Artist on a Quest in Abyssinia

Just when you think you've seen it all...

I'm leaving Ethiopia tonight. Before I flee the madnes I feel I should finish with an account of one of my most memorable experiences in my short but very intense time here: I had an encounter with a hyena a few nights ago.and I don't think I'll ever forget it!. Harar is famed for the packs of spotted hyena which live in the wilds outside the city walls. One evening a few nights back I was walking outside the walls at dusk, soaking in the atmosphere when before I knew it, darkness had fallen (I always happens much quicker than I think it's going to). Harar is a confusing place at the best of times, but now in the darkness it became a bit unnerving. There were no lights of course, so the darkness became total, and I couldn't find the small gateway I had come through back into the city. Suddenly I began to make out various high-pitched whining sounds, strange- almost like a horse whinnying, and I realised to my horror that it was the Hyenas. I realised that my scent (pretty bad these days) would be giving me away to the animals, and the spine-chilling high-pitched 'laughing' sound was getting closer. I needed to move faster. I was right up against the wall, feeling my way along the stones, trying to move as quickly as possible, in the blind hope i would come to an opening, but I hadn't thought, that in positioning myself like this, I was essentially trapped.

Suddenly, I could see it creeping out of the darkness towards me, a huge beast, with long front legs and powerful back legs it bagan to run, and I froze as it launched itself at me, its powerful bone-crushing jaws inches from my outstretched arms....

Okay, that's not really how it happened- but I did get to within centimetres of those terrifying jaws. There is this mad (read: typically Ethiopian) custom of feeding the wild Hyenas after dark. There are 3 or 4 mad eejits who appear to make a living by bringing a basket of meat out to certain patches of wasteland after dark and calling the hyenas... and they come. When I went to watch, about 8 or 0 of these huge beasts skulked out of the gloom towards the nutter. They moved in a loping, bulky kind of way, coming close, then shying away and circling round, eyeing up the meat being held out by the guy. They were seemingly unfazed by the small group of us that had gathered to watch, presumably because they could have had us easily. I had already checked the group out- there were a few fit-looking guys, but one quite plump one, and a plumpish woman, who I reckon I could outrun if it came to it, so I thought the pack might go for them first.

The spotted Hyenas were much bulkier than I had imagined- almost like small bears- their back legs very short and stocky, their front legs long and powerful. The high-pitched squealy giggle which they went into fits of every so often just made them even more sinister. I didn't see what was so funnu- I thought they were terrifying.

The Hyena man would hold out a piece of meat at arms length and a plucky hyena would come and snatch it from his hand with its massive toothy jaws. Jings, rather him than me! Then he decided to show off by holding lumps of raw meat in his mouth and the huge beasts would come and snatch the meat right in his face. Ooyah Beezer!

Then, he suggested I have a go. Well, you know, when you're there, you may as well- so I crouched down beside him, the pack circling round shadily, and he poked a wee stick into a lump of meat which I then held out in a confident manly way (shaking like a leaf). A muckle big beast came and jumped at the meat, its gaping maw lit up by torch light and camera flash. It ripped the meat from the stick and skidaddled away. I tried not to pee my pants. I held out some more meat and the big beasties circled, eyeing, judging, then one loped forward and snatched, and the others had a wee scrap with it to try and get in on the action. Zoinkers Doinkers, enough for me- I think I'll leave this to the Ethiopians.

They insist it's not a show for the tourists, but I cant envisage any reason why someone would want to do this- yet it seems so quintessentially Ethiopian- unfathomable in its irrationality. After all that I have seen here, this seemed the icing on the cake- I feel like I've 'seen it all', and it's time to go home and try, somehow, to process it all. Seeing as my route to Eritrea has become unworkable, I have decided to cut my losses, and rather than spend two weeks doofing around Addis or somewhere, just to quit while i'm ahead and come home. I should be back in a land I understand by saturday night and as it all sinks in I'll probably be laughing like a hysterical hyena all the way home.

