A post I first published in Womeninplaces. It already feels slightly outdated as new impressions take shape. In any case, here it goes.
Thus, when traveling in the territory of Ersilia, you come upon the ruins of abandoned cities, without the walls which do not last, without the bones of the dead which the wind rolls away: spider webs of intricate relationships seeking a form.
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
It has been almost two months since my arrival to Ethiopia. Even though it has been a short time, I have already gone through a number of impressions, all misleadingly solid and all leading me to the next stage of adjustment.
As fleeting as they might be, these first impressions have allowed me to attempt to understand what this new city is made of. As if I was trying and testing my surroundings, I have inadvertently been applying my own analytical perspective to Addis in the hope that it might help me grasp a reality I have never encountered before. What I also realise now is that I had been mentally preparing myself for the unknown I was to face in a place like this; protecting my sense of reality by making acceptable a landscape that perhaps should never be acceptable in the first place.
First and foremost, I am a foreigner. In this first stage of my adaptation to Addis, I was very much aware of the colour of my skin, like never before. To my surprise, I hardly saw foreigners in the streets. I saw the hundreds of NGO’s boards that betrayed the foreign presence. And perhaps I should make a note here to explain that at least my idea of what streets look like and what they function for is a very different one to what any street in Addis stands for. As Doreen Massey claims, space is always political, in the sense that the heterogeneous nature of societies are tamed by spatial strategies and regulation from above. So what does it mean that my understanding of place in the case of Addis is a very fragmented sort of public space, with parts of it being developed, parts being neglected? These are places that could hardly be part of the urban essence of any city as they belong to what I understand as rural ways of living, and still they are a part of it.
But can a city be the consequence of accidental events? Furthermore, isn’t every urban space an ongoing process of both calculated efforts and unplanned encounters? I guess this is the key question. My experience of urban spaces demonstrates the varying nature of their urban language and how it is codified. AbdouMaliq Simone’s lectures provided me with new questions about our urban experience: as I leave my flat in Hackney, do I expect a smooth journey in the city that follows an ordered pattern which leaves no option for the unknown to strike? I can safely say that the further I moved from those so-called “global cities” the more opportunities I have had to be surprised by unanounced events. Another question deriving from this argument is, what is it that has made a big majority in those “global cities” so weary about the unexpected? When we can predict the course of every step we are about to take, when we expect every decision and its consequence to run smoothly, aren’t we becoming a boring reflection of ourselves?
But at the same time, unpaved roads, lack of drains, access to water and lighting, poor sanitary conditions and so on are hardly justifiable, particularly in a country where the most noticeable building sites are giving way to shiny offices and hotels for the very rich. Moreover, it is not that these services are inaccessible to all. It is a matter of class distinction who can use what. I do not believe it’s mere coincidence that the word fordevelopment in Amharic is also used for control.
So what are we left with? It is not a city placed somewhere on the imaginary timeline between developing and developed, even though that has been sold as the unquestionable and natural course of events. In a city like Addis multiple actors play their role, allowing for more or less influence from other players. In my own experience of the city, those first impressions that made me think the role of the foreigner was inescapable changed. I am able to see day by day how every imposed label is actually a matter of practice. I can choose to fulfill my role of foreigner or “farangi” to perfection. If I were to do that I would avoid by all means the so-called public space. I wouldn’t mix, I wouldn’t talk too much with those living in different contidions. I would frequent the few 5 star hotels, the diplomatic dinners and the international schools. I would pretend I don’t see the catalogue of illnesses and disease that people display in order to ask for money in the street. I would enjoy without further questioning a status bestowed upon me for simply being white in a black country ravaged by poverty and lack of democratic rights.
On the other hand, I can attempt to discover the narrow spaces where lines become blurred, never totally of course; accept that very status of privilege without ever forgetting the nature of the privilege; acknowledge the fact that foreign policies have a lot to do with the process of legitimization of a non-democracy whilst appreciating that the only ones able to rule themselves are the Ethiopians in this case; understand the nature of this new concept of public space, whilst measuring my own impact on its fabric; be able, after all, of accepting as part of the same reality, that little naked girl I see from my taxi under a storm in the middle of a dirty roundabout and the snacks the Egyptian ambassador is able to offer with a smile, even though the gap between extreme poverty and the rich stretches far enough to succesfully contest reality.
Because it seems that the public space in Addis is to be avoided by all means. Those engulfed by it seem to try to escape it, to trick it with anything that might be useful, to pretend it is not public and accessible by all after all. Those that can afford it, sit comfortably in their private cars, windows up, go from compound to compound, and keep as far away as possible from the neglected unpaved street, where there might be a chance of an unwelcomed encounter. The limits of dwelling, as poor as it might be, seem to always be designed with barriers. If it’s not a private villa with high walls, barbed wire and guards it is a slum with its own entrance doors. The new condominiums are clearly separated from the open spaces. Restaurants and bars try by all means to conceal their patrons; again, any kind of walls will do. What is this public space being cannibalized by all sorts of private space processes? Perhaps this is a public space that was never meant to be. By accident, it became a city. A city in the sense of a number of administrative offices, services, entertainment venues and housing units having been placed in closed proximity. Perhaps this space is simply a spatial canvas, waiting to be tamed by both strategies and tactics (using Michel de Certeau’s terminology), to be used and labelled one way or the other. The streets, paths, roads and roundabouts seem to have been proggresively imposed on an undefinied conglomerate of places. Regardless of Emperor Menelik’s cunning plan to place the foreign embassies in valleys for them to construct the bridges needed to access the city centre, Addis still feels fragmented, where different spaces try to survive as far away as possible of the idea of a common and egalitarian public space; where the development involves the construction of buildings that will remain empty, condominiums that do not totally respond to the needs of the most vulnerable city dwellers and finally the perpetuation of a hierarchical system that hardly allows for interclass mobility.
