stuck inside of asmara with the agordat blues again

monday was an orthodox christian holiday, mescal (sp?). i don't know much about mescal (not even how to spell it), except that it has something to do with the cross, and that the eritrean coptics burn a big bonfire. the story goes that if the bonfire collapses eastward, it will be a good year. if it collapses westward, it will be bad year. i was there to witness the westward fall.

but this is bad news only to those who lack imagination. the creative interpretation around town is that last year the eastward fall was followed by a shite year, so this year the westward fall means, as otis redding, sam cooke and aretha promised us, a change is gonna come. let's hope so. maybe we can even make it so. that is, if we still believe in such passe ideas as agency.

i spent the holiday with my friend tesfaldet, which meant consuming mass ammounts of fluids with serious chemical agency--5 cups of coffee, 2 asmara beers, some home-brewn bread-fermented sewa, and two shots of the 38% alcohol content zibib. i was in slow motion, that is slower motion than my usual challenged pace, for the next few hours.

i've been in asmara since september 12. you could even say i've been "trapped" in asmara since september 12, if you wish to be inflammatory. but i have learned the ways of the gentle breeze and the westward fall, i have learned how to whisper with my lips while i scream with my heart. it took me about 12 days to renew my work permit, and it's going to take me about 12 days to renew my residence permit. unfortunately, these 2 processes cannot be completed concurrently. it will take me around 10 days to get my travel permit (fortunately, this process may be completed concurrently with either of the above). i cannot enter agordat without a special travel permit for foreigners, just as i can't leave agordat without applying for the same permit. some of the indian teachers in agordat joke, when they wish to be inflammatory, that we are under town arrest.

i went to the port town of massawa 2 weekends ago. if you remember, while on my way to the same town last year i flew over the handlebars of my bike. i cleverly avoided accidents this time around, by choosing to ride a bus rather than my bike, and had enough energy leftover to actually explore massawa, a town that is notorious for its heat. as we walked to our hotel rooms, a new kenyan volunteer, george, confided in me, "i've travelled all over kenya, and i've never been to a place that's as hot as this." a year in "eritrea's hottest city," as many call agordat, must have finally made me robust in at least one sense of the word. i was actually quite surprised by what felt like, to me, massawa's pleasant breeze.

what my sorry injured self couldn't notice last year is how gorgeous massawa is. stunning in it's beauty, poignant in its visible history. massawa was heavily bombed by ethiopian forces during eritrea's independence struggle, and the architectural scars remain, leaving one to only imagine the horrors of the human cost.

last week i also visited the village of himbirti, apparently eritrea's largest village. which made me wonder, are you sure it's not the smallest town? anyhow, geo-philosophical ponderings aside, it's quite a picturesque village with a nearby man-made lake, mountain-range views, and breezin' highlands weather.

a few more days and i'll be back in agordat, teaching. can't really imagine it now. the future is always unimaginable to me until it's present. and even then it seems like imagination. i must have some reality-grasping disorder, which serves me well, b/c otherwise i don't think i could handle the reality of things...