The way I recall it!
It’s rectangular and it has red and blue. It has a certain worked look to it. It was old. It’s not jut an envelope, it’s a letter.
Do you recall the trip to the “posta bet?”
We went, if I remember correctly, about once a month. The building was in front of Tiqur Anbessa hospital on Chur Chur Godana. It was huge very huge, or it represented something very very huge! The building was black and silver, if there was sun then it was shinny. I liked going up the stairs and then looking for our number.
Ezhiga nuew y’enga”
Peculiarly, every body’s mail no not mail but ‘letters’ went to the same building. There were some people that didn’t have their own Posta SaT’ine so they would receive their mail through zemeds.
Now that I think about it, the whole system was very antiquated! What were not antiquated were the stamps. The stamps were amazing! My sister had a stamp book; she would collect all the stamps from all the letters everyone received.
The idea of a ‘stamping system;’ assigning a monetary value to designate payment to send a letter to a certain place, although 19th century is avant-garde. Its genius, but as you might guess it the aesthetic value I assigned to it. There is the posta with the red and blue strips, there is the stamp and then there is the stamp on top of the stamp to specify the use of the stamp, then there is the sender’s information and receiver’s location. Its art!
It was all very special to me, even as a young boy, I respected it. It was powerful, it could make you cry and it could make you happy.
What I realize now is that it’s not the posta that was special. It was the message that it represented; the message represented inside the debdabe. It’s the yearning, it’s the missing, it’s the connection created between the sender and the receiver that was powerful. I realize that a message, no matter form of transmission, is ascendant.
There is email, there is fax, there is telephone, and there is voicemail but nothing is as romantic and sentimental as a debdabe!
Published by April 22nd, 2007 in Design.
So true Nol! It ain’t talking about bills or anything..it was the “yearning & missing” you’d read between the lines. A connection indeed. I remember how excited I used to get when I got debdabe from my friends abroad…Hell I think, I’m now going to take up debdabe writing…
Ayeee Nol, Nostalgia is all over me now!
LoL. thought i was alone in my childish fascination with the debdabe envelopes. love the stripes, the texture of the envelope, the colors that varied from yellowish to blue…never collected them but still love the aestheticism.
hmmmmm….true. I think email and phone have replaced it for most of us. Ooof, I used to love being the one to open the box. Even used to claim that we get mail when I open the box. Nol, like ur sis, I used to collect stamps too…and used to exchange stamps with my pen pals (my, I had pen pals from Europe and America..but forgot about them when I left addis)….yea, I think POSTA carries more than its mere weight. Can u believe it, after so many years, I still use our Post box number as a pass ‘word’ on many things.
Wudenesh, can you send me your posta satine number in ethiopia… I want to send something to you family!
chur chur godana aydelem, its CHURCHILL GODANA nolawi
I keep all my letters including the envelopes and have a collection since forever. I knew when I saw the stripes or air mail it was from my loved ones. The stamps were something my lil bro used to collect he had a photo album full of em from around the world. I have to ask if he still has it.
Sometimes I’d get an envelope from Addis and it has like 6 letters one for me, another for my sis, another for my bro, another for my cousin and so on. Most of them live in other states so I had to put the letter in another envelope and mail it off. I don’t read theirs though except once by mistake.
I have never been to or seen the post office in Addis and can’t wait to see it on my next trip.
I have always loved to write mails even the ones I write on behalf of my mother and the whole negihbourhood. I particularly loved my mothers dictation, which was a narrative just short of a saga. I wish I had a celebrate like relative to retrieve those long mails and relive my moms stream of consciousness. I also keep my mails except the ones I had to leave behind when crossing borders to start my sidet years. I still regret not having them, because they included all the temar lijE leters my father sent me before he passed away.
Checking the zemed posta saTen at the impressive post office was a treat by itself, we used to call that trip the same as ferenj ager mehed. Truly Bole did not have the same impression for me and my pals then. Sipping machaito during the day or the addis draft during the evening and feast on the cream of Addis streaming in and out of that building was the treat of the adolesence years.
