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Spruced me up
I think I made the most of Singapore, and Singapore made the most of me. When I look back on the seven years I lived in that tiny Asian city-state, I admit I felt shy around her at first. Her upscale, driven, efficient ways made me nervous. I was comfortable in places that felt less pristine, more frayed around the edges. I felt more at home where struggle existed out loud, even on the way to peak performance.
So, I made a pact with Singapore when I first arrived in 2010. I would focus on her good side, create meaning, and be grateful for the hundreds of benefits she offered, if she would let me settle in gently. I’d contribute once I surfaced through my haze of transition. In the end, Singapore took me in, spruced me up from the outside in, and gave me a job to do. I launched my kids and helped international families choose their best-fit school on the island. I supported thousands of students as they transitioned to Singapore from around the world. I loved my team, found my stride, used my gifts and made peace with remarkable Singapore.
Losing face
A ways down the road, I noticed something was wrong. The stamina and intensity it took for me to excel in that world started to blur people’s faces in the streets where I lived. I couldn’t see them as well as I used to, and I wasn’t sure they saw me. Most worryingly, sometimes I didn’t care.
I also noticed a growing ache to embrace my fraying edges and tend to my children, my marriage, my neighbours, my soul. I wanted that more than I wanted a Singapore-calibre life. As a family, we began to dream — what and where was the most beautiful life we could imagine? It was a place where raw and real mattered a lot. Where maybe the clocks ran a bit slower instead of keeping pace with the Hong Kong stock markets. Where the life we wanted could coexist in the same city with the work we chose, and not be relegated to summer holidays. Where we could linger to greet a local community we knew by face and name. Where neglected things could be restored. My husband and I knew it was time to leave Singapore for a restart that offered time for different contributions and connections. But, we didn’t know where to go, until the pendulum swung.
A softer relationship with time
After we took time to reflect deeply, we narrowed the options and imagined our Beautiful Life to come. Then, in 2017, we leapt continents to Ethiopia, exactly seven years from the time we moved to Singapore. We went from sea level to the ‘Roof of Africa’, where over 80% of Africa’s mountains huddle in the highlands around Addis Ababa. On our way to the airport to fly to Africa that summer, we passed an abandoned hotel sign that said, “See you in 2010.” Amused, I snapped a photo as we drove by.
We landed in the only country on the planet that marks time with a Coptic calendar. In Ethiopia, time runs 7 years and 8 months ‘behind’ the Gregorian calendar most of us use. For me, it was 2017. For Ethiopians, it was 2010. Literally. On the wall of my new bank in Addis Ababa hung a clock and calendar for Ethiopians and a calendar for foreigners. A new friend had just renewed her local driver’s licence. Though issued in 2017 — in my world— her licence would expire in 2012, five years before she received it.
As the long rains ended that year, “Happy New Year 2011!” appeared on shop windows, written in plastic yellow flowers on the glass. Soon, other yellow Meskel flowers would bloom across the highland fields to announce the coming of ‘Spring’ — in September.
While these surprises were a bit disorienting, flickering like a twilight zone, they also softened my relationship with time and with my own aspirations and regrets. Just by landing there, I had suddenly gained more than seven uncanny years. Ethiopia was not replacing, but regifting the time I spent in Singapore. Without warning, hints of restoration started to appear. Here, I had another shot at living slowly into my values and looking into people’s faces.
The appetite of locusts
After we arrived in Ethiopia, the locusts unexpectedly swarmed. They devoured vast swaths of East African foliage and food crops. I devoured the news about them, too, trying to understand how, in just minutes or hours, pests can destroy what we’ve planted, grown, depended upon. According to a report about the locust surge during that time, a swarm the size of “a single square kilometre…[could] eat as much food in a day as 35,000 people.” It devastated communities already struggling with food insecurity. In the end, the locusts abandoned their trajectory toward Addis Ababa, but the threat of a threadbare city made me realize how quickly life as we know it can be lost. I imagined my neighbours standing hungry and stunned in the countryside farther from us. I remembered an Old Testament prophecy that says, I will restore to you the years the locust has eaten.
“But while we have no control over time itself, we do have a choice in how we orient to it, how we inhabit the moment, how we own the past and open to the future - a choice that shapes our entire experience of life, that ossuary of time. And just as it bears remembering that there are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives, it bears remembering that there are infinitely many ways of being in time.” - Maria Popova, The Marginalian
Change of environment
I put on my ski gear, and pull my boot bag up on my back. Covered head to toe, I step outside. My skis are perched on my left shoulder, and my poles are in my right hand. I walk carefully down the snowy path and up through the village to the lift. It’s a sacred ten minutes of meditative rhythmic walking to warm me up for the day ahead.
