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mind entropy of the ethiofricanArchive for horn of africa
What Obama Should do for Africa
I have been floundering attempting to understand and articulate the Obama doctrine on Africa post-Obama-euphoria. It’s a bit premature for Obama to have the policy drafted and published,…but somehow, I’ve stumbled upon a fantastic article which articulates exactly what I believe Obama’s approach should be toward Africa. Read below an excerpt.
Military or humanitarian concerns alone will serve neither the US’s, nor Africa’s long-term interests.
A deeper understanding of US interests in Africa would require supporting Africa’s overall desire to lead herself and enhancing African institutions that promote democracy, accountability and human rights. A new US Africa policy should aim to trigger fundamental internal changes in the modes of rule in the continent.…
Africa would benefit from an Obama presidency if more resources were invested in long-term projects in rural and inland infrastructure, agriculture and health, basic and higher education, trade facilitation and enhancement, the elimination of obstacles to private investment, the development of credit facilities, support to African civil society organizations, leadership, institutions and expertise and the sound management of Africa’s natural resources and open its markets to Africa’s exports.
The US will not alone provide the full array of investments that are needed to overcome the continent’s economic problems. But Obama could significantly strengthen and revitalise important public constituencies for Africa in the US and broaden the basis for US engagement in the continent. Read more.
I think it’s so important to lock focus on building self-sufficiency rather than building dependency on aid. Ideology-based diplomacy which beams on African issues through the tinted prisms of ‘war on terror security issues’ ‘anti-abortion/abstinence’ and in the past ‘anti-communism’ is also not a good idea.
An exciting emerging phenomenon is mentioned in passing in the article as a “revitalization of important public constituencies for Africa in the US”; I’ve alluded to it in previous posts. This phenomenon is the increasing number of young educated African Immigrants in the US and their engagement in US politics. 1st-3rd+ generation African Immigrants working within capitol hill…getting involved in campaign organizations like Africans/Ethiopians/Somalis etc.. for Obama. There is a chance these organizations will be a trigger for the involvement of the African diaspora within U.S. politics. As stakeholders who fulfill their obligations, these Americans can harness their rights to make demands. The development of these Africa-affiliated public constituencies (i.e. political/community African Immigrant Organizations) could mean they can push the African agenda…at a time when the U.S. will continue to have an expanding basis for engagement with the continent. Jewish communities are well known in their ability to unite for their common causes.
There are reasons to believe these organizations played key roles in some of the successes of the Obama victory last week. Concrete data is pending; however, allow me to indulge in some extrapolations:
- CNN called VA decided by the African American turnout.
- Precinct 8 is the primary locality for a majority of the Ethiopian Americans in Virginia. The report on precinct 8 is: “Obama’s win in Virginia was buoyed by his margin of victory in Northern Virginia, in particular Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church and eastern Fairfax County, inclusive of the 8th and 11th Congressional districts…Out of 3,470,390 total votes cast in Virginia, Obama’s 154,238 statewide advantage, for 51.7 percent of the total, was matched almost exactly by his 154,749 margin in the 8th and 11th districts.” Read more.
What is to come; we shall see. What these Africa-affiliated public entities will amount to; we have no clue. But their engagements early on in the Obama campaign, the dynamism of the young African-born immigrants who have “the highest median earnings/highest education amongst immigrants in the US” and a common ambition to see a better Africa tells me there are some intriguing times up ahead.
There is due cynicism revolving around Obama’s Africa policies. To be expected, especially when taking over from Bush, reportedly one of the more successful leaders in his engagement with Africa… at a time when the U.S has woes that would restrict the plane of vision of any well-meaning, informed president…And here I issue my disclaimer that I agree with some of the skepticism surrounding the issue. But for once the euphoria makes me see that there is more in our hands than we initially perceive. We should help Obama help us. Stay tuned world.
On t’Brink Again: Hungry Horn
the looping setting on the horn of africa. BAM!
2008 ~9.6 million hungry people (hi food prices), 3.25 million affected by drought.
2001 ~over 12 million people in Ethio, Eritrea needing urgent aid within drought.
