Category: Perspective

Learning to be Ethiopian again

“I want to go to Holland or to England because it’s clean and beautiful there,” said my 11-year-old sister Lidya, who has never traveled outside of Addis Ababa or owned a television. Looking out of the taxi’s window I can see that city streets are not too clean, drivers throw garbage out of the window, men pee wherever they feel like peeing and it’s okay for anyone to pick their nose, publicly, for minutes, and shoot little snot balls up in the air. Still, I tell Lidya that Holland is really not that much cleaner or more beautiful than Ethiopia.

“It’s just cold,” I say.

“How cold?”

“Too cold.”

I don’t want to admit to her that streets in the Netherlands might be cleaner because I’m trying to make this country my home again. One year ago, I moved back to Addis Ababa after finishing my postgrad degree. I lived in the Netherlands for 23 years before this, after being adopted by a Dutch family when I was four. I grew up learning how to speak Dutch instead of Ethiopia’s national language Amharic. I watched Dutch cartoons like Fabeltjeskrant instead of listening to the local radio shows my friends tell me about. My favorite food was Wentelteefjes (the Dutch version of French toast), and I almost forgot the taste of Ethopia’s traditional dish, injera (flatbread).

I’m often complimented by strangers for returning ‘home’ – and Addis does mostly feel like home especially when I’m surrounded by friends. I came back to discover what my place of origin is; to see if I was still Ethiopian despite growing up abroad with a European family. And, of course, to see what type of family I would have grown up with had I not been adopted.

Young boys playing soccer on the streets of Addis Ababa. (Reuters)

Strangers ask me daily what happened to me when they notice I don’t speak Amharic. I’m learning though – there’s an alphabet poster stuck to the wall in my home, which has earned me the nickname “Amharic baby” from Lidya. I’m still getting the hang of proper greetings in formal settings and the rules and customs around social interactions.

People usually feel pity for me because I wasn’t raised here and didn’t absorb the culture and language. So I’ve made an effort to behave like a proper Ethiopian girl by wearing my hair straight these days (I used to be pro-Afro) and listening politely to my mother’s pastor who hopes to find me a suitable fiancé. (I’m not too sure if I want to get married, and I feel the pastor is intruding in my personal life.)

Celebrating the return of the lost daughter must seem like a major disappointment for my Ethiopian mother. I cannot imagine what her community says about me. Although she is very sweet and calls me daily – something I have never done with my Dutch mother although I don’t doubt the relationship I have with her – I don’t feel we have anything in common to build a relationship that resembles anything close to a mother-daughter bond. She thanked heaven endlessly for “bringing me home”, but now we don’t see eye-to-eye on religion, the amount of times I visit, and almost any other decision I make in my life. Adoption didn’t turn me into the kind of girl she imagined, and that’s a disappointment.

I decided not to stay with my Ethiopian family when I returned as I’m more comfortable living on my own. I’ve been doing it since I was 19. Despite not being married, I moved in with friends who happened to be guys. Another disappointment.

Lidya, too, is not impressed with my lifestyle. She sends disapproving looks my way whenever I mention going out for drinks with friends, and questions why I’m not religious. Last Friday, I fetched her from the church compound for lunch. My mother doesn’t allow her to eat burgers so I whenever I take her out I let her order whatever she wants. This time, while waiting for our food, she asked me why I only go to church when the service is about to end. I told her I’m not too sure about God – and got another disapproving look, followed by an explanation that this happened to me because I was raised in Holland. Had I stayed in Ethiopia, she assured me, I would have been a decent church-going girl.

One year on, I’ve realised that I’m an Ethiopian that sees most things through the gaze of a non-Ethiopian. Small things remind me of this, like being asked what the breakfast dish firfir is, and getting it hilariously wrong.

But I do feel at home and I don’t complain about Ethiopia like the expats do. However, I also hate the frequent power cuts, the slow network connection that means I can’t waste hours on YouTube, and that there isn’t a range of 35 toothpaste brands to choose from.

