|
To: HG Dear HG: Just when I thought this most impersonal medium of all is the antithesis for communication, your e-mail address - ICSRules - stood right in front of my eyes and made me realize that maybe it's not that bad, after all, for communicating our hopes, fears, ideas and aspirations. These choices of e-mail addresses, what do they say about us? Are they a fair guide to our personalities? Could I judge you? Stereotype you? Not, I guess. .....But then, the elite thing (at least the implication) caught my attention. And then I remembered that the Seleda folks have given us the rather crude theme of "yluNta and misTr?" as a premise for our conversation. I was planning to ignore the theme just for the sake of asserting my independence (assuming that they will forgive me). BTW, where do they come up with stuff like this? At any rate, could I have thought of a better excuse to start this conversation? Perhaps not, except the one issue I have with our brothers and sisters at the Seleda Board of Editors, which I will come back to later on. OK, should I draw a parallel? Well, what the heck! Think about it! Your e-mail has a lot to say about yluNta and misTr. First, I think, just from this rather trivial piece of information, that you are not at least a prisoner of "yluNta" [izih temarku altemarku-sewu mn agebaw?]. Well, let us say, I give you a B for yluNta. [Perhaps be-zemed we can push it to a B+]. BTW, what's up with the grading, you might ask? It is just an occupational trait /obsession [teaching when I have the time] that I carry around. How about misTr? You get another B. OK......OK....I think I am dwelling on this thing quite a lot. Time to move on.... On a serious note, I do not think misTr is such a big deal in our society. What kinds of things are kept secret? That so-and-so is cheating on his/her spouse? No, my dear sister, everyone in the neighborhood would know about it. Just don't bring kids and that disease, many an Ethiopian spouse would say. That the fat people at Construction Ministry and QebelE are corrupt? Even the beggars on our street know who is corrupt and who is not. That some hostesses at the Ethiopian Airlines got in through zemed? Hey, we call that "ye-adebabai misTr", a concept uniquely Ethiopian, sometimes I think. But, ETs are good in keeping misTr. This reminds me of a joke that my childhood friend still tells about why ET girls would tell their guy "kante lEla maninim alawqm.....gn l'and sew andit bileh indatnager". Yeah, so much for MisTr. But yluNta, sister, is a huge ET thing. Almost everything we do, we say, we wear, we drive, we buy has an element of yluNta. I even dare say that what motivates us to throw bi-continental, $25,000-$35,000 weddings are primarily because of yluNta. But yluNta has good sides, too. If most of the politicos in Addis had a sense of yluNta, then bribes of 10,000 and 50,000 Brr would not have happened. H.G., hey, this is just the first letter, so I won't inundate you with my several opinions. But, I thought it would be fair if I make the conversation interesting and say a few words about the person behind these words. I thought of several ways where one could do this without sounding corny or self-absorbed. But, what the heck! Communication is the key here, right? So, here are some fragments of events, thoughts, etc. Why do I still like Kuku SebsibE and listen to her music? Because I think the 80s were the best times in Ethiopia (at least for me). Did I have a Dergue zemed? No, HG! OK...maybe one...and it is not my fault. It's just that any 18-year-old kid in Addis thinks he/she owns the city in the summer right after high-school graduation. Happiest moment in Addis? Hanging out at a café on a rainy day and observing the rest of humanity go on with its life. Happiest moment in Babylon - exile? Grad school -- only because there were 30 Ethiopians in the college, three from the same high school [SJHS...note that I did not say SJRules, even though the idea crossed my mind]...but that was many years ago. Success, I feel, might offer me happiness these days....But is that fleeting or what? And what is success?....OK....I need to chew some CHat now. I almost forgot, I told you I have an issue with the Seleda folks. I love and respect these guys. But I can't believe they said: no poltika. Take politika away from an ET and what sort of topic do you have left for conversation? Sex? Maybe...but can we have both? I mean the topics. OK...begedeb inkua yifeqediliN (politikawin maletE new). Isti, HG, ...anchi demo mn tiyalesh? Sam To: Sam Hi Sam (Sammy, Samiye, Samicho, your royal Samness...any that I've missed?) -- I was amused by your comments on my choice of email address ('icsrules') -- actually, I'd started off with the moniker "Irule", but found that it had already been taken (great yluNta there, eh?)