Book Description
Prologue: This is a travel narrative about Eritrea, a tiny sun-drenched country along the Red Sea, and Ethiopia, its giant southern neighbor and former colonial overlord. Among the oldest civilizations on earth, these two African countries can boast over 2,000 years of recorded history. Eritrean and Ethiopian histories interlock, yet still maintain distinctive features. Eritrea's past revolves around foreign incursions and occupation, as well as ongoing trade and cultural mingling with Mediterranean and Arabian worlds. Ethiopian history speaks of imperial glory and dominance, and for great swaths of time isolation, as its Christian kingdoms held out in highland strongholds while Islamic and pagan militaries swirled around them. Today, both countries, having just emerged from a thirty-year war, are dirt poor. Many citizens live on less than one dollar a day and both nations receive millions of dollars annually in food and development aid. But, with many well-trained professionals among local and exiled populations, rebounding economies, the rule of law, and rich histories and cultures to draw upon, Eritrea and Ethiopia represent the brightest hope for democracy and growth in Africa in the new millennium.

From the Back Cover
"This long-awaited travelogue gently brings the pulse of Eritrea and Ethiopia to life. No one eager who is to know them should miss it." -Frank Smyth, journalist There are some places that hound the imagination of a traveler years before they actually have the opportunity to visit. This is how the ancient lands of Eritrea and Ethiopia beckoned to author Julia Stewart. Breathtaking landscapes, attractive citizens, intricately spiced foods, a gently culture and rich history-it was all waiting for her. all of these things, Stewart came to experience and appreciate with abundance. What she did not predict were several mysterious happenings: harassment at the hands of "union buster," an impromptu running of the bulls, coming face to face with abject poverty, and her own reactions to these unpredictable events. Stewart's travels to Eritrea and Ethiopia are of a current vintage, unlike those of famous explorers of an earlier period such as Richard Burton and James Bruce. Her travels took place during a post-war era when tremendous changes were occurring in the political and social lives of the people. Stewart found many surprises, good and bad, and she shares them all with her readers. Despite a sometimes arduous adventure, stewart's fascination for Eritrea and Ethiopia has not ceased.

About the Author
Julia Stewart lived in Nairobi, Kenya, for six years where she worked for Interaid International and the United Nations' world Food Program. Over the past decade she has traveled and worked in 14 African countries. she is the author of four books and currently resides in Westerville, Ohio.

