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mind entropy of the ethiofrican

Diirre: A Childhood Crush

13 November, 2008 | 6 comments | Category: for.the.love.of.words!, nostalgia.personal, prose.tales

the boy, the city, the spiciness of the experience…

I was 10-12 I think…

The Spiciness
Every summer I went to visit my grandmother and great-aunt away from the rainy, muggy kiremt into the sunny humidity of the East. My great-aunt was the precious kind of woman who exuded love to all the kids of the area and gathered them into her home, showering them with the little cares of a grandmother. She would cajole, scold, hug, kiss and nurture as if they were her own. She was many things at all times, the versatile abode that is Woman. Personified, she was the vesicle for culture, the treasure chest of folktales; a linguist, like many in her generation. She spoke Haderi, Arabic, Amharic, Oromiffa, Somali…saying exactly what was on her mind with sharp eloquence as the need presented itself.

Almost every night, us kids would gather outside by the grayish blue gates around my great aunt’s feet as the sand settles and the heavy nefasha air breezes past the leaves; the teeming starry sky twinkling above us. I was a big fan of these nights, nights of teret teret storytelling about ali babba, the always mischievous monkey and the smart girl, the selfish one…the stepmother (Hmm…maybe this is why I’m such a sucker for breezy warm days that caress as they prode out a contented smile; like a lazy Saturday afternoon by the Potomac waterfront…)

Anyhow, back to another time and place.

Every summer I would reel from excitement as i make my way to Dire to start a month long excursion filled with dankira with the kids and happy days with my adorably talkative aunties. freedom! These summer friends of mine had their own slang; the juiciest kind that combines all the languages of the area. “Kale Waria!!” “Abooooo tewaaa!” “Abshir new, Alhamdililah!” “Intalo, injiru bishaniti?” Qesht, Abo, Senduq, birka, shillingi, roqa, medebir, mamilla, CHebo, deAs, DerIA…and so I rack my memory: to find all these and more profane wordy varieties…

The Boy

It was then that I became crush-struck. My younger cousin’s best friend was about 1 year older than I. The star footballer and the little arada of the area with his hitched walk and croaky voice; sure to be crowned mr. congeniality; deserving by far. It seems I was drawn to personality more than looks, even then…He had sharp accented features (big eyes, big nose, brownish soft hair) and he was light-skinned. Tall and skinny be he.

The old ladies were his fans, the other kids admirers of his mischief. Him and Cuz would tell me stories of classroom antics, football rivalries, adventures running errands around Dire and those vicious kids at the khat terra with whom they waged reckless battles. I’m not sure if I wanted to be them in their recklessness and my rebellious tomboy aspirations or hang with them for some girly reasons I couldn’t fathom! Nonetheless, such were the vagaries which plagued the mind of a little girl coming-of-age.

Jeezz, I was so ashamed of my heart doing a violent and loud ruckus! My tongue-tied little mouth releasing hitched breaths …jitters as he played football outside, came to buy Rossmans…crush-struck! lol, It was petrifying for the little girl that I was. It didn’t even occur to me that I could like him. I badly needed to keep my casual ease – sliding smoothly into funny stories, rants and raves about childhood naughtiness …and juicy neighborhood gossip, for good Dire measure…But No! his voice started breaking as I started breaking into sweat! what silliness!

Sure enough I never told him how I felt- maybe because I didn’t know what it was despite the plethora of teenage books and movies I devoured! At age 11, I expected he would laugh in my face. And as we grew older he would come visit and I would grasp at composure, fumbling… Mainly, I would hear about him from other people…he repeated a class, he was thinking of joining the national football team, he joined the team at the ‘C’ level, then went to vocational school for carpentry …finally he’s joined the federal police… and such a path destiny took…

The City

My little memory vesicle still holds this swanky character with fondness…A fondness that encompasses a town full of people in flip-flops and short-sleeved shirts; long skirts and flirty scarves. Neighbors that come out in the fading warmth- in the cool, calming dusk under acacia trees…as they sit on steps across narrow roads and yell out conversations about so-an-so’s illegitimate child and the price of water… ah! the freedom and openness! Dirty laundry always adorns the dingy streets; if u care to stand for a quick second and listen.

