new trim, looking in fact not unlike pictures I’ve seen of her when she was in her 20s. Perhaps a little tired, but thin and cute. 
Plus she’s got a new toothbrush, new cocoa butter body lotion (got to get even the memories of that hospital stench away away away), and an hour of aroma massaging today surely has eased the dreadful stiffness and some bruising from the freaking drips.

Julia's first selfie ever

We also had a brief shopping expedition to buy ourselves some Ethiopian gladrags. We drove to Dessie’s main street – a seriously busy, big street – and found a cupboard-sized shop with each wall packed rafters to floor with Ethiopian cloth and clothes. 
Rehana was lame and a bit grim, not least because of her soporific-making massage – and sat weakly on a stool while I became the arch negotiator. Wow I’m good at this – especially when I feel so pressured to clench the deal with Rehana clearly just holding on. The two young male shopkeepers and I haggled and argued and finally couldn’t agree. 
That scarf is beautiful, yes, pure Ethiopian cotton, but it’s DIRTY! No, we can’t buy it like that! (In fact it was just a little patch of dust, but you know…). What? You can’t sell me that fine blue stripy scarf with exquisite embroidery on the edges unless I buy the dress AND the handbag that goes with it?!?! Forget it! Sale off! I marched out (slowly mind – Rehana’s still a snail) and deposited her back in the car to spare her further ordeal. 
Then I huffed back into the shop cupboard to buy the scarf that Rehana had liked (the one with a dusty smear). And, to my enormous surprise and delight, I was greeted like a superstar by the two young men! 
“You’re good”, they cried, beaming from ear to ear. “You are merchant? You’re good! Please come again! You must come again!”.

I bought both the scarf that Rehana liked and the scarf (for me) that she hadn’t quite liked (but not the scarf, dress and handbag combo. I’d have felt like a crow in drag wearing it).

Wow did I feel proud of myself. I’ve long been saying that bartering is a socially necessary part of purchasing things in such parts, and our own typical sour, indignant response to being asked to pay hefty prices was the absolutely wrong response – you’re EXPECTED to tut and howl and do a merry dance until a “fair” price is agreed on. 
My three other travellers are pretty bad at it – Rehana plain pathetic. So there’s no holding me back now. I’m a wicked bartering merchant, and prooouuud!

We’re on our way downstairs to a three course meal and a disco, in what amounts to our finest finery, at least for a snack and some shared New Year kindnesses with our new friends here at Hotel Time. And wow, they’ve been so kind, so caring towards us.

STILL JULIA'S WORDS

FIRAY HEWHAT  – THE "FRUIT OF LIFE"

11 September

We spent New Year’s day (11 Sept) pleasantly enough, Rehana once again rallying just that bit more towards betterness. We took a 45-minute drive to a gorgeous green-aqua shimmering lake called Hayk, which had just the right kind of flat and lush-green surroundings for us to slowly walk beside. At a restaurant there we had a crisply fried whole fish in balmy, sunny air.

Our second outing was to Lake Hayk. Click the picture to enlarge.

After our meal we drove back to Dessie for our date with Cha Cha.

Cha Cha is a student waitering here during his university holidays (he’s studying environmental science – much needed!). Our connection goes back my first breakfast at Hotel Time. I was alone in the dining room for an early breakfast before heading off to Selam General Hospital and a really languishing Rehana. 
I was totally shattered, actually, unable to control the shaking sobs and waves of terrible fear crashing over me. Cha Cha, the poor boy, did what he could to comfort me (like, “Don’t cry miss, your friend will be fine” – slight comfort, but what could he do?) and organised the take-away pancakes for Rehana’s breakfast. 
From then on he treated me with special attention, and he being such a very charming and smart young man, I became increasingly attached to him too.

Then a few days after Rehana had been released from hospital we wanted to buy some treats to take to the nurses as a sign of our immense gratitude. Rehana was still flattened in bed so Cha Cha took me to a café on the main street with the requisite fat slabs of sweetness and cream, and then I gave him a lift home. 
He’d forewarned his mum (her name’s “Firay Hewhat” which means “Fruit of Life” – how good is that?!), and she had already set out the incredible shrine that goes with the extraordinary all-Ethiopian “coffee ceremony”. Plumes of burning chunks of frankincense swirled the room while the Aladdin-lamp looking coffee pot brewed on a separate coal stove. The entire ritual is, as you can see, the last word in stylishnessnitude.

They graciously and generously and lovingly invited me into their home to treat me to simply exquisite coffee (an espresso tot of dark bitter sweet bliss), open hearts embracing me, stranger that I am – or was, anyway. Such love they had shown me, when it was so, so needed.

So with Rehana well-enough today to be up-and-about (a bit), we both went for a dose of divine coffee and heartening love to Cha Cha’s home.
His younger brother Chappies is a bright-button 14-year-old who intends to become a doctor and do his bit for his country.
Firay is just the most kind-hearted woman you can hope to meet – just blew me away with her tenderness.

