“How is Ethiopia?”

In an introductory conversation with an Ethiopian friend of a friend, a colleague or even a cab driver, it is very likely that they will ask ‘How is Ethiopia?’ After establishing how long you have been in the country, most Ethiopians want to know how you feel about their nation. Fair enough.

If you asked an Ethiopian to describe their nations typical characteristic, I would suspect the list would include; hospitable, kind, generous, proud, inviting etc.

And I am happy to say that I have been fortunate enough to meet many people, during my four month stay, who more than fit into this description- my colleagues in particular who have made me feel incredibly welcome and at home. Especially while traveling to the field, they make great efforts to make me feel included and encourage my participation.

Someone said to me recently that they feel there is a direct co-relation between how much one enjoys Ethiopia and how much time they have to spend outside/on the streets.

I cringe to think of the habits I have developed here. As a car-less intern I spend A LOT of time walking places on the streets. As a Martimer smiling at passersby is a natural reaction, particularly in rural areas where greeting a stranger is common practice. While in Ethiopia I have developed a particular habit of looking at the ground when I walk past construction sights, taxi drivers, shoeshine boys, fruit stands etc where I am not only asked if I would like to buy what they might be selling but often told we should marry or that they want to be my good friend. It frustrates me because while some, I am sure are good people, the others who yell inappropriate objectifying sexual comments have in fact ruined it for everyone else. For this reason I find it easier to avoid starting conversations or even looking at people rather than trying to escape an uncomfortable situation later on. If someone was to only spend a few days here, taking public transport and walking most places, their perception of Ethiopians would likely/unfortunately be terribly negative and distorted to believe the worst.  I recognize that it is not everyone, people have helped me find mini-buses, and been very kind, but its in-between demeaning animal like catcalls which are incredibly rude and inappropriate… please do not wink at me while making my Macchiato - it is creepy and I’m never going to want to talk to you now.

My mother told me about some errands my brother had to run the other day in Antigonish, buy a camera case, fixing his glasses and ORDERING HIS X-RING (35 days FYI). While she was excited for him that he had managed to accomplish so many things in one afternoon, for me it was the silence and invisibility of his actions that I realized I envied the most. Every time I leave the house/ the office to step onto the street in Addis I take a deep breath and hope that today will be a “good day” aka a quiet day. A quiet day is when only a handful of people shouts at you, and don’t follow you in their persistence. A frustrating day is exactly what I recently had on my walk home from work. I was trying to clear my head, a delusional idea while walking home here, so I was a bit lost in thought, when a man passed me on the Bole road, index finger out pointing at me and shouted “F**K YOU, yea you F**K YOU, F**K YOU” and then carried on his way up the street.

While first I couldn’t help but laugh thinking “seriously? Did that actually just happen?” I then felt immense rage for the anger that was targeted at me out of nowhere. Yet my final emotion was curiosity, I would love to know what the thought process was that went through that mans head before he shouted in my face. And unlike the gentleman who was wearing a disheveled plaid shirt and a cowboy hat that claimed to be interest in ‘being my best friend’ and tried to walk me home earlier that week, the shouter was not visibly under influence of chewing chat*.

So why did the shouter hate me? He wasn’t stoned and delusions, had I ignored his friend or him earlier that week? Had he mistaken me for someone else or was it just because of the color of my skin? I have opted to lean towards the last answer—having been here for almost five months now I have fallen into a routine, built a life if you will, and in doing so seem to have slacked on my analysis of the impact of my presence. While to me I am just another individual living in an increasingly multicultural city, to this stranger my white skin may be perceived as a representation of great privileged and power. Privilege and power that has been exerted by many other foreigners for years in his country, through many streams but particularly Aid organizations. I may represent a life of ease which he can only dream of.

Thus while I see myself as a broke recent graduate, working as an intern who walks to and from work as I’m car-less, I silently represent much more. Thus as much as it is draining to walk, and I will never know what his real motivation was, his abrupt interruption to my walk acted as a reminder of the weight of the privilege I carry, even silently, through my whiteness. It also allowed me to recognize the privilege I have in the fact that I will return to a country where for 20 years I only knew silence and ease of daily activities and interactions. I now recognize that not everyone has access to such a space.

Privileged is deeply complex and I do not claim to have fully understood how mine has influence my experiences here in Ethiopia. Yet, I want to express that my interaction with the “shouter” has acted as a abrupt reminder of a complex dynamic. After the interaction, I dug through some old papers from my undergrad and (thanks to the search bar on my mac) I came across the section that follows, I never imagined in would ring so true to my reality.

Both social location and subject position involve the acknowledgement of ones gender, race, class, and nationality for example, yet to express ones social location is to state it as an abstract frozen and unchangeable fact, which does not provoke a deeper examination of power relations (Heron, 2005, 343). While on the contrary subject position examines how our gender, race, ethnicity and nationality intertwine, engage and impact our perspective. Heron references Foucault (1980), to expand on the role power plays in subject position.

“In thinking of the mechanism of power, I am thinking of its capillary form of existence, the point where power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives”.

Heron uses Foucault to emphasize that we are vehicles of different power relations and that we need to acknowledge not only how these power relations have come to be, but also how they play into our experiences. 

Thus as much as I feel more and more comfortable and “at home” here in Ethiopia, my presence carries a certain level of privilege and it will continue to interact with other power relations for the duration of my stay. Simply stating that I am a white female from a middle class Canadian family is not enough, as it does not examine how these factors play into many interactions, or the history behind why one might resent me without knowing me.  

I wanted to write about this experience because a lot of my friends/ other female interns in the city have experience very similar situations. We have discussed how frustrating/draining moving about the city can be, but how we do not want it to be the sole impression we are left with of Ethiopia as there are many wonderful aspects. More than anything I wanted to reiterate that just like Canadian’s Ethiopians are not a homogeneous group of people, it’s just that all the rude ones seem to congregate on the streets here.

As always please feel free to send me any questions or comments at steph.milo.mackinnon@gmail.com

Steph xx