The easy girls are from abroad
Mistakes and Misconceptions – My first two weeks in Ethiopia
June 11th 2018
When “Il Duce” invaded Ethiopia in 1941 he allegedly said: "it is time for the Italians to have their place beneath the African sun". More than 50 years went by. In two weeks, I haven't found one person that speaks Italian and it's been raining every day in Addis Abeba (or “Addis Ababa,” in foreign translations).
As I start to write this, I notice how many parentheses come to mind. How many additions I would like to make, explaining how every subject raised here is more complex than one can write in a short essay – from the climate (it does not rain every day, there is a whole season where it’s dry) to the Italian influence (they kicked Italian butts twice, but calze is the word for socks etc…). Ethiopia, like any country, has layers of complexity one cannot understand in the short-span of a life-time.
Being here, instead of the guarded bubble of The New School, makes me question how many times my own research drafts have contained the same elements found in the dictator’s speech: Simplifications of the entire African continent, assumptions of the West’s place in it’s reality and notions of time that do not apply here, among many, many other mistakes.
Even now all I have is a glimpse of local reality. It stands right in front of me and I’m unable to decrypt most of it. My attitude towards my own ignorance fluctuates from Socrates to Whitney Houston, from “All I know is that I know nothing” to “it’s not right, but it’s ok”. I see no other alternative than to admit the informational void years of European-centered education has made, and try my best to be intellectually honest, in my research and the field experience.
I came to Ethiopia to explore how the idea of “underdevelopment” affects the local business landscape. If the basis of a country’s economic functionality is trust, how can countries in the periphery of capitalism grow? There is a global mentality that plays against the global South and I wanted to understand how that imaginary affects people here, inside and outside of Addis.
Ethiopia is a country that has currently and historically received economic aid and whose international image is frequently linked to hungry children. When a widespread famine hit the country between 1983 and 1985, a song called “Do they know it’s Christmas?” was promoted by the likes of Bono and Sting and the money capitalized on the campaign promoted by Aid 30 was given to the authoritarian DERG government who ruled over Ethiopia. Westerns “Mussolined” all over that one, understanding nothing and assuming everything – including the idea that Christmas as we know it is a thing here.
Ethiopia’s image never truly recovered from the poverty porn. That and more is appearing in one-on-one interviews about local’s perspective on their country and the possibilities they see for the future.
My research premise stated there would be psychosocial barriers to trust in the country’s economy, affecting the way business students and business owners (the country’s theoretical economic thriving force), would invest in local production, or even decide to stay in their place of birth.
What I didn’t account for, was how much Ethiopia’s history and ubiquitous past plays an essential part on the economic perspective of the Ethiopians I interviewed so far. From the fact that their territory is the birth-place of humankind to their resistance to colonization; from them having their own orthodox church to Addis being a center for African political institutions, including the African Union. Slowly, but effectively, the single-story of poverty-related helplessness gains new dimensions at every step.
At the same time, it deepens the questions related to the meaning and trajectory towards “development” in the current stage of capitalism. Is it more than economic growth? Is it to acquire more Western references? Is it having free and general access to good-quality education? – If it is that last one, the United States, the country I chose to live in, is not developed yet.
There is still a lot to unveil, and a lot that I will not unveil at all. The opportunity to get to know more of what “underdeveloped” means in the words of the citizens of places long neglected and minimized in the global discourse, is a chance to understand the sentiment of hopelessness in the global South. Even, how to, maybe, transform it.
Buildings in construction cover the landscape of Addis Ababa – “New Flower” in Amharic. Signs with an architect’s sketch and the name of the Chinese company who is building it stand proudly on the same fragile wall some people temporarily constructed their house in. It has a number on it. It has families inside. Right next to the construction, sign of progress, sign of infrastructure, there are families who are not going to be able to live there once the building is finished.
Inside the walls I can hear a rooster, screaming that morning has arrived. In the muddy streets of the capital of one of the oldest lands occupied by men, I wonder whose “New Flower” it is. On the same high-way there is a Coca-Cola sign announcing the arrival of the World Cup 2018. I wonder, is that what all this external investment feels like? Something that is happening in the other side of the world and highly-advertised in Ethiopian ground? Will they be a part of it, or just watch on the side-lines, as “progress” parades through their door?
Talking about all this, I sat on the floor of the parking lot of the Medhane Alem Cathedral, talking to an economist about his take on the Chinese endeavor. A priest walks past us, gives my friends their blessing, goes to the ground, picks up a rock for me to sit on. As I see his silent act of kindness towards a stranger, I remember home and agree with Bruno Latour: “We were never really modern, were we?”.
