|
Before the Millennium celebrations proper got off to
a hectic start, the Municipality of Addis Abeba
decreed that all posters stuck to all surfaces -
walls, telephone and electric poles, corrugated iron
fences and the like - would have to be taken down by
a given date, or else…And behold, wonders upon
wonders, everything was taken down, scraped off and
pulped. What surprised all those that follow such
things was that they were taken down before the
stated date. Posters in Piazza were not just taken
down, but the corrugated iron fences, which they had
adorned, were even painted over.
A short eight months later, the posters were all up
again in their inelegant fashion, and the surfaces
once again inundated with messages of all kinds,
quite a few of them senseless and unprovoking.
The name of our fair city, it has to be said, has a
certain amount of longing, tinged with expectation
and hope, about it. Itegue (Empress) Taitu, Menelik
the Second’s consort, both of blessed memory, could
well have given their new capital city a name that
would have symbolized past glories. They had a large
pool from which they could have picked, and they
would all have been fitting. They chose New Flower.
For them, it said it all.
Generations later, the people of Addis Abeba (New
Flower) have tried to match the wisdom of the
monarchs with their zeal to name the various parts
of the city according to perceived notions of
suitability and yearnings, and even of pragmatism.
So what should one make of the part of Addis Abeba
that is known as Chechnya? It is just a short,
unassuming road in Bole, and if you travel there
during the day, you will have no idea what it is.
You will have driven through it before you know it.
Get there after ten o’clock of an evening, however,
and you will see why they cal it what they call it.
There is noise, a lot of noise, mainly of the
blaring music variety. There are scantily dressed
bombshells, or lissom things, suited in contour
hugging leotards parading their wares and their
habitat. There will be shrill wolf whistles aimed at
your car as you drive past blissfully unaware,
perhaps, of the trade and goods being put on show
and sold on the street. There are garishly lit up
house fronts, blinking their invitations at you from
either side of the street, lights that are both
mesmerising, as well as repulsive in their gaudy
pretensions.
And as you drive past the last of these come-hither
magnets, you wonder what had hit you. You, if you
are lucky, have made it through the battled-scarred
area in one piece, withstanding all temptations,
shell-shocked, but none the worse for wear.
You have survived war-torn Chechnya!
And further, who else but sardonic Ethiopians could
have come up with a name that is nothing more than a
replacement for Woube Bereha, the famous Desert, and
the still missed Bishoftu Road. Its also has dance
hall joints and bars, without which no OAU,
later AU, summiteers could have achieved anything
worth their collective salt if they had been shut
down for even one night.
Chechnya today, Bishoftu Road yesterday, and the
Desert the day before!
Of course, it is to be expected, in a deeply
religious country such as Ethiopia that many of the
neighbourhoods will be named after places of
worship. There is the Grand Mosque area in the
Mercato, to give one obvious example. Then there are
areas named after the various saints taken from the
Bible, peppered around the city. To top them all,
however, there is Makanissa.
Many used to think that it was an obscure Italian
word, handed down to us from some minor Italian
bureaucrat. It is not. It is a Swahili word for
‘church.’
Arat Kilo, Amist Kilo and Sidist Kilo, much to the
surprise of most people from Addis Abeba, has
nothing to do with weight. It is actually: Arat
Kilometres; Amist Kilometres; and Sidist Kilometres.
It states the distance from St George Cathedral, the
official centre of the city. In other words: four,
five and six kilometres from St George, Arada
Ghiorgis, where Emperors were solemnly crowned to
the ululations and bellows of the adoring crowds of
the day.
Then there is Piazza, just down the road from St
George, in fact, and unquestionably a word handed
down to us by that same obscure Italian. Piazza is
now dilapidated, made to die not too gracefully. It
was
once-upon-a-time-the-centre-of-everyone’s-universe;
it is now waiting to be resurrected, as soon as the
new modernists have had enough of Bole and its
densely congested lean-to’s.
The Piazza is seeing its own transformation into a
run-down Mercato, and is home to a yet unbuilt
memorial, a traffic circle, to President Charles de
Gaulle of France, conceived some thirty-five years
ago when he visited the city as a guest of the
Emperor.
There is Beklo Bet, in the south of the city,
denoting the days when the mule was the only means
of transport, and housing was especially built to
feed and care for the beasts. Beklo Bet must be the
precursor of the one-car garage.
There are also places in and around Mercato that are
the suppliers of all foodstuffs. There are areas for
all the grains, each of which will have its own
space. In this way, the buyer of wheat will go to
where there is nothing but wheat – acres of it.
There is a part for just sherro, something no
fasting Ethiopian can go without. Blocks of
it you will find. There is the berbere
precinct, an area you will never miss, as you sneeze
your way through the labyrinthine stalls, eyes
smarting. Similarly, you will find coal by the bags
full; onions by the tonne; maize by the lorry load;
all in their designated areas. It makes for very
easy shopping – if you know what you are looking
for.
But the crown must be given to what can loosely be
translated as ‘What have you?’ area. Menalesh
Terra. There, it is said with no gloating or
exaggeration, you will find anything your heart
desires. A four-poster? A cinch. Just one sock – not
a pair, mind you – to match the one you already
have? It is there. Silver candelabra from any age?
It is there. If pushed, it is attested, your stall
owner might even provide you with a pair: one for
the left foot and one for the right, he will say,
with a broad wink.
There are books by the tea chest full, new and old,
including the one you have been looking for ages.
Not stolen, you are told piously, but found in a
dustbin. You both look up to Heaven, expecting that
bolt of lighting from nowhere.
No mention should, therefore, be made of Bomb
Terra. No one knows if you can buy bombs there,
or if bombs are tested here before being sent to
some front or rather. You do not go to Bomb Terra
looking for stuff to cause mayhem anymore: the
hardware is gone, we are told, but not the name.
One of the most intriguing place names must be
Legehar.
At the turn of the century, when Emperor Menelik had
his hands full with the ‘aspiring’ English, Italians
and French, the one weapon open to him was to
somehow appease their ‘aspirations’ for Ethiopian
territory. With the French, it was plain sailing:
Offer them Djibouti on a long term lease,
ninety-nine years was the deal, and in return, they
would build a rail line, linking Addis Abeba to the
Red Sea port of Djibouti, which was then a camel
outpost of no significance. Everything about the
project had to be, of course, in French and French
made, including the rail gauge to be found nowhere
else on earth.
The main terminus in the city was crowned by the
original Lion of Judah statue, which was uprooted
and taken to Italy by Mussolini’s forces and planted
in Rome, but is now back to where it belongs.
The whole area was known by its French appellation.
The French for ‘station,’ La Gare, got
corrupted, as many things tend to do, into Legehar.
It awaits its fate as a thoroughfare was designed to
run through it.
But to get back to the posters.
There was one that was infuriating. It was an
advertisement for an Ethiopian film. And about no
less a figure than Aïda herself. Yes, she is meant
to be an Ethiopian, or, as the Italian composer
Verdi would have us believe, an Ethiopian slave
queen in an Egyptian court. But that is not the
point here, which is the fact that people will take
liberties with acknowledged, recognised facts. And
the facts are that you do not spell her name the way
they have done it: Ayda. The name is not very common
in Ethiopia, but it does exist. And invariably, the
ladies so named are glorious to behold. When it is
used, as the Foreign Office Passport Division will
attest, it is as Giuseppe Verdi would have preferred
it. Queen Aïda of the Ethiopians.
|