1984 ~ 5-7 million affected with very high death rate: drought/delayed response/war.
read more.
it’s worse than the last time…they say…
i did something last time.
i wonder if i will again.
having experienced being at one of the sites they always show on news clips of people collecting food, i am intrigued by how news stories depict the scene…
here’s a pre-commentary, pre-news-edit video, part of the world food programme press release on the drought…
the bareness of the video was chilling to watch. but specifically, watching it in detached mode, i could think of a million ways someone could cut and paste this to make it ‘news worthy’. now, take that little snip with naked emaciated kids with bloated bellies, children collecting grains from the dust.
this piece of material could make a bang…yes, it is indeed as bad as 1984. yes, indeed this is the condition of the horn. sad reality that it is…
at the risk of viewers dismissing the news piece scoffing ‘ahhh…yea…didn’t they have that show on last nite? that infomercial about giving money to feed starving babies?’ the ‘pity-worthy-ness’ to a lesser degree, and the creative spin to a greater degree. these could be the uumph that can compete with other news pieces for the front page, the headline, the breaking news…and prove the point this is indeed comparable to 1984. the always-ness of africa. take a look!
i wonder.
what could be going through the camera person’s mind while they’re recording it? or the producers’ in thinking about what appeals to his audience? what kinda agenda/bias do they bring by editing?
relaying the urgency of the situation, the need for response…a successful news story that reaches the front page…tv superstandome?? i guess good news, is no news…
but really… what of the things that fall through the cracks. that wouldn’t bolster stereotypes…
a cultural value system and context lost in translation? like…respect and reverence of food in that it shouldn’t be wasted. Proverb: “migib kibur new”/”food is to be revered.” This presumes all food is not to be wasted unless it has been contaminated irreversibly…
Also, there may be different conceptions of contamination and germs…and an integrated perception of food-and nature…along with different ideas on ‘wastefulness’ ‘food’ ‘materialism’….’cleanliness’…
an understanding of these things make the scene with kids scrambling for grains on the sandy ground less dramatic.
Edit. Edit. Edit.
the construction of recent history
…versus a recording of the past…
senduQ in Maltese
Doing a google search, the quirkiest thing came up- Senduq is a word in Maltese which means ‘Chest’, a box for safe keeping. In Dire lingo it is used to describe the cupboards, storage boxes, coca cola racks …basically any storage container with a rectangular form.
Who could have thought that a google search vaguely connected to Dire Dawa’s multicultural lingo lands smack where the Italian and Arabic languages fuse to give Maltese? Malta is the 30th smallest country in the world located across the largest desert and the Mediterranean Sea away from Dire… an island which has a total population of 400,000 (about the size of Dire’s population) and interestingly, not everyone IN Malta speaks Maltese!
Well, well…ok maybe I’m making it sound an itty bit more like an Indiana Jones investigation than it actually is. It appears that Maltese is one of the many semetic languages which may have variations of the word ’senduq’. I don’t speak all these languages so I wouldn’t know…
Amharic · Arabic · Chaha · Harari · Hebrew · Inor · Maltese · Neo-Aramaic · Neo-Mandaic · Silt’e · Soddo · South Arabian · Syriac · Tigre · Tigrinya
wiki says: “Maltese is generally accepted to be descended from Siculo-Arabic, the Arabic dialects that developed in Sicily and the rest of Southern Italy, with substantial borrowing from Sicilian Italian and Italian. It is the only Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet in its standard form.”
an interesting blurb also courtesy of google: ‘Senduq Kuluri Ahmar’ is what they call the ’storybox’ series which is used for Maltese primary school reading assignments.
