The Nerd's Eye View

12/31/2004 5:17AM (7:17AM Boston)

As some of you already know, my flight got into Boston late last night, and I missed my connection to NYC. Rather than getting upset about the whole thing and the fact that I hadn't had any more than an hour or so of sleep for the past 22 hours, I took it all in stride and called my good friend Ryan (ptooi!). After arranging for a morning flight to JFK, I started the long trudge to Alewife station where he would be meeting me, in his lady's jalopy. Trying to lug a 60 lb. bag through the Boston underground transportation is similar to dragging a screaming 8 year old through a toy store at Christmas time. Add a second bag of clothes and a book bag, and you have the recipe for an old school Lo Fat Mo slapstick episode. It was worth it though, since I hadn't seen Ryan in almost three years, and we ended up staying up all night talking and playing video games. City of Heroes is a uniquely comical experience when you've had no sleep in several days and are adding your own MST3K type commentary and dialogue.

My flight is supposed to take off at 9a or so, so I had to be at Logan at 7a, which meant that I ended up leaving Arlington at 6a. So no sleep for me. I am currently loopy, but inspired, and so cheerful that I am beginning to worry for my sanity. I don't know how hard I will crash, but I think that it won't be pretty when the time comes. The inspiration comes in the form of certain clear impressions of my vacation:

- walking in to find my old man drinking a tumbler of scotch, listening to Mozart
- waking up to the sounds Chopin wafting through the house like a sweet fragrance
- shopping in the Mercato in Addis Ababa. The Mercato is a mix between an Arabic souk, an Indian bazaar, and the edge of chaos
- having doors opened for me, and overall living the life of a young prince (not the artist)
- the poorest people in the world, with the most disturbing deformities sitting in front of a church
- grown, able-bodied men begging in the Khartoum industrial zone
- tears welling in my eyes at the sight of my young cousins all grown up
- praying in a mosque with my cousin who is the muezzin of that mosque
- answering the question "So what is the condition of Muslims in America these days?"
- hearing the words "you sure do look like your father," uttered a million times
- the sight of Khartoum at night from the air, the broad black band of the Blue and White Niles converging in Khartoum
- the sight of my college friends with their wives and children
- the realization that this may be the last long vacation I will have till the day I retire

The ideal vacation is not just relaxing but also enlightening. Like all the important things in life, you learn something important things about yourself just being there. It remains to be seen what that lesson will be articulated as for me, but I am a better man for it, I can tell you that for sure.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 5:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FINAL THOUGHTS ON ETHIOPIA
12/30/2004 4:47AM

I'm somewhere over the Alps right now, having left Addis Ababa at 7am. The Alps are really fantastic from this height, but I am not in the mood to really enjoy them. My leave-taking was not as tearful as it was with my mother in Khartoum, but I am still disappointed. I wanted to spend more time with my old man, and as expected my gadding about the African continent was at the expense of my time with Dad. I also came to the rather stunning realization that for the foreseeable future I won't be getting any really long vacations, so I'll have to make some pretty tough choices about where I spend that limited vacation time.

But I don't want to sound maudlin. I just wanted to do for Addis what I did for Khartoum, so without further ado, my final thoughts on Ethiopia:

- Amharic is an interesting language. As a semitic language I thought I'd be able to understand it fairly quickly, but there are just too many idiosyncrasies to it that I don't get. For instance they use some explosive consonants. Their t's and g's are explosive, and pop up quite often in regular speech. Imagine the X!hosa people with more options. They also have a tendency to insert short gasps into their speech. The gasps are used to indicate comprehension. Instead of an expulsion of air as in "uh-huh", there's a rapid intake of air: "gasp!" The weird part of it is that it's infectious. Even the stereotypically named Jacques Dubois does it, though his thirty years of marriage to an Ethiopian woman may go some ways towards explaining that. It doesn't, however, explain why the Finns in town all do it too.

- Little kids in Addis Ababa fall into two broad categories: modern or traditional. I've noticed that the traditional kids have some very strange haircuts. I was riding through town when I noticed a kid with half his head shaved. I quickly discarded the possibility that he was in some prog-rock band, but could find no other explanation. It was made more mystifying when I saw another little kid with her head shaved except for a little circle at her forelock, I finally asked around and discovered that it's a traditional practice to ward off the evil eye from little kids. This practice is similar to one that one was prevalent in the Sudan when my father's generation were children. The Ethiopians also add another twist: they tattoo the faces of particularly beautiful young women, also in order to ward off the evil eye. The tattoos incorporate a cross on the forehead and typically also include a chain of small crosses along the woman's jaw line and then down her throat. The overall effect is quite striking, and I wish I had taken a picture of one of these women to illustrate. Interestingly, in the Sudan a counterpart to this practice exists, wherein the woman's lower lip is tattooed. My grandmother's generation is the last generation of Sudanese women to sport that particular look.

- Ethiopians have a strangely intimate relationship with black folks outside of Africa. Within Africa they hold themselves aloof, apart from the rest of the continent because of their ancient civilization and their pretension to being the heirs of the throne of Solomon (yes, as in King Solomon of the baby splitting and the Old Testament). Yet they feel a strong affinity to the rest of the black diaspora. Ads for satellite movie channels show black stars. The country seems to be united behind the English Premier League Club, Arsenal, primarily due to the predominance of black players on their roster. Don't even get me started on the relationship between Ethiopia and Jamaica. The capital is flooded with dreadlocked Rastafarians, and every year a huge reggae festival is held on Bob Marley's birthday.

There's more but for some reason, from the moment I got onto the plane I've been blocked. For now I guess the only thing to mention is the short stop on the tarmac in Alexandria Egypt on the way to London. We landed at Borg AlArab air base, made famous by it's inability to get a single plane in the air during the 1967 Six Day War. Upon touch down I noted the series of hardened camouflaged hangars scattered around near the landing strip. It's always eerie to be near the scene of an infamous historical event.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 4:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/26/2004 9:27AM (7:27PM Khartoum)

This is a tough topic for me, because as the minutes tick away, I am torn between getting my final thoughts down on "paper" and gathering my strength for the last few days in Addis Ababa. It's also tough because there's so much I wanted to write about that I've either forgotten about, or have lost the fire of inspiration. So you'll excuse me if this next part is a little disjointed:

- The Sudan has changed a lot and a good example, for me, is the proliferation of eateries and watering holes. While I've discussed restaurants and fast food joints, I didn't really get the chance to talk about cafes, which have also sprouted in Khartoum like weeds. Some of them are quite swanky, and it is easy to forget where you are. My newlywed cousin had been on and on about going to a place called Parliament Cafe, which is found (of course) on Parliament Street in downtown Khartoum . We never seemed to get there, and eventually I ended up going with his brother and sister, and another cousin of ours. Parliament Cafe is situated on the roof of a business center, and bordered by the tall walls of the surrounding buildings. The result is like being in the crater of a volcano. There is a framed rectangle of sky, and the night I was there, I could see the moon clearly.

The entrance to the cafe's small courtyard is done up in an ancient Egyptian style with bas relief figures along the northern wall. The floor is lined with smooth stones from the river, fanning out from the stairs to the doors of the cafe. The cafe is dimly-lit, moodily-lit even, with a dark wood interior and the sort of furniture one usually sees in Ikea showrooms. A large plasma screen television sits up next to the bar playing an Arabic music video channel. Scattered around the room were various couples talking to each other in soft tones, obviously considering themselves the creme de la creme of Sudanese society. The problem of course is that the Sudanese are terrible at service, and so we ended up waiting for a good half hour before a server got to our table. There is a long road ahead before Sudan becomes a tourist wonderland.

