alehu

its been a while since i posted. why? enenja…

i visited glasgow. its close to edinburgh. i saw this big museum. it has some nice art. the rest i couldn’t understand (ofcourse).

i think african singers should have been invited to sing. rap minamin min endemiyareg enenja. one thing those singers are expensive two and more important, their songs are not enjoyable by most and they are not really directed towards the majority. in addition to very cool ethiopian songs they could have looked for african songs. here is one song by Salif Keita. download it and listen to it.
http://clarence60.free.fr/Salif%20keita%20-%20Djembe.mp

it shows how really dumb alamudi’s people are. these kind of singers represent african styles. something which should be heard in a “big day” as the mellenium. maybe they get more money for inviting expensive singers? but the profit would be even more if the whole thing had a sense of ethiopian and african flavour in it. anyways i long for the day when we no longer see our money wasted…do you guys remember the concert at bob marley’s birthday? there was one woman singer who had a short hair and hear hair was dyed. i loved her song. i think she’s from west africa. by the way did you know that jazz originated in west africa? yep. and what would you say is the main chracteristic of jazz songs? it is improvisation. you go out to the stage and perform whatever that comes in your mind. we also have improvisation in our traditional songs. azmari’s are good examples. creating lyrics right there and even taking lyrics from the audience.

i guess y’all biologists know what this is. yeah. something to do with my thesis. i’ll tell you more later

my treat Gong Gong by Osibisa

19.Sira jemirenal ………….47 days to go

The Ethiopian Millennium has an official logo but I have never heard of it as having an official motto. So how about the title to this post? I think it summarizes what we have to do  for the next thousand years. And you know how countries are eager to host the olympics , world cup etc. I am not an economist :i can not explain how exactly. But such occasions have been known to boost economies.

We have been given a unique event without presenting  a proposal to a committee and beating anyone to it . I just wish that “esira mietu” jump starts our economy; and we get to keep the momentum from there on.

*In geez “esira”= 20 and miet=100 . I just can not get why we could not be using this name instead of …..

 Iraq has gone  to the final of the Asian cup . It was nice to see the people celebrating at least for once . It was sad to see that there are people cruel enough to detonate bombs in the midst of rejoicing fans.

Insh Allah  they beat Saudi in Sunday’s final and get to celebrate another day.

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18. Guzo ……………………………55 days to go

 

 

                                                                              

 

 

 

That right there is my sister feeding a hyena with her mouth. And the other one is what it is-a Babile mineral water bottle cap. And yes I was in Dire Dawa, Harar and Alamaya this past weekend. My younger sister graduated, and with honors I might add, from Haramaya (Alamaya) University. Suddenly I see why my parents would decide to have another child after a fine specimen such as myself. I was also able to see that the reputation that precedes the places I went to is based on solid ground. Harar in particular has an aura of chill and warmth at the same time: and I ain’t talking about no climate. 

I did not get to feed the hyenas and have a set of theories explaining why I failed to do so. It may be that I saw no toothbrushes and toothpaste lying around and was avoiding the stink. Once a girl did it for the first time, everyone else was following suit. And I like to think of myself as one not to follow the pack: may be the act got old right there and then. May be I was jetlagged J and not in the mood.  I think now is the right time to let you know that I flew, for the first time ever. I was concerned that I might suffer from vertigo but except for the occasional urge to jump, I was fine. But, as you can clearly see I suffer from the usage of big words. On an episode of everybody hates Chris, everybody was telling the main character (Chris Rock) “…myocardial infarction….” and he responds in the background “why can’t he just say heart attack” .I also suffer from the construction of lengthy sentences therein are contained too many and often unnecessary words which are made up of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Moreover, there were 11 “I’‘’s in this paragraph.

 My maladies are so many, so getting back to the theories … 

May be I was disappointed by the workings of Ethiopian Airlines to the point of being unable to give meat on a piece of stick to a member of the family Hyaenidae which has a bite powerful enough to crack concrete and whose females are endowed with a penis like structure which has them mistaken for males. On the ticket, the time of departure for Dire was stated as Friday morning at 8, and we arrived at Bole around 6:30 for check in. We learned that the flight has been transferred to 4 in the afternoon. We returned at 2:45, boarded the plane at 5:35, and landed at 7. But the worst was still to come. The return flight was scheduled for 3 p.m. and we made sure that we were there at 1. The plane came at around 7:30 and it was 9:15 when we finally got home. The hours in between ,we spent in the airport’s hideous lounge. There is talk of many Ethiopiawian, tiwilde Ethiopiawian and ferenjoch coming for the millennium. But this important gateway to tourist attraction is in a sorry state of being: from basic upkeep to catering to …

 Some of the times are approximations and by”we” I mean the others and I. 