Wude hode, I have the same request as Nolawi (my purpose is different though) or shall I become a hacker to get yor number?
After graduating high school I was earning to get out of Ethiopia. Some of you may remember the late eighties civil war and military services. In the eighties, if you are young you are a dangerous species (for that matter 74 millions people are dangerous species now). Any way, I still remember the waiting and the worrying about the future, most of that dbdabe that hold my I-20.
It just brings a flood of memory.
Nolex Posta kutiru sint bihon tiru new?
Melkam,
I love it! The long introduction “selameta” in the aerogram was priceless. It was so poetic. Unlike today where we just jump to the subject matter.
I also reminisce reading the letters out loud to my parents. Everybody would gather around with a big smile and anticipation while I read the stories written on it. Oh, the love…
Thanks for the memories…our posta baet was ‘arogew posta baet’ ke-cathedral dagetun weto:) …..thanks for taking me down the memory lane Nolawi!!
reading thsi reminded me of…. me. i used to do the same,run to look for our box and be like ”’Ezhiga nuew y’enga”loool i loved going to the post office,what is diffrent about it how clean it was, the floor; u can almost see ur face, very clean way better than the us.
about the shining of the building ya its dangerous. yup i have heared some one actually lost his eyesight cuz of it,my mom used to tell me not to look at it strait. it was like looking into the sun. thanks 4 the memory
I used to collect stamps too. I still have all the stamps I collected. I think I have some 600 or more Ethiopian and other international stamps. I realy used to enjoy collecting these stamps because it was an interesting way of seeing other world’s perspective. It was a medium of learning the culture, politics, economics, natural, and my other distinct charactersitis of countries and peoples.
I was also so much obssessed with the red and blue designs at the edge of the envelope, I sometimes would hand-make the envelope from a blank white paper and paint it with red and blue pen so as it looks like an original envelope!
Nol and Zgent, sure, but got to kill you first
of all of you … only ‘dove” mentioned about the neatness of the floor.
I was actually a key carrier at my very early teens. and what used to appeal me so bad was the …neatness of the floor “Ebne bered floor” ! just beauty!
Without exaggeration one can eat injera on it. its smell, the post office, is so vivid,.. was like the natural scent of our Addis Girls.
The post office was spacious as well, with amenities:
-Peaceful work environ, advanced & at ease.
-no darn starry eyes gaurd to bug.
-its neat lost & found mirror case.
-Oh, how can I forget “Randevou” cafeteria right in there with their delicious macciato, steamed milk, cake…
..i used to read letters there and walk out with misty eyes. …
Now, for the first time, I went home last year ..and…what i saw was a dismay, a heart- wrenching sight. a systematic destruction.
Guard everywhere, the additional planless boxes, the floors that let its beauty to be stripped off… what not … OH!
anyone who was at 6kilo university in the eraly 80′s would be disappointed to go in there at this moment.
In fact, i kinda get a shot of my memories by often do my running or going to track-and-field events here at Stanford campus in Palo Alto, CA. its campus beauty reminds me AAU of 6kilo.
Sadly, I discovered, our public HSs (Menelik II high, TMS, Menen, etc.. in the 80′s had a beauty, solace and neatness by far at a higher standard than the ones here in the US. regardless of resource shortages we had.
But, Now, all is just …
Thank you for bringing all the memories back Nol.
!!!!!
Our posta saten was at Piassa and I had the key.
Beshou, who calls Chur cher godana Churchill godana, except you?
i never though of collecting stamps just didn’t see it as more that some stiky thing but,i love the posta red and blue strips,it just says ethio.. they better not change it.
when i open my mail box and see the blue n red strip envelope, i get so exited,lool…… like a iittle kid in a candystore.
hope it didn’t sound braggy or outta touch of what the topic is intended to entertain to… .. was just touching base to those who may not have had a chance to see it from the angle that people like me experienced it. that is all
I like the disclaimer Mindw/oC
I loved the post office. I remember bugging my father to take me there every chance I got so I could get my mail. I had four pen-pals and I loved getting letters. The trips to the post office are one of my fondest memories of my father. When he passed away my mother found a collection of stamps in his office. That was something I didn’t know about him while he was alive. I have the stamps now. I haven’t gone through them properly. But I take the book out once in a while and look at them.