My gaze is changing, slowly but surely. When friends from abroad came to visit me here, we end up arguing about the stereotypical and judgmental statements they tend to make about Ethiopia and its people. They don’t know enough to say the things they do.

I’ve decided to stay, not just because I found a great job, or because I’m no longer judged by my skin colour or because I’m still dealing with an identity crisis or because I want to discard my Dutchness. I want to make this country a part of me. I’m curious about how long it will take before I’m Ethiopian enough for Lidya to stop calling me “Amharic baby” (maybe when I start taking my language course more seriously?). One day I want to be able to say I’m Ethiopian with the same confidence with which I say I’m Dutch.

Marthe van der Wolf is a journalist based in Addis Ababa. She holds an M.Phil in African Studies from the University of Cape Town.

12 years ago

What the hookah is socially acceptable anymore?

Ugandans love a good party, every day of the week, till all hours of the morning. We weren’t crowned number 8 in the World’s 10 top drinking nations for our conservative ways. Here in Kampala we tend to embrace a novelty or fad with extreme enthusiasm until we are bored stiff of it. Dance floor smoke machines were once the in thing – we’d literally be choking as we danced at different venues, each trying to outdo the other, until we eventually tired of it, or suffocated. The latest fad is smoke of a different kind: shisha.

The first time I saw a hookah pipe in Kampala, I was warned that it was drugs. Many people probably had the same perception, and believed it served religious and cultural purposes that weren’t our own. It took a while for the trend to take off last year but once it did, it was big.From restaurants to cocktail bars, private parties to clubs, pipes are almost always on standby. It’s good business for the night spots, and the ‘shisha guys’ earn a decent livelihood from it. At a standard and affordable price of $6 per hookah, establishments are less interested in capitalising on shisha profits than they are in buying patrons’ time. Keeping us there for hours equals more spend at the bar. Ka-ching!

At first I was allured by the novelty, especially because it was available at home and not just abroad, but the excitement has since burnt out for me. All anyone seems to care about is shisha. Well, that and how an hour-long shisha session is as harmful as smoking a hundred cigarettes.

(Pic: Flickr/Ian Lloyd)

Smoking shisha in public goes against what’s accepted in our social culture, especially for women. Despite the stigma associated with women smoking cigarettes in Uganda, shisha is a firm favorite with the ladies. It’s obvious to me why it’s socially acceptable, or at least somewhat socially acceptable. Smoking shisha serves as an extension of the modern African woman’s liberation – freedom of choice combined with a dose of rebellion while still fitting within the boundaries of the acceptable. Women are not smoking locally made Rex cigarettes while cheering on the Gunners; they are peacefully and calmly smoking the fruits of mother nature. Mint, berries, grapes and apples; so very demure, acceptable, pretty and fragrant: the definition of an acceptably perfect East African woman.

Other than shaking it on the dance floor, I don’t know another way women and men can acceptably be so socially intimate with each other. Shoot me now for going against anti-smoking campaigns but isn’t there something sexy about smoking? Not the lung cancer, addiction and bad breath of course, but as she inhales deeply with her well-groomed painted red nails, the smoke screen against her pretty face, a woman has a certain je ne sais quoi about her. If there wasn’t a ban on tobacco advertising in many countries I’m sure we would be seeing this kind of imagery more than we do now because it is alluring. Kampala’s upscale bars and clubs are filled with corporate women, drink in one hand and pipe in another, sitting among their male colleagues, passing the pipe from person to person. Not so long ago I learnt that in Kampala-shisha-slang lingo, the plastic mouthpiece is called a condom. I rest my case.

With hookah pipes starring in every other Facebook picture of a Ugandan nightclub or social event, I don’t see the fad going anywhere anytime soon. This 400- year-old trend has modernised itself within popular culture, not just in Kampala but throughout the world.

