A mismatch made in heaven

As you may know, I am car sick. I have two ways to fight it, sleeping (great for short journey, boring highways and rainy days) or listening to music (works exclusively if there is lyrics). In Ethiopia of course, sleeping would really be a shame as most of the time, the car journey is a unique part of the experience. In addition, it is always sunny (remember the 13 months of sunshine?), they have no highways and no short ways either.

One of my favorite activities in a car is therefore to find the perfect music for the perfect landscape. I have noticed that Bob Dylan works perfectly well near Lalibela (with a special mention for Knocking on heavens door on top of the mountains), Muse is better for greener sites such as the North, and weirdly enough rap fits perfectly the dry land of Tigray.

However, my ipod having stopped working normally, I now can only listen to it in shuffle. And some of the song just does not fit at all, example being Michael Jackson on the way to Harar, Zazie on the way to Langano and the Wombat on the delicate road to Wenchi.

As I was driving back from the Gheralta mountain (see following post), David Getta came on (don’t ask why it is on my ipod) in the middle of the desert as we were crossing the tiny villages before the lodge. I was going to press forward when I realised how out of place the song felt in a place where they have nothing. “Get rich or die trying”, in front of houses made of cow excrements, around girls of 6 to 12 walking to the well to get water, amid young man sitting around in the same ancestral position… Here the slogan would be survive or die trying, get food of die trying, get water or die trying. I never thought David Getta would actually make me think about anything, but actually, his song made me reflect on my own materialistic approach to life. I am not going to change of course, my way of life is so different from Mulugeta from Worku in the middle of nowhere, but may be it is time for me to understand better what money really represents and what money can buy...