This world is so messy and getting even messier maybe it is high time someone came up with the sequel to the novel Nineteen Eighty- Four. Yes, the tone might be a title different, new players might be holding important positions while some of the older players have been condemned to the substitutes’ bench or even hung up their boots. But then Nineteen Eighty-Four about a messy world, the sequel would be even more so. While the rules of the game might largely be the same the makeup of the players has changed; be sure about that.
You know what we need in these times of a thousand and one problems…, people who make a difference. That’s it! That’s one species which seems on the way to becoming extinct. No don’t get me wrong, of course there are many in this country that are making a difference, the only thing is that most of them are doing it in all the wrong way. Most of them are using ‘making a difference’ for destroying bridges and replacing them with walls, for sawing seeds of misplaced discontent among sections of society who are easily away by whatever they are told. It is somewhat comforting that despite the concerted effort of tearing up every social fabric into shreds this country is holding its ground and people are holding fast to age-old assets that held them together and saw them brave the storms and hurricanes that came their way.
These people have been trying to create religious differences among Ethiopians as we’ve recently seen in Addis and elsewhere in the country. Thanks to the far-sighted response of people on all sides they failed. The stupidity of such practitioners of hate and discord lies in the fact that they fail to do their homework. Had they taken a few of hours into the story of how Ethiopians of all lived side by side for centuries with all sides respecting the belief of the others, they would have done justice to their own selves. Yes there are many who leave no stone unturned in ‘making a difference’ in all the wrong and vile ways. And because of those people much damage has been brought upon this country and its people, because of them societies in several parts of the country have felt the earthquake under their feet but refused to throw in the towel and turn against their own. Despite campaign-like attempts to replace love and compassion by hate and loathing by those who are ‘making a difference’ in all the wrong ways it didn’t work; as it never would! Yes there are people who make a difference in all the wrong ways trying to drag this country further down the slope and peddle it to its enemy’s square inch for square inch. But like all such campaign-like agendas of vice thrown into the lap of this country this too has fallen drastically…as it always will!
We need people who can make a difference in the political field. Now, that’s somewhat touchy issue. I can tell you one thing though; you’ll never make everybody happy talking politics. Don’t you ever try it as it could make a Sesame Street Muppet out of you! In case you manage to make everybody happy talking politics then there must be something very wrong. Ha!
We’re in times when knowledge and only knowledge allows one to sit in the driver’s seat. As the knowledge industry is being modernized in leaps and bounds we seem to be left far behind and that is costing the country so much so that catching up to the rest of the world is a daunting task. We need people who can ‘make a difference’ in the education sector so that while holding the better aspects of yesteryears we move shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the world.
Look, though I’m not fully aware of the numbers, but the presence of thousands and thousands of foreign professionals in various sectors of importance is because we couldn’t fill those positions with the locals. (Of course it doesn’t mean all of them live up to our expectations in the skills and performances we’d have liked to see. When your ability to choose is curtailed by numerous things, you don’t always get the best and the brightest!) ) It’s a pity that a country of a hundred twenty-plus million people lacks knowledge so severely. The education sector is one sector that is not operating as it we’d have liked it to. For years the talk has been about falling standards and highly lacking academic and vocational trainings. Somewhere down the line, it seems the sector jumped the rails and rested on different tracks.
We need people who ‘make a difference’ in the fine arts of world. It is a pity that the fine arts around here are seen as simply entertainment and no more. Wrong! Stage plays, films, books, music etc. have shaken up this world over the ages in more ways than one. But most of all they provide the best ways of connecting with the rest of humanity through showing what we are and the values we are made of.
We need social heroes who could ‘make a difference’ in a way that our age-old assets which held us together for millennia are polished to make them fit the times and maintained. Unfortunately many of our best social assets which would have taken us across even more seas and oceans have suffered abuse for quite some time; abuse resulting from lack of proper knowledge and mostly politically motivated abuse meant to annihilate everything of the past and trying to make everything a clean sheet.
There’re stories we hear from schools which should worry us as to how the young generation is being brought up in such places. In some private schools, so they say, it is money that talks and not the teachers. Children of the rich and the wealthy flashing wads of ten thousand birr notes, parents with beefy bank accounts (and most probably empty heads) showing the world how ‘civilized’ they are arming their children with thirty thousand birr smart phones, seven thousand birr shoes and pocket money which would have comfortably carried a family of five through two or three months.
We need parents and educators who can ‘make a difference’ by making schools mainly places where future generations of highly trained young people are produced in millions. We need parents who can make a difference by looking well after their kids and not overloading their green brains with thoughts that, as long as the money is there one has nothing to worry about. They could at least do their children’s future justice by inculcating in them the fact that if they want money and the good life they’ve to work for it. Yes, we need people who ‘make in a difference’ these days more than we needed them at any time in history.
Ephrem Endale
The Ethiopian Herald 15 May 2022