What is labor but the agonized concentration of body and mind in squeezing out what has taken months (or years, depending on how you think about it) to develop, through the tiniest door of opportunity? A door that seems so poorly designed for the size of the job, the volume of the output, that it … More Hold the Door!
There’s this joke about an American who went to Washington D.C to teach English to new immigrants from Ethiopia. He ended up learning Amharic instead. When you can do an entire transaction at Starbucks in Amharic (granted, the store in question is right outside the arrivals gate at Dulles Airport) and even add to the … More Shock of the New
Abay is not just the name of the river which springs from the heart of Ethiopia, cuts through Sudan and Egypt, and ends in the way of all rivers big and small. It is also the name by which I best knew my grandfather. Officially, he was known by the more intimidating Shaleka – chief … More How a Dam Works
I can be a flirty type as long as it doesn’t involve people. Ideas is where the chemistry happens. There’s one in particular, which started off as a little harmless flirtation, then bloomed into a full blown on-again off-again thing that’s been going on for years. It never works out, of course, for reasons x, … More The Twisted Edge
Long long ago, as mortals have done since The Fall, so did Mary the mother of Jesus. She died. Sources better informed than I ( = sources informed) tell me that the filseta fast that I currently find myself a little over halfway through has been held every year since then-ish by Orthodox Christians in … More Eating Alone
Just want to send a shoutout to the peaceloving mosquitoes of Awassa. Sorry I went into a manic frenzy and killed half a dozen of you within minutes of arriving. I shoulda known something was different about you when you just waited around for me to squish the life out of your soft bodies instead … More Oops!
When you are born everybody knows you. Half the town turns up to the welcome party to take a good look at you. The only other times that many people who you barely know or don’t know at all are going to turn up on occasion of you is for the two other life biggies: … More The Possessive Tense
Is there anything more aloof than an Ethiopian Airlines flight attendant in charge of a planeload of West Africans? Certain knowledges, no matter how widely shared, should probably not be voiced or printed: she knows that, for reasons that go back hundreds of years and miles of chromosomes, the men desire to pounce on her … More Found Persons and Lost Pens
Few more hours and I head the way the raven flies (or was it the crow?), West, anyway. Time for the least explored destination of all: home! Time for the obstacle course known as Ethiopia. For some reason, nowhere else petrifies me as much as there. At the same time, there are few places I … More The Big One
The trouble with travel is, there’s always a there after the there. I even started a little poem about it. It went something like this … I don’t mean to repeat myself but the trouble with travel is, assuming you’re a pessimist, you find everyone you thought you left back West. All the places you … More The Hype
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