So its a bit curious, isn’t it? Makes you wonder the origin of semetic languages like Maltese (Semetic languages being in the Afroasiatic language group)…and how languages mix…where Malta got in the mix in a city within the horn where the Argobbas, Amharas, Tigre, Oromos, Somali, Greeks, Armenians, Indians and Italians once lived in a cosmopolitan hot spot on the rail trade line to Djibouti…
Origins…extensive, well-grounded linguistic research places the Afroasiatic homeland in the southeastern Sahara or adjacent Horn of Africa read more..
it’s interesting, which language did the term come from? Continue reading for my conjectures and projections 
: Maybe the root for Maltese and all other semetic languages originated in southern Sudan, or western Ethiopia? and how did this word stick in Dire Dawa, Harar and not anywhere else in Ethiopia? Given that its used by a majority of the population, surely it has a semetic root or in a more interesting turn of events… Dire being established in 1906 along with the Railroad, maybe the word is a more recent acquisition and the soldiers from Malta used it during the 5 year Italian occupation in WWII to refer to boxes?
ping me if u know!
Hand-tied: pulse of the horn
* Another green drought in Ethiopia with 4.5mil people needing emergency aid + hunger due to food prices in the towns (I’ve heard of govn’t job holders eating Qolo and water)! + blackouts in the cities
* Scattered explosions in Addis Ababa * Djibouti and Eritrea about to start a war, Djibouti backed by France * Ethiopian soldiers burning towns and villages in the Somali region * Continued fighting in Somalia, Ethiopian soliders occupying the country
and the list goes on…
I feel completely hand-tied sometimes! Like that time there was this group activity thingie where everyone had their eyes blinded or hands tied to test drive a disability.
Sometimes I feel rage, this bubbling anger at the brutality people allow for their luxurious, ridiculous pleasures. I want to screammm, yell at them! Harass them into submission! Something!
Sometimes the corners of my eyes sparkle with unshed tears, my heart so freaking heavy and jaws clenched that it hurts below my ears… some other time I just can’t help it and I chuckle at the heartbreaking predictability and absurdness of the events in the horn!
The horn of Africa is in flames (ha!…who knew keratin could be so flammable? hu?!) the Horn is an incomprehensible, unfathomable mess beyond all limits I knew! It is such a mess it makes me mad sitting and contemplating it,, chatting along with others about ‘ohhh this freaking government!!’ or some other forsaken issue we try to solve…!
So then I decide I won’t talk. I will act instead.
After all, I’d rather pick something and do something about it than yap about it all day, dammit!
I realize even the tiny darn bit would help! The horn is desperate!… so why not get my azz up and take action…? I do! I get up. Then I get so burnt, discouraged, disillusioned. It irks me to make a generalization that the ethiopian diaspora community is more about having a grand old fiesta than any other past-time (where drought relief efforts happen, of course!)… ahem… so I won’t make such a generalization!
…phshhh oh enough already with these abstractions here’s the brutal truth:
It is so easy to turn one’s back, get swept away by the tandem of life’s events in the US, minutes ticking away…despite how disheartening that is; it is very easy to fluff our pillows with nonchalance and complacency in the Godforsaken first world!
…then I can’t help thinking… Really, Is a life within the horn of Africa worth least in this world, today? There really is not much of an opt-out as minutes tick away …
non-nonchalance:conundrum shift
And then there are incredible stories that knock u right out of your daily conundrum!
Have you ever heard the bizzaro idea about creativity being the most potent weapon individuals have against war?? I thought it was a bit too ‘happily ridiculous’ at first…until closer consideration… Ever heard people say “necessity is the mother of innovation.”? Well, Wednesday’s news made me say: “hell ya!”
The quirky reflection that came to my mind reading the news goes…
“”It is in creativity, in the fashioning of self and world, that people find their most potent weapon against war.”
…1st, let me meander to a tiny bit of intro….I first stumbled upon this bizarre concept in Carolyn Nordstrom’s “A different kind of war story” on her experience in the devastating 16-year-long civil war of Mozambique. As an anthropologist, she reflects on the messy nitty-gritties of war, civil society intricacies and the trajectories of individual lives…yadi yada…
nyways, she says “……ultimately, war victims have taught me, violence is about the destruction of culture and identity in a bid to control/crush political will.” She saw human condition at its ‘lowest’, when people were helpless, vicious, greedy, desperate and deeply disturbed. According to her “It is often in what we relegate to the margins of life process and theory [violence and the unspeakable] that speaks most fundamentally about core aspects of human existence.”
i think it’s real; in times of war people have very few choices. when they are caught in the most devastating corner of all, they either create ways to survive, maintain their humanities and fight back…or get sucked in to becoming helpless puppets which push the gears of a viscous ‘war industry’.
