Acts and Tracks

Two months out

Here’s what it’s like: it’s like a hole cut out of my life. Ten weeks I didn’t live, because actually living means happy hour at the bar with friends on Friday nights and obsessively trying to know everything about current Colorado politics, walking the dog at dawn even when it’s 17 degrees and washing dishes while Sean dries. What papers over that autumn gap is a picture book of exotic places and dramatic emotions, and not a very good one, since the plot wanders and there’s no resolution.

Here’s what it’s like: an elaborate fraud. One of my fellow Fellows, one usually based in New York, posted a story on Facebook today. From Bangalore. How weird, I thought, that for a minute we were equals in a program and now I’m back writing stories about a change to agricultural tax exemptions and he’s reporting on swamis in India. And yet it also feels like the natural way of things. At the time I thought I was getting a glimpse of the road not taken, but really, it was just a mad, short dash down the road I was never really on.

Here’s what it’s like: frustrating as hell. Because while I don’t feel savvy enough to think I’d last long covering militias in Nigeria or talented enough for anyone to ship me off to India to mingle with holy protesters, it does feel suddenly much more possible that one could live cheaply, on savings, in some challengingly exotic locale and report the quirky little pieces I feel most comfortable with and never, ever have to write another story about redistricting. And never mind those days when I was too homesick to leave the house and buried my longing inside endless books; on those days I was very sure I wasn’t cut out for the expatriate’s life. But on those days I still wasn’t writing about redistricting.

Here’s what it’s like: it’s forgettable. Really, days go by when I don’t think about it. And it was just two months ago. That kind of freaks me out.

Here’s what it’s like: repeated little kicks in the shin. Does it surprise you to hear that my story, my main story but also the one that I only really got onto my last days in the country and so is, I know, built on weak foundations, was turned down by the Washington Post today? Now to shop it again, and again, and then take it out behind the woodpile and shoot it.

I hope someday I’ll be nicer to myself and not see grand experiences as failures simply for refusing to create impossible transformations. Right now though, I’ve been reading a lot of Richard Yates, which feels very right without actually helping anything. A line from Richard Russo’s introduction to his collected stories seems appropriate in this case: “…the cruelest promise of democracy is that anybody can be anything. All men may be created equal, but they become unequal in a heartbeat.”

December 29, 2011 at 12:05 am Leave a comment

Lowered expectations

Early on in my time here, in the midst of a massive panic attack about how many stories I wanted to do and how little time there is to do them, a phrase popped fully-formed and Athena-like out of my head:

“You are going to fail.”

That sounds terrible, but in the wake of that thought came a wave of relief. That’s right, I’m going to fail at this fellowship. It’s inevitable. No matter what I do, I’m going to feel like a failure. Okay then. There’s one thing I don’t have to worry about.

I am going to fail because, quite frankly, I suck at reasonable expectations. I tried to ask myself how many stories on air would equal a successful trip in my mind and … yeah, nope … my mind refused to play ball. All of them! it hollered Every single one you’ve given even the least passing thought to plus any ones any other journalist writes while you’re here and oh yeah, probably any other ideas that crop up for the next five years or so.

(I should mention that in my daily life I feel like a failure for not writing every single article in every issue of the Denver Post so this isn’t exactly a new experience for me.)

I am going to fail because if I did a lot of easy-to-get stories I’d feel like I should have devoted my time to one single deep and meaningful topic … and if I buckled down on one tricky subject I’d envy every other fellow who papered the world with work.

I’m going to fail because the stories I’m doing are definitely not the most important ones in Ethiopia, even though the point of the fellowship isn’t just to rehash headline news.

I’m going to fail because I won’t get a half-hour radio documentary, a magazine cover story, or a book out of my time here.

I’m going to fail because I’m not going to get thrown in jail or thrown out of the country which is, I’m beginning to suspect, what most editors and many of my friends here would like to see happen (or else why would they keep bringing up exactly the kinds of stories that yield those results?)

But knowing that there’s no way what I do with this experience can live up to what I expect of it, is really freeing. It’s become my mantra. When I run into brick walls of bureaucracy, when I haven’t wanted to leave the house for homesickness, when I’ve felt less than intrepid and awesome, I’ve repeated to myself, “you’re going to fail. You know you’re going to fail. So it’s okay. Do what you need to do, or don’t do what you can’t, it doesn’t matter, you’ll feel the same in any case.”

