And then we were one...again

After 87 days apart I'm happy to announce that we're a family again! The girls arrived from Taipei 台北 (via Dubai) this afternoon, and I couldn't have asked for a better Christmas present. My wife and daughter will now have to go through the same two-week quarantine period at home that I had the "pleasure" of experiencing when I got here 77 days ago. Surprisingly, I don't need to be confined even though we're in the same house, though I am encouraged to keep my distance. To be on the safe side, however, I'm taking the next couple of weeks off,  both to catch up on things, and as an act of solidarity with my loved ones. Now that Amber and Shu-E are back at what passes for "home", we can end this year on a normal note, or at least what counts for "normal" in a year that has been anything but, as we prepare for 2021 and our next assignment (more on that in a moment).

Prior to our reunion, there was the matter of what to do with an unexpected day off. Last week we learned that federal government employees would be given a holiday on Christmas Eve. With nothing else to do, I decided to go to visit another historic church, the Bete Maryam Mausoleum ቤተ ማርያም መቃብር, located not far from the Hilton Addis Ababa. With the area where Menelik II Avenue meets Itega Menen Street being torn up as part of some road improvement project, I knew driving to the church would be difficult if not impossible (it would turn out to more closely approximate the latter), I parked my car at the Hilton and proceeded to walk, following instructions given by Google Maps. Which I should've known better not to do, as I promptly found myself in a neighborhood of unpaved roads and corrugated tin shacks, and lacking running water or a functioning sewage system. I didn't feel threatened, but clearly ferenji like myself were a rare site, even though just a few hundred meters away, healthy-looking white families were enjoying themselves in the Hilton's swimming pool, probably unaware of the squalor on the other side of the parking lot. Merry Christmas!

The Bete Maryam Church was about a twenty-minute walk on the route I'd elected to follow. The Lonely Planet guide to Ethiopia (and Djibouti) had warned me of "surly and unhelpful soldiers", who make visiting the church "problematic", but I didn't see any on the church grounds. In fact, the only security presence was an apologetic woman who scanned me with a metal detector wand just in front of the entrance gate. My lone encounter with a soldier came after my visit, when one told me not to photograph the hills in the distance (due to the prime minister's residence being in the immediate vicinity), but he sounded more bored than hostile. 

The church was erected in 1911 by Empress Zewditu ንግሥት ዘውዲቱ. Upon arriving I took a walk around the exterior, beginning with the eastern side:

Carved lions guard the entrances, like this one looking to the north:

The adjacent Kidane Miheret Church was undergoing restoration work:

The façade facing west:

And the southern entrance. It was here while I was deciding if I would be allowed to enter that Fasil, my "guide" for the morning, introduced himself to me, took me inside and proceeded to show me around:

According to Fasil, I was lucky to have shown up when I did, because apparently the church had only just reopened following two years of renovation or restoration work (although there were still workers inside finishing up). Fasil took me into the mausoleum, where Menelik II ዳግማዊ ምኒልክ (the founder of Addis Ababa አዲስ አበባ) is entombed in the middle sarcophagus. To the left lies the remains of his wife, Empress Taitu ጣይቱ ብጡል; while on the other side is their daughter, the aforementioned Empress Zewditu:

The thrones of Menelik and Taitu, pushed up against a wall. Like I said, the work hadn't been finished yet:

The tomb of Princess Tsehay, daughter of Haile Selassie ቀዳማዊ ኃይለ ሥላሴ, who died at age 22 from complications during childbirth. The chair in front was a throne for Haile Selassie. My guide accidentally broke off one of the armrests while explaining the significance of the chair:

The church is also noted for its murals depicting "historical events" like this one related to the Queen of Sheba (many Ethiopians believe that Menelik I, the first emperor of Ethiopia, was the product of her union with Solomon):

A more believable moment in history is the defeat of the Italians at the Battle of Adwa የአድዋ ጦርነት, depicted in this mural:

Fasil explaining the finer points of a particular church service:

The golden building on the right houses the church's replica of the Ark of the Covenant - almost every Ethiopian Orthodox house of worship has one, which can only be seen by the priests. Another widely-held belief among Ethiopians is that the actual Ark is housed at the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Axum አክሱም, which my daughter and I visited in November of last year (how that now seems so, so long ago). We all know, of course, the real Ark is stashed safely away in a U.S. government warehouse:

This painting is one of several that were relocated from the Monastery of Debre Libanos, which was destroyed by the Italians when they occupied Ethiopia from 1936 to 1941:

It was ETB200 ($5.15) to see the inside of the church, payable to a priest sitting in a chair. As for Fasil's services, he asked for a thousand birr ($25.75!), but accepted the ETB300 ($7.75) I handed him. After all, he was out of work, had a family to support etc. etc. I don't mind having guides...sometimes (Fasil did a good job explaining things), but if Ethiopia is serious about turning itself as a world-class tourist destination, it needs to develop a system of licensed guides who charge clearly-posted set fees.

