Asmara 1973-74

Asmara Mike Banister

A reminiscence handwritten in the Winter of 1977-78, and put into machine readable form in December of 1993.

We arrived in Asmara, Ethiopia, right around Cheryl's birthday in July of 1973. We flew by jet from Addis Ababa carrying everything we owned with us. Cheryl was relentlessly sick, hardly able to stand up, fresh out of one hospital and bound for another. So much for our well-planned and long-awaited vacation in the southern provinces. For three glorious days in Addis Ababa, Cheryl and I and our Peace Corps friends the Clearys and the Vavruses had planned our grand adventure. The Clearys and Vavruses would soon embark on their hitch-hike and bus odyssey to Kenya. The Clearys were going to let us drive their Volkswagen down to Arba Minch and the Rift Valley lakes. After a few weeks there, we were to leave the car with some Peace Corps Volunteers in the area and return to Addis to prepare for our reassignment to the northern city of Asmara.
God only knows what it was that made Cheryl sick. But whatever it was, it stayed with her for ten long, hectic, miserable days. The missionary doctors at the Seventh Day Adventist hospital in Addis couldn't cure her, and Peace Corps was getting very worried. The first few days of the sickness, the two Peace Corps nurses from headquarters would come to our room at the Itegue Hotel, appalled at the shabbiness of the hotel, and gaze down at poor Cheryl as she retched up noise and nausea pills. When it didn't stop after a few days, Peace Corps decided it was time for us to try the American military doctors at Asmara's Kagnew Station. The day before we flew up there, we moved into a double room at the Adventist hospital, luggage, guitar, household goods and all. At something like 5 a.m. a Peace Corps driver with a Volkswagen bus picked us up and deposited us at the airport.
One hour later we were touching down at Asmara airport. We had exactly nowhere to go, no connections other than the Army/Navy base. Because of my inability to dial the correct sequence of numbers, I was unable to contact Kagnew and order up either an ambulance or a base taxi. So, for five Ethiopian dollars, a very sympathetic Eritrean cab driver piled his Alfa Romeo high with our stuff and took us to a hotel in downtown Asmara. Only there at the hotel did I figure out how to use the phone; a half-hour later a blue Volkswagen bus driven a Kagnew-ized Eritrean named Berhane picked us up and sped us out to the base guest house, all for a thin American dime.
First the good news: We were extremely lucky in that there was a room available at the guest house for two nights. What luxury! Real American beds with box springs and mattresses, American furniture and American bathrooms down the hall. Now the bad news: In a week's time we would have to give up the room for a few days. The problem was where to go for those few days before we could return to the nearness, convenience and safety of the guest house.
Well, before the problem became urgent, Cheryl was seen by an American Navy doctor named Stanley Bodner, a nice young Jewish man from New Jersey. He was fascinated at getting the chance to talk to Peace Corps Volunteers who had spent time out in the wilds of southwest Ethiopia. Naturally, his interest in Cheryl's sickness was only secondary. He didn't seem to think it was serious, and he certainly didn't think it merited her being hospitalized.
I was so frustrated and scared by the continuing deterioration of Cheryl's condition that I was ready to do anything to get her into the hospital. I came into Stanley's office the next morning and told him of the "blood" I saw in her vomit. She was admitted without further hassle. Stanley put her on IV feeding, and she began to get better rapidly.
In another day or so, Cheryl was completely better. Absolutely no inkling of what the little bugger was that waylaid my lover. Stanley being the inquisitive, concerned person that he was (and is), he found out about our dilemma vis a vis the guest house, and invited us to stay in his house in the interim. That was the beginning of our long and warm friendship with Stanley.
We were readmitted to the Kagnew guest house in a couple of days. Just by chance, an Ethiopian Peace Corps staff person dropped in on us. He was in the area and was asked to check on us. He was instrumental in helping us get settled. Here is how that came about. He happened to be good friends with a certain Asmara nobleman who held the aristocratic rank of "Blatiengheta." This noble was a retired Eritrean gentleman named Ephrem Teklemariam. He used to be Haile Selassie's ambassador to Germany, and was the Ethiopian delegate at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. There is a picture of him in Sylvia Pankhurst's book, "Ethiopia: a Cultural History."
