Artist on a Quest in Abyssinia

Images from the Exhibition: An Ethiopian Dream

 

Exhibition looms...

8 months after returning from my incredible trip to the mind-blowing land of Ethiopia, I have finally emerged from the Art Cave, blinking in the bright April light. It's been an incredibly intense period, trying to distill the genuinely life-changing experience into a series of paintings; trying to develop ways of painting that can do some justice to my subject.

The purpose of this blog was to help me document my travels as I moved around Ethiopia last summer, and helps me begin the process of distilling my experiences. If you have not looked at it before, then it is a very simple website in diary-form, with the earliest entries the furthest back on the site, if you follow me.

Well, I have managed to produce a whole new body of work which will be exhibited in the Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh,  next week, from the 18th April until the 6th May. If you are able, drop by- it's a lovely gallery- and see what you think. (You can give give me some feedback by posting comments on this blog if you like!) Here's a wee taster of some details to tantalize you!

Once the exhibition's open to the public I'll upload full images of all the paintings here. Thanks for visiting.
 

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!

The Mysterious Realm of Harar

I have arrived in the ancient mountain-city of Harar, where less than 150 years ago unbelievers (non-muslims to you n me) were immediately killed if they set foot within the sacred walls. Well after my overnight minibus journey i felt they were maybe trying to better the tradition by trying to do away with the infidel before they even got there.They have developed this formidable weapon known as "the Overnight Minibus from Addis Ababa", and it's a miracle I survived!

I knew the overnight journey was not going to be easy, especially with my zero-confince bowel issues, but when the little empty toyaota pulled up outside the hotel, I leapt inside with all the naivete of  a happy little piggy going to market. As soon as my bum hit the seat I knew I was in trouble. This minibus was not so much fitted with seats as somethng more like pews. They were hard as hell- and legroom? Even my stunted little pegs had all their circulation cut off within about 15 minutes. However at least I had the thing to myself...

This is a bad thing. If you get in a bus and it's empty- you are in for a long, long wait, because no minibus driver likes to make his journey unless the his wagon is full- and i mean really full. We drove around Addis Ababa for about 3 hours trying to hustle up some passengers. The first place was a kind of seedy motel-hotel, with lots of young girls wearing lots of make-up, tight clothes and stilettoes hanging around the courtyard. They were easily the best looking and youngest prostitutes I had ever seen (in my vast experience) and i wondered why I hadn't stayed there.  But there were no takers for the bus, unforunately so we drove around some more, and some more, and... a lot more, he driver and his 2 accomplices in this torture shouting into their cell phones the whole time, and stopping in seemingly utterly random places. Eventually, 3 hours later the bus is full- every seat is taken, and we are all rather squashed. So at last we start to drive out of town, and just as we are about to pull onto the 'highway', the minibus stops and the driver runs off. I presume he has gone to take a leak. 20 mnutes pass. I can relate to this, so it's okay. But then he returns- with 4 new passengers! Lucky us- and lucky them! They are crammed into the bus after much shouting and gesticulating. Now we are 19 passengers crammed onto the smallest mini-minibus in the world. I have a huge fat man (of course) on my right jamming me into the window- literally leaning and sitting all over me, and my favourite passenger, and old crone who had to be carried on and jammed right in the back, directly behind me, who has a horrendous infectious-sounding cough and insists on playing the "where will i stick my 5-ft long walking stick" game, and seems to delight in smacking me on the head with it, and trying to poke it into the entirely theoretical gap between me and the window. She also seems to really enjoy just knocking me on the back throughout the whole journey (the backs of the seats are low and there are no headrests.

I am painfully aware that I am not going to sleep, so my ipod becomes absolute gold- if it wasn't for the Stone Roses blocking out the hideous mysogenistic Rap the driver loves so much, spliced amongst cheery ethiopian pop and R Kelly, I might just have died.

My bum has succumbed to the numb- in fact it has gone well beyond that- undergoing a kind of bum-death, that i never conceived could be possible. You see, it is clear that moving- even a muscle is quite out of the question- Fat man has made sure of that- and there simply isn't enough room for all the bits of our bodies; two of the men in front who didn't even know each other before this all began are draped over each other like lovers, trying to find somewhere to put their arms and weary heads.