Now, if I can just manage a version of fellowship failure that includes five network stories and three local ones (and have at least one of them feel like a work of significance…)

October 11, 2011 at 1:44 pm Leave a comment

Settling In

It’s been my misfortune to crisscross the country several times with some cat or other in tow. On one occasion, as cries and drool spattered us from the backseat, my co-driver tried to reassure me that since cats don’t really have much short term memory it shouldn’t take long before our furry hostage forgot all about her life outside the moving car and consequently calm down to her new reality. Alas, the cat ignored that quite reasonable theory and managed to spend the entire trip to Alabama in hysterics, but I’ve thought of my friend’s theory many times since.

It’s not like, after a week and a half, Addis is the only life I’ve ever known. It’s just that other lives are starting to feel a bit insubstantial in comparison. Bouncing against the window of an antique Toyota minibus, I find it hard to believe that there are places as clean as I remember, where concrete smooths over the earth in unbroken slabs, always beginning and ending where it’s expected. Haven’t I always lived someplace where driving in the middle of the road is the default and all right of ways are a matter of vehicular negotiation?

Ethiopia still has plenty of shocks and strangeness, it’s just that I’ve gotten used to being shocked. It will be nice to get back to a world where I don’t have to steel myself every time I walk out the door — against begging children, against amorous young men, against crushing poverty, against disfiguring disease — but that squaring of the shoulders is starting to feel like second nature.

Wow, just trying to picture my morning dog-walks at home, where the only human interactions are a few nods and hellos, feels dreamlike right now. You’re just never alone here.

It’s hard for the brain to believe the world contains so much variety, and that for the price of a few hours suspended in the air, one can partake of so much of it. Easier just to accept that this jolting, confining place is my world now and not worry too much about the befores and afters.

September 29, 2011 at 1:52 pm Leave a comment

A holiday bookended by pickpockets

(A shorter version of this post, which photos, appeared in my professional blog. This just adds the story of how the evening ended…)

Have you ever noticed how holidays can be one of the most opaque moments in a new culture? There’s a big festival coming up, everyone knows it’s soon … but no one can quite explain to you what’s going to happen or even when. It’s maddening.

I’ve known since I arrived that Meskel, a major holiday commemorating the finding of the True Cross by Queen Elani sixteen hundred years ago, was on the horizon. But no one could quite tell me when it was going to happen – maybe next Wednesday, no Saturday, no definitely Thursday but anyway all the exciting stuff is on Meskel Eve. And everything will be closed, or it won’t be, the buses will be full, or they won’t run at all, and the celebrating will happen just at the churches, or maybe out in the streets. Everyone is very definite and everyone has a different answer.

Madness.

So of course I’m returning to Addis yesterday when a friend calls to tell me that the big Meskel celebrations have already started so I should hurry downtown as soon as my bus gets in. Sigh.

As we pulled into town in the misting rain, there was a clear sense of holiday. On street corners and in any spare space people were selling bundles of sticks, bunches of fresh grass, and big piles of bright yellow Meskel daisies, the traditional tools of celebration. In the middle of alleyways and squares neighborhoods were erecting cross-topped cones of evergreen boughs to burn in the traditional bonfires. Elani reportedly followed a column of smoke to the cross, resulting in a holiday that feels like a cross between Christmas, Halloween, and the Fourth of July.

Once free of the bus I headed down to Addis’ main gathering place, the aptly named ‘Meskel Square, where vast crowds were gathered to watch church leaders parade around in their holiday finery, accompanied by hundreds of singing, dancing Sunday school students.

Stuck in the back of the pack, I was wondering how I was going to get a shred of useful audio when fate struck, in the form of an unwary hand.

I had my camera up above my head taking pictures when a young man behind me decided to check out the contents of a fortunately empty jacket pocket. The guy next to us saw it, grabbed him, started hollering, and dragged us both to the front of the crowd. I’d packed for pickpockets, with my recording gear latched away in my purse and pockets zippered whenever I put anything in them, so I wasn’t very concerned. Still, the unfortunate would-be thief was my ticket to a front-row view so I followed along as he was dragged away. Thanks pickpocket.

Alas, my new vantage point just revealed that most of the fun was going on across the square, far past the line of blue policemen keeping our segment of crowd in order. I tried waving my press credential around, but was met with little sympathy

I soon learned the front of an Ethiopian crowd is a dangerous place to be. When people behind them surge forward, those in the unlucky front are driven back by police batons. My pale shins were spared, but the kids around me probably ended the holiday with a few new bruises. It definitely dampened the holiday atmosphere.

