Obviously, the Addis Ababa of our youth and childhood is starkly different from the city of our adulthood and old age. Cities, like human beings are born, grow, get old and sometimes die of natural causes or man-made calamities. People build cities, live in them and die in them. This cycle repeats itself indefinitely. Sometimes cities live in people as the latter carry their sufferings and struggles, loves and deaths in their memories. Cities are not founded just by chance. There are certain requirements that have to be met in order to establish cities are permanents settlements.
Cities may be established through conquests, invasions or the decisions of rulers who may want to establish the seat of their governments at a specific place to accommodate their political, economic and cultural visions. The founding of the Ethiopian capital has followed a familiar pattern to make particular places lucky enough to become the political, cultural and economic centers of nations.
Addis Ababa was chosen as the Ethiopian capital because it met some of the fundamental requirements for human habitation. The availability of water and woods for construction as well as a suitable climate had made Addis the ideal candidate for a national capital. “To found a city, pioneers faced many obstacles. They had to find land that suited their purpose. City founders also needed sources of water and land to grow food. Depending on the goals of the city, other factors might also be important such as access to trade routes.”
Like people, cities develop and grow according to their own natural rhythms and the residents’ lifestyles and cultures that play key roles in shaping the faces and lives of people and the cities themselves. Like people, cities have their cultures, and their heartbeats are usually synced with the heartbeats of the residents that give them life, meanings and even symbolic names to their cities. “Urban culture is the culture of towns and cities. The defining nature of a city is the presence of a large population in a limited space that live according to the prevailing economic, political, social and cultural norms. “This makes it possible for many subcultures to survive and thrive close to each other and are exposed to social influence without necessarily intruding into the private sphere.”
Addis Ababa (New Flower) is a symbolic name that reflected the hopes, aspirations and visions of the people who founded its more than 125 years ago. At the time of its founding, Addis was a small town or village surrounded by forests and more particularly eucalyptus trees after emperor Menelik introduced them from as far as Australia. “The introduction of eucalyptus trees to Ethiopia goes back to the time of Emperor Menelik II after he established the capital of the country.” As history showed subsequently, turning a forested settlement, which Addis Ababa was in its earliest days, into a flowering capital required sustained efforts and a determination to turn its symbolic role into living reality.
Addis has indeed gone through various phases of development since its establishment. There was a long period of stagnation that characterized the reign of Emperor Menelik followed by an accelerated tempo of growth under Emperor Haile Sellassie and then ups and downs under the following governments that came on the heels of the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974. Under the revolution, Addis witnessed more devastations that flowing as its residents were subjected to a chronic state of material deprivation and psychological torments culminating in the notorious Red Terror period. No development projects worth speaking of were carried out in the capital.
The last thirty years have also witnessed ups and downs in the development of the Ethiopian capital that has undergone major facelifts and renovations. This was also a time that witnessed the most impressive modernization of Addis Ababa. As city planners often agree, Addis is not a structurally or topographically uniform city. Like any African capital, it is rather an amalgam of the old and the new and the super modern, old quarters coexisting with newly created ones and the architectural legacy of the five year Italian fascist occupation coexisting side by side with state of the art structures.
A good example of this pattern is the part of the city known as Piazza which is now home to the modern Adwa building which is facing one of the landmarks of the capital, namely the old building which is now occupied by Abyssinia Bank that used to serve as the headquarters of the fascists officers who ruled Addis for five years back in the 1930s.
Addis is a capital city striking for its contrasts not only in its buildings and residential quarters and business areas but also in the lifestyle of its residents. One example is the part of Addis known as Gullele sub-city or district, where famous landmarks like the Institute Pasteur medical research and diagnostic centre were located. This place was formerly known as “Doctor Lambe”, named after a foreign veterinary sdoctor who took care of the health of livestock in the area, long before it was replaced by the Pasteur Institute.
The area around that place were surrounded with thick forests where residents lived in small mud houses and were mainly engaged in handicrafts, wood selling and small trades.
Surprisingly enough, that part of the capital is largely kept intact with its old and crumbling houses while the main highway linking it to central Addis together with some of the modern building structures are major constructions that have emerged in the last thirty years or so. The major road from Merkato to Addissu Michael is still an old, narrow and crumbling artery that links Gullele with the biggest market in Africa. Uneven development of the various quarters (sefers in Amharic) has thus become a defining aspect of the present face of the capital.
Most of the residential quarters around Merkato are still overcrowded, dirty and crumbling while the residents are mostly poor traders engaged in small businesses or in undefined occupations. At one time in the not so remote past, there was a highly advertised plan for urban renewal around that most downtrodden part of Mercato, known as ‘min alesh tera’. This is still a crowded and chaotic part of the market for all kinds of old utensils, fittings and equipments, most of them stolen and sold at the same place. After a decade or two of the announcement of the so-called urban renewal plan, there is nothing one can see on the ground by way of improvement let alone renewal.
While major renovation works have taken place almost in all parts of Addis, Gullele is still ‘underdeveloped’ and reminds one of the old ways of life and the old atmosphere of poverty and stagnation. Compare this part of the capital with the new residential quarters and business centers that have emerged in the last thirty years or so. Meanwhile, the old red mud houses of Gullele have traversed decades staggering on the brink of collapse while poverty is still visible and palpable. Walk or drive through Merkato and its surrounding slums areas and you have the perfect example of a typical African capital where impoverished shanties surround the posh areas further to the south and the centre of the capital.
There are also many interesting facets of life in Addis and its cultural variety is really amazing. People from the rural areas who migrated to Addis in search of better opportunities have settled in various parts of the capital without abandoning their traditional and rich cultures in all areas of life. If you go to what is known as Shiro Meda area, past the US Embassy and up towards Entoto hills, you observe the busy handicraftsmen and women and the traditional clothes makers who are congregated in one large area on both sides of the road leading to Entoto, They have kept their language, traditions and cultures intact and they usually give you the impression that they have turned the area into a living museum of southern culture.
If you have time to visit an area known as Ketchene a little farther, you find a different type of handicraftsmen who are engaged this time in the making of various clay utensils whose trademark activity is to give life and beauty to clay through pots and pans and cooking vessels, water containers and other such paraphernalia. The residents have maintained the ways of life of their ancestors back home and their foods and drinks are the same delicacies they enjoyed in the old days in the rural areas. A visit to that place would give you the impression that you are not in Addis but in one of the villages these people came from in the highlands or lowlands.
However, standing on the elevated areas around Entoto, you can see the new skyscrapers in the remote centre of Addis where the new CBE headquarters stands prominently as a major landmark and a beacon of hope and looks like the Statue of Liberty in Manhattan New York harbor. The contrast between the place where you stand and the distant skyline down in centre of Addis becomes all the more striking and amazing at the same time.
Addis is still hostage to a kind of asymmetric or haphazard building structures that are more reproductions or imitations than the products of conscious creativity. Many architects suggest that Addis has jigsaw puzzle kind of architecture rather than a well planned or thought about design. Even the colors of the buildings are often criticized for their oddity or lack of harmony.
Addis is obviously in dire need of urban planning and radical renewal which is a process of developing and designing urban areas to meet the needs of a community. “It is also a process of guiding and directing the use and development of land, urban environment, urban infrastructures and related ecosystem and human services.” Despite its many development problems, Addis is still a flamboyant, vibrant, promising and growing African capital worth visiting in this season of holidays when the city displays its vivid religious and secular faces and colors to the amazement of both visitors and residents.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SATURDAY 3 FEBRUARY 2024
