Imagine an Old Italian carabineer from the occupation period coming back to Addis from hell or heaven and asking you where Piazza has vanished. What would you tell him? That the old Piazza has vanished physically but would continue to exist in people’s imaginations and memories and dreams? That would be unlikely to convince your unusual visitor. Piazza, his piazza as he knew it, walking in the narrow streets with his Italian rifle dangling from his shoulder, the apetite-whetting smell of macaroni or spaghetti hanging in the noontime air, wafting through the tiny shops where cafe latte was sold in cups imported from Rome-well, that Piazza is gone forever now.
Even the living former residents of Piazza are coming to terms with the change that had caught their neighborhoods unawares.
Wait a minute or a year, but Piazza will inevitably be rebuilt and you may call the new or ultra modern neighborhood something like “Piazza Nova” (The New Piazza) as some of the landmarks are called Addis Ketema (New Town), Addisu Kera (the new slaughterhouse) or Addissu Gebeya (The new market). There are so many places in the Ethiopian capital that are called Addissu this and Addissu that, even in their old ages. Addis Ketema retained its old name until the old shacks were replaced with high rise buildings and its name disappeared as if it was buried under the new structures.
Addis Ababa was first imagined by Empress Taitu and it is still coveting for newness.
One of the mysteries of the Ethiopian capital is its architectural “misto” (mix) or the coexistence of the old with the new in an uneasy neighborhood. Old shacks lean on new buildings or survive in their shadows as if their longevity depends on this uneasy coexistence. Take for instance Senga Tera,(bull market) the place formerly known as a market for oxen and then changed into “commerce” because the College of Commerce was built on the very spot where bulls locked horns and escaped from their owners and ran along the dusty streets of bygone years as if they were the fighting bulls from an old Spanish bullfighting arena. Even the once famous Spanish bullfighting vividly portrayed by Ernst Hemingway in his famous novel entitled “The Sun Also Rises” or “Fiesta”, is slowly disappearing. Hemingway, as you may know, was a correspondent to a Canadian newspaper called “The Star” and his best pastime, if not his obsession, was to watch young bullfighters or matadors wrestle with well-fed bulls and kill them with their swords at end of the show. That was not only macho. It was also cruel and horrible to animal rights activists who managed to get the show outlawed in some Spanish towns.
Fortunately, the bulls from the old bull market used to be taken home and slaughtered as sacrifices to this or that public holiday. All that is gone now, for good.
The shacks of Addis Ababa are often resilient to change in the sense that they often resist or survive modernization. Until recently the shacks around Sheraton Hotel were still existing and serving as cheap hotels or drinking outlets or shops until the juggernaut of reconstruction reached their doors and turned them to dust within an hour or so. This is exactly what happened to old and now-defunct Piazza. What is amazing is the speed with which entire neighborhoods that took decades to construct disappeared within hours.
That may be taken as the ruthless face of modernity.
Of course, the demolishing of old neighborhoods was bound to divide public opinion as it was the case with Piazza. Lives, memories and livelihoods disappeared in an instant and that was difficult for residents to swallow although they were bound to get used to it because time is said to be the best palliative. Nowadays, there is less talk about that event as if everyone has finally come to terms with what happened. Addis Ababa, as its name indicates, is never ending its renewal. This was because it was initially built haphazardly and without any master plan and foreigners had a huge impact in its foundation and growth.
According to a female blogger who wrote about Piazza, and about her personal impressions said, “We begin in Piassa, the oldest part of Addis Ababa, rich in heritage buildings and original traces of the city before its expansion into the new construction being built now. My first time walking the streets of Piassa on my earlier trips was so refreshing, because I was used to being in Bole (the newer buildings, downtown area, mall etc) of the city. Not that I don’t like Bole, I do! But Piassa has its own style, a unique heartbeat, from its street shopping, vintage balconies to its historic cafes, Piassa is not to be missed if you are visiting in Addis Ababa.”
This is now a story from a bygone era. The blogger nevertheless continued to share her impressions saying, “For those living in Addis Ababa… I have come to understand that Ethiopians commonly tend to stay to what and where they know. Just as most people in Ethiopia don’t travel very much outside of their birth city, people in Addis Ababa similarly tend to stay to the parts they live and work. I guess that is normal for any place, similarly to when I lived in New York, folks in Brooklyn had all they needed in BK, folks in Harlem were not going to travel all the way down to Brooklyn for what they could get on their own block. This is a universal human trait. However, if I shared this trait, I would not have seen so much of this beautiful world, and I would not be typing this now to share it with you. I give you my eyes, so you may see what you haven’t (yet).”
The Indian-style one-story residential quarters have now disappeared after the demolishing. The houses had typical Indian architecture although the initial resident had long gone back to Bombay or Calcutta. Businesses had taken their places and the inexorable march of time have turned them into the new victims. It seems that cities, like human beings are born, grow up, get older and die in one way or another. They give space to the new and the upcoming while they leave behind their memories and recollections that will also inevitably die with the passage of time. Whether we like or no, the newly built high rises of Addis that adorn its skylines now, will one day be considered backward and old and be replaced with new structures.
Behind or around the new construction projects in the old Legehar neighborhood, there is a frenzy of construction while the shacks that used to be the dominant features of the area are now trying to hide their aging faces and struggling to survive the advance of the modernizing juggernaut.
The bottom line is that city neighborhoods appear at one time and disappear at another, without even leaving any traces of their former existence. I recently read an interesting article about an old town in Colombia called Artacanta which was the birthplace of the Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez who used the town as the setting for his classic novel, “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. That is the town where he grew up and gathered his recollections or the materials that went into the writing of the book later on. In 2007 Garcia Marquez visited the town and he spoke about the shock he felt when he saw how it had gone from its years of grandeur to sharp decline in a relatively short time. He said that he did not recognize most of the popular places he frequented during his younger years and felt depressed by how the whole place had turned old and dismal.
Towns and cities do not always remain young as humans do not. While ageing is natural, it may also be a curse or a boon depending on the circumstances. Addis Ababa which has turned from what visitors then called “a village in the forests”, is not as such an old city. Many cities around the world are many centuries old and still undergoing changes. Whether we like it or not, Addis is also bound to change. What is important is to know how this change is implemented, whether it will be lasting or be a temporary facelift. Or weather change comes with a human face. There are winners and losers in the process; and if it may be difficult to accommodate all the competing interests it may be advisable to at least strike the right balance so that the winners far outnumber the losers.
Another quote from the blogger could well serve as a personal reminiscence of the old Piassa that is now alive only in people’s memories. “We walked around Piassa, and the old, mysterious buildings I once walked past everyday soon became open books of stories I was hearing for the first time. Piassa is literally a living museum. Learning such incredible history opened my understanding even wider to the vast world that is Ethiopia. From the Armenian and Indian inspired architecture, to the delicious cakes and macchiato at Enrico’s cafe, every time spent together was rich with beauty, inspiration and education. Not only that, my love and drive to be a part of something bigger for Ethiopia has been rejuvenated”
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD WEDNESDAY 29 MAY 2024
