Chapter 3: The one with Barry
.
Nekemte, Saturday 5th of September 2015
Frost,
.
god, this isn't working for me.
.
.
Barry,
I can hear you teasing me, cause I'm actually doing this. Well, keep 'em coming, it's not gonna get much weirder.
We arrived in a town called Nekemte an hour ago. There's no power nor running water in our hotel. I feel like Meryl Streep when I look at the candlelight through my mosquito net. Only the sheets are clammy and the air is thick with moisture. Out of Africa didn't look that cold either. But Maura has given me a couple of gabis (traditional white cotton blankets). Nothing gets through those, it's amazing.
Alban is fast asleep, lying next to me, wrapped in a gabi himself. He's been so good. Didn't complain for the whole ride. Although, Hannes also made sure we'd take a break at least every two hours. Plus, he stopped at all the right places.
I had my first traditional coffee ceremony next to the road (though I refused to drink it with rancid butter and salt, used sugar instead cause the taste is good but also has a strong peatiness to it), after that we stopped for breakfast – scrambled eggs with toast, incredibly well done, too, at the next stop he ordered us avocado juice mixed with some papaya and yoghurt, then a traditional lunch, and coffee again... oh! and some grilled corn, which they sold next to the road as well and we could snack on it in the car.
Hannes Kruus, an old friend of Maura's, is a carpenter from Sweden, one of the last missionaries in western Ethiopia, who has been living over here since he was seventeen. You'd never guess his age – judging by his appearance, his... awareness and fitness he might be as old as me, but he's 57!
I like him. His intern Simon from Australia and he arrived in Addis yesterday late afternoon to pick us up and this morning around 5:30 we started our trip westward.
Back in Addis you couldn't really see anything, literally, due to the smog, the rain and mist, the hundreds of white and blue mini buses jamming the streets and blocking your window, or because of the high-risers that get conjured up out of nothing; heck, they're even building a subway, which seems to be responsible for most of the bad traffic nowadays.
Those construction sights work with uneven long branches that serve as scaffolds. They look incredibly dangerous and unsteady and the workers gotta climb from branch to branch in order to reach the spot where they want to continue painting, or setting in windows, etc. And everything they need to fulfill their tasks like buckets full of paint or bricks and stuff is also balanced and transported up that way. The scaffolds let you guess how much one life is worth and how quickly it can be replaced, which is a comment Maura made on that. And she kept telling her horror stories all day.
The last time she came here was in 2007. Back then the Ethiopians celebrated the year 2000, because the Coptic calender apparently differs from ours by seven years. They had prepared extensively for their celebration of the millennium (and unfortunately New Year's falls on the date of September 11th for them!). Therefore the world press had their eyes on Ethiopia. Maura thinks, they must have felt like eminently respectable people were coming to visit, even though they would only be watching from their couches in front of a TV. So the government decided to clean the city. Not one beggar were to be allowed to come up to a car at a red light as soon as September started.
I actually didn't see any beggars around the traffic lights either, but now, seven years later, that's due to a new law as Hannes explained. Drivers are not supposed to give money to beggars anymore. It's supposed to reduce automobile accidents.
In 2007 it had been different – and it had been handled terribly. People got loaded into trucks and deposited outside of town. Then their tents and what little they had got burned and if they actually managed to make their way back to the city – and only few did – then they would have had nothing to return to. Most of them were women and children who already had no support.
At least the press got wind of it and captioned it as awful, too. Not the impression Ethiopia wanted to make. I'm not really sure why Maura felt it'd be okay to dump that story as a first impression on me, though.
Maybe she's trying out some reversed psychology thing and believes the less I like Addis the more I will like the town we're going to. Cause she sure seems to like it and I get if that's important to her. Well, knowing Maura, she probably just couldn't stop herself from sharing those stories and didn't think of it like that. And it's alright, I can handle that. Besides, my first impression had already been gray rain, gray buildings, muddy roads – she couldn't really spoil it.
The rain had stopped sometime during the night (at last!) and it was freezing cold outside. Four Ethiopians and a TV waited in front of the land rover, eager to get to the west as well. They exchanged some words in afaan Oromo, the local language of the western Ethiopians which Hannes speaks fluently, and then they climbed between our luggage into the rear.
I still feel bad about using up the backseat by ourselves. And Maura's comment that they wouldn't wanna have it any different since it is allegedly perceived as disrespectful to have visitors sit in the back of the car, didn't make it any better. How many countries are out there that still need a Rose to stubbornly sit in the front!?
It was amazing to see the metropolis Addis wake up. I had to think back to early hours in Boston. How many tipsy ladies and barfing guys have I seen whenever I got up that early to go for a run... never pretty. Here, I saw donkeys or people carrying firewood all along the road. Others, wrapped in light-colored gabis, maybe on their way to work. Slowly we found our way around goats, sheep and dogs into the misty countryside.
