unworthy cause

Last week I attended what my daughter Thea would call the silliest fund raiser ever. If I had had any doubt that we are living in a pretty privileged society, that event in a small Ontario town (which I shall not name because I don't want them to feel bad, but it rhymes with Sweden Hills) laid those doubts to rest.

I do not have a ton of experience with fund raisers. I don't seek them out. (Does anyone?) I am quick-tongued and teflon-conscienced, so the average police benefit or alumni building society finds me unmoved or away from my phone. And the people looking for major sponsors for hospital wings know better than to approach a children's author ordinaire.

This one I fell into. It was a concert, and the music was stuff I liked from a guy I know. I was not aware of a larger cause until I saw the programme. Then I realized that my friend was donating his time and we were donating our money to help ... are you ready? ... PARKING LOT RESTORATION. That's right: our ticket dollars were going to help Sweden Hills resurface and beautify the lot where our car was sitting at that moment.

I nearly plotzed. Sweden Hills has a very small tax base, and the lot was a little bumpy, but I could not restrain a hoot of laughter. Or maybe two. And when the emcee arrived onstage in his corduroy jacket and beard and single malt voice, and thanked us for our generosity and our concern for a cause that was dear to the hearts of the community, I had to hoot some more. I was speculating to my neighbour (a fellow hooter) on the amount of restoration required to turn the current parking lot into a thing of serious beauty. There were several hundred of us paying 20.00 each. Where would the money go? Would the town want some architectural work? Perhaps a pergola? (Not that I knew what a pergola was until I googled it just now. That's one in the picture. Nice, eh?) Electronic monitoring? Deer? We got so loud and giggly that a lady in the row ahead of us turned round with a stern expression.
"Do you mind?" she said. "I'd like to hear what he has to say."

I bit off my reply. I wish I could have told her what I thought. But I'm a polite guy, and yelling or laughing at her would have offended her to no useful purpose, and I'd have felt bad for acting like a smart ass. So I shut up and tried (unsuccessfully) to compose my face. The lady turned back with a sniff of disdain. The emcee rolled richly along. And then the concert happened, and the music was great.

Still ... a freaking parking lot?

spanking and the state

Yikes, feeling guilty at not blogging more. But life will take over your virtual reality if you let it. Your kids, parents, friends, job and love life will just eat away at your time -- to say nothing of your parents' friends whose kids have love and job problems ... Anyway, my month-after-new-years resolution is to be more responsible towards my online self.

One last Addis thought to share. My hotel was in the middle of extensive gardens, with a swimming area and tree-lined walks. Security was an issue. The gardens were walled, and uniformed guards were stationed at the three or four entrances. The hotel itself had an airport customs-style metal detector set up just inside the front doors. It was all somewhat disconcerting at first, but after a few days I got a truer sense of things.

The guards had uniforms but no weapons or phones. They spent all their time sitting down. Never saw one on his feet. Generally they'd be in a cafeteria style chair, tipped back to lean against a wall, sun shining down on them. (Except that the dozing guy seems to be Asian rather than African, this pic is spot on.) I'd walk by and they'd nod. I thought I might be getting an easy ride because I was a visible minority so I watched, but no. The next guy through would also get a nod, and so would the family after him ... Same story with the metal detector. I'd walk through it and it would go off, and I'd stop, and one of the hotel guys would smile and wave me into the lobby anyway. The couple behind me would go through the detector, and it would go off for each of them, and they too would be smiled at and waved in. The detector went off every single time anyone came into the hotel and no one ever did anything about it.

I'm puzzled. There is the potential for oppression. You are aware of a security presence. You get the feeling that an oppressive act could happen at any time. But it doesn't. And it doesn't. And it keeps on not happening. So is this actually oppression? I don't know. And I don't know what it does to a society. A dad who threatens to spank you all the time but never gets up from the couch is certainly better than a dad who is always spanking. But it's odd parenting.

who to hate?

I hate not knowing who to be mad at. All this anger, you want to direct it at someone or something. Do you know about doctors and phone messages? I just found out, and now I don't know how to feel ...

If one of my kids has an earache and I want to make an appointment at the doctor's office, I must call between 8:30 and 9:00 am. That's my window. If I call before 8:30 I get a recorded message telling me the office is closed, and if I have an emergency please go to the hospital. By 9:00 the slots are all full. So I have this one half hour of grace, thirty minutes to make contact with the office. And -- this is what drove me crazy -- I can not leave a message. The doc does not have a service or a machine. I call, along with every other sick person in town, and get the busy signal, and redial.

