5.Ethiopias tilewet yihon?…..171days to go

Now, Betty is supposed to be the animal lover and Tilaye is the one who has been a fan of National Geographic since its ETV days. And me? Well, my last post had zebras on it! But this time I really have got something to say about an animal, among other things.

The clouded leopard of Borneo ( Neofelis diardi) was given species status a few weeks ago. When I heard the news I thought a never before-seen creature was discovered and wondered how it remained hidden for so long. Later I realized that clouded leopards (Neofelis nebulosa) have been scientifically described since1821.Recent genetic tests revealing that the clouded leopard of Borneo and Sumatra islands is a unique cat species and not the same one found in mainland Southeast Asia, was what was making the headlines. Some 40 genetic differences were seen between the two (as compared to 56 genetic differences between the common leopard and lions), indicating that they had diverged about 1.4 million years ago. Moreover the results of skin tests showed that the Borneo clouded leopard is darker than the mainland species and has many distinct spots within its small cloud markings. It also has a greyer fur, and a double dorsal stripe.

A conservationist exclaimed “Who said a leopard can never change its spots?!….”.

Are humans capable of speciating? I knew from my undergraduate evolution course that geographical isolation (given enough time) was one way of achieving this. I also knew that even though humans live on different continents, there had been continuous mixing through the millennia .Moreover, had enough time elapsed after migration of the first primates from Africa to other continents and the separation of these continents? I did not know. While reading on the subject, I came across an article that drew my attention to another mode of speciation I had looked over. Check it out here ; you will find it amusingly enlightening.

The verse from The Bible referencing the leopard also talks about an Ethiopian not changing his/her appearance. Last few minutes, I have begun suspecting: what if it is talking about not our complexion but our never changing poverty? what if we are damned to live in eternal misery?

Just a thought and maybe a distorted interpretation of the verse .But here is some undistorted data.

Ethiopia was ranked 170th out of 177 countries in the 2006 Human Development Report (no. 8 =U.S.A and no. 18 =U.K.)

Ethiopia’s Human Poverty Index ranks 98th among 102 developing countries

Life expectancy at birth= 47.8 years (153rd)

People without access to improved water source in 2004 =78% (125th )

Combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio=36% (163rd )

Children underweight for age=47% ages 0-5 (131st)

GDP per capita in 2004=113$
.
31 million people live below the national poverty line (on less than half a dollar a day) and between 6 and 13 million people are at risk of starvation each year
Not only is Ethiopia poor but it is equally poor: 81% of the population of 77 million live below a poverty line of $2 a day
.
.
.
.

Ena min yitebes?

I just wanted to say how screwed we are. The big news in Addis Ababa today was about the corpse of Ethiopian soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. No disrespect to them and their families; but I believe that the above numbers are more shaming.

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P.S. Watch how the new U.N. secretary general got a taste of Iraq.

enena alem endet senebetin………… I survived, but the kids in cambodia ????,

There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.
Homer (800 BC – 700 BC), The Odyssey , what does Homer mean by this? ( this is for you Tibe and Tilish, )

What a week it has been. I am still sleep deprived, “ betam endetechemaleku new yegebagn” I mean I used to sleep only for 4 hours so many times and I always felt energetic. But now, losing that one-hour, because of daylight saving time (DST) has got me sleeping all over the place. I mean when I think about it where does that hour go.Does it simply disappear, or will it be conserved like mass,( shows how I suck at physics) Shame on you Benjamin Franklin for coming up with the idea of it, do you think it is fair? Don’t get me wrong, I admire this guy, he is a very interesting character, there is nothing he hasn’t done, no wonder he doesn’t need to sleep. According to the information I got from wikipeidia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin), he has been author, politician, printer, scientist, philosopher, publisher, inventor… (I am running out of breath)… civic activist and diplomat. I like him and because I will be saying, hello Benjamin( like Eddie Murphy) , welcome whenever I see a $100 bill. But most of all his virtues are really amazing, 13 of them, read it on the link above. I read that the idea for the DST came from his essay “ An economical project” in the spirit of his earlier proverb “Early to bed and early to rise / Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” But he did not propose that clock be changed.

