Habeshaview CEO Tigist Kebede (right), stated that the partnership would offer a user-friendly and cost-effective option for accessing live news and entertainment channels. (courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: May 4th, 2023
New York (TADIAS) — Habeshaview Technology and Multimedia, a leading media, entertainment, and advanced technology company, has signed a partnership agreement with Ethio Telecom to provide IPTV (Internet Protocol television) services to Ethio Telecom’s mobile and data customers as a value-added service.
The agreement was signed on Thursday in Addis Ababa and the service is set to launch immediately.
According to the CEO of Habeshaview, Tigist Kebede, the partnership will provide an easily accessible alternative way of watching live news and entertainment channels at an affordable price. Tigist also added that the partnership will provide a home for many talented Ethiopian filmmakers and support them to showcase their work and earn revenue in the process.
At the Habeshaview and Ethio Telecom IPTV launch event in Addis Ababa on Thursday, May 4th, 2023. (Courtesy photo)
Habeshaview is a versatile media, entertainment, and technology company with its main office located in Virginia and additional branches in London and Addis Ababa.
Habeshaview and Ethiotelecom signed the agreement in Ethiopia on Thursday, May 4th, 2023. The announcement highlights that the collaboration also gives audiences access to exclusive Ethiopian films straight after their cinema release on any internet connected devices. (Photo: Courtesy of Habeshaview)
The press release noted that the service will offer a wide variety of national and international content, including video on demand, games, audio channels, and a catch-up service of original content sourced from a wide variety of studios worldwide with multiple language options at affordable prices.
Habeshaview is a multi-faceted media, entertainment, and advanced technology company that provides a user-friendly OTT platform and apps to provide a premium viewing experience. Established in 2015, Habeshaview is headquartered in Virginia, United States of America, with offices in London, United Kingdom, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It has a data center and technology development office in The Netherlands.
Dinkinesh, which is Lucy's Ethiopian name, means "you are marvelous" in Amharic, reflecting the significance of this mission. (Photo: United Launch Alliance)
Tadias Magazine
Published: March 17th, 2023
New York (TADIAS) — NASA’s spacecraft Lucy is on its way to the Dinkinesh asteroid, paying homage to Ethiopia’s place as the cradle of humanity and one of the oldest civilizations on earth.
Dinkinesh, which is Lucy’s Ethiopian name, means “you are marvelous” in Amharic, reflecting the significance of this mission. Named after the famous Lucy fossil, which revolutionized our understanding of human evolution, the Lucy spacecraft is expected to do the same for our understanding of the origin and evolution of our solar system.
According to NASA’s Lucy project scientist Keith Noll, “We are excited to have another opportunity to honor that connection” between Lucy and Ethiopia. This mission is not only a scientific endeavor but also a tribute to Ethiopia’s rich cultural heritage and its contribution to our understanding of our shared human history.
Below is a highlight from Space.com:
Meet Dinkinesh: Asteroid targeted by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft gets a marvelous name
Asteroid Dinkinesh. (Image credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)
The first asteroid to be visited by NASA’s space rock-hopping craft Lucy has finally been given a name. The tiny asteroid in the main asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter has received the moniker “Dinkinesh” or ድንቅነሽ in Amharic, the language of Ethiopia, which means “you are marvelous.”
Dinkinesh was discovered in 1999, but like millions of other main-belt asteroids, it didn’t get a name, only receiving a designation number when its orbit was well determined. First known under its provisional designation as 1999 VD57, the asteroid later entered catalogs as 152830. A proper name was only proposed when the rock was selected as a target for NASA’s Lucy mission.
Evolution enthusiasts may recognize the name Dinkinesh as it is the alternative name of the fossilized Australopithecus afarensis skeleton known as “Lucy”, which was discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia.
“This mission was named for Lucy because just as that fossil revolutionized our understanding of human evolution, we expect this mission to revolutionize our understanding of the origin and evolution of our solar system,” Lucy project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Keith Noll, said in a statement(opens in new tab). “We are excited to have another opportunity to honor that connection.”
Dinkinesh will be first up in a packed tour for the Lucy spacecraft when it reaches the tiny asteroid on Nov. 1, 2023. The space rock wasn’t originally part of the 12-year tour that will see the spacecraft visit nine other asteroids and was only added in January.
Dinkinesh was added to Lucy’s itinerary because the spacecraft’s operators think that the tiny asteroid can be used to test the probe’s innovative terminal tracking system. The system will allow Lucy to precisely image the asteroids it encounters as it passes by them at high speeds.
The fact that Dinkinesh is under half a mile (under a kilometer) in diameter means it will provide an excellent test of Lucy’s high-speed imaging capabilities before the spacecraft starts its main science mission of investigating the never-before-explored Jupiter Trojan asteroids.
This large group of asteroids shares the orbit of Jupiter, the solar system’s largest planet. Astronomers believe that these Trojan asteroids are fossilized remnants of the material that formed the planets of the solar system over 4.5 billion years ago.
“This is really a tiny little asteroid,” Hal Levison, a planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Lucy’s principal investigator, said about Dinkinesh in the statement. “Some of the team affectionately refer to it as ‘Dinky.’ But, for a small asteroid, we expect it to be a big help for the Lucy mission.”
The visit to Dinkinesh won’t be just a test of Lucy’s instrumentation. Researchers are also excited about what they can learn from the asteroid itself, which will be the smallest main asteroid belt object ever explored by a space probe.
In terms of size, Dinkinesh is actually more like a near-Earth asteroid than a main-belt object, as these tend to be bigger. Astronomers hope that the rock could help them discover how asteroids change as they leave their position between Jupiter and Mars and head closer to our planet.
“At closest approach, if all goes smoothly, we expect Dinkinesh to be 100s of pixels across as seen from Lucy’s sharpest imager,” Simone Marchi, a senior research scientist at SwRI, said in the statement. “While we won’t be able to see all the details of the surface, even the general shape may indicate whether near-Earth asteroids — which originate in the main belt — change significantly once they enter near-Earth space.”
That means, just as the Lucy skeleton proved revolutionary to our understanding of human evolution, Dinkinesh could be viral in our understanding of the evolution of the solar system.
Known as the Ethiopian Elvis, Alemayehu became an iconic figure on Ethiopia's jazz scene from the 1960s and performed right up until his last years. (Getty Images)
BBC
Notable African deaths of 2021: From ‘Ethiopia’s Elvis’ to mega pastors
As 2021 [comes] to a close, it is time to remember some of the pioneering, inspiring and controversial figures on the African continent who died this year.
Getty Images
Here is a look at 10 of those to whom we have said farewell.
MUSICIAN Alemayehu Eshete, 80
Known as the Ethiopian Elvis, Alemayehu became an iconic figure on Ethiopia’s jazz scene from the 1960s and performed right up until his last years. From his young days, he was known for his cover versions of Elvis Presley and told the Guardian in 2008 that James Brown later became a great influence.
Getty Images
“I dressed like an American, grew my hair, sang Jailhouse Rock and Teddy Bear – sometimes we would do Strangers in the Night. But the moment that I started singing Amharic songs my popularity shot up,” he said.
In its notes about one of his albums, record seller Rough Trade said “he didn’t so much sing to his audience as seduce it, working himself and his fans into a sweat-soaked frenzy”.
Alemayehu Eshete in concert at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park [in New York] in 2008. His admirers compared him to both Elvis Presley and James Brown. He became a swaggering star in the late 1960s, when Addis Ababa experienced a golden age of night life and music. Decades later, he was rediscovered. (Getty)
Alemayehu Eshete, a soulful Ethiopian pop singer widely known as the “Abyssinian Elvis” who became a star in the 1960s when a cultural revolution took hold of Addis Ababa, died on Sept. 2…
For years under Haile Selassie’s imperial rule, Ethiopia’s music industry was controlled by the state. Orchestras dutifully performed patriotic songs at government events, while defiant bands played Little Richard songs at night in clubs. It was forbidden to record and distribute music independently.
“All the musicians used to work for the government,” Mr. Eshete said in a 2017 documentary about the era, “Ethiopiques: Revolt of the Soul.” “When they told you to perform, you had to perform. We were treated like average workers, not like real artists.”
But in the late 1960s, as Selassie grew old and the grip of his rule loosened, Addis Ababa experienced a golden age of night life and music, and Mr. Eshete became a swaggering star of the so-called “swinging Addis” era.
The sound that dominated this period was distinct: an infectious blend of Western-imported blues and R&B with traditional Ethiopian folk music. It was typified by hypnotic saxophone lines, funky electric guitar stabs and grooving piano riffs.
As a teenager, Mr. Eshete was smitten with American rock ‘n’ roll, and his idol was Elvis Presley, so when he started singing in the clubs of Addis he imitated his hero. He sported a pompadour and wore big collared shirts as he gyrated onstage.
.“I dressed like an American, grew my hair, sang ‘Jailhouse Rock,’” he told The Guardian in 2008. “But the moment that I started singing Amharic songs, my popularity shot up.”
He was soon enlisted in the fabled Police Orchestra, a state-run band composed of Ethiopia’s finest musicians, and he began playing with the ensemble at government functions in the city. After hours, he found refuge in the underground music scene.
In 1969, the defiant act of Mr. Eshete and a young record shop owner named Amha Eshete (no relation) galvanized the scene.
The acclaimed “Éthiopiques” album series, begun in 1997, ignited international interest in Ethiopian music. Two releases in the series are devoted to Mr. Eshete’s work. (Photo: Buda Musique)
Amha Eshete decided to found a label, Amha Records, to commit to vinyl the Ethiopian pop music that bands were performing in clubs. Few musicians were willing to flout the law with him until Alemayehu Eshete stepped forward and offered to record the funky tune “Timarkialesh,” and Amha then had it manufactured as a 45 r.p.m. single in India.
Next month on October 01, 2021 Jessica Beshir will participate in a Q&A session with the audience following the screening of her documentary 'Faya Dayi' by the American Film Institute at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. (Photo via Linkedin)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: September 23rd, 2021
New York (TADIAS) — One of the marks of a successful movie is the lively conversations and reactions it generates among its audience as Filmmaker Jessica Beshir’s Sundance-premiered Ethiopian film Faya Dayi continues to do on social media and other forums.
Next month Jessica Beshir will participate in a Q&A with the public following the screening of her documentary by the American Film Institute at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Maryland.
“A film ten years in the making, Faya Dayi was conceived by director Jessica Beshir as an act of reconnecting with the Ethiopian homeland she left at the age of sixteen, when her family fled to Mexico to escape the chaos and oppression of the Mengistu and Derg political regimes,” the announcement notes. “Later, in 2011, during one of her return trips to Ethiopia, Beshir began collecting observations and impressions of the country by shooting footage that told the stories of several Ethiopians and the social, religious, and economic forces influencing their lives.”
The press release adds: “Among those forces was the ascendency of khat [ጫት ch'at] as a national cash crop. A plant with hallucinatory properties that has been traditionally harvested and chewed for ritualistic purposes, khat was, in Beshir’s youth, one of many lucrative crops bolstering the Ethiopian economy. But in the intervening years, climate change, along with other factors, had forced farmers to grow khat to the near exclusion of all other plants, and its excessive presence in the country increased recreational khat usage among the younger generations. Climate change had also dried up lakes, while economic necessity and political tumult had forced people living in rural areas to look for new prospects overseas or in the capital city of Addis Ababa.”
In explaining her experience of cinema while growing up in Ethiopia and what led her to become a filmmaker Jessica recalls that she was raised in a military camp located adjacent to a Russian military base in Harar. “In the Russian camp, there was an open-air movie theater,” she rememberers. “Us kids dug a hole under the barbed wire and snuck through it to the movie theater.”
She continues: “We’d go there every night to watch Russian films—mostly war films that were meant to elevate the morale of the Russian soldiers stationed in Ethiopia. One of our friends was trained by the Russians to project the films. He would change the reels of the films in the back of a Land Rover, and his leverage with the other kids was that if you were nice, he would show you how he changed the reels. Before that, it never occurred to me that movies were actually made by people. Seeing something of the magic of how movies are constructed, and experiencing the communal aspect of moviegoing, made me feel less alone and transported me during a time of war and trauma. I gravitated to filmmaking in large part because of that.”
Jessica shares that after returning to Ethiopia from many years in exile it was not her original intention to make a film about ጫት ch’at. “I returned to reconnect to my family, especially my grandmother, who was getting very old. And in reconnecting with family and friends, I noticed that everything in the country now revolved around khat, which had always been around but not in such an all-encompassing way. What had changed was that all of the country’s social and economic life centered on this drug, and I wanted to ask why this was and why so many people were medicating themselves.”
Blow is the rest of the interview with Jessica Beshir courtesy of the American Film Institute and AFI Silver Theatre. Faya Dayi will open at AFI on Friday, October 01, 2021. Organizes note that proof of vaccination –or– negative Covid PCR test is required for entry. You can learn more and purchase tickets here
Faya Dayi. (Courtesy photo)
Interview With Filmmaker Jessica Beshir about ‘Faya Dayi’
What do you remember about your childhood and early adolescence in Ethiopia, and how did those memories inform the conception of Faya dayi?
I remember everything that happened up to the time I was sixteen and my family left Ethiopia. My generation reached adulthood a lot sooner than we otherwise would have because we grew up during a cold war. My father was director of a military hospital—war was ever-present, and that couldn’t help but shape our outlook.
In returning to the country many years later, I didn’t set out to make a documentary on khat. I returned to reconnect to my family, especially my grandmother, who was getting very old. And in reconnecting with family and friends, I noticed that everything in the country now revolved around khat, which had always been around but not in such an all-encompassing way. What had changed was that all of the country’s social and economic life centered on this drug, and I wanted to ask why this was and why so many people were medicating themselves.
What was clear was that the country was in a state of decay. There was new infrastructure in Harar and other cities, but mostly the country was falling apart due to the misrule of an oppressive governmental regime. And that regime had also limited freedom of speech, which led to people’s retreat into private worlds. Even after this regime faced protests and was ultimately unseated from power, there was a huge disillusionment when substantial change did not come about.
So, there was a desire for khat, due to its ability to foster a state of insularity, but then many factors influenced the rise of khat as a cash crop. Climate change altered which crops the farmers were able to cultivate, and inflation made it impossible for the farmers to cultivate coffee and other crops. Before, khat was relegated to the Harar region, but now its development had spread to the rest of the country, so my filming concentrated on the farms and land in Harar, around the area where I had grown up. I felt it was important to be very specific—there are more than eighty ethnic groups and languages in Ethiopia. The specific Oromo identity in Harar—I’d never seen that reflected on film, and I wanted to transmit the people’s intonation of language, their cadences. This was crucial to the overall tapestry of the film.
To what extent did you predetermine or spontaneously arrive at the film’s sounds and images?
When I began shooting, I had a specific intention for what I wanted—one that would allow for multiple possibilities that could reveal themselves in the editing room. And I was excited to discover those possibilities, those forms. For example, I knew I wanted to convey a sense of interiority, but through evocation rather than through a direct telling. I also wanted the locations I shot to speak through images. One was the labyrinthine space of this close walled city, Jugol; another was comprised of the vast farms. I wanted the vastness of the farms to correspond to the vastness among the experiences I shot, with different people having different experiences within the same geographical space. I thought, If voices were to emerge from these farms, what would these voices say?
In conversations with my editors, I conveyed that the film’s form should be alive, that it should have its own mode of expression. At times this form didn’t always make rational sense, but it was transmitting something—something more elliptical, perhaps. This elliptical mode was probably influenced by the oral tradition of storytelling with which I grew up. Oral tradition is about the journey and all the things you see and experience before you arrive at a narrative destination. I wanted the structure of the film to be like an octopus, where one story strand was like a tentacle, and if something occurred in that strand it would reverberate throughout the entire body of the film.
Faya dayi took ten years to make. How did that decade-long process start, and what were some of the major milestones along the road toward completing the project?
The first thing I wanted to do upon my return to Ethiopia was to spend time on the farms. My grandmother is not a farmer—she lives far away from where I filmed—but there was a certain kinship there because I was listening to her language, the Oromo language. I met most of the farmers by spending time with them at a café that was owned by a friend. That’s how I started talking with them and learning about the khat farms. I also befriended the children of these farmers, and over the years of shooting I saw and recorded the way these children became political and participated in the peaceful protests, in 2014–15, against the government. That was an invigorating leap in the filming process, in seeing these kids come of age and getting involved in what was occurring throughout the country. A major moment in the shoot was seeing the drying up of the lakes. The first time I saw this, I couldn’t take it. I was heading down in a van to Haramaya, and I asked the driver if we could stop to take a picture of this sacred lake, and when we did, it wasn’t there—grass had grown over it, cows were herding there, it was gone. There was always new information I was obtaining and through which I learned about the changes that were unfolding throughout the country.
Another one was interviewing a university professor who did his PhD on khat studies, who had spent his whole life with and around this plant. He doesn’t appear in the film, but one thing he said stuck with me, that once in a while a visiting professor from the West would teach at the university for a few months and then a while later would publish a study on khat. All of a sudden, he had to read about khat from out there. What I picked up from that was: Where’s our voice in this? I wanted to do justice to the story of the people who live here, their stories and their dignity. Khat came from a religious, ritualistic practice of imams, just like peyote for the shamans. It’s not just a plant for kids who want to get high.
What research in the areas of politics, sociology, religion, and myth informed the production of Faya dayi?
A lot of the time I spent during my return to Ethiopia involved research. My friend’s grandfather, who lived in the labyrinthine city, was the one who first spoke with me about khat’s roots in the Sufi tradition. And not just in a religious sense but also in a social sense—it was what united people coming back home from work to have lunch, since they would chew khat and then go on with their day. It provided a boost of energy for people like farmers, who performed physical labor. It was a means to an end, but now it’s become the end itself, especially for the youth.
From my friend and her grandfather, I met several Sufi imams. These imams who you see in the film, I spent a lot of time learning from them about Azurkherlaini, about whom Ethiopians have their own individual perceptions. That myth is so alive in the people’s imagination and thought process, it’s alive in the recitation and prayer of the imams. I wanted to somehow visualize the various conceptions of Azurkherlaini, and, to get to that interiority, I wanted to represent the people’s reality on the ground as opposed to casting some weird guy who looks like Azurkherlaini.
How did you achieve the film’s distinctive black-and-white cinematography?
I knew I was going to shoot in black and white, but at times I questioned myself about that, because khat is a green leaf and obviously that wouldn’t come through in black and white. But in the end, I decided to go with black and white because so many elements of the film refer to light and darkness. For example, the fable of Azurkherlaini talks about “the black” and the darkness of night—there were all of these dichotomies in that myth that could be evoked through black and white. Plus, the nature of khat and the trade of it, and many of the film’s stories, contain the sides that black-and-white photography evokes. I wanted to focus on the interiority of the people in the film instead of the potential sensationalism of the subject of khat, and so the dreaminess of the cinematography evokes the people’s frustration, dread, loneliness, impotence, resignation, and so on. •
Born in 1941 Alemayehu Eshete rose to fame in the 60s, matching his Ethiopian heritage against jazz improvisation and soulful appeal...Multiple reports from Ethiopia have confirmed the passing of Alemayehu Eshete. (Getty Images)
Clash Music
Ethiopian artist Alemayehu Eshete has died, it has been reported.
Born in 1941 the singer rose to fame in the 60s, matching his Ethiopian heritage against jazz improvisation and soulful appeal.
Performing with the famed Police Orchestra in Addis Ababa, Alemayehu Eshete enjoyed his first hit ‘Seul’ in 1961 before forming his own Alem-Girma Band.
Releasing 30 singles across a 15 year period, Alemayehu Eshete became one of the defining Ethiopian artists of his era – at one point dubbed the Ethiopian Elvis.
Political shifts in the country substantively altered the cultural climate, but a new generation of crate-diggers – spurred on by the Ethiopiques compilation series – embraced his music.
Writing, recording, and touring until the very end, multiple reports from Ethiopia have confirmed the passing of Alemayehu Eshete.
Legendary Ethiopian singer Alemayehu Eshete, 80, died in Addis Ababa on Thursday.
Nicknamed “the Ethiopian Elvis”, the musician died of a heart attack shortly after he was admitted to hospital, bringing to an end a musical career that spanned four different political epochs in the country.
He had, five years ago, undergone a heart surgery in Italy to fix blockages in arteries. This forced him to limit his performances.
Born in 1941, the singer was one of the most popular musicians to emerge in the early 1960s. He also played modern Ethiopian music.
Eshete highly influenced Ethiopian modern music through his outstanding pieces that were loved by many. He was actively involved in Ethio-jazz music from the 1960s.
Compose songs
He was among the first Ethiopian singers to compose songs in English and other foreign languages.
“Temar Lije” or “My Son, You Had Better Learn” is one of his popular songs that motivated many to acquire modern education.
The popular song is still used by Ethiopian parents to discipline and counsel their children, and to raise awareness on the importance of education.
In 2015, the song won an award in Germany.
He also won the Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in Ethiopia. His stylish dress code and hairstyle made him popular among the youth in the 1960s and 1970s.
Eshete was one of the first musicians to record music to vinyl in Ethiopia.
Since his death, his colleagues and fans have continued to send messages of condolence.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said: “I’m saddened to hear that Alemayehu Eshete, a role model for many singers, has passed away.”
“Ethiopia will always be honored in his works. Those who worked for Ethiopia will not die, but will rest in glory,” the Prime Minister added.
Timeless tunes
Selam, a Swedish Independent Cultural Organisation, which has an office in Addis Ababa, also paid tribute to Eshete: “We are deeply saddened by the death of Alemayehu Eshete. Known for his best timeless tunes, ‘Temar Lije’ and ‘Addis Ababa Bete’, Eshete was one of the most popular legendary Ethiopian singers. Our most heartfelt condolences to his family and friends”
Born and raised in Jimma, Eshete who was fascinated by Hollywood films. He attempted to go to Hollywood with his friend at a younger age.
He started his journey to Hollywood with his friend with a hundred birr ($ 2) he picked from his father’s pocket. However, before he could achieve his goal, he was caught at Eritrea’s Massawa Port and sent back home. He loved Rock music.
He played much of the English vocals of American vocalists Pat Bonn, Bill Haley and Elvis Presley.
The two-hour documentary (Amharic, Harari, and Oromiffa with English subtitles) is a visual poetic reflection by the U.S.-based Ethiopian Mexican filmmaker Jessica Beshir on the ceremonies and process of consuming one of Ethiopia's most profitable farm products, khat (ጫት ch'at). (Courtesy photo).
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: August 31st, 2021
New York (TADIAS) — This week Jessica Beshir’s award-winning new film ‘Faya Dayi’ will open at Lincoln Center in New York City.
The two-hour documentary (Amharic, Harari, and Oromiffa with English subtitles), which was released last year to enthusiastic international reviews, is a visual poetic reflection by the U.S.-based Ethiopian Mexican filmmaker on the old ceremonies and process of consuming one of Ethiopia’s most profitable farm products, khat (ጫት ch’at), a leaf chewed for centuries for religious meditations.
(Courtesy photo)
(Courtesy photo)
According to the press release Director Jessica Beshir will participate in Q&As following the film’s showing on Friday, September 3rd and Saturday, September 4th.
The announcement notes:
In her hypnotic documentary feature, Ethiopian-Mexican filmmaker Jessica Beshir explores the coexistence of everyday life and its mythical undercurrents. Though a deeply personal project — Beshir was forced to leave her hometown of Harar with her family as a teenager due to growing political strife — the film she returned to make about the city, its rural Oromo community of farmers, and the harvesting of the country’s most sought-after export (the euphoria-inducing khat plant) is neither a straightforward work of nostalgia nor an issue-oriented doc about a particular drug culture. Rather, she has constructed something dreamlike: a film that uses light, texture, and sound to illuminate the spiritual lives of people whose experiences often become fodder for ripped-from-the-headlines tales of migration. A Janus Films release. A New Directors/New Films 2021 selection.
For in-theater screenings, please review the Film at Lincoln Center in-theater safety and health policies here.
Amha Eshete, the Founder of Amha Records -the pioneering record company whose work from the "golden era" of Ethiopian music is now enshrined in the world-famous éthiopiques CD series - has died at the age of 74. “The Amha Records catalog includes more than 100 vinyl references, released between 1969 and 1975. (Courtesy photo)
World Music Central
Amha Eshèté, a highly influential Ethiopian music producer and founder of Amha Records, died on April 30, 2021. The Amha Records label released iconic recordings of Ethiojazz and Ethiopop rooted in traditional music. These releases captured the golden era of Ethiopian music. The Amha recordings were licensed to French world music label Buda Musique and received worldwide distribution and critical acclaim as part of the successful Ethiopiques series.
Gilles Fruchaux (Buda Musique) and Francis Falceto (collections éthiopiques & ethioSonic) issued a press release: “The departure of our friend Amha Eshèté (Amha Records) from Ethiopia’s great modern music scene follows five weeks after the death of Ali Tango (Kaifa Records).
“A music lover through and through, a lone pioneer of record production in his country, a daring young entrepreneur, an alternative activist before his time (and something of a combative dude), a gentleman outlaw, Amha managed to circumvent Emperor Haile-Selassie’s state monopoly which did not publish any modern music and banned the importation and production of records. Amha Eshèté said «I had a gut feeling that it was the thing to do. I thought, nobody’s going to kill me for that. At most I might land in jail for a while. »
“The Amha Records catalog includes more than 100 vinyl references, released between 1969 and 1975. The very essence of Ethiopian pop golden oldies. Nearly all of them have been reissued in the Éthiopiques series. Ethiopian pop is now firmly established, everywhere.
“Without Amha Records and Kaifa Records, there would have been no Ethiopiques.
The award was announced at a ceremony in the Swiss lakeside town on Nyon on Saturday (April 24). Faya Dayi, which explores the role that khat plays in the economy and culture of Ethiopia, also picked up the Fipresci award. (Photos: @FayaDayi/Twitter)
Screen Daily
Jessica Beshir’s ‘Faya Dayi’ wins top prize at upbeat hybrid Visions Du Réel
Jessica Beshir’s feature debut Faya Dayi has won the grand jury prize at Swiss documentary festival Visions Du Réel (April 15-24).
The award, which includes 20,000CHF ($21,900), was announced at a ceremony in the Swiss lakeside town on Nyon on Saturday (April 24).
Faya Dayi, which explores the role that the narcotic khat plant plays in the economy and culture of Ethiopia, also picked up the Fipresci award.
The US-Ethiopia-Qatar co-production marks the directorial debut of US-based Mexican-Ethiopian director Beshir and previously premiered in competition at Sundance. Mubi recently acquired all rights to the documentary for the UK and Ireland, Latin America, Italy, France, Germany, Turkey and India.
Ethiopia’s lucrative khat crop inspires a hypnotic, immersive documentary glimpse into the country’s soul
The khat plant provides the most lucrative cash crop in Ethiopia. The state of bliss that results from chewing its leaves is almost a national anti-depressant. In Faya Dayi the cultivation, harvest and consumption of khat becomes a glimpse into the soul of the country.
The combination of human stories and haunting imagery leaves a lasting impression
Jessica Beshir’s hypnotic, immersive and very beautiful documentary marks an impressive feature debut. Audience engagement may reflect a film that embodies all the challenges and the rewards of slow cinema, but a high-profile festival run has led to it being acquired by Janus for North America, with MUBI taking a number of international territories including the UK.
Faya Dayi’s meandering, unhurried approach requires you to slow down and adjust to the rhythms of a different pace and sensibility. A languid drowsiness envelopes much of the film. Sleeping dogs lie stretched out on nighttime roads, a young boy happily floats on the surface of calm water, wisps of smoke ascend from a fire, the flutter of a bird’s wings breaks the silence, a boy’s tear silently falls.
Beshir serves as writer, producer, director and cinematographer, and her striking, acutely observed monochrome images lie at the heart of film. The walled city of Harar with its narrow, winding network of streets is a solid presence in a picture that takes particular note of connections to the land and nature. Water is a recurring feature, from the shallow pools in which boys play to the cracked surface of a bone-dry lake bed where water once flowed. The growing, picking, transport and distribution of the khat is threaded through the film. It provides jobs, a thriving economy and distraction for the masses. Beshir captures images of men at work in the fields and in vast warehouses, leaves collected into bundles, sheaves carried on shoulders as the product is spread across the land.
Human connections require much more work on the part of the viewer. We are allowed to glimpse scraps of lives that emerge in tales of struggle, lost loves and anxiety over the future. There is a distinct generation gap between fatalistic older men and those youngsters who ponder whether it might be better to risk fleeing the country. “We shouldn’t have to perish in the deserts and the seas to change our lives,” says one. Another boy frets over the volatile shifts in temperament of a father at the mercy of khat. Yet, he too is drawn to the leaf and the state it induces. He has been told that the hazy high from khat (called Merkhana) is like watching films in your head.
Faya Dayi is a film that grows increasingly mournful as the diverse elements start to come together. Beshir contemplates some of the religious and spiritual significance attached to khat. We learn about a troubled land and how the khat crop is both an economic blessing and a human millstone. Personal experiences of torture, violence and repression are recounted.The fears of the Oromo people are acknowledged. There is little need to spell out why the use of khat is such a widely accepted means of escape from reality.
A running time close to two hours means that Faya Dayi risks overstaying its welcome, but the combination of human stories and haunting imagery leaves a lasting impression.
Tigist Kebede, Co-Founder & Operations Director of Habeshaview and Journalist Tsedey Aragie. (Photo: Tadias Magazine)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: April 3rd, 2021
New York (TADIAS) — Tadias recently had a conversation with Tigist Kebede, Co-Founder and Operations Director of Habeshaview — the first international Ethiopian film distribution and online streaming company.
As Tigist explains, Habeshaview works with filmmakers both in Ethiopia and the Diaspora to curate, produce, screen and distribute high-quality original Ethiopian films. Their current offerings include the feature film Enkopa, which is based on the true story of a young Ethiopian migrant at the mercy of unscrupulous traffickers; as well as Enchained, an award-winning movie that reflects on Ethiopia’s ancient and culturally-rooted legal system.
The interview was conducted by journalist Tsedey Aragie for Tadias.
Watch: Tadias Conversation with Tigist Kebede of Habeshaview
Hewan Teshome, senior vice president and general counsel for Climate Pledge Arena and the Kraken [in Seattle, Washington], is the daughter of parents who came to the U.S. for higher education, planning to return to Ethiopia afterward. A military coup made it unsafe to remain in their home country. (NHL.com)
NHL
‘Committed to Doing It Differently’
March is Gender Equality Month across the globe. Three Kraken and Climate Pledge Arena colleagues provide insights about lessons learned, measuring progress and innovative thinking
A brief gender equality primer from the UN:
“There has been progress over the last decades: More girls going to school, fewer girls forced into early marriage, more women serving in parliament and positions of leadership and laws being reformed to advance gender equality … Challenges remain: discriminatory laws and social norms remain pervasive, women continue to be underrepresented at all levels of political leadership and one in five women (ages 15 to 49) report experiencing physical violence by an intimate partner within a 12-month period … the COVID-19 outbreak exacerbates existing inequalities for women and girls across every sphere from health to economy to security and social protection.”
