WHAT LED TO THE TPLF REBELLION: THE RISE OF WEYANE UPRISING ─ PART TWO

By Professor Kinfe Abraham President, Ethiopian International Institute for Peace and Development (EIIPD) and President, HADAD One of the unfortunate outcomes of the policy of alienation of nations and nationalities was the Weyane revolt that took place in Tigray immediately after the return of the Emperor from exile. The Weyane uprising was ignited by many factors. These included the general insecurity which prevailed in the post-liberation years which was aided by a large quantity of arms left by the Italians, which stimulated brigandage. Prof. Kinfe Abraham Factors Which Promoted the Weyane II (TPLF) Rebellion The brigandage was promoted into a nationalist rebellion because of the usual actions of centerist domination which were aimed to cow down the region. The most obvious symptoms of the officially sanctioned arbitrariness were the high incidence of inefficiency and corruption, and the callousness and rapacity of the Territorial Army. To the above may be added the ill-advised policy of the imperial government, which unleashed a cruel campaign of retribution against the Raya Azebo and lowland Afars in the same way as in the 1920s. Another factor was that the government had underestimated the disgruntlement of the nobility of Tigray, a section of which it had rudely and crudely alienated.

WHAT LED TO THE TPLF REBELLION: THE RISE OF WEYANE UPRISING I ─ PART ONE

By Professor Kinfe Abraham President, Ethiopian International Institute for Peace and Development (EIIPD) and President, HADAD It was in the Tigray country that, during the first seven centuries AD, the kingdom of Aksum reached heights of civilisation never again attained in Ethiopian history. Because of the antiquity of their region and the glory of their past, the Tigreans are to some extent the cultural aristocrats of Ethiopia. Donald Levine The Northern region of Ethiopia comprising Eritrea and Tigray has always been both the soft belly and the front line of Ethiopian defence. Attacks that have undermined the sovereignty of Ethiopia in the past, from the times of Yohannes and Menelik to Haile Selassie, have mainly come from the north. Even now the strongest of the national movements are in the north.

Rough Guides Names Top 10 Countries To Visit In 2014 and Ethiopia Wins

Ethiopia has been named as Rough Guides’ number one country to visit in 2014, beating the likes of Madagascar, Brazil and Turkey. EXCERPT FROM RCI VENTURES JAN 05, 2014 12:00 PM Ethiopia has been named as Rough Guides’ number one country to visit in 2014, beating the likes of Madagascar, Brazil and Turkey. The world-renowned travel guide range said: “This culturally rich East African nation has always been an enticing destination, and though it remains poor, independent travel around the country is becoming easier thanks to a boom in small hotels and restaurants. From Skift: Rough Guides’ top 10 countries to visit in 2014 are: 1. Ethiopia 2. Madagaskar 3. Brazil 4. Turkey 5. Georgia 6. Rwanda 7. Japan 8. Bulgaria 9. Macedonia 10. The Philippines Rough Guides’ top 10 cities to visit in 2014 are: 1. Rio de Janeiro 2. Sarajevo 3. Liverpool 4. Umea (Sweden) 5. Lviv (Ukraine) 6. Marseille 7. Almaty (Kazakhstan) 8. Rotterdam 9. Glasgow 10. Portland READ THE COMPLETE STORY http://www.rciventures.com/ethiopia-named-rough-guides-number-one-for-2014/

South Sudan peace talks begin in Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, peace talks between the South Sudanese government and rebels loyal to former vice president, Riek Machar, aimed at ending violence in the country have finally started. Officials said on Monday that the peace talks, brokered by the East African regional bloc, Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), had officially started, after days of struggling to agree on a ceasefire. "They have begun," Ethiopian government spokesman, Getachew Reda, said on Monday. The announcement comes shortly after both sides said the talks had stalled over a disagreement on the agenda. Earlier, an Ethiopian official speaking on the condition of anonymity had also said that more procedural groundwork was needed before talks could be held between the two sides. Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing was also trying to help the two sides reach an agreement, adding, "China is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, so we are paying close attention to the evolving situation in South Sudan. We have been making mediation efforts." Talks are currently being held between South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Bashir, in the South Sudanese capital, Juba. Bashir has called for an immediate end to the ongoing violence in South Sudan. Clashes continue between government forces and rebels over the oil-producing Unity and Upper Nile states as well as Jonglei state. The recent fighting between troops loyal to Kiir and Machar erupted around Juba on December 15, 2013, after the former accused the latter of attempting to stage a military coup. SZH/SS

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Rebels in South Sudan are forcibly recruiting civilians to march on the capital, the military said, even as representatives of the warring factions gathered in neighboring Ethiopia on Thursday for the start of peace talks. The fighting underscored the challenge facing African mediators as they try to nudge two rivals —President Salva Kiir and ousted Vice President Riek Machar —toward the negotiating table after more than two weeks of bloody violence in the world’s newest country.

US-based North Holdings to build cement factory in Ethiopia

December 28, 2013 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - An Ethio-American company based in the US, North Holdings Investment Inc., is to build a new cement factory with an outlay of USD 800 million in the Amhara Regional State near Dejen town. North Holdings Investment Inc president, Temesgen M. Bitew, told The Reporter that his company is planning to build the factory in east Gojam, Dejen wereda, Menda

locality. Temesgen said with two production lines the factory will have the capacity to produce 8.4 million tons of cement The idea of building the cement factory was conceived in 2006. According to Temesgen, the feasibility study was completed. The company is to hire a Danish contractor called FLS that would build the factory, supply and install the machineries.