While there’s a need to highlight the dangers and effects of shisha, it doesn’t help that our local journalists and health care professionals are a bit over the top with their attempts.

“Uganda will fall into an abyss because of evils like shisha, homosexuality and other emerging moral upheavals…” Dan Kimosho, public relations officer at National Medical Stores, recently wrote.

Okay, then.

They may be coming from a good place but hookah is not a gateway drug to crack and prostitution. The most recent media hysteria is that smoking shisha will cause failure to conceive in Ugandan women. Is now a good time to bring up our over-population crisis and extraordinarily high fertility rate? Probably not. What health care professionals, media and government should focus on is providing accurate information and adjusting regulations so that they tally with general smoking legislation on health, safety, licensing and age limits. Then us big girls and boys can choose to fall into the abyss of evil armed with facts and figures. What is socially acceptable anymore? Looking around Kampala’s nightlife scene, I see a lot more to be concerned about than hookahs – and the starting price is apparently the same as a round of shisha.

Melinda Ozongwu is a writer based in Kampala, Uganda. She writes television scripts and regular opinion pieces on the subtext of urban culture in African countries. Her blog SmartGirl Living is a cocktail of thoughts, recipes and advice for the modern African woman. Connect with her on Twitter.

12 years ago

How language connects us

When asked what my first language is, I often pause because it is not an easy answer. My first language was Chewa. I spoke it like a native although I wasn’t one, but it has slowly faded away over time from non-use. I then learnt Bemba, English, Kaonde and Nyanja. At the time I didn’t realise that my experience as a child of foreign diplomats living in Malawi was quite unique. I had adopted the language spoken by my nanny, the cook, the driver and their children instead of English.

It was only at school where I came into contact with other children of diplomats that I was made aware of being different. Why didn’t I speak English? English came to me with time – I must’ve been 5 years old – and with it a whole new set of rules and airs. There were strict rules on enunciation and pronunciation, and it became very clear early on that this new language was considered superior to the languages I had spoken before.

I navigated my way through two worlds, speaking each language exclusively in different settings, but I always felt more at home with Chewa. This was likely because it was my first language but also because it connected me deeply to my family and earliest friends. The people I went home to allowed me to speak it without giving me stern looks or pinching their lips in distaste. Speaking it came without judgment.

The realities of the world we live in dictate that fluency in English and a handful of other European languages are required to be successful in our education systems and in the workplace. I can live with that, to a point, but it pains me to see indigenous languages falling by the wayside because they are not regarded as keys to success. I see evidence of this in Zambia where some parents explicitly tell their children that English is the only acceptable language in the home and then banish them from speaking anything else. This decision is made by parents whose own experiences taught them that “proper” English meant access to good jobs and advanced educational opportunities. The intent may be well-meaning but I’ve seen first-hand the alienation it brings when children are unable to communicate with peers or family members who are not fluent in English.

(Graphic: Cassandra Johnson)

By speaking our languages we are doing more than stringing words together; we also learn about the underlying culture and influences. Honorific speech systems that exist in many Bantu languages are reflective of social structure, traditions and respect accorded to elders. These are intrinsic and complementary elements of culture and language. Furthermore, each language carries with it the history of the people who speak it and the areas it is spoken in.

Some of my fondest memories as a child are of those spent at my grandmother’s feet, slowly reading from her KiKaonde Bible and hymn book. In those hours she augmented my reading lessons by teaching me about my maternal family and sharing wisdom through proverbs. Proverbs are cultural treasure troves in any language; they reflect accumulated knowledge and wisdom from past generations. I’m always in awe of these proverbs because they reinforce the fact that my people had a history before missionaries and colonisers landed on our shores.

This Kaonde proverb encapsulates so well the lessons from my granny: “Fukafuka uja twabakulu talalala wajamo kubulwa.” (Kneeling, you eat with elders; keep standing, you learn nothing.) It means: “You learn a lot from elders when you are humble but not when you’re rude.”