So the blame or the gratefulness for the idea of DST doesn’t lie on Benji only, there is this other guy, a builder and outdoorsman William Willett invented DST in one of his pre-breakfast horseback rides. He had been dismayed by how many Londoners slept through the best part of a summer day. An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short his round at dusk. ( I cannot imagine , if Tiger Woods ever proposes another hour to be deducted ). So two years later this Watson guy published a comprehensive proposal for DST… I got this from wikipedia too.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time), Any way beneficial or not, “ enkilfam hognalew”

Well, as for the weather, it still is teasing us, one day it rains, another day it is bright and beautiful. I am not gonna complain though, I hear NY got some snow. As much I wanted to see snow, being my first time and all, but it really sucked when all of us in my family got into an accident at the same day. It was a terrible experience. I have had enough.

And finally by the end of the week, I realized my problems are nothing compared to what some kids go through in the other part of the world. I went down to the basement to wake my cousin, who unusually sleeps with the TV on, then what was on the TV got my attention , it was really horrible, I still cannot even swallow the thought. It was about sex trafficking in Cambodia. Who in his right mind would exploit children of age 5,6,7…….., this is sick, this is slavery at its worst, like Colin Powell put it “It is a sin against humanity, and it is a horrendous crime” . (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4038249/). See also the story of Dalyn, 17,(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/6422729.stm)

In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970)

It made me think of my little cousins, those kids are the same age as them, and I thanked God that they are all safe from all this. The worst of it all is, this is a crime supported by many visitors to the country, read the story of the American Doctor. I like what Colin Powell said when he was asked,

Why should Americans be concerned about the sex trade in Cambodia?
SECRETARY POWELL: How can we turn away? If we want to have friends in the world, if we want to have better relations with the countries of the world, we have to help them with this kind of problem.
You know, can you imagine the spread of disease that is taking place with this kind of activity? Can you imagine what will happen to these girls when they’re 15 or 20? What will become of them? They’ll have no education. They will be — they will have been used and tossed away and ruined.
And that affects not just these girls, it affects that country. It affects the family life in that country, it affects society development, it affects income, and, therefore, it affects foreign policy.
So, as the Secretary of State, why is the Secretary of State worried about trafficking in persons? Because it deals with foreign policy. It deals with economic and social development within a country. And a country that does not treasure its youth and protect its youth is not going to be moving in the right direction in the 21st century.
And a nation such as ours, which says we are a moral nation, and that we have a value system, that we would allow our citizens to go over and fuel that trade, by their presence and by their money and by their rotten exploitation of these children, we wouldn’t be living up to our values if we didn’t do something about it.

It made me think about those guys in our country, that bring children and make them work “ Yeshimena sira”, but the one in Cambodia is worse, this is exploitation of innocence. But who knows what goes on in our country; no one even bothers to look into such problems. It is frustrating, saddening, unfathomable. Any way I hope, it will be a past some day.

Now gotta go and see Barak Obama on Larry King. I love this guy, the first black to run for president, and smart too. I like what he said when asked about his not having that much experience… this may not be his exact words, but the meaning is more or less the same

” Chenny and Rumsfeld have so much experience and look what happend”

So long every one,

ciao

4.Gudayu fikirin yimeleketal……179 days to go

Tibebe on your monitor,ya man!(and woman too)

On this post i wanted to talk about the millennium -kind of elaborate on my expectations on both a personal and an Ethiopia level.But I am struggling to get it out :may be some other time .

I desperately want to post something today.Having been writing on a two days’ basis, endi sitefa min yibalal?

I have decided on this instead .Tilaye ,you have read it before, so don’t bother (except if you fancy knowing her name).Sami, you know her name,here are the letters.Betty,I am sure you will catch on.

