There could hardly be any debate that the morning commute of passengers in a minicab from Lage Tafo to Mexico Square can be a gruelling journey. The rattle of the old vehicles, the loud clamours, crowded seats, disarrayed and jam-packed pavements, congested traffics, mountains of trash strewn across the streets, and the billowing dust and smog that envelops everything and everyone tasks the limits of endurance of everyone, even of the most jaded travellers.

But on the morning of Wednesday, November 21, 2018, a peculiarly crisp and bright sunlight seems to enliven the city. A gentle breath pushes and keeps at bay the foul and postulant air that usually hangs overhead; the common piles of unsightly trash packed in dripping and soiled jute-bags are neatly stacked; and the typically grubby thoroughfares and murky public squares look scrubbed, racked and swept.

“Today is Hedar Sitaten,” says a woman in a sing-song voice addressing her companion in the back of the taxi.

She is nostalgically talking about Hedar Sitaten, smoked Hidar, the Ethiopian version of spring cleaning, when household rubbish and refuse are gathered and set alight each year on Hedar 12 of the Ethiopian Calendar, or November 21. Hedar Sitaten, is a custom that originates in a distant past, a century ago to be exact, when the deadly second wave of the Spanish Flu pandemic arrives in Ethiopia and causes devastations and ruins.

For a day or two before the Wednesday, street sweepers have temporarily abandoned their laissez-faire attitudes and have been assiduously working with unaccustomed zeal to sweep and remove the trash from the boulevards. In the days leading to Hedar Sitaten, shopkeepers and residents have been sweeping, cleaning and collecting garbage with uncommon fervour that they have momentarily rendered the shopfronts and streets into shiny and radiant cityscapes.

“Hedar Sitaten is both a commemoration and a public ritual to ward off future pandemics in the country, and its memories are etched in our collective narratives, folklores, and literature,” writes Yayehyirad Kitaw in a 2018 article published by the Ethiopian Journal of Health Development.

On this particular Wednesday, a rare occasion when the city sparkles and a gentle breath soothes and caresses the much-jostled travelers; there, where a group of passengers are sitting jam-packed in an idling taxi caught in a traffic jam; there, in what may pass for a tranquil moment for this collection of hardened commuters; there, intrudes an unnatural, pungent and acrid odour that suddenly drifts and fills the cabin air.

Before the taxi turns from the old Asmera Road to the junction between the light railway tracks and the ring road, out in the distant comes into view a dark bluish smoke that bellows from under the highway overpass. A group of young men are standing around and watching a mound of plastic waste and rubbish set on fire. As the men watch, the dark plume of smoke rises ferociously from the smoldering fire and being deflected by the concrete viaduct, the smoke disperses violently on both sides of the road enveloping everything in its wake.