When in Ethiopia, drink the ‘right’ beer

Written by DEVAPRIYO DAS

Wednesday, 08 July 2009 17:03

We were sitting by the placid waters of Lake Tana, source of the Blue Nile, and drinking the country’s best-known lagers. They are refreshingly light, their bottles bear bright labels with flowering Amharic script and pictures of St. George and the Dragon – symbols synonymous with Ethiopian culture. I noticed that our companion, Tafese, a successful hotelier in the Bahir Dar region of northern Ethiopia, was drinking a Dashen. But that was not surprising because if you want to do well in business or just about anything else in Ethiopia, you need to be on the Dashen side of life. “It is important to know which brand of beer you are drinking in Ethiopia,” warned Tafese. “If it’s ‘Dashen’, it means you are with the government, and just by the way, it’s a very good beer! ‘St. George’ is also okay, but then you are with the opposition.” A federal republic, the country has been ruled since 1993 by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, which manages a tightly controlled political system while promoting a semi-liberalised economy. All key sectors such as transport infrastructure, water, sanitation and healthcare are managed by the state, which strictly regulates entrepreneurial activities. Government control even extends to mobile telephone networks and internet provision (both run as state monopolies), television networks, and radio. The rationale behind a strict regime is growth and stability. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who has led the country since its emergence from decades of feudal monarchy and Marxist dictatorship, maintains that national unity and development goals must be achieved before any idea of liberalised politics can be entertained. On the surface, his system seems to work. The capital city of Addis Ababa has wide, tarmac streets, clean pavements, and functioning street lamps. Towering skyscrapers, orderly apartment blocks and low-rise shopping malls line the busy thoroughfares. Public transport – taxis and minibuses – is orderly and cheap. The bureaucracy is efficient, and civic discipline is maintained, perhaps owing to the numerous policemen on the streets. Precision-engineered highways negotiate steep hills and dramatic gorges that abound in the country, while hydroelectric projects on the Blue Nile provide power to numerous urban centres. Where there are no serviceable roads, Ethiopian Airways can still take you there in dubious propeller-engine aircraft. MIRACLES Days after my Dashen conversation, I looked down from just such an aircraft at the mountain stronghold of Lalibela. This remote town harbours an ancient wonder: twelve churches, each roughly 800 years old, cut straight from living, red rock. What is more, they are all built underground, linked to each other by a maze of subterranean passageways. Antaneh, my local guide, assured me that “King Lalibela built these churches with the assistance of angels on his return from Jerusalem.” It is easy to believe; only a celestial being could have conceived these churches with their towering columns, intricate carvings, vaulted ceilings and baptismal pools, and yet, have fashioned them so cunningly, that it is impossible to tell they exist even when one is within 20 metres of them. Inside, white-robed monks and priests filled the gloom with their hypnotic chanting in the dead, holy language of Ge’ez. And by the light trickling through the cruciform windows, the bright colours of 17th-century parchment paintings depicting the lives of Solomon and Sheba, of Jesus Christ, the Martyrs, and of course, the ubiquitous St. George slaying the Dragon, emerged from the shadows. The need to go underground was prompted by aggressive 16th century Islamic invasions of Ethiopia’s indigenous Coptic Church. Today, despite attacks from busloads of camera-wielding, safari-suited European tourists who swamp these sites, it is still possible to walk in the shadow of Lalibela’s ancient stones and feel enveloped by a divine presence. TIGHT ECONOMY Yet, ancient divinity and power can scarcely shield modern Ethiopia from enormous human challenges. Lalibela’s riches are set amidst poverty-stricken countryside: mud-and-wattle houses with thatched roofs, scrawny cows and horses, long queues at boreholes, women and men with enormous loads of firewood on their backs, everyone attempting to coax life out of the bare earth. Addis itself, although home of the African Union Parliament, the UN Security Council Mission to Africa, and to 108 diplomatic missions (the most after New York), is also home to thousands of street urchins who rise like ghosts every morning from the city’s sewers and vast slums, joining throngs of beggars, hustlers, pickpockets and prostitutes. Ethiopia languishes seven places from the bottom of the UN’s Human Development Index, and one can see why. The country is overwhelmingly reliant on agriculture, which employs nearly 80% of its workforce. But as the government owns all land, which it leases out to tenants, both productivity and entrepreneurship tend to be stifled. It is however, encouraging value-addition to agro-products, and local stores are stacked with indigenously processed bread, lentils, spices, beer, honey, wines, leather goods and tea. But with 50% of the population living in absolute poverty, these goods remain agonisingly out of reach. Coffee remains the nation’s biggest source of revenue, earning Ethiopia over $525 million in 2007-08 owing to its high demand at home and in overseas markets. Unusual for African coffee-growing nations, Ethiopia also consumes a large portion of the crop locally, since coffee drinking is integral to its social life. Coffee also helps lighten the gloom when the government restricts freedom of the press, jails political dissidents or outlaws opposition political parties. Rebellious tendencies have long existed here, as testified by the protracted rebel insurgency in Ogaden (bordering Somalia), and the deep-frozen relations with neighbouring Eritrea, which seceded from Ethiopia in 1993. These unhappy rumblings linked with the increasing clamour of dissident voices both at home and amongst the Ethiopian in Diaspora, are likely to intensify as the country heads for the polls in May 2010—when the country’s unique system of governance might be sorely tested. In a recent interview with the Financial Times of London, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi declared that “There is no disagreement on the principal that the old leadership needs to go and a new leadership needs to take full power… My personal position is that I have had enough.” That a revolutionary, guerrilla leader who governed his country with iron discipline for 18 years, is considering early retirement has surprised many.  Indeed, he would be a rare African leader should he leave office before his term ends. Until that happens, I cannot help wondering that Ethiopia’s regime seems rather like Lalibela’s churches: underground, hard to access, but fascinating when you encounter it. Names have been changed to protect identities.