- Part of the colonial legacy of the Sudan is the existence of social clubs, typically based on nationality or religion. The Armenian Club, the Syrian Club, the Greek Club, the German Club, the Sudan Club (British nationals only, the presumptuous bastards), the American Club, the Nubian Club, the Coptic Club, and the Catholic Club. All of those had fairly extensive grounds and a variety of athletic and social facilities. We filthy locals were typically not allowed in without a "sponsor", sort of like trying to get a visa into another country but with a little less paperwork. Lately of course, things have changed. The original communities that had established these social clubs have long since dwindled away, and the rules have long since slackened, so I found myself at the Deutcher Sudan Verein (German Club) one night, drinking gin and tonics, and listening to a Soca music. It's strange to see alcohol in the Sudan (nominally a Muslim country), but you know me, I roll with the punches.

I went to the German Club with a friend of mine who kept referring to me as her "childhood friend", and a couple of her colleagues. I certainly didn't expect to see anyone there that I knew. I have a theory though, that I like to call the "small world" theory. In short, my theory is that the world is a really small place, and that depending on the type of person you are and the circles you travel in you are quite likely to run into people you know in the most unlikely places. And so I did. I ran into a guy I went to high school with, and another girl who I've known since childhood along with her husband. What kind of a small world do we live in where you can run into people you know in such disparate places?

- The Sudan is a great test bed for the "small world" theory, especially the less benign aspect of it. In the Sudan you are pretty much related to almost anyone. The familial links between people are not always obvious, but they're there and more intricate than one would imagine. For instance, I am related to members of the current government, and members of the opposition. More importantly, they are both related to each other even more closely than I am related to them. Considering how outspoken I am, you can see that this could pose a problem or two (or more). So I refrain from talking politics, and in the Sudan, religion - at least with my two uncles. That doesn't automatically stop trouble from popping up. In a recent visit, the uncle who was in the inner circle of the current government was holding forth on the differences between the Ethiopian and Sudanese national characters. He made a comment about how Ethiopians are technically proficient at everything they do: if they're barbers, they're great barbers; if they're mechanics, they are great mechanics; if they're diplomats, they excel at languages and the business of diplomacy. At that point I had to leave the room.

If there's one thing I know for sure it's that the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was composed, for the most part, of dedicated professionals who excelled in their task - up until 1989 that is. In 1989 a coup installed this current government and they set about purging the foreign ministry (among other venerable Sudanese institutions) of career diplomats. They bullied, humiliated, coerced or directly removed the men and women who made the ministry so efficient, replacing them with party apparatchiks who used the ministry to travel around on the government dime, living it up and making things up as they went along. These are the people who are diplomats with no language skills, and even less diplomatic acumen.

For him to say what he said, in a room where he had to know there were people that knew better just staggered me. The nature of family ties in the Sudan prevented me from saying anything so I just got up and left the room to fume on my own. The man's arrogance and hypocrisy is hard to imagine outside of a caricature. I've been butting heads with him since high school and it hasn't gotten any easier. Being an adult means having to be diplomatic, though, and I am nothing if not a dutiful son.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/25/2004 2:51AM (12:51PM Khartoum)

The last hours in Khartoum are always a mad dash towards the finish line, which is tomorrow at 9p, when my flight leaves for Addis Ababa again. I can barely remember what I need to do, let alone what I want to do. The problem with the Sudan (if you can call it a problem) is that you are surrounded by people who love you and want to be with you, sit with you, talk to you, eat with you, and so on. Everyone wants their moment in the sun, and time is your biggest enemy, especially when you consider that Khartoum traffic is horrendous. The center of Khartoum has not been expanded since the British built it in the late 19th century. All the ministries are there, as are all the municipal buildings, two universities, and any possible organization you want to go to. Add to that, the fact that there has been a huge migration from the provinces to the capital, and all those people have business to attend to in downtown KRT, and all of them have cars. You can imagine the traffic situation fairly easily if your stomach is strong enough.

I have too many visits to take care of today, with little in the way of time to actually enjoy the time I spend with people, and no car to take me where I need to go. Having reconfirmed my reservation for my return to Addis Ababa I am ready to render unto Caesar for the rest of the day. I have made too many promises to visit too many people, and as all of you know, I am not one to welch on a promise. The tale of my visits is probably not that interesting, so I will spare you the details of where we went and what we ate, and the number of times people told me that I look like my father.

What I will quickly talk about, instead, is food. Yes, my favorite subject has finally made its way into the blog, but not just because I am a greedy guts. No, the reason I want to talk about food is the fact that food in Sudan tastes better than it does anywhere else in the world. This is not an idle boast, but a simple fact. Ever since I arrived I've been struck by the flavors of things - even salt tastes more like salt here than it does elsewhere. The meat is more tender and savory. Even the fatty parts are quite delectable and melt in your mouth. I go out of my way to eat them in the Sudan. Vegetables are crisp and full of color. Their aroma fills the room when you are slicing them up, and their flavor fills your mouth as the aroma fills your nostrils. It is all in all a perfect experience for the senses, and I find myself eating with the kind of gusto that has lately been lacking in my eating in the US. Pedro, I found myself thinking of you often as I ate because you're always on at me about my poor eating habits Stateside. Frankly, I feel a little bit justified now since it's mostly fodder to me over there anyway, but I do understand what you mean. I wish you could visit Sudan and taste the food that I've tasted, so you could see for yourselves.

Yet in spite of all this great olfactory sensory advantage the Sudanese populace is shifting in a visible way towards less flavorful food. Like everywhere else in the world, the Sudan is experiencing a shift towards tasteless, mass-produced food. This is most clearly seen in the restaurant boom in Khartoum. They range from a very few up-scale restaurants, to a large number of local eateries with coarse local fare. The up-scale places aren't so much better than their more pedestrian sisters, differing instead in the ambience and a few menu items.

What makes the restaurant craze in Khartoum so mystifying for me (apart from the food quality issue) is the traditional place of restaurants in Sudanese culture. In the past, restaurants were the province of strangers, and people without families. The quality of the food was never comparable to what you could get at even the poorest homes, and while it has improved, it still does not touch the type of meal you'd eat at home. The clientele were invariably men, usually bachelors, and of very modest means to say the least. All of this has changed dramatically, and you can now see men and women, well turned out, eating at restaurants together. The key is on the way they dress and the fact that they are eating together. Once again, this is a major shift. I can only suppose that this is the local face of globalization.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 2:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/24/2004 2:27PM (12:27AM 12/23/2004 Khartoum)

Merry Christmas, America, and I hope you have as much fun in the next couple of days as I had last night. We held a karama last night at our house. A karama is basically an occasion to celebrate a success, newfound health, a birth, or anything else worth noting with some thanks to God. Frequently an animal is slaughtered in thanksgiving, and used to feed the throngs that show up to the party. Family and friends come around, eat, drink and be merry. Since our karama was held in the evening (and on a Thursday night to boot), there was also dancing and live music by Ahmed "Silver", the fanan or artiste. The topic of Sudanese singers is a long one, and enough for a whole separate post, but for now I will say that this "Silver" is the musical flavor of the month in Khartoum, and my cousin and her friends were very excited at the prospect of his coming to sing for us.

The whole thing was organized in less than 24 hours by my aunt (yes, this is exactly how my family operates, in case you were wondering), to celebrate my mother's safe return from Paris where she had a minor procedure performed last month. It was also held to celebrate my own minor achievement of last month. My cousin and I spent most of yesterday driving around town, buying supplies, paying for things and being called every 30 seconds with something else to get. Upon our arrival at the house we discovered that all my female relatives in the capital had descended upon the house to help with the preparations. We had already gotten a cook to take care of the food aspect, and the young men of the family were taking care of the chairs, tables, and so on, so they had nothing to do but sit around drinking tea and chatting about this and that. It was still nice to see so many people there earlier than necessary, and to know that the family is so tightly knit.

