On a brief visit to
Addis I combined work with hearing two good bands and then soaking up the art
and history of repression under the Derg.
January is a good time to be in Addis Ababa, the skies are
clear blue with cold nights and warm days. I had a week long monitoring visit
to Saba, my research fellow there whom i have written about previously. And as
usual I managed to combine work with going to two concerts and a new museum
about the Red Terror, the vicious repression that occurred under the communist
Derg Regime.
Saba has yet again moved. Her latest house is a colonial
style bungalow with a row of servants quarters behind it. She let Gaby her husband
choose the house and wall colours so the house is a vivid pink and the walls
bright green. Gaby has moved back from Nairobi and is setting up engineering
projects in Ethiopia and the books in the study are about camber surfaces and
road drainage, and I suspect that he prefers the precise detail of engineering
to the vagueness of aesthetics. I enjoyed being part of an Ethiopian household,
and celebrating saints days is a large part of life. That week St Mary was celebrated and the chanting in the
church started at 4am, and pilgrims carrying lights thronged the churches. At
home the maids had a coffee ceremony and brewed strong coffee in a black coffee
pot on coals and burnt incense with grass on the floor, a special loaf of bread
was cooked to celebrate St Mary and a candle was lit. The ceremony was also a
welcome for the nurse Alem who had gone home and a welcome to me. In my blog 2012 I wrote about the cook’s hopes
for her son to have a university education. These are now being realigned
because her son has become a father. He was working at the ALERT leprosy clinic
whilst sitting his university entrance exams and had a romance with the other clerk
and soon she was pregnant. She needed a caesarean section and the young husband
then had to bring sutures to the hospital to replace the ones that had been
used for the delivery. The young couple are starting life with very few
possessions. Saba put an advert on the Addis social site and was touched by the
response she had from “ferangis” who had baby things to donate. It is nice that
people chip in with their possessions but it also illustrates the huge need for
health and social services. A new born has such a fragile life in the dangerous
environment of the Addis Ababa slums. Everyone in the clinic is also
encouraging the young man to still try and do his exams and get further
training.
The last Prime Minister Meles Zenawi died in Austria Aug
2012 after a long undisclosed illness but he is achieving sainthood at
home. His face looks down everywhere
from vast hoardings and he is credited with every aspect of Ethiopia’s economic,
and social and sporting development. One poster described him as the leader of the
Ethiopian renaissance. The deputy prime minster has taken over but does not appear
to enthuse people as Meles did. Several vice presidents have been elected,
maybe as a way of keeping tabs on him. Ethiopia played Nigeria in the Africa
Cup of Nations football. The streets were silent as people were entranced by
the match, lucky ones watched in the centre of town on a huge screen, close to
us an enterprising resident had hung a white sheet above the street and the TV
was being projected there, the cops were even redirecting traffic so that the
street was safe for the viewers. Sadly Ethiopia lost to the Nigerians with
their goalie and then even his substitute being sent off and the match had to pause
whilst a replacement goalie jersey was fashioned.
Saba and I had a cultural Sunday afternoon seeing modern art
and then history at two new museums. At the Museum of Modern art we saw a
retrospective of one of Ethiopia’s modern artists, Gebrekristos Desta, he
started work in Hailie Selasies reign and continued under the Derg. He depicted
oppression through abstracts, the famine through white shrouds and the
surveillance through large eyes looking down on scenes. His work was not appreciated
by the Derg and he applied to Germany for asylum but it was refused, even
though he had trained as an artist in Germany. He then found asylum in the US
and died in a small flat in Oklahoma. This retrospective was a poignant
reflection of the artistic response to oppression but also showed how artist
can be abandoned by the people they think would protect them. The Germans have
now built a beautiful new museum named after him, perhaps as atonement. After
absorbing this poignant work we went to The Red Terror Martyrs Memorial museum,
which depicts the genocide perpetrated by the Derg. The museum has been set up
by the relatives of people who disappeared then. The museum traced the history
of the revolution and showed how the early optimism at having deposed the
emperor soured. The Derg regime, headed by Mengistu became one of the most
vicious regimes, people were tortured and killed in their thousands, especially
students. There were large photo-board displays of students nearly all of whom
died. The killing fields on the edge of Addis were depicted by stacks of skulls
and other cases had the personal objects of prisoners shoes, note books. It was
reminiscent of a Holocaust museum. Our museum guide had been imprisoned for 7
years. When he was released he felt unable to go home and hid working in the household
of an Italian diplomat. It was very moving to be taken round by someone who had
been oppressed. He said that he did not want revenge but he did want people to
remember the horror. Since then i have read the book “Beneath the Lions Gaze”
about the oppression that occurred during the Derg. That book captures the
horror of the torture and the effect of the Derg on families.
Music was another theme of the visit. We heard an Ethiopian
jazz band at the crowded jazzamba cafe in the old part of the city. An
Ethiopia sang soulfully about being rejected in love and then. We also heard
Farka Toure, my favourite Malian guitarist with his band. They played a rousing
concert in the Ethiopian national theatre. They wore long white robes with blue
jackets . Local Addis musicians joined them on stage, one female saxophonist
played an amazing number with them, she just blew her heart out clearly very
fired up by the occasion. The national theatre was packed, Saba
commented that she had no idea that there were so many white people in Addis.
I spent time at the hospital seeing patients with
complications of leprosy. One 20 year old had need so much steroids to control her
reactions that she had developed osteoporosis and had severe back pain from
collapsed vertebrae- something commoner in 90 year olds. We are also enrolling
patients from the clinic in Addis into a global network of patients with ENL. I
also have a Ethiopian PhD student, Edessa Negera starting work on these patients later this
year. Saba is also planning to stay in Ethiopia for another 5 years and that
gives a feeling of stability to the project.
So it was a good visit. Saba and i worked hard and made
progress on our various projects, through her household i felt the realities of
life in Addis. In the hospital i saw patients who remind me why we are trying
to improve the treatment of leprosy. I also enjoyed new aspects of Ethiopian
history and culture.
Diana Lockwood
Apr 2013
Beneath The Lions Gaze
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