Errr...Hello?

This is a breakthrough!

The internet in Ethiopia has truly lost its rags (CHerQun Tilo abede) to some manic Telecom server that misdirects e-mails, resets e-mail accounts (my e-mail seems to have been hacked into...) and generally has become even more user unfriendly. It's good to be back, however, access to this page was totally unexpected and I haven't got a solid piece for posting.

Later

So feudal

The road that leads from Yeka to the upper city centre is being expanded to add a couple of more lanes and make it more presentable as befits the neighbourhood that hosts embassies of old and respected standing. The plans foresaw that this road will have to get a piece off the land that the Kenyan embassy stands on, perhaps 4metres or so. The embassy said no. I'm not sure how many square metres of valuable Addis land and Ethiopian soil the embassy reigns over, but I'm sure it could spare a few- say 200m sq off the 1500 or even 2500 m sq it stands on. As it is, the embassy's refusal was accepted- so the road is being expanded on one side only, meaning that a whole row of houses needs to be demolished. The residents are desperate because they have no where to go apart from some vague promise of being rehoused in condominiums "soon".

Let the embassy think it can do that, let it imagine through some weird egomaniac fug that it can command over it's host country like that- but can't this spineless government even stand up to an uppity little ambassador and refuse to destroy its people's houses or make the embassy/ Kenyan government pay direct compensation to them? How can we be sold and traded with like this 60 years after the last spurt of colonialism has ended?

Tu Pac with a Masinqo

Another example that we just cannot stop c...c....c..ccccopying others:

I saw a poster for a dude who calles himself Tu Pac, wears a bandana and brandishes a Masinqo... HELLO!?!?!?!

Maybe I should sample some of his tough squeaky-squawky YeArada Lij Hip Hop before I say more- if there's a Tu Pac, is there a P Diddy and Biggy?

Just a thought

Here our officers run to Eritrea and elsewhere like dogs caught stealing
In Thailand they tell their PM to get lost while he's abroad- without bloodshed...

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ROGUE! Magazine Psycho Test

You wanna know how high your personal fear factor is? Wanna see whether you belong to the hall of fame or hell? Check this test out and see whether you're up there with the greatest tyrants!
Circle the answer that appeals to you most and count how often you have circled each letter- the one you circled most describes you.

1. You are meeting with the Hungarian and Thai ambassadors who are facing an uncertain future and ask you for advice as to what their next steps should be. You suggest they

a) Await a call from their heads of state and continue on the diplomatic cocktail circuit

b)Take all the money and assets they can, settle old scores and get off that sinking ship they call their government for a brief exile in a luxurious location from where they can plan and execute a civil war over a patch of dirt

c)Fly back incognito, settle old scores with their previous superiors and ruthlessly work their way up in the under the new administration, providing insider info


2. You visit the region you grew up in on a political reconnaissance tour, when you see the people of that area you feel

a) A deep affinity and are pleased they are exhibiting a better lifestyle, health and educational facilities than before- which means taxes can be raised

b) Indifference that it still looks the same, after all you left for a reason- but you get out for some photos for the PR lot

c)Get an uneasy feeling that they are harbouring more rancour towards you than they let on, and stashes of capital wealth, so you order a list of all males between 16 and 70 and decree they are all to join the army, while imposing higher taxes on their land and meagre assets.


3. The media is getting frisky lately and are publishing critical opinion pieces, cartoons and jokes about your government, how do you handle this

a)Study opinion polls and try to get to the bottom of the problem, whether you do anything about it is another matter

b)Arrest some editors, raid their offices etc according to “Totalitarianism for Dummies”

c)What media?


4. Elections are looming and you cannot really fathom the public opinion, do you

a)Step up your campaign and leak some “dirty secrets” about your challengers

b)Flex some muscle by imposing tighter control on media, trade unions, student’s associations and human rights watchdogs. Deep down inside you know that public opinion doesn’t matter a fraction of donor opinion

c)Arrest youths, shut down all media (also the government one), impose curfews and make the killings more “visible”


5. At the current UN general assembly you are

a) Popular for your awkward puns and a as a great party pal, albeit a bit dim

b) Accepted by all, who to their dismay realise that you’re a bit of a political butterfly

c) Popular with the great big crowds who have made straw-dolls with your face on which they burn every evening.


