Culture shock

I guess what I was feeling was culture shock.
Someone described culture shock as the disorienting feeling you get when you expect one thing to happen because that is what has always happened and you get the opposite.
It was Christmas day and the owner of a downtown Konso restaurant invited us for lunch.
As soon as we sat down to eat, there was commotion outside. People were running down the street from all directions toward the traffic circle. They were shouting and waving to each other to follow.
I thought it was a terrible car accident.
I thought it was a parade or some kind of cultural display. Whatever it was, people were excited.
Everyone in the restaurant ran to the door to watch whatever it was.
I asked.
"There's a man with a monkey face," he said.
The American with me - sure we misunderstood - laughed and said, "OK. I guess I would go see that."
We laughed at the ridiculousness of the idea.
I've never had my laughter shut off so quickly.
My heart sank and I felt sick.
A man walked by the restaurant followed by people. He had Downs Syndrome. He was mute, someone said. His attention was focused on an old cassette Walkman he was carrying. He seemed oblivious to the pointing, to the crowd. He was dressed in nothing but a long, torn tank top.
A man in the restaurant asked if I would take a photo.
I hated Ethiopia in that moment. Their reaction was so naked and childish and cruel and unembarrassed.
I had to get away from them, to be alone. I barely touched my Christmas lunch.

*****
Fortunately, I could not hide from Ethiopia forever because I had plans to eat Christmas dinner with a neighbor.
Even though the neighbor is Muslim and even though it isn't a holiday in Ethiopia, he wanted us to have something special.
The neighbor is a farmer and the owner of shops in town. Unlike the mud and straw homes of so many others, his home was made of concrete with many rooms, electricity, a TV and cushioned chairs to receive guests.
The people he invited to dinner were a veritable Konso Rotary Club, the town's movers and shakers - a doctor, a teacher, business owners.
They spoke perfect English and wanted to talk about politics, health care and the state of the world. And it was a chance to ask about all the cultural things we had witnessed but not understood.
They served a soup made of sesame harvested from the farm and local honey. Delicious.

We learned:
* The Konso people have elaborate rituals surrounding death. When someone dies - someone important to the tribe or the family - a statue is carved out of wood in their likeness and erected on their grave or inside the family compound.
Great care and ritual is taken to pass life and power from one generation to the next.
Within a family compound, you can tell how many generations have lived there by the tall stone markers encircling the home.

We learned:
* That in the Konso culture, the women do most of the farm work.
Many time during my stay here, Konso man pointed to the women and said, "See how hard they work. See how much they carry." They seemed proud of it.
And I would see the old women stooped and walking slowly up the hill with loads of firewood or bags of potatoes on their backs.
* Until recently girls were not allowed to go to school.
"The family sees that the girl will grow up and marry and join her husband's tribe. So there is no reason to invest in her."

The sun went down and the electricity went out and we sat in the dark by candlelight.
The teacher decided to tell us a folk tale from the Konso culture - a story parents tell their children.
The moral of the story was that everything has a purpose, even if it isn't obvious at the time - waste nothing, be grateful for everything.
The story was long and detailed and the telling of it lasted almost an hour.
And my mind wandered in and out of the story as I watched the shape of the man's shadow on the empty wall behind him - moving and flickering with the candlelight.