How is a photo of zebras in Nich Sar park(guys we should go there sometime) related to this situation?It is not!I just loved the “I got your back!” pose.The lions(not shown here) be laughing like “Yeah right!”

Does anyone have any idea about the meaning of her name?If i did,I would have looked for a more appropriate picture.

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letter 1

dear sir/madam

i hope you don’t (beg you not to) stop reading this letter when i tell u that it has got nothing to do with coffee or business.it is sort of a social call.and if u are ato - ,i would like to assure u that i don’t mean any disrespect or harm. i have been – corny as it might sound -an admirer of - for about five years . we have never talked and there is a probability that she does not even know that I exist(boo hoo).

lately, i have been having this crazy idea about e mailing her to let her know what’s up.i do not know her address so i trial and errored about twenty accounts that seemed sensible to me but to no avail.

here is the plan

u give her this message,she e mails me back,we fall in love,get married(ato -,with your consent ,of course) ,have twelve kids and live happily ever after.

just kidding.

if it is not too much trouble would u please inform her about this e mail and kindly ask her if she is willing to write me back and or even give me her e mail account so that i can write her an e mail proper.if she is spoken for,doesn’t want to wirte me or what not ,would somebody write me back and let me know. whatever the answer,i promise to be a perfect gentleman in handling it.and if no,next time u hear from me will be if i have something about coffee

i hope this letter is not unsettling because there is no reason to make anyone unsettled ,especially -.after sending this e mail your way the first thing i am going to do is check my inbox :that is how anxious i am for a reply.

thank u for your time

thank u in advance for any kind of reply.

have a nice day

p.s. how i got your e mail address is mostly internet work and no one but me was involved.

 

3. Sostegnaw tsihuf ….184 days to go

I interrupt my regular blogging to bring you a special announcement.

Happy birthday Betty!
Wishing you the best life has got to offer on both sides of the millennium and looking forward to staying on the same page with you though we might be in different continents.

Today’s is the third blog proper that I have posted on this site. And all the three blogs have been influenced by things that come in threes. You know what they say, “third time is a charm ‘’. I hope to write something good this time.

The Chinese believe that the number 8 brings luck:

Telephone number 8888-8888 was sold for USD$270,723 in Chengdu

The Summer Olympics in Beijing are scheduled to open on 8/8/08 at 8:08:08 p.m

A man in Hangzhou offered to sell his license plate reading A88888 for 1.12 million yuan

Dragon Fish Industry in Singapore, a breeder of rare Asian Arowanas (which are “lucky fish” themselves, and, being a rare species, are required to be microchipped), makes sure to use numbers with plenty of eights in their microchip tag numbers, and appears to reserve particularly numbers especially rich in eights and sixes (e.g. 702088880006688) for particularly valuable specimens.

I was watching the Oscars and there was Peter O’Toole, who has been nominated eight times but had never won. Then the host (Ellen Degeneres) says that he could win this year: after all “third time is a charm”. A cruel joke, and he did not get lucky either.

Let me take you one thousand nine hundred and ninety seven digits away from the number three. Two thousand – I want to talk about the Ethiopian Millennium .It so happens that today, putting Pagume aside, marks halfway to the end of this year., I am a bit skeptical of our preparation as a nation. There are plans and talk here and there but I am not feeling the action. Why wait until Sene to start the celebrations? Given our tardiness aiming for right about now would have been probably better to start actually doing things on Sene. Better yet, why haven’t we celebrated all the thirteen months? Our mediocrity (not our poverty) is making a golden break pass us by. By the end of the year, I am afraid that there will be nothing much special to make Ethiopians feel that they have celebrated the occasion in style, as a people.

I expected a lot in terms of creative ways of marking the event but not forthcoming.80 million people and what we have to show for 2G is a few thematic garments and jewelry? That’s where I have seen the most creativity. A national council has been established to oversee the celebration. There is the countdown clock at the gates of the Sheraton and even ETV has started counting down the days. The diasporas have setup some websites about the subject (e.g. http://www.ethiopianmillennium.com ). Still, we need more schemes and events that can rise to the occasion.