6. At the dining table of the UN meeting the talk revolves around

a) Your and other heads of states’ exploits at the elite Uni you all went to

b) Fair trade and how to come out of it richer and cleaner

c) The putrid smell of the delicatessen cheese that reminds you and your table mates of the prisons in your countries


7. During dinner at home the talk revolves around

a) Bills, laws, decrees etc

b) How to get the most out of your people and everyone else- and your female staff into bed

c) What dinner- what home? You don’t eat nor sleep- you test the latest torture gadgets and weapons of urban terror


8.Your wife thinks you’re

a) Too busy, never home

b) Too busy, never home and she’s glad of it

c) A rubber doll doesn’t think


9. Your children think you’re

a) Too distracted, never attentive

b) Too weird and unpredictable

c) 5 want your job, 4 are in exile, 15 are in various jails and 8 want your head


10. You want to be remembered as

a) A great, fun guy who made no major waves

b) The stern and just father of a nation

c) How good I was at milking the donors and keeping in power for 30years despite being voted out 6 times

Here's your score:
Mostly
a- Too moderate, you’re a joke of a politician who still believes in dialogue and democracy

b- Ok, you’re a fast learner, however you should stop shaking hands with old ladies all the time- too cheesy. But hey, strike a pose for the ROGUE! camera team!

c- Great, you are due for the HSPP (Hitler-Stalin-PolPot) Terror Prize and Gjengis Honorary Medal

From zero to hero

There is a new delight on the streets of Addis that carries more serious weight beneath. The fresh batch of graduates of the new Federal Police officers are out and about in dapper fresh khaki; the joke being that they are so young and skinny they have to sling their belts twice around their waists and get a muscle strain from having to lift their boots. Some of the more menacing looking ones carry big guns and equally big scowls which nonetheless fail to disguise their youth and ignorance, others carrying truncheons, gangling about on patrol duties.

These new killing machines are rumoured to be the replacement for the “louche and soppy” police currently operating, who are apparently listed for transfer to rural areas that are inherently pro-TPLF/ EPRDF (errr… where?). So next time someone chucks a stone can we expect a higher death toll or a lower one? Higher because they’re too young and keen to relate to the larger consequences of their perverse orders and actions; lower because they just don’t cut it and actually look like they could easily integrate into Addis life with its cynically accommodating residents’ sardonic hospitality that nonetheless must be a allusion to the much-missed warmth and humanity of back home.

Until then though we can entertain ourselves by watching how the young’uns flail about at major traffic intersections trying to direct the traffic- being ignored, pointed and laughed at.

EnquTaTash

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

May 1999 hold peace, prosperity and health for all of us

and deliver Ethiopia from this shadow

Quacktastic

Ouff, this rain is really eating away at my Optimism... (navigate away if you want light stuff)

Just run through these figures and see what it makes you think of the profusion of private clinics in larger cities:

Income (in ETB):

Consultation fee: 10 ETB x 50 Patients per day = 500 ETB (x 30) =15,000/ month
Laboratory fee: 80 ETB x 50 Patients per day = 4500 ETB (x 30) = 135,000/ month


Annual Income: 135,000 x 12 = 1,620,000

Add 10% miscellaneous= Total annual income = 1,782,000 ETB

Expenditure (in ETB):

Rent: 3000/ month (x12) = 36, 000
Utilities: 2500/ month (x12) = 30,000
Equipment maintenance: 1500/ month (x12) = 18,000
Salary for 8 support staff @ 400/ month: 3200/ month (x12) = 38,400
Tax and licence fees: 1500/ month (x12)= 18,000

Annual expenditure: = 140,400 ETB

Add 10% contingency= Total annual expenditure = 154, 440 ETB


Annual break-even/ profit: 1,782,000 minus 154,440 = 1,625,760 ETB


1.6 million Birr take-home, both doctors earn ~500,000 a year (how much do they declare to the taxman and subsequently have to pay in income tax?...) (see NB below)

Everyone has to make a living, especially as a freelancer you have to take what comes; in addition the figures in US$ etc would be laughable and perhaps 50% of the population can afford to pay that and more.

