Man/woman always doin; the dance
One wops, one pops…
We’d be lucky if we both find a groove
That we both can lock
-Q-Tip
One wops, one pops…
We’d be lucky if we both find a groove
That we both can lock
-Q-Tip
“Oh my God…it’s that guy!”
Sara’s face has suddenly transformed from tranquility to mortified disbelief as she looks beyond me to the scenic view outside.
“What guy?” I ask, confused but knowing not to turn around and trace her gaze
“It’s that guy from the mountain!!” she hisses to me.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I say, now in an equally astonished state. Upon saying this, I immediately shift to defensive mode and start babbling to her: “….we have a group report that is due tomorrow, and it must be sent when we return to Addis Ababa. We cannot stay out tonight for any length of time with him…”
“Right.” says Sara. She understands what I am doing. Of course she would. We have both been playing this game for far too long. And we hate it.
I don’t particularly like going out of my way to call attention to the fact that I am a woman- unless of course I get stuck in a positively male conversation that has me mentally making over the clothing choices of the people around me. Unfortunately however, there are days like today where I find it absolutely essential to bring up this distinction in order to vent a little frustration.
See these women? This country operates on the backs of this gender.
Sara and I have continually witnessed how women perform most of the manual labor here in Ethiopia. I get the traditional gender role thing, and I am not out to sound the alarm for universal equality at this stage in my fantastic voyages of privilege. But I will say that the above observation is one that we have been constantly filing away over the past nine days.
All of the little children running up to your car saying “Pen! Give me pen!” – these products of unfortunate positive reinforcement are the least of your concerns. And with children and women out of the way, we are only left with one demographic…
Today we went into the hills to see the village of the Dorze people. We were given a tour by Makona, a local guy who spoke fast English and dressed like an African would dress if he wanted to feel like an hip American. He was of course very kind, but there were a number of interactions that set my spider senses off in the quietest, yet most significant of ways.
But first, here’s some cultural bits on the Dorze community. Here’s the main house in Makona’s family compound. This where our tour began- and this is where we thought it would end.
Here is the interior of the house. Yes, it is always this dark in there.
Makona bade us to sit down in the darkness an he proceeded to explain the various amenities of his family’s house. Cattle over there, bed here, fire pit there. Then he grabbed one of the calabasse (a hollowed gourd used for drinking) and proceeded to plop down next to me and demonstrate how people drink out of these things at the same time. Before I knew it his dreadlocked skull was pressed up against the side of his face.
I didn’t exactly like the closeness factor, but I let it slide- all in the spirit of goodwill and learning about this culture.
Now we move to the back of the house, which is actually a neat-looking hotel of individual huts. We are told to sit down in the porch hut (for lack of a better term) and try the local bread that is made from the false banana plant. It tastes good, and I can check another cultural block, right? Wrong…
It’s about eleven in the morning and no sooner do we tear into the bread that a bottle of clear liquid is brought out. It’s locally made schnapps made from garlic, anise, sorghum, and some other stuff. Some dude is pouring, and we are meant to be drinking.
Before I know it, my camera is snatched from the table and we are posing for a photograph. Of course we don’t want to be rude, and I pick up the glass to drink this stuff down. In this candid, you can see that I have instinctively moved towards Sara and away from dreadlock man- I am all about not giving any impression of being interested at all in this guy.
We have to skull two shots before we feel confident that we have done our part as obliging tourists. We refuse a third drink, and soon we are ferreted outside to watch a traditional dance show. As the spectacle builds, I get the distinct feeling that I am at Paradise Cove in Hawaii- a place where you can experience your own Mickey Mouse luau with a hundred of your closest haole friends. I actually left that luau early because I felt it was ridiculous. But I digress…
The dancing and music is “neat”. Sara and I in our increasingly buzzed state are clapping and enjoying the show. There are a couple of other tourists there as well, and they refuse the continued invitation to go out and dance. Then Sara and I are approached.
I have no problem with making myself look like a jackass in the name of playing along with a little show and tell that is outside of your cultural comfort zone. Neither is Sara. To be good sports, we start dancing- and once again, before we know it our chauffeur for this trip shows up and someone has taken our cameras and is shooting photos of us. At this stage the effects of hard alcohol on an empty stomach see us dancing around in a cheetah skin without much concern.
No really.
Yes, I’m a white girl- but at least I’m not a stick in the mud like the Korean tourists behind me. Feel free to use this as blackmail, I don’t care.
And this one. General Olmsted would be proud at the lengths that we have gone in the name of cultural immersion.
The singing and dancing finally stops, and we give back the cheetah skins. The schnapps that we are given was very strong, and Sara and I are kind of winded. Dreadlock man tells me to come back into the seating area. “Here, sit next to me” he starts to motion to his immediate left. Maybe because I am a hyper-sensitive girl, but I could see this coming, and instead sit opposite him without apology.
He next produces a piece of paper and asks for my e-mail address- “for when you come back and want to organize a tour” he explains. Listen: I always hate when people who you will never see again ask for such personal information. No you cant fucking have my e-mail address, says my reflexive Masshole inside voice, but of course I do take the pen and instead scribble my “throwaway” address on the paper for him. Like I said, I’m trying to be a pleasant cultural tourist- the only question remaining is, why can’t he do the same in his capacity?
“Do you have a Senegalese phone number?” he asks once I give him the crap e-mail address.
“I have no phone.” I answer without hesitation.
Makona’s tour of his village does not end there. Our chauffeur rounds us up into the SUV so we can go down to the local market. I notice that for the first time in three days the the chauffeur is a little more touchy- which is to say that he is placing his hand is on my shoulder, or on my arm. Was he drinking too? Again, nothing to cause alarm- but just another interaction that is filed away into the Hmmm” category.
