All these times I thought walking was a healthy life style until I realized that the sun could dry me up like the so called climate change resistant trees we have been planting with voluntary campaigns every rainy season. Why are we planting if they do not grow? Okay that is too pessimistic. The question should have been, why aren’t we protecting the trees we plant as public properties that belong to all? Oh, speaking of public properties, when are we going to get our public phones back? I know Ethio-telecom said they are out of service because of inappropriate usage by the public.
Some could also say “Dude everyone has mobile phones these days, so what do we need the public phones for?” Emergency issues my friend. There could be time that the pay phones may come handy. And most of all we don’t have to buy so many mobile cards and throw them everywhere and pollute our environment. Speaking of environment, the weather has not been that hot here in Addis during the past couple of months. This fine weather would continue for the next one month, which makes the City, the best place for tourists. I know the western people have celebrated their Christmas recently but if they want to do it again Christmas is next Monday here.
Most of all, the Ethiopian Epiphany is what any tourist from around the globe do not want to miss. It is an outdoor religious festival, which celebrates the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River. This festival is best known for its ritual reenactment of baptism. It will be celebrated few days after Xmas on January 19th.
The cool weather makes it, for tourists, the best festival to be part of. Speaking of tourists, it has become a better idea and I gave away my walking hobby for a foreigner who came to experience challenge in our Danakil Depression, the hottest and most beautiful place in the world. I was talking about environment and trees. You may not find tree in there, just beauty and challenging temperature. What I like about some foreigners is that they like facing challenges and even make them their hobbies. What I do not like is that they choose to come to Africa, as if this is the only continent with diseases, challenges and war.
Meanwhile, Africa is on the verge of many socioeconomic, and political changes, which most international communities are lauding. Ethiopia, in particular is going through a great deal of reform. On a recent interview with The Ethiopian Herald Dereje Zeleke Associate Professor at Addis Ababa University said, it takes a Keep walking: Running could be better now! gut and compassion to put aside the old trends and bring about such multifaceted reform in the country. According to him, this reform has public base and it has to go with an accelerated pace. If the changes have to go on faster, we all have to start running. There is no way that we could leave everything for and put the new administration on a rush.
The one thing, which makes it difficult is that I and my country have been walking for a very long time and anything faster could be hard to cope up with easily. But I see no other options but to run forward. I’m not saying we need to run away from our problems, it’s better to face them. But we need to run to conquer our problems in time. We could run for love and peace, run for knowledge and technology, run for law and order, run for health and against non-communicable disease. Reform is not a principle which could be limited on economic and political agendas. We all can go through our own personal reforms for the greater good.
That is why I like watching voluntary youths doing traffic police jobs on the streets of Addis. Running together could keep us stronger to work hard for the greater good of future generations. The only thing that is shameful and everyone needs to condemn is that stealing from the poor and running away to hide with fellow perpetrators. But we still can run for the greater good. After all, we cannot afford to sit around, while running is what we are best known for.
Herald January 5/2019
BY HENOK TIBEBU
