To Live or Not to Live

Although I’ve just been here for a couple days, I’ve seen so many things I hadn’t seen in my life. When I got picked up at the airport, we had to drive a few hours to get to the farm. On the way, we stopped at a lomyat, a big supermarket, and had our vehicle guarded by security. Only here in the capital city, you can buy stuff like Nutella. Prices in Ethiopia are way down compared to Holland, but for this particular product you can pay almost 10 euros! At a little café, we had some delicious coffee, Ethiopia is known for its plantations, and a big piece of cake. This was a place for the rich people, only us and some other rich people can afford it.

Driving in the city requires a high level of alertness. Every moment you can be forced to stop because of cattle of any kind or people crossing the road. If you were to hit a goat, for example, they’ll make you pay. Ethiopians will not easily rob you in public, but when it comes to these cases, they’ll let you bleed. The dead animal was always the best of the herd, and definitely pregnant, regardless of its gender. Speaking of this, we heard a funny story today. There is a lady working at the farm, who was expecting a boy, the doctor had said. When it arrived yesterday, they declared it was a girl after all. Well, that can happen to the best of us. But today a doctor came to check the baby and they found out it was actually a boy. Really people?

Anyways, when we were driving on the way to the farm, a truck in front of us swerved, but still managed to hit a dog. Beautiful one. Two wheels driving over it must certainly have broken all the bones in the body. The dog was still wriggling and crying till we were out of sight. In the middle of the city we saw a donkey laying, body stiff as if it wasn’t real.

Life and death is daily routine here. The boys got little baby goats yesterday, today I saw six chickens slaughtered for the soup. Ethiopian culture expects the guys to do the slaughtering and the girls do the cleaning. Using an axe to kill the animal is ‘not done’, instead a blunt knife is used to sever the head from the body. All the jumping and the running can’t protect the animals from dropping dead after a couple minutes. Then, the cleaning lady gets to do the rest. The chickens are put in hot water, the remains of the head are removed and the skin is torn from the body. Max, the dog, has a good day.

They have a good collections of animals here on the farm. Besides the chickens, there are cows, goats, sheep and in my bedroom, rats. I woke up the first night from noises coming out of my open suitcase. Plastic creaking. I laid in bed, imagining a cute little mouse eating my stroopwafels, but it turned out, it’s just rats living here. The chickens are usually imported from the Netherlands, but because of the corona they now have Ethiopian ones. They use Ethiopian ways to keep them healthy. When I entered the barns on the first day, a whiff of ammoniac greeted me. Rows of cages, stacked four high, feed circulating on little assembly line. A little further they were doing the work. In one barn, they were cutting the beaks of the chickens. This is to prevent the chickens from seriously hurting their roommates with their beaks. They use a little machine to chop off a piece, little drops of blood on the floor and a stench of burned hair. You see, things gotta be done and they have ways for it. In Holland they use a laser and the point of the beak falls off after a couple days. Here they have a pail of milky water, with pieces of paracetamol in it.

In the past few weeks there has been a bit of unrest in the country. The Oromo people, one of the bigger tribes in Ethiopia, lost a famous singer. The result, danger. Roadblocks, burning tires and there the Federales come. After some shots in the air, they start the real work. Machine-guns are pointed at the public and they’ll start shooting. In a country with more than hundred million people, lives don’t count. If you get stuck in the chaos, you are in serious danger. Mouth caps, plastic screens and disposable gloves won’t help you there. Nor the fact that you’re a foreigner. Like most African countries, instability rules. The Ethiopians don’t have hope for the future, they wanna survive today. They don’t have the opportunity of a helicopter picking them up when tensions start to get worse. They are stuck when a civil war would tear up the country. And yet, they smile. They work, or they don’t, but they live another day. Happy.