We held the actual party in the "other" house, which is to say that there is a house in the neighborhood that is my family's, and we are staying with my aunt. The other house has a larger yard so we decided to hold it there, so as to accommodate all the folks we knew would show up. Around 9p, people started showing up, in all their finery. The artiste had shown up a little before everyone else and set up his gear, a keyboardist and a drummer in tow. I was dressed in a navy blue jacket and a great chocolate and blue shirt (when you see it, you'll know how bad ass I looked), and everyone that came in seemed impressed in that "you clean up good, kid" way. They also had taken up the habit of calling me 'arees, or "the groom". Apparently I'm not allowed to wear a blazer and not be getting married. Coupled with my mother's oh-so-innocent revelation the other day that someone had mentioned to her the rumor that she had come to Sudan to "marry off her son", and you can see how I started to wonder if this was some sort of trap. Everyone was shooting knowing looks at me, and at each other. Fear not, though, dear reader, I emerged from the evening unscathed, unencumbered, and generally free.

The dancing started up early enough, with my cousins taking the floor to get things started. My younger cousin is in her second year of college, and has a group of girlfriends that are very much like her, which is to say, Sudanese party girls. The connotations are not the same as they would be for their counterparts in the West, though. This bunch just took control of the dance floor and basically held on to it all night, dancing with some abandon and much glee. I moved in and out of the dance floor, as often as I could, but as you all know I am a mother hen at parties I am ostensibly hosting and took lots of time to go talk to people and photograph them, and shmooze. All of this is, of course, is immortalized on video tape, which of course I will willingly show for a steep fee, and the signing of a confidentiality agreement.

Due to the repressive nature of some aspects of life in Sudan we had to have a permit for the party (late night noise) and the party had to be over by 11p, so around that time the artiste wrapped up, and people started talking and streaming out in dribs and drabs. I spent the next couple of hours walking people to their cars and waving last goodbyes. By the time I went to bed it was about 3a with 5 days of work crammed into the last 16 hours, and a tired smile draped across my face like an old coat.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/20/2004 2:39PM (12:39AM Khartoum)

One of the things that the casual observer will notice almost immediately in Sudan, is the rash of weddings that is going on around here. Weddings are a big part of the social calendar in the Sudan, popping up so often that you begin to wonder if you're the only person who isn't getting married in the next 6 hours. Since my arrival I've met many friends, relatives, and former schoolmates who are now married. They frequently have children (yes, plural) as well, which is quite uncanny. The sight of your "bad ass" friend, who spent his time raising hell in your youth, chasing some little rugrat around is the sort of poetic justice that one rarely sees in life. "Don't touch that! Get back here! Damn it, boy!" Homer Simpson lives...

I have several theories on why this rash of weddings is occurring, or rather a series of contributing factors. First of all is the fact that this is relatively conservative society, and so people "don't get none" prior to marriage. Yes, as hard as it is to believe, there are places on earth where you have to take care of your own business until you get married. It's no wonder then that people marry earlier here than, say, in the Netherlands. This makes the premium on getting married while you're still young and dumb that much higher. This sounds more cynical than I mean it to, since there is a lot of religious reasoning for why one should getting married sooner rather than later. "Marriage is the half of religion," the saying goes, and that needs some explanation. Religion is mostly about relationships between people: you and your Maker; you and your parents, your children, your neighbors, and so on. When you get married, your relationships change with everyone, due to your newfound responsibilities. Or so the saying goes...

The other factor is more cynical. The entertainment factor is a big contributor to the sheer amount of weddings that take place. There's really not much to do on any given evening. Entertainment in the country, for the longest time, was limited to social interaction with family and friends: going to weddings, funerals, or simply going to visit. In recent years the avenues of pleasure have been widened and began to include renting movies, or going to public parks (particularly near the river), or getting ice cream. Most recently the expansion has been into the realm of restaurants and cafes, where there is much to be made. I'll talk more about the restaurant craze later, but for now suffice it to say that it is only a recent occurrence. Since funerals are somber occasions (and working ones, at that), and visits are typically casual unless there is a formal social reason for them, the main reason for folks to get all gussied up is a wedding. Weddings are also one of the few acceptable places to shake your moneymaker, although this has come under some attack in the past decade and a half, with the current government's conservative posture. As dour as the Sudanese tend to be, they are still susceptible to a kickin' groove, so the dance party aspect of weddings went underground for almost a decade. In short, one should not underestimate the importance of weddings for general entertainment.

Another compelling argument for marriage in the Sudan is what I like to call the "Sudanese Dream". Like the American Dream, it is pervasive and quite subtle in its effects on the general population. The Sudanese Dream is to get an education which is embodied by good grades; to get as high a degree as you possibly can, preferably in some engineering discipline or medicine; to get married to a nice man/woman, from a Good Family; to have a mess of children; to make the Pilgrimage to Mecca; and to die peacefully. While the make up of the Sudanese Dream seems innocuous enough, it can be quite insidious. It leads to an unnecessary rush towards big decisions, and dare I say, adulthood. There's nothing worse than kids trying to grow up too fast, and the Sudanese dream makes growing up too fast into a desirable thing. This is not idle speculation but the observation of someone who was part of a generation that was taking college entry exams at the age of 16 - and that's not the youngest age for people trying to go to college. I shudder to think about the other kids who took their college entrance exams early and where they are now. College, marriage, birth, pilgrimage and then death. This is the dark side of the Sudanese Dream and you can see it at almost any wedding these days.

The final point that brings marriage up in any conversation after the age of 20 is the life span of the average Sudanese these days. This is mostly speculation, but in recent years I've noticed that the life span of the average Sudanese male (for example) reduced drastically. There are several examples in my own family of premature, natural deaths. People far too young die of conditions that are easily remedied, but because they are ignored or unknown, are in fact fatal. In this sort of atmosphere, people want to see grandchildren even more quickly than they usually would anywhere else, and there's only one way to get those around here...

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/19/2004 4:18AM (2:18PM Khartoum)

I have, in my time here, been a little bit tight-lipped. I know this. I know that I've been somewhat laconic in my posts, and there is a reason, I assure you. It was due to an internal struggle, the harrowing details of which I will share with you now. Writing about my country (and I still consider it my country mind you) is a difficult thing. It is in many ways, a wonderful place, full of wonderful people, who are intelligent, loving and fun to be with. It is also, unfortunately, the land of a thousand and one maddening things. But as a native son made good, it is difficult for me to discuss the bad side of living in the Sudan. Not because I deny that there is anything wrong with the country - far from it! I am quite open about the problems facing the country as a whole, and the irritating (or down right self-destructive) habits that its people have. Yet I feel that it is the height of poor breeding and the sign of a bad upbringing to be mean about your country. More than that, I realize that many of you have never been to the Sudan, and have no impression other than the ones you get from:

a- your church
b- Fox News
c- reading this so-called blog

and not necessarily in that order. So I want to make sure that I don't give you to many bad impressions. It's a thin line that I am walking of course, and it is made more difficult by the fact that the Sudan is quite familiar to me, which makes it more difficult for me to notice the everyday magic that I would notice in another place. In short, the bad things stand out, and are more likely to make it to the blog, but they are by no means the representative face of the country.

After that lengthy disclaimer I can talk a little bit about a lecture I went to yesterday morning. The lecture was entitled "Assessment of conflict affected populations in Kabkabiya & Kutum Localities, North Darfur State" [all capitals theirs], and was based on a report compiled by the Sudanese Environmental Conservation Society (SECS, which is an unfortunate acronym if I ever saw one). Gil, you'll get to read it when I get back. Specifically the report was put together by a Gallagher look-alike, Prof Muawia Shaddad. I will state up front that the findings of the report are quite interesting and I think also useful for aid agencies in the region. The data was collected well and I have few complaints with the results of their analysis.

