Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Birmingham, AL: COVID Unfolding, Part 8888: Of Masks and Earrings

 

Widowed earring on Alabama map. February 2021.
Widowed earring on Alabama map. February 2021.


Earrings and lipstick. If I am out, they are on me.

Until a couple of weeks ago, that is.

I suppose there are earring-wearers out there who are sufficiently mindful about removing masks to avoid losing an earring, but I am not among their number. 

After losing two earrings now since COVID began, I have surrendered to reality and my ears will henceforth go nekkid until we are a post-mask world.

I lost my green-glass dangly earring on laundry day last week. I knew I had to have lost it somewhere between my parked car and my various stops inside the laundromat: the change machine, the washing machine, the dryer, the folding table. 

I re-traced my steps twice, scanning the ground surface like a search-and-rescue spotter, to no avail. (A detour into the efficacy of search rescue eye scanning here.)

Before I left the premises, I asked the laundromat attendant if anyone had turned in an earring. "No," he replied, "but there is that homeless guy who comes around here all the time, and he was walking around holding an earring up with his hand, and talking about it being good luck for him or something, and then he left to go wherever he goes when he leaves here, still carrying it." 

So there you go. My earring, lost to me, but out in the wilderness, on a new journey. 

And I had not even been its first caretaker, as it was a rescue earring I had acquired in a Goodwill in South Louisiana. 

The day I gave up wearing earrings outside is the day I also gave up my irrational wearing of lipstick behind a mask. 

 

Some other thoughts on earrings, lipsticks, and masks

23 Best Mask-Proof Lipsticks

... Are Face Masks Leading Us to Kiss the Cosmetic Goodbye? 

Prevent Losing Earrings While Wearing a Mask

 

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

10 Years Ago: In Awassa, Ethiopia

 

Road from Gonder to Lalibela, Ethiopia. January 2011.
Road from Gonder to Lalibela, Ethiopia. January 2011.

Ten years ago, I published this post from my two-month, solo trip to Ethiopia. 

Revisiting the post evokes mixed feelings. 

Sadness. Confusion. About the violence and terror that some Ethiopians have been suffering since November 2020, with the Ethiopian president's military actions against certain Tigray groups. 

Is the kind university student from the Tigray city, Aksum (a site of recent violence), with whom I shared a bus ride, safe? Ten years later, he's likely married with children. Are they safe? What about his sister, also a university student, who he told me about with so much affection? Is she safe?

How do I process the reaction from an Oromo friend (the Oromo are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia), who expressed to me his satisfaction about the Tigray getting their comeuppance after the Oromo having suffered for so long under their thumb? He is a survivor of the Red Terror. An older brother was a political prisoner for many years, separated from his wife and children. Another brother, the baby of the family, almost died from starvation in prison after being captured as a soldier in an Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict. 

[This 2018 NPR article, How an Exiled Activist in Minnesota Helped Spur Big Political Changes In Ethiopia, gives some background on the Oromo experience in Ethiopia. Jawar Mohammed, the center of the story, is now imprisoned in Ethiopia and has been on a hunger strike since January 27, 2021.]

Discomfort about my ignorance, my detachment. I acknowledged this discomfort - this embarrassment - in my original post, and chose back then to leave it unedited, as I do today. So many young adults, so few opportunities. For me it was an observation; for them, a painful reality. Or as one Ethiopian told me: "We are in the prison of our country; we cannot escape. You, you can visit us, and you can leave whenever you wish."

Pleasure. Awassa was one of my favorite places to be in Ethiopia. It was pretty. There were those fairy tale storks. The flying-ear bajaj. The lake. The resorts. That transcendent moment on the rooftop cafe, listening to a tizita, watching storks swooping gracefully in the sky, and the bajaj streaming down the leafy boulevard.


Monday, February 28, 2011

Ethiopia: Awassa, Day 1, Monday

I am in Awassa and I think I am in heaven. After a dismal look-see at three rooms at the Beshu Hotel, I walked down the street to the Blue Nile Hotel. A shower that works! Water comes out! The toilet flushes! A TV! And God-in-heaven -- an in-room mini-refrigerator, in which I immediately popped my bottled water. What luxury. For 150 birr (about $10).

And there is purportedly an ATM in Awassa!

After kicking off my shoes, stretching out on the bed, and watching a little television, I went down to the hotel restaurant for a late lunch. Pretty courtyard. Many round tables, most shaded by palms or other trees or a woven hut roof. A sweet breeze. The fragrant smoke of frankincense wafted nearby. A cold Ambo.

The menu was pricey, but for the moment, I didn't care. A little yellow bird even landed on one of the chairs at my table and tweeted at me. The waitress welcomed me to Awassa.

So let me move back to the beginning of the day, at the Bale Mountain Hotel in Dodola.

Got up a little before 7:00 a.m. Did the usual things. "Soft" paper a bit of an issue - the hotel doled out a small, nicely-folded ration, and I had used the last of the roll I'd purchased before going on the Bale Trek, and I had only a couple of kleenexes from my last little packet of soft. Three days of shiro, albeit delicious, had had an effect on things.