Ooh, I used to grit my teeth. I'd have a moaning child in my lap and a receiver in my ear telling me beep-beep-beep that the line was busy, over and over and over and over again. It was the senselessness of it that bothered me the most. My doctor was smart enough to get through medical school, why wasn't he smart enough to install an answering service? Hey, I had an answering service, and no one was calling me with any kind of emergency whatsoever. (Please, Mr Scrimger, can you come to talk to our book club? It's a matter of life and death!!!!) When I asked him about it he shrugged and said they just didn't do things that way. No one does, he said. Jerks, I thought.

And then Sophie enlightened me. I met her at a party and when I found out she was a family doctor my first question was about answering machines. She doesn't have one either. She explained very simply -- as if I (like Jeremy Irons in the stock market movie) was a golden retriever.

If Mr Smith leaves a message on the doctor's machine saying he is having a heart attack, she said, and the doctor doesn't call back for an hour or two, and Mr Smith dies, his heirs can sue the doctor for negligence.

I know, eh?

But ... but that's stupid, I said.

You don't realize how vulnerable family doctors are, she said.

But redialing and redialing seems so inefficient and stupid, I said. It makes me mad. Who can I be mad at?

She shrugged. You can still be mad at the doctor. Knock yourself out. We're used to it. Just don't sue us.

I want my anger to be justified, I said. It's not the doctor's fault. I don't want to blame him. But there's no satisfaction in being angry at a litigious society. Give me a face!

Dr Sophie left to freshen her drink and I haven't seen her since. I called my doctor yesterday sharp at 8:30. When I got the busy signal, I hung up the phone and stared into space.

perspective

Been back for a week now, managed to throw Christmas together without putting a lot of worry into it. Africa puts things into perspective. One of my favorite things about Addis was the way no one seems to be complaining. The place must have its share of whiners, but I didn't meet any. You'd think that leading your leprous grandma around to beg for change was a totally normal thing to do. It was a blazing hot day and our van taxi was stopped to pick up passengers (love the system -- taxi pulls into the stop with a kid yelling the destination out the side window. At the stop are 4 other van taxis going to different places, with 4 other kids yelling their destinations. You can travel all over town for about a quarter.) The little girl in question was calm, neatly dressed, patient. She met my eye, smiled, nodded gravely, and moved on to the next taxi, pulling the old lady after her by her rotting stump.

In the same way, people would tell me about walking 50 or 100 kms to Addis from their village as if it was a normal way to get around. And why did you leave your village? I would ask. My parents died, they would say. That's terrible, I would say, and they would shrug. It happened, and I had to find a place to live. How old were you? I would ask. Twelve, they would say. Or thirteen or fifteen. That's terrible, I would say again, and they would shrug some more and drink their (lovely but oh so strong) coffee. I must have heard that story four or five times, from tough street kids, from twenty year old students, from the sixty-something director of my NGO. And not one trace of sentiment or self-pity, though my director did admit that they were hard years.

Lunch time my first day home Ed said, Dad, would you make me a grilled cheese sandwich? And I had to smile. Sure, I said. Do you want me to cut off the crusts? I'm not knocking my kid, of course. He has to bear his life, as does the little begging girl and the orphans and everyone else. But like I said, I didn't worry quite as much as usual about who got what for Christmas this year.

travel thoughtfully

It's 1:00 Ethiopian time which means 7:00 am, and I am getting ready for breakfast and then my gig. I've been here a few days now and am starting to get the hang of it. For instance, service. You can't do it yourself. There's a chef station in the breakfast room, and a guy in white who whips up a great spiced omelet for you, but you can't carry it to the table. You make an I'll take it gesture, and he shakes his head. A pompous guy in a tux points to a demure waitress, who takes the plate from the chef, ducks her head at you and leads you to your table. She brings you coffee one pot full at a time. (Looks like a standard metal pot but does not spill -- that's impressive). She has to make the first pour, then ducks her head again and leaves and lets you finish.

If you want to take food or drink upstairs to your room -- well, forget it. I tried to carry my last cup out of the restaurant a couple days ago and was chased down the hall by an old guy with a tray shouting, Mister mister and looking really unhappy. I tried to explain my situation to him and he tried to explain his situation to me, and he won because he simply would not allow a guest to carry anything. We marched to my room, him in front with the tray and me behind looking sheepish. It wasn't about money -- I offered but he shook his head and marched away.

