Saturday, November 26, 2011

Prophet of Change


           At times like this my tears are like a river to wash up all the sorrows I had. Sometimes my tears would not subsidize my sorrows. Instead my sorrow will run through my veins and began to bleed my internal organ giving me a terrible pain. I do have no strength to fight but I know that “a voiceless man is as good as dead.”
I don’t know when things began to change, but at first it all looks firm as a marriage bound with the will of GOD.
          I remember how I could forget those pictures, vividly. Besides, every year at our “libration day”, that is how they tell us to remember it, the liberators. The liberation from tyranny of an evil regime but as far as I know we never been colonized. Shall I hold a rifle and join some “liberators” at war front? To kill my own brothers and sisters so I could save my country. What makes my country a place to live? We, who inhabits it, who have a different opinion, culture, religion, and so on.
         We have gone fighting among ourselves from what I remember and what I read in history class. Back then and now like curse blood shading is a reality.
I was telling you about the “pictures” from the “liberation day”. Yes, each year this similar scene will be aired on television, which was captured almost seventeen years ago.
        A parade of military men and vehicles; a first footstep in to the capital-a tank covered with green leaves, a camouflage. Ironically the children running along both sides of the tank with a raptures joy, some holding small part of a leaf branch, symbolizing peace and elder men and women at a distant were welcoming them.

“we had gone on marches of victory and I do not think there was anyone mean enough in spirit to ask whether we knew the thing we were celebrating. Whose victory? Ours? It didn’t matter. We marched, and only a dishonest fool will look back on his boyhood and say he knew even then that there was no meaning in any of it is so funny now, to remember that we all thought we were welcoming victory. Or perhaps there is nothing funny here at all, and it is only that victory itself happens to be the identical twin of defeat” (Armah, The beautiful ones are not yetborn).
         It is no surprise that our so called “librators” turned out to be worse. This trend has gone for a more than half a century. African writer Okey Ndibe in his book “Arrow of rain: “ I shudder at the behavior of our so called leaders. It’s hard to believe these were the same leaders who asked us to drop the dirt and fight the whiteman. Peasants and workers alike answered the call. Then, when the white man left, what did these leaders do? They took the owner’s corner in the pleasure cars abandoned by Whiteman. They ran in to the mansions the British left behind and barricade themselves there. Then they began to remind us that we were not one people, afterall; that we are Husa or Yoruba or Igbo or Kanuri or Nupe or Edo or Efik or Fulfulde or Tiv, lik the British they discovered they could rule if they divided the ruled…….”
         Is this how we think? Is this how to lead a country? When each year people are dying from famine, disease, malnutrition…you keep feeding us with words that are distractive to say the least.
         I go outside going to school, along my way on a mini bus or going on foot in a short distance, I found our big family and my big house roof blown away.
The sullen heat of the day seems not only talking the morning fog also most of its inhabitant. For the unlucky ones who took the roofless, big house, as their home. You will find them on the streets begging. With drugs and alcohol I see their youth fading away.
          Okey Ndibe on the same book, he said “you hear all these stories about ministers using public funds to buy cars for their mistresses or acquiring European Castles for themselves. How can you think it? You go to any village and you are shocked by the squalid life there. The dust roads. Hospitals that have neither drugs nor doctors. The polluted stream water the people drinks the lack of electricity. Then, as you were trying to come to grips with a reality that seems to belong in the Middle Ages, up comes a Rolls Royce carrying some minister to remind you that you are not in the sixteenth century after all but in the twentieth. Then you are faced with pathetic irony of the villagers lining up to hail the nabob in the Royce-the very man who has plundered their country…”
         Aren't these the reality in almost all African countries, today? When are we going to see our prophet of change?
N.B the whole idea comes from the two books mentioned
2. Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
 

How do I love Thee?

How do I Love Thee?

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

[Sonnet XLIII from
Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)]

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Cultural Shock

It has been three months when I first joined a class at college in Washington, away from home, in the “free world”-America. One of the classes I took was on Broadway, down town and the other at Des Moins. It was exciting having the experience to study with fellow “ferenges”--that is how we call western people in my country-- and also making friends. What I encountered at one of my classes was funny and same time reminder how we live in cultures wide apart.
          At this particular class I was taking a class on the third floor and across the street we see the apartment parallel. Our instructor was very funny and as she puts it “dark humor”. At one point she started closing the curtains that face the apartment meanwhile she pop up a question unexpected, “has anyone seen any naked guys?”.  My eyes popped up and my mouth open with on disbelief. To my surprise one of my classmates said, “Oh! You just missed it” ,and the teacher replied, “oh really” while her eyes fishing for anyone to see on the balcony of the apartment.
           While I was reeling through the dialogues, another student-a woman said, “Ya! I did see that, he has a lot of tattoos”. Has the world gone crazy? It was funny and shocking in the same time. In between these scenes one of the colleagues of the first witness confront him, “Why didn’t you tell me?” twisting herself to face him. Such type of scene is normal in Broadway, as our instructor later recounted her similar experience.
          It was surprising and shocking. For anyone from Ethiopia or similar cultures would be shocked to dialogue such conspicuous appearance and the instructor bold remarks were unheard and unthinkable where I grow up. This would not be my last experience; I am sure! Do you have any to share?

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Take Me Back!