Ethiopia's 'Festival of a Thousand Stars' Celebrates Diversity In The Cradle Of Humanity [PHOTOS]

Ethiopia's 'Festival of a Thousand Stars' Celebrates Diversity In The Cradle Of Humanity [PHOTOS]

Ethiopia plans $250 Million expansion project at Bole International Airport (ADD)

Addis Ababa Bole International Airport Terminal 2 Ethiopia plans $250 Million expansion project at Bole International Airport (ADD) Source: Reporter The Ethiopian Airports Enterprise is going to undertake a major expansion project at the Addis Ababa Bole International Airport passengers' terminal at a cost of 250 million dollars. The newly-appointed CEO of the Ethiopian Airports Enterprise, Tewodros Dawit, told The Reporter that in line with the Ethiopian Airlines Vision 2025 development strategy the enterprise is undertaking various airport development projects. The Addis Ababa Bole International Airport Passengers' expansion project is one of them.

U.S. and UN Prepare Troops as Violence Grows in South Sudan

December 24, 2013 10:50 AM EST The U.S. and the United Nations are preparing to make more peacekeeping troops available for the growing conflict in South Sudan, as President Salva Kiir opened the door to talks with his deposed vice president.UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asked the Security Council to add 5,500 soldiers to the peacekeeping mission of 7,000 already there. The U.S. is positioning troops in the Horn of Africa area to assist in any additional evacuations in South Sudan, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said yesterday.At an emergency meeting yesterday in New York, all 15 members of the UN Security Council showed a “positive reaction”

Ethiopia: EEPCo divided into Two Separate Entities

18 December 2013Category: The Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo) is divided into two separate entities, the Ethiopian Electric Power and Ethiopian Electric Service, Ethiopian Press Agency reported. The corporation's power supply and electricity delivery services will be divided between the two new companies.“Accordingly, the Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) will be responsible for the power supply while EES will be responsible for delivering electricity services,”

Ethiopia brings home 140 000 migrants from Saudi

2013-12-18 14:40 Addis Ababa - Ethiopia has brought home close to 140 000 citizens from Saudi Arabia, the International Organisation for Migration said on Wednesday, a month after the oil-rich kingdom started deporting undocumented migrants.Thousands are continuing to arrive daily from Saudi Arabia, where a seven-month amnesty period for migrants expired in November and where Ethiopia says three of its nationals were killed in police clashes as the migrants prepared to leave. "Ethiopia and IOM are now looking at an additional 35 000 migrants expected to arrive from the cities of Riyadh, Jeddah and new arrivals from Medina," the IOM said in a statement.

Gilgel Gibe III Near Completion - to Go Operational in September

17 December 2013 , Source: Ethiopia Government One of the biggest power generating projects in Ethiopia, the Gilgel Gibe III, is expected to go fully operational on September 2014. H.E. Ato Alemayehu Tegenu, Minister of Water, Irrigation and Energy said that so far 80% of construction work has been completed. One of the power projects planned to be commissioned within the GTP period, the Gilgel Gibe III will add 1,870MW electric power to the national grid upon its completion in September. The Minister also said that concurrent projects like the Genale Dam and the Adama II wind farm are progressing satisfactorily. Projects such as the Gilgel Gibe III project are expected to go a long way in providing energy for the domestic market, the demand of which has been expanding rapidly owing to the extensive infrastructure construction and increasing base of industry. However, power projects currently under construction are also expected to service the regional energy market. Ethiopia has already begun exporting electricity to Djibouti and Sudan and has started installing power transmission lines to Kenya. The energy policy of Ethiopia pictures development of energy sources that would be an instrument in enhancing co-operation and regional integration. Ethiopia's ambitious plan of generating 10,000 MW of energy within the GTP period was crafted, accordingly, with plans to provide energy to neighbouring countries

Ethiopia: ECX to Launch Online Trade Operation

17 December 2013 , Source: Addis Fortune The Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) is making preparations to introduce online trading that enables market players to participate directly in the trade wherever they are. Online trading is envisaged to increase access to ECX and its service; build capacity of various stakeholder groups; and increase efficiency.The Ethiopian government is implementing the online trade project in collaboration with Investment Climate Facility for Africa (ICF) in order to enhance the activates of ECX by creating a modern commodity trading platform which will introduce online trading, and establishing Remote Trading Centers in key locations across Ethiopia. The ICF is providing 2.2 million dollars of the total of 3.8 million dollar project cost and the Ethiopian government through the ECX is matching the remaining balance.The ECX information technology team is currently working on software design, development and other related functionalities to run a testing online trade platform.

What the Somalis can Learn from Ethiopian Cultural Festival?