This is a town with equal opportunity hoya hoye where girls ran around with boys, chanting and singing for coins; where people (read: bachelors) buy ‘muslim’ meat pasta with marinara sauce in thin plastic bags with handles. The pasta spot sells chick-pea porridge ‘fuul‘ at breakfast (a middle eastern meal? As staple as dunked bread in sweet spicy tea, as far as I could remember)

Here, the mid-afternoon starts with a calm when everyone clamors indoors to chew on khat and rewind after the noon nap… Mid-morning is marked with knocks by entrepreneurial contraband salesmen, beggars and milkmaids calling for attention. And what of the open blue-grey gates? These gates are always ajar. Open to sounds of children kicking around balls; little girls mixing sand to build play-houses…and passersby exchanging greetings along with drips of the social update for the day.

This small city ruckus is topped up with the sound of the mamilla-CHebo coming around asking auntie for lunch or work carrying stuff in between his cigarette swigs. Infamously, this year’s mamilla was an amazingly intelligent english teacher until the blinding sun-khat -and sand turned him looney!

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Lifestyle treat: Abuara

23 September, 2008 | 4 comments | Category: for.the.love.of.words!, nostalgia.personal, prose.tales

You know the strangest little thing about memory? remembering those most irksome little bothers in life with unrelenting fondness. nostalgia …isn’t it the weirdest thing about memory?

It was in Ginbot, very close to the national exams,

the time - mid afternoon-ish
when dusty dry particles billow out from pavements
surrounding, adding noise to vision…
little flakes …pricking below the lids.

walking against a dust cloud…


skipped classes for tastier ventures
crashing day parties
gripping the trilling lures of adulteration
lethargic on cafe chairs
see …be seen…
whom, what…
clarity, enclosed in a whooshing sound as
foggy teenage distractions revolve around
the mind
that’s another strange thing about memory
fog….but this Ginbot had no fog
au contraire mon amie!
the horizon was so bright the sky was sparkling.
a piercing white sun shone down like BouZA lights.
specks of dust as they rose from the ground
chocking up airy volume
chipped blue and white paint of taxis
smeared with flakes of brownness. dust.
mirrored by: cloud, blue sky, dust…

the innocence? of school girls in uniforms.
prancing along the pavement,
flimsy thoughts floating- of social swank and swagger.
chatter on details of so-and-so, cliquesy clique qlink…
gossipy chitchat;

joyous giggles surrounded by dust cloud.
slinking words. talks of aspirations, pop pop culture…

air rumbling before a storm.
pensive. big exam. big stuff…big decisions.
whether …she’s going to be going
….the hair salon once every 2 weeks and full on primping for cafe lethargic,
or an alternate existence…in foreign space…
hmmm, days stomping addis streets chasing lifestyle treats….

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tickles of bunna nostalgia

11 April, 2008 | 5 comments | Category: i.mmigration, nostalgia.personal, prose.tales

my eyes glaze as pupils dilate basking in the otherness of my past….

the things i remember are not expected etches within my memory, they are random recollections of flickering visuals, smells, tickles and sounds…

the clatter of coffee beans nosily scattering on a metal roasting plate. incense flitter flattering the breeze, caressing curves of air wafting upward and sideways; releasing smells of home, comfort and cosiness. smells that mingle with prickly acid tastes of long grass strands spread across the floor, the musky, spiciness of incense and, soil, freshly moist feeding the grass outside the door, by the veranda.

incense rising around us frames my auntie’s face already framed by the peach-beige shawl. my mom has owned, my auntie worn this shawl during all her over-night visits to our house ever since I could remember. The luscious red rose petals appear to dance across the shawl amongst tiny brown geometric patterns adorning the length of her legs which are stretched out on the mat. she sits near the coffee mini-table with 9 tiny white cups appearing to gaze adoringly at a glorious black clay coffee-kettle.

When my auntie speaks, her mouth edges to one side; the scars across her neck create protruding fringes hidden till she arches her head up; a head with thick silky short locks usually big-curled or in curling bigodins.

i remember a conversation in this setting about a girl who lived across the driveway. She went to america to school, she was something of a legend in our neighborhood circle. A neighbor told the stories of the girl’s trials to my auntie who was sharing it with the rest of us. I could sense that we all felt butterflies of anticipation about my departure. With nerves at tickling ends, each of us wondered…could my experience be like hers?