Many hours pass. We stop at an all-night 'service-station', which is basically a strip of road lined with some rough shacks that make food all night, unleash beggars at you, and have plastic furniture.. There are about 10 minibuses and trucks parked up, and the place is buzzing with activity. This is a chance to try and get some life back into my lower body, but eventually after doing a few bum-exercises it's back onto the crush-bus. It's really hard to force myself back on, but if I stayed at the all-night eateries I'd be at the mercy of the beggars, so on I clamber, back to snuggle up to my big black man.

We haven't driven far when there is a scene of commotion ahead with a crowd of people standing in the road and several minibuses that were at the service strip all parked haphazardly, We stop and everyone gets out. Wearily I clamber out too, only to discover that the crowds have gathered to stare at the spectacle of a mangled minibus, just like our own, that has careered off the road and smashed into a tree some 20 metres off the road. There is luggage strewn all across the dark field and people are weeping and wailing. Suddenly the crowd parts and some men lay down a body at the side of the road and cover her. People are wandering about in a daze, and people from my bus are holding their heads in despair or disbelief, just sitting, or wandering in an out of the crowd. I get back on the bus, but it's over an hour before we get moving again, my fellow passengers seem keen to help, and are wandering around the accident scene, picking things up and trying to move things. But this aimless dithering makes it seem even more nightmarish to me. Everything seems to be done in a daze and people are just fiddling; no-one seems to know exactly what they should or shouldn't do. The police still haven't arrived by the time we drive on. I just can't help thinking how it could have been us. These minibuses drive so fast.

During the long journey I feel like i'm caught up in a strange dream, where things seem inevitable and unchangeable, yet senseless and not understandable. More than just this journey even, perhaps this is a more general way of describing my feelings about this place altogether: An Ethiopian Dream.

When I finally get to Harar I am so happy to get out of the crush-bus alive that I practically skip into the ancient streets with my massive kit-bag slung over my shoulder. I pass through a great fortified gate replete with a crenellated top and arabic inscriptions. The street that takes me into the heart of this mystical realm is narrow, with ancient wonky whitewashed walls that make a welcome break from the corrugated iron chaos of everywhere else, and set off the amazing colours worn by the people here in the best possible way. On my way to my guesthouse my eyes are dazzled by the saffron-yellow cloth bandanas set off against the dark skin of the Oromo women wearing dark green and multi-coloured dresses, bright cereleum blue hijabs and women carrying all sorts of unbelievable things on their heads, and as I srumble down the white dusty alley flooded with bright african light the street children pop and ping around me shouting "Faranjo! Faranjo! Hallo! Give me money!" I know I'm going to like this place. It feels magic already!

mmm food!... oh help, where's the toilet?!

