Visual Literacy and Photography Series at AAU

As an out­growth of the pre­vi­ous work­shops I ran at Addis Ababa Uni­ver­sity, I’m offer­ing a four part visual lit­er­acy and pho­tog­ra­phy series through the University’s Eng­lish Lan­guage Improve­ment Cen­ter. Yesterday’s talk was a lot of fun. Stu­dent and pro­fes­sors from sev­eral depart­ments attended. We viewed an ana­lyzed work by pho­tog­ra­phers from Richard Avadon to Lolo Veloko to Lise Sar­fati, not to men­tion Sey­dou Keita, whose pho­to­graph is used on the flyer. Quite a num­ber of stu­dents have expressed inter­est in next week’s topic. If you’re in Addis Ababa, do stop by.

Floating Like Angels

One of today’s dance per­for­mances at Hope for Chil­dren.

Where Time and Space are Not Rationalized

In an ear­lier post, I made a fum­bling attempt to describe local con­cep­tions of time that can leave for­eign­ers like me con­founded and frus­trated here in Ethiopia. Soci­ol­o­gist Don­ald Levine does an amaz­ing job describ­ing this and many other aspects of Amhara soci­ety in his 1965 book Wax and Gold. The fol­low­ing pas­sage had me laugh­ing hys­ter­i­cally for all the foiled attempts as mak­ing plans or solic­it­ing infor­ma­tion about past events that it brought to mind. Levine’s work on the Amhara peas­ant of 40 years ago remains rel­e­vant for under­stand­ing the urban Ethiopian of today.

In the Abyssin­ian world view, time is not ratio­nal­ized for sec­u­lar pur­poses.  Some peas­ants cal­cu­late the hour by the shad­ows on the moun­tains, but the effort is not taken very seri­ously. Units of time are of lit­tle con­cern in the work­day world.  When a man says he is going on a trip ‘tomor­row,’ every­one assumes that he means he may be leav­ing a few days later. Many appoint­ments are made, but few are kept lit­er­ally; so that the phrase habe­sha qataro (“Abyssin­ian appoint­ment”) has come to sig­nify an appoint­ment to which one comes quite late or not at all. There is lit­tle sense of time in the abstract.  When an Amhara peas­ant is asked how long a cer­tain trip takes, he does not reply ‘ten hours,’ but rather; ‘If you leave here at dawn you will arrive there before it turns dark’; and his esti­mate of the arrival time tends to vary accord­ing to whether or not he wants to ques­tioner to make the trip.

His­tor­i­cal time is still more vaguely con­ceived than local time. The Amhara peas­ant has lit­tle sense of knowl­edge of his­tory. He con­sid­ers all that hap­pened before Menelik’s day as ‘ancient times,’ and more or less as an undif­fer­en­ti­ated period. He knows very few of the ear­lier emper­ors, no his­tor­i­cal dates, and often not even the exact year, let alone date, of his own birth.  He has no idea when the church in his area was built and no inter­est in pre­serv­ing such his­tor­i­cal mon­u­ments or memen­tos as may exist in his country…

Space, like time, is not regarded as an amoral and homo­ge­neous con­tin­uum to be sub­mit­ted to sys­tem­atic mea­sure­ment… The reluc­tance to ratio­nal­ize space is con­spic­u­ous even in the cap­i­tal of Ethiopia, where to this day there are no street num­bers, so that places can only be iden­ti­fied roughly as near a cer­tain police sta­tion or past a cer­tain hos­pi­tal. Direc­tions are indi­cated with dif­fi­culty.  The points of the com­pass are almost never used, though there are words for the four direc­tions.  Instead, the vague terms for ‘up’ and ‘down’ serve to answer almost every ques­tion about location.

You can prob­a­bly see how this way of look­ing at time and space would throw a Type A New Yorker like me for a loop. It also helps explain why so many peo­ple I talked to about Ethiopia before I arrived spoke with bit­ter frus­tra­tion about the time they spent here.

