iceblog

May 4, 2008

From High to Low in 3 Seconds... Flat

Well, what would a year be without an interaction with AAA?

I watched my car—my first and only, a 1993 Saturn SW1 I bought off a co-worker—be towed away last week by a very nice, young, slightly round man name Oscar from a place called Chuckie's. I donated the car in haste to Cars for Kids, knowing nothing about the organization, hoping they're legit. I had done a search for 'donate car boulder' on Google and came up with a page where all I had to do was enter my first name, the make and model of the car, and a contact number, and withing 2-to-three days they would call me, set a time, and come tow the car away. And they did. Oscar arrived early, just as I was heading out of my apartment to clean out the trunk—wouldn't want to work ahead too much on these things—so I hurriedly emptied out the interesting contents onto a blanket in the parking lot, Oscar and I pushed the car into a better position, he rigged it up to roll behind the minivan he had already on the bed, and with a friendly wave he was off. And there went KIJ. (The last three characters of the license plate.) Would it be weird to wave to my car as it left? Was anyone watching?

I wanted to get a picture, but didn't have my camera with me since Oscar's arrival caught me off guard. I just have to remember her grey body as she was pulled away into the mid-morning sunshine.

For the time being, I am driving my friend Nancy's Jetta. Shortly after I arrived back from Africa, I went out with some friends and mentioned my car situation—specifically, that my Saturn had broken down a few days before I left the country and that I'd now have to find another one. And it so happened that Nancy had a car that she wanted someone to drive. (What are the chances?) Last year, she fell in love with and bought and fell deeper in love with a Toyota pick-up, and the Jetta has been sitting ever since, waiting for August when her daughter turns 16. The car had already been ticketed twice for having expired registration, parked out on the street in front of Nancy's home, and she didn't want it going idle. So we took care of getting it registered, I put it on my insurance policy, and now I'm driving Nancy's Jetta. It's a win-win. Except I think I'm the bigger winner. It's, like, WIN-win.

It would be just too easy to have this car at my disposal without any problems. On Saturday, I was headed across town to pick up my friend Marianne to head up the Canyon to visit some other friends and just have some time in the mountains, and I experienced one of those lovely on-top-of-the-world moments: Beautiful day, radio blaring, wind through the hair, so fortunate to be here and alive. Then a car pulled up beside me, a man and his son, and the man told me I had a flat tire.

Go figure. So I pulled into the closest parking lot, right across from the Men's Warehouse, and called Marianne. I'd be a little late. And probably, she would have to drive. She agreed to come lend a hand, and in the meantime, I rummaged around to find all the appropriate tools. I was a little skeptical of the jack, but figured out where I wanted it placed by the time she got there. A man in a white pick-up stopped on his way out of the parking lot to ask if I wanted any help. No thanks, I said, I think I've got it covered, and I've got a friend on the way. It's been a while since I've changed a tire, but I was sure Marianne and I could handle it.

There were just a few things. There always are. This is how all my field work goes—there are always a few things. And it wasn't just me on this one, although if I had lots of experience changing tires (and a 2 x 4, as it turns out), I'm sure I could have had it done in ten minutes. Which is what the guy AAA sent did. Still, there were a few things. (And how interesting would that have been? Bo-ring.) The first was that one of the lug nuts is special. As in, it's round with a specially-shaped indentation so that you have to have the special adapter (“key”) to fit onto the end of your wrench in order to get it off. And the key wasn't with the rest of the car-changing tools. I called and left a message for Nancy, who was at a trade show and who I didn't expect to hear back from. I called AAA, who said the keys were not something the service trucks carried, and that they could tow me to a dealer. Marianne called a dealership, who said we'd have to come in. At that same time, a group of four young men walked by, asking if we needed a hand, chipper as could be in long t-shirts and sunglasses. When I told them of our plight, they said the keys are actually specific to specific cars, so my idea of finding someone else with a Jetta and using theirs was probably not going to work. Huh. But then Nancy called back, and said where the adapter was in the car, and I found it exactly where she described, so there we were. Back in business.

When the cool kids walked back by, Marianne and I were laughing uproariously—a little punchy, admittedly—because we'd been trying to figure out how to get the caps off the two lug nuts that happened to have them, and after trying all the tools that were in the toolkit in the car with the spare tire, I had just used her needle-nosed pliers to pull one straight off with such ease it was comical, and one of the guys, also smiling, said, Hey, changing a tire's not supposed to be fun. They said they'd stop and help us out to see it through, but they had to go jump out of an airplane. I eyed the wrapped food they'd just bought. Yeah, one said, I thought I was hungry, but then once I bought it... I might just save it for later.

We were in the clear. I loosened the nuts, cranked up the jack, unscrewed the nuts the rest of the way, and pulled. And nothing happened. Marianne pulled. Another guy who was walking by and offered a hand pulled. We banged on it with Marianne's rubber mallet. (The girl's got a bit of a toolkit in her car. Brilliant.) We thought maybe we were doing something wrong, that there was another lock of sorts on the wheel, but when we took off the VW logo from the center of the wheel all we saw was corrosion. And we were already late getting up the Canyon, so I figured I'd just let AAA help me out the next day. Our jack was small and I was a little nervous banging too hard on the car, and what if there was something I'd overlooked besides? So, I screwed the lug nuts back in and lowered the car back down and threw everything back in the trunk and, mission aborted, we headed into the hills.

Thanks, Marianne.

I'd figure out the rest later.

On Sunday, between playing Ultimate Frisbee and meeting a friend for a house concert, I took the bus downtown. And on my way to try to catch another bus, short on time and unsure of the sparse Sunday bus schedules, I ran into Marianne. What a happy coincidence. She took me to my car.

Thanks, Marianne.

I called AAA and they said they'd send someone out, and that they should find me within 45 minutes. It was already close to 3:30, and I was supposed to meet my friend Mark at 4, so I was definitely pushing it. (Such a surprise, with my amazingly tight time management skills.) (That was sarcasm, for those of you who don't know me.) I had thought my back-up would be to just catch another bus up to Mark's if it looked like the timing wouldn't work, but the sparse Sunday bus schedule, and maybe the tire change would actually be faster, and after a morning of Frisbee I'm pretty much trashed, so the thought of walking and thinking was a little overwhelming. I sat in the warm black car and ate my burrito. (I'd realized in my post-Frisbee stupor after getting off the bus that I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. Eggs, three hours of running around, and some water. At least I'd thought to shower before heading out.) And watched the time. Sometimes, the mechanics come right away, and I was hoping this would be the case. I had precious garlic needed for the pesto Mark was making.