Blatiengheta Ephrem, it just so happened, had a small villa for rent in the "Ghezabanda" (probably a corruption of the Italian term "Casabanda") neighborhood of Asmara. The Peace Corps man took us up there that very afternoon and introduced us to the Blatiengheta and his wife. What an elegant domicile! So many refined European touches; the living room was distinctly German in atmosphere. After much small talk about travel and the world situation, we finally got around to discussing the rental of his villa, which happened to be only halfway down the block. As the rent was reasonable (compared to what we had been paying the year before in coffee-rich Mettu provincial capital of Illubabor in southwestern Ethiopia), we leased the place for the school year.
Before we moved out of the guest house and into our fabulous new villa, I decided to see if I could get away with buying some stereo equipment at Kagnew's "Base Exchange" (called "BX" on Navy bases and "PX" on Army posts; Kagnew was being converted from an Army post to a Navy base). When the military brass at Kagnew had given us purchasing privileges at the BX it was only for baby-related items. But the Exchange staff didn't check my credentials and I managed to buy a number of things I wasn't supposed to.
One day, while casing the camera department, I struck up a conversation with the clerk, an American civilian named David Treadwell. He had a glass eye, which I didn't know right off. When I came up to him to ask for help, David had one eye closed. Then he smiled at me, and I saw that he was holding his glass eye between his lips. A real comedian. I ended up buying a flash unit from him.
When I asked David why he was working at the BX, he said that he was "pioneering" in Ethiopia for the Baha'i Faith. Working at the BX was a means of support. This was the first I'd heard about the Faith. At almost the same time Cheryl and I met another American Baha'i on the base, a young woman our age named Linda. She was the wife a non-Baha'i serviceman, and was helpful and friendly. When we asked where we might buy some used furniture, she suggested we might be able to check it out from the Kagnew property warehouse.
That was a very fortuitous bit of advice. For some reason, Peace Corps Volunteers weren't supposed to be able to check out furniture from the base warehouse. However, neither we nor the person in the warehouse knew that, and we found ourselves with three rooms of furniture delivered the next day. We had a scare, though, a week later when we were told we would have to return it all. Fortunately, we managed to talk Peace Corps and the military brass into letting us keep the stuff for the school year. I guess they figured the warehouse was overflowing with excess furniture dating from the late 60's when Kagnew was home to many thousands of American servicemen, and they knew where we were in case they needed ours back.
We kept up our acquaintance with David Treadwell and his wife, as well as with Linda and her husband. I was fascinated with this new Baha'i religion. It seemed to be a natural one for Ethiopia, with its Christians and Muslims living side by side in superficial harmony. I think there were (and are) different levels of feeling about one another. As I said, on one superficial level they were generally civil to each other. On another (less) superficial level they felt compelled to demonstrate to peers their feelings of contempt and superiority to the "infidels." But on a real basic level, on the gut/intuitive level, before their ego got in the way, they knew they were all just people, trying to raise a family, earn a living and worship their Creator. I felt at the time, though without knowing or accepting much else about this new Faith, that the idea of Baha'u'llah was a good one. I hadn't yet come far enough to know the reality of Baha'u'llah.
I remember feeling, at times, that this was just another guru hype, of which I had seen many in Berkeley. We attended one discussion meeting on the Baha'i Faith at the home of Dr. Leo Niederreiter, an Austrian medical doctor who was, like the Treadwells, "pioneering" in Asmara. There must have been 30 or 40 people at Dr. Niederreiter's home, a mixture of Ethiopians, Europeans, Middle Easterners and Americans. I felt a little suspicious of Dr. Niederreiter, perhaps because I was used to seeing so many cultists and gurus on the streets of the Bay Area. Another feeling I had, which I remember expressing during one of the discussions, was that mankind didn't need what Dr. Niederreiter called "Divine Educators," a reference to Prophets. I tended to think that humans were perfectly capable of learning everything we needed to know completely on our own.