By: Mohamed H.Bahal Somalilandsun - The Cultural Festival that held in Jigijiga was an immaculate efforts undertaken by both people and Government. It was human expression depicting the unity of people of 70 tribes of different culture, different region, different languages, and different religions, but under one nation.In a period of twenty one years, Ethiopia has shown remarkable transformation from feudal system into a capitalistic nation that embarked on economic and social success in urban improvement, modern highway system, transformation of peasant agriculture into commercial farming, and attracts foreign investment in industrialization projects.The core of such successes came from people who believe in the shrine of nationhood and the unity of their country.While Ethiopia was undergoing such economic transformation, Somalia was heading towards disintegration into a governance system so alien to a united Somalia. The present system of federalism was crafted by unholy alliances of UN, IGAD, and Europeans who after many years of negotiations came to believe that the Somalis have more pledges to clanism than nationhood.The medical subscription given to them happened to be a bitter pill that can't be swallowed.Right on the eve of forming federal system in different regions, it is apparent that clan feuds among the people living in the same districts came to the surface. This shows that the system has so much loophole that it can never result cohesive national government. It is a hodgepodge system that promotes clanism, lacks economic vitality, puts the regions on the mercy of central government for financial handout. Majority of the regions that will embody federalism, their people have no market economy, because they are either pastoralist or subsistent farmers. Despite this fact, the formation of regional governments emulate that of central government headed by president, cabinet ministers, and parliament.The constitutional wrangle that pops up every now and then and the challenges erupting from regional leaders, like Farole, is a clear indication that the system is elusive and inapt that can't function unless the constitution is subjected to review for amendment.If federalism works in Ethiopia why it doesn't work in Somalia? Ethiopians are people who subjected to rule and law for more than hundred years. They are zealous and patriotic. If even there are particular groups who oppose the government their dedication to their country remains unchanged. In the case of Somalis, if the head of the state is not their clan, they have no loyalty to that government. There is an anecdote that says two men who attended Friday pray came out of the Masjid. One of them said that he was impressed by the message of the Imam.The second one asked " What is Imam's clan?" This shows how clanism is embedded in minds of Somalis and if the Imam is not your clan you turn deaf ear to Allah messages.Regional Dignitaries at Jigjiga festivalIn the absence of national government much have been done in regions and districts that development never reached in the past. All by the efforts of clans, cities grew by leap and bound, educational institutions were built and managed by private people, and water wells were dug in areas that never had accessibility of water with the incomes came from Somali Diaspora.The district authorities have no financial sources to run social services, like dispensaries, hospitals, cities sanitations, and security. The spirit of self-reliance is so apparent in Somaliland where good governance and democratic elections held through out the years despite some deficiencies. Dependable security apparatus that exists in Somaliland is worth of emulation.All in all, the major deterrent to national unity is the abhorrent belief jn every Somali unless his/her clan gets a lion's share in the political power, they withheld their recognition to that government.

Mohamed H.Bahal

http://somalilandsun.com/index.php/opinion/4489-what-the-somalis-can-learn-from-ethiopian-cultural-festival

New Horse Species that Lived 4.4 Million Years Ago Identified in Ethiopia

By James A. Foley

Dec 12, 2013 04:29 PM EST The 4.4 million year old fossil of a newfound horse species fills a missing piece of the evolutionary history of horses in the fossil record, according to the researchers who discovered the specimen at a site in Ethiopia. Renowned Ethiopian geologist Giday WoldeGabrie, whom the newfound horse is named after, is pictured. The 4.4 million year old fossil of a newfound horse species fills a missing piece of the evolutionary history of horses in the fossil record, according to the researchers who discovered the specimen at a site in Ethiopia.The horse was about the same size as a small zebra, the researchers determined from the fossils, which were found in 2001 in the Gona area of the country's Afar region. Research co-author Scott Simpson, a professor of anatomy at Case Western Reserve's School of Medicine, said the fossils not only shed light on the evolutionary history of the horse, but also reveals data about the age of other fossils at the dig site.SHARE THIS STORY   "This horse is one piece of a very complex puzzle that has many, many pieces," Simpson said. The fossil horse was among many animals the lived in the region at the same time as Ardipithecus ramidus, the ancient ancestors of humans."The fossil search team spreads out to survey for fossils in the now arid badlands of the Ethiopian desert," Simpson said. "Among the many fossils we found are the two ends of the foreleg bone-the canon-brilliant white and well preserved in the red-tinted earth."It took Simpson and his colleagues several years to unearth the horse skeleton, finding pieces of it over time. Based on observations of a full-length leg bone, the researchers determined that the ancient horse was an adept runner, a conclusion drawn by the length of the leg bone, which was much longer than horses dated to be 2 million years of more older. An analysis of its teeth revealed it relied heavily on eating grasses."Grasses are like sandpaper," Simpson said. "They wear the teeth down and leave a characteristic signature of pits and scratches on the teeth so we can reliably reconstruct their ancient diets."The three-toed grass eating horse is called Eurygnathohippus woldegabrieli - named for renowned Ethiopian geologist Giday WoldeGabriel, a principle scientists on the Middle Awash project in Ethiopia."Giday oversees the sedimentology, geochronology and volcanology and how the Middle Awash Valley in the Afar rift is changing shape," Simpson said. "And he leads by example, in terms of working hard. He's not afraid of a very long walk in the heat, carrying a 5-pound hammer to collect samples."Simpson and his colleagues report their finding on the new ancient horse in the Journal of Vertebrate Patheology.

