I recently ran across a comment by Maru in MsDaisy's Archaeology thread in which he mentioned visiting Lalibela. My interest was immediately aroused because I grew up in Ethiopia and am always on the lookout for folks who have lived or visited there and want to share our common (or not-so-common) experiences. Anyway, I replied and both Maru and MajBabs indicated they wanted to know more. So here goes with a little personal history that I hope everyone who reads, enjoys.



My dad had learned to fly during WWII (P-51s) and continued flying after the war in the Reserves and as an instructor at a USAF contract school. In 1957, he was hired by Trans World Airlines to go to Ethiopia and train pilots for Ethiopian Airlines. Basically, American personnel had been running the airline since its inception just after WWII and the Ethiopian government decided that it was time for their people to step up and take over. In a coop agreement between the two airlines and the American and Ethiopian governments, TWA set up a training program that would give Ethiopians all the technical and managerial skills needed to run an airline.

So in the summer of '57 we packed up, jumped on a plane in Dallas and four days later landed in Addis Abeba. For a 12 year old raised on NatGeos and N.C. Wyeth illustrations, I was living my dreams and the next seven years provided some incredible adventures. I explored the country, hunted, fished, climbed mountains, dipped a toe in the Blue Nile, picked up on different cultures, and met the most amazing people. (Maru is probably familiar with the schools I attended - Lycee Guebre Mariam and St. Joseph).

I returned Stateside for good in 1964 and spent the next 35 years wishing I could go back. Finally had an opening in the summer of 1999 and my brother and I returned for a month. Of course, things were hardly the same, but there was enough of the old to stir up some real nostalgia, and we even created some new adventures.

I'll do separate posts on a couple of related subjects worth sharing.

(Note: My father left the airline program in 1961 and went to work as a pilot for the Regional Insect Control Project and later, USAID's Regional Development Group. Based in Ethiopia, he continued to train pilots and perform relief work all over East Africa and the Middle East until 1974, when political conditions finally forced him and most other AID employees to leave.)

I've been patiently waiting for more. But I'm in an impatient mood today, so I want more and I want it now!






I do want it now, but I'll wait if I have to. More please.

Is that some thing like: Thank you Sir! May I have another?

No. It's more like I'm sitting in a shopping cart that my mother's pushing through the candy or toy aisle. And it's more like --- pleases, please, please, I promise I've be good if you just give me THAT please, please, please -- and all this with a sad face on.

Thanks to MajBabs for giving me a little push to polish this (somewhat) and post.

Anyone can google up all kinds of information about Ethiopia and the only way I know to make this different is to describe what I personally experienced and the memories that have stayed with me for over fifty years. It’s self-centered and it may bore some folks, but it’s what I have to offer.

One of the most surprising aspects of the Ethiopia that I dropped into in 1957 was the cosmopolitan culture of the place. Some of my greatest memories are of the “internationals” I met. It was in many ways a wild and remote place, but the population truly exemplified the term “melting pot”. These people and their stories captivated me then and have stayed with me to this day.

Except for the brief period of Italian occupation (1936-41), Ethiopia was the only nation on the African continent that had maintained its independence and never submitted to European colonization. The Ethiopians were (and still are) very proud of this fact, but that has not limited their outside contacts or made them insular. In addition to being a naturally warm and hospitable people, they have always recognized the benefits of connections to the rest of the world and have welcomed outsiders who came not solely to exploit. Emperor Haile Selassie’s policies were a case in point; i.e., the Italian invasion and occupation brutalized the Ethiopian people, but after the Italians were defeated, a policy of reconciliation was immediately instituted and Italians who had settled in Ethiopia were allowed to stay under the government’s protection. Many became citizens and contributed immeasurably to the nation’s development (one of their best contributions was operating some great restaurants!) After WWII, the country really opened up and people arrived from everywhere; new embassies appeared, foreign aid poured into the country, advisors flocked in… and last but not least were the refugees.

