Mind, Function and Dorze houses

My dad used to explain that people are only able to see things that relate to their lives in some way. Our minds must filter all of the input we are receiving from the environment and it chooses to concentrate on things that can be connected to something in our existing life. To illustrate this concept, he told the story of an researcher who took a villager from a stone age society in the jungle to New York City. The struggle the villager was facing at the time was one common to those that practice swidden farming. The bananas which the people eat everyday were being grown far away and now people in the villager were devoting much of their resources to transporting the bananas back to the village. What the villager noticed was not the towering skyscrapers, blinking lights, ethnic diversity, noisy urbanity or amazing technology. What he noticed was the one thing he could use to make his life better. When asked what the villager noticed and learned about New York he described a device that could help him transport bananas. The researcher thought he was talking about a car and started to explain how they needed gas and would not be practical back in the jungle, but as the villager clarified, the researcher noticed he was talking about something more fundamental. The villager discovered the wheel.

As many of you know I have recently purchased a house. In the American custom of house buying it is expected to save up from 5-7 years so as to make a down payment on a house and then another 30 years to pay off the loan. One way of thinking about it, is that your are building (wealth to build) the house for 37 years. The time to build this house affects other aspects of life as well, such as saving for retirement, perusing further education and starting a family. So while I was in Dorze village in southern Ethiopia, I was surprised to learn that it only takes about 3 months to build a house that will stand for 60 years. I started thinking, what if I could just buy some land in Minneapolis and build a Dorze house. It will not have all the comforts of a modern home, but is it less than the comfort of being debt free? I could also buy a lot of comfort with the money I am not paying on a house. After the repressive reality of city codes, peer pressure and cold winters set in I tried to abstract this idea a bit to see if I could still extract value from it. Why are Dorze houses build in only 3 months and can last for 60 years? There are several reasons all of them integrated within society, environment and physical mechanics. First the house is built with local materials. None of the cost of the house is tied to transportation. What would a house built entirely of uptown materials be? What kind of trees do we have here? Any strong grasses? What is the consistency of our sand and mud, could be used to construct buildings? If anything broke in the house, I could just walk around Lake Calhoun to find the materials I needed. Also the entire village bands together to build the house. What if I could take the therapist skills of my wife, electrical engineering skills of my roommate, retail, technical writing and broadcasting skills of my housemate, and pediatrician and architect skills of my neighbors to create a house? And then when it was time for their house I could use my interculturalist skills to help build there’s. Also, everybody builds the same style of house. When I look at suburban developments, I see this method is being used to reduce cost. But what if our houses were all the same? Why must we have individual houses? Does a house represent so much of ourselves, so we must create an entirely new creation? Finally, the thing that was truly impressive about the Dorze houses was how function was intimately tied to design. The barn portion of the house acted as central heating for the people. The breath of the animals kept people warm while sleeping in the cold Dorze evenings. Also, the houses were built up to 50 meters high. This height would slowly shrink as termites ate the bottom of the house. Termites were an assumed threat and houses were built higher to account make up for the eventual shrinkage. Just like buying a larger size of close that will shrink in the wash. What would our homes look like if function were integrated with design? It would be nice if somehow the time I spend on the internet would vacuum the floor. Or the cat I keep for company would actually keep me warm in the wintertime.

The Dorze house will continue to stay in my mind to challenge current scripts I have about how to live in a space.

Outsider, Pride and Wine

While in Africa I could not hide my whiteness. No matter how good I got at handshakes, greetings, or facial expressions, I could never, for a second, blend in. I was always foreign. This is a familiar experience for me, as a child I was always moving to new cities, so I have grown accustom to being new, foreign, an outsider. In fact this may be the reason I travel like I do. My identity is locked into being a foreigner, so paradoxically while I am foreign, I am most myself. Regardless of my comfort with being an outsider, this status brings certain handicaps. With this handicap came a multitude of obstacles: increased prices, innovative services and service charges and additional governmental regulations.
Being a foreigner does bring certain benefits however. After being denied entry to one of the premier tej bets (honey wine places) of Addis Ababa, I was determined to find a way in. Most of the tej is artificially sweetened with sugar or adulterated with other ingredients. This place offered aged, pure honey tej and my taste buds were screaming for it. What could I say to the guard that would convince him to let me inside? I could beg, I could reason, I could offer a bribe. By this time I had about a month of experience being a farangi (foreigner) so I was starting to figure out how to use my status to my advantage. I learned introductions and stories are an important part of the culture, so I started with this. “ I have been in your wonderful country for nearly a month. I have seen the beautiful gabis (white cotton cloaks), danced exciting dances…” I shuffle my feet in an attempt to recreate the gurage dance. “I have tasted the doro wat (Ethiopia’s national dish).” Here is the sinker, I realize that my role as a foreigner is to be impressed with the things Ethiopians are proud of. “The only thing that remains is for me to try tej and I am told this place is the best.” A tired nod of acceptance and a wave of the arm signals the success of the technique. The tej tasted every bit as good as I had hoped, probably because it was adulterated with a hint of intercultural satisfaction.
This technique was locked in my memory and sealed with the taste of honey. However I didn’t expect to use it again so soon. Standing before the official at the check in counter in Charles de Gaulle airport I was faced with a similar non. Although Delta airlines bumped me off my flight and stranded me in Paris for a day, this official would not allow me to check a third bag that contained wine. “You have checked the maximum luggage.” I was told frankly. I tried reason, “It’s a small bag,” non. I tried cajoling, “Here, I will just put the bag here in the luggage area and I will pick it up in America, no problem,” non. Then I remember, I must use intercultural competence. I lift my eyebrows and push out my lips ever so slightly, the way I have seen many Parisians do as they explain something rather matter of fact. "How can I be in Paris and not buy wine?” and just to put a button on it I figured I would not make this situation not about me, but about something I suspected the French value more “please…for the wine". He reaches over, grabs a little tag and affixes it to my passport.