The market is big and interesting. Here people are smoking tobacco from a communal pot.
Sara and I are the only two white people here, and that makes us immediate rock stars.
A quick video of the marketplace, which is very cool and has some neat stuff for sale.
At the market we are taken to a little bar area to try some tej, or honey wine. Sara and I are already swimming from the extremely strong schnapps that was ingested just up the hill. At this point she also confides in me that our chauffeur seems to have gotten a little more touchy since the dance. Hmmm.
I think that it must have been here where I remember to assert to Makona that we are leaving town tomorrow. I do this in the hopes of creating a “yes it was nice to meet you, now have a nice life” sentiment. Unfortunately, I am also dumb enough to tell him what hotel we are staying in when he asks. It is an hour away from his mountain home, would make for quite a hike- so I don’t see any harm in telling him. Afterward I totally forget that I gave him this crucial bit of information- which is a rookie mistake considering I have used a bar name and fake personal story since I have been a teenager.
We leave Makona and his village behind and transit down to Lake Chamo, a massive and beautiful lake where you can check out hippos and crocodiles. Sara and I take stock of our morning, and deem it a fun time with only a few odd moments. We are excited to check out some wildlife.
And we are not disappointed. The boat’s engine is cut and we float around to watch a small slice of Wild Kingdom. The south of this country is nothing like what we saw up north. This is one reason why Ethiopia is virtually impossible to describe in one, concise blog entry.
Roar. There were loads of crocodiles having a bit of a bake in the sun.
After getting our fill of lake life, we finally head back in for an evening of relaxation at the hotel.
We get back to shore and our chauffeur is waiting for us. He stands up and has his arms outstretched, because he wants to give us a hug in celebration of our seeing the crocodiles (Sara had voiced her excitement to see these). I’m seeing his arms outstretched and am immediately thinking “Heisman”- so I move off to the side and pat his bicep. I don’t want to create the wrong impression or get too close to our very kind driver- because that’s the kind of hyper-sensitive and paranoid person that I have become.
On the way back from our water adventure, our chauffeur asks what we want to do- specifically he wants to know if we want to go and get a juice in town. Between drinking local witches’ brew, spinning around while wearing a cheetah skin cape, and bobbing for crocodiles, I am ready to disconnect back in the hotel by reading my favorite novel du jour The Yacoubian Building. I speak for the both of us and say that I want to go back and rest- but the inside voice in me says that I don’t want to create any further opportunity for one-on-one time with these men.
We bid good evening to our driver. Again, he is ‘a really nice guy’ but Sara reports that he seems to linger and doesn’t want the day with us to end. “Nothing overtly weird or anything- he is still very professional” Sara points out, “but still, I can sense something.” I know what she means.
Back in our hotel room, Sara and I unwind and continue to do CSI on our day’s spate innocent, yet collectively significant interactions from the day. She already has a blog entry brewing on the situation of women in this country, as well as a reflection on the experience of being a woman traveling in Africa. We decide to leave our room and hang out by the hotel’s cliff in order to take in the view one last time.
And it is relaxing, as we sit on the side of a cliff and enjoy the view of mountains and lakes. It’s nice to unwind.
The sun starts to set and we decide to go inside for some supper. We are ten minutes into waiting for our food to arrive when that look of shock washes over Sara’s face. It’s how I began my blog entry, and we spend our entire meal wargaming how we will interact with Makona as he now strategically seats himself by the exit with one of his friends so he can doubtlessly wait for us to walk by. Awesome.
This recounting of my (admittedly still fun) day out may seem to you as hardly worth a blog entry (save for the ridiculous photos). Still, I find days like this to factor significantly into my life as I deal with this kind of interaction on a continual basis. Sara deals with it too, as do probably most women in the world (especially in the developing world). I’m not trying to launch into diatribe against all men here- because I certainly grew up surrounded by only the most supportive and positive male role models. Instead, I guess what I am trying to say is that we women make lots of alterations to how we conduct ourselves when these opportunists take liberties and push the envelope of interaction too far.
I also don’t want to paint all non-Western men as being like this- but Lord knows that I have seen a sharp increase in dudes mistaking my friendliness for interest while living over here. It’s one of the reasons why you see me taking off to Europe with great frequency. I have long-since given up on giving men the benefit of the doubt when I suspect that they may be making overtures. I now always default to the belief that they are trying to get somewhere with me, and accordingly I have to alter my demeanor to let them know that they have no chance in Hell. That might sound harsh, but it’s my reality.
So what happened with our deadlocked Ethiopian loverboy and our slightly touchy chauffeur? Nothing actually, I am happy to report. We marched on by the dreadlocks and said a drive-by “hello-goodbye” without changing our stride. He tried to engage us as we walked out the door, but we were out of tourist goodwill and happy to be abrupt. The next morning, our chauffeur showed up with photos of him and his girlfriend that were purposefully balanced next to the stick shift for us to admire. He made a deliberate showing to stow these away before starting the car, but I played along and told them they were nice photos. I don’t know why he did this- I don’t pretend to have the entire game figured out.
Maybe Dreadlocks really didn’t have any ulterior motives, and maybe he simply made the hour-plus commute down the mountain to visit our specific hotel and just engage in some simple chit chat. And maybe our chauffeur really is innocent, and he just wanted to be friendly by placing his hands on my back several times. I will never be sure, but at this stage in my life I am no longer willing to gamble on this possibility and place myself in further uncomfortable situations.