I was drawn into this community almost immediately upon arrival. There was a wide variety of options for school and after some review and discussion my siblings and I enrolled in the Lycee Franco-Ethiopien Guebre Mariam, a French government sponsored academy.

http://www.lyceeguebremariamaddisabeba. ... %5Clgm.htm

Of course all instruction was in French, so I was initially assigned to the Classe de Troisieme Accueil, a beginners course for non-fluent students. Talk about a melting pot! Our instructor was a beautiful and very stylish French lady who spoke five languages fluently and had a working knowledge of four or five more. And the makeup of that class quickly made it obvious why her language skills were so badly needed: the place was a veritable Tower of Babel! Two Ethiopians, two Americans, two Swedes (brothers), two Czechs (brothers), three Italians, two Greeks, two Eritreans, one German, one Yugoslav, one Brit, and two Armenians! A Japanese girl joined us at mid-term.

The instruction was based on immersion theory, five hours a day/six days a week, and it worked. Within about three months everyone could communicate pretty well, and by the end of the school year, most of us were carrying on like Parisians. Our varied backgrounds and interests certainly gave us a lot to talk about, and one of the fascinating things I encountered during this period was the situation of the “DPs”.

DP stands for Displaced Person. Four of my classmates had been so classified and there were many others in Ethiopia at that time. These were people (mostly Europeans) who had been forced out of their native lands by the turmoil of WWII and its aftermath and were unable to return. There was also a significant Armenian colony that traced its origins back to the Turkish and Russian expulsions of this people during the WWI and Russian Revolution era. Many of the displaced were still looking for a place to put down new roots, and almost all had amazing stories of survival to tell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displaced_persons_camp

I became especially attached to my two Czech classmates. Their father was a doctor who had been forced to work for the Nazis after they conquered Czechoslovakia. After the war, the family was just beginning to recover when the Communists took over, confiscated their property and forced them to relocate. The father vowed escape at the first opportunity and about 1950, got the family on a passenger train, hijacked it at gunpoint and forced the engineer to crash it though a border checkpoint into West Germany. They were then admitted to England as political refugees and after several years there, the good doctor was hired to administer a rural clinic in Ethiopia. Fantastic story, but just one of many I heard. I was a guest of these guys one summer at their remote home and we spent a whole month hunting and exploring on horseback.

My second year at the Lycee, I took all the required regular coursework, and was assigned to a classroom with side-by-side double desks, meaning that I had a “desk partner” to get used to.
Well, fortune smiled and I ended up with another good friend and and another memorable story. He was the same age as I, incredibly blonde and handsome, and a Russian! Not only that, but royalty!
The family was related to the Romanovs and had left Russia at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. His father, trained as a military engineer, had enjoyed a very successful and lucrative career as a mining consultant in Africa and was then advising the Ethiopian government.

There was a fairly large group of Americans (about 200) in Ethiopia by this time (late 50s), most associated with the embassy, aid programs, the Military Advisory Assistance Group (MAAG), Ethiopian Airlines and religious missions. Some of them had colorful backgrounds as well. One of our embassy nurses was working in the Philippines at the beginning of WWII and had been interned at Santo Tomas Prison for three years. A sweet lady and a real professional with a hollow needle.


I’ll be back with more about the country, the people, Haile Selassie, and surviving the 1960 Shootout in Addis Abeba.

I was there a bit later than you. In fact, I was there when Haile Selassie was overthrown. I will never forget...I was in the 6th grade, at a movie at the US Army complex, watching Creature from the Black Lagoon when all hell broke loose. The army had to take us all back home in armored cars. I still find monster movies kind of freaky.

My dad was an economic development specialist heading up a multinational program. I went to the American school (ACS) and remember our zabanya (sp?) coming to pick us up each day, often bringing our horses for us to ride home.

Our house was this boxy stucco place with 6 different coloured squares on the front, one purple! We had no tv, had to boil then filter our water and Alitalia sent most of our belongings to Asmara vs Addis Ababa. They have yet to be located. The house had a huge fence around it and in the corner of the compound a guardhouse. We had three guards, each guarding for 8 hours a day. They were lovely people and one, Hailu became very good at baseball!

