There is an incident I like raising once in a while. Some years back a group of us were in this place. This elderly man in his eighties or so enters. All of us stood up in respect except one.
This is a guy who has never gone a hundred kilometers out of Addis and acts like he was some sort of a globetrotter. His way of showing that was disparaging every local culture. I mean standing up when the elderly enter is a timeless culture in this country.
Did I tell you once about very civilized brethren of us who at embassy receptions eat injera and wot with knives and forks! Yes, that happened. Why? Well they are a ‘civilized’ lot. And they want to prove to their hosts and other well-heeled guests filling the reception hall they were not one of us; that they were head and shoulders above the rest.
They were on an upper level. And how do they prove that, by eating injera and wot with knives and forks! I’ll tell you what I’ll do if ever some embassy is crazy enough to invite me to a reception and I was creasier to attend. I’ll be eating my fifir with chopsticks! How about that for strengthening ties with the creators of the chopstick!
There was once this thing which really shook society to its core. In some private schools there was the sign “Speaking in Amharic and throwing rocks is forbidden.” Such an outrage in public and in the very country where Amharic has remained the official language for centuries!
There is no mystery as to who were behind this, of course the owners. Any souls who write such an insult to an entire nation probably have rocks for brains. Lifeless, and much of them useless.
Look, I personally have no problem with those who try to show off. We have become so accustomed to that breed all over the place.
Look, this word of course is not new, whichever way you look at it.
“What in the world is the guy saying?”
There are those, who just because they have family in America who send theme sneakers bought from flea markets or at yearend big sales act as if they deserve to be treated like a guy with the Oval Office master key.
Someone should tell those nuts civilization is not about the jacket on your shoulders or the terribly oversized Chicago Bulls t-shirt. It’d not bot the “I Love NY” hat or the Gucci or deodorant.
By the way, someone was telling me plastic surgery is being practiced here and that ‘the rich and the beautiful’ were flocking.
“You mean they carry out any kind of plastic surgery?”
“Any kind.”
That’s one hell of medical advancement.”
“You can say that again; but the stories you hear seem to be torn out of a Dave Barry comedy book.’
“Cut the riddle and come to the point.”
“Well, they say some are doing all kind to their very private parts.”
“You mean the V tablet is out of service!” That was a harmless sidekick.
It is as if getting plastic surgery is one sign of ‘being civilized,’ catching up to the rest of the world. Tattoos are a very common thing around here these days. Now getting tattoos which seem to be a witch’s prayer book is seems to have become the latest way of flashing our , “I’m civilized!” card to the world.
“Hey, I’m going to tell you news so strange, you’ll be walking to the Everest to look for a cave where you’ll spend a ten-year sabbatical.”
“And… what’s it?”
“That guy who eats two kilos and a half raw meat in one sitting…” (Believe me; the way we eat could serve as our public DNA allowing us to be easily identified!)
“What about him!”
“Well he has tattoos all over his arms and neck!”
“So what! Everybody seems to have tattoos in one part of the body or the other.”
I think if we are going to go any deeper in this habit of allowing the needles to prick us on every inch of the skin, we could at least go into the countryside and collect more creative designs which could be books by themselves.
But this is not about choice; about love for tattoos or plastic surgery or something. It is about flashing the “I’m civilized card. I can tell you one action which wouldn’t be part of that, not in another millennium; Using knife and fork for injera and wot. I rest my case.
The Ethiopian Herald February 7/2021