According to the book, some resistance tools toward survival & peace include communities, creative expression and non-violence…
Here’s the true story that hit the headlines. I’m applauding these brave souls who stepped up for the community, regardless of the side they are on! in breaking rules to find solutions, they were indeed innovating a path away from the mainstream…
“Ethiopian troops in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, have distributed food aid bought with their own salaries. About 400 bags of sorghum were handed out to about 500 people in southern Baynile district. An Ethiopian soldier said his colleagues had organised the collection to help their neighbours in need.
Ethiopian troops, who support Somalia’s interim government, are not popular and the food was accepted with surprise, the BBC’s Mohamed Moalimuu reports. The UN says more than a third of all Somalis rely on outside assistance and the urban poor are finding it difficult to get enough to eat.
p.s. how does it freakin make sense not to have the word ‘chalance’ when there is ‘nonchalance’!?
zxantila vibes: under umbrella
around 30 minutes past the hour she strut-walks out, a little bounce to her steps and a content little smirk playing across her cafe-latte face. it is drizzling. the black-as-charcoal shiny ground mirrors white, yellow and orange car lights with blurry imprecision. ‘how pretty’, she thinks.
its work day over her head bobs in complete abandon to beats of tunes causing a pleasant ruckus where a zillion buzzy thoughts were whizzing few instants earlier. Her smirk widening, she makes her way through a tall metropolitan jungle of concrete, glass and cleanliness formidable and contrasting the urban metropolis of a sub-Saharan country she hails from.
rejecting the willpower to contain herself, she increases the spring in her steps and adds a bigger bounce to her walk toward the bus stop. intermittently squeaking, mumbling and bellowing out pieces of the lyric of a song in her second language she strides on, adamant about her full enjoyment of the music and the soft soothing spray of watery droplets from above.
reaching the stop she stands, facing the direction from which a bus will inevitably swoosh down. inevitably- buses like water slide down slopes… Her eyes distractedly dance along the charcoal-black slope only partially seeing. she is swept away in the sounds and words, the volume cranked up high, the music soars with her senses failing to arrest only one: her vision. several many moments pass.
tapping along, hip-twitching along, humming and mumbling along…and then she starts a little wiggle -fully oblivious of her surroundings. for a couple more minutes…jamming…jamming. bouncing. vibing with the music….
she sighs. stopping. smiling.
Then…she notices there were no fresh water droplets on her coat….
how could that…….(!!!)
abruptly, she turns around and her heart JUMPS- threatening to leap right up her throat!
“Oh my God!” ….exhale…
There is another human being right behind her!
…a human inordinately close, discomfortingly…breathing down her neck!! … she saw papery white skin crinkling up into a grimace. decidedly- almost contentedly, the old lady was holding up an umbrella above them both! The lady was wearing layers and layers of what looked like a red tent and a flowery sash with a big floppy maroon hat covering half her face. The other hand was holding a large white handbag with disproportionately huge crafty pink flowers blotched onto it…this was She. This was the old lady she had seen at this stop before. The lady’s voice had withered and trembled when it had tried to be projected, what the lady had said escapes her memory.
exhale…”Oh sorry!! I didn’t see you there!!”
silence.
the wrinkly eyelids twitch as the old lady acknowledges that she had heard; the faint grimace still tugging the corners of her thin lips…
more silence.
“uh….thank ….you……. (?)” with a question mark. she steps forward away from the old lady, toward the slope.
Maybe it was her quirky imagination but it seemed the old lady made a tiny step closer with the umbrella, seemingly to proclaim: ‘no more water droplets are claiming territory on your coat if I have anything to do with! I say no! not on my watch!’
‘hmmm?….so they share umbrellas in this country too? .smile. ‘interesting…’
‘is funny…’ almost unconsciously and abruptly she takes another instinct-inspired step forward.
‘ha! the irony! guess who’s more conscious of personal space…?’
