Tag Archives: culture

Something, Anything

She walks up to me and extends a greeting, but all I see are her eyes and I miss the first attempt at shaking her hand. Those captivating and mesmerizing eyes she has; they will haunt me forever.

She is a camel milk producer, living in the small remote town of Bambas in Ethiopia near Jijiga, in close proximity to the Somalian border. Her days are spent milking camels at the break of dawn, collecting the milk in antique wooden containers, the interiors burned by fire to instill a nice smoky taste to the milk.  (Hear Fatumo milking her camels)

She pours the milk into larger containers and then carries the heavy load miles away to either sell the milk by road side, or give it to milk collectors who will then take the milk to market. Her work is assisted by programs developed by Mercy Corps.

And the next day is the same as today.

She tends to her children, she collects firewood in the distant fields, she prepares dinner for her family, she feeds the animals and cleans their spaces, she settles neighborhood disputes, she sweeps the hay from the floor of her hut. And she looks for water, desperately at times, a scarce resource in this drought-prone area of Ethiopia.

And the next day is the same as today.

She has a quiet yet bold demeanor and when she looks at me, she looks into me. Her eyes never leave mine, and with her chin slightly tucked in and eyes constantly seeking mine, I cannot help but think that she knows how the power and grace she exudes has an effect on others. I muster up something, anything, to break the spell she has on me, but it doesn’t work. I ask her how old she is, and her answer is I am woman.

She looks at my travel clothes and makes her first observation toward me: You will never attract anyone dressed like this. Try adding more color to your style.

And on it goes, one observation after the other, her to me, and me to her. I want to touch her face, but then I realize it is only because I don’t really believe that she exists. She must be a dream. As if she knows what I am thinking, she extends her hand and touches mine, eyes never wavering her intentions.

I cry.

I feel my belly turn upside down and I know this is so inappropriate. Crying in front of an Ethiopian beckons all kinds of feelings and it is highly disturbing to them. I swallow it all, turning away to say something, anything, about the beauty of her home.

We spend the day together, and she shows me what she does all day long, every day. We visit the other milk producers and initiate song and dance among them, pounding beats on the makeshift plastic milk containers as our drums, me singing the Somalian words that I did not know that I knew.  (Hear the milk producers singing)

I return the next day before the sun rises, and she shows me how to milk a camel and what camel milk tastes like right after it has been collected. We walk in silence over sandy fields strewn with beautiful pink sparkly rocks and I try to reason with my soul why I should return home. I want nothing more than to stay longer, learn from her, feel my body adjust to constant movement to obtain nourishment. She knows what I am thinking, and she asks me to stay, inviting me to live in her village with her. I can’t even answer her right away, walking in a stupor as I wonder how she truly is able to read my mind.

I dream of living a life of simplicity, making my own music and dancing when I feel like it, listening to birds awaken me each day and wearing colorful scarves and dresses and greeting visitors in the manner in which she does. And I know I will never be like her.

I know I will return home and acclimate back into my own culture and sit at my computer and write about her, longing for this kind of exchange, deep exchange, with people back home.

And I know that our manufactured distractions will prevent me from doing this, and I might feel happy but deep inside, if I am honest, I often desire a deeper human connection in my every day. Or I won’t long for this, and instead I will replace my longing with pleasure garnered from material goods and the next travel destination and a plate filled with some chef’s concoction.

I turn to her to say goodbye and this time I can’t hold back the tears. She gasps, and waves her hand back and forth in front of me.

No, no, NO! Don’t cry.  Saying goodbye is part of life.  Are you not a strong woman?

And with that, she turns and walks away.

(All images for Mercy Corps)

 

Ethiopia: Exposed

In a jet lag stupor, I sit on the edge of my bed staring at my camera equipment. Neatly arranged in their little Lowepro nests, the lenses and cameras stand ready for the job ahead.

And at this moment, I don’t want anything to do with them.

I have lived life behind a camera since I was eight years old, my way of participating yet remaining an observer, rarely fully integrating into the occasion. I can break down cultural barriers, communicate without language, and both equalize and shift power to my subjects with the best of them. Sure, I can set aside my camera and join in the fun, or crisis, or event at hand, but my mind is always, and I mean always, on how to frame the subject. I stand independent, often.