Where I do start to take exception is in the presentation of the data. The presentation I saw was one of the worst I have ever run across in my life. Mind you, I've spent the better part of the last decade in engineering departments, where Comic Sans was the font of choice. I certainly didn't expect to see it in a forum such as this. The bulk of the presentation involved cutting and pasting the text of the report onto slides, with some sort of terrible color scheme with a graded gray diamond motif (horrid). The tables that were shown took up the entire slide, but managed to use a font so small that I could barely make out headings and numbers, despite the fact that I was in the front row. The graphs that were used consisted of dark blue bar graphs with black numbers - on the bars. Frankly if I didn't have the report in front of me I would have been lost. To compound the confusion, the laptop was manned by some guy with a type of digital epilepsy that caused him to advance the PowerPoint part of the presentation far ahead of the actual presenter.

I could have dealt with all that, I really could. After all, as I said, the data itself was sound, and the report was remarkably type-free. What made the entire thing maddening was a combination of two unforeseen factors. The first was a hitherto unknown Sudanese propensity towards particularly garish and obnoxious ring tones, coupled with the fact that people left their ringers on. The very height of unprofessional behavior, if you ask me. The second problem, is the willful insistence of people to remain ignorant of the effect of the damned ringing. Once the first damned phone call has disturbed the talk, people ought to be looking to their cells to make sure that they're turned off or to vibrate or whatever. Instead, the phones keep ringing and - get this - people keep answering them in the hall itself. I about slapped a couple of people, but in the interests of peace in Darfur I kept the proverbial "it" in my proverbial "pants" and sat it out. It was a long long lecture...

The whole thing was made worse at the end. The poorly equipped chair of the panel opened the floor for questions, and that set off the peanut gallery's inane questions. Everyone would begin by thanking the panel sincerely for the "excellent report"; a report that they obviously hadn't read, considering the questions they asked. The whole thing put me of a mind of any one of a thousand seminars I had to sit through in college, except these people had no real excuse for their terrible questions. They managed to sound even more ignorant as they took the findings of the report terribly personally, which was entirely beyond the point. The thing that Gallagher did right was to answer the questions clearly and concisely, and to bring up the point that we in the Sudan have a tendency to blind ourselves to problems, and to take those problems way too personally. I'm sure you all have your own anecdotes regarding that and me.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 4:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/18/2004 12:04AM (10:04AM Khartoum)

I had a pleasant surprise today. My cousin who has been away has just returned. He was working in Libya's Western Desert, as a field engineer working for an oil services company which shall remain nameless (they are not the one with shady ties to the Vice President). He returned to us in fairly good shape, and with many stories to tell about his time in the oil fields. He'd been out in the field for almost nine weeks, spending two of those in training at the corporate training center in Dubai, and the rest out in the middle of nowhere. Since they are working in a "hardship" area, they get 2 weeks of vacation for every 7 weeks of work, and so he has decamped for the end of the year. The camp, as he described it to me, is a series of prefab boxes in a flat area among the dunes, with barracks, a mess hall and a lounge. They spend some of their time at the camp, just eating, sleeping and filling out reports, but the majority of their time is spent outside the camp, on "jobs".

"Jobs" require a field engineer or two or three to truck out to an oil rig, and perform some sort of service for the client. I'm still a little hazy on what these services entail, though I gather they involve helping out with drilling problems, making deep sensor measurements and so on. The jobs happen when the rig is not in use (time is almost literally money in this environment) which ends up being between the hours of 2am and dawn. At this time of the year those are the coldest most miserable hours of the day, and that is amplified by the wind, which has nothing to stop it as it gallops over the surface of the desert. The job has to be finished quickly, to enable the rig to get going again, and the next job always seems to be waiting. The whole thing reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer goes out to the oil fields in west Springfield to work as a "roughneck" with Lenny.

His return was not just a surprise for me, but for pretty much everyone other than his brother, his brother's wife, and me. We picked him up at the airport at three in the morning, and argued for a moment or two about whether or not to take him home. We quickly came to the conclusion that ringing the doorbell at 3am could only mean that something terrible had happened, and would most likely prompt one, if not several, coronaries. Instead we went back to my cousin's apartment, and talked for a while before falling into a deeply exhausted sleep. My oil field cousin (or OFS, as he's now known) passed out almost instantly, exhausted from the weeks of work, leaving me to toss and turn for a bit before drifting off myself.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/16/2004 1:15AM (11:15AM Khartoum)

Another shooting star last night, and I wonder what this portends. For the time being, I am staving off the vague augurs of the Sudanese skies and enjoying my vacation here. A lot of it is sensory and tactile and I am reluctant to tell you all about it, else you should think me either a liar or a big softy. Neither of these is preferred of course, but I did say that I would relay most of my adventures, and I am always one to keep my promises.

I spent the morning at the University of Khartoum, my almost-alma-mater. There was a time, not too long ago, that it was the premier institution of higher learning in the Middle East. In the sciences and engineering, especially, it was pre-eminent, but no longer. Post 1989 it has experienced a drain on it's intellectual wealth that is hard to quantify without sounding alarmist, or even paranoid. Now it's a shadow of it was previously, but it is still a good school that turns out some excellent students. It is also a great campus, with it's large, lush trees, shading wide quadrangles, and it is there that I met a former schoolmate who now teaches Physics there. Yet more proof that I am in fact and old man, as if I needed anymore. While we sat and talked under the shade of a large tree, a pavilion nearby came to life with an exhibition on Sufism. While I would usually be quite supportive of that sort of thing, I found myself eyeing it suspiciously, since in the current atmosphere of religious zealotry it will most likely be misused, or used to misrepresent a peaceful and beautiful expression of faith. Our conversation was soon cut short by the beginning of a seminar in the pavilion.

During my approach to the university that morning and now, as students gathered for the seminar, I began to notice something. No one was wearing a t-shirt but me, and in fact, every young man I could see was wearing a button-up shirt. In fact, I only saw one other fellow wearing a non-button-up shirt, and that was a long sleeved one which was more like a sweatshirt. Coupled with my experiences in Addis Ababa the whole thing underlined the gap that lay between me and my kinsmen in many ways. As close as I am to them, I am still ... different, just as I am different from my new countrymen in the US. At any rate, that is neither here nor there, and I try not to make broad societal statements based on the fashions of university students.

The afternoon was interesting as well, with my visit to the office of a friend I had not seen since 1991, when he was at a high school in central London and I was gadding about town with no college prospects in sight. We met up in the market of Khartoum 2 (boy, I need a whole post just on the names of places in Khartoum, and the Sudan in general), where he was sitting in a sleek VW sedan. He hadn't quite remembered me when we spoke on the phone but seemed enthusiastic to hear from an old school chum. He immediately perked up when he saw me, calling me "[Lo fat Mo] the genius!". It made me feel embarrassed, as well as being a member of the Wu-Tang Clan. We drove out to his home/office, and we had a bite to eat while we went over the 13 years, though not in detail. It's a strange thing to meet up with the kids you knew in high school. Since the idea of a reunion is quite American, we don't really have anything similar to it here. Instead you just try to keep in touch with folks and make sure you know what's going on in their lives (something that I have been mostly successful at). Regardless, it's always a shock to see your friends with no hair/too much hair/a wife/kids/2.5 million dollars in non-negotiable bonds/etc.

I didn't want to take up too much of his time, and was running late for another appointment, so I made a strategic retreat after our light meal, and went up to meet more friends of the family nearby. That done, I took a bus into town and walked back the rest of the way home. I didn't walk by choice, but the bus routes to take me home were packed with people in the afternoon rush home. It felt good to walk though, and though it was dusty, I found myself ambling along happily taking in the sights of Khartoum in the dying hours of the working day.