 May be I was pissed by the queue in the stadium where the convocation took place. Most of the queues I get involved in are either horizontal ones with a bunch of people being restrained by a guy with a stick (so are they queues?) or ones where the line is well formed at the back but in the front there is an uncertain arrangement (and I hate uncertainty). On Saturday, it was the former. After a while the people overrun the police and scrambled for the limited number of seats that were in the tent: I was among the lucky ones. 

 

The trend in almost any speech made nowadays is to say “ yihen…. liyu yemiyadergew bemillenniumu wazema lay honen….”. If I fed the jib, it would have been something special because it would have happened on the eve of the new..shut your mouth! But many things before and after it (the act of mabilat) made it so that I couldn’t. Another of the “after” factors was the life sentence handed out on Monday to the Kinjit leaders and members. On the newscast, they were talking about how two weeks earlier, the defendants had written a letter of apology to the office of the prime minister and how the letter was not made public until after the rulings lest it would have put undue pressure on the court. But if you ask me, the signatures on the letter were copied from an agreement that was rumored to have been signed by the two sides; an agreement that laid responsibility on both sides for what happened post-election. And the rest of the letter, they have computers, don’t they? Another rumor is that the apologetic letter was in fact written by the defendants, a third in a series of which the previous two what’s his face would not accept. 

The thing is, I can not trust the rumors; neither can I the news. Anyway, the letter has reportedly been forwarded to the president. 

I guess the point I have been trying to make thus far is that there are two types of people. There are the doers like my sister, and there are people like me who waste time writing seven paragraphs of unrelated mumbo jumbo explaining why they did not, and some more ,counting the number of lines in those paragraphs which by the way is  49.

My recent travels were not only physical but also took place in my mind. It has been ten years since the death of Diana and mother Theresa ,nine since The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and the world is left with people like Paris Hilton to make the headlines. Ten years since Titanic and I never knew that screen copies existed until then. Ten years since I started feeling hip hop and r n b, since I was a tenth grader, since Tamrat Layne got jailed….. 

That was for the past.

The future came to me while in a big ass lecture theater, attending a class along with other three students. I started fantasizing about how I would like to own the stage when I become a teacher in the foreseeable future. And there it was the future! It was ten years from now and I have devised a new way of teaching, a cross between psychiatry and pedagogy; psychiped if you will. I walk into the packed room without teaching aids of any sort. I hypnotize the students and spit my “game” .After an hour or so I count to three and snap my fingers: the students wake up feeling educated. My teaching methods have not been perfected yet, I should warn you. I still have to work out ways of painting mental images of complex chemical reactions and of cellular structures.  

This too happened in the future. 

One morning I see my students marveling at my wife who came to drop me off at school. The class starts normal and in the middle I say “I see some of you happen to have a thing for my wife: I saw you give her the jaw – dropped, drool – all overLook; the same look I had when I first laid eyes on her.” their eyes are wide shut but I can see their faces illuminating at the very mention of her. Then suddenly I pull out my gun and fire a couple of rounds (not towards them though). Bang bang! Class over! They wake up and run for the exits. That should teach them not to stare at her again. I get fired off course and most likely end up in prison. 

Apparently, me in the future is a very possessive dude with a gun. 

How about twenty years on?

I was thinking about a reunion with you guys. Corny as it may sound, we can call it vision 20/20, meet up in Nehase 2020 and do whatever : definitely hit Harar . I heard this story about people who were students in a Bahir Dar high school thirty years ago. They had a pact that they would meet this year and they are making good on that. 

What say you? 

I hope ay 

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count down

Count down to the millenium. Hope tibe will like this.

to what to what to what to what

17. Semonun yetemechugn negeroch……….65 days to go

Kaltemechegn neger lijemir. By now you might have heard that the new seven wonders of the world have been named. I am a bit disappointed that neither Axum nor Lalibela made it even to the last twenty. Esti eyuachew, min yansachewal? I salute them and hope to visit them someday.

                                                         

Mo Ibrahim is the Sudanese founder of Celtel, a mobile service provider in many parts of Africa.  He has sold the company to Kuwaitis for some 2.3 billion $ Anyway, he has now come up with a new idea .He has set up a foundation that is going to award African leaders deemed outstanding.

