In Honor of Ethiopian Excellence

Ethiopian Students Organization International

Truth is, we at SELEDA have not had our hands on the pulse of the really young people since that time we had to drag one of them by the wrists away from the embers of ye semma mTad. (" Mamo, effu… isu effu new.")

Remember the days when students hugged their aQumadas and sang for their supper (mostly songs that started with "Sile Mariam… be igzitineh Mariam…")?? Well, not these students. Boy, were we dragged into the 21^st century when we ran across the people at ESAi.

Established for the purposes of "developing skills such as leadership, organization, communication, public speech, creativity and responsibility" them kids have ambitions of "recognizing problems within our own community and developing alternate courses of action to solve [these problems]…to bring the Ethiopian Students in North America and all over the world together, to build a strong bond between students and the Ethiopian community."

Ere zim new negeru. CHI'CH.

OK, we have been shamed into irgiff adirgen dropping the katikala habit. The ESAi page is intimidatingly efficient, easy to navigate and so well organized that even we could maneuver around it without hailing a cyber tesafari and asking for a ride out. ESAi projects underway include a much-needed Book Drive to educational institutions back home. Also featured is a forum where members can submit original works of art, prose and literature in English or Amharic.

Gud, gud, GUD belenal! It is refreshing that the lb tirita of the young and the beautiful is humming along at such a healthy pace. D'rim… d'rim… d'rim. Okay, one last melekia for us… Sebhat le abbbbbbbbbbbbb…

For more information on ESAi, go to www.esai.org.

WASHERA On-Line Books & Videos

For those of you whose relatives back home insist on sending you even more QereTiTs of drQosh at every opportunity and can't understand why you want Amharic books, take comfort. Finally, you can order great Ethiopic language literature on line.

Trendsetters and friends of trendsetters keep telling us that there is a new Ethiopian literati emerging in the Diaspora, and that the scene to see and be seen is at Ethiopian book club outings and literature-themed evenings. To which we say, ifoye temesgen. We thought the tyranny of the Zemene Nightclub would never end. The whole world is watching as the revolution is webesized!

Therefore, it is with open arms that we welcome into our collectively barren lives Washera On Line Books & Videos where we can finally buy Ethiopian literature and jump on this Ethiopian Beatnik Bandwagon. Beside, those in the know tell us, it is a great way to impress the opposite sex. Light up the candles, dust off the Kassa Tessema tapes and get ready to wow your loved one with an evening of a throaty reading of "Fqr Eske MeQabr". (Scented candles…$1.99, Kassa Tessema tape…$15.99, Fqr Eske MeQabr ordered from Washera On-Line …$10.00…the lovin' you are going to get from someone who thinks you are super cool… priceless. For everything else, there is Visa.)

Click on Washera's "complete listing" link and you shall experience mild flashbacks of Saturday mornings at Meno MetSahft Bet. Everything from Pawlos Ngongo's A History of Ethiopia's Emperor Menilik ($8.50), to Bealu Girma's Oromay ($10.00) to Solomon Deressa's magnificent Zebet Ilfitu ($6.75), to Amsalu Akliku & G.P Mossback's English-Amharic Dictionary ($7.00) to Sibhat G/Egziabher's novel Tikusat ($7.70) to Haile Melekot Mewael's epic GunGun ($6.25)… where do we stop? Ere, where do we stop? All this and 153 more items just a couple of clicks away. (Scattered in between are modern videos which we can't vouch for but might be worth trying.)

No more excuses that you have to go to DC to buy Ethiopian books, inna beziaw esti Bravo-Bravo'n mesalem. SELEDA salutes this great endeavor, and may we all buy, read and get lucky.

To experience Washera go to this site.

Ethiopian History Site

We are not people who are easily impressed. Ok, we are. But trust us, we neTren scaled the chandelier and refused to descend until the mesafints of the Ethiopian History Page let us fuut mallet from their scholarly goblet.

From Pre-Historic Ethiopian history to the Zagwé Dynasty to the Gonder period, this page is full of information written beautifully and precisely. We hope this is a start of a great huge movement to bring Ethiopian history to the Web and to the Diaspora (and to the weenies that slept through Ethiopian history classes). The page is without the pedantic tactics usually employed by academicians, is succinct and, hopefully will continue to grow.

A nifty feature called Ethiopia History This Month chronicles certain events that occurred in each month, January through December. Click on October and you will learn that on "October 22, 1847 King Sahle Sellassie, who ruled from 1813 to 1847, died in Debre Birhan..." February? "Dajazmach Webé Hayla Maryam (1799-1867), ruler of Tegray, facing Turkish advances from the coast, wrote to Queen Victoria of England in February 1849. He appealed for her help and declared:…" Not stuff you are going to read on the back of a cereal box. (Er… we think it is just oversight that April 1999 made no mention of a certain web 'zine being launched.)

Someone put a lot of effort on this page, and it shows! A very auspicious beginning, and we sense it will serve as a springboard for an avalanche of writings on Ethiopian history on the Internet.

For more, go to http://www.geocities.com/mentiso.

CYBERETHIOPIA

What can we say that has not been said about Cyber Ethiopia? The granddaddy of Ethiopian portals crossed yet another watershed cyber wenz with its new Amharic discussion board, Warka, "The first Ethiopic enabled web forum." This is not just genius, SELEDAwian. It is brilliance the likes of which we have not seen since… well, never.

If you use Netscape 4.0 and up, you are hooked in and alls you have to do is type away. (Explorer users have to… hell, who cares about Explorer users.) The conversion gizmo works like magic, translating your Latin alphabets into Fidel. (One has to maneuver to learn the corresponding Latin to Fidel protocol, but it is not hard to figure out. There is a handy reference table on the on-line help section that is easily accessible.)

Yes, there is the usual politicking in there, but thankfully, there are also Warka personalities and regulars emerging who bring us witticisms that makes up for it. Our favorite kind of Warka-ites are the kind who drop by with delectable Qines that make us genuflect with sheer joy. The friendly rivalry between people to out do each other with missalé and more Qine has us sitting back and wondering how come there are so many smart people around and we're here wilting away in the mismar tera of the intellectual stadium? Oh well.

Congratulations to CyberEthiopia for providing us with yet another tool to seek and find each on the labyrinth that is the World Wide Web.

Join the mirth and merriment at http://www.cyberethiopia.com/ethiopic/forum/

OUR ETHIOPIAN ATHLETES

In the words of shgitu Derartu Tulu, "It was always going to be an Ethiopian race. The others were just not up to it." Once again, the green, gold and red lit up the Olympics skies. SELEDA deeply thanks all our athletes at Sydney 2000 for continuing the tradition of excellence. LeT blen ij nestenal.