Wisdom is not exclusive to speakers of foreign languages which continue to enjoy unparalleled dominance. Much of our history remains unwritten and is stubbornly passed down orally, and there is so much to learn and safeguard.

There should be no shame assigned to those who speak indigenous languages. A break from the past is needed; rigid rules in schools that see children punished for speaking their mother tongues only reinforce negative messaging about the hierarchy of languages and assign value to what is considered perfect or acceptable – posh, lightly accented speech.

Language is a key component of our identity and through it we can express our unique worldviews. We should honour multiple language and cultural identities. If we lose our languages we lose a way of life, a way of thought and a means of expression.

Though I often take for granted my fluency in multiple languages, I have come to appreciate the inordinate gift I’ve been given. While language is only one marker of a person’s identity, I consider it to be my most important one. Language ties me to my people and my country, and most importantly allows me to communicate. I miss speaking Chewa. Whenever I can, I spend time practising it or listening to audio. I intend to recapture this language of my childhood and add it to my treasure trove.

Bwalya Chileya was born in the early 80s and raised in Malawi and Zambia. She holds a masters in business administration and works as a project manager. She reads and writes stories in her free time. Connect with her on Twitter.

12 years ago

India’s Africans hold fast to ancient traditions

The tiny Sidi community, descendants of ninth century African migrants, have lived quietly along India’s west coast for hundreds of years while never losing touch with their ancient traditions.

A Certain Grace, a new book by Indian photographer Ketaki Sheth, reveals how the community, many of whose members live in poverty, has assimilated in India while keeping its distinctive culture alive.

At the book’s launch in Mumbai last month Sheth recalled her first brush with the community during a 2005 holiday in Gujarat state in western India.

“I first saw the Sidi in Sirwan, a village in the middle of the forest given to them by the Nawab [Muslim prince] … in recognition of their loyal services,” she said. “I was intrigued.”

Estimated to number between 60 000 to 70 000 in a nation of 1.2-billion, the Sidi originate from a swathe of East Africa stretching southwards from Ethiopia.

The fiercely proud community discourages marriage to non-Sidis and outsiders are unwelcome, as Sheth found out when she was greeted by a group of young men eyeing her suspiciously at the entrance to another village, Jambur.

“If looks could kill, honestly, I would be dead. I could sense irritation, hostility, perhaps even resentment to this very obvious ‘outsider’,” she said.

Two of those boys – “still angry and daunting” – would later turn up in a portrait shot by Sheth, their resistance apparently having faded over the five years she spent working on the project that blends portraiture and street photography.

Jambur would become an occasional backdrop to her photographs, all shot in black and white using a manual camera.

Sidi children play outside their homes in the village of Jambur. (AFP)

Often described as descendants of slaves brought to India by Arab and other troops, the Sidi mostly live in villages and towns along India’s west coast, with a few groups scattered across the rest of the country.

Anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani, a professor at New York’s Columbia University, says many came to India not only as cheap labour but also as soldiers, with some rising quickly through the ranks and even acquiring royal titles.

Successive waves of migration saw Portuguese invaders bring slave-soldiers from modern-day Mozambique to India, Mamdani writes in an introductory essay to Sheth’s book.

“Their main attraction was not their cheapness, but their loyalty. In this context, slaves are best thought of as lifelong servants of ruling or upper caste families,” he writes.

Those deemed most loyal were given land that is now home to villages inhabited exclusively by Sidis.

Reinventing African tradition
US-based academic Beheroze Shroff, who has studied the Sidi for years, told AFP that they, like other migrants, “have reinvented their traditions”.

Some customs have disappeared, while others, involving music, dance and the addition of Swahili words to the Gujarati dialect spoken in Sidi settlements have survived.

Shroff said that Gujarati Sidi Muslims in particular still practise “elaborate rituals and ceremonies, which involve drumming and ecstatic dancing called goma (a Swahili word that means drum, song and dance)”.