By the time I got home, I found a cousin of mine in the living room. I apologized for being late getting home, and not calling (my borrowed cell ran out of juice before lunchtime). After some chit-chat she mentioned that she was going to my niece's house next, just across the river from where we were. I decided to tag along, and we ventured out to try and get across the Fitaihab Bridge - which is currently the only bridge open directly to Omdurman as the other ones undergo repairs. My niece is actually much older than me, and her mother (my cousin) is about my father's age. She'd just had a baby - her sixth, I believe - and was weak with the recent effort, so I sat with her as she convalesced with her newborn daughter. The other children filed in, and I found myself delighted by her youngest son, Bakri, who is precocious and a bright little fellow. He was captivated by my camera, and I let him hold it, and fiddle with the controls on it. He immediately grasped all the playback capabilities of the camera, and how to zoom in and out. I was smiling in spite of myself, reminding him to let his little sisters look at the screen too, as he asked me what each of the buttons did. I was almost sad to leave, and was a bit sad to think that this little fellow would not necessarily have the opportunity to let his intellect run wild. Hopefully, things will go well for him, and he'll stay curious. Don't let the bastards grind you down!

7:22AM (9:22PM Khartoum)

EARTH TO FAMILY MEMBERS SEEKING MY RETURN, DON'T TELL ME EXCESSIVE STORIES ABOUT THE LACK OF A RULE OF LAW. IT WON'T ENCOURAGE ME,

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 1:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/13/2004 4:10PM (2:10AM Khartoum)

I saw two shooting stars in a row tonight. I was talking to my newly married cousin outside as he prepared to leave for his new home when I saw them. They both originated in the western sky and arced down towards the south, fading behind the silhouette of the neighborhood mosque's tower. I rarely see shooting stars, and to see two in such quick succession is the sort of thing that makes you understand why ancient peoples took up augury, among other things.

The house has been full of visitors and well-wishers. Mostly they have been relatives, although some friends of the family have been here as well. The surprises are coming fast and furious, as I see young cousins who've started college, and others who've married and even had children. There's nothing so effective at disabusing you of the notion of your own youth as the sight of your younger relatives and friends with their own offspring. A lesser man might go deaf from the sound of the biological clock ticking, but luckily I have reason on my side, and it saves my bacon more frequently than you would think.

This afternoon I got the chance to go out for a little bit between visitors, to visit yet another friend of the family. His family's engineering firm has offices on Hurriya St (Freedom St) in the midst of the Soug AlAraby (the Arabic Marketplace) close to the center of the city. The way there was made very long and unpleasant by the amount of traffic. Like London, and other old capitals, Khartoum simply wasn't meant to have this many cars plying its streets. As a result of the population explosion due to rural migration, the war in the south and simple biology, we are seeing an increase in the number of cars on the road. Like a fat man with arterial sclerosis, the city is finding it harder and harder to push cars through the narrow streets, made narrower by cars awkwardly parked on both sides of the road. While Khartoum traffic was bad when I was living her in the late 80's and early 90's it's even (inconceivably) worse now.

The visit with the family friend went well, though he seems depressed and dispirited by the direction that the country is taking. His melancholia made me, in turn, sad. I wish for his (and all my loved ones' sakes) that things weren't so crummy here, that life and this government had ground the fight out of them, the taste from their food, and the light from their lives. As I've said, the Sudanese are like Russians; they are prone to melancholia, and seem to thrive on misfortune, inviting it sometimes with open arms. This does not ameliorate the harsh hand that has been dealt to them lately, and I find myself ashamed at my good fortunes. Not that anyone begrudges me that fortune. In fact they are happy for me, sometimes happier for me than I am for myself. This serves to make me even more ashamed of course. As I left his office, I saw the unfinished office block that stood opposite to it. It's skeleton had been standing for the better part of 12 years, unfinished, because the owner had built more floors than the zoning commission had approved on his building permit. He did not remove the extra floors and so the building remains at a standstill till today. It's a metaphor for the country in many ways, and its lost potential.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 9:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/12/2004 5:20AM (3:20PM Khartoum)

In the movie version of this morning CCR's "Fortunate Son" would be playing and I would be stepping off a bus in rural Alabama. As it stands I stepped off a 737 onto the darkened tarmac at Khartoum International Airport and boarded a bus headed for the terminal. The music was playing in my head as the bus pulled up to the terminal and we disembarked (my mother and I), stepping into the cool of the terminal building. Sudan has long had a love-hate relationship with its native sons. Whereas landing in the US one is greeted by a "welcome home!", in Khartoum one is greeted with suspicion and open dislike. Especially if you are a naturalized expatriate. So you can imagine my surprise when, upon finishing filling out my landing form, my passport was taken by a passport officer before I even got to the windows. He proceeded to go to the window, grab the stamps and finish up my entry procedure before asking me if I had any bags or anything. When I said I had one bag and my mother had two, he asked where my mother was and, when I pointed her out in the Sudanese nationals passport line, he expedited her entry as well. We got out of the airport with such speed that we were afraid there'd be no one to meet us outside.

My uncle, aunt, and two cousins were outside waiting for us. My mother had been deliberately secretive with the details of our journey so as to make sure that the entire family didn't show up at the airport at 3am to greet us. So just a few people were there and I found myself getting choked up - I hesitate to think about the spectacle I would have made of myself if there had been more. After more than three years of not seeing them, I was finally home. There are no words to describe the feeling of being in the place where you belong. It's a feeling of relief so deep that it's like sinking into a warm vat of honey. Everything slows down for a second and you are surrounded and lifted. We came back to their house which is one block over from our own home in Sudan, and stayed up for hours just talking.

Waking up this morning another of my cousins had heard that we'd arrived (through whatever faster than light communications systems the Sudan seems to have developed over the past several thousand years) and had come over. I woke up to his voice outside and after embracing we sat around talking over breakfast, tea and then a light snack. He is slightly younger than my sister and is earnest in the way that some young Sudanese men are, but with a quick, inquisitive mind that augurs well for his future. He immediately peppered me with questions about everything from my work to how certain types of technology worked. Before we had woken up a sheep had been slaughtered to give thanks for our safe and triumphant return to the bosom of the family. This will probably be the first of many sheep that will be sacrificed and then eaten during my stay.

It's mid-afternoon now by Khartoum reckoning, and so most of the house is dozing away their siesta time. I can't sleep, I'm too excited about the next two weeks, and still agonizing over the people I may not get to see. Still, I'm here and that's the most important thing.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/5/2004 9:17AM (7:17PM Addis Ababa)

Between the last post and this one a great number of strange events conspired to keep me from writing anything at all. For instance the laptop was down for five or so days, due to some meddling at Addis Ababa customs. This of course puts me in a position because so much stuff has happened that I may not be able to do justice to it all. So bear with me...

The second to last night in the UAE was wonderful, partly because I saw my good friend and his son, but also because we visited one of the more beautiful spots in Al Ain. In Arabic, the name Al Ain means "the fount" or "the spring", and the city itself boasts a large number of natural hot springs, the most famous of which is Mabzara. Mabzara bursts out of the ground at the foot of Jabal Hafeet (Mt. Hafeet), the highest point in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. The mountain itself sits on the border between Abu Dhabi and the Sultanate of Oman, jagged and somewhat forbidding, adorned only by the green swath around the hot spring and a winding string of lights on the road to the summit of the mountain. The evening that we went happened to coincide with a national holiday, so the entire area was swamped with people, barbecuing on the vast lawns, walking around, and enjoying the sybaritic pleasures of dips in the spring. The spring itself comes out slightly up the slope of the hill and then flows down through stone-lined canals to various bath houses and shallow wading pools. At the spot where the water comes out it is almost boiling hot, and it continues to steam almost all the way down the half mile of the canals.