Another fac­tor con­tribut­ing to this frus­tra­tion is the wax and gold poetic tra­di­tion that is the main sub­ject of Levine’s book. Wax and gold is a poetic style char­ac­ter­ized by dou­ble enten­dres.  The wax is what the words osten­si­bly mean and the gold is the hid­den mean­ing.  In day-to-day com­mu­ni­ca­tion, this tra­di­tion can man­i­fest as active deceit that is praised as clev­er­ness in tra­di­tional Amhara cul­ture.  By no means do all Ethiopi­ans espouse double-handedness, but the impli­ca­tions of this cul­tural tra­di­tion is a topic of con­cern for orga­ni­za­tions like the Ethiopian Insti­tute for Non­vi­o­lent Edu­ca­tion and Peace Stud­ies.  When he wrote his book, Levine was hope­ful that the wax and gold tra­di­tion could facil­i­tate mod­ern Ethiopian diplo­macy.  Unam­bigu­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion is only part of main­tain­ing bureau­cratic, ratio­nal sys­tems.  The most effec­tive admin­is­tra­tors though have a high tol­er­ance for ambi­gu­ity both in prac­tices and in com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the effort to main­tain har­mony and min­i­mize inter­per­sonal tensions.

The Little Rainy Season

A view of after­noon rain falling on Olympia in Addis Ababa.

Seeds for an Ethiopian Photo Curriculum

At Addis Ababa University’s Grad­u­ate Jour­nal­ism and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­gram, I ran a two-day work­shop on tech­ni­cal aspects of pho­tog­ra­phy as a pre­req­ui­site to a month long inten­sive pro­duc­tion course. Dur­ing the work­shop, it became clear that many of the stu­dents had lit­tle expo­sure to tools like cam­eras and min­i­mal visual lit­er­acy skills, at least in rela­tion to mass media. We made a lot of progress in two days, but they clearly needed some instruc­tion on pho­to­graphic visu­al­ity and its var­i­ous appli­ca­tions for the field of journalism.

Alice Kle­ment, the pro­fes­sor of the course, invited me to guest lec­ture on pho­to­graphic com­po­si­tion, doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy, and visual sto­ry­telling. The fol­low up lec­tures vitally sup­ple­mented the tech­ni­cal skills train­ing that the stu­dents received dur­ing the pre­req­ui­site workshop.

The 33 first-year stu­dents of the Mas­ters in Jour­nal­ism and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions were cho­sen for the pro­gram by Ethiopia’s Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion. They will all con­tinue on to teach at the 13 new uni­ver­si­ties cur­rently under con­struc­tion across the coun­try. The stu­dents intend to use my pre­sen­ta­tions in their own classes after they grad­u­ate. The pos­i­tive response to the work­shop and lec­tures has been over­whelm­ing, and I’ve received a num­ber of effu­sive thank you notes over email.

You can see the pre­sen­ta­tions below. (The final pre­sen­ta­tion is in 2 parts.) I regret that there are not more exam­ples of work from Africa by Africans. I decided it was bet­ter to stick with what I know and admit its lim­i­ta­tions rather than deliver a weak les­son by using work I couldn’t effec­tively speak to. Alice Kle­ment reas­sured me. “Won’t it be great to come back in a few years and find ver­sions of your pre­sen­ta­tions retooled with Ethiopian exam­ples and inter­pre­ta­tions?” It totally will be.

Timkat

Timkat, the Ethiopian cel­e­bra­tion of the Epiphany, was cel­e­brated early this week in Addis Ababa with huge crowds gath­er­ing at sev­eral sites around the city for reli­gious cer­e­monies, pro­ces­sions, and danc­ing. These pho­tos were taken at Jan Meda on Tues­day. Many thanks to Adane for guid­ing me through the crowd and insist­ing that I try the dances and the home brew.

Theater as Catharsis in Grappling with HIV/AIDS

Most of Hope For Chil­dren’s day­long cel­e­bra­tions include somber tes­ti­monies from com­mu­nity mem­bers who have suf­fered with HIV/AIDS and plays by the youth about fic­tion­al­ized fam­ily dra­mas where HIV/AIDS is a strong theme. Dur­ing the Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tion this past week­end, one play enacted the tragedy of a mother who dies from AIDS because her neg­li­gent chil­dren do not take her to receive med­ical atten­tion in time. The play moved many in the audi­ence, includ­ing the small chil­dren, to tears. While this might seem out of place for a Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tion, the rit­ual is deeply cathar­tic for all those involved and reminds atten­dees of the hard work that the com­mu­nity is engaged in with the help of Hope for Children.