At 3:58, the service truck pulled up behind me. And at 4:10, I was on my way to Mark's. Sometimes, life is beautiful.

The man who changed my tire was friendly, weathered, and clear-eyed; he got out of his truck with a glove on his left hand and waited to put the glove on his right until he'd shaken my hand hello. His jack was bigger and fancier than mine. And sturdier. (And yellow. For what that's worth.) He cranked the nuts off quickly (I'd left them loose besides) and pulled. And nothing happened. So he got a 2 x 4, about 2 ½ feet long, out of his truck and banged on my wheel. There was a car beside us, which made things a little complicated; I was glad it was him doing it, and not me. The wheel after a few hits began to budge. He hit the right and the left came forward a little bit, hit the left and the right came forward. But not by much. Whew, he said, I'm gettin' tired. Maybe if I hit it from behind, he said. He snaked up under the back of the car (rear left wheel) and positioned himself to ram. I would never have done that with my little jack. He rammed, and rammed again, and rammed again, and the wheel began to move a little bit and a little bit and a little bit and--“I've almost got it”--there it was! It was off. Rolling on the ground. Perfect.

The 2 x 4 was completely splintered at one end.

I've only had one other wheel that was that hard to get off, the mechanic said, and that one broke my 2 x 4 clear in half and I had to get another one.

Mark made fun of me for traipsing all over the world to do geology but not being able to change my own tire. Whatever. It was complicated.

And I just have to add that it's times like these that give me a little faith in humanity. How many people stopped to offer us help? There were at least one or two I didn't mention, so that makes for four groups, minimum. The same thing happened to us—Marianne and me, as a matter of fact, with her sister—in Tanzania. That's a different story completely, of course, but it's just nice to see that the world over (in my sample set of two countries) people are helpful when it comes to broken cars. There's hope for this planet after all.

Posted by beth at 9:59 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

April 23, 2008

Just Can't Stay Away

I can't help it. I'm a sucker. I wasn't particularly impressed with the last Mike Doughty show, but when I found out he was coming back to town, I didn't hesitate to get a ticket. Just me this time, just one ticket, thanks, and I would happily go alone.

The day of the show, my friend Mark, who went to and like the last show but said he'd opt out of this one, called. “Do you have anyone to go to the show with?” he asked. Nope, just me. “Do you want someone?” he asked. Had he changed his mind? He picked up on my pause. “I mean, not me,” he said. “I have some friends that are going.”

So I went with Mark's friends.

I met them beforehand at a pub down the street from the venue before the show, where I take notice of two men who, like us, sit at the bar. They, like us, are older than most the crowd, so I suspect that they, like us, are visiting the university district to see the show. [My new friend Treasure and I theorize that a man in his late 40s wearing a sweater vest and trying to chat with the customers, on the other hand, has come here for the youth. We make up the conversation he may have had with the hotel concierge before coming—'Where in town is really happening? No, no, like... You know, young energy. Somewhere closer to the university. Does the student union have a bar?' A little creepy.] I hope that they are. They are both tall, as am I, and one fits my instinctual profile—tall, thin, dark curly hair. I can't help myself. I don't know what it is. (Actually, my friend Mike first came up with my profile in college after we each went through a list of who all we'd had crushes on, but the original version was 'tall, thin, smokes a lot of pot.' Even though I myself didn't fall into the latter category. I somehow exchanged 'smokes a lot of pot' for 'dark curly hair' in grad school. So far I've come. So mature I've gotten.) Right. So sucker me is checking out this tall, dark-curly-haired guy kitty-corner across the bar and hoping he's going to the show, trying to do so subtly because I just don't know my new friends well enough to be obvious. Besides, I'm drinking a Coronita (a one dollar, baby Corona), which I think is both absolutely adorable and hilarious, but also a little embarrassing.

The two guys leave before we do—we're stalling, because what show ever starts on time? My guess is that we'll have miscalculated and will get to the show just as the opening band is finishing, but I'm wrong. We've actually missed them completely, which is disappointing. My new prospective best friends from the bar (after Treasure and Nate, of course) are loitering in the lobby, so I ask the dark-curly-haired guy on the way in if they caught the opening band, and then whether they were any good. Guy is friendly, and says that they only caught the last song, and that—he hits my shoulder with the back of his hand—'to be honest, I was like, Is this Mike Doughty?' Ah, I said. One of those opening bands that matches the headliners. Bo-ring.

And I should mention that Guy (I didn't get his name, so as far as I know, that's not it) probably fits my original college profile as well. Just a guess. Thought I didn't hear him chuckle, so, hard sayin'.

When we (Treasure and Nate and myself) got situated in a great little spot up on the side of the venue, an announcer came out and assured us all that Mike would soon be back on stage, this time without the fake mustache. Ah-ha! So the opening band was a pseudo-band. And I missed it. And curly-dark-hair was right in thinking that it sounded a lot like Mike Doughty, because it was. I could have commented on it in passing if I saw him again, but I didn't. I mean, I did see him, but not close enough to comment on it again. So that's actually the end of him. Sorry if I got your hopes up for something more interesting. I just thought it was funny that I saw him and thought, Huh, he's kinda cute. Huh, fancy that, he's tall with curly, dark hair.

On with the show.

I observe crowd dynamics from my sideline perch.

Suffice to say, people's behavior at concerts makes me laugh. I love it. And I find myself doing a lot of the same things that I laugh at others for doing. We get lost in it, we get found in it, we relate to others in it without even talking to them, and, for some reason, we sometimes have the need to prove ourselves. To somebody. In a venue this small, to the band maybe, and in bigger venues, just to our concert neighbors. We sing along, sometimes enthusiastically. There's a guy in the front row of this same show—unfortunately for Mike, all the people in the front row are guys—who tends to jump up and shake his arms and sing exaggeratedly to half the numbers, and I get him. I know what he's putting out there. Deep down, from the core of his very soul, what he needs to say is: “I KNOW THIS SONG!” I've been there. Some of us just need to say it louder and more emphatically than others.

