Bob Dylan, “Desolation Row,” and A Rat in the Kitchen (Ethiopia)
by Karl Drobnic (Ethiopia 1966-68) March 31, 2022 • Bob Dylan, head slightly cocked, stared at me from the wall of my Peace Corps home, a dirt and wattle hut in a remote Ethiopian village. Highway 61 Revisited flickered, hanging on a thread I’d snaked through the the album cover, glossy in the candlelight of my little house that had no electric, no water, and most of all, no record player. “Stupid situation,” I imagined Dylan saying, an abrupt harmonica wail highlighting the “stupid”. A friend had gifted me the then-new album while I packed for two years in the African back-country. “Stay in touch,” she said. “Lots is happening in America, too.” A few days later, I was in my village, two miles up on the high escarpment of southern Abyssinia. Just behind the town, mountains jutted skyward another 4,000 feet, catching fluffy clouds that drifted above thorny acacia trees and . . .
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Hi Mark, Rats and cockroaches can mess up any paradise. I used a similar cockroach trap when I worked in…