Hewan Teshome, senior vice president and general counsel for Climate Pledge Arena and the Kraken, is the daughter of parents who came to the U.S. for higher education, planning to return to Ethiopia afterward. A military coup made it unsafe to remain in their home country.
Like many immigrant parents, they hoped Teshome would become a doctor, lawyer or engineer. But Teshome said when she chose to pursue an undergraduate degree in journalism at New York University, “my parents encouraged me to do what I love.”
It turned out Teshome did earn a law degree from Stanford, then landed a job with a firm in New York working a young lawyer’s marathon days and weeks. Her father returned to Ethiopia on an annual basis during those days as part of a Rotary Club program to provide polio vaccinations. Teshome managed to find the time to join those trips.
Photo of Hewan with her parents at graduation and photo of Hewan and other Kraken and CPA colleagues at CPA. (Courtesy of Hewan Teshome)
“Everything changed so much in a year,” recalls Teshome. “I thought, ‘there’s got to be some way to contribute. I met a lot of people in the [Ethiopian] business community. I started thinking about maybe finding a job in the private sector there.”
Three years into her work at the law firm in Manhattan, the CEO of SouthWest Holdings (hotels, real estate, beverages) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, offered a VP/corporate and legal affairs position Teshome couldn’t turn down. Her parents were less inclined.
“My parents have always been super supportive of my career,” says Teshome, laughing gently. “This was the one time they said, ‘Are you sure?’ … I was going back to a business community not fully developed.”
Per the UN findings, social norms regarding gender in Ethiopia were “not as open and progressive as a city like Seattle” when Teshome accepted the job in 2011.
“Gender was a factor in the professional and legal culture,” she says. “It was assumed women would be paralegals and eventually stay home to raise kids. I was in a senior position and still experienced pushback and dismissiveness.”
NYC-based Ethiopian-American filmmaker Jessica Beshir's new movie “Faya Dayi” about life in Ethiopia’s eastern highlands "is less a documentary than a poem," the Economist observes in a review published this week. "The experience is as intoxicating as qat, but beneath the surface is a sombre evocation of the boredom, frustration and anger which afflict a generation of Ethiopian youth." (Photo courtesy Jessica Beshir)
The Economist
Qat and conflict: “Faya Dayi” evokes what it means to be young in Ethiopia
CHILDREN BATHING in a shrinking lake. Incense wafting through an open door. The wet slap of mud against a wall. Two boys lying on the ground, staring wistfully at the sky. Like snatches of memory, the images are displayed one after the other.
“Faya Dayi”, a hypnotic new film about life in Ethiopia’s eastern highlands, is less a documentary than a poem, its lyrics set against a sequence of monochrome pictures which languidly unfurl across the screen. The experience is as intoxicating as the leaves of qat, a mild stimulant native to this part of Africa, which is a recurring motif. But beneath the luscious surface is a sombre evocation of the boredom, frustration and anger which afflict a generation of Ethiopian youth.
IndieWire Review: ‘Faya Dayi,’ Jessica Beshir’s Ethiopia Docu-Drama About Legend of Khat
IndieWire
‘Faya Dayi’ Review: A Hallucinatory Documentary About Ethiopia’s Most Lucrative Cash Crop
Updated: Jan 30, 2021
Ethiopian legend has it that khat, a stimulant leaf, was found by Sufi Imams in search of eternity. Inspired by this myth, Jessica Beshir’s “Faya Dayi” is a spiritual journey into the highlands of the walled city of Harar, a place immersed in the rituals surrounding this plant, Ethiopia’s most lucrative cash crop today. Through the prism of the khat trade, the film weaves a tapestry of intimate stories of people caught between government repression, khat-induced reverie, and treacherous journeys across the Red Sea, and offers a window into the dreams of the youth who long for better lives elsewhere.
For centuries in Ethiopia, the Sufi Muslims of Harar have chewed the khat leaf for the purposes of religious meditation. Over the past three decades, khat consumption has broken out of Sufi circles and entered the mainstream to become a daily ritual among people of all ages, religions and ethnicities, for whom chewing khat is a means to achieve Merkhana — a term that describes the high one gets from what is effectively a psychoactive drug not all that different from Cannabis. It has various mental and physical effects, which include euphoria and altered states of mind. For many, Merkhana is provides an escape from everyday realities, and the only place where their hopes, and dreams can actually exist.
Khat, for most unemployed youth, has become a way to overcome the sense of hopelessness, a way to tune out reality. They are all searching for a seemingly elusive sense of agency, as well as living with the contradictions of loving a land that makes it difficult for them to live in peace.
In the last decade, the crops that Ethiopia primarily exported — teff, sorghum, and coffee — have been replaced by the leafy green. With social significance, it has sustained so many who have worked in the fields for generations. However familiar the work is, some young people who have grown up in its shadow want more for themselves — life away from the fields; life without khat; life entirely elsewhere. They consider leaving home and all they have ever known for something new, far away, and, while perhaps more economically beneficial, lonelier and more isolating.
Shot entirely in stunning black and white, “Faya Dayi” opens with a long shot of a somewhat amorphous, barren landscape, nighttime, dark, crickets providing the only soundtrack, and in the distance a lone figure running playfully, starts to come into view. We see that it’s a child, as he or she runs past the camera. Cut to bewitching shots of elders indoors, some faceless, some not, chanting, giving thanks to God, separating khat leaves from their stems, and, in some cases, pounding them, as incense burns in a pot, the smoke it emits, thick and intense.
And then a lengthy shot of an open doorway, on the other side, an ambiguous view — smoky, cavernous, vast, dark depths — a haunting score providing an exclamation mark. It’s interrupted by a meek female voiceover, almost like that of a child, beginning a story about the Harari legend of a man named Azuekherlaini, who was tasked by God to find the Maoul Hayat (water of eternal life). The fable stretches the length of the film, as the voiceover interrupts intermittently to continue where she previously ended.
But that’s just the dressing on this striking, if enigmatic, transgenerational journey into the highlands of Harar, immersed in the rituals of khat, weaving a tapestry of hallucinatory stories that offer a window into the dreams of youth.
Unfolding more like a hybrid scripted narrative and documentary, the central story of “Faya Dayi” doesn’t follow a straight line, as it occasionally checks in on Mohammed, a 14-year-old, and the film’s presumed primary character, who works as an errand boy for the khat users in Harar. He lives with his father who, like so many in town, chews khat daily and often fights with Mohammed due to the mood swings caused by his addiction. Mohammed becomes anxious for a better life, but to have it, he must make a treacherous journey across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia.
Lucy is named for the famous two-million-year-old fossil found in Ethiopia in the 1970s that, as a relative of modern humans, helped illuminate the evolution of our species. It is hoped that the spacecraft Lucy will similarly elucidate our solar system's earliest days. (Photo: An artist's concept of NASA's Lucy mission, which will study Jupiter's Trojan asteroids/Image credit: Southwest Research Institute)
Space.com
Lucy mission: NASA’s visit to the Trojan asteroids
The Lucy mission is a NASA probe scheduled to launch in October 2021 that will explore a set of asteroids near Jupiter known as the Trojans. These ancient space rocks hold important clues to the creation of our solar system and, potentially, the origin of life on Earth.
Along with a mission called Psyche, Lucy was approved in January 2017 as part of NASA’s Discovery program, which supports focused and relatively cheap planetary missions whose development costs are capped at around $450 million. A year after approval, the mission was officially given a schedule and a set of eight asteroid targets.
Lucy is named for a famous female Australopithecus afarensis fossil found in Ethiopia that, as a relative of modern humans, helped illuminate the evolution of our species. It is hoped that the spacecraft Lucy will similarly elucidate our solar system’s earliest days.
LUCY SPACECRAFT SIZE AND INSTRUMENTS
Lucy spans more than 46 feet (14 meters) from tip to tip, larger than a 4-story building, though much of that width will be the enormous solar panels used to power the spacecraft, according to NASA. The spacecraft will carry an instrument that can measure the surface temperatures of its target asteroids, providing information about their composition, two high-resolution cameras, and a device that uses infrared light to inspect and identify ice, organic material, and different minerals in each asteroid.
NASA is scheduled to launch Lucy on its 12-year mission in October 2021 on an Atlas V 401 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida, according to the agency. The total cost to launch the spacecraft is approximately $148.3 million, which includes the launch service and other mission related costs.
An artist’s depiction of the Lucy spacecraft with extended solar panels, studying asteroids. (Image credit: SwRI)
LUCY MISSION TARGETS: THE TROJAN ASTEROIDS
The probe’s main objects of study are the Trojan asteroids. These objects are thought to be remnants from the primordial disk that formed the sun and planets, which were captured by Jupiter’s gravity sometime near the beginning of the solar system.
Lucy will be the first mission to visit the Trojans, which are each named for famous figures from the Trojan war in Greek mythology.
According to NASA, the Trojans share Jupiter’s orbit around the sun in two loose groups, with one set slightly ahead of the gas giant and another behind it. “The Trojans are stabilized by the sun and its largest planet in a gravitational balancing act,” the agency wrote.
After being launched from Earth, the spacecraft will first make a quick flyby of a main belt asteroid in 2025. The small space rock is named 52246 Donaldjohanson after the paleontologist who discovered the fossil Lucy. Situated between Mars and Jupiter, the fly-by will serve primarily as a test for the spacecraft’s instruments, according to the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), which helps oversee the craft.
A diagram of Lucy’s itinerary among the Trojan asteroids that trail and lead Jupiter. (Image credit: Southwest Research Institute)
If all goes according to plan, between 2027 and 2033, Lucy will then fly past six Trojan asteroids, including three different asteroid subclasses and two objects that rotate around each other. NASA has said that “no other space mission in history has been launched to as many different destinations in independent orbits around our sun.”
The mission’s targets include C-type, D-type, and P-type asteroids, each of which will help scientists better understand the solar system’s genesis, according to SwRI.
WHAT ARE C-TYPE ASTEROIDS?
Lucy will fly by two C-type asteroids: the previously mentioned main asteroid belt object Donaldjohanson and a Trojan named Eurybates.
C-type asteroids are rich in carbon and are where most meteorites on Earth originated. The OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa 2 missions have previously collected samples from C-type asteroids to bring back to our planet for study.
WHAT ARE D-TYPE AND P-TYPE ASTEROIDS?
It will also inspect two D-type asteroids, which are named Leucus and Orus, and three P-type asteroids, one named Polymele and a binary asteroid pair orbiting one another called Patroclus and Menoetius.
D-type and P-type asteroids are much redder than C-type asteroids and are hypothesized to be rich in organic and volatile elements. No mission has ever flown past a D- or P-type asteroid before.
The asteroids are expected to provide a wealth of information, especially about the organic material that would have rained down on our planet in its earliest days and potentially helped trigger the creation of living organisms. Each target is also thought to contain water ice underneath its rocky surface.
The final encounter with Patroclus and Menoetius is considered particularly special because the pair spend most of their time orbiting high above the main ecliptic plane of the solar system and are therefore hard to reach. The elusive asteroid pair will be passing through a region that is accessible to Lucy in March of 2033, when the spacecraft is scheduled to reach them.
Weyni Mengesha is the director of the show “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!,” which is produced by Chicago’s renowned Steppenwolf Theatre Company. The play starts streaming online this week at steppenwolf.org/now. According to Leelai Demoz, Steppenwolf’s associate artistic director and the project's lead producer: "Scripts as short as [this] aren’t staples at major U.S. theaters. But Steppenwolf Now [their newly launched digital platform], a response to the pandemic, allowed for format inventiveness." (WaPo)
The Washington Post
Images of two duchesses linger in playwright Vivian J.O. Barnes’s mind: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, standing at a lectern, with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II looming behind her. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, looking glamorous soon after giving birth. The appearances by Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton — as the titled women are better known — intrigued Barnes all the more because, at least in memory, they were voiceless.
“I can remember how they looked, but I can never remember anything I’ve heard them say,” she says.
Reflecting on those missing words — and on Meghan’s experience as a biracial woman joining a hidebound, traditionally White institution — Barnes wrote “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!,” a short play that imagines a private conversation between a Black royal and a Black royal-to-be. The play, which was filmed in a no-contact shoot by Chicago’s renowned Steppenwolf Theatre Company, begins streaming Wednesday at steppenwolf.org/now, the Steppenwolf Now virtual stage.
Its paparazzi-lens inspirations notwithstanding, “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!” is no piece of gossipy fluff. For one thing, the characters are not Kate and Meghan, but fictional figures. For another, the play speaks to deep issues around inclusion, equity and society’s resistance to change.
Prince Harry and Meghan lose their patronages, won’t return as ‘working royals’
“It’s a relatable investigation into how many women feel high up in institutions, specifically if you are in a historically White institution as a Black woman,” says Weyni Mengesha, the show’s director and artistic director of Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre Company.
Awareness of Meghan’s significance for the British monarchy infused the play, Barnes says. “To see this person — who looks like no one else who’s been in that institution so far — enter it, that to me is a fascinating story and entry point,” the playwright says.
Barnes, 26, caught the performing-arts bug during the lively, dance-infused evangelical church services she attended as a child in Stafford, Va. Later, while enrolled at the University of Richmond, she would study in London, where she binged on theater — a revelation.
A few years ago, the duchess of Cambridge’s soigné appearance right after childbirth — hinting at stringent expectations for her looks and behavior — inspired Barnes to write a monologue for a fictional duchess. Later, Meghan’s marriage to Prince Harry spurred further thought. What if a future Meghan-like figure, after adjusting to oppressive palace norms, were to welcome another woman who looked like her into the royal clan? How would that conversation go? For an assignment at University of California at San Diego, where she is now a third-year MFA student, Barnes turned her monologue into a two-hander.
For research, she delved into scandal-sheet journalism about Britain’s royal women, not so much to fact-find as to understand the reporting’s tone and approach. She was struck by a shift after Harry’s engagement. With Meghan, says Barnes, “the coverage is very different and very racist and invasive in a very different kind of way.”
“Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!” arrives in a culture much besotted with the House of Windsor, as evidenced by Netflix series “The Crown,” as well as the Broadway musical “Diana,” shut down by the pandemic last March. (A Netflix version of “Diana” has been announced.) But Barnes stresses that her characters are merely inspired by the wives of Princes William and Harry. The idea of writing about the real clickbait fixtures, she says, “wasn’t very interesting.”
Instead, Barnes dreamed up the unsettling encounter between her Duchess and Soon-to-Be-Duchess, who spar and commune over the merciless rules, scrutiny and conformism that their rank requires.
Scripts as short as “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!” (about 35 minutes) aren’t staples at major U.S. theaters. But Steppenwolf Now, a response to the pandemic, allowed for format inventiveness, says Leelai Demoz, Steppenwolf’s associate artistic director and the initiative’s lead producer. Already premiered, for example, and still available to stream with a Steppenwolf Now membership, is “Red Folder,” a 10-minute animated monologue written, directed and illustrated by Rajiv Joseph (“Guards at the Taj”) and voiced by Carrie Coon (FX series “Fargo”).
Succinct as it was, Barnes’s one-act appealed to Mengesha, who admired its imaginative vision and felt a personal connection. Mengesha, of Ethiopian heritage, is among the leaders of color who have added diversity to the top ranks of North American theater in recent years. The director says she identifies with Barnes’s characters, who are “trying to bring themselves to their new position, but also fit into the mold that has been around for centuries but that never looked like them.”
Performers Sydney Charles (the Duchess) and Celeste M. Cooper (the Soon-to-Be-Duchess) also say they understand the pressures the characters feel — to fit in, to toe the line, to self-censor as necessary and even to establish automatic mutual camaraderie.
“Theater spaces, most of them are run by non-Black individuals. How comfortable can I be — how Black can I be — in this space? If there is another Black person, are they going to be like me?” Charles asks. “Vivian did a great job in touching on the emotions wrapped up in that specific experience, which translates across the board for any Black American, and Black women specifically.”
“As I came up in this career, there was a lot of silence,” Cooper recalls. “There was a lot of not wanting to ruffle feathers.” Barnes’s play, she adds, asks really hard questions about that kind of quandary.
Sundance: Jessica Beshir's striking, black and white hybrid docu-drama meditates on the legend of khat, a stimulant leaf, which was found by Sufi Imams in search of eternity. (Photo: Courtesy photo)
IndieWire
‘Faya Dayi’ Review: A Hallucinatory Documentary About Ethiopia’s Most Lucrative Cash Crop
Ethiopian legend has it that khat, a stimulant leaf, was found by Sufi Imams in search of eternity. Inspired by this myth, Jessica Beshir’s “Faya Dayi” is a spiritual journey into the highlands of the walled city of Harar, a place immersed in the rituals surrounding this plant, Ethiopia’s most lucrative cash crop today. Through the prism of the khat trade, the film weaves a tapestry of intimate stories of people caught between government repression, khat-induced reverie, and treacherous journeys across the Red Sea, and offers a window into the dreams of the youth who long for better lives elsewhere.
For centuries in Ethiopia, the Sufi Muslims of Harar have chewed the khat leaf for the purposes of religious meditation. Over the past three decades, khat consumption has broken out of Sufi circles and entered the mainstream to become a daily ritual among people of all ages, religions and ethnicities, for whom chewing khat is a means to achieve Merkhana — a term that describes the high one gets from what is effectively a psychoactive drug not all that different from Cannabis. It has various mental and physical effects, which include euphoria and altered states of mind. For many, Merkhana is provides an escape from everyday realities, and the only place where their hopes, and dreams can actually exist.
Khat, for most unemployed youth, has become a way to overcome the sense of hopelessness, a way to tune out reality. They are all searching for a seemingly elusive sense of agency, as well as living with the contradictions of loving a land that makes it difficult for them to live in peace.
In the last decade, the crops that Ethiopia primarily exported — teff, sorghum, and coffee — have been replaced by the leafy green. With social significance, it has sustained so many who have worked in the fields for generations. However familiar the work is, some young people who have grown up in its shadow want more for themselves — life away from the fields; life without khat; life entirely elsewhere. They consider leaving home and all they have ever known for something new, far away, and, while perhaps more economically beneficial, lonelier and more isolating.
Shot entirely in stunning black and white, “Faya Dayi” opens with a long shot of a somewhat amorphous, barren landscape, nighttime, dark, crickets providing the only soundtrack, and in the distance a lone figure running playfully, starts to come into view. We see that it’s a child, as he or she runs past the camera. Cut to bewitching shots of elders indoors, some faceless, some not, chanting, giving thanks to God, separating khat leaves from their stems, and, in some cases, pounding them, as incense burns in a pot, the smoke it emits, thick and intense.
And then a lengthy shot of an open doorway, on the other side, an ambiguous view — smoky, cavernous, vast, dark depths — a haunting score providing an exclamation mark. It’s interrupted by a meek female voiceover, almost like that of a child, beginning a story about the Harari legend of a man named Azuekherlaini, who was tasked by God to find the Maoul Hayat (water of eternal life). The fable stretches the length of the film, as the voiceover interrupts intermittently to continue where she previously ended.
But that’s just the dressing on this striking, if enigmatic, transgenerational journey into the highlands of Harar, immersed in the rituals of khat, weaving a tapestry of hallucinatory stories that offer a window into the dreams of youth.
Unfolding more like a hybrid scripted narrative and documentary, the central story of “Faya Dayi” doesn’t follow a straight line, as it occasionally checks in on Mohammed, a 14-year-old, and the film’s presumed primary character, who works as an errand boy for the khat users in Harar. He lives with his father who, like so many in town, chews khat daily and often fights with Mohammed due to the mood swings caused by his addiction. Mohammed becomes anxious for a better life, but to have it, he must make a treacherous journey across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia.
We speak to Semhal Guesh, CEO of Kabana Leather, an Ethiopian company that produces a variety of handmade leather products.
1. How did you come up with the idea to start Kabana Leather?
The concept was born while I was making hand bracelets from leather waste while at university. After two or three failed attempts at running other businesses, I established Kabana in 2017.
Initially, it was just a hobby. I am an architect by profession and love designing. My passion for design led me to make leather bags. My hobby became a business when I employed someone and saw the impact it made on their life. I quit my job at an architectural firm to run Kabana full-time.
We produce products under our own brand Kabana and also have a contract manufacturing division which makes items for international labels. We used to be 100% focused on the export market until Covid-19 hit and it tested us economically. Afterwards, our target market partially shifted towards the local market. Our customers are people and corporates who source ethically produced goods.
2. Give us an overview of your product range.
We have tote bags, gym bags, wallets and work bags.
We are currently also producing PPE products, such as face masks and scrubs, with support from the Mastercard Foundation, but this is temporary.
3. Where do you source your raw materials?
Close to 92% of our raw materials are locally sourced; these include leather from sheep and goats, textiles and canvas. The remaining 8% of raw materials are imported from Egypt, the US and Taiwan, including zippers, buckles and accessory hardware. We source leather directly from the factories and produce it according to our colour and texture specifications. We choose these factories based on our requirements regarding their sustainability, environmental footprint and zero child labour practices.
Employees at the Kabana Leather production facility. (Kabana Leather)
4. Describe your product development process.
For our Kabana brand, we try to have launches twice a year. Design starts with a mood board with colours, material concepts and design. Usually, I work with my team to develop patterns and designs. We make samples and get feedback on these. We then manufacture our selection for the launches.
On the outsourced manufacturing side, we obtain designs from buyers who want products made in Ethiopia. We make samples using their designs with potential alternatives. The approval process usually takes several iterations and discussions; once they approve a sample, we go ahead and manufacture based on purchase orders.
5. Where do you sell your products?
Currently, the bulk of our sales are to the US and we send small consignments to Europe but that has not expanded as much as we’d like. We also sell small quantities to Rwanda and South Africa.
The Materials Research Society (MRS), which gives out the annual award, said it's honoring Dr. Sossina Haile for her "fundamental contributions to the electrochemical and thermochemical materials science that advance sustainable energy, for her commitment to the broader international materials community, and for being an inspiring colleague and passionate mentor." (Photo: ETHIOPIA 2050 - Keynote Address/YouTube)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: December 2nd, 2020
New York (TADIAS) — Sossina M. Haile, a Professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University, has been awarded the 2020 David Turnbull Lectureship, a prestigious accolade that recognizes the career contributions of scientists in her field.
The Materials Research Society (MRS), which gives out the annual award, said it’s honoring Dr. Sossina for her “fundamental contributions to the electrochemical and thermochemical materials science that advance sustainable energy, for her commitment to the broader international materials community, and for being an inspiring colleague and passionate mentor.”
Dr. Sossina will receive the award on Thursday, December 3rd during the 2020 Virtual MRS Spring/Fall Meeting, where she is also scheduled to present her lecture, Superprotonic Solid Acids for Sustainable Energy Technologies.
Most recently Dr. Sossina and her team were behind a new discovery that converts ammonia to green hydrogen that’s being hailed as “a major step forward for enabling a zero-pollution, hydrogen-fueled economy.”
Dr. Sossina, one of the leading researchers in the world in the area of renewable energy, envisions that her new finding will particularly be useful in reshaping the transportation industry. Northwestern University cites the Environmental Protection Agency noting that “in 2018, the movement of people and goods by cars, trucks, trains, ships, airplanes and other vehicles accounted for 28% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.–more than any other economic sector.”
“Battery-powered vehicles are great, but there’s certainly a question of range and material supply,” Dr. Sossina said. “Converting ammonia to hydrogen on-site and in a distributed way would allow you to drive into a fueling station and get pressurized hydrogen for your car. There’s also a growing interest for hydrogen fuel cells for the aviation industry because batteries are so heavy.”
Sossina Haile is a fellow of the Materials Research Society, the American Ceramics Society, the African Academy of Sciences, and the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, and serves on the editorial boards of Materials Horizons, Annual Review of Materials Research and Joule. (Photo: Courtesy of Northwestern University)
According to MRS:
Sossina Haile assumed her role as Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University in 2015, after serving 18 years on the faculty of the California Institute of Technology. She earned her PhD degree in materials science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992, and spent two years, 1991-1993, at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany, first as a Fulbright Fellow then as a Humboldt Fellow.
Haile’s research broadly encompasses materials, especially oxides, for sustainable electrochemical energy technologies. Her work in fuel cell science and technology has pushed the field to new insights and record performance metrics. In parallel, she has created new avenues for harnessing sunlight to meet rising energy demands. Haile has published approximately 200 articles and holds 14 patents on these and other topics.
Among her many awards, in 2008 Haile received an American Competitiveness and Innovation Fellowship from the U.S. National Science Foundation in recognition of “her timely and transformative research in the energy field and her dedication to inclusive mentoring, education and outreach across many levels.” In 2010, she was the recipient of the Chemical Pioneer Award (American Institute of Chemists), and in 2012, the International Ceramics Prize (World Academy of Ceramics). Haile is a fellow of the Materials Research Society, the American Ceramics Society, the African Academy of Sciences, and the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, and serves on the editorial boards of Materials Horizons, Annual Review of Materials Research and Joule. Her professional service includes past membership on the board of the Materials Research Society, and current membership on the board of Ethiopia Education Initiatives.
The online event, which is set to take place on November 19th, will focus on Dr. Lia's impressive role in helping to fight COVID-19 in Ethiopia and "women's leadership in the context of a global pandemic." (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: November 13th, 2020
New York (TADIAS) — The Fresh Perspectives Series with Michelle Nunn, President and CEO of the Atlanta-based global humanitarian organization CARE USA, will host a conversation this month featuring Ethiopia’s Minister of Health, Dr. Lia Tadesse.
The organization announced that the online event, which is set to take place on November 19th, will focus on Dr. Lia’s impressive role in helping to fight COVID-19 in Ethiopia and “women’s leadership in the context of a global pandemic.”
“At a time when COVID-19 cases around the world are rising again, Lia will share how she is navigating staying ahead of the curve and what kind of innovative leadership is needed to tackle one of the biggest crises of our times,” the announcement states. “Her insight into adding a gender lens to problem solving and delivering high impact is particularly relevant at a time when COVID-19 assessments and responses are too often ignoring the voices and specific needs of women and girls. Lia notes that, ‘Women are the anchors of their families and communities.’”
Lia is one of the first graduates of Yale University’s Global Health Leadership Initiative’s Masters in Hospital and Health Administration program, and also served as the CEO of Saint Paul Hospital. (Courtesy of Yale University)
Per the announcement:
Lauded for her powerful leadership in handling the coronavirus outbreak in Ethiopia, Lia is a tremendously talented executive and tireless champion of maternal health. An OBGYN by training, she served in academia and hospital management with distinction before being appointed as the Health Minister of Ethiopia earlier this year. Lia is one of the first graduates of Yale University’s Global Health Leadership Initiative’s Masters in Hospital and Health Administration program, and also served as the CEO of Saint Paul Hospital. She was compelled to go to medical school, she says, because, “I saw women die from preventable deaths, and I knew I had to get involved with efforts to help stop it.” She was one of only four women graduates in her class at Jimma University in Ethiopia.
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If You Attend:
Thursday, November 19, 2020
10am ET | 9am CT | 8am MT | 7am PT RSVP HERE- Free Event
Registered guests will receive a Zoom link prior to the call.
New York (TADIAS) — We are now almost two weeks away from the November 3rd U.S. presidential election. This week the ‘Habeshas Vote’ initiative and the non-profit organization Habesha Networks in partnership with Tadias Magazine and Abbay Media will host their first virtual phone banking event to reach out to the Ethiopian American community.
The online event, which is set to take place on Thursday, October 22nd from 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT, will feature various panel discussions, public service announcements and cultural engagements.
Organizers note that there will be a brief training on phone banking as well as “some amazing prizes” for those that call and text the most voters.
Ethiopian-Americans for Biden-Harris Hosts Virtual Conversation
Ethiopian-Americans for Biden-Harris is a volunteer-led group that supports the candidacy of Former Vice-President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: October 19th, 2020
New York (TADIAS) — As the highly anticipated 2020 U.S. presidential election fast approaches on November 3rd, various Ethiopian American associations are organizing voter turnout and education events across the country.
The latest to announce such an event is the newly formed, volunteer-led group, Ethiopian-Americans for Biden-Harris, which supports the candidacy of Former Vice-President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris and will be hosting an online conversation next week Friday, October 23 at 6:00 PM EDT/3:00 PM PDT.
“As one of the largest African Diaspora groups in the United States, the community has historically supported causes championed by the Democratic Party, including but not limited to, immigration reform, healthcare reform, promotion of democracy, human rights and improved trade and investment between the United States and Ethiopia,” the group states in its press release. “Ethiopian-Americans believe that a Biden-Harris Administration will champion equitable access and opportunity for all Americans, restore mutually beneficial relationships with Ethiopia and improve America’s standing among the community of nations.”
(Courtesy photo)
The virtual event, which will be moderated by Dr. Menna Demessie, Senior Vice President of Policy Analysis & Research at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, features Congresswoman Karen Bass, who has represented California’s 37th congressional district since 2013; Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas; Gayle Smith, president and CEO of the One Campaign and the former administrator of the United States Agency for International Development; and Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a Senior Vice President at Albright Stonebridge Group (ASG) leading the firm’s Africa practice. Thomas-Greenfield was also the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the United States Department of State’s Bureau of African Affairs from 2013 to 2017.
Ethiopian American speakers include Assemblyman Alexander Assefa, the first Ethiopian-American elected to public office in the United States and the first African immigrant to serve in elected office in the State of Nevada; Addisu Demissie, who served as Senior Advisor to U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, and was responsible for organizing the nominating convention for the Democratic Party this past summer; Marcus Samuelsson, an award-winning chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, philanthropist and food activist; Mimi Alemayehou, a development finance executive who has served as Executive Vice President of the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation and as United States Executive Director of the African Development Bank.
Ethiopian Americans: Election is Approaching, Let’s Make Sure our Voices are Heard
In this OP-ED Helen Amelga, President of the Ethiopian Democratic Club of Los Angeles, urges Ethiopian Americans to participate in the upcoming U.S. election that will directly impact our lives for many years to come, and shares resources to help our community to get involved in the democratic process. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Helen Amelga
Updated: October 16th, 2020
Los Angeles (TADIAS) — How many people of Ethiopian descent live in the United States? 300,000? 400,000? 500,000? We don’t really know for sure. But with the 2020 census, we will for the first time have the opportunity to get a truly accurate count. If you haven’t done so already, go to 2020cencus.gov and complete your census today.