D.C., Meet Your New Sister City: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Tomorrow, D.C. will add a new sister city to its roster: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.Mayor Vince Gray and Addis Ababa's mayor, Diriba Kuma, will sign a Sister City Agreement tomorrow evening at the Wilson Building, a press release states. The Sister City Agreement will "facilitate cultural and educational exchanges for the benefit of residents in both cities."D.C.'s "vibrant Ethiopian community" inspired the agreement with Addis Ababa, which is the capital city of Ethiopia. Indeed, as the BBC reported, as many as 250,000 Ethiopians live in and around Washington. A part of Shaw is unofficially referred to as Little Ethiopia.This partnership, says a press release, will provide an opportunity for both cities to "exchange information and collaborate on mutual priorities in many areas, including public health, urban development, transportation and youth engagement."Addis Ababa is now the fourteenth sister city for D.C., the others include Bangkok, Thailand; Dakar, Senegal; Beijing, China; Brussels, Belgium; Athens, Greece; Paris, France; Pretoria, South Africa; Seoul, South Korea; Accra, Ghana; Sunderland, U.K.; Rome, Italy; Ankara, Turkey; and Brasília, Brazil.

http://dcist.com/2013/12/dc_has_a_new_sister_city_addis_abab.php

Ethiopia opens Africa's biggest windfarm

Ashegoda windfarm outside Mekelle in Tigray state cost €210m and builds on plan to create 'climate resilient' economy by 2025

 Monday 28 October 2013 09.07 EDTA boy stands near one of Ashegoda's 84 wind turbines. Photograph:

Reuters..David Smith, Africa correspondent

A windfarm billed as the biggest in sub-Saharan Africa has been opened by Ethiopia's prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, a potentially crucial step for the continent's renewable energy industry.The €210m (£179m) Ashegoda windfarm consists of 84 hi-tech turbines towering above an arid region where villagers herd cattle and ride donkey-drawn carts as they have for generations.The project, outside Mekelle in Tigray state, about 475 miles north of the capital, Addis Ababa, has a capacity of 120MW and will produce about 400m KWh a year. It was completed in phases over three and a half years and has produced 90m KWh for the national grid.The farm, inaugurated by Desalegn on Saturday, was supervised by German company Lahmeyer International and implemented by France's Vergnet with French funding. But the Ethiopian government insisted there were also local spin-offs."The project has provided very important experience-sharing for Ethiopia's national companies, who have been involved in the construction of civil works such as geotechnical investigations, roads, turbine foundations, sub-station erection and electro-mechanical erection works," it said.Media reports in 2011, however, noted that about 700 farmers had lost some or all their land to make way for the turbines. They were given financial compensation but some complained the money was too little.Ethiopia aims to become the region's leading producer of renewable energy. In the past two years it has built two smaller wind farms near Adama, south-east of Addis Ababa, with a capacity of 51MW each. It urgently needs new energy to feed economic growth that has averaged more than 10% over the past decade. Power cuts are still a regular occurrence in major cities and about half the country still has no access to mains electricity.The government plans to build a "climate resilient" economy by 2025(pdf), with adequate energy even if hydro power runs short because of reduced rainfall. A study by Chinese firm Hydrochina confirmed the high potential for wind power in the northern and southern parts of Ethiopia, particularly in the Somali region, with a huge estimated wind energy potential of 1.3m MW, according to Reuters.Ruth Mhlanga, a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Africa, welcomed the Ashegoda windfarm development. "We need an increase in renewable energy access on the continent, so the fact Ethiopia is investing is really good," she said, adding a cautionary note that measures are needed to ensure the use of more local manufacturing and expertise.More than two-thirds of the population of sub-Saharan Africa is without electricity, and more than 85% of those living in rural areas lack access.In June, Barack Obama announced a $7bn (£4.33bn) initiative to double access, citing the potential to develop clean geothermal, hydro, wind and solar energy.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/oct/28/ethiopia-opens-africa-biggest-windfarm