Intercultural Tip: Appeal to Pride

Coffee Ceremony VS. Tea Ceremony

Many people in the United States have heard of the Japanese Tea Ceremony. It serves as a powerful motif for what we understand as Japanese; intense focus on process, delicate attention paid to inputs and prescribed methods of ingestion. Unfortunately I was unable to attend a tea ceremony while I was living in Japan. Nobody I knew was qualified to administer the ceremony and the local tourist hotels were charging outrageous amounts. The ceremony acted as another motif, perfection unconnected and unattainable to the people of Japan.
In a way this ceremony is a connection that both America and Japan share. Ceremonies and rituals are reserved for rare once in a lifetime events and are not used to focus or give significance to everyday events.
One of the things I am enjoying in Ethiopia is the daily use of the coffee ceremony. As many of you know, coffee originates in Ethiopia. Its powerful ability to extract productivity from workers as well as its increasingly delicious taste has spread it across the world. Around the corner from our very very budget hotel in Addis Ababa, there is a little hole in the wall performing daily coffee ceremonies for those wishing to spend 28 cents for a cup. The ritual is this: Take green beans and roast them in a pan above a wood burning flame. As they start to pop like popcorn, bring the pan to participants and allow them to waft the aroma towards their nose. Then take the beans and crush them with a pestle and mortar. Pour the crushed beans in a pot and add some spices and boiled water. Serve the coffee and bring by a live plant called “health of Adam”. The coffee drinker then pinches a bit off the plan and adds the leaf to his cup. All the while this ritual is taking place incense is burning over an other little wood burning stove. The coffee ritual takes place in specific little areas with cups arranged a certain way and a particular curved wooden stool. These ceremony places can be seen almost everywhere, in the international airport right outside the baggage claim, in hotel lobbies, in traditional restaurants, in hole in the wall cafes and in peoples homes. I am waiting to see it traveling on a bus or on a donkey.
To abstract this a bit, I am very excited to see how Ethiopian tradition is woven into the fabric of modern life. Unlike the tourist poster I often saw in Japan where the Geisha is talking on a cell phone, which never happens because the Geisha are tucked away much like the tea ceremony, the blending of tradition and modern is a part of life here in Ethiopia. Women wear traditional white cotton robes each Sunday to church, traditional dances are performed on modern music videos on the Ethiopian MTV, and traditional Ethiopian food served at most restaurants. It is nice to visit a country, particularly in a continent that is still struggling from the identity crisis imposed by colonialism, that is very much itself. The past and the present are more visually and practically connected.

Middle Class Confidence

I think I must have walked through a middle class neighborhood today. It was off a major road in Addis. While there were many aspects typical of a rural village such as mud and straw houses, corrugated steel, spices and vegetables spread out in the sun, chickens running around, ect. There were also satellites on top of the houses, plastic chairs children in nice school uniforms asking to shake our hands (vs. begging for money), and a sort of confidence on the faces of people suggesting a sort of middle class confidence.
I am always interested in the middle class of the countries I visit. Everywhere you go there will be wealthy people and poor people, but the middle class is what drives things that are interesting. While the wealthy folks do their best to imitate western styles of fashion, entertainment, and luxury and the poor struggle to get by, the middle class strikes a balance between tradition and the modern life. So what does this look like? If looks like a satellite on top of a corrugated steel roof on top of a mud hut in the city off of a main road in the capital city.
So where are you? Are you struggling to keep up with the fashions of New York and Tokyo? Are you interested in preserving the sometimes hokey traditions of the past and make them part of your new life? Can you innovate solutions to housing, transportation using local materials and fixes?

Intercultural Senses

Intercultural adventure assaults the senses. Taste is one adventure that requires bravery, patience and sometimes an iron gut. Before I left for Uganda, my professor Dr. Chapman gave an ominous warning, “…you will have to learn to like Matoke” the staple of the southern Ugandan diet.. After plate after plate of Matoke was served, and each time I struggled to adjust my palette with a little self coaching. Yes! Matoke again! I love this special dish. It is the pride of the nation and the food that brings the men back home to their wives. I would tell myself as a heaping pile of steamed unsweetened mashed bananas was added to my plate. By the end of my trip I had made my peace with Matoke and was eating it regularly.
I didn’t think the roles would be reversed so soon. Now I am attending a district conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where various Rotarians from East Africa are attending. While waiting in line for Ethiopian food I overhear various Ugandans express their difficulty with the local bread, ingera. “It is too difficult, I cannot handle it”. “How can they eat this?” “Beware it bites you back.” This morning I ask various Ugandan Rotarians, “how are you enjoying the ingera?” I am met with scrunched faces, “Alex I tell you, it is difficult.” “I bet you are waiting to eat some nice matoke again.” I learned to say these things while in Japan. Forming bonds while talking about food is very effective. “Yes, it is not long now till I can enjoy my wife's Matoke.”

Intercultural tip: Talking about food is an effective way to break the ice. It is more culturally specific and interesting than talking about the weather.