The blogosphere is as different nine years later as Addis Ababa
is.
How
do I start?
Where
do we begin?
*
The very concept of a blog has, I think, changed in the last
decade. As the tech industry has prospered, this very online content has
transformed.
This may be obvious enough, as are its implications for how
we live our lives. But the revolution occurring in communications so profoundly impacts the fabric of our
lives that it is worthwhile to reflect on it as I exploit it.
The idea of a blog is perhaps most different today in the
context of the emergent social media industry. Back in the day, so to say – the
early days, the Wild West-ern days, when the Blogosphere was still a frontier
being settled – there was something raw and fresh and unfamiliar about what was
occurring (…a “Beginner’s Mind” of the Blogosphere?). Today the form is
well-worn, engraved in the archaeologist’s epigraphs of hyperlink, broadband, YouTube
culture, along with a whole host of
other forms of social media that have since been established.
The virtual sites of the worldwide web have been built and
rebuilt, renovated and remodeled, burned down and bombed, evicted and
demolished, bought and sold… and so on and so on. What happened to Jeeves
anyway, as Geocities and MySpace made way for Google, Facebook, and Amazon?
(Rings of a tree – pearls and gems – the earth’s silt and
sedimentation.)
With these endlessly new types
or forms of technology available
to us (to name a few more powerhouses, Apple, Wikipedia, Buzzfeed, Skype, the
generic smart phone), the way we experience and interact with this so-called
virtual data-content changes, too.
It is still remarkable to me when a security guard checks my
bag as I leave the library in Cambridge, Mass while he has a “face-to-face” conversation
on his mobile phone with his wife in Pakistan. And we know that smart phones
and social media are playing a significant role in popular social movements,
from ISIS to Eric Garner.
*
I purchased a smart phone in Addis Ababa, in cash, in about
half-an-hour.
After another half-an-hour of queuing at EthioTelecom – the
government monopolized telecommunications provider – a passport scan, a
mugshot, and a little more cash, that phone had a SIM card.
And, after stopping at a souk on a corner for a phone card,
I had a functioning phone.
True enough, I’m making this simpler than it was.
After purchasing the phone at the TecnoMobile store in Edna
Mall, we went to an EthioTelecom storefront a block away. EthioTelecom is as
ubiquitous as Starbucks or Walgreen’s around Addis Ababa, as are power outages.
Within a minute or two of arriving the power went out (as it would later that
day at my great-uncle’s house twice over lunch, and then again when I returned
home in the evening). At Edna Mall, however, it was most striking as the storefront is new and just opened;
being in a building that is still being built; in a location around Medhanyelem
Church that is entirely new, that did not even exist ten
years back… but is now, I suppose affectionately, referred to as “New
York City” for its glossy buildings (shops, hotels, cafes, cinema) and urban
bustle. Needless to say, we didn’t hang around waiting for the power to come
back on.
When going to another EthioTelecom after lunch – in an old,
brutal building, that makes your heart feel grey and drab, and I suspect might
be from the Dergue-era – my cousin and I were initially startled by the length
of the line. There were at least 30 people already waiting when we arrived.
From the doorway where we entered, they wrapped around the walls of the
opposite side of the room, curving around the back wall to our right, and
around again to the door where we stood, only to then, rather comically, hop
over to a small island bench in the center of the room, and wrap around that.
To the left of the doorway was a podium where a young woman sat on a stool calling
out --- “Next!” each time a customer finished their business at the desks of a
salesperson on the left side of the room. The line inched its way forward in this
way, everyone successively standing up and moving forward a spot or two, as the
woman at the podium called out again --- “Next!” All told, the line moved
rather quickly.
*
There is something dystopian and surreal about the “New
Flower”, Addis Ababa, these days. Maybe it used to be this way, too, but I just
didn’t know to notice.
The half-hewn buildings on every block, and the rubble on
the streets lend the city the look of being amidst war, as L remarked the other
night.
And yet, upon completion, the glossy, towering façade of these
new constructions gives no hint of such a phase of destruction – or the brown
rags worn on the bony bodies of the workers who build them.
I am tempted to describe this new architecture shaping the changing
landscape of Addis Ababa as purely ideological. Its practical purpose is lost
on me: it is entirely unclear what and who these new buildings are for. I
imagine they are largely empty, though I have only just started asking. And they
have no aesthetic value, even negative value if such a thing is possible. They
are ugly, completely out of tune with their surrounding environs: phallic
symbols of a capitalist, Western ideal.
From conversations that I have had with people on the
street, on minibuses, in taxi cabs, at churches, at museums, at cafes, on site
at the NGO with which I am working – all of whom spoke at least a little
English, if not a lot – there is excitement for the future of Addis Ababa. As
construction booms here in the capital, more and more people are moving here (a
tangible fact since my last visit); styles and attitudes are shifting, too (also
evident).
However, the role and relationship of Addis Ababa to the
rest of “Ethiopia” is still unclear to me. People say that the countryside is
still the countryside. Although this “development”, as such, is not only
spreading the edges of the capital; but also spilling over to the countryside (by
way of better roads along major routes, and renovations to preexisting
infrastructure); as soon as you leave Addis Ababa cultural attitudes are said
to remain intact.
Meanwhile, access to public education (i.e. government-sponsored),
including higher education, is expanding across the country (though, from what
I hear, the quality of this education is questionable).
And meanwhile, beneath the calm feel on the campus of Addis
Ababa University, a cool respite from the rottenness of city life in Addis (any
better or worse than the cold sterility of city life in the States?), its
pleasure gardens are decrepit and decaying: its majestic fountains run dry, their
blue paint cracked and peeling; and its jungle landscaping is untended and
overgrown. Such faded imperial glory pops up all over town, its forms having been
assumed to fulfill the aims of other regimes.
My sense of a subtle surreal and dystopian flavor pervading
Addis Ababa then exists, I think, largely on the level of image (the sights of
a city in flux), which is to say, idea or concept. The sight of the city
inevitably breeds incongruency and absurdity, just as it did nine years back,
but today in a way that its range is more viscerally striking. The variety
apparent in this one place is extreme.
And people are leaving – fair enough, people are coming
back, too – but people are leaving, and looking to leave, for a range of
reasons. New roads around town surface and then stop, dead-ending or returning
to unpaved rubble.
I am led to wonder, to what ends is all this construction? On
whose terms? Is Addis Ababa becoming anything more than an aping and mimicking
façade? Whose needs is it serving? And whose is it selling, demolishing,
burying – dispossessing?
*
A final reflection on the Blogosphere: As a diasporic kid
with an American passport and a 3-month visa, I have a certain privilege and
ignorance when it comes to commenting on Addis and Ethiopia here in the
Blogosphere.
On one hand, I can critique what I am seeing in a way that
someone considered an Ethiopian national cannot. It is well-known that the current
democratic government of Ethiopia severely limits freedom of speech.
On the other, my observations are severely limited by my
status as a kid borne of the diaspora. I am a stranger in this land, American, belonging
to one very specific branch of a branch of the culture and history of this
place, which today goes by the name of Ethiopia. I see this place only
fragmented from my view, so its totality is not done justice by my words. I do
not actually understand what it means to be a part of this place. And within weeks,
I will leave.
No comments:
Post a Comment