As I crouched there, it slowly became apparent that the rules were different for ferengi, foreigners, than for locals. Groups of tourists, and individual whites, started to drift out of the crowd, as if by osmosis, and into the square itself. The people around me noticed this to, complaining loudly to the police. I wanted to join them in solidarity; the idea of prioritizing tourists over locals just feels so unfair, and more than a bit racist. But I also had a job to do. So when I got the nod, I crept guiltily out onto the open asphalt. Part of what I love about being a reporter is getting to go behind the scenes, into the places ordinary observers can’t, but when it’s not my profession but my nationality that gets me there? That feels more than a bit icky.

My qualms were quickly forgotten though as I stuck my mic into dancing circles of Sunday school students and interviewed giddy crowd members about the meaning of Meskel. When they lit the giant bonfire, I was there to catch the crackle and roar. There’s such a high in hearing interesting sounds and knowing you’ve got them saved for whatever future use you can find for them.

Now it’s no surprise to anyone that holidays which happen after dark, especially ones which involve fire, tend to bring out a wild element. And sure enough, at some point during the blaze, the barricades came down and the white-clad students gave away to riotous bunches of young men. They were also singing and jumping, but the vibe was now more mosh-pit than praise circle. I figured it was time for me to go.

It was at that moment, in the jumping and running, that a guy knocked my shoulder and appeared to become briefly tangled in the side of my anorak, the side with the pocket where moments before I’d foolishly stuffed my camera and forgotten to zip. I think someone around me shouted ‘Camera! Camera!’ Or maybe it was just my lizard brain hollering. Maybe someone grabbed the thief or maybe he just found the crowd too thick for an easy getaway. At this point things were getting blurry with urgency. I remember having the front of his T-shirt crushed in my fist and I think I swung him around a bit. I know I was shouting at top volume, more furious at the possibility of losing four days of work photos than for fear of the camera itself. He was so surprised it was easy to pry it out of his hands. Some little voice in the back of my head, the one that usually prevents instinctive action, wondered if this was indeed my camera. What if I was mugging this guy? Its protest was drowned out by the blood in my ears.

I have over twenty years of martial arts training, but I’ve really never had to use any of it. I’ve always wondered if, in a bad situation, that knowledge would rush to the fore, or if I’d be paralyze and lose the moment. This was hardly a case of physical jeopardy, but I was so excited by my instant response and the galvanizing anger flooding my veins, that I wanted to shout with pride.

And then it was over. I let go, the thief disappeared, and all around me was a circle of very concerned people offering to take me to the police and help me find the thief.

I should say that this helpful crowd, not the snatcher, is so much more my experience of Ethiopia. For all my complaints about Idle Young Men, the vast majority of the people I’ve met – of all ages and both genders – have been kind, helpful, and almost pathologically concerned that I have a good experience in their country. Addis, as an African city, is a world away from the things you hear about Nairobi or Johannesburg. There are pickpockets in every crowd the world over, and even in that short tussle with the thief I never had a moment’s fear for my physical safety.

I had no interest in trying to catch the thief, his face was just a blur in my mind. So I assigned one concerned young man to walk me to the edge of the crowd and play lookout as I stuffed my recording kit and camera away securely in my bag, and then made my way home.

My legs were jellied adrenaline as I flew up the streets with the departing revelers, poking my tongue against a sore lip (apparently the thief and I bumped more than I’d realized), and giddy with aggressive triumph at my short battle. Every person who asked “How are you finding ziz holiday?” got a hollered answer back, “Betam tiruh!” Very good.

September 28, 2011 at 4:52 am 1 comment

Addis by night

So I’ve been living for a week now in the heart of Addis’s red light district. Once the sun goes down, every other building reveals itself to be a bar, pumping out music at mind-erasing volume. These are mostly old Italian wrecks, their crumbling plaster painted bright colors and their rusting ironwork swagged with half-expired strings of Christmas lights. Their doorways reveal little about the dark drinking caves inside. Inbetween their thirty-cent beers, revelers return to the streets for crackling ears of corn, roasted in tiny clay braziers and in wok-like metal bowls, prepared by the same poor women who spend their days serving taxi men tea out of thermoses.