I loved it! Until my dad was asked to give the commencement speech at the University, refused, and angered the new regime rather badly. We ended up leaving Ethiopia very early, hightailing it out of the country and ended up in Kenya.

I also remember getting really good Chinese food in Ethiopia and how big a treat it was to spend a weekend day at the Hilton hotel. They had a nice pool and sold ice cream! When you are 12, that is magic.

I'm really enjoying hearing your stories!

I was a kid in Savannah, GA at the time, and geography was my favorite subject. I'd never been anywhere except to Tampa to see my grandparents, but Savannah was a port with ships from all over the world, and I'd find their home ports on our globe. Savannah also had a SAC base, and some of the kids in our subdivision had been in Japan or Europe with their fathers during the Occupations. I was so jealous of where they had gone and what they had seen. I'm putting myself in that time as I read your adventures, and it sounds like magic.

Postby Maru » Thu Feb 23, 2012 8:35 pm


Did you eat at the Hong Kong up on the Piazza? We ate there regularly and the food was probably the best Chinese I ever had. Ice cream? Hey, all the Italian places had homemade gelati, not to mention crema caramela and mille strati!

You could go on all day with these stories and I'd just quietly read them. Keep it up, please.

Thank you Shagnastie for giving in to my demands. I think it so great to get first hand info on a place that seems so exotic to me. The whole displaced persons (DP) is especially interesting, IMO. I knew that WWII and the Communist takeover of eastern Europe resulted in god knows how many DPs. l didn't realize that some ended in Ethiopia. I would never have thought that. That's one of the reasons why I enjoy getting first hand information from people who have been there. I look forward to hearing about anything you care to share.

Ethiopia was the first place I ever encountered a rainy season. At a certain time in the afternoon it would start to pour. And soon after the sun would come back out. And the next day voila, it would happen again. Naturally, it was right as school let out.

Ethiopia was Christian going back back. The queen of sheba was said to be Ethiopian. And Ethiopian icons are gorgeous. Colourful and very beautiful and everyone has such big eyes. They also make gorgeous silver crosses. The Walters gallery in Baltimore has a surprisingly large collection.

And the baskets that they weave to hold their injera (bread) are amazing. I have one that is almost waist high.

My school was quite small. Only about 20 in my year but we had Americans, Aussies, Indians, Brits, Germans and Ethiopians.

I was only there one year, but it made a big impression, likely since a war broke out.

During WW II, Italy overran Ethiopia. The Ethiopians put up a spirited but not at all successful defense of their country. Some 75000 Ethiopians died while less than 2000 Italians succumbed. The treatment of the Ethiopians during this time was horrible.

And then in 1960, at the Rome Olympics, out of nowhere, an Ethiopian runner wearing no shoes won the marathon. In the country that had so cruelly treated them, Abebe Bikila did to the Italians what Jesse Owens did to Hitler.

He spoke at my school and they named the gym after him. Not too long afterward he was in a car crash that rendered him a quadraplegic.

Google him. It will warm your heart and make you cry.

I hope the tales keep coming. I'm enjoying this.

Some photos I gathered. I didn't take them, but they are representative of my life there.

An injera basket. Injera is a spongey, tortilla like bread that the Ethiopians use as a utensil to eat a spicy stew called wot. The injera basket sits at the table and can range from small tabletop baskets to something this large and ornate.



A typical home for a non Ethiopian. Note the high fence, large gate and guardhouse in the corner by the gate. A guard would be on duty 24-7 and every type of play other than horseback riding would be done within the compound. Bicycle riding wasn't a whole lot of fun. Servants quarters and sometimes a kitchen would be in the back. Our home had the added feature of being a patchwork of blue, beige and purple!



The Hilton in Addis, my idea of heaven back then! Note that the pool is cross shaped. Also, a typical Ethiopian dwelling called a tukul is in the garden. We used to get an ice cream and play Barbies in that tukul!

Lalibela, the Holy City of Ethiopia. The beautiful stone church is built into the earth and, like Gothic cathedrals is cross shaped.