While the exact numbers are yet to be determined, it is clear that there is a significant Ethiopian-American population in the United States. Why is it then that we do not have a strong political presence?
We know our community can organize. We have Iqub (እቁብ), mahbers (ማህበር), business associations, and our faith based groups are extremely organized. We need to use those same skills to mobilize politically.
We must equip ourselves with the knowledge of political systems, major policies and voter rights, not only to serve as advocates for our community, but so that we ourselves can occupy positions of power and authority to be the decision makers who shape the society and world we want to live in.
We know it’s possible because we already have trailblazers such as Assemblyman Alexander Assefa, the first Ethiopian American to be elected into office in the Nevada Legislature and the first Ethiopian American ever elected in the U.S. to a state-wide governing body as well as Judge Nina Ashenafi Richardson of Florida, who is the first Ethiopian-American judge in the United States who was re-elected to a third term his year.
We cannot afford to give our vote away to candidates who are not serving our needs. We are ready to spring into action when there is a problem in our community, but it is not enough to go to our elected officials once we have a problem and try to convince them to help us. We need to be proactive.
We must purposefully engage to get the right people elected in the first place. We must identify candidates who align with and will fight for our values. Then, we must do everything we can to make sure those candidates are elected.
Here are a few steps you can take to get involved:
Bitaniya Giday, age 17, is the 2020-2021 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate. She is a first-generation Ethiopian American residing in Seattle. Bitaniya is one of the young interviewers in a timely upcoming Zoom event on October 14th titled “The Youth Vote: A conversation about leadership, ethics and values and how they factor into choosing a candidate.” (KNKX PUBLIC RADIO)
KNKX PUBLIC RADIO
Young people make up a projected 37% of the 2020 electorate, yet historically they vote less than other age groups. Will it be different this time? The pandemic crisis and the call for racial justice and institutional changes are top concerns as we move closer to this high stakes election. Ethics and values also underpin our decisions. This virtual event aims to bring together first-time and new voters with older adults with a track record of civic leadership to discuss a number of issues through the lens of beliefs and values, touching on things like:
What does it mean to be a leader?
In thorny situations, how do you speak for a community?
If there are three important issues facing your community and you only have enough resources to address one, how would you choose?
Because this is leading up to the general election, we want to frame this conversation around the power to change systems for the greater good and how that ties in with being an informed voter.
The six young interviewers will ask the four speakers questions relating to the themes of conflict/failure, challenges, accountability, transparency, priorities and representation, with the speakers drawing on their personal and professional experiences; and offering examples of how they have faced challenging situations and how that speaks to leadership and community building.
Young Interviewers
Bitaniya Giday, age 17, is the 2020-2021 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate. She is a first-generation Ethiopian American residing in Seattle. Her writing explores the nuances of womanhood and blackness, as she reflects upon her family’s path of immigration across the world. She hopes to restore and safeguard the past, present, and future histories of her people through traditional storytelling and poetry.
Ethiopian Americans Hold Virtual Town Hall Ahead of November Election
The nationwide town hall event, which will be held on Thursday, September 24th, 2020 plans to emphasize the importance of exercising our citizenship right to vote and to participate in the U.S. democratic process. The gathering will feature panel discussions, PSAs, and cultural engagements. (Courtesy photos)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: September 23rd, 2020
Los Angeles (TADIAS) — Ethiopian Americans are holding a virtual town hall this week ahead of the November 3rd U.S. election.
The nationwide event, which will be held on Thursday, September 24th, will emphasize the importance of exercising our citizenship right to vote and to participate in the U.S. democratic process.
According to organizers the town hall — put together by the ‘Habeshas Vote’ initiative and the non-profit organization Habesha Networks — will feature various panel discussions, public service announcements and cultural engagements.
“We intend on discussing various subject matters related to civic engagement issues affecting our community at the moment,” the announcement notes, highlighting that by the end of the conference “participants will be able to understand the importance of taking ownership of our local communities, learn more about the voting process and gain a better [appreciation] of why we should all care about voting.”
Speakers include Helen Amelga, President of the Ethiopian Democratic Club of Los Angeles; Dr. Menna Demissie, Senior Vice President of Policy Analysis & Research at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation; Assemblyman Alexander Assefa, the first Ethiopian American to be elected into office in the Nevada Legislature and the first Ethiopian American ever elected in the U.S. to a state-wide governing body; Judge Nina Ashenafi Richardson of Florida, who is the first Ethiopian-American judge in the United States who was re-elected to a third term this year; and Girmay Zahilay, Councilman in King County, Washington.
(Courtesy photos)
Additional presenters include: Andom Ghebreghiorgis. former Congressional candidate from New York; Samuel Gebru, former candidate for City Council in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and current managing director of Black Lion Strategies; as well as Hannah Joy Gebresilassie, journalist and community advocate; and Debbie Almraw, writer and poet.
Entertainment will be provided by Elias Aragaw, the artist behind @TheFunkIsReal, and DJ Sammy Sam.
The announcement notes that “voting is a core principle of being American, but to exercise this basic right we must be registered to vote! That’s why Habesha Networks and Habeshas Vote are proud partners of When We All Vote and supporters of National Voter Registration Day.”
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Watch: Students Interview Kamala Harris (U.S. ELECTION UPDATE)
Fana R. Haileselassie, a student at Spelman College in Atlanta, asks Sen. Kamala Harris a question during a virtual Q&A hosted by BET featuring the Democratic nominee for Vice President and students discussing the interests of millennial voters. (Photo: BETNetworks)
BET News Special
HBCU Students Interview Kamala Harris
A virtual Q&A hosted by Terrence J featuring Democratic nominee for Vice President Sen. Kamala Harris and HBCU students discussing the interests of millennial voters.
Watch: Sen. Kamala Harris Answers HBCU Students’ Questions About Voting, Student Loan Debt & More
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Related:
Virginia’s Era as a Swing State Appears to be Over
President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama wave after a campaign event in May 2012 in Richmond. (Getty Images)
The Washington Post
Updated: September 18th, 2020
No TV ads, no presidential visits: Virginia’s era as a swing state appears to be over
Barack Obama held the very last rally of his 2008 campaign in Virginia, the longtime Republican stronghold he flipped on his way to the White House.
Four years later, Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney made more visits and aired more television ads here than nearly anywhere else. And in 2016, Donald Trump staged rally after rally in the Old Dominion while Hillary Clinton picked a Virginian as her running mate.
But Virginia isn’t getting the swing-state treatment this time around. As in-person early voting got underway Friday, President Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden were dark on broadcast television. Super PACs were clogging somebody else’s airwaves. Even as Trump and Biden have resumed limited travel amid the coronavirus pandemic, neither has stumped in the Old Dominion.
There’s really no discussion about the state being in play,” said Amy Walter, national editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “If you’re Ohio or New Hampshire, or Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, you’ve always been in that spotlight. Virginia got it for such a short period of time.”
The last time presidential candidates stayed out of Virginia and off its airwaves was 2004. The state was reliably red then, having backed Republicans for the White House every year since 1968. Now Virginia seems to be getting the cold shoulder because it’s considered solidly blue.
“Virginia was the belle of the ball in 2008, and again in 2012, and still once more in 2016, but in 2020, the commonwealth is a wall flower,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a University of Mary Washington political scientist.
Mike Bloomberg to spend at least $100 million in Florida to benefit Joe Biden
Former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg plans to spend at least $100 million to help elect Joe Biden, a massive late-stage infusion of cash that could reshape the presidential contest. (Getty Images)
The Washington Post
Updated: September 13th, 2020
Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg plans to spend at least $100 million in Florida to help elect Democrat Joe Biden, a massive late-stage infusion of cash that could reshape the presidential contest in a costly toss-up state central to President Trump’s reelection hopes.
Bloomberg made the decision to focus his final election spending on Florida last week, after news reports that Trump had considered spending as much as $100 million of his own money in the final weeks of the campaign, Bloomberg’s advisers said. Presented with several options on how to make good on an earlier promise to help elect Biden, Bloomberg decided that a narrow focus on Florida was the best use of his money.
The president’s campaign has long treated the state, which Trump now calls home, as a top priority, and his advisers remain confident in his chances given strong turnout in 2016 and 2018 that gave Republicans narrow winning margins in statewide contests.
Watch: Former 2020 presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg slammed Trump during his Democratic National Convention speech on Aug. 20.
Bloomberg’s aim is to prompt enough early voting that a pro-Biden result would be evident soon after the polls close.
Biden Leads by 9 Percentage Points in Pennsylvania (ELECTION UPDATE)
In the survey, Biden, who was born in the state, draws the support of 53 percent of likely voters, compared to 44 percent who back Trump. (Reuters photo)
The Washington Post
Updated: September 9, 2020
Biden Leads by 9 Percentage Points in Pennsylvania, Poll Finds
Joe Biden leads President Trump by nine percentage points among likely voters in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state that Trump narrowly won four years ago, according to a new NBC News-Marist poll.
In the survey, Biden, who was born in the state, draws the support of 53 percent of likely voters, compared to 44 percent who back Trump.
In 2016, Trump carried Pennsylvania by less than one percentage point over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The NBC-Marist poll shows Biden getting a boost from suburban voters, who side with him by nearly 20 percentage points, 58 percent to 39 percent. In 2016, Trump won suburban voters in Pennsylvania by about eight points, according to exit polls.
Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden stand outside the AFL-CIO headquarters in Harrisburg, Pa., on Monday. (Getty Images)
The poll also finds the candidates are tied at 49 percent among white voters in Pennsylvania, a group that Trump won by double digits in 2016. Biden leads Trump among nonwhite voters, 75 percent to 19 percent.
Pennsylvania has been a frequent destination for both campaigns in recent weeks. Vice President Pence has events scheduled there on Wednesday.
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Kamala D. Harris Goes Viral — for Her Shoe Choice
Sporting Chuck Taylor sneakers, Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) greets supporters Monday in Milwaukee. (AP photo)
The Washington Post
Updated: September 8, 2020
It took roughly eight seconds of on-the-ground campaigning for the first Black woman to be nominated on a major party’s ticket to go viral.
At first glance, little seemed noteworthy as Sen. Kamala D. Harris deplaned in Milwaukee on Monday. She was wearing a mask. She didn’t trip. Instead, what sent video pinging around the Internet was what was on her feet: her black, low-rise Chuck Taylor All-Stars, the classic Converse shoe that has long been associated more closely with cultural cool than carefully managed high-profile candidacies.
By Tuesday morning, videos by two reporters witnessing her arrival had been viewed nearly 8 million times on Twitter — for comparison’s sake, more than four times the attention the campaign’s biggest planned video event, a conversation between Joe Biden and Barack Obama, had received on both Twitter and YouTube combined.
Harris’s sister, Maya, tweeted Monday that Chuck Taylors are, indeed, her sister’s “go-to.” A few hours later, Harris’s official campaign account tweeted the video with the caption “laced up and ready to win.”
Read more »
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81 American Nobel Laureates Endorse Biden for Next U.S. President
The Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and medicine “wholeheartedly” endorsed the Democratic nominee in an open letter released Wednesday. “At no time in our nation’s history has there been a greater need for our leaders to appreciate the value of science in formulating public policy,” they said. (Courtesy photo)
Press Release
Nobel Laureates endorse Joe Biden
81 American Nobel Laureates in Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine have signed this letter to express their support for former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 election for President of the United States.
At no time in our nation’s history has there been a greater need for our leaders to appreciate the value of science in formulating public policy. During his long record of public service, Joe Biden has consistently demonstrated his willingness to listen to experts, his understanding of the value of international collaboration in research, and his respect for the contribution that immigrants make to the intellectual life of our country.
As American citizens and as scientists, we wholeheartedly endorse Joe Biden for President.
Name, Category, Prize Year:
Peter Agre Chemistry 2003
Sidney Altman Chemistry 1989
Frances H. Arnold Chemistry 2018
Paul Berg Chemistry 1980
Thomas R. Cech Chemistry 1989
Martin Chalfie Chemistry 2008
Elias James Corey Chemistry 1990
Joachim Frank Chemistry 2017
Walter Gilbert Chemistry 1980
John B. Goodenough Chemistry 2019
Alan Heeger Chemistry 2000
Dudley R. Herschbach Chemistry 1986
Roald Hoffmann Chemistry 1981
Brian K. Kobilka Chemistry 2012
Roger D. Kornberg Chemistry 2006
Robert J. Lefkowitz Chemistry 2012
Roderick MacKinnon Chemistry 2003
Paul L. Modrich Chemistry 2015
William E. Moerner Chemistry 2014
Mario J. Molina Chemistry 1995
Richard R. Schrock Chemistry 2005
K. Barry Sharpless Chemistry 2001
Sir James Fraser Stoddart Chemistry 2016
M. Stanley Whittingham Chemistry 2019
James P. Allison Medicine 2018
Richard Axel Medicine 2004
David Baltimore Medicine 1975
J. Michael Bishop Medicine 1989
Elizabeth H. Blackburn Medicine 2009
Michael S. Brown Medicine 1985
Linda B. Buck Medicine 2004
Mario R. Capecchi Medicine 2007
Edmond H. Fischer Medicine 1992
Joseph L. Goldstein Medicine 1985
Carol W. Greider Medicine 2009
Jeffrey Connor Hall Medicine 2017
Leland H. Hartwell Medicine 2001
H. Robert Horvitz Medicine 2002
Louis J. Ignarro Medicine 1998
William G. Kaelin Jr. Medicine 2019
Eric R. Kandel Medicine 2000
Craig C. Mello Medicine 2006
John O’Keefe Medicine 2014
Michael Rosbash Medicine 2017
James E. Rothman Medicine 2013
Randy W. Schekman Medicine 2013
Gregg L. Semenza Medicine 2019
Hamilton O. Smith Medicine 1978
Thomas C. Sudhof Medicine 2013
Jack W. Szostak Medicine 2009
Susumu Tonegawa Medicine 1987
Harold E. Varmus Medicine 1989
Eric F. Wieschaus Medicine 1995
Torsten N. Wiesel Medicine 1981
Michael W. Young Medicine 2017
Barry Clark Barish Physics 2017
Steven Chu Physics 1997
Jerome I. Friedman Physics 1990
Sheldon Glashow Physics 1979
David J. Gross Physics 2004
John L. Hall Physics 2005
Wolfgang Ketterle Physics 2001
J. Michael Kosterlitz Physics 2016
Herbert Kroemer Physics 2000
Robert B. Laughlin Physics 1998
Anthony J. Leggett Physics 2003
John C. Mather Physics 2006
Shuji Nakamura Physics 2014
Douglas D. Osheroff Physics 1996
James Peebles Physics 2019
Arno Penzias Physics 1978
Saul Perlmutter Physics 2011
H. David Politzer Physics 2004
Brian P. Schmidt Physics 2011
Joseph H. Taylor Jr. Physics 1993
Kip Stephen Thorne Physics 2017
Daniel C. Tsui Physics 1998
Rainer Weiss Physics 2017
Frank Wilczek Physics 2004
Robert Woodrow Wilson Physics 1978
David J. Wineland Physics 2012
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Related
Biden Calls Trump ‘a Toxic Presence’ Who is Encouraging Violence in America
“Donald Trump has been a toxic presence in our nation for four years,” Biden said. “Will we rid ourselves of this toxin? (Photo: Joe Biden speaks Monday in Pittsburgh/Reuters)
The Washington Post
Joe Biden excoriated President Trump on Monday as a threat to the safety of all Americans, saying he has encouraged violence in the nation’s streets even as he has faltered in handling the coronavirus pandemic.
For his most extensive remarks since violent protests have escalated across the country in recent days, Biden traveled to Pittsburgh and struck a centrist note, condemning both the destruction in the streets and Trump for creating a culture that he said has exacerbated it.
“I want to be very clear about all of this: Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting,” Biden said. “It’s lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted.”
The former vice president also rejected the caricature that Trump and his allies have painted of him as someone who holds extremist views and has helped fuel the anger in urban centers across the country.
“You know me. You know my heart. You know my story, my family’s story,” Biden said. “Ask yourself: Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?”
While the speech was delivered amid heightened tensions over race and police conduct, Biden did not outline new policies, instead focusing on making a broader condemnation of Trump.
He called the president a danger to those suffering from the coronavirus, to anyone in search of a job or struggling to pay rent, to voters worried about Russian interference in the upcoming election and to those worried about their own safety amid unrest.
“Donald Trump wants to ask the question: Who will keep you safer as president? Let’s answer that question,” Biden said. “When I was vice president, violent crime fell 15 percent in this country. We did it without chaos and disorder.”
Pointing to a nationwide homicide rate rising 26 percent this year, Biden asked, “Do you really feel safer under Donald Trump?”
“If I were president today, the country would be safer,” Biden said. “And we’d be seeing a lot less violence.”
It was a marked shift for Biden from his convention speech less than two weeks ago, in which he never named Trump in his remarks. During his speech Monday, he mentioned Trump’s name 32 times.
“Donald Trump has been a toxic presence in our nation for four years,” Biden said. “Will we rid ourselves of this toxin? Or will we make it a permanent part of our nation’s character?”
Spotlight: The Unravelling of the Social Fabric in Ethiopia and the U.S.
As Ethiopian Americans we are increasingly concerned about the decline of civil discourse and the unravelling of the social fabric not only in Ethiopia, but also here in the United States where in the era of Trump and the COVID-19 pandemic politics has also become more and more violent. Below are excerpts and links to two recent articles from The Intercept and The Guardian focusing on the timely topic. (AP photo)
The Intercept
August, 29th, 2020
The Social Fabric of the U.S. Is Fraying Severely, if Not Unravelling: Why, in the world’s richest country, is every metric of mental health pathology rapidly worsening?
THE YEAR 2020 has been one of the most tumultuous in modern American history. To find events remotely as destabilizing and transformative, one has to go back to the 2008 financial crisis and the 9/11 and anthrax attacks of 2001, though those systemic shocks, profound as they were, were isolated (one a national security crisis, the other a financial crisis) and thus more limited in scope than the multicrisis instability now shaping U.S. politics and culture.
Since the end of World War II, the only close competitor to the current moment is the multipronged unrest of the 1960s and early 1970s: serial assassinations of political leaders, mass civil rights and anti-war protests, sustained riots, fury over a heinous war in Indochina, and the resignation of a corruption-plagued president.
But those events unfolded and built upon one another over the course of a decade. By crucial contrast, the current confluence of crises, each of historic significance in their own right — a global pandemic, an economic and social shutdown, mass unemployment, an enduring protest movement provoking increasing levels of violence and volatility, and a presidential election centrally focused on one of the most divisive political figures the U.S. has known who happens to be the incumbent president — are happening simultaneously, having exploded one on top of the other in a matter of a few months.
Lurking beneath the headlines justifiably devoted to these major stories of 2020 are very troubling data that reflect intensifying pathologies in the U.S. population — not moral or allegorical sicknesses but mental, emotional, psychological and scientifically proven sickness. Many people fortunate enough to have survived this pandemic with their physical health intact know anecdotally — from observing others and themselves — that these political and social crises have spawned emotional difficulties and psychological challenges…
Much attention is devoted to lamenting the toxicity of our discourse, the hate-driven polarization of our politics, and the fragmentation of our culture. But it is difficult to imagine any other outcome in a society that is breeding so much psychological and emotional pathology by denying to its members the things they most need to live fulfilling lives.
Ethiopia falls into violence a year after leader’s Nobel peace prize win
Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, centre, arrives at an African Union summit in Addis Ababa in July. Photograph: AP
By Jason Burke and Zecharias Zelalem in Addis Ababa
Sat 29 Aug 2020
Abiy Ahmed came to power promising radical reform, but 180 people have died amid ethnic unrest in Oromia state
Ethiopia faces a dangerous cycle of intensifying internal political dissent, ethnic unrest and security crackdowns, observers have warned, after a series of protests in recent weeks highlighted growing discontent with the government of Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel peace prize winner.
Many western powers welcomed the new approach of Abiy, who took power in 2018 and promised a programme of radical reform after decades of repressive one-party rule, hoping for swift changes in an emerging economic power that plays a key strategic role in a region increasingly contested by Middle Eastern powers and China. He won the peace prize in 2019 for ending a conflict with neighbouring Eritrea.
The most vocal unrest was in the state of Oromia, where there have been waves of protests since the killing last month of a popular Oromo artist and activist, Haacaaluu Hundeessaa, in Addis Ababa, the capital. An estimated 180 people have died in the violence, some murdered by mobs, others shot by security forces. Houses, factories, businesses, hotels, cars and government offices were set alight or damaged and several thousand people, including opposition leaders, were arrested.
Further protests last week prompted a new wave of repression and left at least 11 dead. “Oromia is still reeling from the grim weight of tragic killings this year. These grave patterns of abuse should never be allowed to continue,” said Aaron Maasho, a spokesperson for the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.
‘How Dare We Not Vote?’ Black Voters Organize After DC March
People rally at Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington, Friday Aug. 28, 2020, on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Speakers implored attendees to “vote as if our lives depend on it.” (AP Photos)
The Associated Press
Updated: August 29th, 2020
WASHINGTON (AP) — Tears streamed down Brooke Moreland’s face as she watched tens of thousands gather on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to decry systemic racism and demand racial justice in the wake of several police killings of Black Americans.
But for the Indianapolis mother of three, the fiery speeches delivered Friday at the commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom also gave way to one central message: Vote and demand change at the ballot box in November.
“As Black people, a lot of the people who look like us died for us to be able to sit in public, to vote, to go to school and to be able to walk around freely and live our lives,” the 31-year-old Moreland said. “Every election is an opportunity, so how dare we not vote after our ancestors fought for us to be here?”
That determination could prove critical in a presidential election where race is emerging as a flashpoint. President Donald Trump, at this past week’s Republican National Convention, emphasized a “law and order” message aimed at his largely white base of supporters. His Democratic rival, Joe Biden, has expressed empathy with Black victims of police brutality and is counting on strong turnout from African Americans to win critical states such as North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
“If we do not vote in numbers that we’ve never ever seen before and allow this administration to continue what it is doing, we are headed on a course for serious destruction,” Martin Luther King III, told The Associated Press before his rousing remarks, delivered 57 years after his father’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech. “I’m going to do all that I can to encourage, promote, to mobilize and what’s at stake is the future of our nation, our planet. What’s at stake is the future of our children.”
As the campaign enters its latter stages, there’s an intensifying effort among African Americans to transform frustration over police brutality, systemic racism and the disproportionate toll of the coronavirus into political power. Organizers and participants said Friday’s march delivered a much needed rallying cry to mobilize.
As speakers implored attendees to “vote as if our lives depend on it,” the march came on the heels of yet another shooting by a white police officer of a Black man – 29-year-old Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last Sunday — sparking demonstrations and violence that left two dead.
“We need a new conversation … you act like it’s no trouble to shoot us in the back,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said. “Our vote is dipped in blood. We’re going to vote for a nation that stops the George Floyds, that stops the Breonna Taylors.”
Navy veteran Alonzo Jones- Goss, who traveled to Washington from Boston, said he plans to vote for Biden because the nation has seen far too many tragic events that have claimed the lives of Black Americans and other people of color.
“I supported and defended the Constitution and I support the members that continue to do it today, but the injustice and the people that are losing their lives, that needs to end,” Jones-Goss, 28, said. “It’s been 57 years since Dr. King stood over there and delivered his speech. But what is unfortunate is what was happening 57 years ago is still happening today.”
Drawing comparisons to the original 1963 march, where participants then were protesting many of the same issues that have endured, National Urban League President and CEO Marc Morial said it’s clear why this year’s election will be pivotal for Black Americans.
“We are about reminding people and educating people on how important it is to translate the power of protest into the power of politics and public policy change,” said Morial, who spoke Friday. “So we want to be deliberate about making the connection between protesting and voting.”
Nadia Brown, a Purdue University political science professor, agreed there are similarities between the situation in 1963 and the issues that resonate among Black Americans today. She said the political pressure that was applied then led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other powerful pieces of legislation that transformed the lives of African Americans. She’s hopeful this could happen again in November and beyond.
“There’s already a host of organizations that are mobilizing in the face of daunting things,” Brown said. “Bur these same groups that are most marginalized are saying it’s not enough to just vote, it’s not enough for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party to ask me for my vote. I’m going to hold these elected officials that are in office now accountable and I’m going to vote in November and hold those same people accountable. And for me, that is the most uplifting and rewarding part — to see those kind of similarities.”
But Brown noted that while Friday’s march resonated with many, it’s unclear whether it will translate into action among younger voters, whose lack of enthusiasm could become a vulnerability for Biden.
“I think there is already a momentum among younger folks who are saying not in my America, that this is not the place where they want to live, but will this turn into electoral gains? That I’m less clear on because a lot of the polling numbers show that pretty overwhelmingly, younger people, millennials and Gen Z’s are more progressive and that they are reluctantly turning to this pragmatic side of politics,” Brown said.
That was clear as the Movement for Black Lives also marked its own historic event Friday — a virtual Black National Convention that featured several speakers discussing pressing issues such as climate change, economic empowerment and the need for electoral justice.
“I don’t necessarily see elections as achieving justice per se because I view the existing system itself as being fundamentally unjust in many ways and it is the existing system that we are trying to fundamentally transform,” said Bree Newsome Bass, an activist and civil rights organizer, during the convention’s panel about electoral justice. “I do think voting and recognizing what an election should be is a way to kind of exercise that muscle.”
— Biden, Harris Prepare to Travel More as Campaign Heats Up (Election Update)
Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden and vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris. (AP Photos)
The Associated Press
August 28th, 2020
WASHINGTON (AP) — After spending a pandemic spring and summer tethered almost entirely to his Delaware home, Joe Biden plans to take his presidential campaign to battleground states after Labor Day in his bid to unseat President Donald Trump.
No itinerary is set, according to the Democratic nominee’s campaign, but the former vice president and his allies say his plan is to highlight contrasts with Trump, from policy arguments tailored to specific audiences to the strict public health guidelines the Biden campaign says its events will follow amid COVID-19.
That’s a notable difference from a president who on Thursday delivered his nomination acceptance on the White House lawn to more than 1,000 people seated side-by-side, most of them without masks, even as the U.S. death toll surpassed 180,000.
“He will go wherever he needs to go,” said Biden’s campaign co-chairman Cedric Richmond, a Louisiana congressman. “And we will do it in a way the health experts would be happy” with and “not the absolutely irresponsible manner you saw at the White House.”
Richmond said it was “always the plan” for Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris to travel more extensively after Labor Day, the traditional mark of the campaign’s home stretch when more casual voters begin to pay close attention.
Biden supporters hold banners near the White House on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention, Thursday evening, Aug. 27, 2020, in Washington, while Donald Trump delivers his acceptance speech from the nearby White House South Lawn.(AP Photo)
Biden has conducted online fundraisers, campaign events and television interviews from his home, but traveled only sparingly for speeches and roundtables with a smattering of media or supporters. His only confirmed plane travel was to Houston, where he met with the family of George Floyd, the Black man who was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer on May 25, sparking nationwide protests. Even some Democrats worried quietly that Biden was ceding too much of the spotlight to Trump. But Biden aides have defended their approach. “We will never make any choices that put our staff or voters in harm’s way,” campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said in May.
Throughout his unusual home-based campaign, Biden blasted Trump as incompetent and irresponsible for downplaying the pandemic and publicly disputing the government’s infectious disease experts. Richmond said that won’t change as Biden ramps up travel.
“We won’t beat this pandemic, which means we can’t restore the economy and get people’s lives back home, unless we exercise some discipline and lead by example,” Richmond said, adding that Trump is “incapable of doing it.”
As exhibited by his acceptance speech Thursday, Trump is insistent on as much normalcy as possible, even as he’s pulled back from his signature indoor rallies after drawing a disappointing crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 20. Trump casts Biden as wanting to “shut down” the economy to combat the virus. “Joe Biden’s plan is not a solution to the virus, but rather a surrender,” Trump declared on the White House lawn. Biden, in fact, has not proposed shutting down the economy. He’s said only that he would be willing to make such a move as president if public health experts advise it. The Democrat also has called for a national mask mandate, calling it a necessary move for Americans to protect each other. Harris on Friday talked about the idea in slightly different terms than Biden, acknowledging that a mandate would be difficult to enforce.
“It’s really a standard. I mean, nobody’s gonna be punished. Come on,” the California senator said, laughing off a question about how to enforce such a rule during an interview that aired Friday on “Today.” “Nobody likes to wear a mask. This is a universal feeling. Right? So that’s not the point, ’Hey, let’s enjoy wearing masks.′ No.”
Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks in Washington, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020. (AP Photo)
Harris suggested that, instead, the rule would be about “what we — as responsible people who love our neighbor — we have to just do that right now.”
“God willing, it won’t be forever,” she added.
Biden and Harris have worn protective face masks in public and stayed socially distanced from each other when appearing together at campaign events. Both have said for weeks that a rule requiring all Americans to wear them could save 40,000 lives in just a three-month period. While such an order may be difficult to impose at the federal level, Biden has called on every governor in the country to order mask-wearing in their states, which would likely achieve the same goal.
Trump has urged Americans to wear masks but opposes a national requirement and personally declined to do so for months. He has worn a mask occasionally more recently, but not at any point Thursday at the Republican National Convention’s closing event, which violated the District of Columbia’s guidelines prohibiting large gatherings.
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Related:
Joe Biden Claims the Democratic Presidential Nomination
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden accepted the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday evening during the last day of the historic Democratic National Convention, August 20, 2020. (AP photo)
The Washington Post
Updated: August 21st, 2020
Biden speaks about ‘battle for the soul of this nation,’ decries Trump’s leadership
Joe Biden accepted his party’s presidential nomination, delivering a speech that directly criticized the leadership of Trump on matters of the coronavirus pandemic, the economy and racial justice.
“Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I’ll be an ally of the light, not the darkness,” Biden said, calling on Americans to come together to “overcome this season of darkness.”
The night featured tributes to civil rights activist and congressman John Lewis, who died in July, as well as to Beau Biden, Joe Biden’s son who died in 2015.
— Kamala Harris Accepts Historic Nomination for Vice President of the United States
Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) accepted her party’s historic nomination to be its vice-presidential candidate in the 2020 U.S. election on Wednesday evening during the third day of the Democratic National Convention. (Reuters photo)
Reuters
Updated: August 20th, 2020
Kamala Harris makes U.S. history, accepts Democrats’ vice presidential nod
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president on Wednesday, imploring the country to elect Joe Biden president and accusing Donald Trump of failed leadership that had cost lives and livelihoods.
The first Black woman and Asian-American on a major U.S. presidential ticket, Harris summarized her life story as emblematic of the American dream on the third day of the Democratic National Convention.