“Red light district” seems sort of exciting and daring, until you see the bird-girls hanging around the front of these dives, too tight clothes and too-young faces. Then it’s just sad and intractable. I walk fast through here at night; the only women out aren’t exactly up to any good.

Mostly, the midst of this night carnival, I’ve been a hermit, laid flat by jetlag by eight or nine every night, strangely soothed to sleep by the jazz club blaring nearly under my window.

Last night though, I decided it was time to see a bit of things.

At 10:30 I wrapped up “work” (really just making my fourth or fifth panicked list of all the stories I want to do here and freaking out at the reality that fewer than half of them are really possible, not to mention salable) and took off my headphones to realize that the same 1960s Ethio-jazz I’d been listening to on my computer was now bouncing its way up from down below. I couldn’t resist (check out that link and listen to some; you wouldn’t have been able to either.)

The club, reportedly the best jazz spot in Addis, was packed. A mix of sleek, upper-class Ethiopians out for a night on the town, grubby backpackers from the hotel, and Western ex-pats, falling somewhere between the two on the fashion scale. A beer cost as much as some lunches I’ve had here, although still less than a dollar.

After a few minutes, the young man at the mic wrapped up his Amharic stylings, the horns set themselves down for a moment and a cute young woman came out to perform old school American funk hits. It because rapidly apparent that what I had assumed was an introduction to the evolving world of Ethiopian jazz … was actually just a fairly talented Wednesday night cover band going through their Golden Oldies routine.

Stayed for one more Amharic jazz set and left after the woman returned for round of Tracy Chapman hits.

Left, in fact, because, A., the unfailingly cool son of some Ethiopian family friends, was DJing reggae night at a club across town and had promised to help me meet some rastas for a story if I came.

Getting there was an adventure of its own — it started out with haggling over the price of a cab with a man whose entire job is to negotiate in his passable English with hotel guests, continued in the front seat of a taxi as the negotiator helped push it to a start, and proceeded in a screwball drive at midnight across half of Addis. My driver kept up a steady pilgrimage into the baggie of dried tchat leaves in his lap and his Soviet-era taxi handled like it was suspended on rubberbands. It probably would have had more pick-up if he’d just operated it Flintstones style. When we arrived at the club, he managed to hit a puddle and spray god-only-knows-what on a man in an expensive-for-Addis-looking suit. I barely had time to pay before my driver made his getaway.

Club Jubilee was decorated in a style I think of as ‘Tacky Arabia’ — lots of pastel shades, rotund shapes, and a vibe of harem-light (usually there’s a fair amount of gold-colored chrome too, but this was a toned-down version.) The crowd, young clubbers all dressed up, dredy kids ruling the scene, and smattering of white girls who looked to be either young aid workers or the aimless children of diplomats, filled the air with gaggingly sweet smoke from shared waterpipes and downed thimble-sized shots of vodka. My favorite part of the decor were the barstools — the seats shaped like bottletops with the Castel Beer logo plastered on them. I ordered my second St Georges of the night, a very nondescript Ethiopian ‘light lager’ as my beer snob friend calls such things when he’s trying to be nice about it, and waited fora set break.

DJ A. rocked the crowd while his lyricist for the night dredged up memories of Britain’s rude boys, mixed with the generic pacing of today’s hiphop. Good enough stuff to bounce up and down to while trying not to look too out of place, and so bounce up and down I did, feeling thankful that I’m almost old enough, at 33, not to care when I’m alone in a club surrounded by happy groups much better dressed and much better dancers than myself.

By the time A. was done, I was feeling sick from the smoke and sour from the beer and didn’t have it in me to stay too much longer. Despite a room crowded with dreadlocks, the connection A’d promised to introduce me to hadn’t showed. I got a number of a guy who might be helpful and a few minutes chat with the club owner about what it’s like to come back from the US with an engineering degree and open a club in Addis (mainly it seems to involve literally building things yourself). Then it was back in another of Addis’ inevitable blue-and-white taxis (this time the driver was tchat-less, but had to hand his unlabeled bottle to the negotiator before starting the car) for another Mr-Toad’s-wild-ride across the capitol’s almost deserted streets, wondering at how far a person can come in a week from sober DC professionalism to sitting tipsy and apple-tobacco-reeking in the back of an Ethiopian cab.

I find sometimes it’s a bit hard to remember that just living, microphone off, does not actually count as productive work while I’m here. Every time I open my eyes it feels like material of some sort…

September 23, 2011 at 8:57 am Leave a comment