A Note on Haircuts

A few days ago I had my first haircut in Ethiopia.  While at first that seems like a trivial and irrelevant matter, I have come to find a fascination for it. After getting my hair cut in several countries now, a pattern has emerged.  The further south I go, the cheaper it gets.  In Sweden, I paid 300 crowns, in Germany, I paid 15 Euros and in Spain just 7 Euros. Here in my newfound barbershop in Addis Ababa, I paid 25 Birr. I estimated that I could get over 30 haircuts in Sweden at that price. 

Admittedly, I also paid for a lot less.  When I walked in, I had to wait for a bit so I sat on a low couch covered in a cloth with a pattern of blue flowers.  The two barbers were passionately clipping away at their customer’s hair so as not to leave any protruding strands to disturb that perfect Afro finesse. It is of course important to note that the scissors they were using were nothing more than small office scissors.  I then realized that the only tool they had present intended for cutting hair was a shaving machine.

When my turn came I saw the barber preparing the shaver by pouring some flammable liquid over a screwdriver, lighting it, and then passing the flame across the steel knives. Why? I don’t know. Without worrying too much about that, I explained to him what I would like. The machine, size 3 on the sides and trimmed down on the top. The barber pointed to what is perhaps the Afro version of that; portrait 16 on a poster filed with possible looks.  “Yeah, that’s the one!” and so he began.

I was used to having my sides cut with the machine but never the top. So when he did bring the shaver over my cranium I got a bit nervous. But no! With much care he brushed over my hair with it and trimmed as I asked. As we got to know each other, I realized why hairdressers like to talk to you. It is to keep you distracted while they do their thing without you jumping out of your seat at the slightest clipping. The barber himself is a geography student at university who has been cutting hair for three years trying to make some money on the side. His plan is to become a high school geography teacher.

In any case, I was quite satisfied with the final result and am sure to visit the same shop again. Maybe I’ll even start a new charity: Scissors for All, Barber Aid or perhaps, The Trimming Trust.

Impressions of a Distant Land

I arrived in Addis Ababa early morning on Friday, 2^nd of May. I didn’t have much sleep on the plane and I knew it would be a long day. However, I did not quite know what exactly was coming my way.

For all the news and special documentaries reporting from Africa, they all do little in showing what it is really like to be there. A camera only catches what it is aimed at and only presents visuals and sound. To be there, and sense it all in 360° from a rackety old Russian Lada, is an entirely different experience.

I was picked up, along with another volunteer, from Bole International Airport by a Projects Abroad coordinator and given an orientation of the city in a taxi hired for the purpose.  As we exited the airport we turned left onto a small road well over its capacity teaming with loud and congested traffic.  Looking to my left, I saw children in dirty clothes splashing water from a bucket over the tires of a minibus and begin cleaning it in such a way that told me they have done it over a million times. Then, I saw a boy standing up from behind a bush, grab a leaf to wipe his behind and pull his pants up.  It was 8:15. School begins in 15 minutes. As Freweini was saying something about Ethiopia being different, a man walked past holding up the front legs of a sheep on either side of his hips as the animal trailed behind, clumsily on its hind legs.

I began reading Dracula by Bram Stoker on the plane and I can’t help but feel an eerie parallel that can be drawn with one of the novel’s most famous quotes, “We are in Transylvania; and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things”. This would follow me the rest of that day and quite possibly the rest of my time here.

Volunteer Ken taking me to the shared taxi stop

However, this encounter outside the airport hardly captures Addis Ababa in its entirety.  We were brought to a café for a quick breakfast and had lunch at a restaurant that might as well have been on the Malaga beach promenade. Both places were filled with the new Ethiopian middle class there on business, with family and friends or on a date.

The food is cheap.  An omelette at the café was 35 Birr, approximately €1.50. A large beef stir-fry with spaghetti cost 85 Birr, just €3.15 (the exchange rate is around €1 – 27 Birr).  While there was a blackout towards the end of our lunch, I was surprised to see a reaction that probably would have happened in Sweden.  Everyone took out their smartphones, some putting them on flashlight mode, so that they could continue eating until the problem was fixed about 5 minutes later.

The road where I live

After driving around town all morning, we were heading to the Projects Abroad Office. On the way, a torrential rain began to violently bear down on us. After weaving our way through the chaotic traffic of a construction site for a new road, we arrived at the office… only to find it flooded with water pouring down from the ceiling like a breach in the lower decks of a ship.  Minassie, director of Projects Abroad Ethiopia, was there barking madly into his phone, probably at maintenance. We began to use everything we could find to get the water out.  We used brooms and mops to push, pull and whack the water down the stairs or out onto the balcony. 4 buckets were collecting the incessant rain. Water was everywhere, in every room of the office. In some places it made puddles that would swallow your shoes and soak your socks. When the skies finally calmed, it took us another half hour at least to clear the office of water.  For us, the new volunteers, the whole situation was so crazy that we just laughed about it. “What a reception!” joked Minassie when we finally had a chance to meet him.