New snow has fallen – about twenty centimetres. The snow cats have groomed the mountain during the night. It’s early and I'll be on the first lift up to the slopes.
This is the change of environment I crave the most at this time in my life. The movement from posed stability to energetic vulnerability, from the familiar to the serendipitous unknown, from the routine to the spontaneous. Here on the mountain I feel like I live life to its fullest. I feel more alive here than anywhere else. Curiosity is my catalyst — I could rest today, I could contemplate other days gone by, but I'm curious: What will the snow be like? What will my balance and form be like? What shapes of clouds will appear? What breeze will freeze my nose? Where will the trail take me? It is ski season; adventurous, mysterious and invigorating. It provides another form of lifestyle filled with the sort of vulnerability I love.
Of course everyone knows that change is constant, but there is nowhere else in the world where I see, feel, hear, touch and taste this truth more clearly than here on the side of my favourite mountain.
This magic mountain that I've skied for years and years changes all the time. It's ironic really, as it is made of stone and rock, ice and dirt - elements so strong and stable, so unmoving and unbudgeable, so unforgiving and invincible, yet it is forever changing. Of course everyone knows that change is constant, but there is nowhere else in the world where I see, feel, hear, touch and taste this truth more clearly than here on the side of my favourite mountain. Such a curious phenomenon — this alpine environment that moves and changes constantly, just like me. The weather forecast looks good today, colder than yesterday, but mostly sunny in the morning with the wind rising in the afternoon. Of course, this could change too.
Letting change flow
Arriving at the base of the mountain, I put on my ski boots, tuck my shoes away for the day, and once again perch my skis on my shoulder. I use my poles to help me navigate the steps up to the gates; it’s the beginning of the season and this morning routine of getting to the lifts still has me feeling a bit winded as I get used to the altitude. My friend is waiting for me. She and I smile brightly at each other and, seconds later, the buzzer goes off and the gates are activated. We are the first ones through, proud of ourselves for our early rising and excited to experience the thrill of another ski day together. We banter about the beautiful day ahead, our slight aches and pains and need for some stretching.
My friend is confident and bold — an expert skier. Me, I am not as confident and I am no expert. But I am bold, and she inspires me. Most of all, I am grateful for the change of scenery, communing with nature and the joy of being together again on the mountain.
Tensing up in anticipation of a coming bump or turn will surely cause a fall. The key to serenity on skis is letting change flow, becoming one with the change, and then being the change.
As we descend each run at our own pace, our skis pushing us beyond our unique comfort zones, we each experience individualized moments in the quiet rhythm of skiing. Every day on the slope is different, every turn of every carve into the snow is different, at times smooth and other times choppy. At all times, our minds must stay connected to our bodies. It is invigorating and mystifying, as we must disconnect from all worries and all other actions and stay absolutely present. Tensing up in anticipation of a coming bump or turn will surely cause a fall. The key to serenity on skis is letting change flow, becoming one with the change, and then being the change.
After a few hours of skiing our favourite trails, I tell my friend I want to stop at a lookout spot, not because I’m tired but because I want to breathe in my surroundings. She says she’ll let me have a bit of alone time and we decide she’ll do another run and meet me back here. The sky is vast and filled with a multitude of blue hues, the clouds are fantastical and bright white. The fresh cold air is thinner up here; it smells minty as it passes through my nostrils and it tastes minerally as it drips down my throat. The steam rises from my scarf as I breathe in and out, feeling the warmth of my body. This change of environment is essential to my well-being. It’s not just any change of environment though.
Chrono-diversity
It’s being up at altitude that thrills me most. The physicist Carlo Rovelli in his book “The Order of Time” captures the essence of my pause at the lookout spot. He writes,
“I stop and do nothing. Nothing happens. I am thinking about nothing. I listen to the passing of time. This is time, familiar and intimate. We are taken by it…. Our being is being in time.”
I lived and worked in this village just below the slopes for ten years, all through my thirties, and now that I am retired, I return here as much as possible. Initially when I moved away, down to sea level and no longer at altitude, it took me a long time to adjust and to adapt to being in a different time zone, but not just a different chronometric time zone, but a different “chrono-atmospheric” time zone.
I am fascinated by the way Rovelli explains how altitude changes time. He writes, “Let’s begin with a simple fact: time passes faster in the mountains than it does at sea level…
I am fascinated by the way Rovelli explains how altitude changes time. He writes, “Let’s begin with a simple fact: time passes faster in the mountains than it does at sea level… This slowing down can be detected between levels just a few centimetres apart: a clock placed on the floor runs a little more slowly than one on a table. It is not just the clocks that slow down: lower down, all processes are slower.”