“This is handed down, learned by each subsequent generation, from childhood,” said Shroff, who teaches at the University of California in Irvine.

Sidi musicians perform outside a mosque in the village of Jambur. (AFP)

The Sidis, considered a marginalised tribe since 1956, have been the beneficiaries of affirmative action policies in India.

The Sports Authority of India (SAI) even launched a special Olympics training centre in Gujarat in 1987, in an attempt to capitalise on the athleticism of the African-origin Sidis.

That experiment ended nine years ago amid reports of petty politics and infighting among administrators but it produced a string of national-level athletes, such as Mumbai-based Juje Jackie Harnodkar, featured in Sheth’s book.

Harnodkar is among few Sidis belonging to the middle-class. Most struggle to find jobs and literacy levels remain low as many can only afford to send their children to poorly-managed state schools.

And many children like Sukhi – a young girl whose portrait is Sheth’s favourite of the 88 photographs featured in the book – attend school infrequently.

“She did go to school when I last met her but very erratically. She must have been 10, 12 when I took that photo [2005]but when I asked her she wasn’t sure,” Sheth told AFP in an email.

Sukhi’s striking portrait, her eyes downcast, her curly hair askew, was taken on Sheth’s first shoot in Jambur, she said.

“The early morning light was flat because it was pre-monsoon, the bricks and cement behind her were static and graphic, and her stripey dress seemed to move like a river even though she was so still.”

Ammu Kannampilly for AFP.

12 years ago

Somalia: Pray before, during and after your flight

Taking a domestic flight in Somalia is an experience that can best be described as travelling to the brink of death and coming back. The airplanes on the domestic routes are commonly called express flying coffins and those who survive a flight on them are fittingly referred to as coffin dodgers.

Due to the appalling state of the country’s roads and poor road safety more and more Somalis are choosing to fly instead of drive.

On a recent hot humid Thursday afternoon more than 150 of us gathered in the lounge of Mogadishu International Airport to take a flight to Kismayu, Somalia’s third biggest city.

The passengers crowded around the few windows in the lounge, their eyes locked onto a sky-blue plane at the far end of the runway. Dark smoke, the kind that billows from burning tyres at protests, was coming out of the plane’s exhaust. We just knew that plane was going to be our ride for the 45-minute flight.

(Pic: sxc.hu)

When the gates at the departure lounge opened, everyone rushed towards the plane. I, along with some other quick-footed passengers, chose to run.

As with many domestic flights in Somalia, there are more passengers than available seats. If you don’t literally grab a seat on the plane, you’ll stand for the whole journey despite having paid for a seat.

I was lucky to be one of the first to get on the plane. Seats filled up fast and 25 unlucky passengers were left standing in the aisle.

Competition for seats on a flight can be humbly described as fierce. If you leave yours to go the bathroom, another passenger will grab it before you’ve even negotiated your way through the packed aisle, and you’ll find yourself among those standing when you get back. On a Somali flight, when nature calls you don’t answer!

Most of the seats on this plane were faulty. They had no seat belts and reclined 180 degrees if you touched them. Each passenger had to hold the seat in front of them with both hands. If we didn’t, the seat and the passenger in it would be in our laps during take-off.

Once everyone was on board, a loud male voice pierced through the cacophony of noise. The voice asked all the passengers to be quiet for prayers before take-off.

Then, in an impeccable Somali voice, the teenage-looking steward in a half-buttoned baggy pink shirt said “welcome on board” and proceeded to recite a prayer at the top of his voice (the plane had no PA system and the steward had no megaphone). It was the kind of prayer Somalis normally recite at the graves of their long-gone great grandparents.

For a few seconds everyone was totally silent. Even the crying babies were quiet. I guess reality hit: we were on a plane not fit to fly.

But instead of comforting and reassuring us, the prayer caused silent panic. A lady sitting a few rows in front of me was overcome by fear and the thick smell of sweat in the air. She threw up on the feet of a standing passenger.