Falling Into the Gap

This place never ceases to surprise me with its shambolic eccentricity. Even as I walked around for an hour or so before sitting down to write this on my last morning in Harar I saw a man step on a covered manhole in the market, only for the cover to flip open and the man to fall into the hole (very funny, very painful-looking!) This just about sums up this place for me. Something which is meant to help and improve the place (the maintenance symbolized by the manhole) just not being done properly, and instead just creating a tragi-comic shambles. This is happening at every level. I see a whole sequence of wonders on my short walk. I see a tiny boy wearing a full-size man's jacket zipped up, so that the jacket appears to stand up on its own, covring the infant's feet; only his head poking out the top. I see a man galumphing around the market square wearing layers and layers of polythene bags shaped into a large turban on his head and large, comic-like round poly-shoes on his feet. I see ancient peugot taxis emblazoned with huge stickers proclaiming "Thankyou Jesus" and "Manchester United" and so many transfers on their windshields that it's a wonder they can see where they're going at all. There are strong-looking women and young girls with all manner of things balanced on their heads; huge grass bundles like giant green afros; bundles of leeks; calibas; pots; plates; dishes; reed-bowls; huge sacks; bundles of cloth; and I never see them stumble, never see them lose the balance. I see men wearing detachable hoods, buttoned under the chin like balaclavas as a kind of stylish headpiece although my favourite style guru has an actual balaclave which he wears with stylish aplomb. and greets me enthusiastically whebever I walk past.  As I approach some stalls by the gate the guys sitting there that I see every day clap their hands rhythmically and call out "I love you! I love you forever!" to me. I pass a group of tiny boys who are fighting tooth and nail over a small loaf of bread one of them grasps, as though their very lives depended on it, and of course I walk past numerous plastic sheets and damp ragged cloths littering the ground, with traces of thin bodies underneath. All of this 'eccentricity' is born out of something: a kind of hotch-potch chaos of worlds colliding. Certainly some of this comes from their culture, which to me, coming from a far and distant place, seems intriguing and exotic.But what really catches at the throat is where I perceive that this culture's natural development or 'progression' has been thrown onto a strange trajectory by something else, something external. it's like there is an unequal development here, where some parts have been jumped 'ahead', some left behind and so much seems to fall into the strange gap left in the middle- where it becomes messy and shambolic, and people are left to improvise in this post-modern no-man's land. Addis Ababa is a classic city of PostModernism. It has no plan, no verticality, it just spreads out as a growing network of 'villages', each improvised, evolving their own rules, taking on their own character, where the homes of families (the basic building block of any city) are home-made, individual, made of nothing. Just scrap metal and cardboard patchworked together. There is no shape, no centre. Women sleep rough in the middle of the road with months-old babies, and people with rubber flip-flops tied to their elbows pull themselves along the ground, their withered legs (destroyed by perfectly preventable diseases, like polio) trailing behind them- and I am amazed at their resilience, that they don't give up. So at the extremes of irrationality here it becomes apparent that the eccentricity of this place is brought about by something: by poverty, and that poverty is caused; caused by things not going to plan, or things not really having a plan, or whatever shoddy plan there was being meaningless. But also, this culture thrives on the eccentric, the difficult, and the sense that "Only in Ethiopia would they do something as crazy as this!" For although much of the madness of this place is heartbreaking, so also much of the "Doing-Your-Head-In-ness" of this awesome country is an exhilerating testament to the preposterous imagination of human bonkers-ness... And to illustrate this I'd like to write about one of the strangest of all spectacles I have witnessed here: the Hyenas. But this post has already blethered on too long, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow!

The Problem With Harar

How can I possibly describe this place? It’s difficult not to resort to cliché, for passing through the gates of Harar into the ancient walled city does indeed feel like entering another world…

I suppose it’s a bit like plunging into the ocean to explore an ancient wreck, only to find it festooned with bright coral and inhabited by myriad shoals of bright fish curious and suspicious of this strange visitor. To enter Harar is to lose yourself in a labyrinth of winding passageways and to be tantalized with glimpses of bright colour flitting past entranceways and hovering in the glowing shadows.

Harar is distinct from the rest of Ethiopia, characterized by its historically exclusively muslim roots. However, it has always served as a significant market bringing together a wide spectrum of ethnicity (bear in mind there are over 70 languages spoken in Ethiopia) into a highly concentrated cultural crucible. Many people walk over 35km each day to get to the market hereto sell their crops, and the narrow streets are lined with women sitting by blankets displaying neatly arranged rows of little pyramids of potatoes, beets, limes, chillies. The people proudly display their provenance through their appearance: Somali men dye their sprouty beards bright red or punky orange, some wear the Keffiyah headscarf of the Arabs, and the muslim women cover their hair with bright headscarves and the hijab, sky blue or grass green, setting off the bright bold floral prints of their dresses, but the most distinctive of all are the Oromo women. Possibly the poorest of the peoples here, they are the ones who travel miles to the city from small villages in the surrounding green hills, setting the streets alight with their bright coloured clothes. They favour a style that could almost be classed as postmodern, tying bright thick cloth like a martial-arts bandana around their foreheads; saffron-yellow, bright lime green or brilliant red, thick cascafes of surplus material draped down their backs. The bright colours are set off by their dark skin which has a deeper hue than the more northern Ethiopians. They wear baggy T-Shirts, tied around their thin waists with more wraps of bright material, and wear layers of pleated skirts made out of  a variety of funky patterned fabrics that hang above the ankle. They all seem to have cloth bag-sacks made of another fabric slung over one sholder and under the other- and they are amazing at carrying things on their heads! Perhaps because of this they have amazing posture, and appear very strong and powerful as they walk purposefully through the whitewashed passageways of Harar turning the place on with their colour and energy.

