Abyssinian Royal Enclosure, a Triple Nadir, Drunken and Armed, and a therapeutic Shoulder Dance

Yesterday was the day before Easter and, having decided to stay in Gondar for the long weekend, we set out for the Royal Enclosure, home to kings and queens during the period of Gondarian rule ending in 1889 when Addis Ababa became the capital.


We had coffee and biscuits in the shade of the umbrella we DIDN'T move into our intolerably drippy bathroom and watched this fella weave his nest above us. Then we haggled in Amharik for a fair price to the Enclosure, just past the piazza.








Here I am standing in awe before the ceremonial arch leading into King Fasilidas' Palace, still an intact 2-story limestone and African black wood structure from the early 1600s.






In the King and Queen's tea nook in the main room of King Iyasu I's palace, called "more beautiful than Solomon's Palace". These royals are said to be directly descended from Solomon and Stars of David are inlaid in many walls.








Many churches were built nearby with intentionally direct views from royal windows. This Gondarine cross has 7 real ostrich eggs and a floral motif to represent the metaphorical fecundity of the church.








Dwarfed by Fasilidas.








Queen Mentewab's castle. After her husband, Bakaffa died, she acted as ruler until her 8yo son figured out the job.

Not pictured are a spinning building where she had women trained to made hand crafts, several lion cages for Black-maned Abyssinian Lions, the symbol of Ethiopia (and only removed from the property in 1992!), Turkish baths with "showers" consisting of holes in a cave-like ceiling through which helpers poured hot water, underground fire pits which heated rocks to produce herb-infused healing steam, and ingenius water collection systems to get the royals through the dry seasons.


While Sonal and I were buying a few local trinkets and running into our little friend Daniel who helped us find sugar in the market two weeks ago, Elliott not only got his shoes buffed to perfection, but discussed the civil war, Martin Luther King, Jr and American civil rights, and attempted to introduce this serious young man to the philosophy of Malcolm X. The shoe-shine cost 4 birr (17 birr to the US Dollar) so a tip of 2 is chump change.





We wandered to a nearby restaurant and had a nice light traditional fasting enjera meal and the best little crockery pitcher of coffee yet then hopped a taxi home. I was feeling particularly clostrophobic and was jonesing for some relaxing-at-home time.

What I have been leaving out of these posts in a pervasive frustration both with daily life and with the work here. Contributors include:

• If I walk to work alone, at least 100 people (low estimate) stare, turn their bodies as I walk to continue staring, often say something in Amharik, and sometimes wink or make a lewd gesture. My approach has been to kill it with kindness or to at least demand a "Salam" if they are going to stare. Don't get me wrong, I find myself fascinating too, but it makes the prospect of a run on the street or a simple trip without an ally to the veggie stand daunting.
• The air is polluted with dust, exhaust, and the stink of garbage and human waste to the point that our throats hurt every morning and we notice acutely the absence of smoke when a favorable breeze graces the courtyard. Men pee freely in the streets (a naked penis being less remarkable than a woman's uncovered calves) and toddlers squat to take dumps outside their houses a block from the piazza. These same toddlers run up to us to grab our farengi hands and say, "money, money!". The small alley outside our bedroom and kitchen windows doubles as a garbage pit through which animals and the occasional kid rustles. There is no garbage service in town, begging the question, "What will happen this week to the rotting carcasses of the sheep who will be systematically slaughtered starting in about 5 minutes?"
• At work our presence is tolerated though nobody seems to know what we are doing here. There is not time in the upcoming week's lecture schedule for another talk because, to their infinite credit, the interns and residents have lecture plans each morning. We are not in a good position to teach interns, despite Dr. Shitaye and Desalew's front that we be treated "like staff" during our visit. They are treating disease processes we rarely, if ever, see but, more influentially, their system does not encourage them to seek guidance or oversight until rounds occur and they are berated or told what to do differently. Our style of teaching involves asking thought-provoking questions like, "What are some reasons you don't think this is a pneumonia?" and this kind of encouraging interrogation seems to drop us down in their estimation as if demonstrating, not our kindness and desire to foster intelligent analysis, but our inability to act as their superior. Their responses are tolerant and uncomprehending. Blech, that is not how I am willing to teach.
• What feels lacking here is not academic or clinical training or intelligence of faculty or residents. A meaningful intervention would be a faculty and curricular development workshop with ongoing support from experienced faculty members. Although Sonal and I have much experience and willingness to teach interns and residents how to teach, we are not, socially, in a position where that is acceptable. We are guests with less clinical and location-specific medical experience than our hosts and, in what feels like a post-Colonial (though Ethiopia was never truly colonized) training environment, it would feel intolerably irreverant to propose to the faculty that: they fail to teach their residents and interns how to teach; their teaching methods on the wards to not foster independent medical analysis; they are modeling poor teaching and communication skills by being inaudible themselves and rushing through patient care without taking time to ensure interns understand treatment plans.
  