Cheryl and I luxuriated in the remaining weeks before the birth and before the start of the new school year. There were so many people and things to get to know in Asmara. By chance, or Providence, our need for a maid/babysitter coincided with the need of Linda and her husband to find a new family for their maid, Tsehaitu, since they would soon be leaving Kagnew. Tsehaitu turned out to be great, even though she spoke hardly a word of English or Amharic, being from a village outside Asmara. She did, however, speak some Italian, since she had worked for Italian families in the past. She worked for us five days a week, from about 8 a.m. until about 2 p.m. At times we asked her to stay later to help us prepare for a party. Occasionally she slept over when we wanted to go out and needed her to watch "Gianni." We paid her about $20 U.S. per month, plus all the empty bottles, jars, old clothes, etc., that we had no use for. These items she sold in the market. Her salary working for us was about twice what Ethiopians paid servants, and her workdays were short and easy.
James and Marie Tarrant stayed with us for two weeks or so that summer. What fine times we had with those two warm, loveable people! We were visited occasionally by other Peace Corps Volunteers passing through Asmara. Our Kagnew friends were few, primarily Navy Dr. Stanley Bodner and Army Sgt. Mike Hoffman. Hoffman was our neighbor, and was a photographer doing "geologic mapping" for the Army and the Ethiopian government. We suspected he was really helping the government do counter-insurgency surveillance. Mike had the bottom half of a large house next door, with beautiful Moorish arches and large rooms. He kept two dogs (one pregnant) and a large land tortoise that ate lettuce and flowers.
It was Mike who informed us that our house had formerly been rented by two Army guys who used it as a "friendship house," arranging romantic liaisons between soldiers and Eritrean ladies. Our house was a single-story affair surrounded by a high wall and locking gate. The house and compound resembled many others in our neighborhood. It had two bedrooms with a bathroom between them, a kitchen, a dining room and a living room. It was Italian tile floors throughout. The living room had a large picture window with a stunning view of Asmara and our backyard. Outside the front porch was a small building that served as servant's quarters, but Tsehaitu didn't stay there.
Our street ran along the edge of a cliff overlooking the beautiful city of Asmara. It was a short street, with about five houses on each side. Not only did the street run lengthwise along the edge of a cliff, but the two ends of the street also terminated at cliffs. The street was actually at the end of little peninsula, with another street dead-ending into it in the middle of the block. One end of our block was blocked by a high cyclone fence, and was a sheer drop down a rocky escarpment. The other end was blocked by a large multi-level house, and a concrete stairway ran crookedly down the cliff alongside the house.
We were fairly well settled into our house when the time came for Cheryl to deliver herself of "Shorty." We had no scenario planned, except for a vague idea of calling the base taxi for a ride to the hospital when the time came. Mike Hoffman had also volunteered to drive us to the hospital in his Land Rover. Long about mid-day on August 26, 1973, Cheryl calmly informed me that she had been experiencing periodic but irregular contractions since the previous evening. (We had attended a very nice party at Mike's that evening, and Cheryl kept her secret nicely.) Now she was beginning to feel the contractions more frequently and more regularly. James and Marie were still with us, and they accompanied us in Mike's Land Rover over to Kagnew hospital. Doctor Donaldson said to relax, the birth wouldn't happen till around dawn, and promptly left to do his rounds, this being around 11 p.m. Around 1 a.m. the contractions were occurring with enough frequency to warrant Donaldson's return. He got there around 2 a.m. and told me to get my gown, mask and hat on and come with him and Cheryl and Mary Ann (the nurse) into the delivery room. After about an hour of labor, at 3:09 a.m. (not 3:10 as the birth certificate says) on August 27, 1973, a male child was born in the "land of burnt faces." During delivery I was trying to be both helpful and to get some good pictures. Besides some massage and hand-holding and morale encouragement, there wasn't much that I could do. Cheryl did it all beautifully.