A few minutes later, two old, pot-bellied, sun-burnt, sweat-covered, cigarette-smoking, booze-smelling, Eastern European male pilots wearing only shorts climbed up the creaky metal ladder attached to the emergency exit. It had been left open to let air into the plane since the air conditioning had long since seized to function.

Passengers who’ve been on this plane before – and survived – had come prepared with prayer beads and cardboard pieces to use as makeshift fans.

Because of the intense heat and lack of air, babies started crying and parents shouted at the young steward to do something. Since the standing passengers were blocking the main exit, he rushed out of the plane through the emergency exit and returned with empty boxes. He ripped them into small pieces and started distributing them to passengers who did not bring their own cardboard. The situation calmed down a bit then and soon we were in the air.

I was travelling with my colleague Awil and his three-year-old son Lil Abdi. Despite paying for three seats we had two. Children under the age of 14 aren’t allowed to have their own seats even though they are charged for one. They have to sit on one of their parents’ laps. If they’re travelling alone, they have to ride on the laps of strangers.

Lil Abdi was spoilt for choice compared to the other kids on the flight. He had the pick of two laps to sit on for the journey. But he preferred to sit on mine because I was seated next to a window, which had a small crack that let in cold air. The little things like a window crack are attractive bonuses when you’re on a Somali flight.

I should mention that there were no cabins to store our possessions in. Everyone held their bags on their laps. If there’s a child on your lap – which will most likely be the case if you’re flying during the high season – then you leave your bag in the aisle. If there are passengers standing in the aisle, you have no other option but to hold your luggage over your head until you land.

Somalis are usually not scared of death. In fact, death is treated like an intimate neighbour. Sitting on the seat in front of me was an old man who had returned from Milan. He had his grandchild on his lap. He wasn’t worried about dying, just about where his bones would end up if something fatal happened mid-air.

“Do you think our bones will land on the ground or disappear in the air?” he asked the passengers around him. No one responded.

A few minutes later he looked out the window, pointed to the green vegetation on the ground, and said: “Even if my whole clan went out there looking to collect our bones they will not find them.”

By this time, forty-five minutes had already passed so I asked the steward if we should prepare for landing. Looking visibly irritated he said: “It will take us a further twenty minutes because the plane is overloaded and has to fly at slower than normal speed.”

On hearing this, some passengers voiced their displeasure and asked that the plane fly faster. Frustrated with our constant complaints, the steward reminded us all that a few weeks ago another plane that was flying at high speed was targeted by the Islamist rebel group al-Shabaab as it prepared to land because they suspected the flight to be carrying government officials. Our hearts sunk and fresh panic set in again.

Suddenly passengers were scanning the skies for incoming rockets. It was bad enough being on this plane without the fear of being struck down by al-Shabaab.

Fahad, a passenger standing next to our row of seats, tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was married. “No,” I said. He wasn’t married either, he told me. “I’m not scared of death but I want to marry and have at least one son before I die. I want to leave something behind on this world.”

I told Fahad the plane could have other plans for us and that al-Shabaab sheikhs may not want to wait for him to marry and have a son.

Perhaps he was looking for reassurance but I just wanted to finish listening to the Dhaanto track on my iPod and then pray for a few minutes in case things went pear-shaped.

With every word I uttered Fahad got more tense. Sensing this, Awil jumped in to comfort him: “If the sheikhs kill us up here we’ll be closer to heaven than if they killed us on the ground.”

I guess the sheikhs were busy with other business that day because we landed all right.

As soon as the plane touched down in Kismayu every passenger was on their feet, rushing for the exit. Some prayed enthusiastically on the dusty airport tarmac, thanking God for allowing them to survive the flight.

As we exited, I told Awil I’d be writing about this experience.

“If you do, we could get banned from future flights,” he said.

“That might just extend our life expectancy,” I replied.

Hamza Mohamed is an independent British-Somali journalist. Connect with him on Twitter.