I was doing a little research on poverty and do you know according to the
UNDP and others some 52 % of the Ethiopian population lives below the
poverty line? Our country faces a problem which is beyond any local
government however good it may be to solve it. I warn all not to expect
anything good from Ethiopian Governments. What we should expect is to build
a capacity to neutalise the adverse effects of bad governments! I came
back recently from a lecture tour from China: I met some young high
school children where one of them told me:"our country has a great future".
But look at us and our younger sisters and brothers in Ethiopia: they all
want to leave Ethiopia:According to Waweru Mugo's report of July 9,2001
entitled "how we escaped- Ethiopian students:"He has described their
actions and intentions confirming an incredible tragedy from the
perspective of building Ethiopia's future:
" (Through) a combination of deceit, ktu kidogo(bribes), luck and prayers-
200 Ethiopian students flee their homeland to "safety" in Kenya." Asked if
they want to return, nearly all of them replied:they will not and they feel
very unsafe returning!
Look at the difference, when that young Chinese lad said our country has a
great future, you can guess where my thoughts turned: Ethiopia. I know I
deeply love my country, but I also know I am not contributing (for whatever
reason) commensurate to the love I feel, the hurt I feel and the
humiliation I feel when I read negative accounts about my country. This is
not mind you for lack of trying!!!
When I read some of the stuff people write about the obelisk, the
character of some of the sponsors and the like- boy- I'm astounded by our
capacity for litigation and the grotesque irrelevance of our actions to
the future of our country. One can bet and will be right always that the
erudition and knowledge of our men and women of letters can turn anything
and everything into an issue. Everything, small, big, worthy, unworthy,
significant, insignificant, ugly, beautiful- everything becomes an issue.
That means it is difficult for us to organise on anything. We need a
dictator, a monarch, God, or the devil to help us to do that. One of us,
one amongst our midst- no- we have the uncanny knack of turning them into
a leper. Though the average intelligence of educated Ethiopians is probably
no different from that of China or elsewhere, we do not seem to give anyone
the opportunity to organise on anything, even on a simple petition to
return an obelisk that all acknowledge belongs to Ethiopia.
I think we ourselves are our own worst enemies. We give agency to our
capacity to weave "neger" and thereby deny ourselves the power and agency
for self-action in order to make a difference.
I'm sincerely worried for us in relation to our country's future. I
sometimes wonder, do we really love our country or ourselves in the name of
of our country? Sometimes, it is better to not let our mind wander without
discipline and try to dig in where it may be prudent to see, register and
pass. At all times, it does not hurt us to learn to be positive.
For example, I'm not sure the petition we are signing will persuade the
Italian Government to return it. If it does, great. If the petition has no
influence, at least whoever initiated it- we have tried. The positive
things this petition opened is the following:
- other looted treasures must be found and returned
- compensation for Ethiopia for the loot
- warning to the local collaborators who profit from looting
- warning to the foreign buyer and middlemen
- possible self-organisation to recover the loot
- possible self-organisation to prevent looting
- coordination of these activities
Such nationally relevant directions can be developed from this and such a
positive stretching will help us to forget who initiated this matter in the
first place. If one sees the matter dynamically, a spark may start by
anyone. If there is value to it, others who feel strongly will take it
forward and should!
Complaint about individuals, Government and other distractions simply are
not helpful. They give agency to those who have none and deny agency to
those who care about the issue. Beware of turning everything into a negative!
May God help us from suffering self-inflicted wounds. We need to heal fast
so that we all can make the contributions to reach the level of
self-awareness and confidence like that young Chinese lad who made me
envious. I wish us to act, feel, speak, think, imagine and make things to
make us say like the Chinese young boy: "Ethiopia too has a great future."
Does it not bother us that our country is the storehouse of the world's
biological diversity and yet we had successive famines in the 1970s,1980s
and 1990s? Are we waiting to be humiliated by another one in the 2000s? We
should wake up. The Chinese have learned to create food from anything and
everything. And I tell you they eat very healthy food.
Remember we imagine and make the future of our own country.
Remember"benegger ager ayigebam." As we keep altercating, over half of the
population of Ethiopia do not eat the meals we take for granted in our cosy
homes in various European and American cities. Let us be humble and find
our true calling. We must organise, mobilise and resist the forces that
spread poverty and violence in our country. Let us focus our attention in
mining the rich biodiversity to feed our people and make the nation move
forward on to development.
As someone who sincerely love Ethiopia and wish to see Ethiopia making it
this half of the coming century, I urge all of us not to be distracted by
making non- issues into issues. Let us concentrate on matters that will
help us collectively to reach the very ordinary Ethiopian. As people debate
on the flaws and merits of an individual, the merits or lack of merit of
returning an obelisk, I urge you to ponder the real issue staring us in
the face: Imagine how can Ethiopia develop if 52 % of its people are below
the poverty line? How can a country imagine, create, make with over half
its people not eating, not being able to produce, to buy and sell?
This is a call for relevance and for commonsense! Let us kill the lawyer in
us and let the humane, moral and considerate being in us take the better of
us. That may help us to concentrate on the issues that matter rather than
the issue that divide us. Remember, if one does not like a certain
petition, one can ignore it, not sign it. No need to get into arguments.
Let us select the issues that merit argument from those that really do
not. I consider the arguments over the Obelisk a complete indulgence of the
spolied, abstract and irrelevant intelligentsia! I'm sorry- before one
fires at me. Let me admit that with humility I feel myself to belong,
unfortunately, to that strange intelligentsia!
Mammo Muchie