Misconstrued Thoughts : Yesterday's Misconstrued Thoughts Today

When I mention I’m Ethiopian, people rarely see beyond the “starving children with flies on their face” stereotype. Most people would actually be surprised at how developed the main cities really are. And for the record, it also doesn’t mean I’m a eunuch. It’s pretty hard to do an expert piece on a country I barely remember. The only time I was ever in Ethiopia was when I was just over a year in age visiting my relatives (I was born and raised in Lusaka, Zambia). But Ethiopia was and still is considered one of the most unique cultures in the world. It’s known as one of the only African countries to never be colonized by Europeans.

People speak two main languages, (Tigrinya and Amharic) and hundreds of tribal dialects. (sorry, but no click languages) All these languages were derived from a language called Geez (Ge-ezz) which predates latin and likely was one of the languages Jehovah confused the people with during the construction of the tower of Babel. Geez is written in a way so that each character represents a syllable which means there are over 250 characters in the Tigrinyan and Amharic alphabet.

My family was from the town of Asmara in the province of Eritrea (E-ri-tray-ah). After many decades of war between Eritrea and the rest of Ethiopia, Eritrea finally became its own country in 1991. So now I am considered to be an Eritrean rather than an Ethiopian (no more eunuch jokes). The Eritrean capital Asmara (http://www.asmera.nl/asmara.htm) used to be called “Arbaete Asmara” which is a tribute to how it was founded 700 years ago. It literally means “four united”. Four rival tribes were at war in that region for so long that the women were fed up and went on strike and stopped cooking. The men in the tribe eventually got hungry and decided to listen to their wives’ pleas for peace among each other and the four tribes united to become “Arbaete Asmara”. Today, Asmara is known as the “Miami of Africa” because it’s filled with modernist architecture. When Italy’s army was situated in Eritrea during the 1930’s, Mussolini and the Italian government wanted to develop the city of Asmara in a very short amount of time. So Asmara became a practice ground for risqué modernist architects from Europe to design buildings that conservative European governments would never allow in their own cities.

Being a country influenced mainly by the Coptic Orthodox Church, many of our brothers and sisters in Eritrea (not Ethiopia) find themselves under ban. Many of our brothers have served jail sentences or were executed for their stance against military service. The Memorial last year was raided and many friends of ours were imprisoned for months. My dad would tell me that for assemblies or memorials, the witnesses would dress a brother and sister as a bride and groom so that if one of the lookouts spotted a military guard coming toward the building, they’d turn on the music and start dancing to mimic a wedding. After my parents were arrested for a few months, my dad’s company moved my family to Zambia.