And so it is that the nightmare we lived through in Dessie has been laced, too, with the most delicious experiences of the gleaming best of humanity. 
Doctor Yimer Ali, the nurses, the gate guard at the hospital, a serious clutch of kind and helpful Hotel Time staffers – they’ve graced us by dishing out lashings of love that we’ll always hold dear. Selam Hospital's gate guard helped me get a blow-up mattress out of the tent to lay beneath Rehana on the hard bed at Hotel Time. He took her arm to guide her in and out of the car when her legs were shaky.

My man in red, he was very kind to me.

If Rehana wakes up again a little stronger than she was today (which was a little stronger than she was the day before, and a bit stronger than the day before that, and so on in that encouraging pattern that heralds her recovery), then tomorrow we drive to Lalibela.
We’ve been in Dessie for almost two weeks and, if she feels up to it, then it’s now time to continue our trip.
We’re both edgy about it: her health is far from hearty, so we’re worried the five hours or so in the car will set her back. Plus I’m bluddy paranoid of a mechanical issue besetting us: Mike and Carol continued on their way a few days ago, and having to deal with a breakdown with Rehana flou and just me to work it out feels like it could lead to me breakingdown too.

But we want to go on with our travels if possible, and right now it does feel possible. Every step we’ll have to re-evaluate Rehana’s strength, and at the first sign that she’s not up to it we stop, and if needs be, make a plan to come home. 
Hold thumbs, please (and pray too if you’ve a trusty deity) that we’re making the right decision and that Rehana will not only hold firm, but once again soon regain her sturdy self.

A FEW THOUGHTS ON ETHIOPIA SO FAR:

·       They have the most charming way of expressing affirmation/saying yes. It’s a tiny, slightly aspirated gasp, as I might express when I see that a raw egg is about to drop off a table’s edge, or a toddler is in imminent peril of falling down the stairs. I’m used to such a gasp being a sign of horror or fear – their version, of using it to mean “Yes”, or “No problem” thrillingly turns the meaning on its head.

·       Drivers in other countries we’ve travelled through have been different shades of terrifying, but Ethiopian drivers are in a class all of their own. They’re plain appallingly petrifying. Mostly they’re not private cars but taxis, trucks, bajaj (or tuk-tuk style). A taxi will think nothing of overtaking a string of five other vehicles on a blind rise or a blind corner; by mere eyelashes I’ve seen carnages being avoided. I’ve also seen the evidence of carnage not avoided, with overturned trucks and smashed up vehicles regularly punctuating the roads. Worst probably are the dreaded Isuzu trucks, many of which carry loads of the much-favoured plant Khat. Reputed to be dizzy on Khat and alcohol themselves, the drivers of these vehicles swerve, careen and hurtle like vicious, deadly iron demons. Truly, just the sight of one on the road with me makes me gulp down terror.

·       Pedestrians and cyclists on these roads are as scatty and vague about road rules as are the droves of donkeys, horses, goats, chickens and sheep that randomly criss-cross them. Almost every human on the road seems to share this philosophy: start crossing and THEN look. And if you do look, look in the WRONG direction – not the direction a vehicle will be coming from. It makes for endless gasps (of horror, not the Ethiopian version) and sharp adrenalin rushes. Who needs bungy jumping for adrenalin spikes when you can just drive in Ethiopia?!?!

Khat sold on the streets of Harar

·       I remain very confused by the role and status of the plant Khat (or Chat, or Kat – many spelling variants). As I understand it, the leaves contain some kind of stimulant – not dissimilar to those that are used to make cocaine. It is widely grown here and is a big export crop to the near East. I’ve seen several official accounts of Khat, and they’ve all been very dry and/or neutral in describing it as a favourite national plant to chew on and a source of export revenue. But what I’ve seen – especially in Harar – is not neutral at all. There are significant numbers of people with green stained teeth, green froth at the corners of their mouths, blood shot eyes and clear detachment from even shadows of reality meandering the streets, lying in gutters – or even driving. It’s the Ethiopian equivalent of Russia’s vodka, England’s ale, Jamaica’s ganja – and simply unregulated, it would appear. In fact, one faranji I spoke to -  who’s lived here for a year – claimed it to be a well-known fact that many of these crazed Isuzu trucks deliver government-sponsored loads of Khat to the remote villages in particular in order to keep the people drugged and therefore incapable of rising up and overthrowing them. If I was an insecure and cynical government wanting to dope my people into submission, I wouldn’t chose a drug that’s supposed to lead to focus, energy and a more vigorous imagination. Meths would be a better option. And in fact, the amount of elderly men in particular lying thinly and morosely clutching their bouquet of fresh Khat leaves doesn’t point to a drug that’s an upper at all. Perhaps the allegedly evil government is very aware of this and therefore damn keen to make sure there’s a steady and abundant supply.  It may be that years and years of consumption eventually wears you down into a green-toothed gutter.
Still, as I say, there seems to be little regulating its use. I’ve heard from some that those demon Isuzu drivers are themselves buzzed on it – perhaps explaining their death-wish bravado (the locals call these Isuzu trucks “Al Qaeda”).