Later in the show, the band plays the song that brought Mike Doughty as a solo act back to the mainstream radio stations. The band warms up to the song for a while, and I already recognize it—they're not doing anything different with the music—but when Mike Doughty sings the first line, “The Cuban girl...,” someone in the middle towards the front thrusts their hands enthusiastically into the air with 1st and pinky fingers extended—rock on, man—and I think, Is that a Cuban girl? Celebrating Cuban girl status? No, pretty sure not. The 'Cuban girl' is relatively tall, with long, brown, unkempt hair. Pretty sure it's a dude. The unkempt hair is really what gives him away, and his stocky build which I can only just make out around the shoulders of his concert neighbors. Maybe he just *likes* Cuban girls. But then at the chorus he's going crazy, raising and shaking his hands again like a crazy ape (go figure), and then it dawns on me. I think, Oh—that man feels like he's looking at the world from the bottom of a well. (Which is the chorus of the song.) Like, he's *been* there. At least that's what he seems to be saying.

I myself think about what it would be like to be looking at the world from the bottom of a well. Mainly, I think what it would be like to be at the bottom of a well. Sounds damp. And uncomfortable. I think about the feel of the stones, slick, cold and the quality of the light—dim, with some faint highlights on the rocks around me—and about the muted sound of being so far from flowing air and so close to the water's surface below me. I am glad that I'm in an old well rather than in a plastic tube. Wasn't a baby stuck in a plastic-tube-well for a few days sometime in the 90's? Gah. That would be horrible.

Mike announces that after this gig at the Fox, he will be DJ-ing down at Trilogy, which is where he played last time he was in town. I'm curious but not convinced, and Treasure and Nate are willing but cheap. They'll check it out so long as it doesn't cost anything, but when I get down there they are on their way out—they've already been in and rejected the $5 cover. But you can hear the music from the bathrooms (which are in the hall between the front of the venue, where there is no cover, and the back, where there is), so I decide to go in while I'm here. Why not. And from the hallway, I can indeed hear the music. And it sounds great. What's five bucks, anyway?

When I walk in, there is a buxom woman with glowing poi (the balls on string that Polynesians and hippies twirl around) up on a small stage behind the DJ, who I notice shortly is not Mike Doughty. Huh. Okay, I'll stay until Mike comes out. Maybe. Not sure if I'll last that long. But the woman with the poi is still whirling and twirling them, and the guy seated at the table I'm standing next to asks me loudly, “Do you have any drugs?” “Nope, nothing, sorry man,” I say. I thinks it's funny that he's even asked me, since I'm feeling very very very straight in my sobriety (I'm cheap, since I'm unemployed) and the fact that I'm here alone, which makes me self conscious and stiff. Maybe he's too drunk to notice. He's got a dark cap pulled low and dark-rimmed glasses and dark hair and a dark shirt. “I don't even do them very much,” he says, “but I just thought with all this--” he gestures with his arms to the buxom glowy woman and the guy just in front of the table working at an easel on a piece of art with black-lit paint markers and maybe the DJ-- “that it would be kinda cool.” “Yeah,” I say, “they should probably just hand out X at the door.” “Yeah!” he agrees. “But,” I say pragmatically, “then I guess they couldn't charge 5 dollars.” “They should just include it,” he says. “15 bucks. With that you get entry and a pill. There could be two options. One with, one without.” And then somehow he dropped it down to “Three bucks, entry and a pill.” Huh. “It's a good thing you're not running this business,” I said.

My new friend leaves, but Mike comes in, wearing a black t-shirt and faded jeans hanging off his medium build, tall, almost but not quite stocky. A tattoo working its way all the way up his forearm shows in the low light which illuminates the DJ station. (The tattoo happens to be in Amharic.) I can't leave now that he's here and going to get started. I'm curious. What's he going to do? What will he put on? The poi girl leaves and a woman with a glowing hula-hoop takes the stage. Candles are flickering on the table of the DJ station, in front of the equipment, illuminating the empty glasses as they are discarded by the drinkers and dancers. These are the things I notice and am mesmerized by after Mike takes over, because he plays the same beat the whole time. I guess I would have been okay with it, if X was handed out at the door. But since my new friend isn't in charge, that isn't the case. Still, it's hard to pull myself away, like it's hard to pull yourself away from watching a campfire on a cold night. What, I have to join the world out there? Rather than being a loner in here with my feet glued to the floor? Or my butt glued to the stool, actually, because I had managed to score the one from my drug friend after he left.

Eventually, I do it. Out into the chilly night, back to my car, music behind.

And I think to myself, Hey, I feel as though I am looking at the world from the bottom of a well. A really, really big one. With buildings and lights and cars and stuff. So next time I'm at a Mike Doughty show, I can rock out as hard as the guy in the crowd who was shaking his arms so vehemently in the middle of the audience. The one who definitely was not a Cuban girl. But who, you know, probably likes them, just the same.

Posted by beth at 10:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 27, 2008

Our Daily Bread

I’m a little homesick for Pearl Street.

I’m a little dirty and dusty. I think I pulled as much dirt off my face with a wet wipe this morning right after I woke up as I did last night before I went to bed.

The tents are covered with dust, not nearly as bright as they were the day we set them up.
----

One of these days, I walk down to Ishmael's with Meron to see how ingera is made.

[Polishing the pan.]

[Meron pours the batter.]

[Cover for a few minutes...]

[And pull it off. Ready to go.]

Posted by beth at 11:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

January 26, 2008

We Got Wings

6:54 AM, 67 deg F / 19.5 deg C in my tent.
The day on which the helicopter is supposed to arrive.

My hair still feels nice from my shower yesterday. It’s glowing red in the light of the sunrise. I love the idea of seeing myself for the first time in a month, and seeing a different person in the mirror. Surely my hair will have grown and my face will look more tanned and rugged.