Bubbles and amputees – June 24th 2018
Brazilian poet Manuel Bandeira once wrote a poem called “The beast”/ “O bicho”. It roughly goes like this:
Yesterday I saw an animal
On a filthy hallway
Searching for food among the hand-barrow
When it found something
It did not inspect or smelled
Just swallowed with voracity
The beast was not a dog
It was not a cat
It was not a rat
The beast, my Lord, was a man.
Translating poems always feels wrong but writing this text has been a challenge – I need all the help I can get. I tried to hide behind a video essay, trying to not directly deal with the paradoxes and pains of the country I’ve been living in for the past month, but there is an importance in the exercise of finding words. It is essential for a researcher to develop the ability of verbally capturing reality. Particularly when it is one they desperately try to run-away from.
At the YOM Institute of Economic Development, the graduate institution that agreed to host me during my time here, dirty off-white walls mix with see-through plastic doors. In the labyrinth inside the commercial building I work at, everything looks the same. A newcomer wouldn’t know where YOM start, and other companies begin. Here, an aviation school stands alongside a dentist’s office, an art gallery, a production company.
In between very long internet cables and crammed elevators, one would think an office in Ethiopia would be like any office in the world. Hiding in this office would be a way not to face what is out there – on the streets of Addis. If I just focused on the spreadsheets, eventual trips to luxurious resorts and feline conservation centers (baby lions!), a trip to Ethiopia wouldn’t change me on the inside. At the same time, I would get the Western-hero sympathy card every time I told that story about how I lived in East Africa.
Determined to interact with people outside of YOM’s comfort, I started to take longer walks in my outings through Addis. Here, it is impossible not to notice the people who walk barefoot through the muddy streets, pointing at their mouths when they see you. There are loads of children offering to clean your shoes for a couple of Birr (the Ethiopian currency). That is not too different from the streets of my native São Paulo, Brazil, where children lift their hands amidst cars when the traffic light turns red. In Addis, is the number of children, the number of people by the sidewalk, that makes it harder.
Irkata, - I’m sorry – I mutter, unable to explain why I’m here and they are there. Anthropology teaches: if there is a way of helping them, the first step is to respectfully look, to notice, to stare, even if it hurts. So I stare and it hurts. The comfort of my condition bleeds out of me every day on my way to work. It turns my luck into responsibility and my efforts to see into my one weapon to avoid the blindness that affect most of those who look at the poor from the outside.
Just like in Manuel Bandeira’s poem, as quick as a turn of the head, it is possible to convert those who explicitly suffer into a mass with no name, no past, no laughs – a beast. In the defensive mode of not wanting to see what it hurts to look at, one can ignore the intelligent solutions to the lack of resources and the characteristics that make them different and at the same time, human.
Walking to work, I started to see familiar faces. The man in the parking lot who waves and calls me “Japanese” (I don’t get it either), the guy at the cafe who waves repeatedly and enthusiastically, the armed guard who waves at my spirit saying “Salam”. My spirit acknowledges him and his AK-47. Hello to you too.
One of the faces in the crowd is Maza’s. Maza is an 18-year-old girl. Her English is as good as my Amharic. Our interaction consists of us smiling at each other and pointing at things we like. Her necklace, my necklace. The plastic bottles she ties to the bottom of her house to collect water from the rain, the scar I have on my right hand. On the first time we spoke, after days of waving at a distance, I put my hand forward to shake hers. I felt connected to her, I felt for a while like I understood her more. Her hand approached bringing a wave of guilt as I saw that her palms and arms were covered in dark bubbles and scarred tissues. “You know nothing, Sofia Silveira-Florek” – I thought, speaking to me in the third person, trying to distance myself from me and the fact that I hesitated before shaking Maza’s hand. The difference between the opportunities I had and she had were clear as the coats of the thousands of doctors who took care of every sore throat, every flu, every symptom I’ve ever had. Irkata, Maza. Irkata.
The difficulty of writing this is that I bring with my words a truckload of guilt, but not many suggestions, not one story of how I actively used my privileges and resources to help Maza – who says she is ok – ashy – ok.
Coming back from my walk I return to YOM, with its development classes and vision for a technologically advanced Africa. When my internship started, they asked for help with all medias related to the institute. Faced with an invitation to design brochures, logos and graduation invitations, I cowered away from the task at first, explaining that I’m not a designer. But when the budget is limited, filmmakers turn into designers, solutions are created and Maza still sells her corn at the edge of the road.