Click image and zoom to view full size.

As part of my Ful­bright project here in Ethiopia, I am explor­ing the influ­ence these com­mu­nity plays have on the films of Sud­den Flow­ers Pro­duc­tions. Par­tic­i­pa­tion in plays at Hope For Chil­dren is one way that mem­bers of Sud­den Flow­ers have devel­oped the sophis­ti­cated sense of per­sonal nar­ra­tive that they draw on to pro­duce their films. One of the films will be screened at the Rot­ter­dam Film Fes­ti­val at the end of this month. “Fight­ing With Father” is a true story about Yonas’ strug­gle with his mother’s death and his father’s alco­holism. Con­grat­u­la­tions to Sud­den Flow­ers Pro­duc­tions and direc­tor Daniel D. Negatu in bring­ing this story to an inter­na­tional audience.

New Years?

Only the faran­jis (for­eign­ers) in Addis Ababa are cel­e­brat­ing the New Year now. Ethiopia’s New Year starts on Sep­tem­ber 11th. It is cur­rently the year 2002 accord­ing to this cal­en­dar, hence one local tourism company’s slo­gan: “Visit Ethiopia and feel 7 years younger.”

Time in Ethiopia offers a vari­ety of chal­lenges for faran­jis. Aside from the dif­fer­ent cal­en­dar year, there is the unique sys­tem for not­ing the time of day. Hours in the day are counted sequen­tially with day­light hours. Being so close to the equa­tor, Ethiopia sees very lit­tle vari­a­tion in day­light hours from sea­son to sea­son. 6am, when the sun is about to rise, is con­sid­ered 12 o’clock. 7am, the end of the first hour of sun­light, is 1 o’clock, and so forth through to the next 12 o’clock, or 6pm faranji time, when the sun sets. To con­vert between faranji time and Ethiopian time, just look to the oppo­site num­ber on the face of an ana­log clock. Luck­ily, most Ethiopi­ans assume I’m work­ing from faranji time when I make plans with them. I only had a few botched attempts at sched­ul­ing meet­ings due to con­fu­sion about what sys­tem of time we were using.

But this isn’t what faran­jis are com­plain­ing about when they bemoan habe­sha time.¹ Habe­sha time refers to an Ethiopian style of liv­ing in the present, which comes into con­flict with the ten­dency of most Amer­i­can and Euro­pean to live in the future. Antic­i­pat­ing, pre­med­i­tat­ing, plan­ning, all deeply ingrained activ­i­ties that char­ac­ter­ize how Amer­i­cans like me get things done, do not mesh eas­ily with how most Ethiopi­ans get things done. While I assess my effec­tive­ness based on my abil­ity to carry out plans, Ethiopi­ans mea­sure their effec­tive­ness based on… well, I’m not sure exactly yet, but what­ever it is, it seems designed to foil mine! Hope­fully after another 8 months here, I’ll have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the per­pet­ual present that my Ethiopian col­leagues live in. It’s markedly dif­fer­ent from the siesta-inflected cycli­cal time of Mexico/Central Amer­ica or the mon­u­men­tal bureau­cratic time of India.

If time and mak­ing plans didn’t already sound com­pli­cated enough, here’s another twist. The Amharic lan­guage doesn’t have a future tense. The future is implied con­tex­tu­ally with cer­tain uses of the present con­tin­u­ous tense. This means that only Ethiopi­ans who are com­pletely flu­ent in Eng­lish will use the future tense when they speak in Eng­lish. In my con­ver­sa­tions with Ethiopi­ans, I often strug­gle to under­stand what has already hap­pened, what is hap­pen­ing and what will happen.

