BY KFLEEYESUS ABEBE
Timothy Green is a poet, writer, and voice narration specialist. He is also English language coordinator at School of Aygoda.
Timothy is among many Rastefrians who chose to return to Africa particularly Ethiopia and made their living. He lived in Ethiopia for 16 years now and assimilated to Ethiopian culture and life. He does have Ethiopian baptismal name, Timotewos Gebre-Emmanuel and like fellow Rastafarians he got permanent residency in Ethiopia with all benefits and responsiblities.
Timothy advocates equality, unity, and pan Africanism through his poems but he says poetry is a means of expressing his feelings. The Ethiopian Herald got the opportunity to talk to Timothy about his poem; Pan Africanism, his dream to black people, his views on present world and other relevant matters.
The Ethiopian Herald: We’re in a time, many Africans are migrating to Europe, to the US. Wasn’t it hard to get back to Africa?
Not for me, because being a part of the Rastafarian community, we, that’s what our focus is, Africa. My great grandparents were members of Marcus Garvey’s Back to Africa movement. So, my family has always looked at Africa as a place that one day we would return. And I think I’m the first one to actually fulfill it. It wasn’t difficult for me. It was just a matter of making up my mind and saving the money for the plane ticket and organizing with my job and all of those things to actually pack up and leave. That was the difficult part, but it wasn’t so difficult. It was just a matter of just letting people know. Like for the last, the six months before I left, I’m moving to Africa and tie up loose ends, business, bank accounts, all of those things I did before I came.
What do you think you do with your art?
You know, the purpose of my poetry primarily is just to express myself. I don’t have any agenda for the poems. When I perform them, then my fondest wish is that if one person understands where I’m coming from, then I’ve done my job. So, I’m not really trying to impress anybody or convert anybody to my point of view. I just want people to understand where I’m coming from as an African-American, a Rastafarian, a person who was born in America, but desired to leave America and move to Africa. Like, there’s not a lot of us either, but there are more than people know.
So, I feel like I’m a representative of that community of people who left America and came to Ethiopia , the continent of Africa. Maya Angelou, who’s one of my poetic mentors spent a lot of her time in Ghana. Colonel John C. Robinson came to Ethiopia as a pilot. Robert Abbott was involved in journalism, also started a newspaper here. There’s a lot of other African Americans who left America and came to Ethiopia to contribute. Haile Selassie asked for professionals to come. So, we are here. We’re coming to benefit Ethiopia, but also for our own personal fulfillment.
So, one of your poems talks about the suffering of the black people, the Africans back in time. What do you want to be done this time?
Now that I live in Africa, I don’t really want America to do anything for me. But, they could fulfill some of the promises they made to black people a long time ago. You know, regarding reparations, regarding some sort of restitution for over 400 years of chattel slavery. And the damage that did to our community. They owe the black American community that much, at least. So, to me, they should at least. And, minor things like pardon Marcus Garvey.
Marcus Garvey was convicted of mail fraud and deported from the U.S. And he’s still considered a criminal, according to the U.S. But he’s one of the fathers of Pan-Africanism. So, they should pardon Marcus Garvey. They pardoned all kinds criminals, you know. So, why not Marcus Garvey? Why not some of the Black Panthers who the counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO, targeted, harassed. America can apologize for and reimburse the family of Malcolm X. And reimburse the families of those Black Panthers that were harassed. Reimburse Black people in general for, you know, being oppressive, segregationist, and using the police force as an occupying army in Black neighborhoods.
What is expected from us, I mean, from the Black people, or from the Africans? What should we do?
Malcolm X and some of those Black Panthers were trying to do was unite Black people on the continent, Black people in North America, Central America, South America. Because we’re all over the world, but if we were united economically, politically, philosophically, well, again, we don’t have to be the same, but we have to be united. That means respect each other’s differences, but come together under common areas where we can work together. Those things are very important, and those things still haven’t been done to the level that they could be done. We have more people from the diaspora coming to Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, different areas, but it needs to be easier for those of us who come here to be able to do business, to be able to form linkages with business there, here, again, Central, South America. We all need to be united, and I think that if we have that united front, then other governments have to respect us.
So the other thing is you’re passionate about Ethiopia.
Yes, I am. I’m passionate about Africa in general, but Ethiopia, since I’ve come here, I really feel at peace, at home. I enjoy West Africa. I love the food, the women. I love everything about West Africa and East Africa, but Ethiopia feels like home for me. I don’t know why. I just feel more at home here. Again, you know, the Rastafarians, we focus on Ethiopia, but the whole continent of Africa is Ethiopia for us. At one time, the whole continent was known as Ethiopia.
The Atlantic Ocean was known as the Ethiopian Ocean. So the whole continent is important for us, but Ethiopia being the land that HaileSelassie comes from, that’s very special for us, too. And because he’s an important figure, not only for the Rastafarians, but for Pan-Africans, for black people all over the world. So not just the Rastafarians who see him as a divine figure, but people who see him as an African leader, one who stood up for nuclear disarmament, for world bodies being more fair, because he’s the only world leader to address both the League of Nations and the United Nations. And he was there, and the reason why the League of Nations failed was because they didn’t help Ethiopia according to their charter.
So he expressed the wish that Ethiopia is now part of another world body, which again has to recognize the mistakes that were made during the League of Nations reign and improve. So do we see an African seat on the Security Council yet? again, the United Nations still has work to do.
What are your inspirations to write poem?
Like sometimes, some poems come to me, like the one, the score. I have been teaching in class about words that have multiple meanings. We use the word score as a measurement of time, in sports in just a colloquialism like, oh, yeah, we know the score. Also using it as the whips that scored my ancestors back, the scars that were on black people’s backs, you know, they scored. So I use the word score just to illustrate all of those different factors in our life.
And some of the other poems like Resident, I wrote that one when it was announced that they would give that the Rastafarians our residency here in Addis Ababa, Shashemene and Bahir-dar, every place where we’re dwelling here. When we some of our community had been here over 40 years and didn’t have any status, which, you know, that shouldn’t have been for so long. But I appreciate Dr. Abiy Ahmed and his administration for getting that done, because that that could have been done a long time ago, but they got it done. So I appreciated them for doing that. So I wrote that poem Resident, and then other things come like just, sometimes it’s just inspiration.
How would you describe the power of literature, the power of poetry to freedom fighting?
It was writers who got communities together to be able to express themselves about why they felt the need to go out and burn things down and break in somebody’s store and take things. Because of the injustices for years, heaped upon them, the frustration, the powerlessness that they felt for years, the brutality from the police agencies and all those things. And at some point, it just erupts like, you know, like a kettle that boils over. Writers would encourage the communities to come together and write a journal, write your own expression of why you’re so angry.
That would help them heal. And those artists also put out albums that were very inspirational for me as a young man. And so those things inspired me at a young age that, you know, that art form, to look at that art form. So great writers and great thinkers, I’ve had the profound blessing to be in their presence and to listen to them. Why writing and why expressing our experiences is so important. So to me, I’m just continuing a tradition that started here on the continent, Africa, the word, speaking the word and impacting your immediate community. That’s a very important art form and I’m just proud to be a part of it.
The Ethiopian Herald March 12/ 2023