ethiopia-land-of-dust-eucalyptus-and-hope

By MICHAEL SNYDER

October 11, 2013

I had already spent the last few hours watching Haftay hopscotch up the gravel path toward whatever it was that lay on the other side of the ridge. My guide, Mulualem Gebremedhin, and I had spent most of the day — the first of three we would spend hiking together in eastern Tigray on Ethiopia’s northern border — lagging several steps behind Haftay, a local villager accompanying us on the first leg of our trip.Haftay sang tunelessly as he lunged on long, sinewy legs and struck brisk, almost yogic poses — mostly, I think, for my benefit. He skipped up the path in the same flimsy plastic shoes that practically everyone wears in that part of Ethiopia (opaque, brightly colored jellies), and every so often cracked a joke at me in Tigrayan. I nodded dumbly; Haftay and Mr. Gebremedhin, who goes by the name Mulat, laughed.“I love this guy, he’s crazy,” Mulat said.The air was dry and dusty in early May, when the hard red soil waits for rain that may or may not come by June. We were already more than 8,000 feet above sea level and still climbing toward the escarpment. A work crew crushed large stones into small ones, presumably to pave the road winding up the hillside from the city of Adigrat in the valley below. Three men shoveled the stones into a large truck, heaving in rhythmic unison to pass the time. As the path wound higher, its edges became ragged until it faded to dust at the top of the ridge. Haftay had led us, quite literally, to the end of the road.THE NEW YORK TIMESWe stopped to rest while Haftay, with energy far exceeding his 50 years, continued to pose and joke and sing. I asked Mulat what Haftay — whose full name is Haftay Gidey Welihet — was singing.“Oh,” he said with a shrug, “he’s making it up. Something about Adigrat.”His timing was appropriate. We could see the town, although aside from the curve of a silver church dome — a burnished thumbnail of light in the valley behind us — it was hardly distinguishable from the ground. We’d come to an edge of Ethiopia. From Adigrat and the surrounding plateaus, the highlands drop southeast into the Danakil Depression, among the lowest points on earth. Just 22 miles north lies the long-embattled Eritrean border, and beyond that the Red Sea coast. Due west is the city of Aksum, with its 1,000-year-old granite monoliths and the chapel that, according to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, houses the ark of the covenant.For most visitors, Aksum is the northern point in the so-called Historic Circuit, a rough circle inscribed on the ancient volcanic dome of the Ethiopian highlands. The circuit contains the stars of the country’s nascent tourism industry: the celebrated rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, the source of the Blue Nile at Lake Tana, the medieval castle complex at Gondar and the Unesco-protected Simien Mountains National Park, known as “The Roof of Africa.”Heuml, boy from the village of Enaf, who beat the author at jacks.MICHAEL PASCHAL SNYDERAlthough Adigrat and the ancient cluster of churches carved into the surrounding cliffs lie just a couple of hours from Aksum by minibus, few travelers along the Historic Circuit venture into eastern Tigray, preferring instead to hop among Aksum, Gondar and Lalibela on cheap internal flights.The churches here are not nearly as impressive as the monuments in those more popular towns, but their age, their relative isolation from tourism and the virtually untouched scenery that surrounds them lend a distinctive air of mystery, even sanctity.Before reaching any of the churches (Mulat and I did not enter one until the final day of our trek), we continued along the narrow track between fallow fields and makeshift traps for wild fowl, arriving at the Enaf community lodge by early afternoon. Perched high on a bluff nearly 10,000 feet above sea level, the lodge overlooked another valley to the south: a serpentine patchwork of fields in green and dun, confined by steep walls of red sandstone and plateaus that push out like coral reefs, crowned here and there by flat-topped stone houses and silvery stands of eucalyptus swaying like anemones under the shadows of clouds.The Enaf lodge was built in 2010 by Tesfa Tours (the name comes from Tourism in Ethiopia for Sustainable Future Alternatives), an organization founded as a nonprofit and now operating as the country’s most prominent community tourism company. Tesfa began its first projects in a cluster of villages outside Lalibela in 2003, expanding in 2010 to four villages in eastern Tigray.Women in white cotton robes walk past the 1,000-year-old granite monoliths at Aksum.MICHAEL PASCHAL SNYDERWith increasing international interest in Ethiopia as a destination, both the villages in Tigray and outside Lalibela have seen a steady rise in visitors. Mark Chapman, an Englishman who founded the company, has begun the process of expanding the Tigray program into five more villages, but for now Tesfa’s four Tigray lodges attract a modest 200 visitors annually (compared to the 1,000-plus visitors who pass through the Tesfa lodges outside Lalibela).So it’s no surprise that I was the only guest on that first night. When we arrived at Enaf, the local family tending to the lodge that day greeted us with cups of thick, bittersweet coffee (coffee, I learned the next day, is always served in threes, perhaps my favorite Ethiopian tradition). I spent the rest of the afternoon on the roof reading in near silence, interrupted only by Heuml, an 11-year-old boy from the village who beat me over and over again at a game of jacks played with pebbles. A donkey wandered into the courtyard of the lodge and Haftay continued to sing as I watched him descend to his home in the valley. Heuml, far quieter, seemed to speak in suspirations; when I asked his name, he used a long stick to scratch its letters into the dust.That night, Mulat and I dined on fresh injera and shiro, the sour fermented flatbread and simple bean stew that are the staples of the Ethiopian diet during the vegetarian Lenten period preceding the Orthodox Church’s Easter celebrations. The Tesfa lodges have neither electricity nor running water, so we enjoyed our home-cooked meal and reasonably cold bottles of beer by candlelight while listening to the wind cut across the cliffs. Walking to my room, I saw white flashes under a starless sky, lighting the thunderclouds that opened silently over the Red Sea to the north.