Have you gone to public chat rooms? A person would ask you “asl”? Anyways, I would reply to him/her. The problem is most of them would ignore you the minute you told them you are from Africa. This is true for most part in chat rooms. They see Africa as a continent riddled with famine and hunger and never changing and backward people. I think this people are stuck on time. There are facts but perverted.
The irony is that, unbalanced trade, lack of good governance and growing civil wars has made African people to seek refuge to the same people who has took their ancestors life and plundered their wealth. I am not taking the failures of our government on the west, but they were and are still part of the reason.
          As a result, family of three has started their journey along with other villagers out from the famine struck villages of north western Ethiopia. This was the late 80’s, with already dead livestock and dried stream of water; and promised but undelivered food aid. It was time to make a long journey to neighboring country Sudan. During the wet season, with the harvest, it would have been short journey to reach the border.
           A father means the head of the family working in the field. Now during this famine season he would curse the day he started building family. Since his wife is very tired to walk on her own and his child still trying to suck milk out the mother’s breast. And each second the child would try to make sound, muffled. There is nothing in his power, to change what is happening from happening. At last gesture of defiance of his weakness, he take the child, half way from their destination, from the mother already loose grasp. My child for give me….he whispered to himself than to his child..forgive meplease…his words keep fading and coming up… for I have brought you to this harsh world, but no one seems to hear or care.
           Two, three, four seconds gone and the child seemed to sooth under the sobbing sound of his father; but he was gone, and not returning back.  His wife stopped and squatted as if the death of her child struck her; Seconds later, she lay on her side, on the dry barrel land. She seems to shrink bending every part of her finally resting her head on her knees. Now, she has gone too; forever, and it seems she has opted to be in fetal position; going back to her maternal bosom.
         No tears and only humming sound began to come out from the father. Seconds ago, father and husband, and year ago an elder of the village with cattle and goats.
There is no ceremony to follow the loss of family member; the wife of the village elder and child has died. But, two priests began to assist facing towards East making the final words to now dead mother and child. ..now lord receive the soul of your humble servants ……………….
           How many times have we heard people from Africa dying on their journey to Europe or even to go within their own continent? How many lives has travelled with one of the refuge-child, wife, brother and sisters or parents waiting to be feed…hope has faded in some far land or deep in the sea where the gods of the village has no reach.
*** In the memory of those perished and including the unknown mother and child in the picture

Friday, November 11, 2011

Boys and Girls

I am not sure when things changed. I am talking about me! Like a pelt of a snake, I shook off or rather ploughed myself; but all along I am that person and yet stealthily changing, both mentally and physically. I do remember being a child; as I used to take a shower with my sister or when my mother was smearing “kebe”(by product of milk used for hair) on my hair, and rubbing it with her hand against my hair. What about the school days, back in the kindergarten. You go to school just to have fun, play. At least what I thought.
Petit a petit, seasons change, trees shades leaves and I grow up. Life cycle! As it may look one night process, ironically that is the truth; if you ask me to account most of my life cycle, I wouldn’t: You live the same life over and over again, and you couldn’t say which come first or all together they are the same. Still I am talking about myself, if I mention “you”, then you will tell me finally if it works for you.
         Back in high school, freshman, we seem to have had summer so different than we had before. It is as if we had been exposed to a different climate and all the sudden our growth has changed. Not physically actually but mentally. The girls began to search ways to be noticed or they felt this how it supposed to be now. We used to wear uniforms and the girls used to cut their dress above the normal size. They have to accentuate at least one part of their body. You tell me, girls? And boys we have got a new eyes during the summer, I thought this part of the body doesn’t change. I think that point was on one of our biology lesson back then. May be I misread it. Anyways we seem to look beyond what we see, and also began to observe changes on our bodies. Most Boys on a group goes on discussing about these things and girls. I am not saying the changes between boys and girls are different. Boys are usually busy with this new order: imagination.
We are no more those children once played hide and seek, carry on the girls on our back as punishment and so on. Now, we are estranged from ourselves and our play mates. Some of us seem to shrink away, as a snail would shrink from being touched, with the closer presence of a girl on our side. We don’t know how to react.
Now we needed a new prologue, to mingle with each other. The girl you know since kindergarten and play with seems to affect you in some way. You be seated in a class or be with your friends during lunch break all you could think is to see her. If you are strong enough you will tell her how you feel. Otherwise, like me, you wouldn’t tell her for two years. Finally, you would say “maybe she isn’t meant for me”, not always true, you know that. How do you know if you don’t ask? The truth is you don’t know how to ask. I am not psychic and I am just telling you about myself.
Who are you going to trust and tell the truth, to help you? I usually resorted to my sisters. It may save you from that particular day disappointment but not all good enough to change reality.
How you viewed those insignificant but at the same time significant incidences with her? You may find her alone in the library, your eyes may make contact with her, or she pass in front of you. She even sits in front of you, in the class. Then you would say, some supernatural power force is telling me that we are supposed to be together. Ah! Foolish? With blessing from GOD, as I have imagined it; One day she stopped me only to ask me if I am in her class. May be she is playing with me? No, she is afraid to tell me her feelings. It never stop. Reason after reason; falling in love, imagination!
 Somehow you get over it. And finale attempt you try to catch up with what you have missed during this deep trance. Most likely falling grades would be your main priority. This may happen more than once, if you are like me.
         I think now, you know. You are grown-ups and passed that age of innocence. My advice is giving priorities to school, if you are studying. Just always socialize as you do with your brothers and sisters; just have comfort in being with “Eve”. Don’t go out looking for a girl, just have friends. If she comes, just wait for the moments to settle and confess your feelings. She will say yes or no. Isn’t it, boys and girls?