When I read this, I started to understand and accept why I had found it so challenging to transition from life up on the mountain to life in the valley. All of my processes had to become slower; my mental and physical, even spiritual relationships towards time had to change in order for me to adapt and to adjust to my new surroundings. It was a very unnerving time at first, and I found myself longing to return to the mountains. Despite the fact that I enjoyed my new job, raising my children and making new friends in a different culture, my personal processes, like my coping mechanisms, had slowed down and I needed to give myself time to accept the newness of this “chrono-diversity” at sea level.
Some consider winter a time to slow down and rest, imitating elements of nature that hibernate and tuck in to escape the cold. But for me, it is this change of environment, this other way of being in time, this speeding up and expanding of time, that I long for in the winter months.
During those years, my friend stayed in the mountains; she never returned to life in the valley. And I believe this makes us different in the way we now measure time. Maybe her time does actually pass more quickly than mine? She is a speed queen and can get a million things done in one day. She thinks faster than I think, and certainly skis faster than I ski.
Some consider winter a time to slow down and rest, imitating elements of nature that hibernate and tuck in to escape the cold. But for me, it is this change of environment, this other way of being in time, this speeding up and expanding of time, that I long for in the winter months. It’s the rigour and rhythm of mountain time. Rovelli writes,
“Two friends separate, with one of them living in the plains and the other going to live in the mountains. They meet up again years later: the one who has stayed down has lived less, aged less, the mechanism of his cuckoo clock has oscillated fewer times. He has had less time to do things, his plants have grown less, his thoughts have had less time to unfold ... Lower down, there is simply less time than at altitude.”
I guess the proof is “in the physics.” As I’ve learned, it is the changeability of time in the mountains that keeps me skiing through life. Even if it seems a bit ironic and mysterious to me, I imagine I will always feel this type of change to be constant in my life. Though I suppose, that could change too.
At times, in Singapore and before, it had felt like locusts had eaten years from my own life. At the rate that locusts swarmed East Africa, in just two years, they could ravage enough food to feed 25.5 million people. That’s a lot to devour, a lot to restore.
Coffee spoons and saving face
In Addis, the aroma of roasting coffee always hung thick in the air, begging me to sit most days with a steaming cup from Fiker’s coffee stand around the corner, or at home with friends like Betty or Etaferahu. Elsewhere, under striped roadside tarps, in courtyards and sparse living rooms, wild coffee beans crackled and spat in blackened pans over open coals. People greeted each other with a bow, with questions and answers, with embracing and shoulder bumps, with time and a look in the eye. Hostesses circled to present the roasted beans to a seated crowd. After hand grinding and slow brewing, they poured the first of three cups, and scattered frankincense on glowing coals until it twisted upward in wisps of perfume. Throughout the city and country, neighbours set this same stage for a different audience, all sitting on plastic stools, talking and talking some more, measuring their lives in coffee spoons and connection. Saving their faces for each other. I embraced others, and was embraced, too.
I’ve come to believe that time can bend for us all, wherever we are.
Time can bend
I’ve come to believe that time can bend for us all, wherever we are. I used the time I regained in Ethiopia to walk and live at street level, where struggle was not hidden behind busy lives and achievements. Struggle lived out loud among the candle sellers in wheelchairs, the injera hawkers, the beggars and believers at the gates of the church and the children who asked me to step on their scales on the sidewalk (again) for a single Birr. It lived out loud as people gathered to make sense of the senseless: martial law, civil war, Covid. They spruced me up from the inside out.
When beauty is in everything, packaging is unnecessary.
I loved the open vistas above the Blue Nile and the way the roosters, the singers and the sun would wake up together in the mountains around Ankober, too. When beauty is in everything, packaging is unnecessary. You even see it in the way a woman makes her best home in the garbage dump, dignifying a plastic house with a welcome mat and a stool for guests. It was an honour to live near those with hard earned homes, hands and faces.
In our weary beginnings, messy middles, and awkward endings, time can be whatever we need it to be. I believe that wholeheartedly now. We have all the time in the world to live with intention and to embrace our frayed edges. Beyond the swinging of pendulums, the ticking of clocks, the accepted dates on Gregorian calendars, the high expectations of peers and place, maybe even the foreboding of passing years, many unexpected surprises await us — perhaps even the restoration of years.
Mona documented her time in Ethiopia. You can see a few of her photos in the photo album below, or explore her photos here and here.
Mona's Travel Album
