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When
the going is rough, you have to be tough. Did I hear this
maxim somewhere or did I coin it myself from the blue,
listening to the sounds of the rhyming words? Talking of
sounds, the lyrics of an old song keep ringing in my ears. “Money
can’t buy me love…” I am wondering if money can buy me
food any time soon, and I mean it!
Things
are getting rough around old pensioners, whose monthly
allowance cannot take them through a single week, let alone
a month. Of what value is the Birr, if it cannot acquire a
loaf of bread, not to mention injera? It can hardly
even get your shoes polished. “Can’t buy me love...”
Like I
said before, some sort of polarization seems to be taking
over the town these days, judging by the way some folks are
spending their hardly-earned money, or better still,
throwing away their money. “Hardly-earned” sounds a
questionable term, if you know or doubt what I mean. You
know well that musina has surged in almost every
country in Africa, and even in Ethiopia for that matter.
Keynes’s teachings of the basics of Economics do not say
that about the principles of savings and consumption. I, for
one, subscribe to the school of thought that normal people
behave normally when it comes to spending what you sweated
for. The other day, I was at my favourite hang out, only to
discover that the price of a double shot of an imported
spirit had shot up to 18 Br!
The
“haves” did not seem to mind much. Those are the kinds of
folks people talk about, who drink bottled ‘highlands’
water when they are thirsty because natural water is scarce,
as it often is daily, even nightly, I should add. By no
means do these people live on drinking water only when, they
have the means to indulge imported whisky, gin, cognac
brandy, or wine. And, what do those people dine on? I can
only guess. A few Birr change on the plate from the worth of
a green note! They smile at the waiter to, ‘keep the
change’.
The
middle-income group is sliding down the slope and going
green. Drive or take a cab to Piazza, and you will know what
I mean by this. I sometimes go there to end my walking
routine, after enduring the shoving and pushing of the
growing numbers of the walking bunch.
Addis
seems to be finding a place amongst the so-called
middle-income cities, like Mumbai or Shanghai sooner rather
than later, as far as population growth goes. Right at the
hub of the metropolis, be it Arada or Piazza, you will
surely bump into those wheelbarrows heavily laden with ripe,
red tomatoes, leafy and rough pineapples, mangoes, green
peppers, lemons, and what have you. Where has the corn gone
to this year?
It only
costs three Birr to carry away one pineapple, or a kilo of
mangoes, or red-ripe juicy tomatoes, if you like. Shop for
some red onion, green pepper, juicy tomatoes, and a loaf of
bread, stock it in a black plastic bag so pedestrians will
not know what you are taking home, and then, devour. What is
there to lose from the lack of lean or fatty meat? There is,
everything, however, to gain from green vegetables and juicy
fruits, both in terms of nourishment and of cost.
When
the going gets rough, remember you have to play it tough
like my shoe shiner, Alef does. He buys an eight-centimetre
long piece of sugar cane every morning for a mere 25 cents,
and chews the juice out of it. You do not have to tell him
all the scientific explanations about what type of glucose
you get from sugar cane, and how the energy tapped from the
sugar could drive a car. He does not worry about going into
those irrelevant details, so long as he knows it keeps him
kicking strong until noon. That is what is meant by driving
bio-fuel or biogas. When the going gets really rough, Alef
knows he has to play it tough.
Incidentally, every time I pass by his make-shift plastic
shed, he keeps looking down at my shoes eagerly, and asks
me, “May I clean them?” even when he sees that the pair does
not need any brushing as they keep busy allowing me to
stroll, if not to roll!
The
eatery where Alef and the likes of him dine is not a
restaurant per se in terms of standards, no matter how hard
you stretch your imagination. An elderly lady and her
employees run the business, or should I say the place,
according to Alef. The customers are told to be seated
somewhere in the smoky room, on a bench, or a straw broom,
or a sack of grain flour, or just on the rag-covered floor.
The folded injera, baked from dark teff, is
put onto a plate with shiro wot poured on them.
Alef
and company hold the plate with one hand, while the rolling,
dipping and mouthing is done with the other. The whole
eating process takes only five minutes at the most. That is
all. You pay the bill and leave the smoky, old
house-cum-eatery, and go elsewhere to look for tea or local
brew, tella, if you can afford such luxury of spending 2.5
Br per litre. We used to get that much tella for only
10 cents. But those days are gone never to come back. The
local expression may be “Isu Duro Kere!” You can say
that again for almost everything worth commenting on.
While
many vendors are wheel-barrowing around nutritious fruits
and vegetables, the Millennium Celebration officials are
urging folks to plant three seedlings each for the third
millennium. By Gosh, that is not only too-little-too-late,
but too far from the burning concern of the day. Access to
food seems the pressing issue now, no matter how many trees
we plant for the second or the third millennium. |
