Carole TenBrink: Ethiopia, excerpts

            in Addis Ababa

As my foot steps down

On the tarmac

Donkey smell, hyena musk

Whiff of the lion of Judah

It’s Addis Ababa.

*

One of the early days

Walking alone in Addis.

A frail body

Slumps down the wall.

Through protruding teeth

One last breath passes

Others go by the human lump.

Someone covers the face.

Market day continues.

*

I put my money down for Tej beer.

‘Don’t’                       the waiter chastises

‘turn his majesty’s face down.’

Affront echoes back to King Solomon

And the Queen of Sheba.

*

            in Tigre

Tizghe’s three year old body

Is something I love.

High forehead, a shapely skull

Rounded with braids.

The garlic amulet around her neck

Given with Wogesha,

Witch doctor’s murmurs.

Tizghe’s mother often puts her

In my arms, asking ‘ebakish, awo….’

Take her, take her.  I ache

Looking in those dark shiny eyes,

Sign of a clever spirit.

*

Tzghe’s mother invites me over

To visit Adigrat village women.

Amid formal greetings ‘Tin ey stelhen’

I’m admiring white washed cement walls

Where embroidered picture gleam.

Tadese, our village boy-wonder

Translates for me as they ask

*

‘Ebakish… let down your long

blond hair’.  Each woman comes near

strokes from my crown

slowly, all the way down my back.

I feel like a ritual icon.

Tadese sees my unease & smiles.

‘They think you are part woman

Part sacred horse

With a long wild mane’.

*

            towards home

Last days in Addis Ababa

At the Mercato market

I grow brazen

Engage the stall keeper in fierce bargaining.

I’m after a woven basket

For local value.  He barters up, gesturing

I barter down, smiling, until

We part friends, knowing

We can deal

With one another.

*

Back in New York, at a super market

Chickens packaged up

Row on row

Aisles upon miles of goods.

My eyes roll

Remembering that one

Live, scrawny chicken

I ever saw in Adigrat.

Hearing again, Abbai, blue Nile’s

Thunderous deluge in my ears

holding Tekeste’s hand

As we rushed down the rock of Lalibela,

Earth of my awakening.

My stomach turns….

I put the money, George Washington’s

face down and run.

Carole TenBrink is a Montreal-based performance poet and storyteller.