For the sake of argument, let us assume that we have managed to come up with a decent and achievable national plan (it is not often that we do). Then three months would be too little time to cram all of the planned happenings into.

Just yesterday, a friend brought to my attention a new way of giving someone the middle finger. Raise the three middle fingers and say “read between the lines”. Nice, ain’t it?

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When passion takes over………., what ? … Pysics?

Ok Tilish so as not to MAWOZAGEB you, this is the one and only Betty, but which one?, since sometimes she has a multiple personality.

This week has been OK , the weather in the Midwest still ” TEWKAKTOBETAL”. I spent most of the week in the library, opening a physics book after some 5 or 6 years……( I cannot believe it is that long)… it was kind scary, but I had no choice, I mean the cover of the book was telling me that I was dummy..( well it was titled Physics Demystified).. which do you think is worse, thinking that you are dumb or being told by a non living thing that you are….. ouch that hurt, so I had no choice to just escape the cover. …. the clock started ticking, 1 minute passed and then the longer arm struck 10 minute mark. I looked up and out the window, I spotted a geese couple outside ( well I assumed they would be couples), by the little pond. What kind of geese? well through my reading I Can only identify the Egyptian geese… and these were not, well I am not an ornithologist so sue me…, they were enjoying the water, the ice that formed has somewhat melted, they were enjoying what they got after such a long and dreadful winter. It made me wonder how they survived it. Could they have gone into hibernation, or could they have migrated like their distant cousins the pelicans and flamingos( well they are all Aves), to lake Abijata and lake Shala( which serve as a restaurant or a motel respectively like Tibe used to put it, Oh, the first time I saw the flamingos and the pelicans, it was 4 years ago… exciting stuff, it felt like oh… il cielo sulla terra.. heaven on earth, OK” Sakabid new”, gin it was great. Remember Tibe, first we went to Awash national park, got lost so many times to get there, I wished we had a navigational ability like the homing pigeon. Then we went to Langano and then to Abijata. That day is so memorable because in the morning when I am supposed to see the birds, my eye glasses broke, so I had to ride with our Animal ecology prof. Afework. to the lake, and when we were about to park the car, I saw a creature lying on the the stem of a tree, I shouted a Chameleon, I was excited because I haven’t seen a live one before, Prof. Afework laughed at me and he said this is a lizard and proved that I was blind indeed with out my eye glasses. But the good thing is I never have to use eyeglasses to see the birds because we have to use binoculars. …… Who ever invented the binoculars, or simple eye glass for that matter,… you guys rock ). where was I, Yeah but I doubt the geese reached that beautiful country in the horn of Africa. What ever they did they survived the winter and here they are enjoying life. All this made me want to be like them, free of the everyday life worries,…… would us the Homo sapiens be happy if we just lived not worrying about what tomorrow might bring? … I said back to reality Betty this would never happen, but what if , what if , it did? just then I realized we would have died of hunger, hunger? yeah hunger of the loss of challenge that the everyday life brings. I mean mind you the birds have challenge too, but they do not waste their energy thinking what to do about it, they just do it when the time comes. But for us challenge is what drives us.

But whether we like it or not, we have a tie with any God’s creature, that is our purpose in life, every creature knows and understands it better than us though, so they waste every energy they have to fulfil that……. Oh, I forgot to say what it is, the purpose of life is to make sure that our genes are transferred to the next generation. Well that is survival of the fittest to you, the one who has transferred his gene to the next generation survives. But the Homo Sapiens do not understand that, rather than forwarding our energy to good use, we prefer to forward it to destruction.

People have asked me why I love learning about animals? What started it all? What is the point of wasting every money into researches about animals, plants, the rain forest. My obsession with the wild life ethology is the best thing that ever happened to me, but that is another story. For now lets stay and talk about Rain forests.