Children playing football on the asphalt in front of the
communist monument 

After being introduced to Projects Abroad, our volunteer programs as well as the country and her culture, we would meet our host families and get settled in our new homes. And how different a European home is from an Ethiopian one! You enter the house into a courtyard of sorts.  Straight ahead you see a sheep tied to a tree baa-ing at your arrival. To the right is a path that takes you around to the entrance of the house. However, houses are not organized the same way as in the West. The central building is only used for bedrooms as well as the living and dining rooms. The kitchen, office and other working areas are all in separated rooms outside the main structure.  Walking in this path that separated house and working rooms, one comes across curious new smells emanating from the kitchen, leaving one interested in discovering what it could possibly be. 

However, at this point I was utterly exhausted. I was tired from lack of sleep, I was finding it difficult to breathe because of the thinner air at 2500m and was overwhelmed by a completely new people and way of life. It is at these times when one wonders what one is actually doing. I have never felt this far away from home and Stockholm is a little more than a weekend trip away. However, I do believe that in time I can learn to like and enjoy this place. It will take time and it will be difficult.  But if I begin to enjoy my placement as a journalist I think I might just be realizing my African adventure.

Very far up North: The Ice Hotel

Not one week had passed after I came back from Malaga and I found myself in the northern most reaches of Sweden, in the mining town of Kiruna. Of course, we did not travel 1,000km to the 67th degree latitude to survey the centennial iron pits.  For some time now, Kiruna Airport has been the scene of international tourists coming to sleep in the Ice Hotel.

Situated on the Jukkasjärvi (part of the Torne river), the Ice Hotel is a 20 minute drive from the airport.  Expecting to load our things on a taxi, I was getting increasingly suspicious as we seemed to be walking the opposite way and closer to the din of barking Alaskan huskies. We would be going to the hotel on dogsled! And what a wonderful way to travel. That is, if we exclude the dog at the back left who managed the art of running on its front legs to take a s#%@ while on the move, bringing a waft of fresh poop over us (at least we were saved from the physical matter). Despite this, it was impressive to watch as the dogs pulled our combined weight across the snowy landscape.

The northern Swedish landscape, home of the Sami

I came to realize that northern Sweden is a vast and empty place. It feels somewhat like being, "beyond the wall" for anyone who watches Game of Thrones. So much so that for the first time, flying back to Stockholm felt like coming to a densely populated area. However, what it lacks in population it makes up for natural beauty.  On a snowmobile excursion we went on, the guide took us to a gorgeous viewing point on the top of a hill. Kiruna and its enormous but deserted open mining pit could easily be made out between the white and green hills and frozen lakes. In the distance, one could see the mountains that border Norway.

The reindeer

It all inspires to think of a time before conquest and geological discoveries divided the land. In fact, after having a Swedish 'fika' (coffee and cake) we sped across a lake at thrilling 100km/h to a Sami reindeer farm. The Sami are (or used to be) a nomadic population of Lapland that would follow reindeer herds according to their migration patterns.  Today's Sami have largely integrated into Swedish society and often live off selling reindeer meat, like our guide.  He told us of reindeer and their near perfect adaptation to the Polar Circle. They have large hooves and always have three feet on the ground while walking so as not to sink in the snow. Their sense of smell allows them to find a special moss, high in energy, meters below the snow. And since everything is frozen the majority of the year, they drink by eating snow. After showing us his animals he lead us to a traditional Sami tent where he made us 'reindeer kebab' as he like to call it - a typical Sami cowboy lunch.

I want one of these

Driving snowmobiles only came second in providing an adrenaline kick that weekend, number one was ice driving.  Taking a step aside from polite wording, it was a hell of a lot of fun! Taking off the electronic systems meant to control the car in slippery conditions and speeding around a corner of a rally plowed out of a snow covered lake and pulling up the hand brake to drift around is what I am talking about. Even if that meant crashing into a wall of snow, facing the wrong direction. 

Posing after tearing it up on the rally

Least adrenaline filled of these arctic activities and yet curiously fun was ice sculpting. We were given a block of ice and a chisel from a Florentine sculptor who had designed the entrance hallway of the Ice Hotel (the Italian is fortunate enough that the girl of his dreams should come from Kiruna - I really hope she was worth it!). Hacking away at the ice, I eventually sculpted a bust of a man with a hole on the top of his head suggesting the absence of a brain. Throughout all of the poor excuses of art I had made during school, I had never been as excited to make something.  The mind becomes filled with ideas of how to turn something as a dull as a block of ice into something creative. Maybe it was just the though of smashing something with a chisel.

Making myself comfortable
for the night

Another question entirely is how one spends a night inside a block of ice. The inside temperature of the Ice Hotel is kept at a constant -5°C, providing the humorous warning, "please don't sleep in the refrigerator".  Well, the truth is that it really isn't that bad.  You sleep on a mattress, covered by reindeer fur and inside a mummifying sleeping bag which is guaranteed to keep you warm. So the biggest problem really is the numbing silence, giving the sensation of being inside a sarcophagus. There literally are no sounds. No cars outside, no drainage pipes, no one flushing the toilet, no voices... and yet, I survive to tell the tale.  

