Smoky Dreams

Kero was born in one of the very remote villages in Arba Minch-Ethiopia, out of a poor, small scale farmer’s family. He didn't have the chance to get formal schooling. At the age of 17, he is now looking forward for a better life and work in the town. Currently he is working as a Hookah-Man in one of the Hookah and Chat (Khat) chewing places in the town.

His daily task starts early in the morning. He gets up and barley washes his face, and then start cleaning up the mass chewing rooms that got messed up with sticks and leave of Chat remnants, ashes from charcoal, soft drink spills and other craps that filled each room.   

The cleaning usually lasts until the afternoon, where he would take a break for lunch. 1:00 PM on wards  kero gets ready to welcome his customers with his bright smile and friendly gesture. His usual customers start flocking on their regular times and the room gets filled all at once with all kinds of customers; some students, some business people, and others, random customers from the town. The customers are mostly youngsters aged from 20 to 35.

Aside the sound of the hookah and over-toned chatter from the crowd, the most caching sound you hear is the name ‘Kero’ called by his customers every now and then. They call him for any of their requests, soft drinks, hookah, chat, peanut, and other orders.

He gets busy satisfying the needs of every customer. He makes the hookah, test and start it as needed. He inhales smokes here and there. Every smoke he inhales burns the teenage lung out of him. He doesn't just smoke the hookah; he inhales his desires and exhales it to the fulfillment of his goals at the same time.     

Though you got to be interrupted every minute as he is being called by everyone, his friendly approach makes it easy to chat with him. I have noticed around three waiters in the place but everyone seems to like his name.

He gets a good monthly salary and allowance plus generous tips from his customers. That’s why he chooses this job. I asked him about his saving. For humble he was, he told me how much he saved in a year and half, which in fact is not bad for what it takes to foresee his short term goal.

His short term goal is to save money so he can buy a motorcycle first and then Bajaj, the common transplantation where there is relatively good money in small towns like Arba Minch.

You can read an assuring and decisive sense of passion from his eyes as he speaks about his future plan. Though he is not formally schooled, he seems to be a smart teenager. He sorted out his plan as short term and long term goals. As per his long term goal he wants to open a nice lodge in the town as Arba Minch is one of the most visited tourist destinations in the country …And so and so on, goes his dream with the blowing of the smoke.

At the moment, he is sacrificing what it takes to envision his dream with his energetic, ambitious and kind attitude. And, until the day he achieves his dream, he has to live in the smoke, he has to clean up other’s messes just to make his smoky dreams came true, for until the storm passes and the spring comes.