Fashion Shows and Navigation Adventures

For those of you who know me even a little bit, I know you think the first part of this title is a joke. But, oh, how wrong you would be! I have been to not one, but FOUR fashion shows in the last two days. I kid you not.

The first was at Hope College. This fashion show was a project of a group of young women in the Environmental Studies department and featured models and the full runway scenario. The six dresses had all been designed by students and—get this—all were made from recycled materials. Not surprisingly, the most common ‘fabric’ was a wide assortment of plastic bags, followed by newspaper and magazine pages and rounded out by tin cans. Now, I am being absolutely serious here, as will be proved by the photos above. The spectacle was a bit difficult to photograph because those models were all doing their swanky hip swivels and spinning moves, but you get the picture. All I can say is the concept is laudable, but the dresses don’t look all that user-friendly. 

The second fashion experience was far different and, actually, super interesting. The travel agent (Pam) who has arranged all the transportation and lodging for our SCOPE group invited Nancy and I to join, as her guest, a ‘Behind the Scenes’ tour of three different Ethiopian fashion designers’ studios. I won’t bore you with a description of all three, but I do want to mention the first woman, Fikirte Addis. She is young, gorgeous and very socially conscious. And, she is becoming quite well known in the fashion scene—I predict in a couple of years you will see one of her designs on the red carpet at the Oscars. She designs incredibly beautiful dresses from traditional hand-woven fabrics (ecologically and morally sourced) into very contemporary, but distinctly Ethiopian, garments. We visited her small workshop where everything from design to weaving to embroidery to sewing goes on. I might also mention, she is the mother of three kids and her husband is a farmer.

Transortation that day went perfectly smoothly, as Pam used her driver and a lovely small bus. However, that has not been our universal experience, to say the least. Of course, it goes without saying that when two ferengi women stand at the curb and hail a taxi the dollar signs just start ding-ding-dinging in the drivers’ heads. We are used to that and expect to be price-gouged, a practice we are becoming better and better about aggressively countering. 

But what about when you’re desperate? The morning of our most important meeting, one that Nancy pulled every string in the book to set up with some pretty high-powered people at the Federal Ministry of Health, we were basically screwed by a taxi driver we had used the day before. “Oh, sure, sure,” he had said. “I can pick you up at 7:30.” (our meeting was at 8:30 and it was rush hour.) Well, 8:00 rolled around and we’re still standing around with the goats when we find out the driver is actually at the airport. That news resulted in a mad dash out to the main road where we again dodged donkeys and other various livestock on the sidewalk, then risked a scramble across the busy street to a taxi headed our direction. We quickly negotiated a price and got in saying, “Fast!” Well, fast was not really an option. He was driving a 1970’s era, Soviet, Lada. The driver-side window was propped up with a screw driver, all the window cranks were missing, the back door handles were broken off and the glove box was tied shut with a string. I think top speed was about 30 mph and Nancy and I felt certain we were doomed. Traffic was stopped as far as you could see and even in the best of times, central Addis was 45 minutes away. Miraculously, this driver must have known some super-secret routes because even with his disaster of a car and the insane traffic he got us to the FMoH only fifteen minutes late. I actually gave that guy a tip.

Another thing to know is that Google Maps is not necessarily accurate. I think I’ve mentioned that Addis is a city without street names or addresses, meaning everyone navigates by landmarks. Somehow, I firmly believed GPS was far superior to the usual practice of stopping every six blocks and asking someone on the curb for directions to one’s destination. Alas. After a lovely lunch with Getahun, he offered to take us back to Hope College to collect our baggage (we decided to move into the center of the city.) Getahun had no idea of where we needed to go, so he called a friend. The friend gave him the usual advice: drive to a familiar landmark and start asking directions. “That’s dumb,”  I said. “Look, Hope College is clearly marked, right here on Google Maps. It isn’t that far from here.” So, we started driving, diligently following our little blue dot …. until the paved road became a dirt road became a boulder-strewn trail became an abandoned railroad track. 

Clearly, we were nowhere near the College. Getahun asked cops, bystanders, anyone he could find for Hope College and everyone looked at him like he was a lunatic. Turns out we were miles and miles and miles from our intended destination. The roads on Google Maps were accurate, but the location couldn’t have been more wrong (no, duh, right? Didn’t I just say there are no addresses or street names in Addis?) Anyway, Getahun fixed the problem: he drove to a familiar landmark and started asking directions and voila! It took us an hour, but we arrived. 

My daughter, who is studying cross-cultural psychology, would no doubt have something to say about my western insistence that technology is better than tradition. Lesson learned.

Photos: hand woven fabrics at Fikirte's, eco-friendly clothing, Fikirte, weaver, weaver's product, Soviet Lada taxi, lunch with Getahun, on the road, asking for directions, roadside merchant