I shied away from this text (irkata for the delay) just like I shied away from my responsibilities towards YOM – in the end, they all pinch me in the same spot, asking what my role in all this is. As I allow this trip to change me from the inside out, the resorts and luxury hotels Ethiopia has to offer seem further and further away. Acknowledging and interacting with the space around me changes things. It changes what organizations I want to negotiate with, and how. It makes me realize how blind I still am. It makes me think of José Saramago’s words in another unfair translation: “I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.”
The way I see it, if you are a student from Brazil living in America, or someone working for three full months in the global South, you can find at the back of your Western-sympathy card an invitation to be a bridge in between resources and local people with a vision of a less unequal country. Building a world where your destiny is not defined by where you were born depends on the work of those who are fortunate enough to choose if they will help to build a different global landscape, or not.
If you are in that privileged position and you ignore the fact that you are part of a resourceful minority you are no different than the Americans and Western-European who trashed Ethiopia’s image in the name of aid. If you are the lead of an international NGO and you refuse to give space and autonomy to local coordinators - those you claim to be helping - you are not helping.
I will never truly understand how Maza feels, but I can understand what her challenges are if I respectfully look at and listen to her. If I do not let my discomfort prevent me from seeing her greatness and the odds that play against her, I can find programs and solutions, something, that truly works for the people it should work for.
Systemic poverty is something to be faced with and by every available human force. It needs you to ditch the truck-loads of misplaced AID dollars and guilt described earlier and turn it into a boat to be landed on an appropriate site in hands that are going to act at a grass-root level to face problems they know how to diagnose. At the same time, we need to amplify the solutions already found by locals, not destroy or ignore them. Turn Maza’s plastic bottle into a bucket and YOM’s ideas into projects.
In the month I’ve been here, looking around does not get easier. It does not hurt less. It probably never will. It makes me realize how much I still have to learn. It makes the commercial building’s maze bigger and more confusing, but at the same time it makes me want to fight harder to create fruitful partnerships and lasting resources. If you are looking for how to contribute, jump in, because there is a lot to be done. To paraphrase the 1975’s blockbuster “Jaws” scene when the humans finally see the shark: “we are going to need a bigger boat”.
The easy girls are from abroad – farangi in Ethiopia
July 30th
The sunset dropping over Addis Ababa, bringing shadows to the afternoon. Skirts and scarfs bounce right above the floor as a group of women pass. The colorful patterns wave, dispersing color through their reflexes in the floor of mud and sand. Smell of corn and smoke arise, mixing with the scent of garbage deposited in the stream nearby.
A group of boys were on their knees shining shoes. A grown man with a boy’s face sells shoes. My dirty snickers are outshined by the elegance of the perfectly polished heels, boots and sandals that parade through Djibouti street. The blue taxis honk, trying to park. Two male friends run into each other and continue the path together, holding hands. A water bottle hits me in the head. A water bottle hits me in the head?
A man with a white shirt asks, in English, if I’m ok. A woman apologizes in the name of Ethiopia. A lot of people are looking. A group of four men smirked. Other men laugh in the background. And yeah, I was ok.
“They think you are Italian”, said the man in the white shirt. “Are you?”. “No.” And we kept walking. “You know, during the state of emergency, they killed farangis.” – “Who are they?” – he didn’t answer. He kept apologizing, saying he didn’t agree with violence against foreigners, “but some people blamed them (us) for our current political situation”. He said the water-bottle guys did not follow the laws of God. He asked me if I followed the laws of God. I thanked him and went away. The conversation took a weird turn before I could. Went home through the longest way.
His name is Hafik. Mine is Sofia. I am a 1,64m, skinny as a grasshopper, apparently Italian-looking girl. Does “Italian-looking” means white? Probably. I keep walking. The idiosyncrasies his words represented to me hit me in the head like a water-bottle.
Ethiopia and Liberia are the only countries in Africa that didn’t go through the colonization process as we know it. When I ask my interviewees their favorite thing about Ethiopia, the unison response has been “the history.” People are proud of their fight and victory against the Italians and they say it loud – specially to an Italian looking girl.
But what about the future?
What makes Ethiopians proud of their present, and what kind of hope they have for whatever will come next? That is my question. In the periphery of capitalism, how can one move past the pains of colonization and imperialism while looking for a future characterized by modernity? A concept invented by the same ones Ethiopia is proud of denying. It is like the whole country was bitten by a lion and then, hurt, angry and confused it squirms in a state of pure joy “finally!” as it crawls to a lion’s den. I should not rely so much on metaphors. That one is especially aggressive given that Ethiopia’s symbol is a lion. Rarely, when the business students I interviewed demonstrated hope, it was through faith in the same corporatocracy that swallows Ethiopia in debt.
