The rainy season in Addis must remind you of an old song by Brook Benton entitled, “Rainy Night in Georgia” The lyrics go like this:
Hovering by my suitcase
Trying to find a warm place to spend the night.
Heavy rains falling
Seems I hear you voice calling’ “It’s all right”…
Rainy night in Georgia it’s like
Raining all over the world…
This was clearly a romantic song. The singer was addressing his sweetheart who was calling him “It’s alright” Rainfall has something romantic about it. I am not talking about rainfall in Georgia. I am talking about rainfall in Addis. I don’t think rainfall in Addis has the same romantic effect as the rain in Georgia.
For those of us who grew up in one of the slums areas of Addis, the rainy season had indeed its fascinations and enough vivid memories for the rest of your lives. Rainy days were usually awaited with fascination as well as anguish. The rains were expected to bring something new to our lives.
The rivers that meandered through the old neighborhoods carried all sorts of scraps and trash that the city spits every time there was a downpour: dead cats and dogs, household items, tree trunks, rusting spoons and forks, old shoes…the list is long.
Children used to jump into the rivers and search for these items. There was a big hurrah echoing around the river banks, every time someone discovers something in the river bed, something useless which was considered booty by the children. Everything around the rivers smelt of poverty and mud and of course the smell of eucalyptus leaves floating in the wet air. Children sliding on the wet earth, some of them losing their balance and falling on the mud and the gathering kids laughing until the leaves on the trees seemed to shake violently to the rhythm of the collective laughter.
In the good or bad old days, the rainy season had its own charms as well as its problems. Overflowing rivers swept across the villages, carrying anything they encounter along their journey, including dead bodies. Rains were awaited with great expectations and sometimes with great anguish. The poetic side of life was very interesting. The drizzle in the morning and the torrential rains in the afternoon and the deafening battering of the nighttime downpours on the tin roofs. That was music to the ears but without melodies.
That was why we were wrapping up in our blankets, to reduce the noise as the downpours continued to hit the roofs. We plugged our ears with our fingers and listen to the low vibrations of the rainfall until it stops playing. Fortunately, heavy downpours do not last long. And when they stop falling, the silence that replaced them was also deafening. The wind was hauling outside. The doors were usually closed not to let the cold in. The charcoal fire is burning on the stoves smoke filling the tiny one-room abode and escaping through the cracks in the wooden doors.
As soon as the rain stopped we rushed out to see their devastating effects. People were gathered on the shores admiring the waves and the foamy aftermath of the floods. The streets were inundated and spitting out dirty water, the cars were half submerged in the floods and pedestrians were struggling to escape the splashes of muddy water the cars ejected along their way. On both sides of the streets, the ambers from the fires on the coal could be seen from a good distance.
The stoves were loaded with roasting maize and passersby hastened to eat the hot maize. It was very cheap-twenty five cents each. And everyone could afford those soft, delicious and nutritious foods.
If you were young and single living alone, you buy two heads of maize and call your girlfriend, take her to your house, make her sit on your bed, and you share the meal for two. Roasted maize or boiled potato. If you have an old transistor radio you turn it on and find the only radio station that played traditional love songs. No, it was not about rainy days in Addis. It was something like: Your thirty teeth that are whiter than milk / Come in my dreams to disturb my sleep… kind of lyrics.
There is actually a kind of “class rearrangement” taking place in our society whereby the previously super rich are going one level down and become rich while many from the rich class come down to the rank of middle class. The middle class is fast losing ground and joining the lower middle class and then the poor. Who is below the poor? The paupers, or the poorest of the poor. That is not certainly not an enviable place to find oneself in. As some people mockingly say, the paupers or the “super poor” are located somewhere between the dead and the living.
Our consumption patterns usually change with changes in incomes. They call this the law of demand and supply. Leaving aside the super-rich and the middle class people, who are fewer in number, the majority of our folks find themselves in the lower and lowest income brackets. Their food consumption patterns that had never been good before become now bad and then worse before hitting the status of worst off members of our communities.
As our incomes dwindle, our food consumption patterns or our food culture likewise undergoes radical change. Those who used to dine at most expensive restaurants are forced to go less expensive places for wining and dining. Those from the middle poorer classes are the fast losers.
Instead of dining at cheaper outlets they slide down and find themselves among the throng of people who are now dining on the streets, simply to keep body and soul together. The old side street open air “open air restaurants” are still alive. They have become the last hopes for the most desperate food consumers.
The problem is that the street side sellers of cooked or boiled maize or potato, beans and other “fast foods” are fast disappearing, living their customers without any choice. The pace of demolition and reconstruction in Addis and in the surrounding towns has apparently made them redundant although the demand for their products is rising.
Most, if not all of them, are evacuated from the city centers and relocated in the peripheries instead of finding new locations. Many factors seem to be contributing to their disappearance at this time when their services are highly sought. They too are the victims of the behemoth they call inflation. As the supply of maize, potatoes and beans is clearly decreasing. Supplies are dwindling and prices are rising. The number of services providers at street side eateries is almost reduced to nil.
The rainy season was supposed to provide ample supplies of maize, potato and beans to the ambulatory markets. The suppliers are disappearing because the prices of these items at wholesalers is fast increasing, and their working capitals are fast dwindling as they are also consumers and need food to survive this tough time. We are in a kind of vicious cycle and few can be happy under such a situation.
Who is to blame for this situation? Almost all of us are to blame. Farmers for not producing enough food, sellers for not collecting enough supplies as ammunitions in the fight against the cold of the rainy season. The super-rich and the rich for not trying to provide some kind of support to so many needy people and allow them survive through this difficult time at least until September when the sun will become the main food supply to many among the poorest of the poor.
I remember another song from my younger years. It is a 1986 song by a now forgotten vocalist known as Billy Ocean. The song is entitled, “When the Going Gets Tough” The lyrics says:
When the going gets tough
The tough get going, tough, tough, huh, huh, huh
When the going gets tough the tough get ready
Tough, tough, tough…
As we can deduce from the lyrics, the song is about the need to fight for survival even in the most difficult times or situations. Many of us are actually facing tough times these days. The behemoth they call inflation is raining on us like the relentless monsoons of the rainy season. And it does not seem to stop any time soon. It is affecting almost anyone, from any class of society. We don’t even have the opportunity to be tough in these tough times. I feel like writing a song entitled, “Waiting until September, until sunshine” I wish I could hold a hot potato in my hand and sing the new song.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SATURDAY 12 JULY 2025