Got packed up and went out to the restaurant patio for a good cup of black coffee. My plan was to take a bus from Dodola to Shashamene; numerous buses work this route in the morning, so there was no urgency to leave super-early.

I was almost finished with my coffee when three faranji men passed through the patio area. They were all from Belgium; they had flown in to Addis with their bicycles, and were on a bike trek through Ethiopia. On average, only one to two faranji come to Dodola in a day. Indeed, one of the Belgians said I was the first tourist they'd seen since they left Addis on their trek. One asked what to expect next on the road through the Bale Mountains. Easy --> rocks and dust until you get out of town. Get a bandana. The Belgians assured me they'd already eaten a lot of dust and covered a lot of rocks.

At Lake Ziway, they took a boat across the lake to a "road" that was so deep in dust they couldn't ride on (in) it. They had to push their bikes through.

I mentioned my stay in Gorgora (can't remember why) and about the British couple who fell into the hole. One of the Belgians exclaimed immediately: "An Ethiopian tourist trap!" I loved this.

Example of a typical Ethiopian tourist trap
 
Finished my coffee, collected a small ration of soft from the manager, and returned to my room for that final trip to the bathroom before a bus trip.

One of the restaurant men offered to escort me (and lug my bag) to the bus station, which I accepted. He got me directly to the right bus, pushed my bag up into same, and saw me on my way. A gratuity was graciously offered and accepted.

Pleasant ride to Shashamene, where I got off to pick up a connecting bus to Awassa.

Shashemene really drives home how many Ethiopian boys and men there are without enough to do. The girls and women are, generally, behind the scenes. At homes, I guess. (In the rural areas of Oromia, at least, married women do not even go to a restaurant unless accompanied by their husbands.)

Over and over I hear about students who graduate from university, but there are no jobs for them.

So there are all of these boys and men who are un- or under-employed.

I got off the bus at Shashamene and there was young man after young man after young man who hoped for money from me in exchange for carrying my bag or getting me to the bus I seek. Nobody got anything this round. One guy mentioned to me he needed money for school, but it seemed mostly out of habit that he said this and not out of any belief he'd get anything. It must be so demoralizing. All of this pent-up talent and energy, with no place to go. A bleak future of one day after another, each the same. A dangerous situation for any regime.

It ended up that some women helped me find the bus I wanted. This was one of those bus boarding situations where it was every man for himself, and I tried to get myself in front of the johnny-come-latelys, giving them the evil eye, while making way for those who were before me. I was lucky -- a friend of the bus driver saved me a seat. A completely undeserved break, merely because I was faranji (I assume). The yin and yang of faranjidom in Ethiopia.

Back to the Blue Nile Hotel, a few hours later. OK, the refrigerator light came on, but that was all the work it was able to accomplish. The electricity went off a couple of times in my room, but resumed.

Bajaj in Awassa. Photo credit: Jirenna
 
I took a blue bajaj (tuktuk) to the Dashen Bank in the piazza. Flush with cash from the ATM, I started walking back to the hotel and went by a supermarket. Wow! Grapefruit juice! Nescafe coffee! Cheese! (Alas, this was before I knew the refrigerator really didn't refridge

I brushed off some aggressive beggars (who grabbed my arm, a first for me in Ethiopia) on my way back to the hotel. [Given the paragraph preceding and following, I'd like to just delete this statement, as the contrast between my life and theirs is galactic. But it is the reality, so I let it stand in its discomfort. Life just plain isn't fair.]

Upon my return, I relaxed the rest of the day and evening in my hotel room. Had dinner from the hotel restaurant. As with the earlier lunch, only very ordinary.

 

Monday, February 1, 2021

Word of the Year 2021: Joy 2: Music

 

Viva Las Vegas in El Paso, Texas. July 2017.
Viva Las Vegas in El Paso, Texas. July 2017.

 

"I'm so happy!!!!" is what the guy exclaimed to the universe, expressing the joy we all felt in that small mechanic's garage at the 2013 Lupus Chili Fest, where Todd Day Wait and the Pigpen and we, the audience, melded our energies into something transcendent.


 

Music brings joy. 

Music literally lights up our brains. Your Brain on Music offers cool graphics on "how music impacts brain function and human behavior, including by reducing stress, pain and symptoms of depression as well as improving cognitive and motor skills, spatial-temporal learning and neurogenesis, which is the brain’s ability to produce neurons." 

The Cat Stevens (Yusuf) song, Miles From Nowhere, is my joyful road song. To say it lifts my spirit is a figurative cliche, but it occurs to me now that it probably really does lift whatever chemical-electrical operations I've got going on upstairs.

 

 

I have a feel good playlist. It includes my power songs and even my fuck you songs, the latter also producing a satisfying, perverse joy. I'm not a saint. 


Some other folks' happy playlists

  1. Jennifer Lee's Ultimate Happy Playlist
  2. USA Today's 100 Songs to Help Lift Your Spirits During a Pandemic
  3. Amr Salama's Songs That Will Instantly Put You in a Good Mo


It is good to make a joyful noise.