Matema's Two Worlds

Entering Ethiopia from the border town of Matema was a border crossing unlike any other.  The mosques, prohibition and other bits of Arabian culture stopped at a decrepit bridge, with no water passing below.  The tarmac ends and a dusty, gravel road lay ahead.          

 

The customs hut was a sad structure.  Goats foraged through heaps of litter by the entrance.  The fence and doorway were corrugated sheet metal and a beaten dirt path led to the immigration hut.  Inside were two desks, one emigration, the other immigration.  Tossing my passport onto a stack of others, I watched the finger of the immigration officer scan across an ancient-looking book, his finger dragging over hundreds of names.  Seeing this was no small task, I decided to walk around the corner for a much awaited beer.  

 

It is amazing the difference fifty yards can make.  Seated in a room strikingly similar to the immigration office, I drained a local Dashan beer and learned some basic Ethiopian.  Two locals, both able to speak some English taught me: Indene—How are you? and Amasiginalo—Thank you.  Though I cringe when I hear tourists butcher Mandarin; we are slated for 21 days in Ethiopia and likely longer because of skipping Kenya, so learning a few words can’t hurt, no matter how bad my pronunciation.      

 

As they taught and I repeated, dozens of children stopped by the entrance, backlit by the relentless sun.  Their enormous white and brown eyes danced around the room, quickly landing on me.  “You, you, you, you,” they hoot.  “Me, me, me, me, me,” I respond.  This confuses them and they wander off. 

 

I say amasiginalo to my teachers and return to the immigration hut.  Sitting inside, my eyes wander about the room.  Someone had tried to spruce the inside by painting it with purple and green paint, but as the mud aged, it cracked, making the walls look like a painted, dry riverbed.  An Ethiopian calendar advertises beer by featuring a breathtaking Ethiopian woman, tilting her head, beaming a smile towards the bottle and me.  A unclad women and beer, two things you will not find 50 yards east. 

 

The calendar states, as have many banners I have seen since, that it is the Ethiopian Millennium.  The Ethiopians follow their own calendar and along with their calendar, they follow Ethiopian time.  I was told in the immigration office that it was eight in the morning, whereas following the Sudanese time 50 yards away, it was nearly two in the afternoon.

 

The immigration hut was also the first place I saw Ethiopian script.  I am told by Wondey, our local support, that the language has over 200 characters.  Two or more characters make up a word, and the letters are phonetic, like our alphabet.  While reading a book on Eritrea, Ethiopia’s petite northern neighbor, it mentions how the Ethiopians are very adept at learning languages with nearly perfect pronunciation.  The English language has a possibility of 44 unique phonetic sounds.  Though I am not sure of the exact number, Ethiopian language has 70+ phonetic possibilities.    

 

I’m asked my profession and receive my entry stamp.  A little buzzed, as we have not had much to drink over the past two and a half weeks, I walk to our camp.  On my walk I’m hassled by a local, a consequence of their ability to speak English fairly well, and I feign ignorance.  They try more and more desperately to speak with me, with the effort ending with a Fine, Fuck You!  Yes, fuck you too I think to myself, unflinchingly, as not to give up my facade. 

 

On my short walk, Ethiopian culture is thick.  It seems to battle with the Sudanese for supremacy, and this is likely due to the Ethiopians being very proud people.  So proud of their language (they have the only written history in sub-Saharan Africa) and culture that many will deny they are Africans. 

 

Women are dressed comfortably and lively music blasts from huts.  Crowding the sides of the dusty road are huts no different from the immigration hut.  Walls are constructed from dried mud and straw and the roof is a thatched roof. 

 

In the shade of many huts, groups of five or six huddle around a large dish.  A thin, crepe-like bread sprawls across the large plate, slightly spilling over the sides.  In the middle of the dish is either a meat or bean paste.  Everyone uses their fingers, pulling thin trails of bread and using this to sop sauce and retrieve beans.  The pinched burrito disappears with one bite.  Ethiopians are very proud of their food, so proud, they call it National Food. 

 

Two days earlier, at a spectacular camp along the Nile, I was able to hang my hammock beneath a canopy of trees.  Yellow bursts of flowers, soft and round like felt spheres, carpeted the ground beneath me and choirs of birds chirped all about, happily distracting me from my book.  Occasionally a new species would flutter by, singing its song for a moment, and finding no reply, it continued its search for mates along the bank.  Soft chugs from a diesel pump echoed in the distance.  Our Zimbabwean driver wandered by, speaking as not to disturb the birds, “Yes, now it is beginning to be Africa.”

 

Back in Matema, chickens and roosters cluck throughout the day and into the evening.  Several hee-haws screech above the clucking.  As the sun sets over Sudan, we notice the hills are afire.  They flame not from the fading light, but from brush fires.  Burning to clear grasses and nourish the soil for subsistence farming.  The smoky haze and charred scent add another dimension to Matema.  Yes, after a month of travel, we have finally arrived in Africa