“…mhhmmhm…” she starts to hum again fighting to reclaim her obliviousness until the bus comes…
nonchalant I
“nonchhaalant…!”
she proclaimed, as she described one of those criss-crossy-sweater-wearing ’so what?’ types to me…
…the type that oversleeps an international conference call and emails out a casually-put “ehhh” email scoffing at the fact that he was not even jet-lagged. The type that collects obese benefit packages and flexible hours to lounge on government/investment money; because he played the game right. He knew the right people, fit the right profile or once in some past he has been through a prestigious college~graduate school.
…excuse my intonations but nonchOllaaant, i feel! …like this dude, and frankly, it’s quite pathetic!
whether i have the same access to power~money as dude’s type, is another issue… |maybe perceived helplessness excuses indifference? for sanity’s sake?|
this blooming nonchalance reminds me of 3:
During a heated discussion about what a friend saw as a grotesque lack of activism and a fascination with the commercial glitz of america …she asks “Do the African students on campus not care what is happening in their countries?!”
During a class period, a professor (an Africanist, a white woman from the ‘American’ mid-west) went ahead and asked the question painful for the ears: “Is an African’s life worth least in this world?”.
During one incarnation of a discussion on Africa…a southern african asks “why do you northerners always fight???”
phew… anyway, i need to change my news sources and find a new perspective. cos boy this world is getting uncompromisingly predictable!! its like the world is on the looping setting, playing the same scene over and over and…! and that’s drenching flaming passion in blah! it is disconcerting…
c’mon, you can go ahead and say it!!: “duh, where have you been your whole life? venus?” …lol …Ask me again!
“Ethiopia denies Somalia bombing
Ethiopia has denied involvement in an mortar attack that killed at least 17 people in the main market in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, on Thursday. More gunfire and explosions were heard near Bakara market on Friday morning, but there are no details of casualties.…“
Zimbabwe’s precarious survival/ Starving in Harare
With the Zimbabwean economy in ruins, it is the people leaving the country who are helping those who have remained to survive.
Bread queues
A couple of hours later, as dawn breaks over the capital, many people – the mothers and unemployed – start forming long, silent queues that wind around entire blocks of the city.
There is a rumour that bread could be arriving in the city today.
Five hours later, people are still waiting. Policemen arrive, apparently helpfully supervising the queue and giving a surreal air of normality to the city scene. “They just pretend,” said one man in the queue with five children at home to feed.
“They get the first news if a lorry is on its way with bread, sugar, or mealie meal and they jump to the top of the queue and loot the food.” Once one of the richest countries in Africa, Zimbabwe has become a barrow, bucket, and bag economy. You see people walking for miles, wheeling barrows, buckets on their heads, and plastic bags in hand. Like the “bag ladies” in the former Soviet Union, they are always on the ready just in case something turns up. But it seldom does.
People are starving. The evidence is in the hospitals where tiny, wizened babies lie dying in their cots while their mothers look on helplessly….”
“Zahara’s Biological Mom Speaks Up
Zahara Jolie-Pitt may have a bright future ahead of her, but the story of her past is less uplifting.
According to her biological mother, the two-year-old adopted daughter of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt was the product of rape. Mentwabe Dawit, 24, told Reuters that she was walking home in the dark after a day of a work in the southern Ethiopian village of Awasa when a man approached and attacked her.
“He pulled a dagger, put one hand on my mouth, so that I could not scream. He then raped me and disappeared,” she recalled…..“
Mugabe looks to prolong his rule
Mr Mugabe could stay in power for six more yea |
President Robert Mugabe has seen off his rivals within Zanu-PF and secured the party’s nomination for the presidential elections scheduled for next March.
African migrants drown off Yemen
The capsized boat was carrying Somalis and Ethiopians |
About 180 African migrants are believed to have died in the Red Sea in the last few days while trying to reach Yemen, a Somali diplomat in Yemen has said.
iQaQa: tales of playing life in thingthing
there was a refined science and an art to evaluating the right proportions of water and soil…red or black, or ashawa sand…to make the purrrfect pot, food, house, miniature person … a little world of iQaQa!
