“Have you seen our friend lately?”
“About whom are you talking?”
“That guy who really got some job in a western embassy.”
“Oh him! What about him?”
“The guy has gone through a complete makeover.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way he dresses, the way he walks, even the way he talks is so different he already looks like the civilized ferenji!” (Don’t worry the guy saying all ferenji are civilized.)
“What does a civilized ferenji look like?”
“Looks like the civilized ferenji!” that’s the master key to it all. It might be hard to digest especially in this age of tons information and even more tons of misinformation. Somewhere down the line much of society has been made to believe that all the ferenji are civilized. ‘Hip, hip hooray!’ Well this is not about some body of people congregating around a conference table and giving the titles of ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’ to nations and people. Here is what many unfortunately would take as the sweetest news of all; if someone equates you with a ferenji with some “He looks like a ferenji…” comment it means you are heads and shoulders above everybody else. The sad story here is that such outlooks still persist among many.
I’ve this father of three friend who is one worried soul these days. He had two seventh graders and a high school senior kids. It so happened that one teacher of the seventh graders recently talked to them about what civilization meant. You can say that this was one of those impossibly difficult and contentious issues to deal with. You can talk about such issues around cups of coffee or bottles of beer, But orienting students about what civilization meant especially in these days of total global confusion is a must be a daunting task. Whoever chooses to take up the challenge must either be some person who likes such challenges or someone who have carved out their own ideas of would love to send them out to the world.
Anyways what worries this father of three wasn’t that his children have to face such difficult topics but the narratives of the teacher as played back for him by his early teen children. The teacher’s idea of civilization were high rise buildings, things like electric train AI run production units and the like. Well it appears there’s nothing wrong with such issues being described as examples of civilization, though there could be strong arguments. But the problem was that the teacher raised nothing about hat ‘civilized’ behavior meant. The person was never the agenda. Everything was about material things and that is could gravely lead the students to have wrong conclusions. The point here is these tender minds could easily be put on the wrong path and this brings about the danger of pulling them farther away from their quest for real uncontaminated knowledge. Even if we sit down to talk about the issue of what civilization actually meant believe me it would talk where three of us would have taken thirty different ways each.
Civilization is about providing fair and just service. It is not about the high rises and the carpeted luxuriously furnished office. It isn’t about the thirty-thousand-birr suit. It’s about being human It is about the service rendered. You can’t claim of being civilized while you can’t even provide the most basic of services.
But then civilization is first and foremost about being humanely human and treating all human beings with the same respect and cordiality without prejudices and biases. The moment we veer away from such path that’s where our claims of being civilized gets the knockout punch. Believe me most of us are on that floor on our backs looking at the sky I want to bring up a story I raised a couple of times before. It was the lengths we go to be considered uncivilized.
It is like saying that if you use knife and fork at every meal you’re civilized and if not you aren’t! Hogwash! I’m not going to mess with my Injera Bewot trying to use knife and fork. Decades back a group of us were in this East European country. The very first night of our arrival the twenty-plus of us sat for dinner in a dining hall. There were other ferenji and we were the only foreigners.
The main dish was filled with chicken breasts and legs and we were in a fix. How are we going go about eating it? We’re in ferenji country and the proverbial yilugnta ties us hand and foot so as not to use our bare hands and be seen as ‘uncivilized!’ No we weren’t going give these ferenji reason to look down upon us. So we idled with crumbs of bread or something none of touching the chicken parts. Come on, the knife and fork things being alien to many of us yilugnta ruled over our rumbling stomachs. Then redemption came in ways we never thought of. In a far corner of the hall a heavyset ferenji had gigantic chicken leg firmly in his hands was tearing at it like he had some issue to settle. Well that did it and forty-plus hands went into action.
Going back to my friend’s worry that the minds of his kids are being abused I share his concern. Recently the worried father’s kids also heard that a teacher who’s teaches another subject and not history indulges in some ‘historical narratives’ and the students were left confused as they were being told things which go against almost everything they have been hearing all along. The teacher goes way off the road telling the students that even commonly accepted and non-controversial historical happenings were all fiction. He goes to great length to dispel every aspect of the countries long history telling the students all history books and all historians of yesterday and the present were all liars and unqualified. He said they were writing historical fiction based on ‘invented’ history and not on facts. And what are the real facts?
Anyways we might as well look at our long surviving ideas of the aspects of being civilized vs being uncivilized. Where is the jury?
Ephrem Endale
Contributer
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 24 DECEMBER 2023