Biniam Belete, founder of the Ethiopian humanitarian organisation Mekedonia, serving the elderly and people with mental disabilities, appears in a graffiti  alongside music legends Ali Birra and Ejigayehu Shibabaw (Gigi) in a black-painted café tucked into a Bole neighbourhood. Around them, the café hums with quiet rituals: strangers pause for a slice of cake, cradle cups of coffee or tea, or retreat into their screens, scrolling past the world to avoid small talk. Against this everyday backdrop, the presence of the trio bends the room’s gravity, humanitarian resolve meeting cultural memory, quietly sharing space with the ordinary rhythms of city life.

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