Is my new year’s res­o­lu­tion in keep­ing with Ethiopian con­cep­tions of time, or just a faranji’s attempt to main­tain san­ity in spite of it? I’m resolv­ing to enjoy procrastination.

First Encounter with OLPC

Today, I had my first encounter with an OLPC lap­top. It was in the home of a mem­ber of Sud­den Flow­ers Pro­duc­tions. The mis­sion of One Lap­top Per Child (OLPC) is to enhance edu­ca­tional opper­tu­ni­ties for poor chil­dren by pro­vid­ing them with their own robust, open source lap­tops. After hear­ing so much about the ini­tia­tive, I was ecsta­tic that one of the youth I’m teach­ing is using of an OLPC lap­top to do some inde­pen­dent studying.

Oh Fri­day, we had our last Pho­to­shop les­son, review­ing what I taught them about lay­ers and color cor­rec­tion. I thought they could use more time to play around with what they learned, but they insisted that we move on to dis­cuss web design. It was pretty grat­i­fy­ing to arrive at the office this morn­ing and find sev­eral of the youth on the old Win­dows lap­top mess­ing with the high­lights and sat­u­ra­tion of pho­tos they took last week. Seems they do have that all fig­ured out and are ready to move on. The next three hours con­sisted of play­ing with and dis­cussing a few web based inter­ac­tive projects (1, 2, 3, 4) fol­lowed by writ­ing some sim­ple HTML and CSS documents.

Ten­saye (on the left in the first photo below) was espe­cially eager to learn about web design.  “This is my dream,” he con­fided in me last week.  “Okay,”  I told him, “We’ll make it hap­pen.”  After today’s les­son, we headed to his house to load the exam­ple files onto his family’s desk­top com­puter.  That way, he could exper­i­ment on his own until the next les­son on Fri­day.  But the com­puter didn’t have the right dri­vers for my USB drive.  After unsuc­cess­fully trou­ble shoot­ing for a few min­utes, Ten­saye sud­denly perked up and asked one of his rel­a­tives to get the “lit­tle computer.”

I gasped with delight when I saw the green OLPC OX-1 lap­top.  Seems that it sat largely unused in the house since Tensaye’s older rel­a­tive had received it in school a few months ago.

Ten­saye plugged my USB drive into the lap­top, and it loaded no prob­lem.  He copied over the exam­ples and resource files.

What totally endeared me to the device was the key­board.  Char­ac­ters of the Amharic fidel were printed along­side the Roman let­ters!  I asked Ten­saye if any other key­boards were set up this way.  “Nope,” he said. “First in Ethiopia.”

I showed him how to swivel the screen around for eas­ier read­ing.  “I will use this a lot,” he said scrolling through the doc­u­ments.  “You have to test me.  On Fri­day, ask me what I learned over the week on my own, and I will show you.”

Thanks, OLPC.  Mis­sion accom­plished.

Sheger FM: Ethiopia’s First Independent Radio Station

Sheger FM is Ethiopia’s first inde­pen­dent radio sta­tion. In oper­a­tion for about two years now, the sta­tion reaches between 5 and 7 mil­lions lis­ten­ers in the Addis Ababa area.

Antenhe Safio, Pro­gram Producer.

Much of the broad­cast equip­ment was donated by Voice of America.

Some of the station’s music collection.

Satel­lite dishes on the station’s roof recieve pro­gram­ming from Voice of Amer­ica and Deutsche Welle, among other sources.

                               Solomon Guan­gul, News Editor.

Johannes Yeha­la­work, Pol­i­tics Editor.

Exter­nal Pro­grams Head Tefari Alemu, left, Gen­eral Man­ager Maeza Birru, cen­ter, and Tech­ni­cian Won­gelawit Berhanu, right, pre­pare to record a commercial.

Meseret Bezu, Technician.

Tech­ni­cian Desalegn Mekuria repairs equipment.

Music Pro­gram Edi­tor pre­pares a show.

Gen­eral Man­ager Meaza Birru at her desk.

Gifts from lis­ten­ers dis­played in the sta­tion hallway.

                               The She­gar FM radio tower on the roof of the station’s offices broad­casts on FM 102.1.