We never know what awaits us when we open the SELEDA Mail… besides, of course, the usual paternity lawsuits, a variety of subpoenas and advertisements from people wanting to sell us bigger, er, hard drives.
But sometimes, sometimes we get a delicious meandering of thoughts from a reader which lets our minds wander into that Galaxy that readily accepts ibdet as currency. Oh, yesss. And this month’s aTefariss of a letter came from Tewbel Belachew. Bring on the mirqana…
Dear Honorable Editor (the real one):
It is difficult nowadays to write something humorous, especially on an Ethiopian magazine. Yehone hono, mTs ! I will try.
So as a good tuba mehaynim who has no original thought of his own, bekefteNa mehaynimne, I would like to make some comments on some recent dirssetotch in our beloved and most cherished Seledatchin. Therefore, beTam asqedimo, mTs! Yiqirta teTeyqual mTs!
First I must protest against the self-appointed usurper of the editorship, ayn aTa. How dare he tell us what Seleda means, when every one in the universe knows that it is yemekina targa. He has also the pluck, yedifretu difrte, to quote some complicated Greek words and mention Greek philosophers that nobody knows behageratchin, when all Ethiopians know that the Greek philosophers such as the famous Qdus Papassinos brought to our country things like Metaxa cognac, Ouzo, Qendo and the like. Ye bzu sew gubet lemabelashetina andand rassim lemazor. Gud new iko! mTs! Demonstrating clearly that the self-made editor doesn’t know a hoot about Ethio-Greek relations that started when Homer met a GonderE tourist visiting the Acropolis. The relationship was cemented when Homer invited the Ethiopian to a goat cheese lunch accompanied with some cheap resina wine. Our gidirdir GonderE hardly touched the food, beside the fact that he thought yefiyel ayib utterly unfit for human consumption, and that the wine was some kind of ferenji qirrarri. He said to himself fiyel tibelaletchi inji min wotet alat? Ay yeferenj neger!! mTs! Ere gud new! mTs! When he told his friends of this happening after his return to Gonder some GonderE s thought that this was a great affront to Ethiopia and that war should be declared on Greece. The matter was dropped because in the meantime the tourist died and nobody else knew the way to Greece.
My friend Defar, whose DNA is a mix of Adal, Yfate, Tulema, Raya, Tigre, Woresheih etc., is mad as hell at some historians who dared to limit Ethiopian history to a miserly three thousand years, when the truth is that we are actually 160,000 (one-hundred-sixty-thousands) years old. A serious altercation happened also between a fellow from the Afar area who claimed that the old fossil was found in his area of the first man was 100 percent Adal-ian, while the MenzE claimed that, were it not for the landslide caused by the rain that took the soil including the fossil from his highland to the low lands, the first man was born in Menz, three and half kilometers south of Debre Berhan. As proof of his claim, he brought out the June 23, 2003 issue of Time Magazine in which there was reconstruction of the first man whose resemblance to our beloved Emiye Menelik is simply remarkable. mTs! Indiyaw qurriTT! QurrriiiTTT!!! mTs!
The argument was settled when our MenzE, proud of winning his claim with proof at hand, invited us to Weizero Baffena’s bunna’na shai bEt to a quendo -chased-by- Gush Tella brunch.
By the way, did you know that the Russian KGB (not the American) invented psycophonic weapons designed to brainwash people at any distance? The idea is to scramble one’s brain and reverse the thought process. Gud new eko! mTs!
Which means that when you want to say yes they make you say no. This has created a lot of problems around the world: President C did not want to do “it” in his office and Monilovsky would have preferred the classical protestant type interaction, but for the damned machine uncalled intervention.
Menguistu HM thought he said “ NegellE Hid” to the pilot when he had actually said “ Babatih, nefssen awTTaN.” The pilot understood Nairobi nefssE!
The only people impervious to the psycophonic weapon seem to be the Chechnyans, the Baathists and some yeNaw gud memhurawiyan who have especially thick cranial bone. Y’germal. Y’denqal.
Legizew yetegeNew qum neger yih new. Ngigiru yeqTilal!
Ke kifteNa ye akbrot selamta gar/,
-Tewbel Belatchew.