...no, actually the name was chosen as a joke between myself and my particular Seleda-torturer (arm twisting/emotional blackmailing/LD coercing old EX-friend) because, though we've established many other links since then, that was the site of first contact... Isn't that funny how that seems to work in Ethiopian society, that your ties to your elementary school chums seems to hold deeper meaning than anything to follow? I've seen the most dissimilar types of people continue to bond over years and miles of distance just based on that one remote period in their lives when they scraped their knees in the same playground (and maybe got their knuckles rapped by the same ruler). Maybe I place extra emphasis on this bond because I left Ethiopia at a very young age, and those memories of elementary school are all that I know....nah, I think that it's more like all the San Jo and Naz-rate school parties in DC that we poor foreigners never get invited to!...ok, 'nuf said, school ties is the theme of another issue (though I agree, dear Sam, that the source of these themed issues is sometimes a mystery to me, too). Now to the real themes...misTr 'na yluNta...Wow...I confess that I'm surprised that you say that misTr is not a big deal in our society. Yes, we have many "open secrets," but I think that Ethiopians are full of misTr in ways that I, in my ferengicized way, could never really understand...one simple example is the fact that people hide their age, scraping away at the years until your friend's mama ends up having been YOUR classmate in school when you add up the numbers--sometimes they even end up YOUNGER than you. People are also reluctant to discuss illness, even when it means they don't get the help that they need...especially mental illness, buried in deepest secrecy. Our whole religious system (the Orthodox Christian one at least) is shrouded in mysteries and secrets where even asking simple questions is frowned upon. (Hey, Seleda wonks, are we allowed to talk about religion? Separation of church and state and all). What don't we hide? After having spent most of my adult life in this overly-open American cultural abyss, where people are ever-ready to pop out their life history to the stranger sitting next to them on the bus, I am always shocked by the number of things one just doesn't talk about in Ethiopian society ("Tei tei !New'r new eko. Endeziya aybalm ...T'yaqE ayTeyeqm!!)...there really HAS to be a happy medium somewhere. I think that all this secrecy just leads to some of the gossip and rumors...i.e. if I don't tell that I have five cows in my back yard, you're going to tell others that I have 50, or 0, or whatever number in between...BTW, I have NO cows in my back yard,... maybe a little chicken or two, and a goat, but that's IT! ...ok. ONE cow, but just a small one. As for yluNta...obviously we've already established that I may lack som--so I'm probably not too qualified to discuss it, although your generosity with the B (to B+) makes me wish I'd had you grading some of my papers in school!! I guess I agree that it is both good and bad--and I think it's interesting that you attribute the excessive weddings to yluNta--I thought it was just garden variety showing off...but I guess I see the connection: "inE ke-lEla sew yanese ke degesskuN mn yluNal?" But to most of those soon-to-be-post-digis-paupers, I'd say, "Sew hulu mnm indelElachihu awqo yihenen sitadergu mn yelachuhal?" (Good thing we're maintaining anonymity here -- I can just see my summer social life drying up as all those wedding invites get abruptly withdrawn!) I'm actually kind of an admirer of yluNta, in the sense that it means that we value the opinions of others--kind of a self-policing society. My mother (who I'm lucky enough to have visiting me at the moment) brought up the point that yluNta refers not only to other people, but to God: "YihEn'n neger kaderkuN (weym kal-adereku), Egziabher'is min yleNal?" Our sense of yluNta makes us return favors, help those more needy, watch our actions that may affect others...in general, to follow the rules of decent society...and, all jokes aside, I think that we, as Ethiopians, are decent and caring people (Brrrrring out the soapbox!!)-Sew bemenged wedqo s'naii analfm, unlike our more Northern counterparts...at least that's the way I'd like to see it, though I've already confessed to having spent most of my life outside of Ethiopia... maybe I have a bit of a romanticized view? All right, as you said, be and qen anCHerisew werEun bemulu. I look forward to hearing from you in a correctly apolitical way, and maybe discussing your Kuku SebsibE-driven 80s fixation...admit it, your afro's just waiting to pop out again in its full glory... (And your next email had better be accompanied by a CHat coupon, maybe even a CHat-chew-o-gram with the proper kidanu yetebesa Coke bottle....hey, I said that I grew up outside of Ethiopia, not that I never went back for a visit!) Sincerely yours, HG (ye-MisTr sm, of course!) |
|
|
|
|
|
| © Copyright SELEDA Ethiopia, June 2001. All Rights Reserved. |