by: B. Fanos

I have heroes, the regular kind -- no different from yours, I'm sure. I cheered in utter joy when Derartu and Gete blew their competitors away and came in with an Ethiopian one-two in the Sydney Olympics just a few weeks ago...I felt my own eyes fill as Derartu bowed her head during the medal ceremonies, tears running down her face unchecked as she accepted her due. I get the warm fuzzies whenever I see pictures of Tewodros, Menelik, Taytu...I remember with a great deal of pride the strength and patience of my mother. Heroes...I've known a few, and admired a lot from a distance.

But I'd like to take a moment and share with you the stories of two other, uncommon heroes. At a time when life in Addis is centered around who has and who has not, when those without still seem to be ridiculously concerned about making sure what few things they do have are not Made in China, when how much you have, even if you steal it, is now considered more laudable than how much you learn, these two stand out. Seeing them everyday keeps the low embers of hope in my heart from dying completely.

Actually, I don't know his name...I'm not sure how old he is, though I'd guess him to be between 15 and 22 years old. You can find him somewhere along the road between the Airport Motel and the Imperial Hotel on the way to Gerji. The Chinese contractors who were scheduled to start work on the so-called Ring Road left the yawning potholes of that road untended throughout the Kremt, having thoughtfully also dug a fair number of their own holes right along side. Their workers are missing, the machines sit idle, waiting theoretically for the rains to stop. In the meantime, the water accumulates in the growing holes, and the road becomes even more impassable each day. It would be intolerable but for the actions of one young man.

Standing in the street all day, he does what no one in the city bureaucracy, or in the contractor's employ, or in the community immediately around that area, has managed to do. Addisu (I think of him as Addisu) fills potholes every day with pebbles, small and large stones and pieces of asphalt he salvages from the area right around the street. He tirelessly fills these holes, the same ones, over and over again; once I even saw him using a doma to dig a little boi from one extremely large pothole to where the road drops off; that way he could help the water run off before returning to his self-appointed task.

Every once in a while he asks motorists, who are weaving their way around him, for money...only once or twice have I seen anyone give him anything. Perhaps they think it would encourage others to fill potholes for pay...and what a tragedy that would be. There are enough potholes, and enough drainage problems, in the few paved roads we have in Ethiopia to keep a thousand Addisu's fully occupied...and why not charge a toll to the motorists who exacerbate the problem? I don't know what makes this young man get up every morning and work on something so useful, so deserving of his gulbet and our money...so misgana-bis. I am just thankful that I can look every afternoon for his shy smile and know that, maybe, there is hope for Ethiopia after all.

Ato Tesfaye runs what must be the smallest and most lovingly tended library in the world. Across the street from Gandhi Hospital, down the road from the money-changers (we call it the ATM) where one can openly exchange dollars for birr, right at the entrance to Cottage sits a little structure that is neither gojo nor dinkwan. It looks like a lean-to from old "lost on a desert island" movies, or a little cave cut out of a large bushy hedge. Inside it he sits, the large metal, lockable closet behind him completely dust free and full of paperback books of every size and genre, lovingly arranged. Every day he comes in around 7a.m., except on Saturdays, and awaits the eager students who come by to borrow a book, or the voracious vacationers looking for this or that remembered novel from days gone by.

The gentleness of his smile, the quiet flow of his voice, and the ageless courtliness of his sine-sir'at would humble the most arrogant of visitors...or should. He greets you with a warm handshake, insisting on referring to you as antu until your insistence persuades him otherwise. The more-salt-than-pepper hair on his head is still full, but it declares him to be a man who has seen the better part of five or more decades. On Saturdays his little library/bookstore is closed, a thin green electric cord zigzagging across the entrance of his little lean-to the only sign that the Master is not in...on Saturdays he goes to his many sources, looking avidly and faithfully for the books that future readers may come looking for. If you ask him far enough in advance, he will note down your requests and purchase the books that you ask him to find for you, paying for them himself in advance.

I have heard it said that some wegeNa customers have left him holding books that they have requested but have not returned to claim. He is too set in his ways to change his policy of not asking for payment in advance; if you were to offer it, however, he would not refuse. He charges fair prices for the books -- once he even offered me a copy of a book from his own collection for 5 birr, an amount far less than I would have paid if I were lucky enough to find it elsewhere -- it took a lot of gentle persuasion on my part to make him take more.

Reading in Addis Abeba is now a social faux pas among the trendy. I remember a time not so long ago when my older brother and his friends always had a paperback bulging in their pockets as they sat in their usual haunts around town -- that is unthinkable now. A young woman who sat in a café reading a book in 1998 is still talked about in some circles with much eye-rolling and tittering. I know nothing of her other sins; the most quoted one was that she sat...READING A BOOK, in a café. Heaven forbid. Ato Tesfaye is quietly serving as a reminder to the young girls and boys who come to borrow books from his little lean-to that the first window into the outside world...outside your mind...outside your life...can be found between the pages of a book. Yanurilin...Yibarkilin...Igzher yisTilin.