Tightropes, Chit Chats and the Odd Faux Pas

Devoted followers of my blog (ha!) will note that I am quite terrible at updating it. That I am into my third month here and this is only my third update from Addis is, of course, entirely unacceptable. Somewhat legitimate excuses abound; they range from the rather unpleasant (suffering two bouts of food poisoning and a couple of nasty colds) to the wonderfully indulgent (entertaining a dear friend from London for 10 days) to the downright mundane (simple disorganization mixed with spotty internet access limited to occasional frivolous social network updates). In truth, I just need to get a little more in the habit of recording day to day occurrences. It’s a cliché but life is flying by here. My very early New Year’s resolution is to be a much better blogger...

Excuses and wot not aside, there have been some major highlights in the five or six weeks since I last wrote. First, there was the wedding of Fitsum and Samarawit, to which I was invited by my friend Sarah (who has known Fitsum for several years). Mindful of the fact that Ethiopian weddings are elaborate affairs and guests are always impeccably dressed, I of course panicked about what to wear. Sadly I had not brought wedding-suitable attire from London and I knew that my rainy-season battered boots and scruffy jeans were grossly inappropriate for everyday attire, let alone a glamorous Ethiopian couple's special day. With Sarah in tow I found a local dressmaker, Mulu, who made me a simple traditional dress (“habesha libs”) out of local fabric, edged with red and gold. Typically, women wear white dresses, elaborately edged with gorgeous metallic threaded designs and accessorized with a matching Natella (scarf) or Gabi (a much thicker shawl). I decided to go for a color rather than white; it was only when I got the dress home that I worried that the green, red and gold ensemble evoked Mrs Claus or a Christmas elf.

Ho ho ho?

Sarah, rightfully, pointed out that this combo was also the Ethiopian national colors, and that I was probably worrying too much. At the wedding itself we had a fabulous day. We trawled all over town from photo spots to drinks receptions and finally ended up at an 800-guest reception where we ate injera, marveled at the glitz of it all and danced the eskista into the midnight hour. 
The only moment of anxiety was when we rocked up 20 minutes late for the reception (having indulged in an extra beer at the Hilton) only to find that there were no seats left for us. To our shame Fitsum’s relatives insisted on finding a tiny table-for-two, covering it in a slightly tatty table cloth, evicting a couple of lesser guests from their chairs and plonking us in the VIP section, next to unimpressed aunts, uncles and cousins. We smiled sheepishly, and sipped some tejj, hoping the omnipresent video camera (and massive wall-projected live feed) had not captured our epic cultural faux pas. With the help of Johnny Walker (the whiskey of choice in Addis) we drowned our embarrassment.

The second major highlight was the opening of the Elias Sime exhibition entitled ‘Tightrope.’ Opening simultaneously at the four big European cultural institutes in Addis – the British Council, the Alliance Francaise, the Goethe Institute and the Italian Cultural Institute – the curatorial vision was as vast and ambitious as the contents of the show. The former belonged to Meskerem Assegued, one of Ethiopia’s (and, frankly, Africa’s) leading curators, and a warm and generous human being. Meskerem has had a long-running creative partnership with Elias, an equally affable and talented individual. In each of the four sites that constituted ‘Tightrope’ Meskerem had installed Elias’ massive, elaborate, richly colorful works that consisted of hundreds of recycled computer motherboards, electrical wires and other technical paraphernalia. Hung like three-dimensional painterly canvases, Elias used the motherboards to evoke dense urban maps and aerial views of rich topographies. He took seven years to collect the material he needed to make each of the nearly 20 massive works, the complexity of which was quite breathtaking on close inspection.

Details from Elias Sime's "Tightrope"

For the opening we were shepherded from one cultural institute to another in quick succession in an open-top double decker bus; this exhaust-fume rich traversing of the town, past ripped up roads and half-finished sky scrapers, kept fresh the images of Addis as a place of rapidly (and sometimes awkwardly) change that resonated closely with Elias imagined city-scapes. As he discussed in a subsequent artist talk at the Alliance, his title ‘Tightrope’ was chosen to evoke the precariousness of rapid infrastructure building and of the influx of global technologies into developing economies; to be successful and beneficial, everything, he said, must be in balance. Whether or not Addis’ city planners are successfully walking the tightrope of urban development is currently a hot topic of debate. Since I live in the ever-changing construction site of Hayahulet, I found Elias’ work and his explication of it to be particularly compelling.

Immediately after the opening I fired off an email to Meskerem, introducing myself and enthusing about the exhibition. To my delight she replied very promptly, inviting me for lunch, introducing me to Elias and enthusiastically encouraging my research. In the past few weeks she has been instrumental in acquainting me with other artists and academics, and in return, I will be reviewing ‘Tightrope’ for African Arts magazine. [Spoiler alert: the show was awesome.]

My other highlights have mainly been the conversations I have had about my research with artists and other academics. Zerihun Yetmgeta showed me the sketches and doodles he used to draw whilst being forced to sit in “Marxist Leninist Discussion Group” at the School of Fine Arts. Esseye Gebre Medhin told me about the excitement of seeing art exhibitions again after the dark days of the violent Red Terror. Eshetu Tiruneh effused about studying in the Soviet Union and about teaching his fellow Russian students about Ethiopian history.

Prof. Bahru Zewde, Ethiopia’s leading historian, told me about the time back in 1973 when he and his fellow Ethiopian students at SOAS in London decided to organize a dinner to draw attention to the famine unfolding in his country. He said they had wanted to confront Haile Selassie’s ambassador to Britain and on the evening Ethiopian dignitaries were invited, but quickly left as soon as they saw that the event was one of protest. Had they stayed, Prof. Bahru told me, they would have been amused by the evenings entertainment because, unable to find Ethiopian musicians, Bahru and his colleagues shortsightedly hired a Rastafarian band…who arrived and, of course, began singing praise songs to man they worshipped as god, Emperor Haile Selassie!

Somewhere, amidst these fascinating and often funny conversations, there are some great nuggets for my dissertation. With only three weeks to go until I fly home to England for Christmas I am permanently anxious about having not achieved enough in these first few months. My progress feels patchy, but I hope very much that these conservations will develop further on my return in the New Year.

Now I must go and do my Amharic homework… I am currently taking an intensive course at the Mekane Yesus Joint Language School. It is, hands down, the best language course in town – a claim I will elaborate on in some future post. Tomorrow I have to present something about a food that is traditional in my culture. Since my classmates are British and Australian, I thought I’d present on food from my beloved adoptive/adopted country – America. And since this week is Thanksgiving, I’m going to tell my classmates (in Amharic) how to make pumpkin pie! To all my friends and family in the good old US of A, have a wonderful day on Thursday and I’ll try to do justice to one of your most delicious feasting staples in my presentation.