Unprepared for a dip in the life giving waters, we instead drove up the mountain. The road winds back and forth ion its way up the mountain, a brightly lit, perfectly smooth surface. At the top there is a broad plateau that is so high that the view is reminiscent of that from an aircraft at 30000 ft. The view also provides a rough measure of the relative prosperity of the UAE and Oman. While on the Emirates' side the landscape flashes and sparkles, with the city lights strewn across the plain, the Omani side is dark. Not just dark, it is completely dark, a complete and inky lack of any light that makes you feel like you are staring out over the edge of creation. This sensation is amplified by the cold wind whipping across the summit. All in all it made for a wondrous final night in the Gulf, and served to offset my crummy flight back to Ethiopia.

As I sat in my cramped middle seat, soaking in the stench of my seat mates, I thought fairly hard about my stay in the UAE. The place has changed a lot since I saw it last, as I mentioned in a previous post. Still, there are things that stick with me. Most importantly is the part that my family has had in making the UAE what it is. In the late 1970's my uncle, still a young architect, moved to the Emirates and took a job with the city government in Al Ain. Being very competent, and also one of the few qualified people in the area, he found himself getting more and more responsibility. My uncle soon found himself drawing up the city plans for Al Ain and then for the city of Abu Dhabi as well. Anyone driving through those two cities is driving on roads my uncle laid out on a piece of paper, in a desert that hadn't been developed yet.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/11/2004 10:11AM (8:11PM Addis Ababa)

It is strange to watch the American run Arabic language satellite television channel Al Hurra (the Free One). It is immaculately produced, especially in comparison to it's dowdier cousins in the region, and features programs that are intended, I'm sure, to endear American culture to the "Arab street". I don't watch it often, but when I do I am struck my one particular thing: commercials for the upcoming Iraqi elections. They are broadcast frequently, and take several forms:

- three mobs approach each other on three streets. They wave different flags, and are shouting some sort of slogan as they glower at each other. As they stop at the intersection and violence seems imminent, a child peeks out from behind an adult, spying another child in the opposing mob. They rush out to greet each other, obviously friends, and you notice that they are wearing threadbare jerseys of the same soccer team. As they embrace the adults find themselves ashamed of their inability to get along and sheepishly step out to embrace each other, the flags mixing as the shot from above recedes.

- a montage of smiling women sewing together an Iraqi flag, and intent men building ballot boxes. The music swells as the sign saying "polling place" is put up, the ballot boxes are brought in, and schoolchildren watch the Iraqi flag being raised.

- a montage of people from different walks of life (and obviously different religious backgrounds) with their thoughts about the future broadcast. They are all hopes for a brighter future, dreams for a future career, or subtly worded hopes for a secular Iraq.

We've all heard about the moves that the US is taking to encourage the Iraqi elections, and to improve the image of the country in the region, but it is only when you see the tangible results that it really hits home.

Speaking of home, I am leaving for the Sudan at midnight, for two weeks. I'll probably have better access to the internet there than in Ethiopia, so look out for more posts about my travels.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/3/2004 4:38AM (3:38PM Abu Dhabi)

The last time I was in the United Arab Emirates, it was 1983 and there was sand everywhere. Everyone was thin in the way that all nomadic people are, with aquiline features and fuzzy eyebrows. The country was dusty, and barren, a desert kingdom in the most stereotypical sense of the word. That was 21 years ago. Yesterday I got to Dubai, the gleaming center of trade and industry for the Middle East and soon the world, and was stunned. In the intervening years Dubai had become something completely beyond my ken. The airport was clean and efficient in ways that left Heathrow and JFK in the dust, with marbled arcades and arching glass ceilings. I stumbled through it, a worldly ragamuffin, through to the passport control area and baggage claim. Dubai is one of the most open places you'll ever go, since the tiny emirate is pushing as hard as it can to be a free trade zone. I could go on and on about the steps they've taken, but I will simply say that getting in and out is a thing of great ease, and leave it at that.

The only thing that belied all the modernity was the sudden appearance, as I walked through the airport, of a ninja. "Ninja" for the uninitiated, is not an assassin from the feudal era of Japan, but a woman covered from head to foot in black robes with only a thin slit for her eyes (and even that is frequently covered by a diaphanous veil). They are the stereotype of a Muslim woman that all liberal folks in the West point out as proof of Islam's misogynistic bent, failing as people in the West often do, to recognize that this particular practice is limited to places like the recently pacified Afghanistan, and the ersatz friendly states in the Gulf. Seeing a clutch of these ninjas, some in the company of men who were either their husbands or brothers, I found myself staring. Much like yourselves I wonder what sort of life these people lead, and what passes through their minds as they walk through public spaces so isolated from the rest of the world. Staring can be somewhat dangerous, though, considering that the whole purpose of the niqab (as it is known) is to discourage that sort of thing. So I forced my gaze onto other things like the advertisements for Duty Free booze, and the bronzed European faces staring out from a poster for some haute couture next to the moving walkway.

One learns to avoid the muwatineen in these places. The word itself means "citizens", and the use of the word is pointed. Outside of it's most obvious meaning, it implies that they belong here, and you, my friend, do not. They are both the law, and above the law; they make policy, and ignore it; they are both pious and dissipated. Up until quite recently, the only way to do business in the Emirates (and in many other Gulf countries) was to have a partner who was a muwatin. This partner had to own 51% of the enterprise and was not required to do much else. Basically they would sign their name to documents, get a nice office, and never do a lick of work, dropping in only to pick up their handsome checks from time to time. For this reason business has stagnated in most every Emirate apart from Dubai which (due to it's lack of oil wealth) has made trade and commerce uncommonly easy. The citizens, like those of the Roman Empire, enjoy a great many rights, but make up a paltry proportion of the population. Only 26% of the population of the UAE are muwatineen, the rest of the bulk made up of the various stripes of foreigner who actually make things run, from national security to street sweeping. With all these advantages they are predictably fat and venal, filling their days with eating copious amounts of fatty foods, drinking fresh fruit juices and watching satellite television. I am mostly shocked and disgusted by their behavior, and when I remember the outraged attitude of many Arabs and Muslims at their low regard in the world, I sometimes think that perhaps we/they have it coming if this is the best they have to offer. A generation of PG-13 Paris Hiltons.

At least they have good taste in food, because that is one of the things that makes this place bearable. They have here, perhaps the best shawarma sandwiches you will ever have the pleasure of eating. Forget the stale, dry chicken shawarma sandwiches you've had, wrapped in a limp half moon of pita, like a refugee from a drought stricken region of the world. The ones they have here are juicy and tender, with a savory flavor that brought tears to my eyes. The pita is warm as a mother's embrace, stuffed with chicken, pickle, and garlic sauce like that same embrace is with affection. It is nature's perfect food, and never mind that it can't be found in nature. Upon arrival in Abu Dhabi (a good hour and a half on the road from Dubai) my cousins took me to their local shawarma emporium, which is run by the Lebanese in the area. Their full Nelson over this sector of the economy is well-deserved, as they have brought their civilized cuisine to the dusty masses and made us all happier. Mind you, this is not the only thing that these wily Levantines have control over, but that is the subject of another post, perhaps. In this particular arena I bow to their superior knowledge and watch on, patient and in awe, as the mu'allim or maitre of the shawarma, slices tender pieces of meat into an open pita, adding slivers of potato and pickle with a dollop of sublime garlic sauce. I ate two in such a short time that I wondered that they had ever been there in the first place. Perhaps it had all just been a dream? I could not linger over these thoughts, as we had to head home to wait for my aunt to get off work.