All in all, it was an amazing weekend. I tried a lot of new things and spent some valuable time with family after all that time away. With good weather and temperatures averaging around a comfortable -1°C, the trip up north is certainly worth it.

And so ends my Andalusian Advenuture

Well, after 11 weeks spent living in Malaga, Spain, the time finally came to return to Stockholm. It was a difficult parting. I had certainly become accustomed to warm weather, beach and a general lack of any pressure.  Sunday breakfasts at our usual cafe, sitting in the sun, were hardly a punishment.

Cooking paella at the school

In case I'm conveying the wrong message, I didn't only spend my time dilly dallying in beach cafes.  I was also there to learn a language. In fact, if I do say so myself, my Spanish has improved a lot. Better said, from A2 to about B2 (The EU has created a standardized system of language understanding. A1 and A2 is for beginners, B1 and B2 for intermediate levels and C1 and C2 for advanced language skills). I've gone from hesitating and having to think about everything to simply speaking and applying more complicated grammatical structures to my expression.

The courses were good, but it was the teachers that made the difference.  One teacher in particular, Patricia, practically taught me everything I'm taking away from there. She would thoroughly explain new verb conjugations and vocabulary through her enthusiastic and interactive teaching. Furthermore she provoked us to discuss controversial topics like religion and the death penalty to have real discussion as opposed to talking about reality TV and paparazzi. However, some weeks with other teachers the pace became so slow that it felt like I was becoming worse at Spanish (essentially the times where we would talk about the latter two of the aforementioned topics). Nonetheless, I would recommend the school to others wanting to learn Spanish.

Drinking a "jarra" in Malaga's popular 'El Pimpi'

My knowledge of the language was put to the test when on my last weekend in Malaga, I was visited by good friends from Freiburg - Joaquín, Judit and Borja (my old roommate). Together we ate tapas, went to the beach, drank cerveza, and were up very late at night for activities provided at such times on the weekend. All in all it was too short but I think I speak correctly when I say that it wasn't the last time we see each other. After saying goodbye I gave myself a little pat on the back for having spoken Spanish with them the entire time :)

My fried sandwiches got quite good
towards the end

Leaving was difficult.  Realizing that I will no longer be drinking 5 cups of tea a day together with my flatmates and playing ping pong on the hostel terrace on nice days after school abets a melancholy not so easily amended. I leave Malaga behind with what I came for and much more. A conversational proficiency in Spanish, a host of new experiences and great friends.

My New Home on the 4th Floor

After two months living with a Spanish family I have moved to a shared apartment to accompany four very friendly young women from Poland, the US, France and Greece/Romania who share a near harmonic environment on the 4th floor of a Franco-era apartment block.  The apartment is in the perfect location, across from the supermarket and a short walk from the beach. This is something the girls take to their advantage when they go to their preferred cafe on the weekend to have breakfast and perhaps stay out long enough, if weather permits, to have lunch as well.

The new view

It was an interesting experience to live with another family for such a long time. I can't possibly imagine having smelly young men treading through my home (and you would know what I mean by smelly after walking into the bathroom shared with 3 pubescent teenagers from Dresden). I must say I was quite happy to move out by the end.  Despite my yearning for independence, I can't really complain for what I had there. A breakfast and an excellent dinner cooked by a chef who owns his own Spanish restaurant.  I had a large and colorful room with a view on the Mediterranean and most of the time it was only me living there anyways due to the low season. One thing that did irritate me was the near refusal of the family to talk to me.  Dinners were usually spent in silence as they watched television and I sat lonesome on the dinner table, perhaps accompanied by their 7 year old son, similarly mute. At other times I would mention a topic such as my presentation on the death penalty I had one day and suddenly the father wouldn't stop talking! 

It seems traffic laws have abandoned this road I see from my window

As it is one of my first times living independently and having to cook for myself it is a bit of a weird feeling. However, so far that hasn't really been a problem as they are all more experienced with the matter and often offer to cook for me anyways! (maybe because I dared kill a rather large cockroach in the kitchen for them - which we posthumously baptized Pepe) The one big problem with the apartment is the abundance of a language called English, a tongue foreign to Spanish soil. It seems to be a natural consequence of making good friends, whether in Freiburg or Malaga, the language people are more comfortable with eventually establishes itself as the lingua franca - which is nearly always English.

Eaten from right to left, this nigiri was fantastic

My move to the new apartment coincided with a visit of my mother form Sweden that weekend. It was a delightful time, never too much and always pleasant.  Not to mention the fact that I had some of my best culinary experiences in Spain.  High quality tapas, steak served on a burning hot stone and probably the best sushi I've ever had contributed to a "firework of taste" as my mom coined it.