I don't really like being waited on but it's not my country and I'm not going to insist. Maybe this is a way to deal with unemployment. Everyone gets a little something to do. Like the ladies I saw sweeping the walk in the courtyard of the ministry where I am teaching. I was early yesterday (rare for me) and the sessions started late, so I was able to observe them for almost 45 minutes. There were three of them with brooms and dustpans. The first swept a small section of walkway, the second scraped the leavings into the dustpan and slid them carefully into the third lady's bucket. Then they switched jobs and moved on. I watched in fascination. The tiled walkway was maybe as long as two first downs and no wider than a residential sidewalk. Someone with a leaf blower would have finished in a minute or two. After 45 minutes these ladies were less than half way down the walk.

This is not me making fun of primitive ways of working. Not at all. A leaf blower is never a better answer. I did feel some initial frustration at observed inefficiency -- very similar to my feeling last year watching a large road crew take an entire week to dig up and then fill a hole in my street. (Their work to chat ratio was lower than the sweepers, and the project was completed at umpteen thousand times the cost and mess.) But the three women seemed to be enjoying themselves, and the work was so dogged and painstaking and plain weird to me that it wasn't long before I was hypnotized. Got me pondering on the importance of efficiency. Why do we care so much? What is there about the finishing that matters more than the doing? Maybe there is something to be said for driving slowly through life...

But now of course I am running late and have to hurry if I'm going to enjoy my omelet and coffee. I'd order room service but I am afraid of how many people would show up.

does anybody really know ...

So, Addis Ababa. It's a real city, in that there are masses of people on the roads and sidewalks, walking and arguing, smiling and sitting around, driving with hands on the horn and heads out the window (love the drivers here -- no sense of lanes or right of way, plenty of smiles, and horns as conversation), selling food and I don't know what and shoes (lots of shoes, seeming like pretty good quality though I am no judge) and generally doing their best to get along and have some fun in the process. It helps that the sun is shining. It may help that it is Sunday and hardly anyone has to work. And it may be that I am missing something. I won't lie to you guys -- there's a whole lot here that I don't get.

Like the guys in the uniforms. They seem to pop up all over the place. I haven't seen a lot of consistency but there are brass buttons and caps and stripes galore. No guns, no agenda that I can work out, but they stay where they are, at ease mostly, and we regular walking-around guys leave them alone.

I say we but I kind of stand out. I am not a regular guy here. The gifts of a city are invisibility and unconcern, and they don't apply to me here. I get stared at. Not heckled or approached, but noticed. I did not see any other white folks on my walk. None. I don't think I was in a tough part of town. The streets were wide and there were all sorts of women and babies and old folks walking calmly. But no tourists except me.

I am gradually getting used to the time thing. After 24 hours on airplanes crossing who knows how many zones, I have no sense beyond day and night. My various electronic devices tell conflicting stories. Computer: 5:13 am. Cell phone: 11:14 am. Wrist watch: 1:15 pm. I set my watch to the clock in Tesfaye's car last night. It said 10:00 but I know that car clocks lie. (I still haven't switched mine to daylight savings.) When I asked him whether the time was correct he shrugged.

Sometimes in Ethiopia when we say 10:00 we mean 4:00 pm, he told me.
I nodded but had to ask: Um, why?
4:00 pm is ten hours past sunrise, he said.
Of course, I said. But what do you do at night? Do you call 5:00 am 23:00?
He laughed heartily. He's got a good laugh.
At night we sleep, he said.

So when I say I am getting used to the time thing I mean I am getting used to not knowing. With luck I may get around to not caring.

me straight him funny

The problem -- no, not the problem; my problem -- with Frog And Toad Are Friends as a subject for close textual analysis, is that I wouldn't be able to do it without laughing at myself. I have enough trouble taking myself seriously under normal -- even harrowing -- circumstances. So the picture of me poring over these stories comma by comma, discussing how Lobel achieves his comic and revelatory effects ... well, I just had to shake my head. Like taking a spade to a souffle, as someone said, reviewing PG Wodehouse.

So I did a Saki story instead. That's him in the pic looking characteristically somber. He may not be as brilliant as Lobel but he's pretty brilliant. And easier to analyse without feeling like a piece of fruit. Turned out to be a good choice since my instructor is a big fan, and we had a lengthy discussion about Saki's place in the continuum of a certain kind of English humorist stretching from Wilde to Kingsley Amis.

You probably know Saki. A lot of his famous stuff has a surprising chilling flavour -- "Tobermory" or "The Reticence of Lady Anne" or "The Open Window" -- and these are great great stories. But I have a soft spot for his goofy surreal side, where he launches on a fugue of weird fantasy that takes the humour point and just runs away over the horizon with it. Wilde doesn't do that. Waugh doesn't do that. Leacock does it now and then, and Twain, but not as well as Saki. Anyway, it makes me howl with laughter. If you don't know "The Talking-Out Of Tarrington," give it a read.