I remember playing this game in two settings:
ahnd. the main gates were fuchsia pink, with peeling paint along the top edges. we lived across the sandy driveway from each other. Three of the SaId family children: the eldest boy, the eldest girl, the youngest and I, grandma’s girl. Chronologically, I fit between the two girls.
the consistency was fiiiine! fine sand which rises in sheets from underneath the ’save the children’ land cruiser usually parked next to the veranda where the gatekeeper situates his-self under the shade and cockily challenges all willing to a mean game of draughts.
the scorching heat of the sun and humidity prick the air leaving wavy optical illusions and refractions tangled with the dusty sand puffing upwards all day. but we always hid, we would go behind the old Italian building housing the venerated top floor office. we would go where the adults did not come, by the garden and store rooms. we frolicked well-lit grounds quaintly accented with insect infested dark corners while ever-flowing tap water trickled into these bountiful lands …casting pipes of soft gooey sand along the edges of the plants. If only grandma knew how we messed with those peoples’ gardens!
‘there are so many big trees!!’ Don’t you ask me what big meant! Ask me ‘when is Big’? and I might try to recall how tall I was at 7 years old….or not! … I wasn’t short! I did like wearing puffy colorful skirts tho!…
trees were the kind unique to that area of the world. ones with “monkey money” (yeTota frank) with entourages of small plants with “trumpet flower” (TirumBa AbeBa) & “bird’s seed Qolo” (yeWef Qolo)…my favorite, the ‘bogambil’, made for a mean hoooot pink stew concocted in a mud pot which had been very crispy-crunchy well done under the hot horn of African sun.
lema. there was a lot of short and stout greenery 515kms away, many about my height. and large chipped rocks lining the ground. it was rainy and muddy, gloomy clouds suspended over the wet season blues… moisture, nagging muggyness. the corrugated narrow metal doors were open, for what reason I don’t know. there was my cousin, the neighbors’ kids and I. the youngest one, a chubby little pumbkin with twinkily eyes was my favorite. such a cutttiie! they lived across the rocks…it seemed.
we messed with water. messy could make Coca cola, (aheeem! ambition and imagination allowed us to fathom even the most infamous/intricate billion dollar cola assembly line, kemir!!) … and soups and sauces, salaTa…and many more dishes and beverages… there were different shapes and sizes of tin cans, the yellow ethfruit salsa can and rectangular green olive oil can, the small one with the cartoon yeast dude on it!… and we went water-fetching behind the house… through the narrow path into spooksville, a space I later grew too big to fit in.
I enjoyed snipping all sorts of leaves and flower petals, mashing up different colors and concoctions. soiling my soft palms, tinging them with acidy tart smells/tastes. We served on different plates, qorkies (bottle caps…whatever are they called in english!?)… and with different utensils; invisible ones work especially well when we make the sound-effects “Aam-Aaaaam-Aam” and “fpfffffuuuuut!”
I remember the fascination with which every day passed, the immense amount of concentration and energy with which we jumped! jumped! Jumped! songs and chants, daily chores, timhirtibet-timhirtibet, mushira-mushira, …we were playing life! oh! joy-joy, funny how somethings, like playing life, are universal!
yester-wheres
A hush caresses the morn with a whisper only momentarily, as a slanted ray illuminates the landscape. Speckles of sand dance spinning twirls in the wind.
The smell of early morning dew in the air wages battle with the pungent stank of rubbish along the floodplane, a 5 minute walk away… Where waste decorates the lush soft yellow sand of the ASHawa: the coveted playground of aspiring football stars who are daily baked by tropic sun, their hopeful dreams smoking up aerodynamic dust lingering in the air well into the early hours of the evening- every day.
Here and now, there is fresh crispness and a sparkle of energy. The coolest part during day-light is almost over before it began… As the birds chirp a call-response rendition of a tune, an Acacia twig swims through the wind, dancing an early morning fox-trot before the burning heat of the sun silences its stamina.
