AbEt? ImEt?

We knew we were really late coming out with the March issue when upper management called us collect from winter haven du jour with a list of editors they want fired ASAWFE-- as soon as we finish exfoliating!-- for dragging the SELEDA name down. Apparently someone had hEdo “tuss” malEt-ed about our slack work habits. Ma? INa? Slackers? Nyyyy…. OK. We’re slackers. But upper management has never needed a half way decent reason to let heads roll. They don’t even know when SELEDA is supposed to come out. 

Lucky for us, however, upper management, God bless their blemish-free skin, don’t know any of our names… so they had to resort to rattling off a list of vague descriptions of people on their “Abiyotawi Irmija” list: #1“That tall, kosso yemesele neger”. #2 “Yachi plump Temenja ras bitE”. #3 “That ye sew menQara who over-foams our cappuccino”. #4 “Whoever that borCHam gandila is in the basement office” and #5 “Everyone whose last name starts with an N”. Ahh. Nothing like swift justice to turn our cheeks rosy. 

IndEt senebetachiu, SELEDAwiyan?

We come to you wearing burlap sacks (the type that can’t even be accessorized to look like those perfectly horrendous Tommy Hilfiger jeans!), and Tlashet faces in profuse apology for our tardiness. The cat ate our cable line. Dr. Raselas yimootoo!

Welcome to the Class Issue. Boy, was it stormy around here, or was it stormy! The struggle to bring out this issue illustrated a) why there was a revolution in our country, b) why people who think they are in power are more dangerous than people in power c) why there was a revolution in our country and d) why there needs to be a revolution at SELEDA.

Huh? Where were we?

It has become tradition to canonize our writers in this column, but we must admit this month’s contributors are in a … class of their own. Mechase… we realized we were kifuNa menTerarrart-ing when we asked you to contemplate “Class” without re-routing the subject back to the usual Ethiopian hateta and Traz neTeQ breakdown of Medeb that made us go into exile in the first place! But, but, but… you writers… gudeNoch! We know now that SELEDA is truly in the hands with our readers. We are gnats compared to… well, gnats, and we are forever grateful to all those who made it possible to discuss such a contentious issue with such finesse. 

Many, many thanks to our contributors, who, despite aspersions cast on their, er, “struggle for sexuality” [insert dumb look here] by some irritable girls from a certain Catholic School last month, came through for one of the most difficult issues we have done.

We hope you enjoy these offerings and take a step back to re-examine the issue of class and its manifestations in Ethiopian society. (Hmmm. Flashback! Sunday morning… QebellE “Ma-lE” Tnat… Youth LiQe Menber asking how the underclass interprets Dialectics/Dialectical Materialism and Anarcho-syndicalism? We: “What the underclass needs is a great stylist.” Flashback… imprisonment… no wallpaper on prison wall… no lounge chairs… the humanity… the…

Ehem.

So, What’s new at SELEDA?

Some housekeeping: Our Life Diaries this month will be serialized. Yep. Meaning, LD one and two are up… three and four will be posted in consecutive weeks. Don’t blame us, blame the Diarists. Ok, blame us. We don’t have any backbone to stand up to these two. Something about beating us “amedachiu ‘bunnnn!’eskil, if we raised our voice in even the slightest l’il peep of a protest. And we like our amed un-bunnn-ed, thank you very much. 

April is our Heroes and Mavericks Issue. Ah. Finally a forum where we can exalt the people we like and denigrate those we don’t. (Note to selves: Should do more denigration of people we don’t like.) As always, we welcome your contributions. Sharing is caring as they say in daycare, so reach into your memory banks and tell us about the people who changed you, who hurt you, who made you turn that mad little short bit into possibly the next “Great Ethiopian Novel,” who turned a blind eye to one little, youthful faux pas so that you could move on to greater things, who praised you when you deserved praise and who introduced you to sama that one time when your lEba Tat alarf bilo… Tell us. Make us breathlessly say… “Yelam berEt…”.  Our April issue editor, a known whip cracker and supreme aQaQiir awCHi, and a SELEDA-upper management in-training to boot, wants to talk to you more about this in his column.  If you have any questions after that, well, we wouldn’t ask him before 11:00 a.m. 

Articles are due firmly on March 15^th, but, as they say here in ‘Merika, “Everything that has a bribe attached to it is negotiable.” Bribes-ii? Yemin bribes? (Second note to selves: Don’t say ‘bribes’ out loud!) We meant for people who attach a doctor’s certificate verifying congenital Abeshatisis, we will happily extend the deadline to the 17^th. Mn frja new!  

This just in: Said SELEDA editor would also like to invite all our readers to participate in next month’s SELEDA Berenda by submitting pictures of people you consider heroes and mavericks. And we quote “None of the obvious ones, can you tell them that? The first person who sends in a picture of Jan Hoi or Abebe Beqilla will be mentally tortured.”  Uh?  Hm.  This is going to be fun.  But we trust our readers to be more creative than that.  So, scan in your pictures and kindly let us know your first name and what part of the world you hail from.  And for people in New Jersey trying to scan in pictures by stuffing them in the disc drive… beQa… yiQr.  Someone a’and beluliN.

IndEt yihonal tadiya?

We’re thinking we should have some kind of celebration to mark our second anniversary. Waw. Waw-wee. Who would have thunk it?  If we had any money left after megeber-ing all of upper management’s pet causes, we would have bet that by now they would have cashed in the SELEDA name and moved on to greener pastures in the Swiss Alps, just like all decent, third world dictators. But, God works in mysterious ways. We are still here, hanging on to dear life, and honored that you our readers have allowed us to invade your lives every month.

So… yes!  Yes, there should be a celebration of some sort, and as soon as we figure out what, we will let you know.

Looking ahead, May 2001 will be our Neurosis and Tsebel Issue. Ah. Zor belu… this is SELEDA editors' territory… we who have not met a neurosis we have not shared Feng Shui tips with. But we figure there are more of you like us out there, and here is a forum for CHewa ibdEt. Our Neurosis and Tsebel editor, who has more voices screaming in his head than a CHat negadE who has been sampling the goods, wants to murmur sweet nothings in your ear in his column.