“Donald Trump’s failure of leadership has cost lives and livelihoods,” Harris said.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama told the convention Trump’s failures as his successor had led to 170,000 people dead from the coronavirus, millions of lost jobs and America’s reputation badly diminished in the world.
The evening featured a crush of women headliners, moderators and speakers, with Harris pressing the case against Trump, speaking directly to millions of women, young Americans and voters of color, constituencies Democrats need if Biden is to defeat the Republican Trump.
“The constant chaos leaves us adrift, the incompetence makes us feel afraid, the callousness makes us feel alone. It’s a lot. And here’s the thing: we can do better and deserve so much more,” she said.
“Right now, we have a president who turns our tragedies into political weapons. Joe will be a president who turns our challenges into purpose,” she said, speaking from an austere hotel ballroom in Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden leads Trump in opinion polls ahead of the Nov. 3 election, bolstered by a big lead among women voters. Throughout the convention, Democrats have appealed directly to those women voters, highlighting Biden’s co-sponsorship of the landmark Violence Against Woman Act of 1994 and his proposals to bolster childcare and protect family healthcare provisions.
Obama, whose vice president was Biden from 2009-2017, said he had hoped that Trump would take the job seriously, come to feel the weight of the office, and discover a reverence for American democracy.
Obama on Trump: ‘Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t’
“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t. And the consequences of that failure are severe,” Obama said in unusually blunt criticism from an ex-president.
“Millions of jobs gone. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before,” Obama said.
The choice of a running mate has added significance for Biden, 77, who would be the oldest person to become president if he is elected. His age has led to speculation he will serve only one term, making Harris a potential top contender for the nomination in 2024.
Biden named Harris, 55, as his running mate last week to face incumbents Trump, 74, and Vice President Mike Pence, 61.
Former first lady and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee who lost to Trump, told the convention she constantly hears from voters who regret backing Trump or not voting at all.
“This can’t be another woulda coulda shoulda election.” Clinton said. “No matter what, vote. Vote like our lives and livelihoods are on the line, because they are.”
Clinton, who won the popular vote against Trump but lost in the Electoral College, said Biden needs to win overwhelmingly, warning he could win the popular vote but still lose the White House.
“Joe and Kamala can win by 3 million votes and still lose,” Clinton said. “Take it from me. So we need numbers overwhelming so Trump can’t sneak or steal his way to victory.”
U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) accepts the Democratic vice presidential nomination during an acceptance speech delivered for 2020 Democratic National Convention from the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S., August 19, 2020. (Getty Images)
Democrats have been alarmed by Trump’s frequent criticism of mail-in voting, and by cost-cutting changes at the U.S. Postal Service instituted by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump supporter, that could delay mail during the election crunch. DeJoy said recently he would delay those changes until after the election.
Democrats also broadcast videos highlighting Trump’s crackdown on immigration, opposition to gun restrictions and his decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord.
‘DISRESPECT’ FOR FACTS, FOR WOMEN
Nancy Pelosi, the first woman Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, told the convention she had seen firsthand Trump’s “disrespect for facts, for working families, and for women in particular – disrespect written into his policies toward our health and our rights, not just his conduct. But we know what he doesn’t: that when women succeed, America succeeds.”
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leading progressive who ran against Biden in the 2020 primary, spoke to the convention from a childcare center in Massachusetts and cited Biden’s proposal to make childcare more affordable as a vital part of his agenda to help working Americans.
“It’s time to recognize that childcare is part of the basic infrastructure of this nation — it’s infrastructure for families,” she said. “Joe and Kamala will make high-quality childcare affordable for every family, make preschool universal, and raise the wages for every childcare worker.”
In her speech later, Harris will have an opportunity to outline her background as a child of immigrants from India and Jamaica who as a district attorney, state attorney general, U.S. senator from California and now vice-presidential candidate shattered gender and racial barriers.
She gained prominence in the Senate for her exacting interrogations of Trump nominees, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Attorney General Bill Barr.
The Republican National Convention, also largely virtual, takes place next week.
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Democrats Officially Nominate Joe Biden to Become the Next U.S. President
It’s official: Joe Biden is now formally a candidate to become the next President of the United States. Democrats officially nominated Biden as their 2020 candidate on Tuesday with a roll-call vote of delegates representing all states in the country during the second day of party’s historic virtual convention. (Photo: Courtesy of the Biden campaign)
The Associated Press
Updated: August 19th, 2020
Democrats make it official, nominate Biden to take on Trump
NEW YORK (AP) — Democrats formally nominated Joe Biden as their 2020 presidential nominee Tuesday night, as party officials and activists from across the nation gave the former vice president their overwhelming support during his party’s all-virtual national convention.
The moment marked a political high point for Biden, who had sought the presidency twice before and is now cemented as the embodiment of Democrats’ desperate desire to defeat President Donald Trump this fall.
The roll call of convention delegates formalized what has been clear for months since Biden took the lead in the primary elections’ chase for the nomination. It came as he worked to demonstrate the breadth of his coalition for a second consecutive night, this time blending support from his party’s elders and fresher faces to make the case that he has the experience and energy to repair chaos that Trump has created at home and abroad.
Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State John Kerry — and former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell — were among the heavy hitters on a schedule that emphasized a simple theme: Leadership matters. Former President Jimmy Carter, now 95 years old, also made an appearance.
“Donald Trump says we’re leading the world. Well, we are the only major industrial economy to have its unemployment rate triple,” Clinton said. “At a time like this, the Oval Office should be a command center. Instead, it’s a storm center. There’s only chaos.”
In this image from video, former Georgia House Democratic leader Stacey Abrams, center, and others, speak during the second night of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2020. (Democratic National Convention via AP)
Biden formally captured his party’s presidential nomination Tuesday night after being nominated by three people, including two Delaware lawmakers and 31-year-old African American security guard who became a viral sensation after blurting out “I love you” to Biden in a New York City elevator.
Delegates from across the country then pledged their support for Biden in a video montage that featured Democrats in places like Alabama’s Edmund Pettis Bridge, a beach in Hawaii and the headwaters of the Mississippi River.
In the opening of the convention’s second night, a collection of younger Democrats, including former Georgia lawmaker Stacey Abrams and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were given a few minutes to shine.
“In a democracy, we do not elect saviors. We cast our ballots for those who see our struggles and pledge to serve,” said Abrams, 46, who emerged as a national player during her unsuccessful bid for governor in 2018 and was among those considered to be Biden’s running mate.
She added: “Faced with a president of cowardice, Joe Biden is a man of proven courage.”
On a night that Biden was formally receiving his party’s presidential nomination, the convention was also introducing his wife, Jill Biden, to the nation as the prospective first lady.
In this image from video, Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden, his wife Jill Biden, and members of the Biden family, celebrate after the roll call during the second night of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2020. (Democratic National Convention via AP)
Biden is fighting unprecedented logistical challenges to deliver his message during an all-virtual convention this week as the coronavirus epidemic continues to claim hundreds of American lives each day and wreaks havoc on the economy.
The former vice president was becoming his party’s nominee as a prerecorded roll call vote from delegates in all 50 states airs, and the four-day convention will culminate on Thursday when he accepts that nomination. His running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, will become the first woman of color to accept a major party’s vice presidential nomination on Wednesday.
Until then, Biden is presenting what he sees as the best of his sprawling coalition to the American electorate in a format unlike any other in history.
For a second night, the Democrats featured Republicans.
Powell, who served as secretary of state under George W. Bush and appeared at multiple Republican conventions in years past, was endorsing the Democratic candidate. In a video released ahead of his speech, he said, “Our country needs a commander in chief who takes care of our troops in the same way he would his own family. For Joe Biden, that doesn’t need teaching.”
Powell joins the widow of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, Cindy McCain, who was expected to stop short of a formal endorsement but talk about the mutual respect and friendship her husband and Biden shared.
While there have been individual members of the opposing party featured at presidential conventions before, a half dozen Republicans, including the former two-term governor of Ohio, have now spoken for Democrat Biden.
No one on the program Tuesday night has a stronger connection to the Democratic nominee than his wife, Jill Biden, a longtime teacher, was speaking from her former classroom at Brandywine High School near the family home in Wilmington, Delaware.
“You can hear the anxiety that echoes down empty hallways. There’s no scent of new notebooks or freshly waxed floors,” she said of the school in excerpts of her speech before turning to the nation’s challenges at home. “How do you make a broken family whole? The same way you make a nation whole. With love and understanding—and with small acts of compassion. With bravery. With unwavering faith.”
The Democrats’ party elders played a prominent role throughout the night.
Clinton, who turns 74 on Tuesday, hasn’t held office in two decades. Kerry, 76, was the Democratic presidential nominee back in 2004 when the youngest voters this fall were still in diapers. And Carter is 95 years old.
Clinton, a fixture of Democratic conventions for nearly three decades, addressed voters for roughly five minutes in a speech recorded at his home in Chappaqua, New York.
In addition to railing against Trump’s leadership, Clinton calls Biden “a go-to-work president.” Biden, Clinton continued, is “a man with a mission: to take responsibility, not shift the blame; concentrate, not distract; unite, not divide.”…
Kerry said in an excerpt of his remarks, “Joe understands that none of the issues of this world — not nuclear weapons, not the challenge of building back better after COVID, not terrorism and certainly not the climate crisis — none can be resolved without bringing nations together.”
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Democrats Kick Off Convention as Poll Show Biden, Harris With Double-Digit Lead
Democrats kicked off their historic virtual convention on Monday with the keynote speaker former first lady Michelle Obama assailing the current president as unfit and warning Americans not to reelect him for a second term. Meanwhile new poll show Biden, Harris with double-digit lead over Trump. (Getty Images)
The Associated Press
Updated: August 18th, 2020
Michelle Obama assails Trump as Democrats open convention
NEW YORK (AP) — Michelle Obama delivered a passionate broadside against President Donald Trump during Monday’s opening night of the Democratic National Convention, assailing the Republican president as unfit for the job and warning that the nation’s mounting crises would only get worse if he’s reelected.
The former first lady issued an emotional call to the coalition that sent her husband to the White House, declaring that strong feelings must be translated into votes.
“Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” she declared. “He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us.”
Obama added: “If you think things possibly can’t get worse, trust me, they can and they will if we don’t make a change in this election.”
The comments came as Joe Biden introduced the breadth of his political coalition to a nation in crisis Monday night at the convention, giving voice to victims of the coronavirus pandemic, the related economic downturn and police violence and featuring both progressive Democrats and Republicans united against Trump’s reelection.
Former first lady Michelle Obama speaks during the first night of the Democratic National Convention on Monday, Aug. 17, 2020. The DNC released excerpts of her speech ahead of the convention start. (Democratic National Convention)
The ideological range of Biden’s many messengers was demonstrated by former presidential contenders from opposing parties: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who championed a multi-trillion-dollar universal health care plan, and Ohio’s former Republican Gov. John Kasich, an anti-abortion conservative who spent decades fighting to cut government spending.
The former vice president won’t deliver his formal remarks until Thursday night, but he made his first appearance just half an hour into Monday’s event as he moderated a panel on racial justice, a theme throughout the night, as was concern about the Postal Service. The Democrats accuse Trump of interfering with the nation’s mail in order to throw blocks in front of mail-in voting.
“My friends, I say to you, and to everyone who supported other candidates in this primary and to those who may have voted for Donald Trump in the last election: The future of our democracy is at stake. The future of our economy is at stake. The future of our planet is at stake,” Sanders declared.
Kasich said his status as a lifelong Republican “holds second place to my responsibility to my country.”
“In normal times, something like this would probably never happen, but these are not normal times,” he said of his participation at the Democrats’ convention. He added: “Many of us can’t imagine four more years going down this path.”
Post-ABC poll shows Biden, Harris hold double-digit lead over Trump, Pence
The race for the White House tilts toward the Democrats, with former vice president Joe Biden holding a double-digit lead nationally over President Trump amid continuing disapproval of the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Democrats [kicked] off their convention on Monday in a mood of cautious optimism, with Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), leading Trump and Vice President Pence by 53 percent to 41 percent among registered voters. The findings are identical among a larger sample of all voting-age adults.
Biden’s current national margin over Trump among voters is slightly smaller than the 15-point margin in a poll taken last month and slightly larger than a survey in May when he led by 10 points. In late March, as the pandemic was taking hold in the United States, Biden and Trump were separated by just two points, with the former vice president holding a statistically insignificant advantage.
Today, Biden and Harris lead by 54 percent to 43 percent among those who say they are absolutely certain to vote and who also report voting in 2016. A month ago, Biden’s lead of 15 points overall had narrowed to seven points among similarly committed 2016 voters. Biden now also leads by low double-digits among those who say they are following the election most closely.
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and his running mate, US Senator Kamala Harris. (Courtesy Photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: August 17th, 2020
New York (TADIAS) — Joe Biden’s campaign has announced its speaker lineup for the Democratic National Convention that’s set to open on Monday, August 17th in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Below are the list of speakers that will be featured “across all four nights of the Convention which will air live August 17-20 from 9:00-11:00 PM Eastern each night.”
Simet is an Ethiopian movie about betrayal, courage and sacrifice. The movie is set in the Era of the Princess, mid-18th to 19th century. The country was divided and ruled by local warlords, and Gondar was the capital city of Ethiopia. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: September 10th, 2020
New York (TADIAS) – This week as Ethiopians usher in a new year a timely new movie is set to stream on the online platform habeshaview to mark the holiday.
The movie called SIMET (ሲመት) is “an epic Ethiopian drama about betrayal, courage and sacrifice,” the press release states. “The movie is set in the Era of the Princess, mid-18th to 19th century. The country was divided and ruled by local warlords, and Gondar was the capital city of Ethiopia.”
(Courtesy photo)
The press release adds: “The movie Simet is about an elderly king who is fragile and on the verge of dying. He lost his heir in an unfortunate and deceptive situation. Seeking revenge of the killer, he orders his two younger sons to find the man who killed the heir. Whichever son succeeds, will take the throne. ”
Watch the trailer here:
Habeshaview presents this movie to celebrate the Ethiopian New Year.
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You can learn more and watch the film at www.habeshaview.com. The movie can be streamed through the habeshaview-app and be enjoyed on mobile phones, laptops, tablets, and smart tv’s.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Amid a flurry of government reappointments instigated by recent ethnic violence, Ethiopia’s premier on Tuesday replaced the country’s defense minister.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed named Kene’a Yadeta in place of former defense chief Lemma Megersa, who had been a prominent figure in recent years prior to a major change in governance.
Lemma had diverged with Abiy, opposing the formation of the Prosperity Party formally supplanting the former Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a four-party coalition that firmly ruled the country for 27 years.
The Prosperity Party did away with party lines that divided the EPRDF on an ethnic basis, which Lemma argues would have been better at upholding the government’s federal system.
Recently, security fears have gripped the Horn of Africa country after violence erupted last month following the killing of Oromo activist and singer Hatchalu Hundessa. Deadly clashes and destruction had ensued in various places in Oromia, the most populous regional state.
Abiy also appointed Gedion Timothewos as new Attorney General, Samuel Urkato as minister science and higher education, Takele Uma as minister of mines and petroleum, Tesfaye Daba as deputy attorney general, Yohannes Buayalew as director-general of the Ethiopian Foreign Relations Strategic Studies Institute and Nigusu Tilahun as commissioner of the Job Creation Commission.
He also appointed Endawek Abte as deputy director-general of the Metals Engineering Corporation, Fekadu Tsega as deputy attorney general and Hirut Woldemariam as social sector advisor to the prime minister.
Last month’s violence saw the arrest and indictment of many politicians, some of whom are standing trial for alleged instigation of violence leading to the death of hundreds of civilians and destruction of property.
Ethiopia on Tuesday set a limit on the amount of cash a firm or individual could hold at any given time, blaming liquidity “hoarding” for placing undue pressure on the country’s economy.
In a statement, National Bank Governor Yinager Dessie announced the limit of 1.5 million Ethiopian birr ($42,400), saying that the government had “come to the realization that hoarding cash is significantly harming the economy,” without specifying the amount of liquidity thought to have been accumulated.
“When the nature of their business compels them to possess a certain amount of money, companies can have in their possession not more than 1.5 million birr,” he said, adding that non-compliance with this measure would entail unspecified penalties.
Experts estimate that the amount of cash circulating informally in Ethiopia was more than that under circulation via banks.
According to Yinager, Ethiopia is trying to expand digital cash flow services such as ATMs, Point of Sales (PoS) and Switch Operators in a bid to maximize the amount of formal transactions.
The Central Bank is prepared to license prospective operators of these e-banking services, he added.
- Reprinted banknotes
Meanwhile, the country’s economy also lost millions each year to reprint banknotes that had been damaged or vandalized, said Yinager.
He urged people not to write on or tear banknotes, as this could damage the security features imprinted on them.
With most international athletics competitions either canceled or postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic the World Athletics website has launched a downloadable 'color the stars' series for kids featuring iconic sports figures, including this week's highlight Tirunesh Dibaba. (Image: World Athletics)
Have some crayons or coloured pencils? Then get to work colouring and getting to know some of our sport’s biggest stars.
We continue with two more all-time greats: Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia and Japan’s Koji Murofushi.
Dibaba is one of the finest distance runners ever, having collected two world 5000m titles, three world 10,000m crowns, three Olympic gold and four world cross country triumphs. Murofushi, the 2004 Olympic champion in the hammer throw, also spun to the world title in 2011.
Ababel Yeshaneh of Ethiopia smashed the world record by 20 seconds on Friday winning the 2020 Ras Al Khaimah half marathon at the World Athletics Gold Label road race in UAE. (Photo via worldathletics.org)
Athletics: Ethiopia’s Yeshaneh smashes half marathon world record by 20 seconds
Ethiopia’s Ababel Yeshaneh smashed the half marathon world record by 20 seconds on Friday to win the Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) event in the United Arab Emirates on Friday.
Yeshaneh crossed the finish line in one hour, four minutes and 31 seconds at the World Athletics Gold Label road race, eclipsing the previous record of 1:04:51 set by Kenyan Joyciline Jepkosgei in Valencia in 2017.
Marathon world record holder Brigid Kosgei finished second, and her time was also two seconds inside Jepkosgei’s mark.
Both Yeshaneh and Kosgei were wearing a version of Nike’s Vaporfly shoes, which have featured in several other track and road records in the last three years.
Some earlier models of the shoe were banned by World Athletics last month, but the latest one launched by Nike complies with the rules to limit carbon plate usage and sole thickness for elite races.
“I didn’t imagine this result,” said Yeshaneh, whose previous best of 1:05:46 had stood as the Ethiopian record for five months between 2018 and 2019.
Nesanet Teshager Abegaze’s Film “Bereka” is set to be screened at the 2020 Sundance Festival in January. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: December 23rd, 2019
New York (TADIAS) — Entrepreneur, Educator and Storyteller, Nesanet Teshager Abegaze, will be screening her short film entitled “Bereka” at the Sundance 2020 Festival in January. Held annually in Salt Lake City, Utah, Sundance is considered America’s largest independent film festival and takes place this coming year from January 23rd to February 2nd, 2020.
Named after the third round of the traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony, “Bereka” is a heart-stopping experimental film sharing a family’s sudden departure from Gondar, Ethiopia and the triumphant return of grandchildren to their ancestral home. Narrated in English and Amharic by matriarch Azla Mekonnen as well as her granddaughter Samira Hooks — and shot on Super 8 film in Los Angeles, CA and Gondar, Ethiopia — “Bereka” evokes searing memories related to forced migration, resettlement, growth, a deep yearning to discover heritage, and a return of the heart to what will always be “home.” Asked about how she developed the concept and narration of her short film, Nesanet shared that she had been recording audio as part of a family archive project through the years and had also begun to add footage when the idea for this short came to the forefront of her mind. “The whole film came together in a very organic way,” she said.
Nesanet Teshager Abegaze at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia, August 2019. (Courtesy of the artist)
We first wrote about Nesanet six years ago when she launched Azla, a plant-based Ethiopian restaurant in South Central Los Angeles. Named after her mother and business partner, Azla, the restaurant has been featured on Food Network in 2016 as well as in numerous publications including Serious Eats, KCRW, and Complex.
Nesanet holds a Bachelors degree in Human Biology from Stanford University and a Master’s in Education from UCLA, and previously worked in the education, non-profit, and entertainment sectors before launching her own business and later joining Echo Park Film Center as a Fellow. As shared on her website, Nesanet “recognized the power of the moving image during her freshman year in high school when she saw “Imperfect Journey,” a documentary by the legendary filmmaker Haile Gerima, that changed her life trajectory.”
According Sundance’s press release the 2020 list of films to be screened at the festival were “selected from a record high of 15,100 submissions including 3,853 feature-length films.” Robert Redford, the President & Founder of Sundance Institute, noted that “this year’s festival is full of films that showcase myriad ways for stories to drive change, across hearts, minds and societies.” Executive Director of Sundance, Keri Putnam added that the institute believes that “diverse stories from independent artists around the world open us up to new perspectives and possibilities – at a time when fresh thinking and dialogue is urgently needed.”
Congratulations to Nesanet Teshager Abegaze for her film’s win this year at BlackStar Film Festival, and now heading to Sundance 2020 to be screened under “Shorts Program 4!”
Etenesh Tesfu at her 7-Eleven store in Aurora, Colorado. she and her husband Zek Tesfu, opened their second 7-Eleven franchise this week. (The Sentinel)
AURORA | Etenesh Tesfu emigrated from Ethiopia in 2000 and got a job at an Aurora 7-Eleven. Now she owns one.
In fact, she and her husband Zek Tesfu, opened their second 7-Eleven franchise this week.
“It’s all about community,” said Zek. “You won’t believe how many people come and, like, try to meet us here.”
The Tesfu’s new store at 3800 Tower Road. in the Green Valley Ranch neighborhood, celebrated a grand opening with free small Slurpees, coffee and Big Gulps. There were discounted pizza slices and hot dogs and even games. Sponsors set up booths outside to greet customers, like Colorado Lottery, Monster Energy and KS1075. The Denver Broncos mascot Miles came to visit and take photos with families.
Etenesh worked her way up from cashier to assistant manager, to manager to 7-Eleven franchisee. The other location the couple owns is in Commerce City.
Jullian Garcia, 4-years-old, spent his summer morning and afternoon at the grand opening. His tongue turned blue from the blue raspberry Slurpee he sipped on. When he found out that there would be a new location, his father Joseph Garcia promised Jullian that he would take him to the event. According to Joseph, his son has always loved the place.
“So he was always saying ‘They’re gonna build my 7-Eleven,’” said Joseph. “He loves Slurpees, pizza, anything from 7-Eleven.”
Negussie Mengesha who began his journalism career in the U.S. as an Amharic reporter at Voice of America in the 1980's is now the head of VOA’s Africa Division overseeing the agency’s nearly 125 hours of weekly programming in 16 languages on radio, television, and digital platforms to the African continent - reaching nearly 51 million people weekly. (Photo: VOA)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: May 5th, 2019
New York (TADIAS) — Voice of America (VOA) has been a voice for the voiceless in Ethiopia for many decades, and one of the main people behind this effort is Negussie Mengesha, who started out as young reporter then became an editor, Amharic Chief and is now the Director of the Africa division for VOA.
In the following video Negussie explains how he fled Ethiopia in the 1970s and became a refugee in Sudan before relocating to the U.S. all because he was unable to practice his profession as a journalist in his home country due to the repressive government at the time.
Thanks to the current reforms underway in Ethiopia Negussie was able to return to Ethiopia for the first time in four decades last October. In addition to an emotional visit to his parents’ burial grounds, Negussie said one of the highlights of his trip was meeting with PM Abiy Ahmed.
“I thanked him for opening up the political space and for allowing the media to operate freely,” Negussie said. “That meeting for me was very, very important.” He added: “Freedom of the press is close to my heart. I have seen journalists killed because they wrote freely, because they exposed corruption, mismanagement or also injustice.”
As to VOA he said: “This place is more than a workplace for me, it’s like my family. I started out as reporter, then became a senior editor, then became the Amharic Chief.”
Negussie says VOA is planing to strengthen its presence in Ethiopia and added: “Hopefully one day we will have a VOA 24/7.”
Watch: Negussie Mengesha on New Media Freedoms in Ethiopia
Ethiopia’s Worknesh Degefa cruises to Boston Marathon title
BOSTON (AP) — Worknesh Degefa had never set foot on the Boston Marathon course before she toed the start line in Hopkinton, Massachusetts on Monday morning.
It didn’t stop the 28-year-old Ethiopian from conquering it on her first trip down the famed route.
Degefa broke away from the rest of the field early and ran alone for the last 20 miles to win the women’s Boston Marathon.
Degefa crossed the finish line in Boston’s Back Bay in a time of 2 hours, 23 minutes, 31 seconds.
She is the eighth Ethiopian woman to win the race, and the third in seven years. Kenya’s Edna Kiplagat was second, coming in at 2:24:13. American Jordan Hasay was third, crossing the line in 2:25:20. Defending champion Des Linden, who represented the United States in the marathon at the past two Summer Olympics, finished fifth in 2:27:00.
“Winning the Boston Marathon is super special to me,” Degefa said. “Even though I’d never seen the course before, last year I watched all the marathon coverage. I kept that in my mind.”
And for most of the race she kept the rest of the field far behind her.
Worknesh Degefa wins the women’s division of the 123rd Boston Marathon on Monday, April 15, 2019, in Boston. (AP Photo)
It was Degefa’s first major marathon victory. She won the Dubai Marathon in 2017, setting an Ethiopian national record.
Linden took advantage of a rainy and windy course with temperatures in the 30s to claim last year’s title in the slowest time for a women’s winner in Boston since 1978.
A heavy band of rain moved through Hopkinton at the start line about 6:30 a.m. but tapered to a drizzle and then stopped before the women’s race began. It didn’t rain during the race, allowing the Ethiopian and Kenyan contingents to push the pace.
A half marathon specialist, Degefa took her first lead after Mile 4 headed into Framingham, followed by Ethiopia’s Mare Dibaba and Kenya’s Sharon Cherop. Degefa increased the margin between Mile 5 and 6 and opened a 20-second advantage by Mile 7.
“I knew that I had some speed, so I pushed myself after Mile 5,” Degefa said.
Degefa’s pace slowed in the final three miles and she looked behind her a few times to try to glimpse one of her fellow competitors.
Kiplagat became visible again in the distance around Mile 25, but there was no time for her to close the sizeable gap.
Despite not being able to get on the podium for a second straight year, Linden had a lot of support on the course. The crowd serenaded her with loud cheers when she was introduced. At the finish, a young girl held a sign that read “Des 4 Prez.”
On a day in which the marathon fell on April 15 for the first time since the April 15, 2013 bombings, Linden said it had lots of significance for the city and for herself.
“That run down Boylston was very special to me,” Linden said. “I feel like I’ve built a name for myself in this community with these fans and they really appreciate what I’ve done over the years.
“It’s also a sign that I’m pretty old that they actually know me now.”
Ethiopian vocalist Etenesh Wassié began her career in Addis aged just 15 singing in traditional music venues known as Azmari Bet. She’s now building a successful career in Europe singing azmari songs and working, notably, with French musicians. Her second album Yene Alem is out in June.
Wassié was introduced to European audiences thanks to Francis Falceto, producer of the influential Ethiopiques compilations of Ethiopian music.
“I met her in the 90s after the end of the revolution when the curfew was cancelled and nightlife was passable again,” says Falceto. “She was one of my favourite singers then and she still is very active. And mostly abroad, because she’s musical enough and talented enough to deal with musicians from all over the world and especially with French musicians.”
She began working with French band Le Tigre des Platanes about a decade ago.
“I was dreading the rehearsals,” she told RFI’s Musiques du Monde programme “but after four or five concerts it got easier.”
She now seems perfectly at ease performing live with bass player Mathieu Sourisseau – with whom she’s recorded Yene Alem – and cellist Sébastien Bacquias.
“She’s an incredibly talented vocalist,” says Falceto. “Her voice, her sense of fun, on stage she’s a hurricaine but she can also be an incredible blueswoman. For me she has a brilliant future if she goes ahead properly she can fly very high.”
Etenesh Wassié performs at Les Nuits de Fourvière festival in Lyon on 22 July with Mahmoud Ahmed and Girma Beyené.
New York (TADIAS) — Abaynesh Asrat, Founder & CEO of Nation to Nation Networking has been named one of the Champions of Change in 2018 and will be formally honored at an awards ceremony on Friday, May 18th by UN Women’s Metropolitan New York chapter.
The last time that we featured Abaynesh — whose prior achievements included working to eradicate fistula, promoting youth ambassadors for health, and providing diversity leadership training programs — she was in Ethiopia hosting a workshop in collaboration with Addis Ababa University on solar energy as an alternative to women’s backbreaking daily task of fetching firewood and coal for fuel in remote and rural parts of the country.
The 2018 Champions of Change celebration honors women who worked in various areas including economic empowerment, peace & security, political participation, eliminating violence against women, media and advocacy.
“We are proud to recognize these women and men who make significant contributions to women’s empowerment and gender equality in their professional and personal lives” states the formal announcement for the event. “These diverse champions have made an impact on a wide range of issues including women’s economic and political empowerment, gender-based violence, peace and security, and sexual and reproductive health and rights.”
Born in Ethiopia, Abaynesh lives in New York holds a B.A. from Bennett College in North Carolina as well as an M.A. in Social Science from East Michigan University. Her non-profit, Nation to Nation Networking launched in 2004, bridges health, education and economic development programs for young children and their families in urban Ethiopia. The organization facilitates short term access to yearly eye examinations as well as financial support for uniforms, food, and school building rent, while visionary long-term aims include addressing early marriage issues, which affects adolescents’ access to full-time schooling. Nation to Nation Networking develops and implements results-oriented projects aimed at promoting culture and understanding to serve under-privileged communities, without fragmenting those cultures, through empowerment and enrichment.
(Courtesy photo)
As a former clinician and administrator at New York Medical College, Abaynesh also developed a program that trains medical students to see beyond the stethoscope and observe how social and economic issues affect their patients. She implemented interventions for families to end the cycle of violence while trained staff provided peaceful living awareness and conflict prevention training. Her contributions led to establishing an infant and toddler rehabilitation school, within a hospital setting, where early development challenges and parental behavior are addressed and corrected on-site.
Abaynesh describes her work as encompassing and “creating a world with equal access to resources and open conversation on topics that promote change at a global level.” She highlights that her passion and commitment to social change comes from a “devotion to empower women, families and underserved communities,” and she therefore diligently and successfully envisions and executes programs and conversations committed to justice and human rights. She has been a strong advocate for the empowerment of women and families, and in particular against organ trafficking affecting migrant domestic workers as well as disseminating key awareness training and workshops via speaking engagements and conferences hosted by Nation to Nation networking in African countries and beyond on various projects including use of solar power energy for households, maternal health & fistula education, and prevention of infant mortality. Abaynesh’s philanthropy and activism work has also been presented at UN NGO CSW parallel events, and her innovative programs have changed the way communities think and work, and helped open conversations that pioneer forward-thinking, thoughtful action.