But once we left the caldera of the volcano and the sun came through to scare the fog off - it was like you could see e-v-e-r-y-thing! I felt so good... so right. Despite the cold. There was nothing – nothing!– I had to do but watch. And I'm telling you: Who needs a Grand Canyon? It was breathtaking. Hundreds of shades of green, beautiful valleys lined by powerful mountains, effervescing rivers that were recharged with lots and lots of rainwater and huge fields of corn and something I don't know.
Hannes must've seen it on my face, he'd stop the car whenever my hand twitched and let me get out to take a picture. (After the first couple of stops I got over the embarrassing sensation that the Ethiopians in the back must think I'm crazy, taking pictures of nothing but landscape from all directions. )
Frankie got me this wonderful Leica as a gift to the small farewell party Maura and Ma had thrown as a surprise for me. He had me fight tears. She's that pretty. I love the clicking sound she makes and I love that after the clicking something mechanical is actually set into motion inside. And I love that I cannot look at the picture right away. It's like wrapping a present and one day when I'll unwrap it, it will still be a surprise.
Hang on a sec...
I just had to mail this to Frankie. (They don't have post offices in the west, but you can get a Wifi connection almost anywhere – can you believe that?) And while I had my phone out I also had to send a pic of Alban to my Ma. He's so adorable when he sleeps. Well, he's adorable all the time, but a sleeping child is something... else. I remember that one time you've warned a guy in the BPD cafeteria that you would arrest him for "baby waking". I love you for that.
You know, the way Alban's hair looks right now he looks a little - yeah, he looks a little like you when you were a boy.
I can't believe it's been just over a year since we talked. One year has passed since you died. So much has happened, but in contrast to losing you... one year suddenly seems short. I just realized how much I expect of people whose sorrow "already" dates back one year.
I know, I should believe that where you are now you are able to see and know about the things we do, but... it just doesn't feel like it. It feels like you're missing out on... on everything, really.
I mean, I'm in Ethiopia now. (!) Yeah, what was I thinking?
Honestly. I think, I didn't really get what this would mean, even that I'd really be doing this, until I stepped on that plane. I have no idea why I came here. I don't know if Maura is enough of a reason. How come I'm so numb to decisions as big as this?
.
I never got the chance to tell you that I'm pregnant. You were already on vacation and... you never came back from that.
I gave him your name, you know. This feels strangely like a confession. I had a son and I named him Alban Barry. My great-grandfather's name was Alban. He died in Italy before I was even born, but Ma loved him. I grew up with the stories of the wonderful person he must have been.
Do you think it's weird to give a kid the names of deceased people? Maura tells me that it is quite common in Ethiopia. People even name their child something that translates "taking the place of a lost one". I don't want Alban to have that hanging over him.
Take for example the Boodenstines (a couple Maura and I met at breakfast yesterday). Thank god, I didn't have to talk to them, but of course Maura had to make "small" talk. (Some people really don't know what small means.) They had been working for MSF 25 years ago and had a baby that got really sick. They left Ethiopia in a hurry to get better medical care, shortly thereafter, their child died. Now they've come back for the first time since then. To get closure, I guess. Maura says they have to make peace with this country.
You should've seen the way she studied me when she told me. I hate it when she feels like she has to hold something back as if I wouldn't worry as long as I don't know. I am worried, but I wouldn't have come here if she hadn't been convincing in the first place. And I really don't think she tried to trick me into going, you know, so why not be honest?
Anyway, I wanted to say that it crept me out the way Mrs. Boodenstine looked at Alban. You could feel her guilt even without knowing the story. I wouldn't want her to hold him, I didn't even want her to look at him like that.
But now I feel bad about feeling that way. After all, I'm the one who gave my son the names of two dead people. I guess at the time it didn't feel like that. I'm not sure. The day of his birth is kind of hazy to me. That's probably normal, right? Anyway, I don't wanna dig into that.
.
On your birthday Maura and I left a candle burning all day, we bought flowers and at a yard sale an old ceramic vase that must've been blue in another life, we cooked your favorite food and went for a walk in the afternoon sun. You would have liked it.
Often I think it's gonna get better... it's gonna be right again. One day. But some things can't get better: You're not coming back, not ever. You're never gonna meet Alban, never gonna talk to me again, or laugh with me. We'll never share a desk again, you'll never mock me the way only you did anymore, you'll send no more postcards, letting me know that you're thinking of me, too. We won't spend time together ever again.
.
There's something I've been meaning to tell you. I missed you, too, when you were in San Diego. Still do.
Yours,
Jane