In Ethiopia, a different clock ... and faster times

A nation takes pride in being out of step

(Sally Sara photo)

Tenagnework Mekete, who fought against invading Italian troops as a young girl, wearing her medals and army hat on Patriots' Day in Addis Ababa in 2005.

Sally Sara is a foreign correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corp. As the 2007-8 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow, she has been spending an academic year studying at MIT and Harvard and working at The Boston Globe and The New York Times.

By Sally Sara

Ethiopia offers a promise few other countries can keep. It can turn back time. Step off the plane, and you’ll step back seven years. The Ethiopian calendar is at least seven years behind the West. So right now in Ethiopia, it's only the year 2000 and the New Year won’t come around again until September.

When I visited Ethiopia in 2005 conducting research for a book on African women, it took a while to get used to reading the morning papers dated 1997. I’d gone back in time Ethiopian-style. Even the clock was different. Local time started at dawn, so by noon elsewhere in the time zone it was 6 o’clock Ethiopian time. I was 7 years and 6 hours behind, and slightly confused.

But that sense of difference is a great source of pride. Many Ethiopians will tell you their country is not part of Africa. It’s different. It’s never been colonized, only briefly occupied by Italy, when Mussolini invaded in 1936.

I was visiting Ethiopia to interview a woman who as a child fought in a militia against the Italians. Her name was Tenagnework Mekete. She was only 10 years old when she was married and went off to war with her family. She was so young, her husband piggybacked her to the altar, in line with Ethiopian tradition.

She was widowed by 15 and had buried several of her brothers on the battlefield. She used her skirt to carry the dirt to cover their graves and she still had the blotched tattoos of her name on her forearms, to identify her in case she was killed in battle.

Tenagenework had outlived the war and most of her family. She had grown up in a wealthy family with slaves and servants in the 1930s. She had lived through the rise and fall of the Emperor Haile Selaisse, endured Marxism, and seen the cruelty of famine and drought. She was spending her last years in a tiny damp house in Addis Ababa. But, she was proud of her country and it’s sense of difference. She was frustrated that many foreigners didn’t know the history, only the television news pictures of starvation and poverty.

In the mornings, not far from Tenagnework’s house, young Ethiopians were determined to put their country on the map in a different way. They were exercising their patriotism -- and their legs -- on the streets. This nation’s tough history and high altitudes have helped produce some of the finest distance runners in the world. The champions and the wannabes all train together along the terraces of Meskel Square.

I was among the ranks of the wannabes.

I ran through the mist each dawn. Some mornings I would hear footsteps behind me as local runners challenged me to race. There was laughter and cheers from the commuters at the bus stops as they watched the white foreigner with the red face trying to out sprint one of Ethiopia’s finest.

At the end of the first week a friend bought me an Ethiopian Olympic running top, which added to the amusement and the number of challengers.

In its own way, the singlet also turned back time. Each time I wore it, I was too embarrassed to run slowly. I was wearing the national colors of one of the greatest running nations on earth. After two weeks of high altitude, impromptu races and pure fear of failure, my running times were dropping to new personal records.

In 2005 in Ethiopia, 1997 was a very good year to run down the clock.