Today, my heart is restless. A few things happened here in Ethiopia within the first forty-eight hours that have been immobilizing. It is not worth detailing exactly what happened because it doesn’t really matter. The important thing is that I feel raw and exposed, and I have turned the lens upon myself. I see who I am, as a reflection in my Ethiopian friends’ eyes. I have never so fully appreciated how bonding into another culture can transform a person. It is one thing to go to a country to taste their food and enjoy the scenery; it is quite another to invest oneself so fully that a mirror erects itself and is present with your every move and gesture. While I rejoice in this new frame of mind, it is painful to stand on the fulcrum of now and then, and not be self-imposing if not downright critical of my past ways of relating.

Here in Ethiopia, I see how humans can relate to each other on an innate and intuitive level and I celebrate this relief from my guarded self, only to become saddened by the realization that I most likely will go back to old ways of relating upon returning home to our easy society. When I land on familiar soil after visiting Ethiopia, I increasingly isolate in my house for a period of time. I can’t bear to see how we relate (or more accurately, don’t relate) to each other. We can’t help it. We have been raised on a steady diet of adequate and swift fulfillment and we avoid obstacles at all costs. Here, obstacles are a way of life, and from an early age, people learn how to traverse them with gusto and lean upon their hearts for solace. In turn, love flows expressively from one person to another.

My friend Daniy told me that when he is really happy about something, he does not eat because he feels full in other ways. I think about how often we turn to food or entertainment for pleasure in the US. How often do we turn to each other to make us feel equally, or more, full? Who makes us feel so happy we can forgo the need for food?

Increasingly, we are relating to each other more via social media and other means of technology, with less face-to-face time. I am struck by how often people touch each other here, holding hands, stroking each other’s hair, kissing cheeks, removing a stray hair that crosses a loved one’s lips. I get in a bit of trouble when I come back home, because I start to touch people again, and it often startles others.

An Ethiopian friend who moved to Portland seven years ago told me how he now has to refrain from his culture’s practice of kissing a child or elder upon entering a room and greeting them, whether they know them or not, because he could be seen as a molester or manipulator. How amazing to be raised in a culture such as his.

I think of my relations back in the US, and I want to take this Ethiopian culture filter and overlay it upon my home life. As I sit here now, I realize that the cameras have been a way for me to build instant intimacy over the years. I long for more of the overt gestures of humanity in my life. I have walked through a door on this journey, and there is no turning back.

I leave my cameras behind, exit the hotel, jump into Daniy’s van with all of his friends and we make our way toward a place to go dancing. Night passes into morning hours, and I realize how much I have to learn by this culture. We form a circle and dance with arms around each other’s waists, one leg lifted up, feet intersecting in the middle to see who will outlast the rest, the instigation of shared physical exhaustion, set to a rhythm. It helps to stay in the game by focusing not on my weakened knees, but upon the faces of my friends. As we all feel pain and shortened breath, exhilaration takes over and we become high on this thing called life.

My self-reflection dissolves, and I no longer feel like a separate entity. I am less as one, and more as community.

Ethiopia: Psychological Support

Sometimes a woman needs urgent care while Dr. Andrew Browning is in surgery at the Fistula Hospital in Barhirdar.  The nurses do their best to help until he can tend to the woman in need.  Often, their needs rest in the psychological aspect of their experiences.  Healing does not end after their surgery.  After being released from the hospital, women return to their daily lives of back-breaking wood collection, water fetching, navigating numerous disappointments and bracing against fear of repeated painful bodily injury.

A psychologist is unheard of in rural Ethiopia, and women are accustomed to bearing their own problems.  They live for their children, and will repeatedly return to a man who causes great physical pain, just to live out their desire for motherhood.

At times I get asked why I do so much international work when there are so many needs in the United States.  I have pondered this a lot during this trip.  I think part of the reason is that I am in awe of seeing women with such an unwavering commitment to raising their families and keeping the cycle of life going, despite such dire hardships.  The explosive joy when they see their first baby, a tender touch on the cheeks of their pleading children, a knowing smile they give to one another, the giggles when they carry a heavy load of wood on their hunched backs when they see me, a firenje, the fierce support they lend to one another.  All of this is so magnified to me, living in a society where my life is so easy yet insular.

These women remind me of the power of grace, and the depths to which a loving hand can heal.  I watch them interact with one another, and am humbled by their devotion to life.

How can I not extend a reciprocal hand?

Ethiopia: Fearless Curiosity

Day Three and sleep still evades me.

As my mind and body ache for a hint of rest, I can think of a myriad of reasons why, instead of sleeping, I have my laptop propped up in bed acting as a magnet for aggressive mosquitoes that find their way under the bed net. Repetitive music hypnotically blares outside the window as people yell back and forth to each other late into the night.  Frequent footsteps outside of my sleep room door beckon for attention and my 18 year old daughter Brynn sleeps peacefully next to me, her breathing almost syncing perfectly with the music.