Thanks Nolawi, for bringing back fond memories.
[quote comment="37284"]I like the disclaimer Mindw/oC[/quote]
XNKs bro! you sure know how to extract an archived memories. Good work.
-Nice day!
To top it off, does any one remember the cake at Post Rendevous? It is closed now but it was one of the highlights of going to the Post office for me and my friends and siblings.
Mamitu … where were u when i babbled ’bout it?
.. yup ..were u saddended by its new facelift? they now made it some computer training center.
Nolawi–you brought a lot of memories. We use to go on a bi-weekely basis. The box was owned by the company my dad worked for and so we gave it up when my dad retired and then we used the posta saten right by Arat Kilo.
But, what I looked forward to was getting letters from Ethiopia once I moved to the US. I especially looked forward to my dad’s letters.
Thanks for the walk in memory lane.
[quote comment="38048"]To top it off, does any one remember the cake at Post Rendevous? It is closed now but it was one of the highlights of going to the Post office for me and my friends and siblings.[/quote]
that is weird I don’t remember no cake bet?
[quote comment="37233"]reading thsi reminded me of…. me. i used to do the same,run to look for our box and be like ”’Ezhiga nuew y’enga”loool i loved going to the post office,what is diffrent about it how clean it was, the floor; u can almost see ur face, very clean way better than the us.
about the shining of the building ya its dangerous. yup i have heared some one actually lost his eyesight cuz of it,my mom used to tell me not to look at it strait. it was like looking into the sun. thanks 4 the memory[/quote]
dove, so its true how i remember it … sigerm..! it was so shiny eko!
Ya Nolawi, there was one and and they closed it after there was an assassination attempt on then Information Minister Abdul Mejjid Hussien. It was a cafe with glass walls, it kind of resembled the Martin Luther King Library in D.C. and the Cake was to die for and the crowd was even better.
[quote comment="39045"]Ya Nolawi, there was one and and they closed it after there was an assassination attempt on then Information Minister Abdul Mejjid Hussien. It was a cafe with glass walls, it kind of resembled the Martin Luther King Library in D.C. and the Cake was to die for and the crowd was even better.[/quote]
how old r u?
116, that makes me the oldest living human being in the world
But seriously I am 35 plus some months. Seems to me I am the oldest person on your blog if non of you guys except Mindwithoutc remembers the place.
The Information Minister was a Somali/Aderie Ethiopian guy and he was a minister about between 14 and 10 years ago. Post Rendez Vouz was closed about 1995. It was THE hang out place for kids who used to go to IEC in the SIM compound [before IEC moved to Sar beit
] HA!!!! I am sure now you are even more confused than when I started my explanation.
no you are by far not the oldest… but I am sure there are really old people…:)
I actually know this is the wrong place to ask this question so I APOLOGIZE TO THE HOST ahead of time. BUT, I am desperate for an abesha kemis vendor I can order online with that ships from anywhere in North America to Montreal. Anyone pls!!!
While I am at it, can I suggest to the host to include a sort of ‘classified section’ over here…unless people think that might make such a nice classy website a tacky one….
Just a suggestion….Eitherways, thank you for what you already set up!!
Awet we do have a section dicussion section for such requests… its called the bernos press
Ok I feel better now
I found out there are some ppl over age 30. I am one of them.
This post to me back to my childhood memories. I remember going to the post office early in the mornings with my mother. Her brother lived in US and use to send her aerograms.
How sad Post Rendezvous is closed!
My dad use to take my sister and me when we were little girls.
That was a long time ago.
I still collect stamps and postcards.
hmmmmm… I remember scanning them posta from America for $$$$