----

And the helicopter DID arrive! After we set up the official landing pad and called in the coordinates and.... Oh, wait. I think what actually happened was Tim said to the pilot, 'here are the coordinated for the GPS site on a nearby hill, and you'll see our camp, so just land somewhere in-between.' And that's what he did. In a grand cloud of dust.

[A take-off later in the day, but you get the idea.]

Actually, the reason I don't have pictures of the helicopter's first landing is that I was distracted by these little guys. You can't tell how small they are, but they're bitty little baby goats! So cute! So soft! So clueless! And so many of them!

But back to it--the arrival of the helicopter was, of course, quite a bit of a to-do in town. Everyone, more or less, or at least all the men and children, came out to check it out.

[A small group off men discuss a ways away from the helicopter. The structure to the right is a goat enclosure.]

We put the helicopter to work almost immediately, getting a highly attended safety briefing from the pilot which was translated from English (the pilot is British Kenyan) to Amharic (the national language of Ethiopia) by Shimeles, to Afari by the tall police guard Mohammed. Needless to say, not a short safety briefing. And, as Tim mentioned in his e-mail update, one of the major items was insisting that the magazines be out of the AK-47s at all times in the ship. That, I must admit, is a new item for me.

After the safety briefing, we put in the structural group at their field camp somewhere in the rift.

[Ellen and JR get ready.]

Despite all the excitement, Tim said by the fifth take-off no one was even out watching.

I was on a flight later in the day, to put in the first of the GPS campaign sites. I'll let me journal entry sum it up:

----------

Tim asked if I was excited to head up in the helicopter, and I shrugged. It seemed like a complication to me, although I figured it’d probably be pretty cool.

Then, later in the day, I got into the helicopter. And as soon as we started taking off, I was mesmerized. I was elated. I was fascinated and full of thoughts and observations, only of what was changing before me. I was sucked in. I saw the landscape change from flat dusty plain to lava rock, and cracks—first small, and then wider, and then offset, and then hugely offset into a valley.

[Clearing the dust.]

[Our camp and the town of Digdida, in all their glory...]

[Heading out over the dust plain.]

[Skirting a volcano. Note the small, circular features--these are rock livestock enclosures.]

[Cracking.]

[As the crust pulls apart, the center drops down.]

When we landed, Shimeles—who had been on the first flight in—said Just walk a little bit, and you will see everything. So I walked a little bit. And I felt like I saw everything. The world dropped away below me into the rift and I felt like I was standing on the brink. I was standing on a lava cliff, columnar basalt dropping vertically into a land of broken bits and long lines of cliffs. Browns, blacks, tans. I could dive into creation. I imagined on my way to the GPS site—carrying my two heavy cases alone, amazingly enough [usually there’s enough help around that I’m not allowed to do anything myself]—that I was walking across ocean floor. This is where it starts. (This may someday be ocean floor….)

[In years past, the group accessed this area via camel trek. But this is as far as they got. Any guesses as to why....? Note that I'm standing at a 100+ ft drop.]

[View straight out across the rift.]

One of the guards came over to see if I needed anything and spoke to me friendlily in Afari, gave up and went back to his spot with the other guards in the shade. So, I got to set up the site all on my own. It was nice.

[The last GPS site in the transect, 3 km from the center of the rift. The mode of work once the helicopter arrived was as follows: Install a GPS instrument and an MT instrument co-located (in essentially the same place) and leave the instruments with 2 guards for two days. Pick up the instruments and move them to a new site. We did this every day, so two sets of instruments and two sets of guards were in the field at all times (when things went well) (there was an issue or two with GPS co-location....]

[The MT group working to install their sensor.]

[Conflicting interests: MT needs sand, GPS needs bedrock.]

[Shimeles.]

[Sophie.]

[Waiting for our helicopter pick-up.]

[Graham.]

[Our guards.]

[On the flight out. Check out those cracks!]

[Back to our neighborhood volcano.]

There was a new addition to our camp by the evening: A biiiiiiiiiig tent with a veranda for the pilot and engineer. “…..our tent,” said Chris, the pilot, and Tim said, “Your palace, you mean?”

In other news, the camel trekkers called to say they made it back to Barantu but the camel drivers hadn't shown up—with the group’s rocks and probably group gear. The cars we'd sent to retrieve them returned with Abdu and the group stayed on in Barantu to spend the night. The thought was that the drivers were probably staying out to argue for another day’s pay. Word came sometime after 9 that they’d arrived demanding dinner, and I think word was this morning that most the gear had gotten back to the group with some exceptions like a long length of rope. Cheeky, cheeky, cheeky.

There are too many people in camp!

Posted by beth at 6:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 25, 2008

Dawn to Dust

Dust. Dust. Dust.

Maybe I should shake out everything in my tent instead of just my sleeping bag. I zip it up and turn it over every morning when I leave my tent so that I don’t get dust inside it, and then carefully pull it out and shake it out every night before crawling in.

Stars are here to the night sky before the moon comes up what pimples are to my shoulders. The joy of the hot, dusty desert.

There is a sound from outside which I hope is an animal and not a person…but I’m not convinced. It sounds like a crazy old woman. Now it is gone. I think I hear it in the distance still, moving away.

Will the helicopter arrive tomorrow? Chris, the pilot, is in Addis today but has been told (it seems) that he needs a military observer on board after all, but he doesn’t have the capacity (fuel, presumably) to bring the weight that far.

The fuel trucks arrived today, three of them, with Eyaya and Dani who’d gone yesterday to Mille to meet them, and one has a leak. Eyaya said it lost a lot of fuel from Mille to Digdiga. Oh dear, as Tim would say.

[The arrival of the fuel trucks. Such an event. Notice that I'm not the only one taking a picture...]

On my way to the bathroom, an older woman carrying water on her back, bent over, her arms wrapped up behind her to hold the jerry can, her low-hanging breasts swaying forward and back as she labored.

[Traditional Afari attire for women: Dark blue and black material wrapped around the waist as a long skirt, scarf if anything on top, beads and braids in hair.]

In the bathroom, an updraft kept my toilet paper from dropping into the hole. Instead it hovered just against the cement.