The point is that most private clinics are run like businesses, with a minimum daily turnover stipulated to all staff, especially the doctors. Turnover of cold hard cash, not people helped or any such soppy notions. Therefore, what does this mean on the ground:

-A normal flu suddenly requires intravenous treatment with “anti-inflammatory” drugs

-A skin irritation is diagnosed (using an array of blood tests, urine and stool analysis, when a swab of the area could have been the solution) both as a bacterial infection and allergy, with medication of the 3rd generation variety being doled out like qolo for both and neither.

-A colicky child has to take potent antibacterial drugs against the trinity of favourites: Typhoid, Typhus and Amoeba after the blood and stool had been examined in a messy, barely-sanitary laboratory right next to the filthy “washroom”

Another point is that if at least after all that hocus-pocus the right diagnosis and treatment were given to achieve long-lasting recovery and health the unscrupulous rip-off could just be excused.

NB: Calculations based on first hand information:
Local clinic with 24 hour- 7 day service close to a major transportation taxi hub in densely populated area so patient numbers are roughly 50/ day
Overnight stays and surgery excluded from sums
Lab fees always add up to a minimum of 75-80 Birr per visit, no matter whether it is a sprained foot and a blood test is ordered to check for stomach ulcer causing bacteria (Oh that rascal H. plyori! Nasty bug, but does it make you miss the steps on the stairs? No but it costs 70-120 ETB a pop for testing.)
All expenditure figures are assumed based on common fees for rent, overheads etc. plus 8 staff (excluding big cheeses)f: 2 Security, 1 Receptionist, 2 doctor’s assistants, 3 lab staff

Down on our knees

Ethiopia’ s poverty never seemed entrenched or hopeless. I saw the potential of the natural and human resources to yield something substantial for the future of a prosperous and dignified Ethiopia. The poverty, hunger, corruption, oppression and lack of infrastructure seemed like the growing pains of young and budding nation, symptoms of a worry child that will come good. I had hope, always had hope, even when I discovered that more beggars and homeless were out on the streets, that the gap between the rich and the poor was widening, I always had hope. How can a country so beautiful and rich in history, culture and resources ever fail to make it at some point? I would defend Ethiopia to people raised on the media-diet of hunger, drought and strife. I would point out the strong religious traditions, the mostly peaceful co-existence of religions, the ancient and rich history, the cultural variety and the unique ethnic identities and languages that come with this. Oh yes, we do have roads and food, oh even the most unique cereal in the world is used to make delicious food which is so rich in nutrients, it even gets really cold at night and when it rains we get the most dramatic thunderstorms- how rustic romantic! Of course at times I would resort to sarcasm when people were totally blinkered, I’d claim I swung from tree to tree on a liane wearing a loin cloth, suckling on a lioness and the cubs were my brothers…

The first inkling that perhaps we weren’t on the road to a better world came through work, when I saw that population growth was threatening to engulf and gobble up any development, when I saw how governments and NGOs alike had a vested interest in keeping Ethiopia poor. The didvide-and-rule tactics did and didn’t have success, they weren’t successful in that there was no Rwanda style ethnic strife as TPLF had hoped to orchestrate, but intolerance and prejudice are growing insidiously like an obscure cancer. The election and its aftermath weren’t such a great shock since Meles & Co didn’t really inspire faith, which strengthened the belief that Ethiopians have to work from within each individual to achieve freedom, democracy and consequently prosperity and well-being. The hope that the west would “do something” was a still-birth as the greater hidden agendas are unclear to ordinary mortals and are dictated by the “War on terror” and related neo-imperialistic aspirations.

