August 12, 2023
In mid August, on late afternoon that was a little cold, I got on a black down jacket and lame skinny jeans I bought in Galle, Sri Lanka three month ago. I sauntered toward the hostel, and enjoyed eating the fried dough I had bought at a food stall. The strange women blundered about on the sidewalk and regarded me. Their face were rigid and their eyes inward. I sauntered on; and then a woman moved closed to me, saying the word,“Money,” so close that I brushed her with my elbow. I could see their eyes followed me down the road.
A little bit ahead I saw some scales at a short interval; by each scale stood one child. As I watched them one boy’s hand clutched my arm. “Put your weight on, sir!”he said. I shock it off quickly, speeding my pace against the children. Before they could follow me I half ran, crossed the main road, fled around the roundabout—the little cluster of buildings stood out. Square tiles and mirrors of outside walls, modest and reserved, painted in red and pink and white, yellow and pale blue. Addis Ababa—not such a big city, for rich and poor together all in one. There were no trippers with smart phones. Small shops and restaurants sprang up, rich people just having fun. I had been awful hungry, but I understood myself—it would get me kind of sinful if I ate at these here nice restaurants.
The dusk deepened. I retraced the road I had walked before and hurrying back to the hostel. It was a mile to the hostel. I turned down a side street, into a graveled road, and saw the shadows of people against the walls of shacks, low and rough, exposed in the opening. I looked away—moved quickly along the other side of it, staring helplessly straight ahead. At the crossroad, where there was a fancy hotel, flickered the dim lights. The night air was cold , somewhere EBM sounded, and strange people moved about in the streets. My impulse was to get into these local folks for warmth; it seemed like I wished African people could be nice to an outsider.
By the feeble street lights I looked at figures moving from the shadow of like small grocery stores or of like canteens. Speaking of Ethiopian traditional food, it seemed to be Injela, which I had wanted to try to eat. I skulked about a series of corrugated iron sheds, looking for signs : RESTAURANT. And then I could see their heads turn as their eyes followed me, whenever I was not sure of myself in a country I had never been to.
Outside, a young broad woman sat on the stool, a shadow crossed her face and from the little shack opening I looked at the folks eating. “What do you want?” She tipped up her steaming mug and sipped the drink. Her toenails glistened pinkly in her sandals, her legs crossed. A mischievous, laughing face. “Im just going past,”I said. I tried to avoided her. “Come in. Have a seat,”she gestured for me to go inside. I wondered I was getting screwed. Some people in business got to cheat a foreigner. I blundered into the shack—only six feet wide. Around a small round table, a young couple sat on each box against the walls. I sat on the pale blue bench by the entrance, where a middle-aged man in the ragged overalls was eating salad. This couple had been tearing the end of a blown stuff; I guessed maybe it was home-made Injela. I caught a woman in a white apron scurrying in and out through the opening. “I’d like In…ju-la?” I flinched with embarrassment. “You said Injela? “Yes.” “No, finished.” “Do you have a menu?” “No, we don’t have,” she disappeared from my view. As I looked for help from face to face the laboring man said, “You gonna eat.” He left me some stuff to eat and he hobbled into the dark night.
I mooned into the shacks, into the grocery shops—and not getting Injera. I remembered a place I glanced through the open door—the small iron shack where the men ate a brown creased flatbread on which there were fried potatoes with thick red sauce. I set out toward again it. Down the graveled road I could see the folks sitting huddled together drinking coffee.
The front of the gray, paintless shack of corrugated iron, silver and tin, but properly set up. I put my head out of the threshold of its entrance again. The inside—the warmth, the lightly hubbub—was such a contrast to the chill night that I regained my energy.
A woman stood near by, cooking beside the fridge and smiling a little but firmly at me. “What you want?” “Is this what you call Injera?” This time I pronounced more clearly maybe, and pointing at it; one folk ate standing, a plate in his hand, and tearing the edge of it. “Yes,”she said soberly. “Injera, you want?”she asked. “Yes, I wanna try to eat the local food. It is very famous, is it?” She did not answer. In the small room stood a square table, and around it were plastic stools—pale blue, white and purple—for the local people to sit on. A dark-faced man, drinking from a pint flask, sat on the stool. “Come in,” he gestured toward a stool, friendly and humble. “Come right in.”