As an activist Abaynesh has worked with international lawyers on issues such as “bill of rights of child marriage” and “child labor” with a goal towards incorporating legislation within the UN charters of protections. Abaynesh has been recognized and awarded for her work by organizations including the New York Metropolitan Museum, MLK Jr. Center for Non-Violence, the Association of Black Educators of New York, Africa Chamber of Commerce, the Fistula Foundation, National Council of Women of U.S., the New York Women’s Agenda (Galaxy Woman), and NBS radio talk host and W.F. Ambassador of Peace.
“If we have understanding, we can build peace” Abaynesh says.
Abaynesh is currently a Board member of UN Women’s National Committee, United States Metropolitan New York Chapter, and a member of the Planning Committee of UN NGO CSW, NY, CEDAW Task Force. In the past she served as a Board member for the Museum of Art and Design and New York Women’s Agenda as well as the Fistula Foundation, where she was also National Fundraising Chair for the foundation’s initiative to build a specialty hospital in Harar in 2002. Abaynesh continues to remain involved with Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia and their established Midwifery College, and has conducted speaking engagements with UNIFEM, UNICEF and the Committee on the Status of Women (CSW) planning committee. She also previously served for two terms as President & CEO of the Coalition of Ethiopian Women in New York with the goal of aiding individuals in adjusting to a new adopted country and culture as well as providing resources for violence prevention against women.
We congratulate Abaynesh on her selection as a UN Women 2018 Champion of Change for Gender Equality!
— IF YOU GO:
Champions of Change for Gender Equality
Friday, May 18, 2018
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd Street New York, NY, 10011United States Purchase tickets at this link:
6pm Reception
7pm Awards Ceremony
Emcee Laura Brounstein from Cosmopolitan and Seventeen Magazines. Entertainment by Batalá New York, TrevMoMatic, and Emmy® Award-winner Mickela Mallozzi of PBS’s Bare Feetwith Mickela Mallozzi.
Ethiopia ‘Red Terror’ aide Alemu jailed for war crimes
A Dutch court has sentenced an aide to Ethiopia’s former communist ruler to life imprisonment for war crimes.
Eshetu Alemu, 63, was found guilty of crimes including the execution of 75 people during Ethiopia’s “Red Terror” purges in the late 1970s.
The dual Ethiopian-Dutch national and former aide to then-ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam denied all the charges against him.
More than 300 victims were named in four war crimes charges.
Ethiopia has already sentenced him to death in absentia.
Prosecutors said that Alemu was a henchman for Mengistu in the north-west Gojjam province.
The case was tried under Dutch universal jurisdiction laws at the district court in The Hague.
Presiding judge Mariette Renckens told the court that Alemu was “guilty of war crimes and treated his fellow citizens in a cold and calculating manner… including robbing them of their right to life”.
Families of victims applauded the sentence, but neither Alemu nor his lawyers were present in court.
CHICAGO – Ethiopian Tirunesh Dibaba, who during her illustrious career has won 12 global titles including three Olympic golds, added a new accomplishment to her CV today — she won her first marathon as she captured the 2017 Bank of America Chicago Marathon in 2:18:31 – the second-fastest time ever recorded in Chicago. Kenya’s Brigid Kosgei was second in a massive new pb of 2:20:22 (previous pb of 2:24:45).
Dibaba’s victory was much-deserved as well as she hammered from the gun. She ran her first 5k in 16:09 (that’s 2:16:09 pace) but five women were still with her at halfway. Shortly after that it became a two-person battle between Dibaba and Kosgei as Kosgei did her best to stay with Dibaba, who often was swerving from side to side to prevent Kosgei from drafting off of her. A 5:15 20th mile gave Dibaba a sizeable lead, which only grew to the finish.
With Dibaba’s victory assured, the only drama was how well everyone else would hold up until the finish as all of the five women in the lead pack at halfway ran a positive split.
Joe's Pub in partnership with Tadias Magazine presents a celebration of Ethiopian New Year with Grammy-nominated songstress Wayna and the music of Bezunesh Bekele (Tadias)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
August 21st, 2017
New York (TADIAS) — For the upcoming Ethiopian New Year Wayna will perform at a special midnight concert at Joe’s Pub in New York City, honoring Ethiopian music legend Bezunesh Bekele.
Wayna who spent a better part of the year performing with Stevie Wonder as a soloist and supporting vocalist, has previously performed at the Kennedy Center, the White House, Lincoln Center, and the Blue Note along with a 3-month performance residency in Ethiopia in 2016. The Ethiopian American Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter started her one-of-a-kind tribute to Bezunesh this summer with a show at Bethesda Blues and Jazz Supper Club in Maryland held this past June.
The late Bezunesh Bekele — who was once dubbed the “First Lady of Addis” and the “Aretha Franklin of Ethiopia” in the 1960′s and 70s — was a popular and one of the most iconic Ethiopian female singers of her generation.
Below is a Tadias exclusive video from Wayna’s first show paying tribute to Bezunesh Bekele:
— If You Go:
Wayna at Joe’s Pub
Friday, September 8 at 12 AM
Joe’s Pub at The Public
425 Lafayette St
New York, New York 10003 Click here to buy tickets
Yonas Beshawred — an Ethiopian-American from Maryland -- is the founder and CEO of Stackshare, a developer-only community of engineers, CTOs, VPEs, and developers from some of the world's top startups and companies. (Photo: Techcrunch.com)
Why Stackshare is quietly becoming a secret weapon for developers and Silicon Valley CTOs
On Stackshare, Airbnb lists over 50 services in its “stack,” Slack lists 24, and Spotify lists more than 31; these stacks are collections of different pieces of software that each company is using to run their operations, and range from infrastructure tools to communications tools to container tools to email services.
Why are companies beginning to share the specific mix of apps that’s enabling their businesses to grow? Because they know it’s the missing piece of the puzzle for developers, many of whom struggle to learn which tools certain companies use and why, says Stackshare founder and CEO Yonas Beshawred.
In fact, Stackshare is quietly becoming a go-to platform for numerous players in the startup ecosystem for a few reasons, Beshawred argues.
The benefits are clearest for developers. “If you’re trying to build a new on-demand service,” he notes, “you can come to Stackshare and see all the tools that Instacart uses.” Stackshare also benefits companies; when big or small startups volunteer what tools they’re using, they have a better shot at attracting developers who are well-versed in those very same technologies.
Meanwhile, Stackshare is attracting the attention of SaaS vendors, a small but growing number of which are beginning to sponsor sections of the platform and that now have a new place for their communities to evangelize their products.
Certainly, something seems to be clicking. Stackshare, founded in San Francisco in 2014, currently features the “verified” tech stacks of 7,000 companies. More, it claims that more than 150,000 developers are now using the service, where they not only see which companies are using what but they’re also invited to (and do) comment on the tools, helping their peers understand what they should be using and avoiding.
Investors like it, too. At least, today, Stackshare is announcing that it had raised $1.5 million in seed funding late last year, led by Cervin Ventures. Other participants include Precursor Ventures, Square exec Gokul Rajaman, and former VMWare and Facebook exec turned VC Jocelyn Goldfein. The round follows $300,000 in earlier seed funding from 500 Startups; MicroVentures; Airbnb’s first employee, Nick Grandy; Heroku’s former engineering manager Glenn Gillen, and others.
Grammy-nominated singer Wayna will perform a tribute to legendary Bezunesh Bekele at Bethesda Blues & Jazz club on June 9th. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
June 8th, 2017
New York (TADIAS) — Following her performance with the Stevie Wonder as a soloist and supporting vocalist, Ethiopian American singer Wayna is starting this summer with a one-of-a-kind tribute to Ethiopian music legend Bezunesh Bekele. Wayna’s upcoming concert is scheduled to be held at Bethesda Blues and Jazz Supper Club in Maryland on Friday, June 9th.
As a Grammy-nominated musician Wayna has previously performed at the Kennedy Center, the White House, Lincoln Center, and the Blue Note along with a 3-month performance residency in Ethiopia in 2016. Wayna also recently released a music video this past March in honor of Women’s History Month entitled You’re Not Alone, which featured images of Ethiopian women by photographer Aida Muluneh as well as photos of women that she encountered at the historic Women’s March on Washington in January 2017.
BOSTON – Buzunesh Deba will leave the Boston Marathon with one champion’s medal this week.
She would like to make it two.
The 29-year-old Ethiopian inherited the 2014 title this December when Kenya’s Rita Jeptoo was stripped of her victory for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Jeptoo joins Rosie Ruiz, who was caught cutting the course in 1980, as the only people to be disqualified from the Boston Marathon after breaking the tape on Boylston Street.
“She took my chance,” Deba said this week after returning to Boston, where she has also finished third and seventh. “I lost so many things.”
When Ruiz took a shortcut to the finish line, she deprived Jacqueline Gareau of the thrill of breaking the tape , being crowned with the traditional olive wreath and hearing the Canadian national anthem waft over Copley Square. Race officials, who were immediately skeptical of the unknown and unseen Ruiz, made it up to Gareau with a substitute victory ceremony and even had her cross the finish line again – this time in street clothes.
But Gareau’s victory was in the race’s amateur era, so there was no cash to recover.
Jeptoo, whose 2006 and 2013 victories remain unchallenged, claimed $150,000 for the victory and an additional $25,000 for setting a course record. Both legally belong to Deba, whose time of 2 hours, 19 minutes, 59 seconds remains the fastest in Boston Marathon history, but the Boston Athletic Association would have to claw it back from Jeptoo.
“We are trying,” CEO Tom Grilk said.
In the year after the finish line explosions that killed three people and wounded hundreds more, Jeptoo herself was already an afterthought, coming in just minutes before Meb Keflezighi claimed the first American victory in the men’s race since 1983 . As “The Star-Spangled Banner” played over Boylston Street, Jeptoo’s third win – even in a course-record time – drew less attention than normal.
But for Deba, it was costly. All the after-the-fact ceremonies, medals and even the prize money – if she ever gets it – wouldn’t make up for the opportunities lost when she wasn’t able to capitalize on being a returning champion.
“When you are the champion, the next year, the appearance fees, the contracts, everything” is more lucrative, the two-time New York City Marathon runner-up said this week. “My happiness is that day. But she took it from me.”
Deba’s husband and coach, Worku Beyi, said they are talking to B.A.A. officials about the prize money, “but it is not 100 percent.” They are hoping Jeptoo will return the money.
“She knows herself she is not champion,” Beyi said.
Deba has a chance to steal back the spotlight on Monday, when she joins a field of more than 30,000 in Hopkinton for the 121st edition of the race. Among them are defending champion Atsede Baysa of Ethiopia; Kenya’s Gladys Cherono, who has the fastest time in the field; and two-time Olympian Desi Linden, who is trying to become the first American woman to win in Boston since 1985.
Directed by Jessica Beshir the film 'Hairat" documents one man's nightly ritual in Harar. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: April 1st, 2017
New York (TADIAS) — In her short film Hairat, Jessica Beshir goes back to Ethiopia to the city of her childhood “to tell the story of one man’s extraordinary ritual that unfolds nightly in the outskirts of the walled city of Harar.”
Hairat, which was screened at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival this past January, will make its NYC premiere at the Lincoln Center as part of this year’s New York African Film Festival in May. The film was also shown this month at the Dallas International film Festival in Texas and the Rincon International film Festival in Puerto Rico. Hairat will premiere at the upcoming Arizona International Film Festival and the Pan African Film Festival in Cannes, France later this month.
“An Imam in Harar spoke to me about the meaning of Hairat at length, but in short it means, ‘You are where you need to be,’” Jessica says.
In addition to Hairat Jessica also has two additional short films, Heroin and He Who Dances on Wood , premiering at various festivals across the U.S.
In Heroin, which make its world premiere at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 20th & 21st, Jessica grapples with the question of free will as she “explores the creative process, inspiration and alternative reality of an artist.”
The short film He Who Dances on Wood highlights tap dancer Fred Nelson. BRIC TV describes it as “one man’s search for joy..culminated in a constant experience of rhythm in the world around him. Something so simple, yet beautiful, found its way into Fred’s life in the form of dancing on an old piece of wood.” He Who Dances on Wood will make its NY premiere at BAM’s New Voices in Black Cinema series on April 30th, and its international premiere at the 2017 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto taking place in early May.
Watch: ‘He Who Dances on Woods’ — A short film by Jessica Beshir trailer
Abaynesh Asrat, Founder & President of NNN, speaking at a training on solar energy at the College of Natural and Computational Sciences at Addis Ababa University on February 21st, 2017. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: March 24th, 2017
New York (TADIAS) — What better place is there than Ethiopia, which advertises itself as the land of 13 months of sunshine, to utilize solar energy for basic household needs including cooking, boiling water and even charging your cellphone? A workshop held last month in Ethiopia — hosted by the U.S.-based organization Nation to Nation Networking (NNN) in collaboration with Addis Ababa University — demonstrated this untapped potential of abundant, clean energy with a long term goal of decreasing women’s backbreaking daily task of fetching firewood and coal for fuel. The solar energy program was led by NNN founder Abaynesh Asrat whose prior work included working to eradicate fistula, promoting youth ambassadors for health, and providing diversity leadership training programs.
“Themed ‘The way Ahead with Renewable Energy: A Role for Ethiopia,’ the recent training focused on the utilization of solar energy, solar cooking and water pasteurization,” Addis Ababa University shared on its website. “Nation to Nation Networking organized the training in collaboration with the College of Natural & Computational sciences of the AAU.”
In an interview with the Ethiopian Herald, Abaynesh noted that “solar energy helps families preserve food, saving scarce resources and keeping them healthy” adding the potential of dramatic improvements for the majority of the rural population in her native homeland.
“Young Ethiopians are working diligently to change their fate. Their enthusiasms tells me that Ethiopians have entrepreneurial acumen,” Abaynesh tells the Ethiopian Herald, stressing her hope that the training provided could be expanded as young engineers in the country join the effort and assist in the assembly of the necessary materials.
NNN’s Solar Energy workshop put together in partnership with Addis Ababa University was held from February 21-27th, 2017 at the College of Natural and Computational Sciences of the AAU. (Courtesy photo)
Abaynesh, who was among the 2014 honorees of the People of Distinction Humanitarian Awards, knows a thing or two about positively impacting disadvantaged populations. As a long-time board member of Hamlin Fistula USA foundation Abaynesh was at the forefront of the campaign to treat and prevent fistula, which is a childbirth-related injury affecting thousands of women in Ethiopia as well as various countries around the world. As the National Fundraiser Chair for the ‘Tesfa Ineste’ campaign Abaynesh successfully mobilized the Ethiopian Diaspora in the United States to contribute toward the building of a regional hospital, the Harar Hamlin Fistula Center, in 2009.
Likewise during her latest visit to Ethiopia in February, 2017 Abaynesh challenged Ethiopian scientists to think out of the box about solar energy and empower the new generation to improve their lives.
Abaynesh says she appreciates the assistance she received from Dr. Shibiru Temesgen, Dean of the College of Natural and Computational Sciences at AAU as well as the director of Office of External Relations, Partnerships and Communication of Addis Ababa University, Dr. Zenebe Beyene, in setting up the week-long joint workshop.
“I have lived in the USA for about 48 years,” Abaynesh told the program participants hailing from across Ethiopia. “I decided to come to Ethiopia to do something,” she added. “Moving beyond the rhetoric, improving the health of society supported by science and technology thereby creating jobs.. I hope fellow citizens second this.”
The film 'Hairat," which documents one man's nightly ritual near Ethiopia's historic city of Harar, is directed by Jessica Beshir. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
Tadias Staff
Published: Wednesday, December 7th, 2016
New York (TADIAS) — The documentary short film Hairat from Ethiopia by Director Jessica Beshir has been selected to be featured at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
“This is a visual and lyrical exploration of the nightly ritual between a man in Eastern Ethiopia and his feral companions,” the Sundance Institute wrote describing Hairat in a press release.
In Hairat Director Jessica Beshir, who was born in Mexico City and raised in Ethiopia, “returns to the city of her childhood to tell the story of one man’s extraordinary ritual that unfolds nightly in the outskirts of the walled city of Harar.” Jessica’s short film is one of 68 works from around the world that will be screened at Sundance from January 19th through 29th, 2017.
“Each year we see more short films from around the country and from more regions around the world, which is exciting as we want to discover new voices to support,” Mike Plante, Sundance’s Senior Programmer, shares. “This year’s crop captures the full spectrum of what short films can be: emotional, hilarious, horrifying and touching — sometimes all at once.”
Jessica Beshir has a Bachelor’s degree in film studies and literature from UCLA, and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. She recently also released the short film entitled He Who Dances on Wood.
“An Imam in Harar spoke to me about the meaning of Hairat at length, but in short it means, ‘You are where you need to be,’” Jessica says.
Tedros Adhanom, Minister of Foreign Affairs, is among those leaving their post. (Photo: Russell Watkins)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: Tuesday, November 1st, 2016
New York (TADIAS) — Twitter is reacting skeptically to Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn’s announcement of a reshuffled cabinet in Ethiopia today, which apparently is designed to appease a growing and popular uprising calling for land and political reforms as well as an end to corruption at the highest levels of government. According to media reports “among top party officials leaving the government are Dr. Tedros Adhanom, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Redman Hussein, Minister of Youth and Sports, and Getachew Reda, Minister of Government Communications.”
On social media people are already expressing their views:
While BBC News Field Producer Hewete Haileselassie noted: “#Ethiopia cabinet – departure of @DrTedros was expected, as he is a candidate to head @WHO.’
“And #Ethiopia government needs to stop issuing regressive decrees and start negotiations with opposition if they want to avoid tragedies,” tweeted Herman J. Cohen, Former Ambassador, U.S. Asst. Secretary of State for African Affairs. Author, The Mind of the African Strongman.
Per VOA News “the appointees include a new minister of foreign affairs, Workneh Gebeyehu, who replaces Tedros Adhanom, a former health minister who has been one of Ethiopia’s most recognizable public figures in recent years. Adhanom is currently a candidate vying to be the next World Health Organization’s chief. Communications Minister and government spokesman Getachew Reda was ousted and replaced by Negeri Lencho, the head of the journalism and communications college at Addis Ababa University.”
Seyoum Teshome, who blogs on the website Ethiothinkthank.com, is a prolific writer and a lecturer at Ambo University, often sought-out by international media for his insight into current Ethiopian affairs. (CPJ.org)
New York – Ethiopian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release blogger Seyoum Teshome, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Police arrested Teshome on October 1, according to press accounts and opposition activists.
Seyoum is a frequent commentator on Ethiopian affairs who writes for the website Ethiothinkthank.com and lectures at Ambo University’s campus in Woliso, some 110 km (68 miles) southwest of capital Addis Ababa. Police arrested him from his home there, searched the house, and confiscated his computer, an Ethiopian journalist exiled in Nairobi told CPJ, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Ethiopian bloggers also reported his arrest on social media.
It was not immediately clear what charges, if any, Seyoum faces. Ethiopia’s information minister, Getachew Reda, did not immediately respond to CPJ’s request for comment.
“This arrest of a prominent writer and commentator is deeply disturbing as it comes against a backdrop of government moves to stifle protests and criticism,” CPJ Deputy Executive Director Robert Mahoney said. “Seyoum Teshome should be released without delay and without condition.”
Seyoum is a prolific writer, and international media frequently seek him out for comment on events in Ethiopia. In a recent New York Times article on the Ethiopian marathoner Feyisa Lilesa, who crossed his arms in a sign of solidarity with anti-government protesters at the finish line of the men’s marathon at the Rio Olympics, Seyoum was quoted as saying the athlete’s symbolic protest action had struck a blow against the Ethiopian government’s carefully constructed image as a thriving developing state.
“This was what the government was afraid of,” he told the newspaper.
Protesters in Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, raise the Oromo protest sign ahead of an October 2, 2016, stampede that left more than 50 people dead after police fired teargas and warning shots to disperse the crowd. (Photo: Reuters)
On Sunday, dozens of protesters died in a stampede after police fired teargas canisters and warning shots to disperse an anti-government protest at a religious festival in the heartland of the Oromo people, where the protests have drawn the highest level of support. Human Rights Watch estimates about 400 protesters died in the seven months leading up to June.
Ethiopia's Etenesh Diro at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil on August 13, 2016. The 25-year-old struggled to pull off her right shoe after colliding with some of the others on the track. (Getty Images)
Ethiopia’s Etenesh Diro has advanced to the final in the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase after having run the last half mile of the semifinal with only one shoe.
After reviewing video of the race, the Jury of Appeal advanced Diro to the final, following protests from the Ethiopian team, according to The Associated Press.
Diro was leading her heat in the qualification race when her right shoe got loose.
The 25-year-old struggled to put it back on after colliding with some of the others on the track.
After trying to put it back on, Diro finally yanked it off and threw it onto the field. Taking a few steps, she ripped off her sock and continued, completing the last leg of the race with just one shoe.
Diro managed to catch up to some of the runners, but finished in 7th place in her heat, clocking in at 9:34.70. That time originally knocked her out of the final.
LONDON – Ehtiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele won the 10km Great Manchester Run on Sunday before expressing his frustration at being overlooked by his country’s selectors for the Olympic Games in Rio.
The three-times Olympic champion finished the Manchester race ahead of Kenya’s Wilson Kipsang in 28 minutes and eight seconds.
Bekele, who returned from a long period out with injury to finish third in last month’s London Marathon, is only a reserve for Ethiopia’s marathon team for Brazil and has virtually ruled out trying to make the track team.
After Sunday’s race, which he also won in 2014, he expressed his displeasure at being overlooked for the Olympics.
“I’m not happy about that…there is no-one better than me in the marathon in Ethiopia,” he said.
Tirunesh Dibaba made a winning return to competition after a two year hiatus and she also created a small piece of history by becoming the first woman to claim three victories in the Great Manchester Run, an IAAF Gold Label Road Race, on Sunday (22).
Keen to blow away the cobwebs in her first race back, Dibaba unusually took up the lead just before the two kilometre mark – a position which she barely yielded for the remainder of her comeback race.
Edna Kiplagat and early leader Diane Nukuri followed in Dibaba’s slipstream through 5km in 15:45 but Nukuri – the multiple national record-holder for Burundi on the track and road – began to lose ground after Dibaba inserted a 3:04 split for the sixth kilometre.
The order remained the same through the eight kilometre mark in 25:03 and for a short while, an upset appeared to be on the cards. Kiplagat moved into the lead for the first time while Dibaba was looking laboured.
But Dibaba stayed in contact before striking the front with about 600 metres remaining. It might not have been a vintage showing but the world 5000m record-holder proved she is likely to be a force this summer on the basis of her victory this morning in 31:16 to move to third on the 2016 world lists.
“I felt a bit nervous [before the race] but I’m happy with my result,” said Dibaba, who clocked 15:31 for the second half. “I did not expect this time; I just wanted to win. I didn’t know what was going to happen and I had no clue about the time.”
Dibaba will turn her focus back to the track with the foremost goal of sealing the qualifying time over 10,000m for the Olympic Games.
“I don’t know exactly where or when I will be running but I expect to run it within a month,” said Dibaba, who hasn’t decided if she will run any shorter races to sharpen up.
While there was a considerable degree of uncertainty in regards to the selection criteria for the Ethiopian marathon team, Dibaba more or less knows what she has to do to gain a place on her fourth Olympic team this summer
Journalist Lily Mengesha. (Photograph courtesy of the National Endowment for Democracy)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: Monday, June 15th, 2015
New York (TADIAS) — Ethiopian journalist Simegnish (Lily) Y. Mengesha, who is currently a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC is the featured speaker at an upcoming presentation hosted by The International Forum for Democratic Studies at NED.
The event entitled: “Too Scared to Post: Freedom of Expression Under Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Legislation” will be held on Tuesday, June 23 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The program will include comments by Yohanan Assefa of the National Endowment for Democracy and will be moderated by Sally Blair of the International Forum for Democratic Studies.
“The September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States spurred the passage of anti-terrorism legislation worldwide, a development that has engendered widespread debate about the dangers such legislation can pose to civil liberties. Ethiopia is no exception: In 2009, after domestic and international threats to Ethiopia’s national security, its parliament passed a far-reaching anti-terrorism bill whose controversially broad parameters have been used to clamp down on freedom of expression and political dissent. Despite an international outcry, the Ethiopian government continues to employ the sweeping anti-terror law to crack down on journalists critical of the regime. At least fifteen reporters and bloggers have been charged and sentenced to prison terms since the law took effect, while more than thirty others have been driven out of the country. In her presentation, Simegnish Mengesha will analyze the origins of the anti-terrorism law and its harsh effects on Ethiopian media, focusing on new media and highlighting cases of journalists directly affected by the law. She will offer recommendations for creating a more open media environment in Ethiopia. Her presentation will be followed by comments from Yohanan Assefa,” the National Endowment for Democracy announced in a press release.
“Lily Mengesha is a seasoned journalist, media consultant, and translator who has served most recently as director of the Ethiopian Environment Journalists Association. An outspoken advocate for freedom of expression, she has worked extensively with foreign news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Voice of America, and the BBC, partnering with the international media to highlight stories the Ethiopian government would rather leave uncovered. In 2005, she began working with the Sub-Saharan Informer and covered the political unrest following Ethiopia’s national elections that year. In 2012, she assisted U.S. photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair and the United Nations Population Fund in producing the award-winning documentary “Too Young to Wed.” On Press Freedom Day 2015, Ms. Mengesha conducted an interview and press conference with President Barack Obama at which she highlighted the plight of Ethiopian journalism. Yohanan Assefa is program officer for East and Horn of Africa at the National Endowment for Democracy.”
— If You Go:
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
3:00 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
1025 F Street, N.W., Suite 800, Washington, D.C. 20004
Acceptance only with name and affiliation by Friday, June 19 Click here to RSVP
Debebe Eshetu in the new film "Red Leaves" by Ethiopian-Israeli filmmaker Bazi Gete. (Photo: (Filmlinc)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: Monday, May 18th, 2015
New York (TADIAS) — The renown Ethiopian actor Debebe Eshetu plays the lead role in the new award-winning Ethiopian-Israeli movie Red Leaves (debut film by director Bazi Gete) that explores complicated issues related to immigration, family, culture, and the process of adopting to a new country.
The film, which screens at the opening of the 12th annual Sheba Film Festival at the JCC in New York on Tuesday, May 19th, tells the story of a recently widowed “Seventy-four-year-old Meseganio Tadela [who] immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia with his family 28 years ago,” according to the synopsis.
“He chooses to zealously retain his culture, and in effect talks very little and hardly speaks Hebrew. After losing his wife, Meseganio sets out on a journey that leads him through his children’s homes. As the harsh reality begins to hit him that he belongs to a rapidly disappearing class that believes in preserving Ethiopian culture, he struggles to survive according to his own rules.”
Debebe — whose international credits include a role in the 1973 US film Shaft in Africa — is the only professional actor featured in the 80 minute movie in Hebrew & Amharic with English subtitles made in 2014.
“Other than lead actor Debebe Eshetu, Gete cast non-actors in his debut feature, which he shot in a documentary style mainly in Tel Aviv,” adds Screen Daily. “Each actor knew where he was going and we simply rolled and kept on filming through the scene. “I think it was a wise choice. This almost documentary cinematic style serves the film’s voice and preserves its authenticity,” Gete says.”
Other films scheduled to screen at the 2015 Sheba Film Festival include Asni: The Life of Asnaketch Worku, Courage, Passion & Glamor in Ethiopia by director Rachel Samuel of Ethiopia and The Village of Peace by Israeli filmmakers Ben Schuder & Niko Philipides.
— If You Go:
12th annual Sheba Film Festival
Venue: JCC Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave
New York. NY 10023
Venue: TSION CAFE
763 St.Nicholas Ave
(Btwen 148 St& 149 streets)
New York, NY 10031
Ethiopian runners Endeshaw Negesse and Berhane Dibaba took the honours at the 2015 Tokyo Marathon, an IAAF Gold Label Road Race, winning in 2:06:00 and 2:23:15 respectively on Sunday (22).
It was the first time that runners from the same nation had won both the men’s and women’s titles in the nine year history of the event.
Negesse broke away from Kenya’s defending champion Dickson Chumba just before 40km to become only the second Ethiopian man, after Hailu Mekonnen in 2011, to win Japan’s most prestigious road race.
It was third fastest time in Tokyo Marathon, but just fell short of the twin goals of beating the Japanese all-comers best of 2:05:18, which belongs to Tsegaye Kebede from the 2009 Fukuoka Marathon and who was also in this year’s Tokyo race, and the course record of 2:05:42, which was set by Chumba in 2014.
“It was a good race, although the condition was little bit tough because it was rainy and cold (with temperatures around 5 degrees Celsius),” reflected Negesse.
“The pacing was little slow. If it had been faster, then I could have run faster,” he added. “I knew that the field is formidable when I saw the start list. However, I did not dwell on it. I have done good training including good speed work. So I knew I could win the race.”
Investors in the Emerging markets have exhibited an unquenchable appetite for the Bonds Market, after the success of Kenya’s debut Eurobond, other economies like Tanzania and Ethiopia have announced plans for their respective bonds.
Ayalenesh Tafese from Rand Merchant Bank joins CNBC Africa to discuss Ethiopia’s Eurobond plans and prospects for investors and the country.
Watch: Ethiopia Announces Plans to Issue EuroBond (CNBC Africa)
Ethiopian-born long distance runner Buzunesh Deba of New York with Coach Knox Robinson of Nike + NYC at Queen of Sheba Restaurant in New York City on Thursday, October 30th, 2014. (Photograph: Tadias)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: Friday, October 31st, 2014
New York (TADIAS) – “I usually ask a question about pizza because it’s New York,” said Knox Robinson, Coach for Nike + NYC, speaking at a gathering at Queen of Sheba Restaurant on Thursday evening after their local run. But tonight Buzunesh Deba had joined them in a surprise visit and Robinson modified his question amid cheers on her arrival: “What do you eat before and after a race?”
“Before the race.. one bagel and one banana,” The Bronx-based, Ethiopian-born athlete answered. “After the race spaghetti with chicken.. and of course especially Injera.”
“We are overjoyed, honored and humbled to be joined tonight by Buzunesh Deba who, as we know, is not only one of the greatest marathoners in the world, but also a New Yorker.” Robinson said. “She is one of us, so we are excited to surprise the runners with her presence.”