And I find Ethiopian icons to be kind of a cross between Medieval illuminated manuscripts and Byzantine artwork.



Ethiopian silver crosses are also lovely. They can be beautiful filagree or more commonly, something like this.

Maru, I do so love the photos you shared. I never would have be able to picture that church that is craved into the rock if you hadn't shared the photo. I hope you can find more photos to share. I hope you have some photos to share, Shagnastie but if not, I'm more than happy just to read your thought of memories about your life way back when. I hope folks from other places share their stories and experiences -- especially how they spent their childhoods. I'm sure Suranis has some interesting stories about growing up in Ireland or ZorbasLeGreque and his life as a wee one on Germany -- as well as all the folks who grew up in other countries whose names are too many to mention. Myself, if you read Stephen King's It and read the parts of the the children riding their bikes and such, it's not all that different from my summers as a child -- well except for the creepy Pennywise part.

Again, so much of what I love about Fogbow are the people and the wealth of experiences and knowledge they willing share here. To everyone at Fogbow

Tanasteleng! (Traditional Ethiopian Amharic-language greeting roughly translates as “I stand in your
presence”)

Maru’s description of housing and security is accurate. For most of our time there we lived in a one-house gated compound with 2-3 meter walls. We had a gardner during the day who also provided security, and a sabanya (watchman) to keep an eye on things at night. No firearms; the day man had a couple of garden tools and the night guy had a short spear. Their basic responsibility was to raise an alarm in case something unusual happened.

(BTW, Maru, my mother had a high quality collection of those Coptic crosses that was displayed in museums several times. They were divided amongst the grandchildren when she passed)

Something that I’ll be eternally grateful to my parents for was a decision they made soon after we arrived in Ethiopia: the kids would be allowed to grow up in the least restrictive environment possible. In other words, try to exercise good judgment and “situational awareness”, but don’t be afraid to learn from experience. So after a brief period of orientation, we attended the local schools, roamed unescorted around Addis Ababa and even out into the countryside, developed a wide variety of social relationships and were all the better for it.

And just to demostrate how the mundane can turn into an adventure …

An issue we had to deal with right away was transportation. Addis was a sprawling city and we kids had to get to school and other activities, but as Dad was extremely busy and Mom was initially reluctant to drive, for several months we had a driver. Then as we got settled in we started using public transportation, and this was an experience truly worthy of a few words.

At the top of the public conveyance chain was the bus system. The fare was cheap - .15 Ethiopian cents = .06 US. Buses covered all the main thoroughfares and were fairly reliable, but invariably packed from front to back. It was not uncommon to wait thirty minutes at a stop only to have your bus arrive and the driver open the door to tell you he couldn’t board any more passengers. This was usually followed by several miles of walking.

Next were the taxis. We used them a lot, and in the late 50s and well into the 60s, the vast majority of Addis taxis were the Fiat 600. They were everywhere. Impossible to describe them, so here’s a picture:

http://www.autoevolution.com/images/gal ... 2342_1.jpg

Those in Addis were painted a bright blue and white scheme.

The fare for a normal trip was a simmonie or .25 cent piece (US .10). Longer distances were negotiable, but still incredibly cheap. The service did have certain idiosyncracies that took some getting used to. Taxis were always shared and the drivers would stop and pick up anyone who flagged them down until the car was full, meaning there was almost always lots of jockeying around at destinations. Drivers would also do anything they could to save on gas. Addis is just one hill after another (some long and steep) and the downhill practice was to put it in neutral, shut off the engine and coast as far as possible. As in most of Africa and the Middle East, the horn was superior to either steering wheel or brake pedal, and a trip with an aggressive driver was breathtaking.