From outside came a rushing sound. A man like a shopkeeper skittered toward the tank in the shade beside a tin wall, the border between the shack houses, squatted down and washed the dishes in the tubs. I stepped humbly over the doorsill, and then I wriggled slowly my way among the stools and sat beside the tipsy man. “Set down,” he said forlornly. In the back of me was the small kitchen, where the woman had been turning the thick slice potatoes, the onions and the green weeds in the hot grease.
I was just waiting for Injela. The tipsy man was silent, holding his pint. He sapped it occasionally. The fridge on the right stood so close to me that it could only be half open. I turned back.“Excuse me. Can I have a beer?” She opened its door and it banged the table and then she peered into. Finally, she hold up two beers. “Which one?”she asked. “Uh, I was very new, arrived today. Which do you recommend?” “St George.” “Okay, I’ll have it.”
The lonely man had been silent. The walls were whitewashed gray and the floor concrete. The night wind around the shacks rustled the rusty tin walls, and a frying pan hissing and spitting. I had tasted its bitterness and going elated. I tried to talk with him. “What is this you drank?” “Nice liquor,” he said. “Can you try?” I wondered if he asked for money. “Uh…maybe. A little bit.” “Yes, yes,” he poured white liquor from his pint into a tin cup.
I was waiting for Injela; grease splashed and hissed. I twisted my neck and looked over my shoulder. “Excuse me, I wonder could I eat lnjera?” “Oh, you wanna eat Injera?” “Of course,” I sipped the drink, silent and fretful. The shopkeeper came in. “Pa. Get to the store,” said the cooking woman. They huddled together talking together—he took her money and went out the door into the darkness.
She moved back to the kitchen and I stood looking around. In one corner an orange corrugated paper sagged steeply from the ceiling, and empty beer bottles were on the floor. She picked up the fork and stirred a few dark curls like intestines in the grease. There was a life in the shack.
When the shopkeeper came back I could see through his bags brown flatbread; he passed them up to the cooking woman, who set out a tin platter with something like a creased wide crepe in front of me. The frying pan of intestines no longer hissed, and she scooped them with the fork from the grease and laid them in the center on it. I inspected the Injera; approaching my nose then poking at the intestines with the point of my knife. As soon as she was aware that I was a little taken aback, she tore off the edge of the Injera of mine, wrapped intestines and took a bite of it backing to the kitchen.
I tasted Injera—a little acid, but not as bad as the bloggers said—and gnawed at the dark curls slowly, pain ripping and echoing with each bite through my lower left back teeth, because one of them had fallen out in Varanasi, India. And so I chewed gingerly and swallowed.
Near the open door a randy man moseyed around. Cockily, he walked close, seeing my Asian face, and he came into with a swaying strut. He sat a plastic stool across from me, merry and efficient. The randy man wore a black cap rakishly and a white stubble beard made impact. For clothes he wore a black and white checkered shirts. “Hello, my friend,” said the rancid man, who enthroned on the plastic stool. I sat still, eating Injera awkwardly. “You from China?” he grinned affectionately at me and his pale blue eyes were somewhat kindly with secrecy. “Japan.” “Japan! You’re welcome here, my friend.” “Thank you.” I said flatly.
I tore off a piece of Injera that was soft and smooth and carefully scooped up the intestines with my fork—stuff spilling over. The rancid man looked at it. “Like this.” He tore off my Injera, quickly grabbed the remains from above, and filled his mouth full. This heller did so again and again, silent and wolfish; tearing, grabbing, chewing and swallowing. I was full of wonder, or rather I got mixed up. His teeth were very white against his brown skin. “Hey! This is mine I ordered,” I said angrily. “There’d be nothing left.” “Yes, yes,” he said, dipping it into red sauce. “Do you like spicy?” He asked. I wanted to say—I wanted to say—I could not understand—besides, I was not capable yet of saying something. Now and then the cooking woman glanced around pleasantly from the frying pan. “Yes…a little…”I said. He passed the oily small cup that leaked redder sauce up to me. “My name is Zewdu. What’s your name?” “K.” The randy man stood up and said, “K, glad to meet you.” A third of my Injera was left. “Good night,” he went out the open door.