Excerpted from Eccentric Graces : Eritrea and Ethiopia Through the Eyes of a Traveler by Julia Stewart. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Part 1 Eritrea - Asmara - Two well-dressed eight-year-old boys, weaving through cars parked along Liberation Avenue, hurled banana peels at a pair of poorer boys. One of the targets rubbed his forehead where he had been hit; a distressed look swept across his face. An elderly man arrived on the scene, but only in time to see banana peels-incriminating evidence-at the feet of the poorer lads. The old man scolded the victims and ordered them to pick up their rubbish. The boys bent over, meekly protesting, and cleaned up the mess. As I was watching this vignette of Asmara street life several flashily attired teenagers walked by. One of the girls smiled and said, "Hi, honey!" I screwed up my face, "Honey?" They all laughed the waggish laugh of teenagers throughout the world. In the dirt courtyard of a vast apartment building with cracked windows and rusted shutters, four little girls jumped rope. The girls eagerly waved hello. I entered the fenced compound and appealed to them with hand gestures to turn the rope high. Surprising myself as much as them, I leaped into the twirling rope and managed several hops and showy twists before my foot got tangled. The altitude hit me hard. "Whew, I am old and tired," I told the girls in a language they didn't understand, and left them giggling. Further on, two small boys walked down the sidewalk holding thick chunks of jagged amber glass up to their eyes-a child's version of a psychedelic experience. Teenage boys and girls in matching blue sweaters stood on the steps of a blue school building, gaily prattling. A horse-drawn carriage rattled across an intersection; a woman snuggled in a shawl while a man held the reigns. Hand-painted across the back of the wooden buggy were the words: "Pray to One God Only." Life unfolds in front of your eyes in Asmara, an elegant city of 400,000. Residents socialize openly and play on the streets. Women in flowing white dresses chat and stroll, their hair worked into buns, French twists, and Shirley Temple curls. some sport the traditional Tigrinya kuno hairstyle: microbraids hugging their skulls down to the nape of the neck where the ends frizz out like a fur collar. Their smiles are like those of toothpaste commercials. To make their teeth appear whiter, Abyssinian women tattoo their gums using thorns dipped in charcoal dye. Particularly striking are the children with their storybook appearances. 'there stands Pippi Longstocking, here braids akimbo. On the curb sits a miniature Rastafarian with head sprouting soft dreadlocks. A barefoot boy steps out of a grocery clutching three fresh loaves of bread, a tuft of hair spilling over his forehead as if a cast-member of American Graffiti. Children tug one another's jackets and lean against each other on benches. roaming in tot packs, they poke their heads into cafes and bars, twirl balls made from paper and string, and slug each other in the arm. One threesome swatted a ball dangling from a zebra-striped sign pole-homemade tetherball. Almost always the children have something to say about, or to, the tourist. A grandfather held a small boy's hand while walking down Liberation Avenue. Oblivious to everything else, the boy licked a swiftly melting ice cream cone as it dribbled down the front of his shirt. Asmara's old men, like its youth, could also be featured in children's books. The men wear thick-rimmed black glasses and delightful wool berets. They don soft v-neck sweaters under smart blazers, and wield canes more for style than necessity. They ride bikes and shuffle in and out of cafes and bars, sharing an espresso or a cognac with friends. Reminiscent of the little boys roaming the streets, the old men hold each others hands, pull each other into shops, and tease one other-life goes full circle. Part 2 Ethiopia - Addis Ababa - Just as driving tends to bring out aggressive behavior in people, so do African airports. Ethiopian Airways allowed open seating on the route from Asmara to Addis Ababa, so these normally orderly people jockeyed for positions in line like children in the school cafeteria on pizza day. In hindsight, why we pushed and shoved each other onto a plane headed for Ethiopia's capital rather than bolting back into our taxi and driving straight back to Asmara, I'll never know. Addis Ababa, wrote John Gunther in 1955 in Inside Africa, looked as though it had been "dropped peicemeal from an airplane carrying trash." Things haven't changed too much. As our jet approached the city, I could see an endless plain of gleaming tin rooftops stretched out below. Over ninety percent of the homes in Addis Ababa have corrugated metal roofs and more than fifty percent have earthen floors. While Asmara was a small town, Gunther noted forty years earlier, Addis Ababa was a big village. Located in the center of the country, Addis Ababa remains part big village, but also part reckless, overgrown city. It has become an octopus on a plateau-the downtown high-rise buildings its body, the suburban extensions its tentacles. Blocked by the Entoto Mountains to the north, the city's tentacles go unchecked to the south, grasping for an illusive sea. But the creature will never find salt water: Addis Ababa, at 7,868 feet (2,400 meters), is the fourth highest capital city in the world (after La Paz, Bogota, and Quito), and is hundreds of miles from any coast. Planning must be an alien and hostile concept to Ethiopians. Addis Ababa is like spris-tossed together in a blender. Multistory buildings compete with shacks for street-front property. Behind our hotel stood mud and wattle huts straight out of a pastoral African scene; in front rose modern high rises and a chaotic, traffic-filled street. Just as the lines between urban affluent and impoverished neighborhoods. According to the UN's Global Report on Human Settlements, an incredible seventy-nine percent of the city's four to six million people are inadequately housed or homeless. Upon first examination, the city's name Addis Ababa-"new flower" in Amharic-is completely incongruous, for throngs of destitute give the place a ghastly, not floral, air. Rows of indigent Ethiopians, swathed in lengths of soiled cotton cloth, line the perimeter walls of city churches. Some with bodies grotesquely distorted, they squat on concrete side-walks and beg, or just sit with their backs pressed against the tall walls. As citizens of better fortune walk by, needy mothers push toddlers into their path, forcing their tiny outstretched hands into a pitiful plea. Like the two-dimensional characters in traditional Ethiopian art, the residents of Addis walk their streets with solemn expressions, their thoughts kept to themselves behind enormous brown eyes. Younger ones descend on foreigners commanding, "You! You! You!" They thrust out milk chocolate arms hoping for money, pens, or whatever odd item the tourist will supply, even if it is just a moment or two of abuse. Feeling as though I was walking through a Dali painting, the word "surreal" kept churning through my mind and spilling out of my mouth.

FROM THE PUBLISHER