Then there were the moto-taxis, three-wheeler motorcycles with a canvas-enclosed passenger compartment capable of carrying 2-3 adults. Not as common as regular taxis and usually relegated to back streets, we avoided them whenever an alternative was available because they were a rough ride, slow and usually very dirty. Another picture:

http://atlacatlgroup.com/assets/images/Moto_Taxi.jpg

Last but not least, and certainly the most fun, were the horse drawn two-wheel open carriages known as gharries. During the time I lived in Addis they were very common, but have now almost completely disappeared. Usual fare was the simmonie, they were reasonably comfortable and could take you almost anywhere, but were most satisfactory for short trips around the neighborhood. If you stepped out onto the street and didn’t see one nearby, all you had to do was yell “Bala Gharry!” a couple of times. Other people down the street would take up the cry and it would carry farther and farther until it reached a driver who would spring into action. He would go to the nearest caller, who would point to the next one and so on until he finally arrived in front of the customer. Most gharries did not have an awning, so using one during the rainy season meant carrying a good umbrella. Another drawback was that there was no divider between the driver/passenger seat and the horse’s exhaust system. Usually a minor inconvenience compensated for by holding your nose, but my brother was once sharing a ride with a friend when the horse suddenly lifted his tail and blasted everyone with a load of explosive diarrhea … our maid was not happy with that batch of laundry. Then when I was about sixteen I got involved in gharry “racing”. A group of us would rent several carriages, find a quiet street and put them through their paces. We handled the reins, but the drivers always stayed with us. This stopped after a couple of minor accidents and when we realized how hard it was on the poor horses.

In 1960, I got a driver’s license and Dad gave me an old car he had been using to drive to work – a 1936 Fiat Topolino. A mechanic friend completely rebuilt the engine and added a little “boost”, making it an extremely fun drive. This gave me a real sense of independence and in no time I was all over the map. Images:

http://www.autogallery.org.ru/k/n/nsu500A_Opelzh.jpg

http://www.shorey.net/Auto/Italian/Fiat ... polino.jpg

More to come …

I do have some photos to share, but am not the most competent computer pilot and despite several visits to the FB manual have not figured out how to post them. I have a Kodak scanner/printer and already have some of the pics in files. If someone could provide some step-by-step instructions, such would be deeply appreciated.

Cause I’m a step-by-step kinda guy … and as they used to say “Thank You” in Ethiopia:

Xghiarsteleng (God Bless)

Thank you, Mr. Z!

I will follow your instructions (step-by-step) and hopefully the photos will soon appear.

For those of you with Google Earth ...

Cut and paste into search: N 08 44 48.59 E 38 58 59.41

This is a resort area about 25 miles south of Addis set amid some of the extinct volcanoes and crater lakes of the Great Rift Valley. It was a small village when I lived in Ethiopia, but has obviously grown. If you zoom in, the coordinates take you to a little hotel perched on the rim of one of the volcanic lakes. When my brother and I returned in 1999, this was our headquarters for about ten days as we traveled around southern Ethiopia. The hotel restaurant is built right out over the crater and has spectacular views. (The big aircraft runway to the southeast of the crater is the headquarters and main training base for the Ethiopian Air Force. If you zoom in you can see some of the Soviet equipment currently employed by the EAF)

As I previously mentioned, I enjoyed hunting and fishing in Ethiopia, and back then the area to the west/northwest of Debre Zeit was prime hunting territory, with several kinds of gazelle, wild hogs and lots of game birds. Today the whole area is under the plow.

I'm really getting nostalgic ...

Well, by a quite delightful coincidence, no doubt, I'm happy to say that the word has not completely vanished from the scene...



Carry on. I'm enjoying this thread muchly!

Awesome, Piffle! That had to be a winner!

If anyone is interested, I could also do something similar about the time my dad took a job in Indonesia and I was known on passport applications as Marubarkah.

I for one would be interested. Too bad you're not older, I'm sure you would have met Obama, Soebarkah if you were.

Thanks for including the coordinates It was fun to get an idea of what the place looked like.

How far away were you from the site where Lucy was found? I know you probably a long ways away since the shows I've seen on the discovery of Lucy show the site as pretty barren and isolated. But then again, all the photos I've seen show the pyramids at Giza appearing to be smack dab in the desert. I was a bit taken aback to find out that in reality, there are a ton of sourveir stands on the opposite side from the desert. So I've learned to keep an open mind about what the real site/location looks like compared to what I see on TV.