My aunt is a wonderful lady. She looks like a shorter, roly-poly version of my mother, but it much more garrulous, with a manner of speech that leaves your hair swept back with its speed. We went to pick her up at the University of the Emirates, where she has been working since my cousins were old enough to be relied upon to take care of themselves at home. From the moment I saw her I felt my heart go out and my knees follow it. I hadn't seen her for such a long time that I wanted to immediately start weeping as I hugged her and kissed the shock of white hair in her forelock. She sat behind me as we drove back to the house, asking questions about my parents and my flight. She kept talking as we got into the house, and into the living room, and as I brought my laptop out, and as we watched the video files of my cousin's wedding in late October that we had both missed. My mother had given me copies of the files knowing that my aunt, uncle and the cousins would be desperate to see what had transpired at the wedding and who'd been there and who hadn't. Wedding videos are a big deal to Sudanese living abroad, as they are the last palpable link to the celebrations that are going on in your country as you range the world, protecting common sense and earning an honest buck. Between the videos, and just general conversation about how the family was faring we ended up staying up till almost four in the morning. She managed to be up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 8AM or so, waking me up at 9AM to eat breakfast and keep talking.

My poor aunt! She is so lonely out here in the UAE. Like my mother she is finicky about who she will befriend, which, combined with how busy life keeps her, makes her fairly isolated. Like her sister (my mother) she is so close to our family that this distance between her and them is like a weight that sits on her chest. It is a constant reminder of how she is at the periphery of our family life, relegated to watching the rest of the family celebrating births, marriages, and so on, without being able to really take part. More-so than either myself and my siblings, my mother and aunt are affected by their lives as expatriates, suffering silently, and stoically, away from the people who they love. So this trip was of paramount importance to me, since it gave us a chance to see each other, and drew her close to the bosom of the family for the few days that I would be here. The visit would recharge us both, and make the intervening months till the next visit more bearable. Of course, this leaves me with yet another dilemma (who is surprised by that?), which is that I also have friends whom I haven't seen in many years, living here, and I want to see them too.

In 1991 I moved out of my parents' house, to Alexandria, Egypt, to begin my university studies. I was 16, brash, and so wet behind the ears you'd think that Davy Jones and I were sharing locker space. Far away from home, I was befriended by a bevy of young Sudanese guys who took it upon themselves to help me grow up. They were the closest thing I had ever had to older brothers and I formed very close friendships with them before I moved back to the States to complete my education. Many of them had been raised in the Gulf, by expatriate parents, like my aunt, and returned there when their stay in Egypt was over. Some returned even before I left, and I had slowly tracked them down, or been surprised by them tracking me down in the meantime. So to come here and not see them would be just not right. I set about calling the only two I knew still lived in the Emirates first thing this morning after eating my breakfast and drinking morning tea with the family. Both were overjoyed to hear my voice and in a state of disbelief that I was even in the country, and one, it turns out, lives 20 minutes down the road. He immediately drove down to see me with my aunt at a small museum nearby - with his son in tow.

This is the first time I have seen the offspring of someone I went to school with so long ago (it was practically high school for me, remember), and it hit me like a ton of bricks. My colleagues have gone off, gotten married, become useful members of society, even, while I fiddled around in college. Now, you might say that I got some sort of degree out of it, and you'd be right. And you might say that I got a lot of friends out of it and you'd be doubly right. But deep down inside, I was a little bit sad and a little bit jealous watching my buddy talking to his son. Crazy, huh? Now, let me state, for the record, that I neither want a wife nor any children just yet, and that this was a momentary lapse of reason, but it certainly did have me thinking. Life has been passing me by, and like Rip van Winkle, I have awoken in a world I remember faintly, that has changed immensely.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

12/2/2004 5:19AM (4:19PM Addis Ababa)

I am somewhere over eastern Ethiopia or the Red Sea, on my way to Dubai. While this might seem somewhat unexpected it is just part of the "vacation". My aunt lives in the UAE and I have not seen her for three years. Being this close means that I have to visit, and in fact in the throes of my tummy trouble yesterday I took time to book myself a flight to the UAE for today. So here I am, on a plane, in a cramped seat which is made somewhat more comfortable by the fact that it is in the exit row. I can't take any credit for the exit row seat though, the PA did did the legwork. This lead me to further look at my previous post regarding being in the lap of luxury. The fact of the matter is that there are some perks to being my father's son, though they are not all measured in dollars and cents (or Birr for that matter). The exit seat is not what I meant, so much as the brief trip from the house to the airport. We drove past the usual parking lots, and off to a separate lot right by the entrance to the terminal where the car was saluted. We bypassed the lines at the counter, at the service desk, and at the outgoing passport control desk. I practically didn't have to talk to anyone as I made my way to the gate. It's an eerie thing, watching the protocol machine at work, knowing that our money doesn't power it, so much as the position my father has worked very hard to get to in his career. Sitting here in my cramped (yet spacious) seat, watching the Simpsons on the small screen in the middle of the aisle, I realize that things are pretty good for the Lo Fat Clan.

That brings up a second point: on the way here through London, and now on the way to Dubai, the in flight programming is all American. It's faintly concerning that I can watch Everybody Loves Raymond in the company of a planeful of Ethiopians, Kenyans and other Africans. Not that anything is wrong with Raymond, just that one would hope that there would be something better to watch out there. Unfortunately I am quickly reaching the conclusion that good television (yes, I know it's an oxymoron of sorts) is hard to come by. Most evenings, when I am not gadding about town with my old man, or visiting folks with my mother, we settle down to a bit of television before heading upstairs for some pre-bed reading.

Like all the expatriates in town, my folks watch satellite television. They tune in to ArabSat 2 or 3, I can't remember, so they get the satellite channels of the Arab world, from the polished international channels of Al Jazeera and MBC to the rough around the edges local broadcasts of Mauritania, Sudan and others. Watching these channels you get several impressions. Firstly there is the news, which has a different slant than the news you see in the states. The second impression, which stretches from the news to the talk shows to the commercials, is the Americanization of television programming all over the world. The anchors are young-ish women, some blonde, some not, usually of flanked by an older gentleman of the heavily coiffed variety. The talk shows discuss the unhappiness of rural types, with an overly-solicitous host gleaning embarrassing details of their travails, and troubles. Does any of this sound familiar yet? This shouldn't sound so surprising, since the format and details of television programming in the US are not happenstance or coincidence, but much studied (usually via focus group) for maximum consumer stimulation. The third, and also unsurprising thing, is that the quality of the programming is fairly poor - that is to say that the copies are not good copies. When you don't do the studies yourself, you don't know why they use the bright colors, or why the images have to move so fast, just that they do.

Those are the "modern" channels, which, as I said, appear to be just like American channels but in Arabic. The other channels are not quite like that. I will roll up the Sudan, Mauritania, Libya and others for the purposes of this discussion. It is actually unfair to even bring Libya into this, since they have some pretty well-made shows. Watching the news on the Sudanese satellite channel, or Mauritanian national television, is a painful thing. The real stories come from Al Jazeera, or CNN or BBC World. The local stories are poorly produced propaganda pieces. Now bear in mind that all news has some propaganda aspect, especially local news (those of you in Arizona can look to Fox 10 or ABC 15 for evidence), but there is a big difference in the subtlety of it all. Propaganda poorly done, shows a profound lack of respect for the viewer. We are all lied to, all the time, but when no care is taken to craft the lie properly it's just insulting.