[The bathroom: (oh, the bathroom:) A concrete structure encasing several small and one or two larger ‘stalls’ each containing a hole in the floor, with a low cement block on either side for your feet. The small ones are for the students, the bigger ones for the teachers. The smaller ones are so small you can barely get inside and close the door. The walls of the nicest one are riddled with abandoned hornets’(?) nests. There is a big rock inside which can be shoved against the door to keep it closed against the wind. I shouldn’t say but will anyway that for pretty much the entire time in camp I had a low-level yeast infection or something that kept me needing to pee frequently and on very short notice, and every time I walked over to the concrete block it was all I could do to get over to that thing and just barely kick the rock against the door before peeing myself. Also, almost everyone in camp had a G.I. issue at some time or another, and the place stank to high heaven—I had to hold my breath every time I stepped in, envious every time of a guy I had just met in Boulder who had no sense of smell. (Would he be offended if I told him I thought of him every time I stepped into our outhouse? I wondered.)]

The structural group (JR, Ellen, Bekele, Tesfaya, Berahu) plus petrologist David Pyle arrived in camp. That makes for—scientists, camp staff, our drivers, fuel truck drivers, police guards from Semera—35 in camp? 33?

Posted by beth at 11:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 24, 2008

Goats, Chat, and Camel Drivers

Wow. It’s January. That’s a little crazy. [Hot in the Ethiopian desert, remember.]

Yesterday* was eventful. The goat was butchered, the chat truck came, the camel drivers went on strike. And we got a lesson in the Afari language. [Gotta love a journal entry that starts that way.]

[*written Jan 25]

Tim and I went in the morning (but not early) out to DA35, here in Digdiga, and installed a campaign marker for the upcoming gravity survey a few meters from the continuous (permanent) GPS site. While we were drilling, a man approached yelling from the back side of the hill. Our police guard from Semera, the smaller Mohammed (because of course there are *two* police guards with us named Mohammed—this brings us to Mohammed #4, I think), who had been out of view, stood up and calmed him. This is why we have guards. Speaking Afari and carrying an AK-47 works wonders. The angry man calmed down and moved on and we got the campaign GPS going and I took a look at the continuous GPS site—no satellites. Hmmm. Antenna cable just barely hanging on to the antenna, maybe by one thread. Bummer. But at least an easy fix. I screwed the antenna on tight and the receiver was back to collecting data.

[The beginning of our campaign GPS work: Glue a metal marker into a hole drilled in the rock, set up the instrument over it and measure, come back and do it next year or whenever and see how the position has changed. Or, in this case, measure for just a little bit to get the height to within a centimeter to use as a correction for the coming gravity measurements.]

When we came back to camp, we parked and headed off with Belay to Ishmael’s to see if he had any soda in. There was quite a crowd gathered outside—around a truck. People and a few long stalks of sugar cane and big bushes of chat in the bed of the truck, and the crowd of people receiving the big bushels of chat gathered round.

[What's all the fuss about? Photo: Tim.]

[It's...... the chat truck! Note the guy just to the left of the truck with the huge bushel of chat and the AK-47. Chat is a mild narcotic which works on you as you chew the leaves. You do swallow the leaves, which makes it seem to me that the act should be described as *eating* chat rather than *chewing* chat, but you chew the leaves up pretty good before swallowing to release whatever it is they've got inside. Folks will hang out chewing chat all through the hot hours of the afternoon, sitting around on mattresses on the ground in cafes or behind store counters (in places where there are cafes and small stores) or otherwise dark rooms. I came into the back room of Ishmael's once towards the end of the project when a group of our gang was back relaxing with some chat and I said Woah, it's dark in here, to which one of them said, 'It's only dark in here because you just came from the light.' Which was kind of funny, because I had just come from Ishmael's front room, which is already dim. 'No,' I said, 'I think it's dark in here because there are no windows.' I mean.....well, *I* thought it was funny. Photo: Tim.]

Men wandered around like beauty pageant winners with bouquets against their shoulders. A man followed us into Ismael’s trying to sell. Abdu was already there, and showed us back into a dark room where we sat on a mat across from three women. A little boy used my knee as support to stand up and I said salam, and he looked at me and at Tim and at me and then turned crying to run for the door but tripped and Ishmael happened in just in time to scoop him up and cover his cheek in kisses.

See these three beautiful women? Abdu said, gesturing to the women across from us. That one is coming back to Semera with me. She has already agreed. She will be my wife. (He is, of course, joking.) (We hope.) Later, Abdu shamelessly pointed at the woman on her right: For Tim, this one, he said. I don’t know that my English wife would like that very much, said Tim. He took some photos of the women in the lovely low light, and of a small boy crouched against the dust-colored door.

[Photo: Tim.]

After our sodas (Cokes for them, Mirinda for me—a frighteningly but deliciously orange drink), we got up but paused in the front doorway. It’s quite a beautiful scene, isn’t it, said Tim. In the kitchen, a woman nursed a baby. Another was cooking. The only girl from our the English class was hanging shyly in the doorway from the kitchen to a back room, and the main room was filled with men and boys. “The whole community in four rooms,” I said. As we turned to leave, Belay and I caught sight of a boy—the one who a few days earlier had been running barefoot through town at high speed with his “car” (a stick with a wheel fixed onto the end)—running around to pick up errant leaved branches of chat. As we walked out, a goat munched on the scattered leaves the boy had left behind.

After lunch, Tim got an anxious call from John on the petrology camel trek: The camel drivers had gone on strike. They’d unloaded the camels and threatened to throw away the rocks. It was, of course, over money. We’d planned to pay 100 birr/day for camel and driver both, and they wanted 200 birr/day—100 for camel, 100 for driver. That is, they said, what the last group paid—the last group being the BBC. So I’ll take a moment here to (start to) talk about money in Afar. Here’s the problem: Everyone wants money. That’s a given, right? The Afari are not business men, do not make much money, and not consistently. And, the men have all the time in the world, since the women are tending to the huts and the children and the food, so why not got on strike? Why not sit around for two hours or more, discussing? Because really, what else is going on? There are no cell phones here, no internet, no daily planners—no running water or electricity, for that matter. So. We have our agenda, and they have theirs—ours has a time limit, and they could care less. And, of course, we need them.