“The white flag means it’s a bar,” Mulat told me, pointing to a small house surrounded by prickly pears and eucalyptus that looked more or less exactly like every other house we had passed. At 10 a.m., about two hours into our second day of hiking, we’d emerged onto the valley floor. The rocky soil atop the plateaus supports only grasses, grains and legumes, but even 100 feet below, bushes of prickly pears grow 8 feet high and stalks of aloe tower 12 feet or more over the stone-lined paths. On the more fertile valley floor, farmers plant their fields with garlic, onion, corn and cabbage.Inside the bar, a clutch of laborers hefted brown clay goblets overflowing with murky soam, a lightly fermented drink brewed in nearly every household in the region, either from barley, millet, sorghum, maize or wheat. On Sundays, whole villages gather to drink together, rotating from household to household over the course of weeks. In the troubled days of the Derg — the repressive military regime that governed Ethiopia and Eritrea, then a single nation, from 1974 to 1987 — most people in Tigray allied themselves with revolutionary associations like the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front. (The T.P.L.F would later become the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, the party that still rules the country.)In villages like this one, revolutionaries would use these Sunday gatherings as covers for political meetings. If the military or police authorities interrupted, the villagers would explain simply: “Soa Sambat” — Sunday soam.In Tigray, contemporary turmoil and ancient tradition tend to nest like this, one inside the other. It was from its base in Tigray that the Aksumite Kingdom reached its fourth-century apogee, stretching across the Red Sea into southwestern Arabia. And it was from here that King Ezana first declared Christianity his state religion in 330 A.D., fully half a century before Rome. In 1868, the British Expedition to Abyssinia passed through Adigrat on the way toward Lake Tana. Thirty years later, Italy’s Abyssinian campaign met its final defeat in the Tigrayan town of Adwa, between Aksum and Adigrat, the same town where Meles Zenawi, the late prime minister and freedom fighter, was born in 1955.Tigray was also, until barely a decade ago, the site of a costly border war with Eritrea. Though violence mostly ended following a peace agreement in 2000, the road that I traveled between Aksum and Adigrat still marks the southern border of a State Department restricted travel zone, perhaps one explanation for the relative dearth of travelers here. You would never know that sleepy Adigrat, hunched quietly beneath its rampart cliffs, had so recently seen United Nations peacekeeping troops, but Mulat said he remembered well the sounds of bombs falling and the unsilent flashes in the night sky.Yet little if any of this modern tumult registers on the landscape, subsumed (though certainly not forgotten) in the sheer physical and temporal scale of the place. More recently, a tentative optimism has begun to emerge, the firm hope that development and prosperity may finally reach the region. Roads creeping slowly into the remote interior villages, like the one we followed to Enaf on our first day, are but one sign of change. Near the bar where we stopped on our second day, a substantial school building was nearing completion. Later that day, our second village guide pointed out sites for planned hydroelectric dams that will, at least in theory, supply these agricultural communities, long vulnerable to drought, with access to water throughout the year.On that second day, Mulat and I hiked for seven hours past children playing in fields and, disconcertingly, at the edges of cliffs. We walked past humble churches dwarfed by the mountainsides that abutted them and hiked up and over a plateau into another eucalyptus-scented valley, where we stopped for a lunch of roasted barley with a sweet and smoky sauce.Our host, Giday Gebre, chatted happily while she poured soam into plastic cups. After lunch, she set to the elaborate ceremony of preparing coffee: lighting incense, roasting the fresh beans over open coals, wafting the heavy brown aroma across the room, pounding the beans into powder with a high-sided mortar and pestle, brewing the grounds in the bulbous clay pot and pouring each of us three cups, right to the brim.Ms. Gebre told us about a visit she had made once to a church where the nuns told all the coffee drinkers that they were sinners and would go to hell. Ms. Gebre said she would give up coffee when she died.Later that afternoon, after another steep climb, Mulat and I arrived at the Erar lodge, built at the edge of a cliff that drops 1,300 feet straight down to the terraced fields below. When the rains come, he told me, these fields would turn green and the obscuring dusty haze would lift to reveal the distant peaks of the Simien Mountains spearing the southern horizon.Thus far, Mulat and I had yet to step inside a church. On our way to Erar we had walked by one of the cave chapels, tucked behind a nondescript white building, but the priest in possession of the only key was away at the time. The only other church nearby was the fourth-century Maryam Kiat in Kiat Village. We could reach it, Mulat told me, if we started walking before dawn.So we began our third day in darkness, the cliffs in gray scale beneath the moon. For a while, we walked in silence, eyes on the ground as we edged along narrow shelves of rock barely a meter wide. Eventually, the cliff chats began to call and the sky started to turn pale. As the sun rose, we descended through a steep gorge toward Kiat’s amphitheater of green terraces. Near the bottom, an old man dressed in white smiled at me and offered his hand in greeting, back of the hand toward me so I wouldn’t touch the rock dust coating his palms.“Almost there,” he said, and nodded toward the church.Past small plots green with garlic shoots and stalks of corn, an unassuming stone building leaned against the cliff face. Two men in shabby white shawls stood alongside the doorway. Just inside, a turbaned priest read in Ge’ez — Ethiopia’s liturgical language — from a leather-bound Bible. Beside him, a low opening led into the church’s dim, high-vaulted interior, carved from the rock more than 1,000 years ago.Inside, Mulat showed me the drums used in Ethiopian Masses He explained that their two faces represent the cheeks of Christ, and that the ropes of animal hide that pull those surfaces taut represent the flayed flesh of his back. Mulat lifted a cloth to reveal paintings of St. George and the Virgin Mary. A young priest stood in the door to watch us: we were the only ones there.It was Holy Thursday on the Ethiopian Orthodox calendar and a small group had gathered near the base of the steps that lead up to the church. Two old women — hair braided into rows over their scalps and flaring at the neck, small crosses tattooed in dark blue ink on their foreheads — repeatedly prostrated themselves, then stood, tossing their palms over their shoulders, an Abrahamic gesture of humility and faith.The sun had risen high enough to flood the valley with light, but Kiat remained dark and cool in the shadow of its cliff. Mulat and I began our walk back toward the gorge. The steep path carried a surprising flow of traffic: women climbing up with oversize bundles lashed to their backs and old men in white robes using walking sticks to negotiate the rocky terrain. They were climbing, like us, to reach the road.Really just another gravel path, albeit a wider and flatter one than we had started on with Haftay two days before, this road, in the year since it was built, had already spawned a cluster of shops selling coffee, tea, bread and snacks. Men, women and children waited with chickens and goats and produce they would take into the nearest towns on cramped blue-and-white buses.With our own bus ride back to Adigrat, Mulat and I inscribed another, far smaller circle on the landscape, another historic circuit that, who knows, might soon be absorbed into the larger one.“Almost there,” the man had told me as we came into Kiat. The same could be said for eastern Tigray.For now, though, most of the region’s many treasures remain, like Maryam Kiat, draped in shadow, hidden in the folds of the cliffs.