In a part of the world where neighbourhood noise pollution is a foreign concept, houses of worship recantations, rooster crowing, “harun harun! harun dabo!” “shieka pasta buLa! shieka pasta!”, horse buggy bells and kur-kur horns ring in the day.
grey & worn ethiopian tales
i did not know u could do me like this!!!
how dare u let my dreamlands…my neverlands disappear? how could you let reality bite me from behind without warning?…i thought u had my back?! what have you been doing all this time?
yes you! you, who is supposed to keep weaving fairy tales, myths and stories about a country inclusive of diverse people! yes! you! who is supposed to draw, paint and sing, tell history and folktales…You are supposed to create the imaginary community in which; a lady home-maker who lives near Lake HayQ and I, an Ethiopian in the US share a bond? i don’t need to know her name!! I just need her to hear the same stories, to believe in the same country where her family, traditions and way of life are included!! beqa, that’s it…that is all I ask and what do you do? other than stubbornly clinging to old and grey fairy tales, proudly sticking to your righteousness & not pausing to listen? u tell me!
when i think ‘ethiopia’, instant images flash before me: agerlibs, injera, bandira, ethiopian orthodox church, warriors (tewordros, menilik etc…), gonder and axum…not other images…
my granma/ayate used to tell me tales about my patriotic great-grandpap. ‘He was a great warrior who died fighting against the somalis!’ she said. Truth be told, my granma’s heart was soft for the Somalis, she understood it was a matter of fighting for pride and such was life…She had grown old, with them as her neighbors and friends, after all. And yet, as our storyteller, passing on the family history she tells the story of patriotism, of glory and country -Ethiopia.
I remember history class when I used to learn about the beauty of a glorious land I happen to luckily be from!
i remember teacher talking about great civilizations that competed with those of the greeks and romans, he talked of the king of “ethiopia”, Ezana conquering yemen and sudan… Then came the defiant Zagwe and…the history of biblical ethiopia: solomonic dynasty. And then Adwa and victory! All these fairy tales propped my young patriotism, hugged my self-esteem and handed me validation for living in the country now ranking 7th poorest out of 170, with the 16th largest population. This same country, my country was/is glorious and victorious?…My, life was actually splendid! I felt proud!
And then…the uncomfortable grey areas of history swept their way into my conscious. Making me say ‘Why did I ask questions?’. It is possible that…”ethiopia” is an ambiguous name that Ezana plagiarized from meroe to puff up his grandeur, the word originating in the greek term for the burnt faces of subsaharan Africans. it is possible that the solomonic dynasty is based on a legend later written as the Kebre Nigist during the 14th century (story of Queen Sheba, Menilik I). It is possible that the civilizations, languages and glories of this flimsy “ethiopia” happened through regional collaborations; naturally! Technological & cultural contributions of the others planted the pillars: sudanese, kenyans, somalis, egyptian, yemeni…everyone within and beyond the area, with and without names….! it is very possible that zagwe and solomonic dynasities were very localized in the north. And anyhow, the construction that is “ethiopia” may very well be very recent…and a simple, creative solution for a state looking to legitimaize becoming a nation. It is very possible that while the Italians were kicked out the first time round; 5 years of occupation may question the “never colonized” myth about Ethiopia. Talk to an Italian!
It is most definite the histories of this state came about through the blood and sweat of those other than the valorized, victorious “warriors”. It is definite that some were exploited, enslaved and even forgotten!!! The cunning forgetfulness of historic fairy tales, discarding failures and injustices laid a foundation for a national vanity which worked for cohesion in the past. Should we continue to discard the past, or acknowedge and hold it as we sprint forward?
Now, I choke when I read accounts of history because: “History is written by the victors”. I know this too well when most history books, written by the colonizer/westerner talk of African solutions to daily challenges as savage, barbaric and primitive. I feel it when it’s apparent that colonialism sculpted Africa into a quintessential poster child for “feel-good” anti-poverty projects; our hands extended for aid.
so…it is… OUR fault for being negligent and stubborn about OUR fairy tales. We need to mind the gap! There’s a real need for re-invented folktales and fairy tales…Changing times call for new solutions. We need an Upgrade!
