When the snowflakes first appeared on December 17th, 2009, people were pleased and excited in anticipation of a blazing white Christmas to be enjoyed in Brussels. But as the days went on all the excitement and happy spirit went down the drain as it were. Strangers like me could not take it anymore. So I had to cut short my medical stay in Brussels and leave for Ethiopia, but not before writing my impressions and encounters as a little bit take-home memorabilia.

Subjects like the weather and its impact on the lifestyles of people, human relations and communication, disguised discrimination, the value of time, and the like all have to be shared with my readers. God willing and if all goes well, (Scary statement to make, eh?) I shall be reading this article in Addis Abeba.

My readers may know that such accounts cannot be thematic, but I will attempt to organise my observations while making comparisons with situations in Addis Abeba, without using too many words.

I have already started with the weather.

The streets are almost deserted. The vehicles which are left parked on the roadside are covered with white, looking like heaps of snow lined up in a whitewashed sea. The leafless trees seem to have their share of the booty on their branches. But life goes on. The underground transport system, the metro service, is indeed the lifeline of the city residents. I cannot imagine what would have happened to passengers in the city under such a harsh climate if it were not for the tunnels.

As a child I used to find some amusement in watching ants and termites build their “highways” and “access lanes,” if you will, along which they shuttled to store their food stock underground. Tunnel digging must have started from that point of reference.

One morning I had to take the metro, and as I stepped in I saw a few unoccupied seats while some passengers were standing. I moved over and occupied the seat beside an African woman. It did not take me long to realise why the seats were vacant. It was nothing but the reflexive action of disguised colour discrimination. I observed that on several occasions.

An interesting incident took place in a hospital waiting room when I met an young Eritrean man of about 30 years of age who goes by the name Kidane, a pseudonym he picked up from somewhere. I would have taken him for an Ethiopian just the same. In fact he prefers to be identified as an Ethiopian.

According to Kidane, he was not born when the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) was initiated in the 1960s but grew up on the empty rhetoric of independence from Ethiopia, the high cost of lives paid on both sides, and the political and economic devastation that independence delivered.

Kidane was victimised. He fled to England to seek asylum but was detained there and tortured, he claims. He feels sorry for those asylum seekers, genuine or not, who are detained and tortured by countries which are supposed to be the champions of freedom and democracy.

Kidane’s friends are all Ethiopians and do not understand why the two countries cannot reunite in the spirit of the goals of the African Union. He feels that it is time Eritreans return home, oust the dictator and become masters of their destiny instead of fleeing to other countries and suffering the consequences of migration.

An enviable observation deals with the stark contrast between the behaviours of medical personnel here in Belgium or even other countries in Europe like Germany and those personnel working in some of the medical centres in our country of Ethiopia with a  few exceptions, like one doctor who has made a 8name for himself, Belay Abegaz.

The hospital compounds, the waiting rooms, toilets and the consultation offices are so immaculately clean and shiny that a patient starts feeling cured even before he sees a doctor. I have been to a number of clinics and hospitals, and in all cases it is the doctors in charge who come out of the corridors to roll call patients and warmly greet them, shaking hands while ushering them to their rooms.

I do not expect that kind of courteous welcome in Ethiopia even from a person who feigns to be a doctor the minute he or she puts on a white gown.

I find it easier to leave to the imagination of readers than to try to describe the technical devices installed inside a fully air-conditioned examination room where the doctor scans an ailment to help him perform his diagnosis. Prescriptions are written in a standard form on the computer.

Incidentally, payments are made directly to the doctors like in a bus where drivers sell tickets for passengers. Senior citizens over 65 years of age get free tickets for city transport.

Brussels is packed with an aging population and migrants from other countries like Pakistan, China, Morocco, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and East African Countries. I have noticed that some of the busiest trade centres are run by Moroccans and Arabs from the Middle East. There are also a lot of people from Turkey and Eastern European countries formerly under the Soviet Union. In Port de Namur, I saw a lot of Congolese barbers and hairdressers at a corner popularly know as Matonge.

If someone stops to greet someone for more than a few seconds, one expects breaking news that may be shocking or stunning with excitement. In Ethiopia, we are excited just to see someone who drops by unannounced. In fact, we do not encourage guests to notify us of their visits ahead of time. In Europe that is not the case. One has to inform his host of the time of visit including his preferences like tea or coffee or something else.

Table manners are worth mentioning. In our homes, to finish a plate is a sign of wanting more. If one clears his plate out of manners, we tend to force him or her to eat more. We sometimes take finishing food to the last crumb as an act of impoliteness.

In many homes here in Ethiopia, families eat from the same tray and use their bare hand. This feat is taboo elsewhere. Every individual has his own plate, fork, spoon and knife depending on the cuisine. The dish has to be swept clean and taken to the sink for washing and too; there is no reason why the host has to do the dishwashing alone. If the guest says that he has had enough of something, there is no need to offer him some more.

If someone invites you to accompany him to a café, it does not necessarily mean that he is going to pay the bill. This is even truer between a husband and wife who pay for their separate things, even if they go out together.

Expenses like house rent and utility bills are shared equally between a husband and wife living under the same roof.

Grandparents who are too old to care for themselves are usually taken and kept at “old age homes” and institutions. Their children might visit them during Christmas or New Year holidays. On the other hand when children come of age, say at 18 years, they start living on their own, although this is now being extended due to the economic recession. The good thing is that they often get employed even before they graduate from collage.

Men and women living alone often keep pet animals. Dog walking seems to be a national sport where the elderly find excuses to go out and meet people. There are cases where lonely individuals are found dead days after they are seen outside their houses. Finally, the most important point I would like to mention, as a conclusion, is the availability of city maps that indicate every detail of routes, names of streets, and roads, including house numbers. A stranger cannot miss a house or place if he can read a map.

BY Girma Feyissa