The May issue of Harper’s has a heartbreaking essay by Toronto writer Yohannes Edemariam, “From an Ancient Cloud,” about the slums of Ethiopia, delving into the wrenched lives of the poor and “middle class” in Addis Ababa.

The piece details Edemariam’s descent into an existence that seems impossible to most of the Western world: families who live and eat (or not) solely by begging and the bare essentials they can get from NGO food programs, where the line between beggar and middle class is nonexistent. Having spent a childhood in Addis, he says, “My parents’ picture albums from … decades full of revolution, bloody purges, famine, civil war — are lined with close-up photos of us kids and family members. I had come back to Ethiopia to see the Addis that those pictures do not show.” And he does. He hangs out in the rooms of hopeless and laughing young prostitutes, and tries to untangle the stories of a woman who adapts her family size and circumstances to what she thinks will garner the most pity (her husband is in reality a quiet working man, but she initially says he died of yellow fever). It’s an excellent piece, equal amounts precision and hopelessness.

(Harper’s online articles are available to subscribers only, but you can look through it at your local bookstore. This issue also has travel-related articles about an experimental poverty program in Kenya and an eclectic library in San Francisco.)

This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Africa travel, Antonia projects, travel stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.