If you pay a guard 100 birr/day one trip, you can’t come back the next trip and expect them to accent 70 birr/day. If a ferangi (white foreigner—obviously very, very rich) comes along and pays what they can afford for a guard and then the Ethiopian nationals like Elias and Gezehegh come along later and want to pay what *they* can afford based on their funding, the Afari won’t have it. So groups like the BBC, who pay way more than groups funded by the Ethiopian government can pay, and our group with its funding mostly from the UK and US, make it difficult for Ethiopian geologists to get anything done on their own in this region. It’s easy for foreigners to cause inflation like this in regions like this—I even heard a waiter in Christchurch, New Zealand, complaining about his fellow Kiwis not tipping, even though it's not part of their culture.

And another thing, back to the camel drivers—it’s not unusual to see one man driving a string of six or more camels, but yet when we come along they *obviously* need one driver per camel. Camels are very high maintenance, you know….when there are foreigners involved.

Anyway. BBC had paid 200 birr/day, apparently. Tim put Abdu on the phone with Gezehegn and then Abdu talked with the elders on the trek, emphatically and unhappily: I told them *you* are responsible for the success of this project, he said to me afterwards. You are the ones making this problem. He’d stood talking and gesturing against the barbed wire fence of the school complex for some time.

Right, and sometime in there the goat’d been slaughtered, over on the other side of the shower, just outside the fence. I saw Sahid (local camp help) and another man, Sahid with a knife glinting in his hand, but opted out of going over to take a look. I’ve heard that the slaughtering process is quite efficient—slit slit and they just pull the skin right off the body. I don’t feel like I need to see it, though.

Later, Meron called me to the kitchen—probably because I’d asked her to get me the other night for the cooking of the ostrich egg. As I followed her, I said to Tim, also heading that direction, “I hope it’s not to show me the dead goat.”

Yeah.

Fortunately, the goat was already in pieces, Sahid and the other man working with a knife to make them smaller. The other man picked up the guts to show us—spongy and tan, not looking like anything that would come from an animal’s insides. I was thankful that they didn’t offer any of it to me.

In the afternoon, at almost 4, Tim and I headed out with Belay and our police guard smaller Mohammed to install and measure a campaign marker by DA25. We chose some rock at the base of the hill right next to a major thoroughfare—hoof-trampled sand. After setting up the site, Tim headed up the slope to have a sit near Belay and Mohammed and a local who wandered in.

[And to make a little call on the sat phone.]

I stood on the plain looking outward, taking pictures of the lengthening shadows and eventually watching a herd of goats and sheep (sheep, as Tim pointed out, always at the back) approach with three young herders.

At first, the boys were curious but shy, and wouldn’t come look at their picture on my camera after I took it. A young man also materialized, and Tim took some pictures while I took down the GPS and emboldened them, and when they came over my way I took some more. I didn’t notice until Tim pointed it out that they had a newborn sheep—born just that day. When I asked to take the boys’ picture, they put the newborn down behind them and posed, and when I tried to ask if I could get the sheep in the shot—guard Mohammed understood, and passed on the thought to them—one of the boys turned to pick it up by the neck and place it in a heap before them, its stub of umbilical cord exposed. Mohammed leaned in to rearrange it for the picture.

[Check out our friend in the foreground. How very GQ, no? What a nut.]

After dinner, sitting around, just about ready to go to bed, Abdu the teacher came and sat down with us enthusiastically, sitting down next to David on the solar panel box and immediately putting—slamming—a hand onto David’s leg. David and I snickered—I doubt David minded, probably not having issues with his masculinity, but still, I doubt he gets that much in the UK. Abdu went on to teach us (again) the numbers in Afari with much repetition, which killed us—every time we nodded after reaching ‘ten’ (‘tabana’) in a thank you, that’s nice, okay, Abdu started again with ‘one’ (‘iniki’). He ain’t a teacher for nothing, I guess. After a while, he excused himself and came back with a sheet of paper filled with English-Afari translations, spelled phonetically so that we didn’t really know what a word was supposed to be until he said it (like ‘it’ for ‘eat’). He put words together into cryptic thoughts, like “house door milk.” The others were thinking he was inviting us to his house for some milk, but since he lives in the school I was a bit skeptical. Or, at best, confused. The lesson went on until we could politely excuse ourselves, which we did with relief.

Note that, according to David, Abdu was a “shifta,” or bandit, along with the town chief until something shifted and the chief became the chief and Abdu became a teacher. He has delicate patterns tattooed onto his forehead that I just today noticed, in the light.

The stars were fantastic before the moon came up. It’s rising later every night (obviously) and is waning—last night it looked just a little squashed.

I have nice little fantasies of a lovely, clean porcelain toilet in a large, clean private bathroom and a nice private shower with hot water. Mmmmmm.

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Waxing Poetic

Two days to helicopter! Not even two weeks yet in Ethiopia…three weeks of the project to go.

Lovely sunrise. This time there were already other people up and talking. Now there is a sound like a radio between stations. Very relaxing. Mmmm…or maybe not.

How quickly the sun rises from orange to yellow. The erratic brushstrokes of clouds in a patch overhead—angel-white in the morning light, contrasting with the heavy grey of the clump of clouds passing below them—make me want to paint.

Ode to the Afari

I want to be strong like the rock-throwing boys,
I want to be strong like the stick-wielding girls—
The men with the beaded Kalashnikov straps,
The women with the beaded headbands.
I want to be strong like the woman who carries,
bent forward, a 5-gallon jerry can of water
on her back,
Like the man who runs back and forth behind his
herd of camels all day.
Like the old women with their creased, worn faces
And the men with their henna-dyed beards,
Cooking all day and negotiating all day and praying
and climbing the rocks, crossing the plains,
searching for water, for brush for my herds.
Using my herds to feed my family—
The rock-throwing boys, and the stick-wielding girls.

Posted by beth at 10:37 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

January 23, 2008

Laundry Day

The sun’s just up, and the goats and sheep are going crazy. Puffs of cloud are catching morning color in the sky above me; yellow, and a luminescent white that fades even as I write. What a wonderful time of day. Now there are people talking, and a radio on, and the sound of Graham fussing in his tent behind me, but when I awoke, just before sunrise, the world was still quiet. How nice.

