Black Foam

Description

This Saturday could have seemed perfectly ordinary in Addis Ababa.

Just like any other December day; the sky overcast, the weather chilly, and the bars preparing early to welcome crowds who wouldn’t let a weekend pass without reading it, pouring out all their weariness on the comfortable benches: Stella, Heineken, Guinness Corona, Harar… and the bench of the toiling masses, St. George, whose popularity skyrocketed as soon as a football team adopted its name, even before it had achieved anything. It could have been all that, were it not for what was happening at that very moment in another part of the city, giving this time of year a certain uniqueness.

Five buses, escorted by two police cars, sped along, through a light drizzle, from the gathering point in Meskel Square in the heart of Addis towards the Bole suburb where the airport is located. Lined both sides of the muddy asphalt road, for six kilometers, were curious onlookers, resentful and envious, and grieving farewells.

Only the last group waved, seeing only the shattered reflections of their own images on the tinted windows of the buses.