Ephrem Endale Contributer
Come next Sunday, it’d be two days into the Ethiopian New Year. A full twelve months and one gone! Yes, we’ve a thirteenth month Pagume of five days, six every leap year. Even for decades our tourism slogan was, “Thirteen Months of Sunshine?” Wasn’t that a beauty! I never figured out what those who changed this wonderful slogan were thinking; though, of course, I have a couple of ‘theories.’ Time for reflection of all those which happened, taking our lessons and devising the road to be taken for the future. Conventionally, that’s supposedly what should happen at this time of the year. For the obvious reasons those actions wouldn’t be easy this time around.
It has been nowhere near to being any close to a good year; not by a million miles! Our country has been facing more problems than is fair to any nation, let alone ours where almost ninety-eight-percent of the population is religious. It has been a year of never-ending depressing news, of betrayal, of the selling-out, of backstabbing on an international level. Those we thought were friends to rely on during the storms proved exactly the opposite. They treated us as if we have always been thorns on their sides while we stood by their side for decades.
One thing we won’t feel years down the line is nostalgia. No way! It has been a year which, if it was possible, one completely wiped out form one’s conscience. As if it never happened, and was the creation of malfunctioning cells upstairs. But,
then things have been happening and still happening which we’ll have to go over and over again. Oh yes, we’ve much more questions than anyone could think of. It will not be about where things went wrong; it’ll be about the lessons we take from all that happened and perhaps tame our nice-kid-on-the-block approach when our goodwill goes unappreciated and backdoor shenanigans turn everything on its head. How come this nation got into so much trouble! Isn’t that obvious? How come we, the victims, seem to have won more enemies than friends?
While we are at it something comes to my mind. There is this popular story where two guys fight over something and one of them takes refuge on the top of a tree. The friend on the ground tried to talk him into coming down; he failed. Then comes that exchange which seems to have assumed legendary status in its own way. The one on the ground says;
“Come down; Don’t worry, I’ll not kill you.”
The one on the treetop responds, “What is the ‘I’ll not kill you for?” Yes, why did the word ‘kill’ bulldoze its way into the statement and the fellow didn’t try to fight it off? Doesn’t it have that conspiratorial tone?
A couple of weeks back I was reading this statement about the Americans helping our compatriots who are in grave need of food. The statement carries this line; “We are currently feeding roughly 7 percent of
Ethiopia’s citizens in every corner of the country.” We’re very grateful, like we have always been in the past. Keep up the good work. I don’t know why but something strikes me as out of place in the line “We are currently feeding…” True that’s what is being done, feeding. No one in their right senses would deny that. But the word ‘feeding’ is not an everyday word. Nothing wrong with it; but looking the events prior to it, it just doesn’t sound right. At least we don’t hear much of it; We’d have expected words like “We are providing food…” “We are supplying urgently needed food provisions…” and the like; but feeding! Maybe my genes are being overcautious, at a time where every word and gesture could be interpreted in multiple ways there’s no sin in asking “Couldn’t there have been a better (even ‘a nicer’) word? You know maybe this is the place to evoke that tired cliché, political correctness. Couldn’t there have been a more politically correct way of putting things! Just asking. Anyway, no hard feelings; keep up the good work! (No connection with the Gramatica guys! Ha!)
So it hasn’t been a year to be nostalgic about. Look, what if, just even for a few minutes, there was no gravity! Have you ever thought of that? A world with no gravity! Nothing to pull you and hold you down against your will! Nothing to impede your upward swing! Nothing to keep you stuck in this messy world which is getting so uglier by the day we find it hard to recognize it! “You mean we’re in that same place we have been all those decades?”
“Yes, we are.”
“What the hell happened to it?”
“I’ll tell you what happened to it, we!”
If you were to ask me what in the world that means I’d politely respond; I don’t know! Yes, that is exactly what I said; I don’t have the minutest ideal of what it means. Then why am I talking about something I don’t know? Well, I want to be part of the crowd. (Click the thumbs-up icon!) I want to fall in line so I wouldn’t miss out on all the melodrama unfolding everywhere. After all, they say it’s easier to ride with the herd; wouldn’t you say, too? You know with every other guy talking endlessly about things they don’t know don’t you think it’s fair enough for me to vie for the piece of the cake!
Yes we’re having real tough time getting through. In a simpler world we’d have sorted out the angels from the villains easily because we know them. There is an Amharic saying which goes something like… “The devil you know is better than the angel you don’t know.” Well, I’ll tell you what is bugging us real hard; there are too many devils which we never really knew! ‘Devils, on the backs of which we attached the angels’ wings and were even willing to put good words for them up there when quizzed by St. Peter.
All said we’d wish with fingers crossed and pray also the New Year to be real ‘thirteen months of sunshine!
The Ethiopian Herald September 5/2021