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One can glean so much information from the billboards that dot the streets of Addis Ababa. A major artery like Bole Road, for example, is lined with oversized texts and images that advertise local and foreign goods; government and NGO messages; the latest movies and music hits; boutiques, cafes, computer schools, and agencies for tour and travel. Some ads exploit sentimentality or humor to promote their goods and services, or imbue a product with heightened norms of gender, color, and beauty, or with symbols of national pride and exception.
There is a tourism billboard near Olympia that animates for me questions seldom raised in Ethiopia. The billboard crops and yokes together from a common repertoire of images-Addis Ababa's skyline, Axum's standing stelae, and a half-nude Mursi woman-an Ethiopia at once modern, ancient, and primitive. The suggested message of the billboard is spelled out further in an Ethiopian Airlines tour brochure, which relies on the same images as the billboard and the following text to index parts of Ethiopia:
Axum: Fly to Axum, a town steeped in more than 2500 years of history. From the palace and tomb of King Kaleb (6th C, AD) we will visit the extraordinary stela (UNIESCO World Heritage Site) and tomb of King Remhay (1st to 4th C, AD). Followed by a trip to the church of St Mary of Tsion, (17th C, AD the present church) in which deposited [is] the Arc of the Covenant.
Mursi: Drive to Mursi and visit ethnic groups. Excursion to the Mursi people via Mago National Park. These people are curious and famous in that the women wear geometrical lip plates in the slits of their lips. The men practice fierce stick fighting.1
Although meant for tourist eyes, both the billboard and the brochure are representative of how northern and southern Ethiopia are figured in the nation's dominant visual and popular culture: the north is vested with history, the south is ahistorical; the north has time, the south is atemporal; the north is authenticated, the south is authentic; the north gazes upon itself, the south is gazed upon; the sites of attraction in the north are grand and sacred places, while in the south they are wild plants, game, and "these curious people."
For a...