The news is hardly the only bad bit of programming on Sudanese television. We watched a movie the other night, that had perhaps the worst acting I have ever seen in my life. Dead lifeless eyes, dialogue with no inflection at all, and overwrought scripting made for an absolutely ghastly experience, but like a train wreck there was no looking away. Instead I watched the whole thing with my parents, mystified that this was the best the Sudan had to offer. Would you choose this as the representation of your nation's artistic output? After all, there's always, Everybody Loves Raymond.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/30/2004 11:16AM (9:16PM Addis Ababa)

I was talking to a former roommate once about some financial woes of his, and when I suggested he swallow his pride and ask his folks for money he replied, "They don't have that kind of money! We don't all have parents who are ambassadors." I took offense at that and dropped the subject. After all I felt that I had grown up in fairly standard middle class circumstances, with the only exception being that we lived abroad most of the time. Of course living abroad on a middle class income enables you to have some help around the home, and even when you don't there are copious relatives who are living at your home who help out - frequently one of them was me. In recent years I have come to re-examine my views on the matter. For instance, here in Addis Ababa, there is a lady who comes in early in the morning and does the cleaning and some of the cooking, as well as laundry, before leaving in the evening. My father, on the other hand, has a driver who drives him around during the day to his various meetings. Looking a this, one would think that we were living in the lap of luxury! But the truth of the matter is not quite so simple. For instance, the "maid" doesn't live with us, as she does in the homes of other foreigners who have household help. She goes home to her family each evening and gets paid about twice as much as a schoolteacher does. Similarly, the driver doesn't pick my father up in the morning, nor drop him off in the evening. Instead he simply carts dad around to his daily appointments, and is off home at the end of the day. He is also given ample time to pursue his university studies in economics. Does that make us any better than the people who have people working for them? In our own egalitarian way I think so. All the employees are treated with great respect and frankly sometimes I think we don't demand enough for our money.

Tonight, I accompanied my father to a reception at the Sheraton Addis, which may be the most luxurious hotel on the entire continent. This is not meant to be a snide remark, or an off-the-cuff sort of thing. It's a statement of fact, and in fact, I am willing to go the distance and say it may be the best hotel that I have ever been in - and I've been in places a sight better than the Holiday Inn, Tempe, let me tell you.

The reception was being held by the Minister of Water Resources, to mark the opening of the Nile Valley Initiative. The NVI is meant to head off the inevitable water resource conflicts that are going to occur Nile River basin. Also it is the beginning of a unified power grid for Ethiopia and the Sudan on the way to a broader unification of services. All that is in the future though, and tonight my Dad and I stood around in a room full of minor diplomats and non-governmental organization functionaries waiting to speak to the Minister, who ended up not showing. Still I got to see some of my newly made Finnish friends, and some others. It was somewhat awkward, due to the fact that of all the people there, I was the only one who had nothing to do with either international cooperation or development. In fact, I was just some guy's kid who was tagging along. That makes it all the more hilarious that I will most likely be the one getting shown on television. The cameras were rolling throughout the second half of the soiree, and kept coming round to the group that I was in. Not too bad, for some guy's kid who was tagging along.

The advantage was getting to meet these people and listen to their discussions. They talked about development from the front lines with the sort of cynicism bred of dealing with inefficient governments, overloaded bureaucracies and generally bloody-minded people. This is the sort of experience that can't be taught in any school, and is hard to come by for newbies to the trade. It's secretly made me more determined to get involved with policy in the long run. It also made me proud of my old man, who was the focus of some attention at the reception. He's not just a funny looking old guy, who happens to be my dad, he is also a man of some consequence. It's a sobering thing to see your father as other people see him, but not in a bad way.

I had lunch with both my parents today, which was quite nice. We went to a charming little Italian place about a mile from the airport. I'm sure that Pedro is currently clucking his disapproval, and shaking his head. Before you do though, let me just say that this place is littered with restaurants, representing every type of cuisine there is. Ethiopian cuisine is fairly standard and there is not much variation as far as I can tell in the different regions. They don't eat much in the way of vegetables, and meals consist of the the ever-present injera covered with some sauce or meat, or both. At any rate it was nice to have a meal with my parents in the open, on the patio of the restaurant. We had my father drop us off far away from the house so we could walk back, which was quite pleasant. We had a walk yesterday as well, which allows me to see the city as it really is, as opposed to from the passenger seat of a car. I had access to the camera today, so I would pause every few minutes to take a picture of some roadside flowers, a billboard, or something else that had taken my interest.

I'm really interested in advertising here in Ethiopia, mainly because it's so different to advertising I'd seen in other parts of the developing world. They're very sophisticated, as you might see if I get the chance to put any of them up prior to my return, else you'll have to wait to speak to me. They show a far more advanced consumer sensibility, which I am ashamed to say surprises me. As I had mentioned previously, I was expecting Ethiopia to be virtually identical to Sudan, but it is seeming less and less so.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/1/2004 2:16AM (12:16PM Addis Ababa)

Everything in Addis Ababa is named Highland. They have Highland Queen Whiskey, Highland Springs Water, and of course the Highland two-step, which in typical Lo Fat Mo fashion I have contracted. For those more delicate souls out there, I suggest you turn away or go read something pleasant. My famously strong stomach has failed me for the first time that I can remember. It has saved me in countless harsh environments where the water or the food were not fit for human consumption, but here in relatively benign circumstances, I am thrown for a loop. It started last night with a late dinner with the folks here at home. Immediately afterwards, of course, I leapt to my feet and retired to the littlest room for much longer than I had anticipated. My stomach has not been settled fully since I've been here, but certainly not anything to write home about (you'll note that I literally did not write home about it), but things were getting ridiculous. I felt like a bubbling cauldron, or a volcanic crater, with huge bubbles of magma growing and then spattering loudly against the walls of the caldera - or in this case, my stomach.

The gastrointestinal distress woke me up early this morning, and kept me up and reading Wired's defense of the nearly indefensible K. Eric Drexler. You know things are bad when reading Wired is your last tenuous grasp of normalcy. As I write these words now, my stomach is making noises that I have rarely heard, and I feel slightly nauseated. I hope this is nothing, because with all my morbid thoughts of the past couple of weeks, I would hate to die like this. Better on the field of battle with Valkyries singing my name.

The other thing that had me awake earlier than I expected was the clatter of birds on our roof. After spending a little bit of time in Addis Ababa one quickly discovers that every house has a corrugated zinc roof. From the second floor of our house, or the windows of a hotel restaurant one can look out over the majority of the city and see the gleam of that material as far as the eye can see. In fact, one gets the impression that they use this material for everything. The advantage of the zinc roofing is the sound that it makes when there is any rain - a gentle but insistent pattering which is perfect around the time when one is turning in. It is just the perfect sound to lull you to sleep. Like everything else, though, the corrugated zinc roof has it's disadvantages, namely the sound of anything other than rain on the roof. Birds particularly make quite a racket, either walking or just flapping their wings. The clatter is loud and startling, and if you didn't know any better, you'd think that there were children up there running around. Pitter-patter of little feet, my ass.

Today was also World AIDS Day. Usually this wouldn't be a big deal to me, since I am an insensitive clod and anyway I don't know anyone with the disease, but around here I've been paying quite a bit of attention. This is mainly due to the fact that there are billboards everywhere cautioning against the disease and the behavior that puts one most at risk. We all know that Africa is currently the site of the fiercest battles against AIDS, but you don't really know how bad it is by just watching the news or reading about it. It's apparently a pandemic, and there are infection rates upwards of 20% in some areas! Needless to say I was shocked to find this out, especially when one begins to thinking of the number of people this entails. So the Ethiopian government and people are understandably worried, and laudably active in their efforts against the disease. This, in particular, as I compare to the Sudan where the disease itself is swept under the rug, and the scope of infection is known to but a few doctors. My cousin, himself a doctor, used to go on mobile clinics to the rural areas in Sudan and came back with horror stories to tell. The degree of government inaction and societal blindness was harrowing, he told me, and the numbers of the infected were stunningly high. Add the stigma that comes with the disease and it's assumed cause (sex, in short, and probably the illicit kind) and you are looking at an intractable public health issue.

Meanwhile, in Ethiopia you can actually see very active efforts against the disease. I was surprise to see, the other day, a policeman with a red AIDS ribbon on. While this may not seem remarkable to all you folks Stateside, where even obesity has a colorful ribbon associated with it, it is quite significant here on the "Dark Continent". Overall their efforts seem to be taking hold here, which means there is some hope overall. though as I have noted previously, this is a very different place than the Sudan.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)