Dani took our laundry this morning so I changed into clean clothes: Shirt and skirt. Appropriate, since today’s the day Tim’s arranged for us to give an English lesson.

I’m quite sure that for years to come the children of Digdiga are going to be saying, “Nice to meet you, Tim” to whoever they happen to meet.

After Tim had taught polite (very English) conversation, I taught the numbers. I wrote my name and the word numbers awkwardly on the board and held up a finger, saying “What’s this?” since some of the kids already knew some English. “Finger,” the only girl in the class said. I should have known better. Poor girl—the laugh should have been on me really, but I’m sure our chuckles embarrassed her.

While we taught the English versions, I asked the kids to teach us the Afari versions, so Tim and Talfan and David and I repeated and immediately forgot the Afari numbers while the kids said the numbers in English like champs.

When I went to take the class picture at the end, I started on the typical ‘1-2-3-click’ but the kids thought I was continuing the lesson, so when I said “One” they said “One!” and when I said “Two” they said “Two!”—the picture was taken, as you might be able to tell, on “Four!”

[Class photo. A sampling of the kids in town, plus the principal and our friend the teacher, Abdu. There are only three Abdus, by the way—Crazy Abdu, Abdu ‘diplomat’, and Abdu teacher. Nothing like keeping track of the Mohammeds.]

Late in the morning, Abdu ‘diplomat’ had a surprise. He had it behind his back when I wandered over that way, and Tim said he had something to show me. For 10 birr in town, he’d bought and ostrich egg!

Quite impressive, beautifully smooth. I felt bad for the ostrich but it was a treat for us. So heavy, seems so strong. Abdu said it was a gift for me, that I should take it back with me, and I said it’d never get through but Tim had the idea of draining it—clever, and I guess obvious—so the egg was drained from a small hole in the shell and we had scrambled ostrich egg for dinner. I would have enjoyed it more if I didn’t see how much oil went into cooking it…

[Our 'kitchen'--the same schoolroom our water is stored in.]

Unfortunately, Eyaya didn’t remind me until it was too late that, being Friday, it was a fasting day, so none of the Christians would try the egg. We also bought a goat too late—why did Meron even approach us about buying a goat today? So instead of slaughtering and cooking the goat this afternoon, since half the camp wouldn’t eat it, we tied it to a storage tent to wait for tomorrow. Poor goat. It seems very uncomfortable. I’m trying not to establish a relationship with it. No eye contact when I pass it on the way to the bathroom.

[And this will be the goat's fate. Don't know quite why they hang the skins on the school's barbed wire, but there were three or four of them there already when we arrived.]

I love Dani. I got a clean bra, shirt, pants, and head scarf.

[Dani’s the best.]

And, I’m dusty already.

[One day of dust. It *was* a clean shirt. And that's just an around-camp day.]

I spent some time this evening after dinner sitting in a plastic chair by my tent. I watched the moon rise. The sky above the hill got lighter, lighter, lighter with its nearing—it was almost killing me. The moon rose red. It’s now bright, shining white.

Sophie and Shimeles (MT group) arrived with another police guard and another driver today. Since the petrology group is out on their trek, that puts us at I think 21 in camp.

I charged up my iPod some on the generator tonight and I’m listening to Crowded House.

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January 22, 2008

Shortcut to DA45

Got up and had breakfast, tossed some things in Belay’s car and headed off to Finto with Tim and Abdu (‘diplomat’) and guard Mohammed Unda (Mohammed #3, I believe?) from town to show us the way. He said there were two ways to get there. We took the northern one, since we were coming from the north.

Lots of wildlife today—gazelles and lots of seguri (Afar for dik-diks or something similar—tiny deer), which were barely bigger than hares… my first time really seeing them (might have caught a glimpse of one last trip, but not sure)… baboons including two different groups up in trees, perched like birds’ nests.

[Didn't mean to scare them.]

[But we did.]

A hare on the way back. And at a riverbed where we stopped for something, lush vegetation—large trees—and these great medium-sized funny-beaked birds that looked very tropical and were very chatty, with a beautiful whistly song.

No problems at Finto. I puttered with the site and Tim paid the guard when we were done. [We hire a guard or guards to be responsible for the instrument and pay them ahead a few months].

[The view down at Finto from our site.]

[Tim sits. Guards behind.]

[Site guard.]

[Visitor.]

[Local guard, visitors, and our guard Mohamed from Digdiga with his argyle socks.]

I stood out in the street taking pictures of kids while they got started with the money stuff.

Abdu told us that the guard said he polishes the solar panel every day. Indeed, it looked very clean.

[A crowd gathers. I had to keep stepping back and taking another picture, and then another, and then another, because more kids wanted in. And note that they are ALL BOYS.]

[It seems that there is always some young man that wants in on the picture with (or without) the kids. In this case, it was this one.]

[I was lucky enough after the mayhem to get this girls to stand for me.]

[Everyone puts on their best serious face for photos, but I waited just long enough for these girls to start cracking nervous smiles.]

Tim and I decided we’d like to take the other way to Finto back, to see it (and record it on our handheld GPS), and we tried to express this. Instead, our site guard (the one living in Finto) offered to show us a shortcut to DA45, the next site we wanted to visit. Shortcut…the very word makes me nervous. Uhhhh…is this such a good idea? But the guard got in to share the front seat with our day guard, Mohammed, and we followed the pointing hand of our guard offroad over sometimes flat but frequently bumpy terrain (brush and streambeds), and after a few km we stopped the car and… the guard got out. He explained the rest of the route to Mohammed in Afari, and sent us on our way.

Belay was not happy. Tim and I were skeptical. Abdu was optimistic. Tim and I kept track of the distance left to the site with his handheld GPS and maybe halfway through the 18 km Abdu said, This was a good idea. What?? said Tim and I. We don’t even know if we’ll make it yet! You’re an optimist, said Tim. Even if it’s a bad idea, we should say it’s a good idea, said Abdu.