On my way back to the Hilton I passed by St. Gibi Gebriel, which as a review on Google Maps helpfully points out, "is a church":

The contrasts can be stark at times in Addis:

And nowhere more so than back at the Hilton, where I had a leisurely lunch of beef tibs at the Gazebo restaurant next to the pool:

And a "caramel in a glass" for dessert:

The Hilton has a small supermarket, where I picked up these bottles. Happy holidays indeed!:

And now that the family has returned, some news of a different sort - it appears I finally have an onward assignment. Nothing is official yet, and may not be for several months (which is why I haven't posted anything up to now on social media), but barring unforeseen obstacles, we should be headed to Beijing 北京, starting in the fall of 2023. It won't be a Consular position - I will, instead, be an Assistant General Services Officer, working in the areas of housing, motor pool, procurement, property, shipping and customs, travel and VIP visits. This will require an extensive training course, after which I will need to study Mandarin (again), only this time for two years, with the second year in Beijing. My Mandarin skills have clearly atrophied, thanks to having to endure Russian and Amharic at the Foreign Service Institute since the end of my tour in Shanghai 上海 more than five years ago, and I am most definitely not looking forward to relearning a language in the manner in which the State Department goes about doing these things. But I really wanted to return to the Asia-Pacific region, not only for myself but for Shu-E, who has had a difficult time in Ethiopia. And the best thing about this assignment is that I won't have to endure the brutal and demeaning bidding process again until 2025!

And now I can vent. Actually, if I had written this several weeks ago, this would have been a very long and profane blog post that might have ended my relatively brief career as a diplomat. Time has had a mellowing effect, but the bitterness still remains. The bidding process (see here) this time around has brought into focus just how unmeritorious the State Department can be in practice. The good jobs are given out not on the basis of ability and qualifications, but to those who have connections to the decision makers (i.e. the ones who decide who goes where). It's called "corridor reputation" and its perniciousness is a cancer eating away at the inner workings of an antiquated institution that can't seem to catch up to the fact that we're now one-fifth of the way into the twenty-first century. But like employee evaluations and language instruction at FSI, the bureaucracy does all it can to resist meaningful change. There's supposed to be a union out there somewhere, but it's harder to find than a taxi in a heavy downpour after the trains have stopped running for the night. Kids, if you're thinking of pursuing a career in the Foreign Service, my suggestions would be to reconsider your options while you're still young. 

But, hey, it looks like we're going back to Asia, where we'll be close to Japan and Taiwan, so I'm happy (temporarily) again. For now. Until the next pointless exercise in frustration comes along.  

And on that note I'll leave you with a few random images taken since the last entry. Such as this typical neighborhood scene:

I've often posted photos taken from our third-floor balcony, but here are a couple of shots from a bedroom on the opposite side of the house:

The buildings in the background on the left are part of the African Union complex:

This is what happens when I'm left alone to decorate the artificial Christmas tree. Wait till next year:

The view along Roosevelt Street, looking northeast:

The girls may be back, but they did send me a few final photos of some of the things they did in Taiwan, like when they went to Chiayi 嘉義 to watch the son of one of Shu-E's friends play baseball:

 

While in the area they also visited this place, of which I know nothing about:

On one of their final excursions they made a day trip to Fenqihu 奮起湖, a small village that was once a maintenance and repair station on the Alishan Forest Railway 阿里山森林鐵路. Shu-E and I visited years ago, but it was the first time for Amber. These days tourists come to see the Old Street (Taiwan is full of them):

Fenqihu is especially noted for its lunch boxes 便當, derived from the Japanese bento 弁当. The real thing is more appetizing than this photo taken by my wife would suggest:

Though I've been to many places in Taiwan, I've yet to ride on the forest railway train. One more for the Formosan bucket list:

I'll close this post out with the cliched but still-relevant (especially in these trying times) wish to all of you that you have the happiest of holiday seasons!