It is ironic that this attractive exuberance belongs to this incredibly poor part of the city’s life. Indeed, to return to the metaphor at the beginning of this blether, Harar does seem to me like a wreck. Once an incredibly prosperous city-state, its market, like Zanzibar, one of the most renowned in East Africa, it has now been notably bypassed by the economic development that has been bestowed elsewhere. (The nearby city of Dire Dawa has grown explosively due to a massive investment of infrastructure, at Harar’s expense). To wander around the charming streets is to simultaneously marvel at the rich atmosphere and colourful people, yet also to pick your way carefully among the destitute sprawled everywhere. Lepers line many of the streets here, outstretched hands grasping for charity; countless barely clad infants grub around in the dirt, running shrieking and playing games with stones and coca cola bottletops. At night the streets are full of bodies, sleeping in ditches at the side of the unlit roads, covered in dirty blankets; the lucky ones have tarpaulin they erect into one-man shelters that cling to the dark walls like limpets to the sunken wreck.

Perhaps it’s because of this abject poverty, or perhaps it’s just in their character, that Hararis seem that bit more suspicious of the foreigner. Especially one who stands, staring about him for a long time, and then whips out a large black hardback book and starts making strange arcane scribblings. I’m kind of used to people shouting at me now, and staring, and I think I’m petting pretty good at winning them over with my smiley charm(!), but yesterday whilst drawing I was shoo-ed away like a stray dog by an angry shopkeeper- he even threw stuff at me! Another time I was drawing in the market, and the group gathered around me were bickering animatedly. I asked a guy who spoke English what they were saying and he revealed they were saying I was making a map, and was planning to destroy them. Now come on! (I think chewing chat induces paranoia!) It is strange trying to draw in a place where people have no understanding of what I am trying to do.

However, all the suspicion is more than made up for by the friendliness that people are showing me now. There is this amazing street here known as "Machina Girr-Girr Street" which is lined all the down its winding length by old Singer Sewing-Machines mounted on their old tables, and tailors sit there all day, peddling the contraptions with their feet, filling the street with a busy "Girr Girr-ing" An old tailor with the most amazing wonky teeth took a liking to what i was trying to do and got me to sit down alongside him. So I sketched as he girr girr-ed away, and he shoo-ed off anyone who so much as snuck a peek at my drawing. It was possibly the two most blissful hours I've spent here!

However, for all the friendliness< I am left in no doubt I am a foreigner here. Nowhere else have I experienced such an unrelenting barrage of "You! You!" and "Faranjo!"- almost as though it's a reflex action, that they hardly even kow they're doing it. Everywhere I go my presence is acknowledged, I am marked, and I cannot ignore it. Even though my smile and thumbs up are usually returned, I am not allowed to forget, I am the Outsider,. The Other.

This makes for an interesting point, because as an artist, a Western Artist, looking at the culture and experience of a poor, African country, I have to be mindful of avoiding representational cliches: of subjecting the people to the oppressive image-making and gaze of the white western audience- the classic 'orientalist' paradigm- enforcing nationalist stereotypes driven by a desire or a nostalgia for something exotic.

As I try and think about how I will make art from this experience the thoughts of Hani K. Bhabha, the Analyst of Post-Colonialism are worth considering:

"The colonized is associated with excess and fantasy. A site for dreams, images, fantasies, myths, obsessions and requirements": a kind of falsely constructed vessel, that has little to do with the reality of the people concerned, that is a function of the colonizer.

And although Ethiopia has never been "colonized" in the strict sense of the word, the point is still relevant. Yet here, I am the Other. I am constantly made to feel different, outside, excluded. HEY FARANJO!

And so my experiences necessarily take on the quality of a dream- not of unreality as such, but of a reality made inaccessible- something hidden, folded away from me, and with all the best post-orientalist intentions in the world, I just can't see into it.

