“Where is your son? It has been some time since I last saw him.
“Are you telling me you haven’t heard?”
“Haven’t heard what?”
“He has gone to Ferenj Hager!”
“Really! You are the luckiest people. In a couple of years he’d build you a G-4 residence!”
The sending off was dreamlike. It was an opportunity which came after years of ‘praying’ and also going to most of the ‘wise’ guys who could make anything happen at the clap of their hands. It wasn’t clear to which side the parents and relatives of the young fellow gave the credit. But one way or another it happened and he flies to that place which was supposed to be sort of ‘Heaven on Earth.’ the following weeks and months saw the young man’s family sort of enjoying mini-VIP status. Why not! After all, their son is in the dreamland and soon the dollar would start flooding in! Well, it didn’t actually flood in. But a few months later he starts sending sent some money and everyone was happy.
Barely a year passed when all of a sudden the money coming in dried up. The phone calls too stopped. What in the world was happening? His family managed to contact his friends and asked if he was alright to which the ‘friends’ answered he was doing well. It was because he was so busy he didn’t have the time to phone. His friends stuck to the narrative of his being too busy to call.
That was on hell of an excuse, but still did the trick of making his family believe their son was really making it big over there. Years went by and then bits of information began sipping all the way into the family’s living room that he might not be as well as the so-called friends claimed he was. Finally one day the family had to go to the airport to welcome tier son, a welcome better forgotten than remembered.
Their son haggard and practically not the son they saw off years back, gets off the plane! What happened was that the repeated offender drug addict he was and having failed to polish his acts he was deported. Deported! Yes deported; isn’t that a familiar story we hear over and again these days?
Now all those years his family and friends back here believed he was indeed having it nice and dandy in that Brad Pitt country and they had no reason to suspect otherwise. Don’t many of us believe that family or friends in the countries of the ferenjis are doing well despite the fact that they don’t call us as regularly as they used to? On the other hand many keep on phoning and gracing their social media accounts with dreamlike pictures and we just can’t stop wondering how they manage to escape the rough waters which even citizens find hard to navigate.
I mean the fact these days is beyond our darkest imaginations as life in the so-called civilized world isn’t as easy and as comfortable as we would have liked to believe. But few, if any, are willing to tell us these facts for reasons that they would be giving away how their real lives look. In fact being truthful is not a good thing to do because the false narratives of many would come out into the open.
Not a very nice scenario, wouldn’t you say? But then there are those who despite being treated as outcasts choose to tell it as it is. “Things aren’t as you think they are. Please gather as much information as you can before deciding to go abroad.”
A couple of days back I watched an interview on a young Ethiopian lady’s YouTube site where she talked with an Ethiopian man who has been living in an European country for the past two or so decades. The interview was about the lives of Ethiopians in that part of the world. Now the young lady chose to talk to him because of his courageous social media posts where he told the story of his own life as it was and as it is. Now his genuine narrative was indeed the likes of which you seldom come across.
Once upon a time this man was a gifted international caliber athlete. And he had a completely different kind of live in his past life was that of the TV cameras flashing and the VIP treatment of the high class hotels as he was one of those who stand out from among the crowd the athletics world. But that life was a story gone but not forgotten as the multitude of prizes gracing his house attest.
Married and supporting a family of seven, six children and his wife with whom he had been married for about a decade, life was nothing but easy. One would think given his illustrious athletic background he might be earning his living in some professions that had to do with sports. No. He worked in a construction company as a laborer where day in and day out he had to carry various building materials in the most uncomfortable of situations.
His face and hands covered with dust nothing and he carrying loads of real heavy building materials nothing about him showed a more or less stable family life. But despite working in situations many would have shuddered even to think of, a stable family was what he was leading. I could tell you that many in his situation would have moved a mountain and more to hide what they really did for a living. He used his Face book and You Tube cannels to tell his story posting pictures and videos of himself carrying, pushing, pulling loads of building and construction material.
And especially on the part of those in the Diaspora such actions didn’t get him standing ovations. No t many didn’t like one bit of what he does. Here is a man who, engaged in one of the most challenging, tiring and energy sapping works, he supports a family of seven. This is the sort of man who deserves all the accolade accorded to such souls who refuse to hide behind fake narratives and challenge life toe-to-toe.
Ephrem Endale
Contributer
The Ethiopian Herald November 19/2023