The gathering at Queen of Sheba Restaurant in Manhattan featuring Buzunesh Deba was sponsored by Nike and preceded by a 4-mile local run. Buzunesh, who finished second in the 2011 and 2013 New York City marathons, told her fans that this year, God willing, she’ll win, and posed for photos with the runners, some of whom will be joining her at the 2014 NYC Marathon on Sunday, November 2nd. Buzunesh also posed with the restaurant owners who had welcomed her into their home when she had first arrived in the U.S. to build her career. “This is truly a family gathering” Robinson told the audience.
Coach Robinson told Tadias Magazine that the group chose to stop by Queen of Sheba after their local run because “this is where the world’s best marathoners come to celebrate their victories.”
Abaynesh Asrat, Founder & CEO of Nation to Nation Networking (NNN) & Board Member of Hamlin Fistula USA. (Courtesy Photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: Tuesday, October 28th, 2014
New York (TADIAS) – Abaynesh Asrat, Founder & CEO of Nation to Nation Networking (NNN) is among the 2014 honorees of the People of Distinction Humanitarian Awards. As a long-time board member of Hamlin Fistula USA foundation Abaynesh has been at the forefront of the campaign to treat and prevent fistula, which is a childbirth-related injury affecting thousands of women in Ethiopia as well as various countries around the world. As the National Fundraiser Chair for the ‘Tesfa Ineste’ campaign Abaynesh successfully mobilized the Ethiopian Diaspora in the United States to contribute toward the building of a regional hospital, the Harar Hamlin Fistula Center, in 2009.
Her continued involvement in the fight against fistula includes advocacy to expand educational institutions in Ethiopia with a special focus on training more midwives. In 2014 the Hamlin College of Midwives enrolled 21 Ethiopian students for the Bachelor of Science degree, increasing the total count of midwifery students to 89. “The opening of the Hamlin College of Midwives, about 12 kilometers from Addis Ababa, is the key to tackle, and even eradicate completely, this devastating childbirth injury” Abaynesh said in an interview with Tadias earlier this year. “I think, as we did a phenomenal job collectively to build the Harar Center, we can once again use our intellect and our financial support, individually and collectively, three-fold, toward the education of more students to graduate from the Hamlin Midwifery College.” Her suggestion to add a clause banning the inappropriate taking of photos and videos of fistula patients in the Bill of Rights for patients with obstetric fistula was recently approved.
Abaynesh’s New York-based non-profit, Nation to Nation Networking, works with various international organizations, including the United Nations, to bring together leaders from the private and public sectors by providing a networking platform to initiate collaborations across cultures and professions. In the past, Abaynesh has also been named one of New York Women’s Agenda Galaxy Women (2004), Ambassador of Peace (2005) and also received the Chairmanship Volunteer Award (2005). In 2007 Abaynesh was part of the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church delegation that traveled from Harlem to Ethiopia in celebration of the legendary Church’s second centennial and Ethiopia’s millennium.
Abaynesh Asrat will be honored tonight with the second annual People of Distinction Humanitarian Awards at the City University of New York Graduate Center. The event, hosted by talk show host Al Cole from CBS Radio, recognizes “inspiring and dedicated ‘Unsung Heroes’ who are making our world a better place.” Al Cole, the Director of People of Distinction Humanitarian Awards and Master of Ceremonies, launched the accolade in 2013 to celebrate “Unsung Heroes (as well as “Sung” Heroes) to share their stories of courage, humility and success.”
Tadias Magazine congratulates Abaynesh Asrat on the well-deserved recognition.
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The U.S. has Higher Income Inequality Than Britain. And Bangladesh. And Ethiopia
This month, Bloomberg Rankings dove into U.S. census data to measure the level of economic equality in each of 435 congressional districts—a useful endeavor, given all the recent political attention on inequality. The Rankings team did this by calculating the Gini coefficient, a formula that measures the distribution of income across a population. The closer a Gini number is to 1, the greater the level of inequality; the closer to zero, the closer to perfect equality. You can see the Bloomberg rankings here. The big take-away: A strikingly high level of inequality exists throughout the United States.
Manchester, United Kingdom: Ethiopian athletics legends Kenenisa Bekele and Tirunesh Dibaba eased to victory in their respective races in the Great Manchester Run on Sunday.
Bekele, a three-time Olympic gold medallist on the track, raced alongside world marathon record holder Wilson Kipsang of Kenya for much of the 10 kilometres course.
However, the 31-year-old — who indicated he may have an equally glorious career ahead of him in road racing when he won his debut marathon in Paris in April — kicked away in the final 400 metres to finish in a time of 28 minutes 23 seconds.
Kipsang, also fresh from a marathon triumph in London, where he set a new course record, came in five seconds back, while South Africa’s Steve Mokoka was some distance back in third.
Buzunesh Deba and Mare Dibaba. (Photographs courtesy Boston Athletic Association -- B.A.A)
Tadias Magazine
News Update
Published: Monday, April 21st, 2014
New York (TADIAS) — Ethiopian athletes Buzunesh Deba and Mare Dibaba took second and third place in the elite women’s division at the annual Boston Marathon today. Both runners broke a course record last set in 2002 by Margaret Okayno of Kenya.
Kenyan Rita Jeptoo was the winner of this year’s women’s competition — also finishing the race in a record 2 hours, 18 minutes and 57 seconds.
Among the men Meb Keflezighi of San Diego, California (a naturalized U.S. citizen from Eritrea) became the first American man to win the Boston Marathon in 31 years. He was followed by Wilson Chebet of Kenya (the runner-up), and his fellow countryman Frankline Chepkwony who came in third.
Below are twitter updates from the event organizers:
Last year’s third place finisher in the men’s field Gebregziabher Gebremariam (ETH) has dropped out of the race at mile 15.
New York City marathon runner-up Buzunesh Deba. (Photograph: news.wsxnyc.org)
Tadias Magazine
By Sabrina Yohannes
Published: Saturday, April 19th, 2014
New York (TADIAS) — After placing second at the New York City marathon in November, when Buzunesh Deba of Ethiopia was preparing for next Monday’s 2014 Boston marathon, she came down with a respiratory infection that cost her several weeks of training starting late January. She expected that interruption to affect her race at the New York City half marathon, which took place on March 16, in temperatures below the freezing point.
“It was very cold, and my muscles were tight,” said Buzunesh. “I was with the leaders til about 8 miles, I think.” Things changed at a turn on the course. “I was at the back of the pack when a strong wind came and it flung me back, and after that I was separated from the group,” she said in an interview. “It was very windy and I couldn’t close the gap. After that, at about 9 miles, it was again very windy, and there wasn’t anyone near me, and I got left behind.”
Nevertheless, in a field that included reigning Olympic 10,000m silver medalist Sally Kipyego, 2013 Frankfurt and 2011 Boston marathon champion Caroline Kilel of Kenya and others, the New York City resident Buzunesh managed to finish second behind Kipyego in 1 hour, 8 minutes and 59 seconds.
“Based on that result, I believe I’ll run well in Boston, with God’s help, because it’s my best time,” said Buzunesh. “In 2011, when I ran 2 hours and 23 minutes [to place second in the New York marathon], I had run 1:09:55 [for the half marathon].”
Her 2014 half marathon finish and its nearly 1-minute improvement on her personal best (PB) was all the more meaningful because of her interrupted training in the lead-up to the race. “In fact, when I went into the race, I was thinking I may even be forced to drop out because I’d been sick and might not have enough energy,” she said.
“The training I’ve done after that has gone well to date,” she said this week from her winter training base in high-altitude Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she spent most of the time since mid-December, before leaving Thursday for Boston. “I believe that that New York half marathon PB will help me in Boston, and it gives me confidence.”
“This year, we’ve increased the speed work she does,” said her husband and coach Worku Beyi, adding that she upped the number of fast repetitions of 400m, and that she has also prepared for the hills on the Boston course. “The place where we train in Albuquerque is very hilly,” he said. “We did our last long run on Sunday.”
He is aware of the challenges Buzunesh, whose fastest marathon time is her 2011 New York 2:23:19, faces in Boston. “Right now, Buzuye is 10th on the entry list in Boston in terms of time,” he said, using an affectionate form of his wife’s name. “They are very tough opponents.”
The stacked line-up for Monday’s women’s race includes Ethiopians Mare Dibaba, who ran 2:19:52 in Dubai in 2012 and won in Xiamen, China in 2:21:36 this January, and former world 10,000m silver medalist Meselech Melkamu, who won Frankfurt in 2012 in a course record 2:21:01.
The field also includes a bevy of fast Kenyans like the defending Boston champion and favorite Rita Jeptoo, who won October’s Chicago marathon in 2:19:57, current Chicago and former Boston runner-up Jemima Sumgong (PB 2:20:48), Eunice Kirwa (PB 2:21:41), and former Boston champions Sharon Cherop (PB 2:22:28) and Kilel (PB 2:22:34).
“We come hoping to win,” said Worku. “One thing I admire about Buzuye is that she has no fear.”
It was running with no fear that took Buzunesh to eight marathon wins in the United States including course record wins in the 2011 San Diego and Los Angeles marathons (defeating Mare Dibaba in the latter).
It was running with no fear that took Buzunesh twice to the podium in the prestigious New York City marathon, where in 2011, she finished behind compatriot Firehiwot Dado but ahead of runners like the former world half marathon champion Mary Keitany of Kenya, who had won London in 2:19:19 just seven months prior; and Kilel, who had a PB nearly a minute faster than Buzunesh going in to the race.
“She puts her hard work on display,” said Worku. In the 2013 New York marathon, Buzunesh ran from the front along with her training partner Tigist Tufa, maintaining the pace she had trained for, and disregarding the field behind her, building up a lead of nearly three minutes at one point.
She was only caught in the final miles of the race by then-London champion Priscah Jeptoo of Kenya, who won ahead of Buzunesh’s 2:25:56 second place. The women left in Buzunesh’s wake included the world champion Edna Kiplagat of Kenya, who had run 2:19:50 for second place in London a year earlier.
Both the New York and Boston races are among the major marathons of the world, assembling top fields.
Buzunesh’s 2014 half marathon PB may not result in a subsequent marathon PB in Boston, like it did in 2011 in New York. “I’ve heard the weather is variable: One time, it’s warm; another time, windy; another time cold,” she said. “The weather will be decisive, and there’s also the fact that I don’t know the course, so I’ll know better when I’m in the race.”
Buzunesh was entered in the Boston marathon in 2012, but didn’t run it due to an injury. Last year, she had run the Houston marathon in January, placing second there in 2:24:26, and she was in New Mexico during the running of the 2013 Boston marathon on April 15, when bombs went off near the finish line several hours into the race. With masses of non-professional runners on the course and spectators lining it, the explosions left three dead and many seriously injured.
“We were watching coverage of the race on television, when we saw what happened,” said Buzunesh. “I was so shocked.”
“It’s tragic what happened last year,” she said. “This year, the security level will be increased. It will be like New York was last year. It was very good. They had greatly increased security measures from the start all the way to the finish line.”
Race organizers and Boston law enforcement officials have outlined tightened security procedures and an increased police presence leading up to and on race day this year.
“I don’t think there’ll be anything to be concerned about or anything to fear for us elite athletes or the mass runners,” added Buzunesh.
Ethiopia’s Lelisa Desisa won the men’s race last year, and gave his medal to the City of Boston afterwards as a gesture of empathy for what the city and its residents experienced. Lelisa is back this year, and favored to win again, after a spectacular year. He added a world championship marathon silver medal in Moscow last August to his April Boston win, which itself came after a victory in Dubai that January. He won a fast Ras Al Khaimah (UAE) half marathon this February.
Kenya’s reigning Chicago champion Dennis Kimetto is regarded as Lelisa’s toughest opponent, and his compatriot, the former 10K world record-holder Micah Kogo, will also be looking to upgrade his 2013 Boston second-place finish.
The strong 2014 field includes Ethiopians Gebre Gebremariam, the former world cross country and 2010 New York marathon champion, who was third in Boston in 2011 and 2013; former Los Angeles marathon champion and 2014 Dubai runner-up Markos Geneti; and 2013 Rotterdam champion and 2012 Chicago third-placer Tilahun Regassa.
American Ryan Hall, who was third in Boston in 2009 and has since finished just off the podium twice, is also coming to the race from Ethiopia, having spent time training there.
Others coming from Addis Ababa include the nation’s 2013 world championships 10,000m bronze medalist Belaynesh Oljira, who was 5th in the Dubai marathon last year, and the 2012 and 2013 Tokyo marathon runner-up Yeshi Esayias in the women’s race.
The Boston marathon takes place on the Patriots’ Day holiday celebrated in Massachusetts on Monday, April 21, with the elite women’s race kicking things off at 9:32am Eastern time, while the men’s race starts shortly thereafter.
– The race will be televised live throughout the U.S. on the Universal Sports channel.
(Photo: Cover image from Yeshi Demelash's album "Qene.")
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: Wednesday February 26th, 2014
New York (TADIAS) — Musician Yeshi Demelash has been called “arguably the most talented contemporary female Ethiopian jazz singer.” Yeshi, who was born in 1984 in Gojam, is a former Ethiopian Idol judge and a graduate of Addis Abeba University’s Yared School of Arts where she majored in flute and minored in piano. She established her reputation as an Ethio-jazz singer two years ago with the release of her debut album entitled Qene, an ode to Ethiopia’s ancient literary and oral traditions.
Now Yeshi’s voice has captured the attention of New York-based producer Bill Laswell — the person behind the records of Jano and Gigi — and he is currently remixing one of her songs entitled Fano. Yeshi plans to work on a new album with Laswell when she arrives here this Spring to begin her first American tour.
Organizers say Yeshi will perform at SOB’s in New York on April 26th accompanied by her band, also named ‘Qene.’ Stay tuned for updates.
Betelhem Seleshi (right), owner of the Maryland-based Baby Joy 3D/4D Mobile Ultrasound, finds out the sex of Deisy Izquierdo’s fetus during a baby shower in Silver Spring on Sunday, Jan 26th, 2014. (Gazette)
Baby Joy 3-D/4-D Mobile Ultrasound promises expecting mothers and fathers a personal and intimate experience — finding out their in utero baby’s sex — away from a doctor’s office.
Baby Joy 3D/4D Ultrasound, a Silver Spring business, was an idea that grew from a mother of two who believes seeing a baby in the womb is a special bonding moment.
“I see pregnant women every day. … Some of them want to show the pictures to their husbands that couldn’t make it to the doctor’s office … or they want to show the pictures to the grandparents who were watching the kids at home,” Betelhem Seleshi said.
And that’s when Seleshi thought: Why not bring the experience to people’s homes?
Nesanet Teshager Abegaze and her mother Azla Mekonen at their family owned business Azla+Tesh in Los Angeles. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Aida B. Solomon
Updated: Monday, December 23, 2013
Los Angeles (TADIAS) — Walking into the Mercado La Paloma on a Saturday evening, you feel an immediate tranquility from the busy streets of Downtown Los Angeles. The open space of Mercado La Paloma presents a line of eateries, with an unexpected new tenant nestled into one corner: Azla Ethiopian Vegan. Alongside the simple white countertops is a joint space labeled Azla+Tesh, filled with goodies ranging from jewelry to vinyl records to original stylish crop tees. As someone who has frequented Little Ethiopia in Los Angeles’ Fairfax District since childhood to indulge in Ethiopian cuisine and merchandise, pleasantly surprised is an understatement to describe this newest modern addition to the LA food scene.
So who was the mastermind behind Azla? Needlessly to say, it was a family effort as Nesanet Teshager Abegaze tells Tadias Magazine. With mother Azla Mekonen as the head chef behind the vegan and gluten-free menu, and siblings Nesanet, Sonny, and Banchamlak Abegaze as the brains behind the lifestyle brand and boutique next door named Azla+Tesh. Nesanet runs the day-to-day operations, while Banchamlak, an attorney, handles the legal and financial aspects of Azla. Their brother Sonny Abegaze, a DJ and manager of the Ethio-jazz group Ethio-Cali, dons the title of “Chief Vibe Creator” curating merchandise and producing events. Together the powerhouse family has created not only nutritious vegan treats, but also an empowering space for Ethiopians and non-Ethiopians alike to come together around the concepts of wellness, health, and creativity.
Nesanet’s journey to opening Azla first began after graduating from Stanford University with a degree in Human Biology. She soon began working for The New World Foundation in New York City, supporting non-profits advocating for environmental justice and workers rights among other causes. Nesanet’s work in the nonprofit sector took her to the South where she became increasingly involved in education policy. She went on to obtain a Masters at UCLA in science education, and began working at various schools, eventually becoming an assistant principal. However it was Banchamlak opening her own law firm that would shift Nesanet’s career from school administration to management. After a few years, one of Banch’s clients offered both sisters an opportunity to work at Atom Factory, an entertainment company. Nesanet served as Vice President of Operations for the creative division, managing campaigns including superstar Lady Gaga’s perfume line, Fame and clients like Barneys New York. Nesanet was able to explore her love of marketing and design and gain confidence in her creative skills.
Combining her work experience with her passion in health and nutrition, Nesanet developed the concept of a contemporary, family-owned Ethiopian restaurant – Azla – that serves traditional Ethiopian vegan cuisine alongside modern artisan fare. Azla emphasizes supporting local, organic farmers and uses their produce in designing their menu.
“Throughout all of my career transitions, the common denominator has been my love for food and wellness. It’s been a lifelong dream to create a space to share our family’s love of healthy cuisine, as well as Ethiopian art, fashion and culture. We are very excited to share the rich culinary and art/design tradition of Ethiopia with our customer base, which includes neighboring USC students and professors, downtown professionals, creatives, and members of Los Angeles’ thriving Ethiopian community,” Nesanet says.
Azla has been open for just six months and is already creating a buzz with its fresh vegan Ethiopian meals, as well as their signature Ethiopian pizza made with a berbere marinara sauce, soups, and inventive desserts. It was a no-brainer to the family that the restaurant be named after the matriarch, Azla, whose family dinners are said to be nothing short of legendary. Azla’s genuine love for cooking fresh meals for her six children and husband was contagious, as Nesanet says that all of her siblings not only share a passion for food, but are also vegetarian/vegan. “For us my mother really expressed her love through food.” And the customers agree. “A lot of customers have told us that they can taste the love in the food. They say it tastes like a big hug. We love seeing how people respond to the food, often coming by to meet chef Azla.”
What also sets Azla’s menu apart is the incorporation of ingredients such as kale to a classic collard green (gomen) dish and making gluten-free injera to ensure not only taste but healthier food options, which is a vital aspect of Azla’s mission.
“I feel that Ethiopian cuisine has so much to offer as the awareness of the benefits of a plant-based diet grows,” Nesanet said. “Oftentimes, people turn to processed meat alternatives when exploring vegetarianism, but Ethiopian food offers abundant flavor and texture with unprocessed whole foods.”
Nesanet cites The China Study written by T. Colin Campbell as a personal favorite in her personal journey of following a plant-based and vegan diet. The book argues that most chronic diseases can be reversed through a plant-based diet, and Nesanet says that the rest of the public is catching on and becoming more empowered. “A lot of customers who eat meat religiously come in and are open to trying our food because they realize their current diet is making them sick and lethargic. They often say ‘I never knew vegan food can taste like this.’”
In addition to the cuisine at Azla, Azla+Tesh next door offers unique jewelry including colorful acrylic and wood Orthodox cross earrings, apparel including crop-tees and sweatshirts with graphics such as the Lalibela churches and a vintage Alemayehu Eshete album cover. Honoring timeless design elements from Ethiopia, while incorporating current fashion elements is the approach that the Abegaze siblings take in order to attract both Ethiopian and non-Ethiopian customers to the merchandise. “We’ve always been enchanted by Ethiopian crosses and the intricacy of their designs,” Nesanet shares. “We’ve worked to create jewelry that explores new materials such as acrylic and wood with pop colors to speak to a younger demographic.” The collection also includes necklaces with vintage bridal pendants and telsum beads from Ethiopia, using thicker bold chains, and a juxtaposition of modern and classic that guides the Azla+Tesh design aesthetic. In addition to accessories and clothing, Azla+Tesh offers old-school vinyl records, Ethiopian literature and films, and artisan food products that are packaged in beautiful mason jars.
As for what the future has in store for Azla and Azla+Tesh, there will be a series of free monthly events for the community, including guest speakers in acupuncture and yoga, vegan supper clubs in collaboration with local vegan chefs, as well as musical performances and networking events. The Azla team is dedicated to providing customers with a wonderful dining experience, as well as inspiring a more healthful lifestyle by providing cooking tips, recipes, and cooking demonstrations. Sure enough, Azla is already making its mark in Los Angeles not only for its fresh and tasty vegan dishes, but by providing a new space for Ethiopians and Non-Ethiopians alike to indulge in history, fashion, music, and health all in one place.
— You can learn more about the restaurant at www.azlavegan.com and shop for Azla+Tesh products at www.azlaandtesh.com. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Soundcloud handles are @azlavegan and @azlaandtesh.
Priscah Jeptoo (above) and Geoffrey Mutai of Kenya cross the finish line Sunday to capture the 2013 New York City Marathon in the women’s and men’s races respectively. (Getty Images)
Priscah Jeptoo and Geoffrey Mutai have won the women’s and men’s titles in the New York City Marathon in its triumphant return after a 1-year hiatus.
The two Kenyans waved their flag in celebration while thousands cheered in Central Park.
Jeptoo, 29, overtook Bronx resident Buzunesh Deba with an impressive final kick and sped across the finish line to thunderous applause, clocking in at 2 hours, 25 minutes and 7 seconds for the grueling 26.2-mile race.
Deba, 26, finished second for the second straight time, having claimed No. 2 in 2011 as well.
Jeptoo trailed the Ethiopian-born Deba by more than three minutes halfway through. But she made her move as the race entered Manhattan and passed Deba with more than two miles to go.
New York Resident Buzunesh Deba of Ethiopia Finishes Second in the Women’s Race
File Photo: Buzunesh Deba of Ethiopia training in her Bronx neighborhood in New York City. (Photo by Jason Jett for Tadias Magazine).
Tadias Magazine
News Update
Sunday, November 3rd, 2013
New York (TADIAS) — New York-based Ethiopian Buzunesh Deba repeated her 2011 record on Sunday, finishing second at the 2013 ING New York City Marathon. Priscah Jeptoo of Kenya won the women’s race with a time of 2:25:07 while her fellow countryman Geoffrey Mutai won the men’s race in 2:08:24 time. He was followed by Ethiopia’s Tsegaye Kebede and South African long-distance runner Lusapho April. The third place finisher in the women’s competition was Jelena Prokopcuka of Latvia.
Below are the results as announced via Twitter by ING NYC Marathon. Stay tuned for updates.
Women's podium:
Priscah Jeptoo, KEN, 2:25:07
Buzunesh Deba, ETH, 2:25:46
Jelena Prokopcuka, LAT, 2:27:47
It’s impossible to count on two hands the number of women with sub-2:30 marathon personal bests on the starting line of this Sunday’s ING New York City Marathon. What does this mean? There’s potential for fireworks.
Reigning champion Firehiwot Dado of Ethiopia returns as does former champion and two-time reigning world champion Edna Kiplagat of Kenya. London Marathon champion and Olympic silver medalist Priscah Keptoo will also be in the hunt for victory as will New York-based Ethiopian Buzunesh Deba, who finished second in New York in 2011. Sub-2:24 runners Valeria Straneo of Italy, Jelena Prokopcuka (two-time NYC Marathon champion) and Risa Shigetomo of Japan also figure to be in the mix, along with host of other mid-to-high 2:20 women who are all hoping for a breakthrough.
Here’s a look at the top-5 international women to watch in this year’s race.
Frehiwot Dado and Buzunesh Deba after their first and second place win at the 2011 NYC Marathon. (Getty Images)
Tadias Magazine
By Sabrina Yohannes
Published: Friday, November 1st, 2013
New York (TADIAS) — Frehiwot Dado and Buzunesh Deba have a lot in common. They finished in the top two places at the 2011 New York City marathon, with Frehiwot winning in 2:23:15 and Buzunesh finishing just four seconds later. They are both from the town of Asela in the central Ethiopian Arssi area, where they both belonged to the athletics club sponsored by the police force. And while chatting over a meal on Wednesday, a few days before running the 2013 NYC marathon on November 3, they found they share the same mortal fear.
“My biggest fear in life is snakes,” said Firehiwot. “I’ve never seen one, but I don’t even want to see them on TV.” The New York-based Buzunesh echoed the same fear, but she had encountered one on a training stint in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “The place is full of snakes!” she said, relaying an incident where she and her husband and trainer Worku Beyi went out running early in the morning, a time she thought the cooler weather would keep the reptiles away. “It was huge, as long as a crocodile, and it had doubled back on itself,” she said. “I screamed.” Worku picked up a can of Coca Cola off the lunch table. “The snake’s girth was about the size of this can,” he said. Buzunesh had never wanted to leave her beloved Bronx, where she lives and trains most of the year, anyway, and the encounter became one more reason to wish to head back. “I wanted out of New Mexico,” she said.
As Buzunesh described the snake, Firehiwot shuddered and looked away. “I don’t even like hearing the word ‘snake’,” she said. Apart from the despised serpent, she has few fears, and none going into a race in general or the upcoming New York marathon in particular. “Sometimes, people have unfortunate experiences,” she said. “One can choke on a swig of water, or get stitches, but you try to take precautions against such things,” she said. “Although racing is tough, you rely on your training and you hope to reap the results.”
Following the 2013 Boston marathon bomb explosions, security concerns are an inevitable topic of conversation at marathons and road races this year, but Frehiwot said she’s not worried about it. “I had heard of the Boston marathon [incident], and have seen it,” she said. “People from my country were running as well, but my focus at this marathon is to win, and I wasn’t in the least bit perturbed.”
Frehiwot and Buzunesh finished ahead of the then-reigning London marathon champion Mary Keitany of Kenya in the 2011 New York marathon, and the 2013 race features top Kenyans Edna Kiplagat, the two-time world and 2010 New York champion, and Priscah Jeptoo, the Olympic silver medalist and current London marathon winner. “Kiplagat is an amazing athlete, and I am her fan, but Buzunesh and I have been training tremendously, and we are hoping with the help of God that we will keep them in check,” said Frehiwot.
The two Ethiopians worked together to rein in and overhaul Keitany in 2011. “After a certain amount of distance, we started talking, and Buzunesh was getting me water,” said Firehiwot. “If there is anything I will never forget, it’s that day because Buzunesh and I grew up together. We were very close friends and running with her was the happiest day of my life. I love her very much.” The women had parted ways when they left Asela years ago, with Buzunesh eventually settling in New York, where the marathon brought them together. “Oh, 2011, I saw her on the list of names, and I was so happy,” said Buzunesh. “I missed her.”
The following year’s marathon was eventually canceled due to superstorm Sandy, but Firehiwot had been forced to pull out ahead of the race due to injury. “I got a blister on my heel,” she said. “Then, after having taken a break, I resumed with harder training.” She placed third in a half marathon in Lisbon on October 6, her last race before Sunday’s marathon. “I wasn’t so well-prepared for it, as I was training for this marathon,” said the 2012 NYC half marathon champion and course record-holder. “Since then, my training has been good, praise God.”
“The speed endurance work has increased,” her coach Haji Adilo said, comparing her current training and readiness to 2011. “The mileage is the same and the rest is more or less the same. But since the speed endurance work covered in training is harder, my guess is that she can run better.”
“I’d like to run faster than last time, as that was my personal best,” said Firehiwot. “It’s a tough race, and there are strong competitors. I know I have to watch my pace and run a smart race.”
The 2011 Los Angeles and San Diego marathon champion Buzunesh also ran a personal best in New York that year, something she has aimed to do at successive marathons. “This time too, God willing, I hope to improve my personal best,” she said. “But if the others are running at an excessively high pace, I’ll stay on my own pace and won’t follow them.”
Her years since 2011 have also included injury, causing her to pull out of the 2012 Boston marathon, where Firehiwot was fourth, the only non-Kenyan in the top six. Buzunesh ran the 2013 Houston marathon in January. “Before the race, especially three days before it, I wasn’t feeling well,” she said. “I had abdominal pain and bloating. But I guess because I was well-prepared, I still managed to run well, and was second in 2:24. I was very pleased with the results.”
She won a 7-mile race in Spokane, Washington in May. “One week later, I strained a muscle in my right leg,” she said. “I didn’t train for one month and one week.” She ran a few shorter road races after recovering and has since been training for New York. “I have prepared very well,” she said. “If God gives me the strength, I’m hoping for victory.”
Then she and her companions all laughed as she added: “Everyone is looking for victory. I want to win, she wants to win.” The three-time former Rome marathon winner Firehiwot, who has remained the NYC defending champion for two years due to the 2012 cancellation, concurred. “I’ve trained hard and pray that God would help me to be successful,” she said.
Winning in athletics is something Firehwiot dreamed of as a youngster, with no less a local role model than the legendary two-time Olympic champion and former marathon world record-holder Haile Gebrselassie, who is also from Asela and who serves as inspiration for all Ethiopian athletes of recent decades. “Haile is an amazing athlete whom we love and admire, and since he’s from our hometown we are even prouder of him,” said Firehiwot. “We all wanted to be him.”
Frehiwot lives and trains in the Ethiopian capital currently and doesn’t head back to Asela too often. “I was born there and grew up there, and my mother and father are there, but they come and stay with me,” she said. Buzunesh has also not been back in a long time, but the two chatted about local developments, like the Asela stadium that replaced the old dirt track they knew. “I see photos when my friends who are there post them on Facebook,” said Buzunesh. Their family members there will be watching the New York City marathon on satellite television, the women said.
Mulatu Teshome has been elected by parliament as Ethiopia's new president. (Photo: World Bulletin)
Tadias Magazine
By Dagnachew Teklu
Published: Monday, October 7th, 2013
Washington D.C. (TADIAS) — The Ethiopian parliament has elected Dr. Mulatu Teshome Wirtu to serve as Ethiopia’s President for the next six years.
Dr. Mulatu replaces the outgoing Girma Wolde-Giorgis who has held the position for the past 12 years.
Mulatu, a 57-year-old economist, was Ethiopia’s top diplomat in Ankara, Turkey prior to his election as President on Monday, October 7th, 2013. Mulatu has also served as Ethiopia’s ambassador to China and Japan, as well as several other government posts including as Ethiopia’s Minister of Agriculture. The new president, a father of one son, said he is humbled by the appointment and vowed to work hard to speed up the the country’s development.
Mulatu is the fourth president since the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) took power some 21 years ago. The ruling party controls 546 out of 547 seats in the Ethiopian parliament, and the lone opposition parliament member, Girma Seifu, represents the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party (UDJ).
