April 07
“Welcome. What you like?”
“Can I have goat tibe, please?”
“No have”
“Umm, okay the beef tibe then”
“No meat. Come tomorrow”
“No meat?”
“No. Today fasting. Easter”
“Is fish okay?”
“Fish okay”
“Can I have a fish then?”
“No fish”
“Why?”
“Because no have”
.
.
“Tomorrow is holy day.
Have peace to you and your family”
.
.
“Hello”
“Hello”
“Welcome to Saturday market”
“Thank you”
“So...want to buy a goat?”
.
.
“I’m about to have three wives you know. One of them knows about the others, she’s the more open minded one. The others don’t know about each other.”
“You sure you’ll still have three of them by the time they find out about each other?”
“Of course, they’re all friends with each other since school. It’ll be great”
“Wow. I didn’t even know Ethiopia was a polygamous society.”
“It’s not, it’s just with my family. Hah!”
...
April 06
“Welcome to Lalibela”
“Thank you”
“Okay if I practice English with you?”
“Sure, you’re already doing pretty well. How old are you?”
“Thirteen. The church beautiful, yes?”
“It is. Why is everyone wearing white?”
“Everyone must wear white. They come to pray, they fast, or Jesus come kill them”
“Wait, but I’m wearing black. Is that okay?”
“For tourist okay”
“Jesus isn’t going to kill me then?”
“No”
...
Addis Ababa
April 05
“You know, Ethiopians and Americans are similar in that we like to oversell what’s ours.”
“I know what you mean, the U.S. likes to pretend we won the world wars, even though we entered both at the last moment. Russia was did most of the hard work. What’s an example of Ethiopia’s?”
“You ever saw Black Panther? You know how there’s Wakanda, this great hidden civilization that was never colonized? Ethiopians like to think that that was them, since we beat the Italians in 1896 and became an inspiration for African independence and this and that”
“Didn’t the Italians come back for revenge and dominated for 5 years a few decades afterwards?”
“Yeah, that’s the part no one here ever seems to remember. We still like to convince ourselves that we were never colonized”
...
April 04
“You’re in Africa, man. Start eating like an African”
“I don’t even eat this much at home”
“You know, there’s was a guy I the bathroom who asked me, “who’s that friend of yours out there? He’s tiny, does he eat much at all?’ And I said well of course he eats, if he didn’t, he’d disappear’. That’s just his nature”
“That was good, I would have probably said the same thing.”
“Yeah, but I already finished my plate you’re not even halfway done”
“I’m just trying to savor it”
“If we ate to savor, we wouldn’t be that much bigger than you”
.
.
“China! China! Are you Chinese?”
“No”
“Where are you from?”
“Vietnam (I guess)”
“Yeah? But you look Chinese”
“You Nigerian?”
“No”
“Well, you look Nigerian”
“Ahhh, okay okay”
.
.
“You know, part of why there’s been more political unrest here in recent years is because enough people are starting to see, whether through TV or internet or social media or whatever, what people in other countries have but we don’t have. It’s as if they’ve been asleep their whole lives, and now they’re starting to wake up and finally realize how little they actually have”
...
April 03
“I can’t tell you how thankful I am for your hospitality”
“Don’t mention it. It’s our duty”
“No man, it’s your choice”
“No, it’s not a choice. In this country, when someone else is in your home, it doesn’t matter who, it’s your duty to serve them”
“Um...”
“...but don’t worry, it’s also our pleasure”
.
.
(In response to my frustration with the unresponsive long-distance bus ticketing hotline)
“So...you’d better start getting used to the fact that nothing here works after 6”
.
.
(In response to Al Jazeera’s live commentary on the peaceful transfer of power to the new Prime Minister)
“No shit, it was an intra-party hand-off”
...
Doha
April 02
“Where are you going?”
“The grand mosque, do you enter this way?”
“You want to go into the mosque?”
“Yeah”
“To pray?”
“Umm...no, to observe”
“Okay, you can go in this way, but just pretend that you’re praying”
...