Getting Chatted Up

These Ethiopians- they seem to thrive on confusion! They set their clocks 6 hours ahead. Or behind, i'm not entirely sure. This has nothing to do with the timezone- 6 hours ahead would be china or something. They just refer to 7 o'clock in the morning as 1 o'clock, 8am as 2 o'clock and so on. It gets pretty confusing because they understand that us foreigners don't do this, so they often refer to two times at once:

"1 o'clock. That's 7 o'clock".

"Oh, okay, which is which? 1 o'clock your time?"

"Your time?"

"My time?"

"Yes, 1 o'clock my time"

"Ethiopian time?"

"Yes, 7 o clock Ethiopian time". etc.

So you usually make contingency plans for both times.

At 12 noon (my time) the atmosphere of Harar changes. Just before, troops of women take up positions sitting at the sides of the roads, and the working men start to pay considerably less attention to what they're supposed to be doing. The women start to prepare for the frenzy, slowly, deliberately putting their wares on display. The men eye the clock, and at 12, shops are closed, taxis and tuc-tucs abandoned, as crowds gather around the women and their plastic bage full of bundles of stems sprouting small green leaves. This is chat, and the men go crazy for it. The 6 o'clock (their time) chat-market is the event of the day in Harar. The men purchase their bundle from the pushers, then willl often just find a spot by the side of the road, spread out a mat, lay down and get chewing.

At first it seemed people here wwere enquiring after my ethnicity; "You chew?" I was asked so many times on my first day in Harar. It seems to be something of an obsession here, and was the thing people seemed to want to know more than even what football team I supported (shock!). It is a mild intoxicant,that apparently becomes more potent the more you use it,  but its users swear by its power to focus the mind and aid concentration. Drivers drive whilst chewing, and some do do theit wol while chewing, but it seems to me that most people chewing appear to be sitting about doing nothing for ages. Like other intoxicants it seeems to imbue the takers with a strong sense of their own aceness. It seems to waste a lot of time to me. Several yimes when i was drawing, people said to me " Tou should chew chat- it will make you draw better!" So that made me totally disinclined to partake.

However, by the afternoon of my second day here I find myself reclining on some cushions, a pile of little green leaves in front of me, and i'm chewing, chewing chewing as if my life depended on it. The leaves are bitter, and you must chew them into a paste, storing it in the side of your mouth, then when you can mash no more, it is washed down with something sweet, like coke. to me, it tastes like i/m munching on hedge-clippings, but I persevere. It's quite hard work on the ol' mastication muscles, but gradually I do begin to feel an effect. It's not like getting stoned- it's not nearly as strong or obvious as that- it's more like a kind of rosiness in the head. It was a bit like having a strong pint in the middle of a sunny day while playing chess- a wee bit woozy but kind of focussed too. The point of chewing chat is not to get high, or to get a hit, but to stimulate conversation- and it really works!

I had been invited by my guide-for-the-day Addisu, to chew chat with his older, and completely eccentric friend Ali, a self-confessed guru of Harari culture who lived in a madly-decorated old Harari house. Ali had been imprisoned under the old Derg regime, and since his release seems to have become something of a recluse, spending his time researching the lost language of ancient Harar, botany, and covering the insides of his house with strange stucco-like relief decorations made with cement and painted all sorts of crazy colours.

Both of my chewing companions tried admirably to speak english the whole time, for my benefit, but that made the conversation a little tricky to follow at times, especially with Ali's creative use of present and future tense, and 1st and 3rd person grammer. I think we talked about (or at least Ali talked about and I expressed my chat-induced boyish enthusiasm over) Ali's imprisonment and horrendous torture under the brutal Derg regime, HIV, education systems, arcane Harari architecture, ancient scripts and forgotten alphabets. So as you can imagine, it was often hard trying to keep track, and whenever I did lose the plot and ventured a "pardon?" or a "I don't understand..." he would respond with a slow, serious "Ye-es!", nodding slowly and fixing me with his fiery eyes. And of course all of this whilst chewing the cud. I mean chat.

They say a poor man in Harari is a man who has no chat, and life does seem to revolve around it. Beggars line the streets chewing it; the green froth at the corners of their mouths looking slightly alarming with the fierce expressions on their faces. Men with no teeth pound it into a thick paste witth big wooden mortars and pestles, and scoop it into their mouths. It seems that once you chew, that's pretty much all you do, everything else gives way.

That is the principle problem I have with this pastime: it takes over peoples' lives, and the women are left to do the work. That and the fact that it gave me incredible wind, and I had to dart outside Ali's house several times (it's not good to suffer from wind when reclining in company, especialy when you have such unreliable bowel control as I do at the moment...)

So I think I'll spend my afternoons drawing instead. It makes me focussed and that's when I'm at my happiest- but maybe I'll at least draw better now that I've chewed!