Down on our knees

Ethiopia’ s poverty never seemed entrenched or hopeless. I saw the potential of the natural and human resources to yield something substantial for the future of a prosperous and dignified Ethiopia. The poverty, hunger, corruption, oppression and lack of infrastructure seemed like the growing pains of young and budding nation, symptoms of a worry child that will come good. I had hope, always had hope, even when I discovered that more beggars and homeless were out on the streets, that the gap between the rich and the poor was widening, I always had hope. How can a country so beautiful and rich in history, culture and resources ever fail to make it at some point? I would defend Ethiopia to people raised on the media-diet of hunger, drought and strife. I would point out the strong religious traditions, the mostly peaceful co-existence of religions, the ancient and rich history, the cultural variety and the unique ethnic identities and languages that come with this. Oh yes, we do have roads and food, oh even the most unique cereal in the world is used to make delicious food which is so rich in nutrients, it even gets really cold at night and when it rains we get the most dramatic thunderstorms- how rustic romantic! Of course at times I would resort to sarcasm when people were totally blinkered, I’d claim I swung from tree to tree on a liane wearing a loin cloth, suckling on a lioness and the cubs were my brothers…

The first inkling that perhaps we weren’t on the road to a better world came through work, when I saw that population growth was threatening to engulf and gobble up any development, when I saw how governments and NGOs alike had a vested interest in keeping Ethiopia poor. The didvide-and-rule tactics did and didn’t have success, they weren’t successful in that there was no Rwanda style ethnic strife as TPLF had hoped to orchestrate, but intolerance and prejudice are growing insidiously like an obscure cancer. The election and its aftermath weren’t such a great shock since Meles & Co didn’t really inspire faith, which strengthened the belief that Ethiopians have to work from within each individual to achieve freedom, democracy and consequently prosperity and well-being. The hope that the west would “do something” was a still-birth as the greater hidden agendas are unclear to ordinary mortals and are dictated by the “War on terror” and related neo-imperialistic aspirations.

But boy have we sunk to a new low! Now we are the mercenaries of the USA, the private henchmen; the EPRDF gets money to send Ethiopians into a war that we have very little to do with. So the question as to why the west support a tyrant like Meles has been answered, we are someone else’s dirt shovelers. We go abroad to do jobs the natives are too fine to do, now were are low enough to do just that even in our own corner of the world. The Mafia boss was burnt 15 years ago in Somalia, so now he sends his dispensable, thuggish, testosterone-crazed jackals to do the dirty job. The dead protesters from June and November ’05 didn’t just die for peace and stability in Ethiopia, oh no, they died for the safety and democracy in the land of the free- what do we on the ground get for it? Nothing, but more oppression, corruption and a slide deeper into the muck and tangly bog of human-induced development impediment. The USA, as short-sighted and yobbish as it always is, doesn’t realise that a bit of “hearts and minds” stuff in Jijiga with schools, libraries and clinics has not won anyone over, least of all the Somalis in that area.

The Ethiopians are starting to resent the terrorist-speziale treatment that they get at the hands of their own government in its effort to please the USA and keep itself in power. Resentment turns into hate, what with more fundamentalist muslim ideologies taking root in Ethiopia on one side and the dehumanising war on terror on the other, the EPRDF and thus the west are breeding more hate-blinded suicide-bombers. They aren’t stalling the spread on fundamentalist terror, they just opened another Kindergarten for it. And this is where I realise that our perceived poverty and economic worthlessness are dragging us back, by enslaving us to the warlords of terror on all sides and stripping us of any hope and dignity to do things our way for ourselves

Closer than you think

The recent blog-debate about homosexuality in Ethiopia was interesting and frightening in that it revealed the blinkered bias and prejudice about homosexuality like it's some deviation and disease. Today I found that it has been much closer to home than I realised when chatting to a cousin:

My uncle was not very popular in my world for various reasons, one being that he'd loose all male and adult aloofnes when it came to unruly kids, stooping to harmless pranks and trying to give tit for tat.

What was strange to us was that he used to spend so much time on his grooming, dyeieng his hair and fluffing it up for hours outside infront of a mirror. He used to have a minceing limpwristed walk that was impossible to keep up with in its leg-numbing slowness. He used to hand-make very realistic cloth dolls for my mother. He was married but after his misfit of a son was born they separated (nothing special for sure, but the wedding pictures show a cornered man). He used to bring over male friends, who would share his bed in a "brotherly" fashion. He wore a tiny braided ponytail that he'd stuff down his shirt collar when at home. He'd spend a lot of my mum's money. He drank a lot. He was nasty.

The nastiness, drinking and bitchiness to children (especially his nieces) are not steroetypical traits of gay men, but I reckon they are the result of the oppression and prejudice that cause the frustrations to come out in a nasty way. So not just for the sake of humanity and a more tolerant society should homosexuality be accepted as something that is part of human nature. Let's accept it for the sake of healthier families and happier men, for those thwarted and oppressed inevitably find someone else to torment, in most cases children. To those who say it's against God's will and design, if anything exists in the world it is by his design.

Thing is I just guessed only a few years ago that he might have been gay. I never had confirmation, the whole family was blind to it -despite the extended grooming etc (though stereotypes mean little on their own) and I didn't run it past my mother as she would have had a fit- after all he made dolls with his hands to keep her entertained.

Tonight my cousin and I almost simultaneously said "Did you know he was gay...?" Only to stop and gawk at each other, as no-one had ever mentioned it. And it will stay like that since it will not be seen as something that he just was among other things, like he was light-skinned or liked to wear a "shirrit", it would look like I was acting out a final piece of revenge against an uncle who bullied me by "tarnishing" his name with homosexuality. I think if I said he was a child molester, rapist or red-terror torturer people would accept it more since those are more "manly and heterosexual" things to do, but loving other men? Never.