Belatedly, the expansion of roads, particularly that of Ring Road, envisaged and designed in less hurried times, started to make an impact on Addis Abeba city life. There was the wrecking of existing infrastructure carried out on a large scale. It seems that the one building that was doing no one any harm, the main railway station at La Gare, will be demolished  to make way for a thoroughfare.

What seems to have escaped the planners’ notice is that the main road in question, Churchill Avenue, cutting as it does through the heart of the city, is, like La Gare, a relic of past glories.

Winston Churchill is a figure from Ethiopia’s recent past, after whom a thankful emperor and nation named its most prominent highway. It was the jugular that connected the very modern Mezzidini City Hall to the main land transport nerve centre - the railroad terminal.

Between the end of the road and the station, lies the Lion of Judah, what must be the most iconic of Ethiopia’s many and varied statues, a witness to past history. Splendid in gold, and majestic to the core. Outshining even the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela and the Axumite obelisks, it is a national symbol of Ethiopia, representing a past that is no more- the imperial epoch. A great symbol fought over for many hundreds of years, in 1935, the marauding Mussolini army took it as war booty to plant in the centre of Rome.

Returned to its native land, it stands proudly in its rightful place today, although sadly blackened by the soot from cars and buses that circle it every minute of the day.

Woefully, however, there is now talk that a collection of tea-houses are to be erected around its base. Tea-houses, to serve the many tourists that are hoped will come to see it. Is nothing sacred any more?

Who would have thought the government’s laid-back stance on historic buildings and sites would come back to haunt it. Its attitude to preserving what is historic, and therefore worth the keeping, has been dismal to say the least, almost verging on the immoral. It is as if those who should have known better, and are in a position to make the difference, are feeling, instead, that they are being forced to interject in a subject matter that many of them feel is marginal.

The approach seems to be: what of it? If a building has been slated to be knocked down because it is in the way of some development; or just because it is old, why should we care? 

The story goes that when the Derg wanted to build its much vaunted parade grounds at Meskel Square, which it wanted to name Revolutionary Square; Col. Mengistu Hailemariam told its designer, brought in especially from Finland, not to bother about expenses. Nothing would stand in his way. Anything, or anyone, that did so would be bulldozed.

He was not as uncouth as his masters, as luck would have it. But, he did have one problem on his horizon. He could not, for the life of him, find a way to get around not to knocking down Ras Biru’s elegant mansion overlooking the square. The Derg wanted to preserve the minimalist structure that they found so appealing.

The designer wanted to keep the magnificent structure. He found an ally, as fortune would have it, in the Chinese Embassy in Addis Abeba, who put the case for him to the Derg. They, of like-minded socialist, bent convinced Col. Mengistu Hailemariam to keep the building, because, they argued, it was an historic site and part of Ethiopia’s heritage. Halcyon days when a simple decision based on long term benefits could and did pass muster!

Irony upon irony, Ras Biru’s mansion today houses the Addis Abeba museum.

It was good to see that the swan-like elegance of Liya Kebede has stepped in to the rescue of a building that would most probably have ended up in a landfill. It takes one beauty to recognize another, as the saying goes, and her timely stepping in to save the stunning building on Africa Avenue (Bole area) from a sure demise is to be welcomed.

That is not to say that the best use for the building has been found for it: a tourist trap?
 

We are told that there are some 33 churches, two grand mosques and an overabundance of other treasures in our fair city waiting to be preserved by those that want to put their money into historic ventures. Other than the places of worship, who would want to invest untold money in the old, rambling and crumbling municipality building, across from St George Cathedral, and a dilapidated, main fire station adjoining it, both of which are still in use?

Perhaps UNESCO will still find a use for it, a use that would satisfy both the city elders and the government. No private individual should be expected to step in: it is primarily the duty of the state to do the honours.

As outsiders were allowed into what had been a closed East Europe, it was discovered that the communist rulers in most of the Warsaw Pact countries had been far looking enough to preserve most of their inner cities. True, some places of worship were converted to sports arenas or put to some other unexplained uses; but in the main, ‘old towns’ had been preserved with strict building codes in force. Demolition was tantamount to tearing out pages of history.

It is because of these and other precautions that the beauty of Prague in the Czeck Republic is often cited as the best example of what conserved heritage can, and ought to, look like.

And Addis Abeba, our new flower?

It has grown by leaps and bounds. In the past 30 years, there has been a large influx of people from all walks of life. To begin with, there were those that were displaced from the Derg’s nationalization of both urban and agricultural lands in what were then the provinces. They formed a steady stream towards the capital city.

There was then a deluge of people looking for work - any work, and not finding it. But they stayed, ever hopeful. Added to all this was the natural population growth of a city.

To accommodate all these increases, houses had to be built, and they were built haphazardly, with the existing services not being able to keep up with the expansion. Many things just vanished to create room, including whole blocks of houses. Many of them were of historical interest. But, who cared, least of all those that needed some sort of roof over their heads?
 

The buildings that have been put up of late, four-storey monstrosities, were designed, it was said, to alleviate a shortage of low-cost housing. They were slow in coming, and were gobbled up as soon as they were erected. The shoddy workmanship, the irreverent land use, the absence of basic greenery on which children could kick a ball around, and indeed for parents to take their infants for strolls; have blighted the noble thinking behind the whole venture. As one person who had witnessed run-down ghettos in Europe and in the United States said: could they not have first learned from municipalities around the world?

As for the chemin de fer, the railway terminus: it is sitting there as idle as all the first, second and third class carriages are, as well as the many freight cars that brought in and took out Ethiopia’s needs and produce for well over a hundred years. Idle despite its hallowed platforms once having been a bustling area. Soot from bygone days from coal-fired and then from massive diesel locomotives, still adorn the gigantic cast iron eaves, built in France 120 years ago. There is no other building as functional and as beautiful as La Gare, the French word having been vulgarized to legeharr in the Amharic, the name today of the neighbourhood around the station that too will vanish with the structure that gave it its name.

But its fate is to be decided by a committee, no less. This, if past experience is anything to go by, is its death knell.  Put it down to one more page torn out of the history nooks. Or rather, a whole chapter entitled the ‘Franco-Ethiopian Railway.’