I look at my daughter.

These past few days were not as I expected, which is true about any other time I have spent in Africa.  I have come to plan for the occasional lost luggage, flight cancellations, missed communication and long confusing waits. But this time I suppose I do have fantasies of mother-daughter bonding occurring as we tenderly experience a new part of the world together. Instead, we are bickering like cats after our long flights and spending the night staring at the ceiling in the Nairobi airport “dungeon” (as it is affectionately called by ex-pats).  Anything I advise her is fodder for heated debate, and when I allow my frustration to escalate, it only catapults the tension.  I realize it is only Day Three, and experience informs me not to get hyped up about anything that happens during the sleep deprived and cultural shift transition period.

But this angst about Brynn is not what is keeping me awake, nor are the sounds coming from the bathroom that eerily sound like a gigantic  fang-toothed rodent coming up from the sewer.

It is that girl in the museum.

I saw her from the corner of my eye as we looked at artifacts in the National Museum in Addis Ababa this afternoon.  She stood there, right in the center of the room, and stared at us, as though we were from another life time.  Left arm crossing her body to clutch her other arm, she looked braced and strong.  Her arms were hidden by dozens of gold bracelets pressed tightly into her skin.  But it was the glee in her eyes that caught my attention.  She looked giddy as she unflinchingly stared at Brynn’s blond hair.  When my eyes caught hers, instead of becoming shy and looking away, she seemed to lock in harder with her gaze, and with this, she looked like she was from another galaxy.  Or that she knew something very sacred that we did not know, living in our Western haughty ways.

I could not refrain myself from staring, and this did not seem to bother her in the least. She stood tall, muscles rippling down her arms and legs from hard work of some kind.  Her head was shaven, and tiny scars lined her skull in a swirling pattern.  Her ear lobes were dangling long, with wide open circles where her gauges once were.

She was one of the most mesmerizing persons I have ever seen.  She somehow seemed to exist outside of her body. A spirit in the flesh.

Her curiosity about Brynn was fearless, and as we made our way from room to room, we could feel the magnetic force that was in the room.  Our friend and guide Seyoum identified her as most likely being from Southern Ethiopia villages, and as he started to tell me more about this part of the culture, I found myself not able to hear him even though I wanted to know everything about her tribe. The visual of her was overwhelming any other sense.  I turned my eyes toward Brynn, and could see the same level of wonderment coming from her. As the girl stood firm, I slowly walked over to her and said hello as best as I could without words, reaching my hand out to her and holding eye contact way longer than is comfortable for my cultural influence.  I heard a catch in her voice as she tried to bridge the gap between our languages, her words barely audible.  I motioned for Brynn to come over and I silently watched as they shook hands, giggling nervously.

Mankind began here in Ethiopia and this girl seemed to wear that distinction in her every gesture.  Yet here she was, enchanted with Brynn’s exoticism.  This haunts me at this late hour for some reason, and I wonder:  what could she possibly see in us that we don’t see?  With her grace and level of ability to engage, I felt that we were far less interesting, and coming from our expedited Western culture, that we could not see humanity such as she could from the vantage point of the heart. I felt humbled by her, and a tinge of longing crept in as I knew we couldn’t follow her and learn more from her.

As Brynn lies curled up next to me now, I think about her and our mother-daughter complexity that mirrors us together and propels us apart as she begins to lead her own life without my constant oversight.  Through the Ethiopian girl’s gestures and honor toward toward Brynn, I realize something.  I think I can see my daughter more closely from afar.

Ethiopia: Daughter Brynn

How do I aptly prepare my 18 year old daughter for her first trip to a developing nation?  And this trip will be especially intense due to the various heart wrenching medical conditions we will see.  Our home will be the hospital, not a hotel, for most of the time we are there.  Brynn will have a variety of assignments, including scrubbing in during surgeries on occasion if she is needed.

We talk about general safety, how to interact graciously with the culture, how to avoid problems, what to wear and not wear, and the fact that there will be many frustrations, joys, hazards and times when we will feel drunken by the culture.  But where do I start with telling her that she won’t return home the same person?  That pulsating Africa, with all of its terrors and catapulting strains, will get into her blood and grip her in the heart like little else can affect in the same manner?

I choose to remain silent, and not put words on something I can’t even come to terms with myself.  I will listen closely to her while we are there, and I will watch for that hesitant flicker in her eyes, when it is obvious the world has shaken.

(Photo: Joni Kabana)

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