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Ethiopian utopian village goes against the grain

In the middle of Ethiopia, a country with strict religious and cultural mores, a village where women plough and men sew has become a model for development and poverty reduction.For decades Western governments and NGOs have been trying to find ways to break the aid dependency that has dominated much of post-colonial Africa. So when Awra Amba, a small village of just under 500 inhabitants in northern Ethiopia, found a way, on its own, to reduce poverty and increase development, they sat up and paid attention

"I saw a special on Awra Amba on the BBC and how different their tradition is," said Fikir Abraha, a 22-year-old research student who came from the US state of Maryland to see this extraordinary place. Her parents are Ethiopian and she is interested in how culture can help or hinder development."If you have a culture that is willing to change and that is willing to adapt to new things like the Awra Amba community is, I feel like that would bring about better development," she said.And indeed, Awra Amba does things differently, which has been both a curse and a blessing. In a very traditional country with strict religious and cultural mores, it goes against the grain.Zumra Nuru is the founder and a co-chair of Awra AmbaFounded in 1972 by an uneducated Ethiopian farmer, Zumra Nuru, as a better alternative to mainstream Ethiopian society, Awra Amba is a community where gender equality is crucial, where organized religion is banished, and where work and development are of the upmost importance.The elderly and the young enjoy rights that aren't accorded outside the village. The village is run by way of committees where 50-percent-plus-one vote majorities decide all bylaws and decisions concerning the community.Down a dirt track from the paved road, about a nine-hour drive northwest of the capital, Addis Ababa, lies Awra Amba - a clutch of wattle and daub houses and shared buildings, including weaving and textile workshops, a grinding mill, a tourist hostel, a school and a library. Most of the village's labor force works communally, so money is ploughed back into the village and the profits are split evenly.This way of doing things has helped lift the village out of poverty and now, some 40 years after its founding, family income, literacy levels, life expectancy, gender equality and economic growth are far exceeding the national average.Consultants from the Ethiopian government, the World Bank and development NGOs, such as Oxfam, frequently visit the village in a bid to discover what Awra Amba is doing right so as to replicate it elsewhere.Attacks from neighborsBut "rethinking the wheel" has brought Awra Amba its fair share of trouble. Since day one, the project has been met with hostility and attacks from very conservative Christian and Muslim neighboring communities who have considered Awra Amba pagan or heretical, according to 65-year-old Nuru."They threw a grenade right into the center of the village once, but luckily, no one was hurt," he said. "They have tried shooting members of our village. They have sabotaged our harvest on occasion."In 1989, the neighboring villages denounced Awra Amba as insurgents to the communist Derg regime in power, leading to the community's exile to the south of Ethiopia for four years. When the Derg fell, the community returned in 1993 to find most of their land confiscated by the neighboring communities. They now only have 18 hectares (44 acres), a disaster for an agricultural community.The village offers training to locals, such as this spinning workshopBut the crisis was also a door of opportunity. It forced community dwellers to pursue other revenue-making activities and to diversify. So they got into weaving, milling, trade, tourism, textiles - a diversification of labor that is now a key to its development success."Their life principle is to work and their work is the manifestation of their faith or belief, so they don't have a church or mosque or anything," says Ashenafi Alemu, a researcher in the sociology department at Ethiopia's University of Gondar. "They always work and that helped them a lot to get out of poverty, and now we observe that they are really improving."Through word of mouth and significant interest from the media, news of Awra Amba is spreading fast. Perhaps too fast.While Nuru aims to export his idea beyond the village, Awra Amba does not have the capacity to supervise such an expansion. New communities, inspired by the Awra Amba model, have already sprouted up elsewhere in Ethiopia, but it is a spontaneous, erratic growth - unmanaged by Nuru and his community."We need to see these villages," he says, "but I can't go check them out because we don't have a car and it is not feasible to travel there by bus."Inter-village bridge-buildingStill, the village is at a crucial crossroad. Because it can't acquire more than the 18 hectares it currently has, the community must find ways to expand off-site and manage that expansion. Also, it must continue and complete its process of acceptance by the very conservative culture of the villages that surround it.Children from the area go to school together at this kindergartenTo this end, the various services Awra Amba offers help build bridges. It has several mills to which locals bring their grain to be ground for a small fee. It has constructed a junior high and high school where children from the entire area are educated together. The village sees the key to moving forward as a combination of revenue-generation with inter-village bridge-building through trade and services.On top of that, every month, the University of Gondar brings together a growing number of people from Awra Amba and the surrounding Christian and Muslim communities. Around the same table, they talk it all out."Now there is a sort of understanding and improvement regarding the image of the Awra Amba community," said Ashenafi Alemu, the researcher.With government, NGOs and individuals borrowing from its model to create development projects elsewhere, one could say that Awra Amba is already a success. However, as an ideological project, the village risks losing control of the spread of its core ideas. The question now is: will Awra Amba remain a fascinating yet small exception to the norm, or can it manage to export its ideas and bring about much-needed change to Ethiopia and beyond?