About 3 weeks ago there was a show on AC 360….. many environmentalists, the government were trying to catch those destroying the rain forest. The people go under the most arduous road, very unpredictable weather conditions. to save what is left of this pristine habitat. The term ” Rain forest” was first coined in 1898 by a German botanist named Schimper to describe the forests that grow in constantly wet conditions. There are different types of rain forests , but let’s leave that to the taxonomists. But what is it about rain forest that causes such strong feelings?

Well the book ” The last Rain forests” forwarded by DAVID ATTENVOROUGH, summarizes why all the people in the world are dependent on it. Some of the main reasons are

IT provides home for millions of tribal people, who are adapted to life in this unique and beautiful habitat, do not these people have a right to live there, I mean, do not we have a right to sleep in our bed.

But those of us who do not live there depend on it as much, these forests may receive periodic doses of heavy rain, but give out steady supply water, which most of us take for granted, but the worst of it all is , the loss of the genetic resources contained in the forests which are common heritage of human kind . Most of us do not know this, although the rain forest covers less than about 6% of the earth’s land area, more than 50% of all Sp. are found here, and this genetic diversity may well prove to be vitally important to the future welfare of the human race. Scientist already derived many important medicines and drugs from small groups of plans Sp. that are unique to this great habitat. But what is becoming more of a near future reality is that, the danger of finding that just when the curtain covering Natures’ medicine shelf is being opened, we have lost the contents. Deforestation is also associated with the spread of diseases like Malaria,Leshmaniasis. I donot want to pass this opportunity with out admiring the MASSI tribe in kenya, these people sure know how to live harmoneously with the wild… GO MASSI, GO MASSI ….. IT is your birthday…… I know this is becoming more of an Ecology 101 lesson, I am sorry, and at the risk of boring you I have to continue writing. So bear with me.

One thing , us, Homo Sapiens like is to be abel to see a beautiful thing. Well Homo Sapiens chicks are one……( yeah that is right, I mean do not we all love looking at those sinfully beautiful people……. , Beyonce, JLO,…… OK OK,…. those beautiful Abesha girls with those de·li·cious body…. I mean we girls love looking at them too, although what we would be thinking at the time may differ from what the guys may think or is it the same… I do not know.). Any way my point is we all love looking at those we consider beautiful, and the chicks are easy to conserve. But there are those that can be extinct forever.

Some of my favourite South American creatures are …

The bald Uakari ( Cacajao, caluus)
http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/red-uakari.html

Black howler mokeys(Alouatta Caraya )
http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/howler-monkey.html

The leaf cutter ants( Atta Cephalotes) ( well this is amazing stuff, the male dies after mating, but it does not really matter, remember the fact about purpose of life. And the amazing stuff is they understand fungus farming, a story for another time)
http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/animals/enlarge/leaf-cutter-ant.html

I hope this convinced you to better understand nature, for those of you who could not get it still, well go and read some books on rain forests. If you are not still getting it , then leave the book aside and start living in the real world, because it cannot get any real than this

Papiy, I still cannot believe you forgot, Tilish , still didnot get pics. Oh my God I knew I forgot something,,, my physics book is still staring at me, waiting for me to wake up from my dream… or whatever engulfed me or hallucinated me. so long every one

Chiao

2. Sost setoch……… 186 days to go

Picking up from where I left off last time, my second fear of relationships is, for lack of a better term, boredom. Once I am in a stable relationship with a girl, all the anticipation might die out and I might end up dreaming of the times I was happily chasing her. A while back, Betty forwarded me the saying “the journey is the reward”, that so eloquently describes a recurring theme in my life. So many times I have longed for something only to reminisce fondly, once I got there, of the path I took. Case in point- my college graduation.

Taking the above into account my ideal girl would be one to keep me dreaming of her even when we are sleeping side by side. Kind of like the Abenit Agonafir song that goes “tinafkignalesh derete lai honesh”. And her name would be “Serkaddis”.

My third fear is related to what I let describe my being .If I am not Tibebe the biochemistry masters student, then who am I ye all? My education is one of the few things I have going for me, along with my family and friends. It may be the only thing that I can approach a girl with.