 

A guy in Harvard is developing an index that is going to be used to make the evaluation. One winner a year is going to receive a prize of 500 000 $ for ten years and 200 000 $ thereafter. He reckons that the fear of being suddenly separated from the lavish lifestyle they used to enjoy makes what their face corrupt and what not. The first winner is going to be announced in October 2007. One of the skeptics said of the plan that most of the “bad governance” is done at the ministerial level and the presidents/prime ministers alone can do so much.

                                          

  The picture above is of a hybrid between a horse and a zebra. I got it from a Spanish blog by the name “inadecuado”. I started visiting this blog in the hope that it was going to help me improve my Spanish. It is mostly pictures and videos with short descriptions. I do not visit it as often as I set out to. Oh by the way, did I tell you that I once bought an Italian magazine on the streets mistaking it for a Spanish one. I realized my mistake soon enough and returned it to the guy who sold it to me. But I was a laughing stock for sometime due to this. 

It has been a while since Robin Thicke released his album. For all I know he might have gone double platinum by now. I have heard and loved two songs of his: lost without you and can you believe. I recently saw his cd cover and have admired the creativity.

                                      

 Lauryn Hill is also set to release a new album; can not believe that it has been nine years. I hope it is banging as supposed to. The mtv unplugged album was also nice. On the home front, I have already told you about Mikaya and even sent some of you a song. But it is time you know that she also happens to have a nice smile.

                                                              Staying with music, here are the scientists turned rockers who brought to the live earth concerts what has been dubbed “the coolest concert on earth, literally”.                                       And staying with cool, this post would not be complete if I did not mention one of the coolest human beings I have ever met. In Hebrew her name stands for                                         Damn straight I can do mystery!  One

16. Zinab ewedalehu!……………….75/74/73/72 days to go

Writing from my three months’ experience, it is hard to be a blogger. What I have learned is that you need a muse to inspire you and once the ideas keep on coming you have to try and stay stimulated and hope to write them all. 

My inspiration for this post came mostly from the rain that poured down on me yesterday and in part from the insect I saw some days ago. Here go my piece; hope you enjoy it. Yethiopia television, yehisanat program kifil, enanten lemasideset ,lik beseatu…… 

The kiremt is upon us: it is raining-cats and dogs at times and we are chilling-literally. There is bekolo on the streets, chika is everywhere and especially in our neighborhood upon which the road construction has conferred the name “boka sefer”; or so Robel says. All the hallmarks of the season are there and there also is the aberration of ladies clad in cleavage showing and shoulder baring tops. For some, this look has become an obsession that those two particular areas do not seem to get an off season.  

I love it when it rains! Starting from when the sky darkens, to when I am on the road or in the comfort of my home when it is raining. The dark clouds make me fantasize about sleeping in their midst.  If the rains catch me while traveling by foot, my choice would be to keep on going, whistling a song. Pitying the people who run for shelter for missing the glorious downpour. Hydrophobic bastards! 

This doesn’t mean that I always get soaked to the best of my satisfaction. Sometimes the rains are really hard core, I might be headed somewhere else as opposed to home or the fear of being thought of as too showy/crazy might force me to run for cover.

But yesterday …… it was dark, I was on a less frequented dirt road, was on my way home …… man! It was just the rain and me.  And it spoke to me in words so sublime that it made my soul mellow. These were its exact words: “mogne! atitelelim? ” . Okay, it did not say anything. Still, I got to have my fix and it felt goooooood! 

When I got home dripping all over, the look on my mom and dad’s face said “where did we go wrong with him?” Okay I lied; I do not know what they thought. Give me a break; I am not a mind reader! 

How about when it rains while staying inside? It too I love and especially the sound it makes on the corrugated iron sheet roofing. I tell you, when it comes to enjoying this particular sound, people living in concrete buildings have the luck of cavemen. The same is true for people living in huts. But still, you have to feel sorry for the people who are outside (they will get wet; boo hoo). Living in Ethiopia, you again have to feel sorry for people whose homes have roofs and walls that leak; and worse even for those who sleep on the streets. That right there I think is enough to take the romance out of the rain. 

I can say winter is my favorite season. May be because I live in the land of “the thirteen months of sunshine” and rain makes for a good change.  “The sun is going to shine” is the usual way of representing hope. But for me, clouds have to do more with hope. May be because I live in a land where the clouds judge over the lives of millions.  Whatever the case might be, I beg you not to try and relate the following picture with hope and shit. Just shut up and enjoy the beauty.