DW.DE

http://www.dw.de/ethiopian-utopian-village-goes-against-the-grain/a-17152619

People in Lalibela – another life in Ethiopia

12 OCTOBER 2013

By Masumi Koizumi

Flying to Lalibela from Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa with my friend, I was going to observe that Addis Ababa is not the only representation of Ethiopia in terms of the lifestyle of the indigenous people in particular.Touching down at Lalibela airport, I felt like we were left alone at the runway – no aircraft were in sight waiting to take off. All the artificial dins seemed to be absorbed by a strip of greenery and a beautiful mountain ridge in the region. Near the exit of the airport, young locals were shouting at tourists to draw their attention to the accommodation they provided. Walking down the hill with bundles of straw in light clothes, was a small kid. I wondered if he traveled all the way up from the mountain with no bathroom stops or even occasional breaks in his lengthy and exhausting trip. Waiting for us with a beam in the midst of the bumpy road were two young children who then uttered, “Welcome to Lalibela!’’ in excitement.Lalibela is one of the popular tourist destinations in Ethiopia with local people and foreign travelers weaving the geography of Lalibela together. It was not hard to imagine that numerous people in Lalibela are making a living through the tourism business as our local guide, Abie, told us that prices here are comparably high because of its position as a tourist attraction. In fact, we had no choice but to call off a visit to a UNESCO World Heritage site, the eleven churches, which were hewn from the living monolithic rock during the reign of King Lalibela (13th century) due to the dearth of money on hand. Just in one hour, I noticed two things about the people of Lalibela that struck me as a surprise: fluency in English and hard-working nature. After some ten minutes on foot from Lalibela Hotel, we reached a busy district around our accommodation which was full with souvenir stores and cafeteria. When looking around the grocery stands, two young boys, who appeared to be 10, approached us and walked side by side to have a chat with us in English. The chiseled looking boys spoke astonishingly fluent English for their age, pointed at the sight where men and women of a wide range of ages working under the evening sunlight were constructing what they described as “a priest office’’, using primitive instruments such as a stick with a cylinder-shaped stone at the end in order to level the ground. They were not the only boys who came up to us. Indeed, everyone who walked past us struck up conversation when we replied hello back to them. People, mostly boys rambling on the streets, would start off the talk usually by guessing our nationality (I was shocked that a number of people had succeeded in guessing my nationality, Japanese!) or how we had been up to in Lalibela. They would carry on the conversation on their school life, the eleven churches, and so forth. Even children aged three to five knew how to greet people in English and to attract foreign visitors with their innocent charms. Lalibela, as a holy sightseeing site bringing in a great deal of travelers and pilgrims from overseas, must have enabled locals to communicate well with them. Walking further down the road which overlooked a village full of mud-thatched houses with a pointed woven-hay hat, we found a woman looking to be in her late forties growling in a muted tone. She was carrying piles of sticks of wood on her back which had pinned her down in the spot. We helped her stand up on her own feet by lifting the bundle of sticks, though they were unexpectedly hefty for us. A passer-by ran up to us and pushed up what was on her back; the sticks made a pop and crackle sound as she squeezed out her last voice to get up. I wondered how she had made her way down the hill with the heavy load on her back. The people in Lalibela living in a primitive fashion were astonishingly hard-working regardless of their sex or age. On our way to Asheten Mariam Monastery, a 13th century rock-hewn monastery located at an altitude of 3150 meters, the indigenous people with their hands occupied with the construction materials rushed their way up whilst I was struggling not to slip over the slippery hill. An old man carrying a long, thick piece of wood around his neck struck an exquisite balance and readily descended from the mountain. Our guide, Abie, encouraged us that we would be able to walk as fast as the locals after climbing up and down the same route three times. I landed off with the front of my feet as advised. However, my feet started to feel sore after five steps. I certainly needed more time to learn the knack without hurting myself. There was no motorized transportation but mules that could take us to the destination through a rugged and angular path. I was looking at the people overtaking us and fading in the distance. Although Lalibela is a tranquil countryside monastery which preserves a traditional way of living, it offered us a surprisingly good internet service. I received a phone call from my friend near Asheten Mariam Monastery. There was also a wifi connection at the hotel where we stayed. It further set apart from the lifestyle of the people in Lalibela. It was a beautiful rural town which thrives on tourism business and which still retains the traditional lifestyle in which people spend much time and effort on a daily chore

Source...ethiopianreporter.com