For the next two days, Cheryl and the baby stayed at the hospital. Since we had been consistently unable to imagine a name for a baby boy (but had several possibilities for a girl), we planned to think of a name for him after Cheryl left the hospital. The hospital authorities thought differently, though, and suggested that we come up with a name in return for a swift exit from the hospital. Cheryl was fond of "Chris," after her mother, and I sort of thought the baby looked like my uncle John ("John" is also one of my favorite names). The name "John Christopher" also appealed to me, because it reminded me of John the Baptist, "bearing" the name of Christ the way Saint Christopher was supposed to have borne Christ Himself. Cheryl and John Christopher Armstrong Banister left the hospital on the third day after the birth.
Tsehaitu began working for us immediately and quickly became attached to "J.C." as we called him for short. When our school started up, Tsehaitu entertained J.C. and cared for him for three hours or so every morning while Cheryl was teaching. The Asmara Junior Secondary School, located at the eastern edge of the city, near the escarpment which drops 8,200 feet to the Red Sea, was on split session. We taught the seventh and eighth graders from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., and the ninth graders came over in the afternoon. Cheryl talked the director into only scheduling her for the first three periods so she could be home by 11:30.
For the next couple of months we learned new ways to enjoy a city, ways involving packing a kid around on one's back or in one's arms. Riding a bus through the city with J.C., or riding one down the mountain and across the Danakil Depression to the port city of Massawa, brought us into contact with the Eritrean people (especially the women) in ways completely new. J.C. was such a flirt: we used to be sitting there with him leaning against our shoulders facing the seat behind us, when pretty soon we would hear a little embarrassed laughter coming from some ladies behind us. J.C. would be putting on his best flirting grin. Out on the street we would often be taken to task in Tigrinya or Italian for not covering him up enough. The Eritreans, like other highland Ethiopians, considered the sun and the wind to be dangerous. Ethiopians were always warmly dressed, even when it was hot outside. In fact, on one of our earlier vacations to the lowland river city of Gambela along the Sudan border, we noticed that the vacationing highlanders were invariably dressed in jackets and sweaters regardless of the fact that it was often 90 to 100 degrees and very humid.
We had some pets by this time, some domestic and some not so domestic. Right off we inherited the last puppy of a litter of German Shepherds belonging to Mike Hoffman's formerly pregnant dog. We named our new dog "Patty" and let her have full run of both yards; but she never came in the house. Tsehaitu never touched her or had anything to do with her. Then we found two miserable little kittens at the fenced end of our block. They were covered with scabs and crud. It looked like they were going to die for sure. I was never so upset by an animal's condition as I was by theirs. I suspected that the servant of our landlord had tried to do them in by pitching them over the cliff or something. Cats were everywhere in Asmara, and he probably couldn't give these away.
So I decided to give the kittens a bite to eat. I was pretty sure they weren't long for this world and I wouldn't be feeding them for long. I was wrong. They day by day looked better and better. We washed the crud off them and cleaned their eyes, and their scabs disappeared. They began purring when we touched them or even came near them. Patty tolerated them. Tsehaitu was a bit friendlier to them than to Patty. We named them "Anti" and "Ante," meaning "you" feminine and "you" masculine in Tigrinya. They looked like they were brother and sister.
A few months later I heard a terrible shouting and running about next door. The landlord's servant and a friend had treed some animal in the cedar tree growing next to the wall dividing our yard from Mike's yard. The two Eritrean men were throwing rocks at whatever they had treed. All of a sudden, young baboon jumped down out of the tree and landed on the roof of our little outbuilding. The baboon then jumped into our backyard, scaring Patty half to death. The two tormenting men made like they were going to hop over the wall and pursue the baboon (which was an adolescent female). I stopped them and said the baboon could stay in our yard and I didn't want them throwing rocks at her.
