Chapter Seventeen
Ethiopia was a completely different world. The air carried an essence of sweet and sour fragrances intertwined with dust, the water tasted slightly of something metallic and sharp, and the unwavering heat all simmered together, permeating our experience of the countryside. It took a long time to get used to this culture, so traditional and extraordinary, yet so different from our own. On the other hand, we quickly grew to love the Ethiopian people. It was hard not to.
Before we left Asmara, Loren Hovestad, the man due to soon leave for language school, the very man I was filling in for at the mission station, took us to lunch at Georges, a restaurant that had a well-known reputation for being the best place to eat for miles around. As we entered, I scanned the room, taking in the unsanitary conditions, the dirt, and the flies. Neither Jan nor I ate much during that meal. But it’s interesting to note how our perceptions changed over time. Months later, on our way back home to North Dakota, we stopped in to have a meal at Georges one more time, surprised to see how clean it was and how good the food tasted. The restaurant hadn’t changed one bit. We had.
We arrived at the mission station, tired with the cloud of jet lag hovering over us, and we were introduced to our new home, quite clean and comfortable. For the next few days, we began to settle in. We began to learn about these delightful people, the Ethiopians.
About a week later, late into the night, I was deep in slumber when I awoke with a jolt, Jan’s hand covering my mouth. “Shhh. Be quiet. Listen. Don’t make any noise,” her voice quivered, her eyes huge.
In the deep primordial canyon directly behind the house, loud rhythmic beats of a drum kept time as wailing, chaotic voices sang and roared through the night. We listened intently for any signs of danger to accompany this frightful serenade, hoping they weren’t planning on coming any closer, but they didn’t appear to mean us any harm. Gradually, we both fell back into a fitful sleep, waking early in the morning to find out it was simply a traditional wedding celebration, Ethiopian style.
There were an abundance of creatures here that we had never encountered on the Midwestern prairies. We had been warned about the profusion of lizards that take up residency on both the inside and outside of houses, the hordes of rats that populated the countryside around Selek-Leka. Jan had a fear of both that bordered on hysteria.
On her first day of teaching music to the children, she had to walk on a path bordered by tall grass on her way to the schoolhouse. She watched the rats skitter through the grass and dart across the path, deathly afraid to take her first step. With a deep breath and a huge leap of faith, she started toward the school. As the rats scurried around her feet, a deep calm came over her and, out of the blue, her fear of them completely disappeared. As for the lizards, they climbed over, through, and into all the neighboring houses constantly. Except for our home. Never once did we see one there.
Early one morning, as I was on my way over to a neighbor’s house, I stopped and watched as several men began to butcher an old ox that was no longer fit to work in the fields. They led the animal to the butchering spot and, without hesitation, slit his throat. It wasn’t long before he fell to his knees and bled to death.
The very second the ox stopped kicking, the men started to skin it, keeping the hide underneath the carcass to help keep the meat off the ground. With no refrigeration in this intense African heat, they needed to work fast or all the meat would quickly spoil. They cut it into small strips and hung the pieces up to dry. Immediately, it became covered with flies.
Not wasting one ounce of this animal, the men divided the rest of the carcass, the bones, the organs, into five equal piles, one for each family that had purchased the ox. To insure that each pile was as close to the same size as possible, each buyer put a unique mark on a slip of paper, folded it so the mark couldn’t be seen, and placed it into a basket. Flagging down a passing stranger, they asked him to randomly pick the slips of paper from the basket and place one on top of each pile, making a fair and unbiased decision as to who gets what pile. Each of the five families then subdivided their portion in the same way to sell to additional families.
One of the things I was most thankful for was that our mission station had running water, one of the few that did. The source was a deep mountain well that spouted crystal fresh gravity-fed water from a pipe connected at the bottom of the well.
One hot cloudless morning, the pipe sprang a leak. This was something that had to be fixed right away and I, of course, was the most likely candidate to do it. How on earth was I supposed to shut off the valve on the inside of the well, at the bottom, so I could work on the pipe? I couldn’t even swim.
Luckily, a farm worker was quick to volunteer his help. He looked at me, grinned, and said loudly, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost” and then plunged into the ten feet of water to shut off the valve. There was no doubt in my mind that it was the first bath he had taken in a long, long time. Maybe the first bath of his entire life. As he dived to the bottom, I could see the dark, greasy film from his unwashed body and clothing float to the surface and pool together creating a murky, muddy film in the water.
From the moment we arrived at our mission station, I had been told to boil and filter all my drinking water. I never had to be told again.
