To millions of Ethiopians who are used to a rather temperate weather, the last few months of the dry season have been excruciatingly hot. Even residents of Addis Ababa who usually enjoyed the gentle highland climate of the capital were complaining about the heat wave. Thanks to God that our heat wave was not comparable to similar events elsewhere in the world where people literally die of too much heat. The rains of the last few days therefore came at the right moment when people started to be fed up of the weather. People breathed a sigh of relief and welcomed the rains as bonanza from God or free cooling sowers sent by the Almighty.
There are also other reasons to welcome the rains in Ethiopia. In a country depending on rainfalls for its agriculture, the gentle showers of the last few days herald the beginning of the rainy season which is also the season when farmers launch their struggles for survival. To be frank, in Ethiopia no rains means no food. We cannot blame the Creator for this. We have plenty of water in the form of rivers, lakes and reservoirs. The trouble is that we are not yet awakening to the fact that we could easily stop looking up at the sky every rainy season and look down at the water reserves below to secure the livelihoods of tens of millions of people.
The Egyptians are blaming us for using the Nile to promote national development. Their blame game is pointless because they have developed the Nile to such an extent that they grow plenty of foods, use irrigation farming and even get drinking water from it while we are fighting against darkness as an estimated 60 percent of our people do not get electricity and seriously tens of millions of our folks are starving every year because we have so far failed to use the Nile and other big water sources to grow food through irrigation farming.
We are in a way facing an existential threat while they complain about the luxury of having more and more water to farm more lands than they really need. They worry about managing the extra water they get from the Nile while we worry how we are going to use it to generate light. This is a kind of culture clash: the culture of plenty versus the culture of scarcity. This clash can nevertheless be overcome by developing a culture of empathy and mutual concern.
To go back to our situation, we realize that the Ethiopian calendar year is divided in such a way that there is time for work and time for fun, time for the body as well as for the soul. By tradition as well as necessity, the rainy season is a period of hard work in the fields. It is the busiest time for farmers in particular. As a popular saying has it, “To the foolish farmer, July is the dry season”. This is to say that a lazy farmer is loathing the arrival of the rainy season and pretends it is still the dry season in order to avoid work. July in Ethiopia is the beginning of the rainy season when farmers spend the days working in the farms and fields. The rainy season in Ethiopian folklore symbolizes the bounties that the earth delivers to the hard working famers while punishing the lazybones.
The good thing is that the rainy and farming season is coming on the heels of the wedding months. The last two months were mainly devoted for tying the knots by the young people. Wedding ceremonies or celebrations are a very sophisticated, and sometimes, very messy affair in Ethiopian communities. This is also the case in many African societies. Westerners on the other hand manage their weddings in a simpler, more economic and short-lived affair.
Weddings in almost all Ethiopians communities, irrespective of geography or social status, start with a bang as the would-be married groom sends the “Shimagiles” or elders to ask for the hands of the prospective bride. Everything else depends on the response to this request. In case of a positive answer, the preparations for the wedding start right afterwards. Newlyweds generally prefer to tie the knot at the most ideal moment such as the beginning or the end of a big Christian fasting season or a national holiday. They choose these moments to take advantage of the holiday mood, so to say, that may further galvanize their moment of happiness.
The burden of responsibility is heavier on the groom than on the bride. The “Tilosh” or the gift to be handed over to the bride by the groom is one of the exciting moments for their mutual families. Depending on their social and economic statuses, the groom is expected to appear at the house of the bride with bags full of the best clothes in town, jewelry and many other gifts. The groom and best man arrive at the bride’s home. A song is sung while no one is allowed in yet. But after a few moments, after a tug of war in the form of songs, the groom is given consent to go in.
Weddings in Ethiopia are becoming increasingly expensive these days judging from the retinue the groom arrives to the house of the bride, the limousines, and the long queues of the latest model cars that follow him on the wedding day and the huge banquets that are attended by hundreds of guests, with whiskey and raw meat mixing in an uncomfortable and noisy environment where music coming from the orchestra and the attending dancing and shouting gives the whole event an intimidating allure. Judging by the lavishness of many weddings, you have the impression that talks of inflation and rising cost of living are stories from another world. “Anecdotal evidences suggest that an average wedding costs between ETB100, 000 to as much as millions of Birr in urban areas like Addis Ababa.”
The last two months were thus witnesses to such extravagant weddings. Although marriages are made in heavens it is not clear whether divorces are made on earth, and how many marriages will survive for years or decades is anyone’s guess. Ethiopian television programs often broadcast husbands and wives celebrating half a century of their lives together. These people give you the shivers, as you remember many marriages are these days ending sooner than expected. The young couples or newlyweds may not be in a mood to see their hairs greying or walking with the aid of a stick like our forefathers. Many hastily arranged marriages are ending sooner than the ink on the marriage contract has dried up.
Whatever the outcomes of the weddings that took place in the last two months, the rainy season is a good time for them, to enjoy their honeymoon away from the cold and in warm beds, watching the rainfall through the glass of windows. This is even more economical than going to America or Europe for honeymoon as many of our fortunate folks were doing during the dry and sunny season. The opposite scenario may be farmers working in the fields, their legs deep in swampy lands, rain falling on them, braving the cold often without enough to eat. For these hard working people, happiness comes at the end of the season when the harvest is ready to be collected and the results of hard work start to give sweet results.
The rainy season is also accompanied with good news of agricultural activity. The government recently announced that it has launched a huge wheat production drive in Bale zone which is also traditionally known as the place where during the Derg time, Agarfa in Robe woreda was the place where a huge and ambitious project was launched, although it was soon stopped due to technical and managerial mistakes. Things are different this time and all the farming and harvesting will be done by machines. The government is committed to addressing the current food shortage particularly wheat shortage, by producing enough to cover local demand whether the war in Ukraine drags on or not.
According to available information, “Ethiopia’s wheat production is on the rise as the government has dedicated more resources to the production of the commodity such as irrigation and input supply”, according to a Global Agricultural Information Network (GAIN) report from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). This gives rise to tangible hope for a better time for Ethiopia’s wheat production that has been hit hard by the Ukraine war and prices in the international market. The other bonanza offered by the rainy season is of course the planting of billions of tree seedlings in the national quest for turning Ethiopia green in the context of the huge nationwide program that was launched a couple of years back.
Nature’s cyclic movement is of course bound to continue uninterrupted. The theory of cyclic movement states that “nature is characterized by a cyclic change which is observable in all realms and domains of life.” The rainy season will end in September and the wedding seasons will return soon after the harvests will be gathered. People will keep on dreaming of the good life and will work hard to attain it. Meanwhile, those youngsters who tied the knots this year will be having their first babies as gifts of nature if not those of the Creator.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
The Ethiopian Herald 12 June 2022