It is not like I have any other suggestions, but it doesn’t seem like the brightest idea to walk into the lion’s den. At the same time, it seems like there is not much space for a middle ground: either Ethiopia puts down the water-bottle and come to play with those who harm its people, or they shall cave into isolationism – and that would make the population turn on its government.
I still have more questions than answers. But the experience in Ethiopia has brought me closer to the kind of questions I want to ask. The way I see it, the United States and Europe stand as a modern lighthouse. It is the reference of life and ways for Latin American and African countries, but at the same time is what deeply consumes them. A lighthouse that devours the same boats it shows the light to. And just like an insect that is drawn to the candle that kills them, countries like Ethiopia drown permanently away from the shore. Ok, now I’m ready to quit the metaphor game.
In strategic places, there is an almost aggressive adoration of foreigners and a simultaneous rejection for everything they represent. The flux is thin, constant and everchanging. A few blocks away from where I was hit, a fancy bar vibrated to every goal Belgium scored against Brazil in the World Cup. The crowd swooned for England and other European teams. Rarely a person at a bar could justify why they were cheering for said team. Couldn’t investigate more thoroughly, but to hell with who says politics and futebol do not mix. I warn the sociologists that there is something there to be investigated. On the streets of Addis, my Brazilian jersey was praised, but once I got into a fancy bar, the Ethiopian elite didn’t take more than two seconds to cheer emotionally for teams whose queen still wear jewels stolen from their land. And I can’t blame them. Especially when one has access to the cosmopolitan side of their city and is in a country whose infrastructure was developed by foreign forces, it is hard not to fluctuate between fear and/or an inferiority complex. Let them cheer for England.
Infrastructure, technology and real state are areas mostly controlled by foreign investment and private corporations, at the same time, the climate in Ethiopia is of liberation, as if the prime-minister Abiy Ahmed Ali’s action of liberalizing Ethiopia’s economy meant freeing Ethiopia from itself and not opening the possibility for more exploration by others.
Privatization of previously state-controlled industries will possibly bring an improvement in services, but it is important to ask who will hold the profits and where will the money go.
I am now back in the US. An ankle injury has anticipated my return and I now sit comfortably in a fancy New Jersey home. The whole experience in Ethiopia seems to slide through my fingers. I don’t want it to go. I will not let it go away.
After all, I realize, if I want to participate in the battle against global corporatocracy and the systematic subjugation of countries like Ethiopia I need to act. Bell Hook’s words in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom alert about the necessity of antiracist behavior, not simply non-racist actions. Same principle applies in the fight for a world where one’s limitations are not decided by where they were born in.
I have to remember what I learned from Ethiopians search for “development” amidst private and state players that actively need them to fail and fall into debt. I need to preserve and expand what I saw bringing their words to American ears and promoting conversations and actions that pressure the global and local elites of the world, wherever they may be. It is a constant pursue, to let my experience make me not cringe in guilt but act in eagerness to change the world.
No matter where you are, or what political discussion presently afflicts you. From the privatization of previously state-held companies, to the American health-care crisis, Exon-mobile merge with Ethiotelecom, authoritarianism in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it all seems to be a unison fear of the same daring-question: Where will the money go?
I come back to the moment before I take the turn and to the man in the white shirt, to the strike of the water-bottle. To the tied hands of Ethiopians. Killing the farangi won’t help. My flair for the dramatic couldn’t be shied away. It invited me to play, daydream: after all, what would happen if I was killed in Ethiopia?
Well, being under the care of a United States organization, the American government would be involved. There would be at least one comment on the press. Probably, the Brazilian and American embassies would be alarmed: “Is it safe for tourists to be here?”. They would issue a note, maybe even an alert.
Since the 1950’s Ethiopian airlines promotes themselves as the bridge to a new world destination. Only in 2013 the Ethiopian government started heavily investing in tourism. Meanwhile, on the streets, the question “why are you here?” still moves from a surprised disbelief that someone from the “first world” would come to Ethiopia to an aggressive distrust in you and your suspicious presence.
Ethiopians reaction to tourists and students demonstrates how state and civil society are not on the same page. To play in the global game and match Ethiopia’s economic growth with actual demonstrations that incentivize even more growth, tourism is a powerful weapon – at the same time, it is a double-edged sword that gives foreigners like me even more power. Don’t kill the Italian-looking girl. It is literally not worth it.