Addis Ababa - Fekade Azeze

I walk your streets, but make no strides:

your shops and kiosks crowd my eyes

ENTs and dentistries

music stalls

drug shacks

photo booths

jumbled!

chaotic!

so many loud bars competing to make the most noise

how can so much thunder come

out of shops as small

and cluttered as gravestones?

this flow of people that never stops

pushing, storming, elbowing

measuring the chaos of your streets...

I walk your streets, but make no strides:

dinginess and squalor

poor rag-dirty men

all men, sleeping rough

in your abundant filth

on every corner

keep piercing my eyes,

I stop and glance, not long enough to see

if they are alive,

I march forward, like everyone else

we all march forward

I walk your streets, but make no strides:

your population is so dense

there is no space to walk!

your bodies look so pale and shrunken

discoloured!

slack!

I ask myself, do they have food?

do they have a roof over their heads?

is everyone sleeping rough on street corners

lying in make-shift tukuls?

piled on top of each other like planks?

I walk your streets, making no strides,

hands stretch out and hold me back, begging every step:

thousands of fathers and mothers!

hundreds of babies and young girls!

crowds of skinny old men and teenagers

with no one to care for them

all searching for scraps, a living out of scraps.

I walk your streets, making no strides:

a naked boy runs past me

another clutches a stone or stick

others a flower or a rag

or a paper

long black hair locked in dreads

skin burnt to charcoal

shouting in the squares where other people call them

insane!

but there is always some truth in what they say

they have nobody to care for them

but they are your decorations, Addis, your beautiful jewels!

I walk your streets, but make no strides:

how can I avoid playing football with your children?

your streets are a playground

a nursery where you bring up your young

your little shoe-shine boys

lottery-ticket hawkers and cigarette touts

q'olo corn sellers, gum sellers, paperboys

children doing nothing

children begging

look! it is World Children's Day

they are performing a show for everyone to see

about survival

they have made your streets into a stage.

Yes, I have walked your streets, I have made no strides.

Your secrets are endless, Addis! I will give in now, I will rest.

---

Fekade Azeze (born 1950) Ethiopia
Translated by the author and Chris Beckett
Source: The Missing Slate