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zxantila vibes: under umbrella

13 February, 2008 | 2 comments | Category: I.dentity, i.mmigration, love.of.words!, nostalgia.personal, prose.tales


around 30 minutes past the hour she strut-walks out, a little bounce to her steps and a content little smirk playing across her cafe-latte face. it is drizzling. the black-as-charcoal shiny ground mirrors white, yellow and orange car lights with blurry imprecision. ‘how pretty’, she thinks.

its work day over her head bobs in complete abandon to beats of tunes causing a pleasant ruckus where a zillion buzzy thoughts were whizzing few instants earlier. Her smirk widening, she makes her way through a tall metropolitan jungle of concrete, glass and cleanliness formidable and contrasting the urban metropolis of a sub-Saharan country she hails from.

rejecting the willpower to contain herself, she increases the spring in her steps and adds a bigger bounce to her walk toward the bus stop. intermittently squeaking, mumbling and bellowing out pieces of the lyric of a song in her second language she strides on, adamant about her full enjoyment of the music and the soft soothing spray of watery droplets from above.

reaching the stop she stands, facing the direction from which a bus will inevitably swoosh down. inevitably- buses like water slide down slopes… Her eyes distractedly dance along the charcoal-black slope only partially seeing. she is swept away in the sounds and words, the volume cranked up high, the music soars with her senses failing to arrest only one: her vision. several many moments pass.

tapping along, hip-twitching along, humming and mumbling along…and then she starts a little wiggle -fully oblivious of her surroundings. for a couple more minutes…jamming…jamming. bouncing. vibing with the music….

she sighs. stopping. smiling.

Then…she notices there were no fresh water droplets on her coat….

how could that…….(!!!)

abruptly, she turns around and her heart JUMPS- threatening to leap right up her throat!

“Oh my God!” ….exhale…

There is another human being right behind her!

…a human inordinately close, discomfortingly…breathing down her neck!! … she saw papery white skin crinkling up into a grimace. decidedly- almost contentedly, the old lady was holding up an umbrella above them both! The lady was wearing layers and layers of what looked like a red tent and a flowery sash with a big floppy maroon hat covering half her face. The other hand was holding a large white handbag with disproportionately huge crafty pink flowers blotched onto it…this was She. This was the old lady she had seen at this stop before. The lady’s voice had withered and trembled when it had tried to be projected, what the lady had said escapes her memory.



exhale…”Oh sorry!! I didn’t see you there!!”

silence.

the wrinkly eyelids twitch as the old lady acknowledges that she had heard; the faint grimace still tugging the corners of her thin lips…

more silence.

“uh….thank ….you……. (?)” with a question mark. she steps forward away from the old lady, toward the slope.

Maybe it was her quirky imagination but it seemed the old lady made a tiny step closer with the umbrella, seemingly to proclaim: ‘no more water droplets are claiming territory on your coat if I have anything to do with! I say no! not on my watch!’

‘hmmm?….so they share umbrellas in this country too? .smile. ‘interesting…’

‘is funny…’ almost unconsciously and abruptly she takes another instinct-inspired step forward.

‘ha! the irony! guess who’s more conscious of personal space…?’

“…mhhmmhm…” she starts to hum again fighting to reclaim her obliviousness until the bus comes…

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yester-wheres

21 September, 2007 | 3 comments | Category: love.of.words!, nostalgia.personal, prose.tales

A hush caresses the morn with a whisper only momentarily, as a slanted ray illuminates the landscape. Speckles of sand dance spinning twirls in the wind.

The smell of early morning dew in the air wages battle with the pungent stank of rubbish along the floodplane, a 5 minute walk away… Where waste decorates the lush soft yellow sand of the ASHawa: the coveted playground of aspiring football stars who are daily baked by tropic sun, their hopeful dreams smoking up aerodynamic dust lingering in the air well into the early hours of the evening- every day.

Here and now, there is fresh crispness and a sparkle of energy. The coolest part during day-light is almost over before it began… As the birds chirp a call-response rendition of a tune, an Acacia twig swims through the wind, dancing an early morning fox-trot before the burning heat of the sun silences its stamina.
In a part of the world where neighbourhood noise pollution is a foreign concept, houses of worship recantations, rooster crowing, “harun harun! harun dabo!” “shieka pasta buLa! shieka pasta!”, horse buggy bells and kur-kur horns ring in the day.

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