When supper was over I stood up. I was unwilling to wipe the grease on my hands with my jeans. “Come,” the cooking woman went out and gestured toward the blue tank. Her hand twisted its lever; I washed my hands, with water running down toward the tub in which the dishes dipped.
I awoke to find sunlight pouring in and heard the chittering of the birds and the hammering of the irons and the timbers. I got up from my bed and passed through the glass door onto the balcony. A wind was gentle and sighing. Addis Ababa had begun to come to life. The men worked in the formwork of the building before me. I looked over at the direction I had been walked yesterday. The outskirt of the town was so cluttered with the ruined small shacks; the ragged patched roofs, and the scraped walls—green, purple and yellow—made of tin or of concrete. And a few obscure houses and buildings.
Leaving the dormitory room, I descended the staircase. Along the bright red wall were the African paintings and the postcards lines. When I reached the ground floor, ahead of me emerged a big water pump, which two small, lean men lifted. The water had not been running in this hostel since yesterday’s check-in. I made my way past them and wrenched the door open and into the enclosed space, where bed sheets and clothes lines hung. A dog came sniffing at me. Then he trotted away watched the two men for some kind of signal. I slowly opened the bar gate with the squeak of iron on iron.
A little way outside the gate there were dozens of small white cups neatly on a table, and among them stood green herbs in one glass. A woman in a black denim jacket sat on a blue plastic stool and put her elbow on her knee and her chin in her cupped hand. I inspected them with interest. “Could I have a coffee?’’I asked. She pulled out a plastic stool and put it beside me. “Thanks,”I said and sat on it. She squatted beside the little old brazier. She had a fire started and poked the coals and set a tin kettle inside.
As the morning went on, men and women huddled near her. She still sat looking into the coals. The lid of the kettle clashed and she lifted its handle and poured coffee into another black kettle, from which steam rosed. “Yes, Juna! Very good,” said a man’s voice.
Instead of a table, Juna set the black leather chair with no backrest. On my tray she put a cup and set a small red porcelain, incense burned—she filled up it with coffee. “Without sugar,” I said and she looked at me in wonder. “It would spoil the taste of coffee.” And I slowly brought my mouth closer to its surface and drank the scalding coffee.
I wanted some breakfast and idled along the streets where mud puddles formed, and in the low place little lake formed. I lost the memory of last night the rain had fallen. The mud loosened ahead of me. I saw the men and the shovel rose and fell; their shoes were shapeless of mud. Perspiration stood out on the forehead of the young man.
Finally, I reached the large windows with the brown frames and could see plenty breads and a sign: GOLDEN COFFEE & BAKERY. I stood silently, breathed in and went into the shop. And there was a seated man, eating something shaped like a triangle—crispy on the outside and so dense on the inside—over hot milk. A young woman in clean clothes walked around the counter. “I’ll have the same he eating,” I said, looking at the man. “How many Sambusas you want?”she asked, developing a little smile. “Sa…busa. Uh, maybe, I’ll get one.” She went to the back room, and soon she came back bringing a thing wrapped in white paper. “It was last one, careful, very hot.”she smiled and handed it to me. The seated man pull out amiably a white plastic chair near to me; I bowed to him and sat in it. And then I just nibbled and nibbled—Sambusa was packed with beans. I looked around at the woman and held up my hand. “Excuse me, and a cup of hot milk.” The light of the sun came through the windows. The sun, warm as a blanket, allowed myself to be coaxed back down into my chair. She put a cup of milk and a bowl of sugar on a red tray and carried it to the table. The large square windows showed four young person juggling a soccer ball in the circle on the concrete street.