Curry for breakfast, anyone? The Ethiopians have a highly developed food-culture, which is centred around the central concepts of Cake, Coffee, Curry, and.... floppy bathmats.
There appears to me, as a visitor to the country, to be no major food shortage- certainly not in the areas I have been, and nothing that matches the alarming reports in the media I encountered before I arrived here. There has been talk about 'the drought', as the rains have come very late this year (though they're in full force now- believe me!) and that means there will be food shortages ahead, but it seems to be the rising price of grain in the markets that is causing genuine alarm and anger in the markets here. This is not caused by the drought, but is a factor of the rising food prices that are being felt worldwide, that seem to be related to the price of oil and to worldwide markets. The ethiopian staple grain, tef, has risen in price by 300%, and this means many ordinary people cannot afford bread.
The bread made from tef is called injeera, and it is this staple they consume with baffling relish at breakfast, lunch and dinner, that has the alarming consistency of the aforementioned bathmat. Eating traditional Ethiopian fare is a bit of a lottery. When I first dipped my tastebud-toes into these dark culinary waters I was presented with a menu covered in squiggles. This was to be expected- the ethiopian alphabet consists of around 250 charactersd that all look a bit like little dancing stickmen. The 'english' version was barely any more illuminating: Shiro, Tibs, Kitfo... the list of potential poisons went on. I chose a couple that seemed to have nice-sounding names. When I ordered, the waitress asked me, in a slightly worrying way, "cooked or uncooked?" "ummm... Cooked?" At least she asked. The food arrived on a huge round metal dish, about 20 inches in diameter, which seemed to be covered in a light brown cloth or flannel. There were various pastes and curry-type portions heaped onto the flannel in several discrete mounds, and there were 2 more flannels rolled up also on the plate. There were no cutlery. As I looked around the restaurant it seemed the done thing to rip up the flannel, grasp some curry-type stuff with it and pop the whole bundle into one's gob. The flannel, as i'm sure you've guessed was the injeera 'bread'. It's taste was only mildly less offensive than its texture, being sour and slightly zesty, and the texture... well, Paul Theroux describes it in his book Dark Star Safari as like chewing on a spongy thin bathmat.  I would have to concur with this description, although i haven't actually tried the bathmat yet. The whole package is reasonable- the hot beri-beri powder that you sprinkle on your meat n sauce tends to obliterate the sourness of the injeera, and the whole thing gets washed down by some very agreeable St George beer ( at about 40p a bottle- it really is very agreeable!) The experience is definitely improved my much chop-smacking and lip-icking, as i have discovered by observing the local ways. I am busy practising my eating-noises in order to fit in. Finally the meal would not be complete so it seems, without some loony ethiopians dancing about in traditional costume accompanied by some very loud cheery-synth music and some guy singing very melodramatically into a reverb-laden mic. I thought this was just for the tourists at first, but i've been to many places where i am the only faranji in sight, and still they dance- and the locals love it!The music is very perky, and the dancing is even more so, with lots of grinning, jaunty leg-kicking and jerky shoulder thrusting. It's so energetic in fact, that eeven if you've managed to keep the injeera down, following their moves too closely could result in a serious feeling of nausea. The strange thing is, that (apart from the dancing) this strange way of doing food is great for breakfast, lunch and tea. I only tried it for breakfast once- i think when i was doing the rock-churches i the mountains. It was pretty good actually! Most of the time i have been fine with the food, but more recently I have bee really quite ill after partaking in the injeera- and i don't think it was to do with the dancing. So now I am trying to hold it together by eating more western-type food. They are pretty big on pasta and italian-style food, so it's pretty easy to a decent bowl of spaghetti, or a piza (a bit of a life-saver for my poor gut at the moment!). The other unexpected aspect of the ethiopian culinary experience is the cakes. There are zillions of cafes with loads of gateaux, sponge-cakes, pastries and freshly baked biscuits. Yum! These go particularly wel with the amazing coffee. Sometimes a place will put on a coffee ceremony. This is basically where they roast the beans and brew you a cup from scratch using simple stoves and metalpots. It tastes amazing. One of the parts of the ritual is that they pesent you with the pan of beans just after roasting, so that you may smell the beautiful aroma- not in order to grab a hanful of the roasty toasty beans and cram them into your mouth- as i did. Oops.

So food here is pretty good- drink even more so- i just hope my gut holds out until i get back. Hygiene isn't amazing here. It's a very dirty place generally ( i got caked in mud yesterday just walking about the market) and there seems to be a helluva lot of nose-picking. In fact it seems to be perfectly acceptable to this in the middle of a convesation with a relative stranger (me), and i have seen many a waitress having a good pick and roll after serving me my dinner. Lovely!

Flicking Art Souls

So It seems i have completely succumbed to the cliché of the Artist Abroad, wandering about with one's little watercolour box perched on the open pages of one's sketchbook, a bottle of dirty water poking out of one's bag and a number of brushes sticking out one's mouth. This, I have found, is the ideal way to take this city on.

The watercolours are a little easier to manage than the bunch of oil bars that I was busy smearing as much on my clothes and the inside of my bag than on my actual pages, but far from mere convenience dictating the choice of artist's materials, it is of course the intrinsic qualities of the paint that sets it above its sketching rivals. For watercolours are ideal for the sketching technique of 'accidentally' flicking onto any crowder who is getting a little too closely aquainted. This is an extremely satisfying, if somewhat childish way to behave I admit, but this is no child's play as it requires a certain amount of painterly skill to achieve the desired result. The wetness of the brush and the loading of diluted colour must be keenly judged, so as to allow the paint to spring from the sable tip in the correct form of delicate splatter- not so much as to cause genuine outrage to the said crowder, risking physical retribution back upon oneself- and the flick itself must be executed with a deftness of touch that appears to the onlookers to be entirely an accident of brush manouvre- in this way it causes them great irritation, and can often cause them to start back, causing a most satisfying crowd jumble, and affording one much appreciated elbow room for a moment or two, and a gulp of fresh air; a momentary relief from the smell of sweaty bodiea and faeces that often accompanies the press of the crowders.
The other aspect of watercolours that sets it apart as a medium is the versatility of the brush. I find keeping all my brushes held in my mouth a most satisfying way to avoid the tedious conversations one always seems to get into whilst sketching an urban scene. The most common, and certainly the most tedious goes something like this:

Crowder: "Where are you from?"
Serious Artist: "Scotland"
Crowder: "Scoat-land..?"
Serious Artist: (pause) England.
C: Ah Ingland! Beeootiful country! I like Manchester United!
S.A: Oh right. They're good aren't they.
C: Wayne ROONEY!
S.A: Yes he's good isn't he.
C: Cristiano RONALDO! ALEX FERGUSON!  (getting very excited) (Lists more players)
S.A: (Silence- still trying to draw)
C: England-man, which team you like?
S.A: er, Newcastle (trying to think of one...)
C: I like Manchester UNITED! (repeat to fade.)

The fact is that they are MAD for the English Premier League here. Everyone supports an english team. If you say the right things about the right team to your taxi driver you will get a reduced fare! If you want to make friends it's easy- just swat up on some premier-leaugue facts and you can have age-long conversations with people who barely speak any english. They even publish weekly newspapers entirely devoted to Arsenal (the most popular in Ethiopia), Man U, and the premiers Leaugue in general. Really odd.
However, with a bunch of brushes sticking out your mouth the conversation goes very differently:
Crowder: "Where are you from?
Serious Artist: Mmmbwwuummm mmwmb
Crowder: What? Where are you from?
S.A: mmvvuy dwiwmm
Crowder: (Silence)
S.A: (Happy Silence)

This I have found is the surest way to cut a conversation short. Some people don't want a conversation and just want to shout, like the man who pushed into the wee crowd of onlookers the other day and shouted in my face "WHAT ABOUT OUR DROUGHT?! ARE YOU PAINTING OUR DROUGHT?!!"  And there was they guy who stood at the back of the group and shouted "Whit man is the enemy of Ethiopia- the enemy of Africa." I told him to "Fehhw Oahhwh" and he went away soon enough. I thought that listening to my ipod would work, but they just tapped me on the shoulder til I gave in, and even once had someone pull the earphoe out my ear so he could make his essential football-orientated conversation heard. The brushes-in-mouth technique works wonders however, as I think they are quite put off by anything that smacks of a demented mind, and when one is  wildeyed, and painty, in the throes of sketching ecstasy, with 5 or so damp n dangerous oral protruberances waggling to the rhythm of one's  mark-making, one somehow seems that bit less suitable as a prospective best friend. 

the colours of a country

I have returned to Addis Ababa a braver and more intrepid artist. Arriving for the second time in the city of shambles is a much less daubting experience than the first. Driving through the streets in a bright-blue Lada taxi I am not surprised by the beggars that press their hands and faces against the passenger window whenever the car stops in a queue of traffic; I don't baulk at the dilapidation of the shack-stores lining the streets that seem to unfold into disintegrating patchworks of corrugated iron and brightly painted boards; I'm not bothered by the taxi being cut-up by a squad of traffic-savvy donkeys traversing the highway, taking their place in the traffic queue; and although disorientated by the sheer muddy sprawl of it all, it doesn't make me feel quite so anxious; but what does still hit me is the colour. I'm still caught up in the vibrant riot and swept along, out of sensory control, and this is what I love about this place.

