Sept. 10-11, after midnight, Addis Ababa
As America approaches a painful anniversary, people here are getting ready to celebrate. In Ethiopia, Sept. 11 is New Year's Day. The Julian calendar is used here. A year is 13 months, so Ethiopia is seven years "behind" the rest of the world. It's about to welcome in 1999.
Everyone is wishing each other a happy new year and feeling festive and hopeful about new beginnings. But it's an odd irony, this date. An Ethiopian man who lived in the United States told me that for five years, the Ethiopians there haven't felt right celebrating their new year.
Here, New Year's Eve is observed with lively parties, dancing and fireworks. I have to get up at 4:30 a.m. to catch a flight north, so I've opted for bed. But the drumming and music and fireworks continue loudly through the night, so there is no sleep.
The Americans I'll be traveling with from here on arrived today. There are journalists, family-planning advocates and policy strategists and Ethiopian interpreters. We were briefed at a reception this evening in a restaurant set high above the city, with a stunning view. Heard about the high infant mortality and maternal death rates, the economy, the decimation of the environment, the AIDS epidemic and the backward slide in family planning. With an average of 5.2 kids per family, it's hard for families to climb out of poverty, but family planning has taken a back seat in recent years to AIDS-fighting efforts. As for education, there may be 80 to 120 kids in a classroom. Even by Africa's low educational standards, one speaker said, Ethiopia's schools are among the worst.
Earlier, visited the Addis Ababa Museum, a rather listless place heavy on old photos uninspiringly arranged. Next door was a more lively trade show, where people shopped for household goods, toiletries, clothes, honey and everything else conceivable as loud, lively Ethiopian music blared from stereos.
