maybe time travel is possible after all

I’ve just returned from Ethiopia. For four years in high school I had a good friend whose parents had come to the States from Ethiopia as young people and had ended up staying there to raise their family. This friend and his entire family were brilliant, striking and interesting. This friendship probably made Ethiopia the first African country that I started to understand as its own unique country and culture, rather than just a name of a place on a continent where I vaguely thought there was mile upon mile of sameness.

Eight years after I last saw this friend, I took my first trip to Africa and began to fall in love with the people, the culture, the diversity of the various countries I visited. But still I had never made it to Ethiopia. That took nearly another eight years.

My Ethiopian friends tell me now, however, that it didn’t take me quite as long as I thought. Proudly declaring that they have “13 months of sunshine,” Ethiopia’s calendar runs separately of the calendar I have always known. This past September, the country celebrated the millennium. The typical jokes they receive about running very late are countered with a reminder that we should be very glad to know that in Ethiopia we are 7 years and 9 months younger than usual.

Using this same logic, we figured out that since my first visit to Africa occurred when I went to Tanzania in 2001, and it is right now 2000 in Ethiopia … well, my first country to visit in Africa was Ethiopia! Are you sufficiently confused?

Among the Ethiopian people you find a wonderful range of skin tones, from a light yellow-brown to stunning purple-black. And everywhere you see big, open, friendly smiles that are in pleasant contrast with their soft-spoken, gentle, deferential demeanors.

Coming to Ethiopia after visiting and learning about many other countries and cultures over the last decade, I find myself using these others as a reference to describe what I found there. Soft-spoken voices, striking traditional clothing, spicy sauces and an emphasis on education that bear strong resemblance to India. Music, dance and language reminiscent of the Middle East. The wide white smiles of East and West Africa. Independently courting and marrying a spouse of one’s choosing (and often waiting till one’s late-20s to mid-30s to do so) like so much of the West -- and so UNlike almost all their neighbors.

All these comparisons served to help me at once contextualize this culture I was visiting and also appreciate how unique and “other” this beautiful country is – as indeed every country is, if we only can take the time to recognize it. Much as I have grown to enjoy the familiarity and understanding that comes with going back to places like Uganda and Tanzania and now Rwanda again and again, this trip also allowed me to remember how much fun it is to experience a new place as well.

English is quite widespread in Ethiopia, which I find extremely impressive. The Ethiopian alphabet is a series of characters -- with the same roots as Arabic and Hebrew -- called Amharic. As I understood the description, the alphabet consists of twenty-something consonant-type starting sounds, each with seven possible vowel-type following sounds. Combined, these make up all the possible sounds of the language, so Amharic is entirely phonetic.

In the good schools, by seventh grade the students’ day is entirely in English. Which means that by 13 these children have learned not only a whole new alphabet, but an entirely different spelling and pronunciation system. Trying to fill my head with Kinyarwanda at the moment, I found that I could never really get past “salam” -- or “hello” -- in my Amharic lessons on this trip.

I did learn one other … well, not word exactly. I guess you’d say I learned one more sound. I remember traveling to India a few years ago and being a bit confused when I asked questions only to get a response of head-bobbing that was a sort of a cross between a US “no” and “so so,” accompanied by a verbal “yes.” After a few days I realized that this was how they nodded yes in India. I thought of this again during this past week in Ethiopia.

Within my first few hours there, the person to whom I was talking had a quick intake of breath. I paused for a moment because it was the kind of sound I often make when I’ve suddenly thought of something that I forgot to do. However, she seemed to be waiting for me to continue and so I did. Only to have her gasp similarly several times through the rest of the conversation, making me decide that she was having hiccups.

In a bit, I was conversing with someone else. Same thing. I would be sharing some detail only to have them respond with that sudden “hhhhp.” More hiccups? Next I overheard one side of a phone conversation and there it was again. And I finally realized that this is a sound of agreement. It’s a “right, I’m listening, I’m right there with you” sort of sound. Even once I figured this out though, it still caused me to pause at times, waiting for them to say something like “I forgot to turn the oven off!”

Another one of those funny language/interpretation differences right here in Rwanda is the word for no: oya. It is pronounced almost exactly like the US informal “oh yeah” — in other words, “yes.” It can get especially confusing among people who speak what I’ve decided to call Kinyarwenglish, which is fairly common due to the number of people who have returned to Rwanda after years in the US, Europe and neighboring English-speaking countries like Uganda and Kenya. Tone becomes essential in figuring out if they are agreeing or disagreeing.

Much as I enjoyed my time (and the people and the coffee and the food) in Ethiopia, I found myself looking forward to returning to Rwanda. Each time I travel somewhere and then return here once again it seems to help this feel a little more like home. My house is still empty, but as I write this I am sitting on the front veranda of my little house, looking out at the trees and flowers and shrubs of my own place, and the hills of Kigali stretching out beyond my gate. The air is pleasant and the view is beautiful and I’m happy to be here.