"Dawn Of Freedom"

I finally got a copy of Dr. Berhanu Nega’s book entitled “yenesanet goh siked” (The Dawn of Freedom)

The book takes off with brief early political indoctrination of the author and elaborates the need and importance of liberal democracy in Ethiopia and explains in more details some of the problems and challenges of building democracy in Ethiopia. The book also talks about the election and the political attitudes of the ruling party and opposition groups before and after the election and much more....

For those of you who have rusty amharic comprehension like myself, you probably need to start reading it in a slow pace until you loosen up or get the hang of it. I would have liked if the book had a glossary of words and acronyms at the back or front of the book.

Nevertheless, Dr. Berhanu’s well thought, and well-written book has a power to captivate and emotionally to involves us, no matter what our political views and opinion are at the phenomenon in question.

I found his pragmatic and intelligent approach to the Ethiopian politics and especially his advocacy of non-violence struggle, very fascinating and morally very stimulating.

It is a must read book !

Happy Epiphany

ADDIS ABABA (AFP) - A sea of faithful resplendently dressed in white have filled the streets of the Ethiopian capital to celebrate the annual Epiphany, or the baptism of Jesus Christ.

Jubilant crowds from Addis Ababa's 13 Orthodox Churches descended on city streets for the religious ritual, locally known as "Timkat", marked on the 11th day of the fifth month in accordance with the Orthodox calender.

Making prayer pit-stops, the procession walked behind replicas of tablets of the Biblical Ten Commandments, removed once a year during the festival from the Ark of the Covenant -- the vessel in which the Commandments are believed to have been held and which the Orthodox church here maintains is located in Ethiopia.

Children, adorned in the national red, orange and green colours, walked alongside white-veiled adults as they belted out hymns and beat drums. The priests from the hexagonal churches and the monks and nuns wore their most ornate robes and habits.
"The message is, this is the feast of our faith, the baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ is for our own sake," said Abuna Paulos, the patriarch of the country's 35,000 Orthodox churches.
"When we speak about religion or about Christianity, we are speaking about peace," he told AFP.
Second only to Christmas in religious importance to Ethiopians, the festival attracts hundreds of thousands of faithful and tourists to Addis Ababa and is capped by a water drenching session to symbolise the baptism of Jesus Christ.

According to the church's lore, Ethiopia's first emperor Menelik I took the Ark of the Covenant from Jews in Jerusalem because they had lost faith and were no longer observing God's commandments handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai.
Menelik I, the founder of the Ethiopian empire, is traditionally believed to be the son of the Biblical King Solomon and Queen Sheba.

He is said to have brought the Ark of the Covenant to Ethiopia after the destruction of Solomon's Temple and according to that legend, the Ark should be preciously conserved in the Axoum church north of the country.
At the festival, the tablets from the 13 Addis Ababa churches are placed in the middle of the crowd, which holds night-long prayers before the symbolic baptism.
The faithful seek out blessings from the priests, prostating themselves before crosses as women touch the grounds trodden by Abuna and touch their childrens' foreheads as a symbol of blessing to their offspring.

At dawn of the following day, Abuna plunges a giant cross in water to bless the crowd and later spray pipes are turned on to shower the swollen crowd of believers, the most faithful of whom will remain fully dressed for the dowsing.

Cool Stuff

I don't know where I got this picture but it touched me so much, I had to post it on my blog.

It is one of those pictures which are so poignant and heartbreaking.













Jimma is said to be the capital city; the place where coffee originated from. What do you think if Starbucks names our coffee "Starbucks Jimma"














Check this cool Emperor Menelik era passport, this was the kind of passport they were using to travel around the globe back then..... Please click on the image to see what the passport looks like

Life's Simple Secret

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must out run the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle, when the sun comes up, you better start running (African Proverb)

And so it goes for many of us in our day to day lives. Economic pressures, new technologies, globalization, demographic shifts and a host of other realities challenge us to keep pace in today's hectic life. updating our knowledge and continuous learning is one easy route we can take to manage this vast array of challenges and opportunities that confront us in our lives and in our work places.

"Politics Is a Dirty Game "

I don't know who coined this wise saying and for what reason and when, but some how I am realizing this to be quite true these days; when I look in to our world politics in general and Ethiopian politics in particular.

I am from a generation of young men and women who had spend my formative years in a country where I and many of my generation of young people witnessed unimaginable form of injustice and crime being commited, and politically motivated killings was so rampant and was a day to day prevalence that almost slaughter my entire generation. I still have hard time coming in terms with this reality of the bygone years, and yet here we are again in a different epoch of our history but heading back to square one.

One of the biggest hurdles that attributed to the political catastrophes we had in the past as well as at present in our midst and that clearly stands out and very obvious is Intolerance.

We had all kinds of political groups in the past that couldn't solve their different political views in a civilized manner and nowadays we have appallingly too many kinds of political groups, liberation fronts which I can't even decipher their acronym. It seems all these groups they have in common is not the best interest of their people or country, but a yearning for power, sadly enough that is their common denominator. What a pathetic state of affair!