lunch in debre markos

I had never before taken a bus trip to get from one place to another that involved a stop for lunch. But the second time we pulled onto the side of the road to stop, everyone piled out and into the nearby restaurants. The first time we stopped was for a pee break, which was not hard to figure out because, well, we were in the middle of nowhere and everyone split up by gender to turn their backs or look for a bush. But this time I was unsure of what to do, because all I really wanted was to eat last night's leftover pizza which I had brought along. However, with the throngs of people from the buses and passersby and boys selling gum and oranges and packet of tissues, it seemed impossible to just pull out food and start eating. So I stood for a moment somewhat stupidly and considered my options.

A couple sitting out in front of the nearest cafe gestured to me. I walked over; 'Join us, would you like to sit?' the man asked. 

'Thank you. But really what I'd like to do after the last six hours is stand,' I replied, smiling, sitting down anyway.  He smiled, she smiled. 'We are a bit foreign as well,' he said, acknowledging my awkwardness gently. 'We are from Germany,' he added. They were Ethiopian by ethnicity, but German by residency, he explained. His wife was a nurse, working in a hospital not far from Frankfurt.

We talked about how terrible the road was, what our travel plans were, a bit about Botswana in comparison. When their 'tibs' (bits of roasted meat sizzling in a clay pot) and injera arrived, they asked if I wanted to try. I begged vegetarian, and excused myself, hoping I was not being too rude. They did not seem offended.

I walked off the main road a little ways, skeptically marveling at the signs for computer stores with banners proclaiming access to Gmail and Yahoo and Skype. There were also lots of corrugated tin shops selling fruit and cigarettes and bottles of water. The sides of road were russet mud, separated from chunks of tar by ditches full of garbage that seemed poised to overflow and retake the narrow rough strip of asphalt that passed for a highway.

It started to rain. After the dry of the last five months in Botswana, I did not mind. But then it started to pour. I ducked under an overhang in front of another computer shop to wait.

A small boy darted up from my right, slightly behind me as if he had not quite decided that he wanted me to see him. I waited for him to ask me for something, as nearly every other child who had come up to me in the last few days had. The poverty here is grinding, pervasive, filling space like smoke, worse than anything I have seen elsewhere in Africa and honestly, from my limited experience, in India too. So I waited to be asked for something, with that mix of dread and guilt and compassion and anger that simmers when I want to help, but remain at a loss of really knowing what to do, and it never gets any easier.

But he didn't ask. He didn't make a sound. He just stood at the perfect edge of my field of view, looking at me. He was perhaps five years old, wearing a dirt-patterned tan sweater and navy track pants with stripes of red and white down each leg, neither of which were really red or white any more. His expression was plaintive, perhaps the most direct look I have ever been given by someone I did not already know - reaching but not pleading, curious but not intrusive, open but not completely unafraid.

I was still hoping to eat my leftovers, but I knew there was no way I could do it in front of him. I'd share, I thought. Then I wondered what the odds were that the child had ever seen pizza, despite its being everywhere in Ethiopia like a weirdly delicious leftover of the Italian Fascist occupation, or if the rich cheese might make him sick if he did eat it, dairy not being a usual part of Ethiopian food in general and much less that of a kid on the street.

Instead, I reached into my bag for a granola bar. I smiled, leaning forward to hand it to him, a peanut butter pretzel, one of my favorites and I hoped, a flavor he would like. He accepted it gravely, and carefully tore at the plastic, ripping it open just enough to start eating as he perched on the concrete lip at the base of the storefront. The bar looked huge in his tiny hands, and he ate deliberately, not ravenously as I had thought he might or protectively to hide what he had - just like he was appreciating something precious and not taking a single mouthful for granted. I took out my slice of pizza and we ate together, just barely out of the downpour, chewing slowly as the sound of the water drowned all other noise into the background.

Suddenly the boy shouted, pointing at my feet. Water was swirling around my right shoe, backflow from the rain that cascaded down the side of the building. I grinned and stepped closer to him, out of the growing puddle. He triumphantly finally managed to remove the entire wrapper from the bar, and flung the crackly plastic maybe three feet out in front of him onto the dirt-wet concrete with relish.

A few minutes passed, and another boy approached us, this one perhaps ten or eleven years old, carrying a bundle of branches with neat-cut ends and waxy dark green leaves. This was chat, a mildly narcotic leaf that is a huge part of the Ethiopian economy even as it is illegal in most surrounding countries. It is meant to be chewed slowly, tucked into one's cheek and then turned over and over in the mouth to release a high that is said to be best experienced with others while sitting around talking. 

The boy looked at me and brought his fingers to his mouth; I brought out another granola bar and extended it to him. He looked puzzled, unsure of what I was offering. The little boy saw his hesitation and immediately piped up from below, apparently telling the older one in no uncertain terms that he should take it - which he did, tucking it safely into his shirt pocket. He looked at me again, still rather grave but with some of the serious worn off, and then he reached into his bundle of branches, wrapping his narrow fingers around a single stem and starting to pull. It was a trade, I realized. He wanted to give me something in return.

I put my hand out to stop him and shook my head; 'It's ok,' I said, knowing he would not understand the words but figuring he would understand what I meant. He nodded and walked back out into the rain.

I stood there a few more minutes, and the rain let up a bit. I heard a bus horn and figured I had better go back, not sure if it was my bus but not wanting to find out the hard way. I turned to the little boy, still sitting on the concrete, and I smiled. His face burst into a grin for the first time, beaming at me in the rain, still carefully chewing little bites of peanut butter pretzel. I waved. He waved. And back to the bus I went, dodging red rivulets pouring down the road and climbing back up into the bus - the last one to come back from lunch.