Every day we would see the baboon roaming the cliff edge and back wall of our yard. Our dog wouldn't go in the yard any more. Sometimes the baboon would go over to Mike's yard. She stripped all the figs and peaches off the trees in the yards. I tried to get close to her, but not a chance. After about two weeks of sporadic visits by her, she disappeared. We heard that she had escaped from some nearby factory yard where she was a "pet." I don't know what happened to her. I hope she made it out of town; not too far away was the escarpment falling away down to the Red Sea some 40 miles east and over 8,000 feet down. There are thousands of baboons in those cliffs and gorges.
Sometime after that we heard Tsehaitu burst into the house all excited and looking for something to catch a "chicken" with. She led us outside and showed us a beautiful Guinea Hen. Tsehaitu assured us the bird was delicious to eat and she would cook us up a great chicken dinner. I was sure she would not be able to catch the bird, so I didn't stop her from trying. For a week or two the fowl lived in or near our yard and then it too disappeared. Our cliff must have been like a little highway for wildlife. I suppose an animal could make its way along the edge of the little peninsula for quite a distance, maybe even out of town.
On the strength of Stanley Bodner's recommendation, we took a one-week vacation the beginning of January, 1974, to the capital city of Yemen, Sana'a. Stanley had gone several times, and come back loaded down with slides and guns and daggers and silver. A young Peace Corps Volunteer had previously come over to Kagnew hospital from there, sick with some sort of bug. She was accompanied by her Country Director, and they both stayed a few days, during which time we were invited to come over and stay with them in Sana'a.
The trip was about an hour by jet, and three hours back by DC3. The DC3 flight was fun; we flew low over the Red Sea and could see coral reefs just below the surface. We had a remarkable visit. We were accompanied on our sightseeing trips by an American Embassy officer in his Land Rover. Sana'a is an old, oddly picturesque city. About as big as Asmara, but primitive and dirty by comparison.
Our only other outings that winter and spring of 1974 were a bus/jet trip to Makelle for a teacher conference, and several car and bus trips down to Massawa to visit Chris and Amy Ramsden and their young baby Fred. The Ramsden's were British teachers at the Ethiopian Naval Academy and had a sea-front apartment in the old City. They had a little outboard boat in which we putted out to Green Island to do some snorkling off the coral reef. I found the ability to see so clearly underwater a little unsettling. Every time a large tuna swam up toward me, I promptly turned around and made for the boat. Sharks and barracuda were plentiful around there.
Time finally ran out for Ethiopia in February of 1974. The month before, the teachers joined the other professions in a general strike. Cheryl and I were on strike for some four weeks. We spent our days visiting Massawa, seeing Asmara, eating lunch at downtown restaurants, visiting the market and shops, and following the progress of the two Ethiopian knotted rugs being loomed for us at the local Orthodox church.
But no sooner did we go back to work, than the military coup began. The straw that broke the camel's back was the truck drivers' strike, which followed the cab drivers' strike. Finally, the Ethiopian Army's Second Division enlisted men, headquartered in Asmara, arrested their officers. Then they arrested all the provincial government officials and closed the banks and airport. Then the First Division in Addis did the same. Finally, the Navy and Air Force followed suit. All the while, the military was swearing loyalty to His Imperial Majesty, who was nonetheless kept under lock and key in the palace.
During all this, the Eritrean Liberation Front kidnapped some foreign nurses, killing one in the process. Then they announced open season on all Americans. That was it for the Peace Corps. Luckily, Cheryl and I had already finished out the school year and were all packed and ready to leave the country. We arrived in Addis around the end of May, and took the first flight to Nairobi.
We travelled with Stanley and his Italian friend Lina for three weeks in a rented Fiat 124. We visited not only Nairobi, but Mombassa and the Kenyan game parks as well. We travelled around the Serengetti area in Tanzania, and returned to the Kenyan coast for a week-long stay in Lina's friend's home in Mombassa, while the friend was away visiting family in Italy. Finally, we bought a cheap charter ticket to London, and began our trek home via New York, Chicago and Oklahoma City.