I had decided to give myself a week back in Addis and had ambitious plans to spend a week pushing myself to try a more experimental approach to my sketching. However the latest assault on my digestive system meant that I spent the first day lying on my bed making little moaning noises and fantasisng about cheese sandwiches. Not quite the start I  had intended. By the next day I decided to get out there and brave the Addis crowds. So having had no food for goodness knows how long, my rugby-player-type physique reduced to a poor wraith-like form, struggling with the weight of my propelling pencil and my hardback sketchbook I wafted out of the hovel, oops i mean the hotel, and drifted into the crowds. I started by trying to capture in line what I was seeing as I was walking- patterns, shapes, movement and mess but I wasn't getting anywhere. There were so many people all around me, and whenever I stopped to try and draw something more completely, the inevitable crowds coagulating around me meant that I caused a log-jam in the tiny streets, and the shopkeepers where my personal throng did clot got really narked, and threatened me on several occaisions with the wares of their shops (a mop and a ladle). I moved on (I've come up against a mop before and it's a fairly invincible weapon to overcome, especially if wet) My drawings seemed so insipid, so lifeless. It seemed to me that it would be impossible to get at what really made me buzz about this place without dealing in colour. It's not that the colours here are particularly attractive: everything seems to have been painted with cheap industrial paints, or draped in some kind of battered tarpaulin, but all this improvised decoration sets off a jarring exciting vibration.
When you first arrive in a country the colours are one of the first things that strike you as different to home- at least that's true for me. The longer I spend in a place the more I get used to them and stop noticing. However, either I'm getting better at staying tuned in, or else this place is so throbbing with a headrush of colour that it doesn't give you a chance to get used to it. The colour that dominates is the bright cobalt blue of the corrugated tin fences that colour the streets everywhere like bright industrial veins, and it's the same colour that moves through the city too, adorning as it does the innumerable lada taxis and toyota minibuses that course through the roads like little blue bloodcells. There's a slightly stronger blue that covers much dilapidation and brokenness, as it is the colour of plastic tarpaulin that is used like a sticking plaster to cover what  has not been built properly or is falling apart.  Tarpaulin also seems to abound in the opposite colour of bright traffic-cone orange, and the two often sit side by side, patched over broken walls, or serving as a roof or a canopy creating an optic vibration that would test Matisse's mettle to render as harmonious complementaries. Other colours en vogue for a shop or a structure are lime green and a kind of lilac-purple that I associate with foul-tasting medicine, like they have tried to flavour their concrete with a chemical version of blackcurrent to disguise the taste of poverty.
The colours of the Ethiopian flag are green yellow and red, the colours adopted by the rastafarians, and the ethioipians love to wear these colours. Many women wrap themselves in bright white shawls and headscarves, but they will be catch the eye with bands of these colours at the hem. A lot of guys wear these colours too, and they do look good against their fair vrown skin-tone, the average ethiopian being quite light in complexion; darker than egyptian, but lighter than Indian.
Red is another colour that punctuates every scene. This is the bright bold red of coke advertising. It is notable that there is hardly any advertisinfg here; hardly any billnoards or bus adverts etc, but Coke is omnipresent and everything from permanent railings and shopstands, to millions of posters on everything invite me to Live on The Coke Side of Life, or something. I'm not sure what this means, but i'm up to about 4 a-day. There is a certain yellow that gets everywhere too. This is the plastic-yellow of Water-containers. These tanks, complete with a  little red tap are on every corner, strapped onto the roof of every minibus and, in the country, strapped to the back of every other woman, walking the miles from the water-source to her village. (The blokes in the country seem restricted to carrying the ploughs and herding the animals, but never seem to do anything as back-breaking as carrying the yellow cans).
There seems to be plenty of water around to me- torrents fall from the sky every day- but it is the rainy season. It doesn't seem as though much of it is organised or managed though. This is the problem. Addis Ababa, as Africa's 4th largest city, continues to grow much faster than the government can possibly cope with, and the resulting confusing chaos of growth, is really what is screaming out about this place.  As I stood, sketchbook in hand, pencil paused, trying to find a way in to the incomprehensible tangle, a wee lad called out to me from my crowd, "Why do you draw this? This is not good. This is poor." He seemed unusually articulate, although he was only maybe about 12. I tried to explain simply with some blether about colour, pattern and liveliness, but he was not deterred from making his point. "This is like this because we are poor. Here it is not even so bad," he pointed to the dilapidated buildings. "Where i live it is more dirty and more poor."
"Yes! What are you going to do about that?!" shouted another crowder.
"Sorry, I'm just trying to draw," I confessed, and shut my sketchbook and lost myself in the throng.