About 5 km from the site, we came to a riverbed that looked promising. Wouldn’t the going be easier along its smooth floor? So we drove down into it…and almost immediately got stuck. No more Belay driving in the sand. And what’s more, he tried to get out before everyone was back from scouting out the terrain up ahead, leaving only Mohammed and I to push, digging our feet into the sand, filling our sandals with sand and gravel, and though we gained a bit of ground we mostly just dug ourselves in deeper. When Tim and Abdu got back, we dug around the wheels again, put rocks in front of the back wheels, tried again with everyone, stopped, pulled one of the rocks out, and when Tim explained to Belay that he should drive to the gravelly patches and away from the sand once he got moving, Belay said ‘Okay’—handed Tim the keys—‘You drive!’ Not bitterly, but seeming happy to hand over the task. So Tim, looking a little taken aback, climbed in and the rest of us took our places behind the truck. Again, we dug our feet into the sand, and Tim made slow progress until he finally pulled up ahead of us, out of the riverbank, and there we were, 100 meters or so later, back on the main road to Digdiga. Shortcut over.

When we’d approached DA45 that morning, a group of boys in a riverbed just before the nearest village threatened us with rocks. Abdu rolled down his window and reprimanded them. He said they get angry because the cars scare their goats away. (I said maybe they shouldn’t bring their goats so close to the road…) In the afternoon, while Tim and I were at DA45 where I was downloading the data while Tim had a look around, Tim announced that he could see the rock-throwing boys down below. They were taking positions, advancing. Then Tim announced laughing that Abdu was chasing them all with a stick and they were running down the road in retreat. By the time we were done with the site and headed down, the boys were all hanging happily around the car. Oh, they are now friendly, we said to Abdu. You have tamed them. I said Salam and the boys all answered, immediately, even the fiercest of the bunch with his small, sharp features—a striking kid—Salamno, some with smiles even.

----

As soon as we got back, while it was still light, I got a shower. First one, from our little battery-powered shower. Cold at first, then warm as I became cold from standing around with wet skin.

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January 21, 2008

Adventure to Teru and Barantu

Let’see: Left this morning with the petrology camel trekking crew so I could service Barantu and then Teru on the way back and it turned into a bit of an ordeal [big surprise]. I rode with Belay, Gezehegn, Lorraine, and Charlotte, because Charlotte found a Phil Collins greatest hits tape in Balay’s car and this somehow excited us. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who had ever been excited about the tape, because it sounded like Phil was singing from under the future Afar sea. [In lots and lots of time, the land here will sink enough that water will come in and there will be a sea like the Red Sea. Probably by that time there won’t be any Phil Collins tapes around, though.]

The drive is beautiful—over some cool lava frlows with a pavement of small columns, big volcano in the background, and cinder cones near and far. We made it to Teru fine.

In Teru, the town seemed to [seemed to? I find this funny now. Of course, it absolutely did!] gather outside the administrative building where we’d gone to sort the petrology group’s guards for the trek.

[John. Classic.]

[And the man says, Want to buy this? I always say No thank you, but it's very pretty.]

We eventually loaded two guards in our car and two in Eyaya’s and we headed off to Barantu—and got stuck in the sand. Eyaya made it through but we didn’t, and we tried to get out and Eyaya came back and with sticks and digging and pushing and Eyaya pulling with his car, we got out—and then got stuck again about ten feet along. Belay hasn’t mastered the art of *not* revving the engine once stuck and kept digging himself in again and again and again. Did it again from a different direction. Eyaya’s cargo (John and Abdu and Osman) came along (they’d been left up ahead) with all sorts of brilliant strong ideas about what we needed to do (most of which we’d already been trying)—whew, good thing they came along to save the day—and those didn’t work either. (I have to admit to being smugly happy about this, after they rushed in so, so very knowingly.) Eyaya went back to Teru and came back with a pick-up truck and *then*, after much prep work and people who are probably getting trucks unstuck from the sand all the time, the truck got out. Hooray!

[It's never good when you're clearing sand out of your tailpipe.]

[I handed my camera off to one of our new local friends, and this is what I got.]

[Sometimes, you have to put down the AK-47.]

[And---we're out!]

[I had to sneak this picture, aiming without looking through the viewfinder. The girls were alternating between shy and aggressive, one of them threatening anyone who came near her (the locals; we ferangi weren't harassing the poor girl) with a stick. I'm telling you--these girls are tough.]

We got in and headed off—at high speed, Charlotte and Lorraine with their eyes shut—to Barantu. And made it.

And then proceeded to hang tight while Dr. Gezehegn headed off to meet the officials. Abdu found the guard for our GPS site and he, the guard, and I went up to download it.

[Taking care of the site--now that we're here.]

All was well but he didn’t want us to pay him in public so we went back down to the ‘café’ where we’d been waiting and in a bit Abdu beckoned me back out and we went up to the guard’s home. Which was very exciting, since I’d never been in a traditional hut before. We ducked in—very awkward, because the opening is very low—and squatted inside. Two people were back along the far side and a woman was cooking over a fire, a young child at her side. She fried bread—Ethiopian fast food, said Abdu when I asked if it was traditional—which was offered to us and which we then took out with us to offer around back at the café.

[The cafe.]

When Gezehegn came back, nothing was resolved—the trek was planned for an area along the disputed border of two kabales (precincts) and each wanted representation on the trek. Over 30 men joined around Abdu to crouch in a circle (most were onlookers) and discuss. The final, simple, obvious solution: Four camel drivers from one group, four from the other.

[Not even the main discussion.]

[Dusty.]

After the matter was resolved—at maybe 3:30—we unloaded the cars, said goodbye and good luck, and headed out. To Teru. I got up on the roof of the administrative building via a sketchy ladder to download the GPS in peace. Well, relative peace. I had to pee pretty bad as soon as I got up there. I figured the roof was constructed for rain, so the run-off probably wouldn’t go directly into the building, right? But the sound might be suspicious… and the smell… Yes, I actually did think these things. And I held it.

[The black towers are vengence towers, there to remind neighboring tribes that they've still got it coming to them. As in, you killed one of ours, we've still gotta getcha back.]

[From my tent at night:] Foxes or jackals calling, a falling, whistling noise, interspersed with high-pitched barking.

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