There are these two girls whom I dig .One is a doctor and the other is an engineer. Let’s be honest, biochemistry is not as “prestigious” a profession as the other two (remember that scene from shark tale where Oscar is told by Mr. Sykes of his status in the hierarchy ?). If I get the courage to express my feelings to either or both, I fear that they may be looking for (or already have found) someone from their own ranks. And even if they don’t have a problem with my being, I hate the probability of me developing an inferiority complex once we are in a relationship.

I equally hate the probability of having a superiority complex (does it come in the form of a complex?) if I get involved with someone of a “lesser” educational standing than me.

Enough with the fear business. I have two girls in mind but I am entitled to a third .I have three reasons to back me up on my claim. One, it is “macho March”: I can say whatever male chauvinistic crap I can think of. By the way, happy March 8! Second, the Central Statistics Authority has revealed that there are 120,000 more females than males in Addis Ababa. I am feeling the moral obligation of coming to the rescue of all the damsels in distress. Remember the murderer from last time? I now think that he should be charged with the unwise use of resources: driving all those kilometers and committing some dumb shit when he could have had his pick of worthy substitutes.

The third reason is part geometry and part physical chemistry. When a guy is romantically involved with two girls, it is called a love triangle. Add one chick to the picture and what do you have? That is right, a triangular  pyramid .Now, the straight lines formed by every person could have easily given a rectangle or a square. But the uneven force of attraction/repulsion along sides and diagonals would destabilize the structure. This is the basis of the unwritten fourth law of thermodynamics, ‘‘Straight lines tend to aggregate and form an energetically favored structure namely a solid”.

This might sound pathetic, coming from a guy who is not too keen on numbers and has never been in a relationship. But if anybody is wondering about the number of girls needed to have a lasting and solid relationship, three seems to be the magic number. I mean, look at the pyramids:4,000 years on, they are still going strong.

Wait a sec, the pyramids have a rectangular base – the more chicks for me

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enquan dehna metachu

I was sitting at work today and it just started snowing, it really is starting to bother me now, the weather in the Midwest just changes everyday. Then I said to my self, well I should not complain, it not like CROZET, the island located in southern Indian ocean, where the four seasons are experienced in one day. So I decided to think of a happy place, then Italy came to mind. I remembered this place that I heared about in Calabrese, and some province there, which I thought was Galiciano ( later tried to Google it, and the name does not exist)… Well any way it could also have been Aspromonte, ..or my mind is playing tricks on me, I know I heared it correctly or I thought so…..( this is the part where Papiy says ATIWOZAGEBI, ). Any way at this place there is this stream of very cold water, the locals believe it to have a power of making any guy and a lady drinking together fall in love. It could work or not…. , Well I was thinking of going there with you Tibe when you proposed….. the idea of sharing a blog. …. oh my, where are my manners, I did not even introduce my self.. My dad named me Bethelehem , people know it as the birth place of Jesus, but it is Hebrew word and it means ” house of bread”, or as some of my friends call me ” Yedabo bet”.

I am not much of a writer, but it will be interesting to read what I will come up with in the next…. well I do not know exactly , we will just have to wait and see. Tilish thanks for the inspiration, well papiye we are partners ( in blog) now till death do us part.
chiao

0.metewawekia ……………. 190 days to go

Selam! Tibebe  a.k.a. one half of this here blog. How wezgaboch came about goes a little something like this.

I have thoughts on many subjects, don’t we all? Anyway, these thoughts have a funny way organizing themselves that always seems perfect in my mind. Talking is a disappointment because things tend to come out wrong almost everytime. And the few times I have tried to write about stuff, I have ended up hating my writings. Regardless, I still want to blog.

Why?

In a few years, it would be nice to read what I have written earlier. This idea was inspired by T. Credit goes to him for encouraging me to start a blog of my own. And props to Betty for instilling in me the very notion of blogging.

Step to the keyboard, girl!

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