Video: Dr. Mulatu Teshome becomes new president of Ethiopia
In the first clash of the year between the two Ethiopian giants of women’s distance running at the Weltklasse Zürich meet tonight, the final 100 meters belonged firmly to the 2012 Olympic and 2013 World 5000 champion Meseret Defar. Defar emphatically kicked away from Tirunesh Dibaba to win the women’s 5000 as well as the Diamond League crown in 14:32.83 after a 58 low last 400 (58.48 leader to leader but Defar was in second at the bell).
Dibaba was second in 14:34.82 as those two were leaps and bounds better than everyone else over the final 600. 2013 5000 silver medallist Mercy Cherono was third in 14:40.33 – the only other woman in the race within 10 seconds of Defar.
Meseret Defar (left) pictured at the Moscow Ethiopian embassy earlier this month and Tirunesh Dibaba (right) photographed at the Ethiopian embassy in London following the 2012 Olympic Games. (Tadias file)
Tadias Magazine
By Sabrina Yohannes
Published: Wednesday, August 28th, 2013
New York (TADIAS) – The world 10,000m and 5000m champions Tirunesh Dibaba and Meseret Defar will race for the first time in over a year at the IAAF Diamond League 5000 in Zurich on Thursday. A rare and much-anticipated clash between the two Olympic champions over both distances — and an opportunity for both to medal twice – failed to take place at the Moscow world championships this month due to the Ethiopian athletic federation’s preference that they each contest one event.
“If we had both raced twice, Ethiopia could have collected better medals,” said Meseret in an interview at the Moscow Ethiopian embassy some days after she and newcomer Almaz Ayana took gold and bronze in the 5000 there, and Tirunesh and teammate Belaynesh Oljira earned the same medals in the 10,000. “I complied with the request made of me, but my original intention was to contest both distances, and it’s the reason I ran a qualifying 10,000 in which I led for 20 laps.”
The 2004 and 2012 Olympic 5000 champion Meseret ran the year’s fastest 10,000m in June when seeking to make the world championships team.
In the Russian capital, the 2007 world champion Tirunesh regained the title ahead of Kenya’s Gladys Cherono, while the silver medal in the 5000 also went to a Kenyan, Mercy Cherono. Ahead of the championships when the 2008 double Olympic champion Tirunesh and Meseret were provisionally entered in both Moscow races, some athletics experts had speculated that Ethiopia could sweep the medals in the two distances.
“Yes, if we’d both run in the two events, I think we could have taken all the medals,” said Meseret. “Although the Kenyans could have come in between us, and perhaps they might have finished third and taken the bronze, but Ethiopia could definitely have taken gold and silver, I think.”
Ethiopia did sweep all six medals at the Helsinki world championships in 2005, where Tirunesh won both events and Meseret took 5000 silver.
“That could have happened, especially in the 5000 where all three of us are very strong,” said Meseret of the hypothetical Moscow 5000 team in which she would have been joined by Tirunesh and Almaz, who had run the year’s two fastest times. “We could have taken first through third.”
Both Tirunesh and Meseret said they were moved to consent to the federation’s request that they put aside their double medal hopes. “I pulled out of the [5000] race because the federation asked that both of us race one event each so that emerging athletes could gain experience, and Meseret and I agreed,” said Tirunesh after her victory.
“The younger athletes got the opportunity, and they ran very well and I’m so happy about this,” said Meseret.
The federation was content with the four medals earned in the two events and with its strategy to guarantee the most important objectives in each race. “It’s not so much a matter of medals, but a matter of golds,” said the organization’s technical director Dube Jillo in an interview in Moscow after the conclusion of the championships. “If we get the golds and these bronze medals, it’s sufficient. But our goal is developing athletes. The athletes who will tomorrow replace Tirunesh [and Meseret] have run here now, and it’s a matter of achieving that.”
“The maximum number of golds available in each race is one,” he continued. “What would be the purpose of having both do double duty? So we let each one concentrate on one event and run. Secondly, we have young athletes who are capable of medaling and we know this from their training and their competitions. And even if they don’t medal and we get just two golds, … we need to provide them with global championships experience.”
Of the young athletes who made the teams as a result, Ababel Yeshaneh was ninth in the 10,000m and Buze Diriba placed an impressive fifth in the 5000. Buze and Tirunesh’s world indoor 1500m champion sister Genzebe join Meseret and Tirunesh in the Weltklasse race in Zurich on Thursday. The stacked field includes three Kenyan silver medalists — both of the Cheronos who medaled in Moscow and the 2009 and 2011 runner-up in the world championships 5000, Sylvia Kibet – as well as their compatriot Viola Kibiwot who was fourth in Moscow.
The title match-up however is between Meseret and Tirunesh, who are one another’s fierce rivals on the track and last raced regularly in the 2006 IAAF Golden League which preceded the current Diamond league series of competitions. Sparks flew on the track as the pair traded victories and most notably, Meseret won the last race in the series where Tirunesh was headed for a jackpot prize for multiple victories and had to settle for a lesser award as a result.
They last met in the 2012 London Olympic 5000, where Meseret snatched victory in the final lap from Tirunesh, who was attempting the golden distance double, but had to settle for a 5000 bronze to go with her 10,000 gold. Prior to that, the two raced at the New York Diamond League meet where Meseret was a late entrant and lost to her rival in a moderately-paced 5000, in which both were seeking to make the Olympic team.
“I’ve raced many times with Meseret,” said Tirunesh when a reporter at the press conference following the Moscow 10,000 questioned hers and Meseret’s not doubling up there, and he also asked if she feared Meseret over 5000. “She’s beaten me and I’ve beaten her. But this is the world championships and we are competing against the world.”
“There’s nothing for me to fear,” she added.
“I like to run with her,” said Meseret when asked at her Moscow post-race press conference about racing her rival in future. “She is the strongest athlete and my biggest competitor.”
The next such contest takes place at 8:13pm Zurich time and 2:13pm Eastern United States time on Thursday and decides the winner of the 2013 race for points in the Diamond League women’s 5000. Tirunesh enters the Zurich race slightly fresher than Meseret as her last race was the 25-lap run in Moscow on August 11. Meseret has since run two rounds of the Moscow 5000 and won a 3000 in Stockholm last Thursday in a world-leading time, and she currently leads the race for points by a small margin.
The two women are also scheduled to meet over the half-marathon distance at the Great North Run in England on September 15.
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Steeplechaser Sofia Assefa Follows in Olympian Eshetu Tura’s Footsteps
Ethiopia's Sofia Assefa won bronze in the women’s 3000m steeplechase Tuesday at the 2013 World Championships in Moscow, Russia. (Photo credit: Getty Images)
Tadias Magazine
By Sabrina Yohannes
Updated: Thursday, August 15, 2013
MOSCOW (TADIAS) – History was made in Russia’s Luzhniki Stadium as an Ethiopian made the podium in the steeplechase at a global championships for the first time ever on July 31, 1980, when Eshetu Tura took the bronze medal at the Moscow Olympic Games. Thirty-three years later, history repeated itself when one of his athletes, Sofia Assefa, also took steeplechase bronze in the same stadium at the 2013 athletics world championships on Tuesday night, becoming the first Ethiopian — male or female — to medal in that race at the biennial event.
“Repeating Eshetu Tura’s achievement places me in the history books,” said Sofia, who also followed in his footsteps last year in London, when she became the first female steeplechaser from her nation to medal at the Olympics, earning bronze. “I’m very happy, praise God.”
Sofia’s accomplishment in Moscow was made all the more dramatic after she fell at a jump during the race and recovered to finish in 9:12.84 behind Kenya’s African champion Milcah Chemos and national champion Lydia Chepkurui, who ran 9:11.65 and 9:12.84.
With two laps to go, Sofia was comfortably tucked in the lead pack, in fifth place behind the two Kenyans and Ethiopia’s All Africa Games runner-up Hiwot Ayalew and Etenesh Diro. “The race was tough … but I was doing well,” said Sofia. “I took a running leap and crashed into the hurdle. When I fell, I was very worried, because it’s very difficult to fall and get up again. I only had 700m left. The effort you make to catch up costs you a lot of energy.”
Sofia was quickly dropped by the leading four runners and overtaken by Kenya’s Hyvin Jepkemoi, leaving her adrift in sixth place. “But I just kept going, thinking that I’ll leave with whatever God gives me, whatever I get,” she said.
She gradually regained contact and resumed her fifth place position at the bell and coming into the final turn, she overtook Hiwot and chased the Kenyan pair down the homestretch, gaining ground but unable to reel in either. “If I hadn’t fallen, I think that even if I didn’t win, we would at least have finished closer together,” she said. “I don’t know, maybe I might have been second.”
She didn’t think she would have beaten Chemos. “She’s strong and she always beats me,” said Sofia, who has beaten Chemos in one steeplechase race each season since 2009 compared to the nearly two dozen times the Kenyan has bested Sofia. “But I would have stayed with them and fought hard til the very end, and if I had been beaten, I would have been beaten,” added Sofia. “But God be praised, this for me is sufficient.”
She was still in a slight daze over her fall and eventual outcome when she encountered Ethiopia’s newly-crowned 800 meter champion Mohammed Aman in the mixed zone for athletes and media, and he embraced and congratulated her. She started talking to him about her fall and her voice trailed off. “Ayzosh,” he comforted her in Amharic. (“It’s OK.”)
She had just come from the track where she had been handed an Ethiopian flag and congratulated by members of the team who had been on hand to see her medal, including Eshetu Tura and the head national steeple coach Bizuneh Yaye, though neither she nor they had brought up Eshetu’s Moscow bronze. “I didn’t think of it at the time,” she said. “But both of them were there, and they’re very happy.” Upon being reminded of the decades-old historic achievement she’d emulated in the same city and stadium, she added, “Even though it’s with another bronze, it’s great that it was repeated.”
Eshetu also earned a steeplechase silver medal representing Africa at the 1977 International Association of Athletics Federations’ (IAAF) World Cup, a continental team competition that was a predecessor to the current IAAF Continental Cup, in which both Sofia and Ethiopian men’s steeplechaser Roba Gari medaled for Africa in 2010, he with a silver and she with another bronze. (The competition is not, however, seen as a global championship in the same sense as the Olympics or world championships.)
In the season leading up to her Moscow bronze, Sofia had five podium finishes in the IAAF Diamond League series of one-day competitions. Prior to emulating Eshetu’s Olympic feat in London last year, she had four. “I had high expectations because I had run well in the Diamond League,” said Sofia, who had run her personal best and Ethiopia’s national record 9:09.00 in the Oslo Diamond League meet on June 7, 2012 behind Chemos’ 9:07.14 African record. “The whole time I was running [at the London Olympics], I was thinking about medaling,” said Sofia. “I may not have had the confidence to be first, but I thought I might place second or third.”
After the Olympics, she arrived in Ethiopia without fanfare. “I didn’t return with the team,” she said. “I had races scheduled and I went straight to the site of a race from London. I saw the team’s homecoming reception in Addis Ababa on the internet and it was nice. As I didn’t even [finish my race] in Stockholm, I wished I had gone back with them.”
She received plenty of praise from Ethiopia’s only other Olympic medalist in her event , Eshetu, and her other coaches, including former steepler and 1980 Moscow 5000m runner Yohannes Mohammed. “The coaches are great,” she said. “They were very happy. They always encourage me, telling me I can run even better.”
A year after London, Sofia has indeed increased her global medal tally, and made her mentors proud. Coming into Moscow, she had hoped to reach a higher step on the podium, and that future hope remains. “I have bronze,” she said. “I believe I have to put in my effort to, God willing, achieve something better — be it silver or gold.”
— Related: Ethiopia Celebrates Highest Ever World Championships Medal Haul in Moscow
Tirunesh Dibaba and Meseret Defar. (Photo: Creative Commons/Getty Images)
Tadias Magazine
By Sabrina Yohannes
Updated: Friday, August 9, 2013
Moscow (TADIAS) – Ethiopia’s London Olympic champions Tirunesh Dibaba and Meseret Defar will contest just one event each at the 2013 athletics world championships in Moscow, with Tirunesh running only the 10,000-meter final on Sunday August 11, team officials confirmed on Wednesday. Meseret will run the 5000-meter elimination round next Wednesday morning before the final takes place three days later, on the evening of Saturday, August 17.
The two women had been entered in both of those events and were considered favorites to medal twice, while the double gold medal feat that Tirunesh achieved at the 2005 world championships and 2008 Beijing Olympics has served as a tantalizing prospect.
“It’s very difficult for athletes to run three races in one week,” said the Ethiopian athletic federation’s head coach Dr. Yilma Berta in Moscow on Wednesday. “It’s better for them to contest one event each, and take one event each.” The team believes the strategy would set up two golds for the nation.
For the 2004 and 2012 Olympic 5000 champion Meseret, who has medaled repeatedly over that distance, but never yet over 10,000, running the longer event first could jeopardize her chances for the shorter event. It appears to have done so in the 2009 and 2011 world championships, where she ran both events but took just one bronze medal in the 5000m. In 2009, as in 2013, she had run one of the year’s two fastest 10,000m in the world before the championships, but that did not guarantee a medal.
Tirunesh, though, would have already contested her main event, the 10,000, by the time the Moscow 5000 begins. However, even if she were to win the 10,000 and still wish to start in the 5000, she would not be able to do so, said Dr. Yilma. “It’s already been decided,” he said. “Everyone is running one race each. There are also other younger athletes who deserve the opportunity.”
Meseret will be joined in the 5000 by Almaz Ayana, who in July ran the second-fastest time any woman has run this year. That race, in Paris, was won by Tirunesh, who at the time was looking forward to racing over the distance in Moscow in addition to the 10,000.
“She wanted to run both and she had been preparing for both,” said her sister Genzebe Dibaba on Wednesday in Moscow, where she arrived ahead of her sibling. “She’s in better shape than she was last year,” added Genzebe.
The 5000 world record-holder Tirunesh did run both events in London last year, and finished the 5000 in third place after losing a final sprint to her track arch-rival Meseret, who was coming into the race with fresh legs and a fierce determination to regain the Olympic 5000 crown.
No such double attempt is in the federation’s plans for 2013, and Ethiopia’s only Moscow 10,000 and 5000 double gold that will be in the history books when these championships are over will be the legendary Miruts Yifter’s from the 1980 Olympics.
Genzebe also qualified for two events in Moscow, the 5000 and the 1500, in which she is the fastest Ethiopian of the year and the only one to have run under four minutes. “The federation wants me to contest the 1500, since there’s a shortage of athletes in it,” said Genzebe, who will run the event’s first round on Sunday morning, August 11.
The overwhelming favorite to win that event’s final is Ethiopian-born Abeba Aregawi, who represented the nation at last year’s Olympics, but had established ties with Sweden previously and now represents the Scandinavian nation.
Ethiopia does have a favored athlete in the Moscow middle distance events, as Mohammed Aman runs the men’s 800m, which starts its first round of races this Saturday morning in the absence of Olympic champion and world record-holder David Rudisha of Kenya.
Olympic champion Tiki Gelana and former world track and cross country medalist and 2012 Frankfurt marathon champion Meselech Melkamu run the Moscow women’s marathon Saturday afternoon, after which London women’s steeplechase bronze medalist Sofia Assefa competes in the first round of that event.
The 2008 Olympic and 2009 world championship double gold medalist in the 10,000 and 5000, Kenenisa Bekele, is entered as a reserve in the men’s 10,000 final, which takes place Saturday evening. Kenenisa was the fourth-fastest Ethiopian this year in both of his events, after winning the 10,000m in Eugene, Oregon in May.
That race was initially scheduled to serve as a trials race for the Moscow 10,000m, where the first three Ethiopians would automatically make the team, but that plan was abandoned before the Eugene Prefontaine Classic meeting, and Moscow selections were made based on athletes’ fastest times for the season.
“There was a plan to hold a trials race there, and then there was another plan to hold it somewhere else, but neither plan worked out,” said Dr. Yilma. Ethiopia ordinarily selects athletes for track championships based primarily on fastest times, and Kenenisa, who is gradually coming back from injury-plagued years, ran several races this season in search of fast times.
The fastest man in the world over 10,000 this year is the London Olympic 5000m silver medalist Dejen Gebremeskel, who won his first race ever over the distance in Sweden in June, leading his compatriots Abera Kuma and the 2011 world 10,000m bronze-medalist Imane Merga to similarly fast times. The three men will be joined in Moscow by the surprise 2011 world champion, Ibrahim Jeilan, whose role as defending champion allows him automatic entry into the event.
Ibrahim beat Britain’s Mo Farah in 2011, but the Somali-born Farah enters the 2013 race as the reigning 10,000 and 5000 Olympic champion, and is even more heavily favored this season – not that that will stop the 5000m bronze medalist from 2011, Dejen, and his teammates from aiming for another upset victory.
Ethiopian team members receive a warm welcome at Moscow airport
Most of the Ethiopian athletes running in the first few days of the championships arrived in Moscow on Wednesday along with team coaches and officials. They were greeted by Ethiopia’s ambassador to Russia, Kasahun Dender Melese, who met the delegation inside the arrival area at Domodedovo airport.
Members of Moscow’s Ethiopian community gathered in the waiting area of the terminal holding Ethiopian flags and wearing wrist bands and scarves in the flag’s green, yellow and red colors, while some women were decked in traditional outfits from head to toe. Ululations and cheers arose when the delegation appeared, and later, flowers were presented to the London Olympic medalists in the squad.
Nile Basin countries GDP, population, and hydroelectric power production data from The World Bank, World Development Indicators. (data.worldbank.org)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: Saturday, June 15th, 2013
New York (TADIAS) – In 2009, over 99% of Egypt’s residents had access to electricity, while in Ethiopia, a country of 80 million, less than 18% of the population had access to power. In neighboring Sudan 35% of its roughly 30 million inhabitants received energy generated by the Nile river.
In 2011 the annual fresh water withdrawal in Egypt was recorded as 68.30 billion cubic meters. The same year Sudan also took in 37.14 billion cubic meters of fresh water. In comparison, Ethiopia’s withdrawal of fresh water for the same period was a meager 5.56 billion cubic meters.
These statistics come from the World Bank’s “World Development Indicators” and are now compiled by a newly launched website that employs data visualization and creative interactive timelines of Ethiopian history and current affairs.
“While working on my first historical item to publish, on the Solomonic Dynasty, the whole Nile issue exploded into the international news scene,” said Jomo Tariku, the site’s founder, who works as a designer and publishing officer at the World Bank’s Development Data Group in Washington, D.C. that includes the Open-Data team. “So I thought that was a perfect vehicle to do a data-based analysis, as much as possible, on facts and not emotions.”
Ethiopia and Egypt, next to Nigeria, are both among the top-three most populated countries in Africa. Jomo told Tadias that research driven stories are something he deals with on a daily basis, and he hopes that this would particularly assist journalists in providing a balanced coverage of the rather heated current exchange between the two nations on the Nile matter.
“Our main site and the most visited one at the World Bank is under our wing at data.worldbank.org,” Jomo said. “Our other popular asset that really makes the World Bank stand out compared to any organization that has vast amounts of data is our databank tool that lets you query our indicators and build your own analysis.”
Graph: Access to Electricity vs. Total Fresh Water Withdrawals (Source: data.worldbank.org)
“What inspired this project?” we asked Jomo. “Even though I have been meaning to do a data visualization site on the continent and Ethiopia, discovering a similar Ghanaian site really got me off my lazy chair,” Jomo said.
So what’s the next topic he is researching? “I will publish one on Abebe Bekila by Monday,” Jomo said. “I am sticking with Wikipedia and World Bank but I will be using any free data source I can find to generate the visualizations.”
(CNN) — It could be the spartan living environment, or perhaps growing up in the thin air nearly 3,000 meters above sea level — or maybe it’s the influence of a legendary local coach.
Whatever its secret, a remote mountain town in Ethiopia has produced a string of world-beating distance runners.
Three-time Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba is the current cream of a crop that has helped put Bekoji on the map. Like many from her area, she was clearly born to run.
“Running is for me my job, but also my source of entertainment,” the 27-year-old told CNN’s Human to Hero series.
Bronx resident Buzunesh Deba at the end of a morning training session at Fort Washington Park in Manhattan on Saturday, October 20th, 2012. (Photo by Jason Jett for Tadias Magazine)
New York (TADIAS) – Having come so close to winning last year’s New York City Marathon, finishing second by a mere four seconds, Buzunesh Deba will be chasing victory again in one of the world’s greatest marathons which eluded her and instead was grasped by Ethiopian compatriot Firehiwot Dado a year ago.
Firehiwot, who pulled away from Buzunesh over the last 200 yards of the 26.2 miles event, will not defend her crown this year after withdrawing from the race last week with what her manager said was a foot injury.
This time around Buzunesh faces 2012 London Olympics marathon winner Tiki Galena and 2011 World Marathon Champion Edna Kiplagat of Kenya, among a deep elite international field.
This will be Buzunesh’s fourth New York City Marathon; she finished seventh in 2009 and 10th in 2010. A resident of the Bronx, she will be a hometown favorite and she knows the course well.
She also knows most of her competition — both their faces and their paces. There is no awe or intimidation when she speaks of the other elite runners, only self-confidence and the conviction that if she runs as well as she is capable she will win.
“I believe I will win, it is my dream,” said Buzunesh. “God will decide.”
She trains diligently, some say maniacally, six days a week, but she says the seventh day she devotes to attending St. Mary of Zion Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church in Yonkers, New York. An Orthodox Christian, her bedroom is decked with illustrations of the Virgin Mary. And, born in the Asela region of Ethiopia, Buzunesh said: “When I am running, and I get tired, I call on God,” she said. “That is my power.”
Buzunesh has trod through some valleys since her podium finish a year ago in Central Park. She spent the winter training at altitude in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was accompanied by her husband Worku Beyi, who is also her coach and manager. Their relocation was made easier by sharing living quarters and training schedules with friends Genna Tufa, Serkalem Abrha and Atalelech Asfaw — all among a group of Ethiopian runners who left New York for the benefits of living and training at high altitude.
Returning to New York in April, Buzunesh was poised to stake her claim at a World Marathon Majors championship by following her second-place finish in New York with a win at the Boston Marathon. (Top-finishers in the New York City, Boston, Chicago, London and Berlin marathons compete for the $500,000 prize awarded every two years.)
Training had gone well winter into spring leading up to Boston. However, after completing her final pre-marathon track workout just days before the race Buzunesh miss-stepped, turning an ankle, as she walked off the synthetic surface and onto the stadium infield.
Neither prayer nor treatment could chase away the pain in time for Buzunesh to compete in the Boston Marathon. Ultimately, she was not able to return to running until mid-summer. Unable to train, Buzunesh became a spectator of the sport as she followed the race results of her friends and rivals during sleepless nights.
“When I am training, I go to bed early,” she said. “But when I could not run I would be up two and three o’clock in the morning on my computer.”
Buzunesh finally resumed training in August, and competed for the first time this year at the Rock n’ Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon on Sept. 16. She finished eighth, in a time of 1:14:54.
The result was mind-boggling to running experts, fellow competitors and even enthusiasts: Buzunesh had run 1:09:18 over the half-marathon distance in winning the 2011 Rock n’ Roll San Diego Marathon in 2:23:31. Yet she ran five minutes slower over an equally fast Philadelphia course (Sharon Cherop of Kenya won the race in 1:07:19, followed by Mare Dibaba of Ethiopia in 1:07:44.).
Buzunesh was disappointed, of course. And Worku did a bit of head-scratching before reasoning it was simply a bad day.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I saw her that day and she looked heavy.”
“She was not able to run fast that day, but she had had only six weeks of training at the time,” he added. “She will have had six more weeks before New York.”
There are critics that doubt Buzunesh will be competitive this year, let alone win. They point to Philadelphia, and note that she has barely raced this year.
“Look at her Philadelphia Rock n’ Roll results,” said Hicham EL Mohtadi, an agent-manager of runners based in New York City including Ethiopian Mekides Bekele. “She had lots of time off from competing on a high level due to injury. She still is not at full-force. I don’t see her being a factor in this year’s marathon.”
Mohtadi noted that despite these issues he is still rooting for Buzunesh. He added: “Though I’d love to see her win it because she’s a dear friend and a lovely young lady.”
Bill Staab, president of West Side Runners New York, which supports a large number of Ethiopian runners in the city, said Worku is the best barometer of Buzunesh’s chances.
“Due to her foot injury last April and the fact that her time at the Rock n’ Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon was not up to her PR (personal record), it is hard to judge her chances.” he said. “But we all know Buzunesh trains with fervor.”
Buzunesh’s resilience has been further tested in recent weeks. Worku’s father died in early October, and there were several days of mourning. The funeral in Ethiopia took her husband and coach away from their marathon training for several more days.
And then there are the stomach cramps that Buzunesh said contributed to her being unable to hold the lead after pulling Firehiwot Dado along in overtaking Mary Keitany of Kenya at the 25-mile mark last year in New York. Firehiwot would pass Buzunesh in the final mile, and Keitany finished third. (Keitany, who won the 2012 London Marathon and was fourth in the London Olympics marathon, is not competing this year in New York.).
“She gets cramps after some workouts,” a concerned Worku said of his wife. “There is pain, and sometimes she throws up.”
Buzunesh hopes the problem does not recur during the marathon. She knows from training runs of 24 miles in Central Park and 26 miles on the New York Greenway along the Hudson River that she can cover the marathon distance without such pain.
And, she has her own belief-system for support. Buzunesh radiates a confidence steeped in humility. She does not boast, or deride other runners; she simply believes in herself. It is a belief rooted in her faith, which she takes as much care recharging every Sunday as she does her body following training sessions other days of the week.
Having a husband who is a good cook helps when it comes to revitalizing the body. A training-table dinner last week in the Buzunesh and Worku’s home, an apartment in Kingsbridge, consisted of a salad of green leaf, tomatoes, avocados, green peppers and oil-vinegar dressing, a vegetable medley of carrots, potatoes and broccoli, halved hard-boiled eggs and chunks of white-meat chicken.
While Buzunesh and Worku prefer traditional Ethiopian cuisine, or injera, they eschew it during training season in favor of lighter fare. Vitamin bottles and other supplements cover a tabletop in their home. Buzunesh noted she takes supplements when she remembers — indicating with her face and hands that often she does not. However, she is more reliant on the energy-electrolyte drinks that Worku prepares before and after workouts.
Buzunesh and Worku occasionally can be spotted running in Central Park or Riverside Park, but the bulk of work occurs at their favorite training site — Rockefeller State Park in Tarrytown, NY. Van Cortlandt Park, near their home, is their most-frequented site given its proximity.
They elected not to train at altitude for this marathon, having decided sufficient benefits can be gained simply through hard and smart training in New York. That belief has Buzunesh undaunted by Galena, Misikir Mekonnen and Kenyan runners coming directly from high altitude to compete in New York.
Hours after Buzunesh finished the 2011 New York City Marathon, reporters and photographers gathered around her and Worku following a news conference in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel at Columbus Circle. Hugging his wife, a beaming Worku held up his other hand leaving scant daylight between the thumb and index finger.
“She came this close,” he said. “She made a little mistake. We will correct it for next year.”
On Nov. 4, 2012 the couple will learn whether or not they were successful in making the necessary correction.
—- Below are slideshow of photos taken during Buzunesh’s morning training session on Saturday, October 20th, 2012.
BALTIMORE — An inch separated the top two women’s finishers in the 12th Baltimore Marathon, and a Kenyan won back-to-back first-place finishes in the men’s race Saturday.
Perhaps WBAL-TV 11 News Sports Director Gerry Sandusky put it best: “In sports you make a name for yourself by winning. And, sometimes, when you win, everyone learns the correct pronunciation of your name…Elfneshe Yado won the women’s race literally one inch ahead of Malika Mejdoub. Timing chips showed identical finishing times, and officials declared a winner via visual sight line, making for the closest finish ever in the Baltimore Marathon.
Through a translator and friend, Yado said, “The race was amazing. (I’m) happy that (I) won, and (I) loves Baltimore.”
Yado enjoyed her first trip to America with a virtual photo finish with Malika Mejdoub, of Morocco. Both were given the same time — 2:38:46 — the 10th fastest time in race history. Yado will return home to Ethiopia in a week before running next month in a 10K in India.
“She was certain she was going to win. All she saw was the finish line,” Yado’s translator said. Yado said she will use her $25,000 prize to buy gear, and “a lot of stuff to enhance (my) training and to support (my) family. Yado has three siblings.
Singer and songwriter Teshome Mitiku shown in a new documentary about his life. (Screen shot from the film "Swinging Addis")
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff | Art Talk
Updated: Tuesday, September 25, 2012
New York (TADIAS) – A group of filmmakers in Germany are preparing to document the legendary musician Teshome Mitiku’s return to Ethiopia. Teshome, who now lives in the United States, has not been to his home country since his forced departure more than four decades ago. The film entitled Swinging Addis, is a narrative of the artist’s role in the storied music scene of his generation and his remarkable personal story, which spans three continents and several countries, where in between he managed to earn a graduate degree in Sociology and witness his daughter become an international music star hailing from Sweden.
“I am very excited about returning to my country,” Teshome said in a recent interview with TADIAS. He is currently composing new songs for the occasion and he plans to give a homecoming concert in Addis Ababa and other parts of the country.
Teshome will be accompanied by several musicians from the Diaspora, including his daughter Emilia Mitiku and his brother, saxophonist Tewodros Mitiku. “I am also looking forward to jamming with the new generation of musicians in Ethiopia,” he said. “I love their energy.”
Regarding the film Teshome said: “It’s a multi-million-dollar project, we will be traveling to many places including Gondar, Gojam and to all the historical locations.”
— Click here to watch the trailer.
Tirunesh Dibaba talked about a variety of subjects – including her love for injera with doro wot and kitfo – in one of the cover articles of the September issue of Running Times magazine, which is on sale at newsstands like Barnes and Noble now. The interview took place in New York before the London Olympics. (Photo: Reuters)
By Sabrina Yohannes, Published: September 2012 issue
Beijing double Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia has found a few things to surprise her recently. Walking through New York City’s Times Square in June, she came across a sight that forced her to do a double take. A man — known locally as the Naked Cowboy — was strumming a guitar and posing for photographs clothed in nothing but his underwear, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. “I was shocked,” said Dibaba afterwards with a laugh. “In the city squares, there are many surprising things.”
While preparing to defend her 5,000m and 10,000m Olympic titles in London, Dibaba also found herself gaining a new perspective on her own achievements, especially after injury caused her to miss most of 2011 and a good chunk of 2010.
