Even after leaving home and getting married, I’ve always thought of price increases as something that should be left to mothers to worry about.
Coz mother’s do, don’t they? It comes with the territory. I have no children and I’m not planning to have any. In fact, I may not even be able to consider having any if food prices keep climbing the ladder this fast.
However, my motherly instincts have been forced to the surface under the pressure of the oil prices, inflation and looming food shortages: it’s as if my consumo-logical clock has finally kicked in with a vengeance.
Every time I enter one of those posh supermarkets on Bole Road, I have to resist what I call the ”Jean Valjean complex”. This is when, like Victor Hugo’s starving protagonist in Les Miserables, I am reminded of how window shopping for food in troubled times can lead an honest soul into temptation.
Gone are the days when I could indulge in a bite of Bilo’s Pastry’s tiramisu, the best a girl can get in Addis. No more can I take my lazy ass home in a ”contract taxi” the way I used to before joining the have-nots.
Then, I would pay 45 birr an hour for the luxury of sucking up fresh air, smug in the knowledge that the Âminibus-riding public and I had parted ways.
I am bitterly reminded of how oil prices and inflation, global warming and the world economy, Brazil and biofuel production are affecting my every day needs — by limiting them.
Just six months ago 27 birr would have covered the price of a huge cheeseburger (almost as big as the ones that took care of Elvis Presley’s heart — for good) for two, a Coca-Cola or a double espresso, a waitress’s tip and perhaps a taxi fare home, at the best of cafés in Addis.
Nowadays 27 birr buys you the agony of seeing less of what you love in a mouth-watering food and more of what you’d rather not have: tomato, lettuce and rude looks from a waitress who won’t be running to the manager any time soon with your complaints. Not that you’d be invited to stay long enough to locate the manager — they start mopping the floor beneath your feet the minute you’re done chewing because either it’s the restaurant’s twice-weekly turn to go without electricity and they can’t afford the candles, or there are customers who might order more than a salad waiting for your seat.
I used to work in a travel agency where ”boys” from the country with bachelors or master’s degrees from the social sciences department of Addis Ababa University would train as tour guides for the packages we offered: bird watching, history, culture, wildlife and trekking.
They were not only well paid, almost as well as our managers with per diems, tips and what not — they saved like maniacs.
These guys didn’t even eat three meals a day — and back then three meals were possible.
They ate twice a day (and called it ”5/11”, first brunch then a snack, that’s it); they hardly changed their clothes; they practised an everybody-for-himself payment technique they referred to as the ”detuch system” and, in general, they lived by their wits — in slang terms ”Nuro Bezede”.
We despised their country ways — even while behind each other’s backs we were worrying about how to make it to payday without coming face-to-face with our creditors — the landlady or that girl from Ethiopian Airlines who sells dirt-cheap accessories.
So of course we used to wonder at them, us cool and carefree city bways and gals who ate their mother’s injera (traditional food) and drank El Aid Pastry’s Macchiato.
But now I wonder if those country boys didn’t have it right all along: when it comes to survival, impressing your colleagues isn’t everything.
Lemlem Tilahun is an Ethiopian language and literature student at the Addis Ababa University. She also works for an NGO