But boy have we sunk to a new low! Now we are the mercenaries of the USA, the private henchmen; the EPRDF gets money to send Ethiopians into a war that we have very little to do with. So the question as to why the west support a tyrant like Meles has been answered, we are someone else’s dirt shovelers. We go abroad to do jobs the natives are too fine to do, now were are low enough to do just that even in our own corner of the world. The Mafia boss was burnt 15 years ago in Somalia, so now he sends his dispensable, thuggish, testosterone-crazed jackals to do the dirty job. The dead protesters from June and November ’05 didn’t just die for peace and stability in Ethiopia, oh no, they died for the safety and democracy in the land of the free- what do we on the ground get for it? Nothing, but more oppression, corruption and a slide deeper into the muck and tangly bog of human-induced development impediment. The USA, as short-sighted and yobbish as it always is, doesn’t realise that a bit of “hearts and minds” stuff in Jijiga with schools, libraries and clinics has not won anyone over, least of all the Somalis in that area.

The Ethiopians are starting to resent the terrorist-speziale treatment that they get at the hands of their own government in its effort to please the USA and keep itself in power. Resentment turns into hate, what with more fundamentalist muslim ideologies taking root in Ethiopia on one side and the dehumanising war on terror on the other, the EPRDF and thus the west are breeding more hate-blinded suicide-bombers. They aren’t stalling the spread on fundamentalist terror, they just opened another Kindergarten for it. And this is where I realise that our perceived poverty and economic worthlessness are dragging us back, by enslaving us to the warlords of terror on all sides and stripping us of any hope and dignity to do things our way for ourselves

Closer than you think

The recent blog-debate about homosexuality in Ethiopia was interesting and frightening in that it revealed the blinkered bias and prejudice about homosexuality like it's some deviation and disease. Today I found that it has been much closer to home than I realised when chatting to a cousin:

My uncle was not very popular in my world for various reasons, one being that he'd loose all male and adult aloofnes when it came to unruly kids, stooping to harmless pranks and trying to give tit for tat.

What was strange to us was that he used to spend so much time on his grooming, dyeieng his hair and fluffing it up for hours outside infront of a mirror. He used to have a minceing limpwristed walk that was impossible to keep up with in its leg-numbing slowness. He used to hand-make very realistic cloth dolls for my mother. He was married but after his misfit of a son was born they separated (nothing special for sure, but the wedding pictures show a cornered man). He used to bring over male friends, who would share his bed in a "brotherly" fashion. He wore a tiny braided ponytail that he'd stuff down his shirt collar when at home. He'd spend a lot of my mum's money. He drank a lot. He was nasty.

The nastiness, drinking and bitchiness to children (especially his nieces) are not steroetypical traits of gay men, but I reckon they are the result of the oppression and prejudice that cause the frustrations to come out in a nasty way. So not just for the sake of humanity and a more tolerant society should homosexuality be accepted as something that is part of human nature. Let's accept it for the sake of healthier families and happier men, for those thwarted and oppressed inevitably find someone else to torment, in most cases children. To those who say it's against God's will and design, if anything exists in the world it is by his design.

Thing is I just guessed only a few years ago that he might have been gay. I never had confirmation, the whole family was blind to it -despite the extended grooming etc (though stereotypes mean little on their own) and I didn't run it past my mother as she would have had a fit- after all he made dolls with his hands to keep her entertained.

Tonight my cousin and I almost simultaneously said "Did you know he was gay...?" Only to stop and gawk at each other, as no-one had ever mentioned it. And it will stay like that since it will not be seen as something that he just was among other things, like he was light-skinned or liked to wear a "shirrit", it would look like I was acting out a final piece of revenge against an uncle who bullied me by "tarnishing" his name with homosexuality. I think if I said he was a child molester, rapist or red-terror torturer people would accept it more since those are more "manly and heterosexual" things to do, but loving other men? Never.