                                                    The picture below, I know you will recognize either as “ashen” or “kiremt agbi”. Mengie says that they are a life stage of termites. When I was a kid, one of the best things about winter was playing with these suckers and getting to bring down some of them. The one on the photo is actually is a victim of the rain: no invertebrates were intentionally harmed during the writing of this post

                                               

Back in the days we had patches of grass in our home where we used to play football, run around and chase ashen. I wish my kids, all 12 of them, get to have all the green they want to play on: both inside the house and outside. Nowadays, the playing fields are being given to developers and the kids are turning to another type of green-chat.  Even my primary school now has concrete for a sports’ field. You should see the die hard football lovers who play on busy asphalt in our neighborhood every Sunday, looking out for cars.

Henry has left Arsenal. Though I am a Manchester United supporter, it still is sad news. He was one of the best players to grace the premiership and it beats me why he  never won a golden ball. 

These past three days, I came down with a cold. And you know that in this situation, everyone you meet is eager to suggest one type of medicine or other. “nikil yadergewal”, “esun tetiteh shifinfin bileh tegna: belab yiwetalihal”…… But one proposal has made me admire the imagination of whosoever came up with it.Yetefela mirinda!? You gotta love it! 

Well Tilaye, a new leader where you are. I admire the way the whole thing unfolded. He left number 10 and another guy entered; just like that. You know what else I loved? The hot car he and his wife were in.Haileselassie left in a Volkswagen beetle (props to Teddy Afro) and his destination was not particularly nice. Mengistu took an airplane and he lied to us about where he was off to. Zimbabwe now is in deep shit (4500 % inflation) but he may be okay so long as Mugabe is in power. Is it the University of Edinburgh which is thinking of revoking the honorary degree that it gave to Mugabe ? 

And what about Meles? 

 Here are some of the bad things that come to my mind with regards to him. A 70,000 lives and a 26 billion war, the people that were imprisoned and brutally killed pre/ during/ post-election, the way force seems to be the only response to every kind of problem, the population that is being driven apart mentally for all the physical roads that are being built, an avalanche of political jargon, a country that remains to be the prototype for misery …….. 

 I think I am becoming a follower of the “Teddy Afro school of thought”. If forgiveness is the way that Ethiopia can move forward, and it might as well be, I am ready to forgive Meles. And I hope all the real victims get to forgive him. I guess what I am trying to say is, I do not mind seeing him leave power in a fancy ride. Not too fancy though: I do not want to see him roll in a 2018 model automobile. You dig? No? Betkur ena nech television lemitiketatelu hulu ,lemalet yefelegkut betolo siltan bilek des yilegnal new. And I wish he stays out of the public eye; you know, play tennis or something. Cuz I am fed up of his ass.

 I once read on Addis Admas that King Caleb was one of the few if any Ethiopian leaders who gave up power willingly while alive and well. He became a monk and later was canonized. Ironically, if memory serves me right, his nigs falls on Ginbot 20. 

These days, an interview of Teddy has created a stir: he was talking about reconciliation, the release of prisoners, a good spirit among Ethiopians …… And there was also talk of a deal being struck to release the kinijit prisoners. It was then, on a report to the parliament , that Meles said it was not going to happen. 

The end. 

I am kidding; but you are getting there. 

The last post was on biases and I believe that they are evil. Still, allow me to base the next few lines on prejudice because it is very important for my story. (Like that scene on liar liar Jim Carrey- I object!…….judge- on what grounds?………………j c –on the ground that it is very damaging to my case……………judge-overruled……..j c – good call!) 

The prejudice I am going to talk about has to do with how everytime we see a dreadlocked person smoke something, we conclude that it is ganja!? For all we know, it could be a nyala, delight or… On my way to somewhere, I saw exactly this kind of person on a doorstep. When I returned, he had a book on his hands and the title was, get this, “birds”! 

The relation between the Rasta and birds stretches back a long time as evidenced by Bob Marley’s song “three little birds”. What you probably do not know is that it is not at all about the birds pitching by Bob’s doorstep. It is more about Bob pitching by their nest. He rose up one morning, smiled with the rising sun, he got high bebado hodu and the rest is musical history. The three birds were in the nest alone because the mother had went to look for some food and “baby do not worry about a thing” was the nursery rhyme they were singing at the time. That is a breach of interspecies copyright law for you! 

You have to agree (I insist) that lyrically, it is one of his weaker songs. The words are powerful and all but he just keeps on repeating them. And if you are wondering where I got this story from, just ask the elderly Rasta who happened to be there, in flight, the same morning and near the same tree tops. He saw the whole thing.

And who am I? Let me give you some clues.

1.       As a child my younger sister used to tie my shoes for me cuz apparently, I used to find it toooo complicated. I still do. 

2.     My nickname around the house is “buchi”

3.     I scored a 100% in ersha in the first grade. 

Do I hear a “Tibebe”? Do I? Yeah baby!

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