This trip, far from confirming that I want to do international work, has sent me into a gentle, cloud-wrapped, Elliott-slowed tailspin about my career and life dreams. All three of us, yesterday afternoon, had a tearful (for some of us) outpouring of frustrations and brainstormed solutions (yes, we have hope and suggestions both for this residency rotation and for ourselves; all is not lost) and decided that we needed to go out on the town to cheer up. Unfortunately we were met, not 30 seconds later, with an angry guest house guard and the sweet daughter of the restaurant owner across the street where we have eaten three meals a week since our arrival. Neither spoke English but the guard was a little intoxicated and thought he did and eventually made it clear that we had not returned all 6 of the beer bottles we had taken from the restaurant. This, not being true, we attempted to explain to our kind hostess who, in frustrated misunderstanding, walked away unconvinced that we had returned our returnables. We shooed the annoying guarda away and Elliott and I compiled a list of helpful Amharik words, "different day", "young man", "returned", "bottles", and "I'm sorry" with which to explain ourselves. We walked over to the restaurant ("Habesha") and I used all those words in some semblance of a prepositionless sentence until she smiled and said, "Eshi, eshi" which means "ok, sure, fine, yes" etc. Trying to keep our few good, fun relationships intact, we ate and drank there, watched a cow eat ceremonial grass off the porch before being shooed off towards its Easter demise.

Boy, this is getting long...

We went home to digest before going out for music and, on our way out, there was no guard so I opened the big metal gate myself. Biz, the aforementioned guard, came running down with his rifle and followed us out, eventually making it clear that he was "not a rich man" and would like us to buy him a beer at Habesha. Elliott, to get him off our case, offered to buy him a beer. Biz, in the restaurant, tried to deman four, slammed one onto the counter, dropped one on the floor where the top blew off and overflowed, and made a general drunken scene. We apologized to our understanding hosts and left quietly. He followed us up the street to our hailed Bejaj until we could shoo him, cowed (heh heh), away.

Then the night got fun! We were dropped at Dashen House where we had mugs of amber draft in the cool evening breeze surrounded by 95% male locals drinking and singing, met our new German medical student friend, Uli, and let loose in conversation and laughter. 1/2 liter drafts are under 50 cents and smooth and tasty and we then moved a few doors to the cultural club, following Sonal's drum-trained ears (heh heh) to the animal skin 3/4 beat and away from the pumping club music. Inside 6 people, 3 men, 3 women, took turns mocking the audience in spontaneous song (apparently to Ethiopians, Elliott looks like Mike Tyson) and playing two tom-toms tuned a fifth apart and a single string, neckless, bowed string instrument the size of a ukulele but held vertically in front while the player stands. Dashen cost 25 Birr (double usual but covering the musicians) and we sat on cow-hide stools with a maximum of 10 other guests, all locals, who, along with us, were brought up to dance the shoulder dance periodically. Several kids, Danny and Ebenezer included :) were drinking slowly underage and enjoying the spectacle. Our sugar friend Daniel turned up too and sat with us, translating the friendly musical slander for us and drinking the Pepsi we bought him. Sonal showed off some of her best traditional Indian dance moves and, after a dark and bumpy ride home, we all woke up with sore shoulders, a better feeling of how to dance without removing our hands from the back of our hips, and a renewed sense of relaxation and adventure. I'll let Elliott describe the adventure that was the back alley squat toilet when he gets online next.

Love to all.

xo, liz