Days go by like hours and our lives have been taken over by the African routine. But this word has a different meaning here. Everything here is chaotic and it’s not what we take as routine. You can’t make any plans for the next day because when you need to do the laundry, there might not be any water and you don’t know how long it’s gone for. Also, when there’s not enough of water you have to wonder every day if there will be a chance to wash yourself. This waiting might take to 4 days.
It’s two weeks from the time I had to do everything alone, regarding the school lunches. Now Norman is helping me to carry the bags home.
On Tuesday Norman took control of cooking. He spent the morning in kitchen pealing potatoes and chopping onion, cabbage and carrots. The hotpot was very Estonian with Ethiopian spices and very delicious. The afternoon he spent repairing the benches. This repairing with the hammer and nails made him very serious because he had hoped to use screws. Here you may have with you the wisdom or the will to do things but the tools are different than we are used to. Everything is very basic here, even our dinner -boiled chickpeas with tomato slices. Need for something more has vanished.
This is what our days look like:
- I prepare the breakfast
- Annika and Norman bring the drinking and washing water from a river near-by
- Annika’s morning classes with children
- Me and Norman get the food from the market
- Norman repairs school inventory
- Evening spent with friends or as locals say “Chigirillo”
“Chigirillo” is filled with laughter and discussions, such as:
- I went to the cafe and asked two coffees with milk but all I got was 2 glasses of milk. I asked in the local language for the coffes and they gave me only 1, though i had asked for 2 showing it vith my fingers at the same time. The third time I finally got 2 coffees. The bill with the 2 milk glasses was 29 birrs. I asked them to change it, they did, but instead of decreasing the bill increased. Sometimes I still think why it surprises me.
- You buy 10 breads but have to pay for 12. Even if many times you show 10 fingers, the price is still for 12 breads. A local came to help me. They started counting the breads once more and touching each of them. It comes out that there really are 10 breads. This is followed by a “sorry” and a humble look. It’s not a coincidence or a mistake, but a rule that you have to control every bill before you pay. Nobody checks the white people. When I go to the market I weight myself, pay and leave. They don’t even bother to count the money, because they trust you. Also, when I go to thw market then I say the price, because if you ask for the price, it makes them feel that they can add 2birrs to every price. So, when I go to the market, I pretend that I know all the prices and I start telling them to the seller and doing that I take a few birrs off the price. 95% of the prices I offer are correct and I get the stuff I want with the price I want. But it’s also useful to check the scale before buying anything. You get tired very fast in these situations, but by the evening chigrillo everything negative is a joke and it seems as you weren’t there when it happened.
MERLE