Tirunesh Dibaba pictured after wining the gold medal in the women's final 10,000 meter race at the London Olympic Games on Friday, August 3rd, 2012. (Photo: Reuters)
Tadias Magazine
Running | London 2012
By Sabrina Yohannes
London (TADIAS) – Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia will run the first round of the 5000 meters at the 2012 Olympics on Tuesday just four days after defending her Beijing Olympic 10,000m crown in spectacular fashion in London.
“I’m very happy, this is my third gold,” said Dibaba Friday night after winning the 10,000 in 30 minutes 20.75 seconds ahead of Kenyans Sally Kipyego and Vivian Cheruiyot. “I’m ready to run the 5000, the decision is the federation’s.”
The Ethiopian athletic federation needed little persuasion. “She will run, 100%,” said the organization’s technical director, Dube Jilo.
The first woman to win the two events at one Olympiad when she accomplished the feat in 2008, Dibaba had been entered in the shorter event in London as a reserve, due to her having the fourth-fastest time for the distance this year among her compatriots. But with the federation also observing the fitness of the selected athletes during training, her potential double attempt had been anticipated.
Jilo praised the dominant fashion of her 10,000 victory. “To come from having being out with injury for two whole years and achieve this is a great accomplishment for her, and for us and for our country,” he said.
Dibaba returned to competition on New Year’s Eve after having suffered from injuries that kept her out of both the 2009 and 2011 world championships.
In the interim, she successfully defended her 2008 African 10,000m title in July 2010 in Nairobi defeating, among others, the hometown favorite Linet Masai, who had won the 2009 world championships race in the absence of Dibaba, then the defending world champion. The Ethiopian had also won both distance races at the 2005 world championships.
The 2009 world 5000 title went to Cheruiyot, who completed the double in Daegu in 2011, and coming into the London 10,000, the Kenyan was a favorite along with Dibaba.
“I wasn’t thinking about any individual athlete, I was thinking only about winning,” said Dibaba after her second straight Olympic 10,000m victory.
Prior to London, the Athens 5000m bronze medalist Dibaba had elaborated on her thoughts about Cheruiyot in an interview.
“Vivian has become much stronger than in the past,” she said. The two women did not race during the Kenyan’s red-hot 2011 season due to Dibaba’s injury layoff, but the Ethiopian pointed out that she had previously run against a rising Vivian Cheruiyot — and won.
“We raced in London,” said Dibaba, who won the 5000m in 14 minutes, 36.41 seconds to Cheruiyot’s 14:38.17 at the Crystal Palace on August 13, 2010, in addition to finishing ahead of the Kenyan at the world athletic final in Thessaloniki, Greece in September 2009. “She had just won the world championships 5000 when we raced. She was strong then too and she’s strong now.”
“We’ve run indoors as well as outdoors,” added Dibaba, who won the Edinburgh cross country and Birmingham indoor two-mile races in early 2010, over eight seconds ahead of Cheruiyot both times.
“I know Dibaba is a tough lady,” said Cheruiyot Friday night. “We are coming here to try our best because there is a time for everybody.”
“I’ve watched her race so many times and she can run really well, and she can close really well, and I respected that,” Kipyego, who took the lead at times in the race, said of Dibaba. “I tried to push the pace to try to make it painful for everybody. Unfortunately, it didn’t work on her.”
The three women will meet again in the 5000m in London, as both Cheruiyot and Kipyego are also doubling. That race will also include Dibaba’s teammate and rival Meseret Defar, the 2004 Olympic champion, whom Dibaba defeated over the distance in New York in June.
The Ethiopian women’s team entered in London comprised the nation’s three fastest 5000 runners of the year: Defar, former world indoor 1500 champion Gelete Burka and Genet Yalew. The event’s world record-holder Dibaba will replace the less experienced Yalew in the team.
“I will take a bit of a rest tomorrow and then I will prepare for the 5000 heats,” said Dibaba Friday. “I know I’ve trained well.”
The elimination round of the women’s 5000 takes place 10:55am on Tuesday morning, with the final set for 8:05pm Friday, August 10.
— Sabrina Yohannes is reporting from London.
Tirunesh Dibaba (center) and Meseret Defar (right), will face each other today at 5000 meters Adidas Grand Prix track meet in New York, the first time the two have met in a non-championships race since Berlin in 2006. (Photo: Gold medalist Tirunesh Dibaba Kenene (C) of Ethiopia poses with silver medalist Elvan Abeylegesse (L) of Turkey and bronze medalist Meseret Defar of Ethiopia in the Women's 5000m Final at the National Stadium on Day 14 of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 22, 2008 in Beijing, China. (Getty Images AsiaPac)
One of the most anticipated entrants at this year’s Adidas Grand Prix track meet in New York on Saturday is Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia, the defending women’s Olympic champion at 5,000 and 10,000 meters and quite possibly the fastest finisher in the history of women’s distance running.
Dibaba, 27, is recovering from shin splints so severe they kept her out of competition every day of 2011 except the last, when she won the San Silvestre Vallecana 10-kilometer road race on New Year’s Eve, in Madrid. Last week, at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore., she continued her comeback, running — and winning — her first outdoor track race in almost two years, at 10,000 meters, and she did it in dramatic fashion.
Amha Eshete is the Founder of the trailblazing Ethiopian music label "Amha Records." (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: Friday, May 25, 2012
New York (TADIAS) – Five decades ago, when the Italian owner of the only record store in Addis Ababa could not keep up with growing local demand for more music variety, an Ethiopian music enthusiast named Amha Eshete opened his own shop. “I ended up opening the first music shop owned by a native Ethiopian, diversified the import and started buying directly from New York, India, Kenya, and West Africa,” Amha recalled in a recent interview with Tadias Magazine. “But there was one very important ingredient missing — I was selling foreign music labels, all kinds of music except Ethiopian records, which was absurd,” he added.
Amha Eshete is the Founder of Amha Records – the pioneering record company whose work from the “golden era” of Ethiopian music is now enshrined in the world-famous éthiopiques CD series.
“There was a government decree that granted music publishing monopoly to the national association Hager Fikir Maheber, but they did not produce a single record of modern Ethiopian music.” He continued: “After many sleepless nights I was determined to take a risk of probable imprisonment and decided to ignore the decree to start producing modern Ethiopian music.”
Referring to his first client on the Amha Records label Amha said, “Alemayehu Eshete was willing to take that risk with me.”
Amha describes the music scene in Ethiopia then as almost similar to that of today — buzzing with the mixture of international sounds, Ethio-jazz, and traditional music. “During the 1960s and ’70s modern Ethiopian music was emerging at an incredible pace even though there was an extensive government control and censorship every step of the way,” he said. “It was the first time that new and modern night clubs were being opened, records players were being installed in cars, and enjoying music was the spirit of the time.”
Professionally, Amha said he had no role models and that he learned through trial and error, often making business decisions based on “just gut feeling.”
“I had no experience, for example, on how to negotiate with the artists,” he said. “I did what I thought was right and fair to me and all the others involved at the time.” He added: “It was a lifetime experience and believe you me it worked because I was able to produce one hundred and three 45s and a dozen LPs in a few years.”
Amha leased the distribution rights of his originals to the French label Buda Musique in the ’90s. “My work is not owned by Buda Musique but it is definitely pressed and distributed under an exclusive license by them,” he noted. “The main credit should be given to Mr. Francis Falceto to bring about this re-birth of the golden age of Ethiopian music into reality in the form of the éthiopiques series.” He continued: “Mr. Francis was the one who was adamantly determined to reproduce this music and introduce it to the outside world. He should get all the credit because this music would have been buried and stayed buried somewhere in the suburbs of Athens, Greece where all the masters were stored until then.”
For Amha, the most dramatic recent change in the Ethiopian music industry has been the size of compensation packages for singers. “The Ethiopian superstar Tilahun Gessesse used to be paid about 200 birr per month,” he said. “I paid Alemayehu Eshete and Mahmoud Ahmed 2,000 birr for a single recording of an album.” He added: “This was all unheard of at the time, and in fact I can say it was the talk of the town.”
“Things have very much changed now,” Amha noted. “Payment of one million birr is no more a topic of conversation. The recent sales and revenue from Teddy Afro’s recording might gross millions of dollars.” he added: “This is definitely progress in the right direction and it is the beginning of good things to come.”
Tirunesh Dibaba reigned as the Queen of Carlsbad 500 in California on Sunday. Read more. (File Photo)
By Associated Press
CARLSBAD, Calif. — Dejen Gebremeskel of Ethiopia has won the men’s championship at the Carlsbad 5000 for the second year in a row, tying for the fourth-fastest time ever on the roads in 13 minutes, 11 seconds.
Fellow Ethiopian Tirunesh Dibaba regained the women’s title she won in 2005, finishing in 15:01. The 2008 Olympic champion at 5,000 and 10,000 meters, Dibaba ran away from the field over the closing stages and won by 12 seconds over Werknesh Kidane of Ethiopia.
Trish Hack-Rubinstein, pictured center on the top right photograph, is President and Co Founder of "Friends of Fresh and Green Academy Inc.," a U.S. based non-profit organization, that supports a school by the same name in Ethiopia. (Photo courtesy of FFGA/Flickr)
Tadias Magazine
By Tseday Alehegn
Updated: Wednesday, February 29, 2012
New York (TADIAS) – In 2008, Trish Hack-Rubinstein, a flight attendant based in New York City, joined several of her airline colleagues on a volunteer trip to Ethiopia, and it became the beginning of new friendships and lasting connections to the country. That’s when she met Muday Mitiku, an Ethiopian teacher and founder of Fresh and Green Academy – an innovative elementary school in Addis Ababa that provides not only academic curriculum but also meals and showers for impoverished school children. At the end of each day, when the students are ready to go home, their caregivers also pick up clean water supplied by the school’s water purification system. Muday Mitiku has been serving as Fresh and Green Academy’s Director since 2000, and the school is striving to add one grade level each year with the support of Friends of Fresh and Green Academy in the United States.
Initially Fresh and Green was started as a fee-paying kidergarten, but Muday quickly realized the dearth of access to education for street children living in the area. As she decided to enroll these children into the academy free of charge, some parents pulled their kids out of the school. The venture was at the crossroads when Trish and her friends visited Fresh and Green four years ago.
“The school had no other source of funding as it was a private school started by this amazing woman,” Trish said in a recent interview with Tadias Magazine. “But when she started to bring in the poor children from the streets the money ran out.” She added: “I fell in love with the kids, moms, staff, director, and everyone else and knew I couldn’t just go back to the USA and leave them to fend for themselves. So I started Friends of Fresh and Green Academy Inc., a 501(c)(3) that supports the school. ”
What’s a normal school day like for a student at Fresh & Green? Trish describes the youngsters arriving at school at 8am, eating breakfast, brushing their teeth, taking showers, and putting on clean clothes and then having their academic lessons in accordance with the national curriculum. Extracurricular activities begin after lessons end at 3pm, which include classes in art, drama, music, computers, and physical education. “The students have been helping with the planting of vegetable gardens, which produce some of the food they eat,” Trish explains. “By 5pm the school children have eaten dinner and await their caregivers to pick them up from school.”
What makes Fresh and Green stand out as a model school for under-served communities is that it not only provides free education, clean water and nutrition services for students, but also supports the mothers of the children as part of its Mothers Co-op program.
“The Mothers Co-op has grown tremendously since it was started in 2006,” Trish said. “It began as 20 mothers helping to prepare school meals in shifts, and also meeting once a week to string beads. It expanded to 50 women cooking, beading and weaving, as well as working in a store in front of the school.” Looms and sewing machines have been installed on school grounds where the mothers are also learning to sew and make clothes. The Mothers Co-op also incorporates social networking traditions such as the Ethiopian coffee ceremony.
Through the assistance of Friends of Fresh and Green Academy, the overhead rent of the store is paid for by donors. Speaking about her non-profit organization Trish noted, “We have very little overhead, and no paid employees, so over 80% of the donations go directly to the operation of the academy.”
Friends of Fresh and Green Academy hosts quarterly fundraisers including child sponsorship programs, a silent auction and raffle event at Cielo in downtown New York in May, and a poker fundraiser in September. Fundraising is also conducted using various social media-based campaigns.
“Tadias readers can help us spread awareness, attend fundraisers, donate goods and services like clothing, shoes, fabric for the coop,” Trish said. “We can always use volunteers with fundraising ideas, accounting skills, grant writing and PR experience. But of course, most of all we need funds.”
Ultimately, Trish and other supporters of Fresh and Green Academy would like to see a self-sustaining institution. “Our dream is to build a school that can accommodate students through grade 12, with a boarding facility, a center for the Mothers Co-op, a working farm to cut down on the cost of food and possibly provide income for the school,” she said. “And a guest house for volunteers to rent rooms, which will also provide some income for the school.”
Reflecting on her work with the academy, Trish shares, “For the first time in my life I truly feel like I am doing what I was put on this earth to do. Nothing gives me more joy than to see the children eating playing and learning. Every time I visit the school (three times a year) I am smothered with hugs and kisses and I couldn’t be happier. I look forward to the day when I see them graduate from university and make a difference in their community and country. Everyone has the right to food and education.”
— To learn more about the organization, visit: www.friendsoffreshandgreen.com.
African American Women in the Obama Administration: Yeshimebet Abebe
Ethiopian American Yeshimebet Abebe serves as the Advisor to the Secretary of Agriculture for Special Project at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (Photo: The White House Blog)
Each year America recognizes the month of February as National African American History Month. We reflect and celebrate the heritage and legacy of African Americans and many of their achievements. The theme for this year’s African American History Month is focusing on, “Black Women in American Culture and History.” In his 2012 proclamation, President Obama says, “During National African American History Month, we pay tribute to the contributions of past generations and reaffirm our commitment to keeping the American dream alive for the next generation.”
Yeshimebet Abebe serves as the Advisor to the Secretary of Agriculture for Special Projects, where her portfolio includes USDA’s Strike Force Initiative. She recently served as the Acting Chief of Staff for Research, Education and Economics (REE) where her responsibilities included the managing of the daily priorities of the four agencies that comprise REE, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Economic Research Service (ERS), and National Agriculture Statistics Service (NASS).
Yeshi also served as the Special Assistant to the Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development and the Special Assistant to the Administrator for Rural Utilities Service. Prior to arriving at USDA, Yeshi practiced law in both the private and non-profit sectors, worked in the office of Congressman Bruce Braley and worked on the Obama campaign.
An Iowa native, Yeshi has a Bachelor of Science in Urban and Regional Studies from Cornell University, a Juris Doctor from the University of Miami School of Law, and a Master’s of Arts in International Law and the Settlement of Disputes from the University for Peace in Costa Rica.
New York (TADIAS) – A recent video created by Beshou Gedamu offers a comedic perspective on everyday conversation and activities among Ethiopian and Eritrean youth in the Diaspora. “Shit Habesha Girls Say is inspired by the Shit Girls Say video,” Beshou said in a brief interview. “I caught on pretty late and decided to take upon myself to do one about Habesha girls.”
“I wanted to do it from a different angle and actually cast women who would play those parts,” Beshou said regarding her production. “I have no experience in film-making so I had to get help and content.” She added: “I decided to use crowdsourcing to gather content and the help I needed. I owe it all to social media like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and my network. The hardest part was actually coordinating and finding time to accommodate everyone’s schedule.”
A video released earlier than Beshou’s, featuring a mostly male cast with the same title, also portrayed “habesha girls.” That video was directed by Aynalem Geremew.
Here are both videos:
Video by Beshou Gedamu
Video created and directed by Aynalem Geremew featuring actor Yonathan Elias
Dallas 2012: Fresh Start for ESFNA, Hopes to Reunite After Dispute
ESFNA has announced that the 2012 Ethiopian Soccer Tournament will be held in Dallas, Texas. (Photo: Chicago 2009 / Tadias File)
Tadias Magazine
By Jason Jett
Updated: Saturday, December 24, 2011
New York (TADIAS) – After near dissolution, the 28 year-old non-profit, Ethiopian Sports Federation in North America (ESFNA), recently held elections for new leadership. The organization was steeped in disputes for the past 15 months prior to the current resolution.
On December 11th a newly elected board announced that the organization’s annual summer soccer tournament and cultural festival would be held in Dallas, and noted that the upcoming guest of honor will be a sports figure from Ethiopia.
ESFNA’s executive board decision to rescind an invitation to former Ethiopian Judge and opposition leader, Birtukan Mideksa, in October 2010 initiated the disputes. Judge Mideksa had been chosen by the ESFNA board as a guest of honor for its July 2011 event, but internal strife ensued over whether the invitation was appropriate or not. The controversy escalated as resignations followed amid public criticism, including accusations of corruption and malfeasance. Ultimately an invitation was extended to Judge Mideksa and the tournament went on as scheduled in Atlanta albeit under a cloud of threats of boycott by several groups as well as calls for new elections.
“As most that follow ESFNA know, 2011 was a difficult year for the organization because of some decisions that it took or did not take during and following its annual October meeting in 2010 regarding a guest-of-honor selection,” read an official statement from the organization. “All in attendance knew this was a special meeting where all differences were going to be placed on the table and discussed so that the organization could identify mistakes it committed, learn from its mistakes and place safeguards not to repeat it. It was understood that after the discussion we will be united, and go forward even stronger than before.”
The tournament, and the ESFNA itself, was salvaged during a three-day meeting of the organization’s board in Northern Virginia. The board elected Getachew Tesfaye of the St. Michael football club in Maryland as the new president of ESFNA, and likewise installed a new treasurer and business manager.
“There have been questions about our political views,” Tesfaye said when the tournament-site selection was announced after months of delay. “This is a soccer federation. We do not discriminate based on political party, religion or tribe. If you serve the interests of Ethiopia, you are welcome to our tournament.”
Dallas was selected as the 2012 host over Seattle, Las Vegas and Denver, which also submitted bids to host the event. The new president told Tadias Magazine that Denver’s hosting proposal was nearly as persuasive as the one selected, but a down economy influenced the decision to return to Dallas a fourth time.
“We have not held a tournament in Denver yet, and did not want to take a chance amid the current financial situation,” he explained. “All tournaments held in Dallas have been well-attended by the Ethiopian community. Also it is central, and many teams and people can drive to Dallas. We took all that into consideration.”
Also in acknowledgement of the weak economy, the 2012 venue — a stadium in Addison, a suburb of Dallas — is significantly smaller than the 2011 site, the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.
Regarding the guest of honor, Tesfaye said two prominent sports figures are being considered and an announcement is expected early in the new year.
Yohannes Berhanu, the new Public Relations Officer of ESFNA, said there is hope that internal divisions are now laid to rest, and that the organization will be viewed as a sports and cultural entity moving forward.
“The ESFNA was never into politics,” he said, while acknowledging the appearance of influence by big money. “The problem is interest groups or sponsors give some tendencies that goes this way or that way — like the big donors, or when we rally against what happens in Ethiopia.”
“In Atlanta there was a tribute to people who had been massacred,” he said. “That was human rights, something any human would do. We were with the people, but not on any side. We are not political, we have to accommodate everyone.”
Addressing guest-of-honor selections, Berhanu added, ” It could be anybody who does something big, like donate $240,000 [Sheikh Al Amoudi, who has donated to ESFNA, was a 2002 tournament guest of honor] or Judge Birtukan Mideksa. We wanted to recognize her for standing up for herself.”
“We are all Ethiopians. We came here and started the federation with four teams, and now there are 29 teams. People with political ties want to bring their own identity and go forward with that. That has nothing to do with ESFNA.”
The sport federation was formed in 1984, and the first annual tournament was held that year in Houston. Berhanu likened the federation’s inclusiveness to that of community groups.
“When they started this thing, they never thought it was going to become this big,” Berhanu said. “But wherever Ethiopians are, they love the sport, culture and getting together.” He added: Like a church or a community organization, we open our doors to everybody. Everybody comes with their own agenda.”
Of the athletes, he noted some are former members of the Ethiopian national team and are well-known and highly regarded.
“They are known not only for what they do in the soccer field, but in bringing people’s spirits up,” he said. “They are like Haile Gebrselassie. The players do a lot for us. People feel homesick, and the players are getting them together and giving them sports. It keeps them going.”
“We should be all working for the same goal,” continued Berhanu. “We have a country that needs our help and a community which needs our support. Otherwise, we will not grow as quickly as other communities.”
— Related: The New York Abay Team: Soccer With an Empire State of Mind
Buzunesh Deba training at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx on Monday, October 24, 2011. (Photo by Jason Jett for Tadias Magazine).
Tadias Magazine
By Jason Jett
Updated: Thursday, October 27, 2011
New York (TADIAS) – Buzunesh Deba “is not in the local race, she is in the big race this time,” her husband-coach Worku Beyi emphasized last week in reference to the Ethiopian-born runner’s bid to become the first New Yorker to win the New York City Marathon since 1976 — before the race left Central Park to touch all five boroughs and become the world’s largest marathon.
On November 6 she will pursue the $130,000 overall top prize that goes to the first man and woman finishing the 26.2-mile race through Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan.
Deba has the runner’s resume to be considered among the top five in the elite women’s field at the 2011 New York City Marathon.
Last June she won the Rock n’ Roll San Diego Marathon in 2:23:31, blazing the first half of the downward course in 1:09:53. Three months earlier she won the Honda Los Angeles Marathon. Last year she was victorious at the Twin Cities and Grandma’s marathons in Minnesota.
Deba was among the top-10 finishers both times she competed over the marathon distance in New York City, finishing 10th, in 2:29:55, last year and seventh two years ago in 2:35:54.
The New York City Marathon is a demanding 26 miles, 385 feet (42.195 kilometers), with five climbs onto bridges, that runners seeking fast times typically avoid in favor of running over relatively flat courses in Berlin or Chicago.
Beyi insists if the weather is pleasant, Deba has a good chance of beating the New York City Marathon course record of 2:22:31.
“In San Diego she ran the first 5K in 16:0-something,” he said. “Her 10k time was 32 minutes, she was on world-record pace. Then until 23 miles, she was on sub-2:20 pace.”
The husband-coach told Tadias that he first met Deba when she was age 13, and a year later attended one of her races, positioning himself along a clearing about 400 feet from the finish line.
“Buzunesh was second, a good distance behind the leader, when she came by,” said Beyi. “I shouted ‘go, go, go’ the next thing I knew she began to run faster. She passed the other girl and won the race.”
“When I congratulated her after the race I asked her how did she manage to pass the other girl so quickly?” he continued. “She said, ‘You gave me power. You are my power.’”
His wife’s pre-New York marathon workout routines peaked this fall to 130 miles a week, covered in two-a-day training sessions. Recently, Deba has slowed to about 90 miles a week with robust-morning and easy-evening sessions.
“Nutrition is very important for running a marathon,” Beyi said. “Marathon training is very hard, you have to eat properly. Up to one month before the marathon we ate a lot of meat and injera, but injera makes you heavy. Now we eat mostly vegetables, with a little chicken and some lamb soup.”
Deba gives a lot of credit for her success to Beyi — both his training and cooking.
Beyi, a world-class athlete, competes less now because of a medical condition and instead focuses on coaching Deba. Quite a cook also, friends say, Beyi said he prepares their meals so Deba can stay off her feet after training.
For Deba, the ascension was gradual. She arrived in New York on an athlete’s visa in 2007, and her early performance was hampered by chronic ankle problems.
With uneven success, she competed across the country at various races. It was not until September 2009 that Deba ran her first race over a 26.2-mile course — The Quad Cities (Iowa) Marathon — and won.
She found her winning stride, and with coaching from Beyi and altitude training in New Mexico, victories followed at the 2009 and 2010 California International Marathon as well as in Minnesota, Los Angeles and San Diego.
Buzunesh Deba trains under the watchful eye of husband-coach Worku Beyi as members of the Manhattan College Jaspers track and field team look on at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx on Monday, October 24, 2011. (Photo by Jason Jett for Tadias Magazine).
Buzunesh Deba, far right, holds trophy after winning the 2010 Chris Thater Memorial 5K in Binghamton, New York. (Photo by Jason Jett)
Now Deba is on the brink of a life-changing achievement. If she wins the New York City Marathon next week, it would mark the first time a female runner has left her homeland as an adult and rose to world-class status on the North American road-racing circuit. Only Khalid Khannouchi, who was born in Morocco and lived first in Brooklyn and then in Ossining, NY, has done that to date, winning the 1999 Chicago Marathon in a world-record time of 2:05:42 that since has been broken. Meb Keflezighi, winner of the 2009 New York City Marathon, was born in Eritrea but as a child moved with his family to the United States and grew up in San Diego.
In recent days, Deba has been besieged with media requests – which included interviews with The New York Times and The New York Daily News.
With a victory in New York, Deba would take a big step from her colleagues who survive by the same pattern she had followed in the U.S. until this year — racing here and there, virtually anywhere, to secure enough funds to support themselves and send home to family in Ethiopia.
More than dozen Ethiopian runners living in New York and Washington, D.C., are pursuing with season-highlight anticipation that New York City Marathon race-within-a-race from which Deba is attempting to move on. For them there is still gleam in the prospect of being the first city resident or New York Road Runners member to finish, and the money that comes with the distinction.
Pride unites the network of Ethiopian runners who live in and around New York, training in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, Rockefeller State Park in Tarrytown and in Manhattan’s Central Park.
The pride is both for their homeland and in their resettlement in a country that offers greater opportunities — if they can find them amid all the competition from other Ethiopian nationals not to mention Kenyans, and East Europeans on the running circuit.
Friendships survive the race competitions, in which one runner’s success often means another’s failure in monetary terms ranging from several hundred to thousands of dollars.
Schadenfreude is a reality after each race, with everyone getting to share in it at some point as they hope for better for themselves in their next competition.
That is the manner in which relations within the network are affected by the hands of fate. One’s success is shared; one’s failure means there is opportunity for some other runner to move up.
The New York City Marathon brings local media attention to the running community each year. The scrutiny has not always been embraced by its members.
Nearly three years ago Village Voice reporter Graham Rayman extensively interviewed Ethiopian and Kenyan runners living in the Bronx for a post-New York City Marathon story. Rayman and photographer Jesse Reed spent days into weeks interviewing and photographing the runners in their homes as well as at training grounds in Van Cortlandt and Rockefeller State parks.
The result was a front-page story with a full-page picture of Ethiopian runner Abiyot Endale, who has photogenic looks to match his athletic prowess. However, photoshopped onto the bib of Endale’s running shirt was the headline: Will Run For Food.
The Ethiopian running community in New York was outraged.
Kassahun Kabiso, a Bronx runner who was featured in the report, said Rayman had befriended the runners and they had accepted him and his photographer into their homes and apartments. “He was our friend,” Kabiso said. “Maybe his editors changed the story.”
Rayman did not respond to a request for comment sent to his email account at the Village Voice.
The article, published December 17, 2008, is still viewable online along with additional comments but sans the cover photograph shown below.
The Ethiopian running community in New York is still stinging from the article, and wants the world to know that while their lifestyle is not luxurious neither is it impoverished.
“That was a bad article,” Beyi said, shaking his head, after leading Deba through a training session last week.
Endale and Derese Deniboba, who live at a Perry Avenue address in the Bronx that for the past six years has been home for Ethiopian runners, note that while they may live four people to an apartment the conditions are clean and well-maintained, if not spartan.
Deniboba recently recalled a conversation he had last summer with his absentee landlord.
“He called me over and said, ‘You know, you are not like the tenants I used to have. You guys are quiet, and never cause any trouble. Where are you from?’”
“I told him Ethiopia,” said Deniboba. “Then he asked, ‘What you do?’”
“I told him we are runners,” added Deniboba. “Then he said, ‘You guys are disciplined, you are in good shape. None of you are fat. I think I will take up running, too.’”
Will Run For Glory
Deba is running the New York City Marathon for the glory and the money.
Her six-figure annual earnings and a $40,000 Mizuno sponsorship, along with a 2011 Honda Insight hybrid car that was part of her prize for winning in Los Angeles, has her and Beyi preparing to buy a house in their adopted city — as she pursues United States citizenship.
Should Deba not win the New York race, but finish second, she would earn $65,000; plus bonus. A third-place finish would net her $40,000, fourth $25,000, fifth $15,000, and so on, plus bonuses.
November 6 likely will be a big payday for all the hard work and discipline Deba has put in every day the past few months, including rainy days on which Beyi suggested she rest but she insisted on going out and running in the rain for hours.
Buzunesh Deba (front) at the 2011 San Diego Marathon. (Photo by Justin Brown)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: Monday, October 10, 2011
New York (TADIAS) – The New York Daily News highlights the Bronx-based long-distance runner Buzunesh Deba, who is preparing for the upcoming ING New York City Martahon. If Deba wins the race next month, she will become the first New Yorker to claim hometown victory in the annual fall race.
“Buzunesh Deba is a 24-year-old former gymnast who grew up in the town of Asela in Ethiopia’s Rift Valley, and now lives in a fifth-floor walkup on West 195th St. in the Bronx,” writes Wayne Coffey for the Daily News. “The apartment has…a few dozen trophies and medals, all of them the fruits of Deba’s rapidly ascending marathoning career.” He adds: “A month from now, in the ING New York City Marathon, Deba will endeavor to add to the collection – not only by scoring the greatest victory of her life, but by becoming the first New Yorker to win the five-borough race.”
“I hope to make the New York Road Runners, my husband as well as myself proud,” Deba told the newspaper, speaking through an Amharic interpreter.
Buzunesh Deba ran the 11th-fastest marathon in the world earlier this year at the Dodge Rock n’ Roll San Diego Marathon, finishing the race in the fastest time ever run by a woman in California.
“It’s remarkable to think that there could be a champion hiding in plain sight, training in our parks and streets right here in New York City,” Says Mary Wittenberg, CEO of the New York Road Runners.
Above:Shusta, a shoes and accessories boutique in central
Berlin. The store is owned by Tedros Tewelde and Fidel Tesfa.
Tadias Magazine
By Tigist Selam
Published: Sunday, February 20, 2011
New York (Tadias) – Every year I return to Germany to spend the holidays with my family. Having lived there for ten years before coming to America, I still consider it one of my many homes. During my most recent trip, I also enjoyed getting ready for Berlin fashion week, Berlinale International Film Festival, and getting back in touch with a few Abeshas in the city.
Tedros Tewelde & Fidel Tesfai
I was introduced to co-owners of Shusta, a shoes and accessories store located in central Berlin. After quitting his corporate job, Tedros Tewelde in partnership with his friend Fidel Tesfai opened up his dream store. And I’m so glad they did. I could have bought every single item in that store — it is such a chic boutique! The sales associates were also super friendly. Shusta has enjoyed several years of great business and is now expanding into design and this year it will be offering custom-made shoes for exclusive clients. Another intriguing Shusta collaboration is its ‘design-recycling’ work with Waste Barcelona, the Spanish company known for its durable and high quality products produced with social and environmental consciousness. Shusta designed 30 bags built entirely out of recycled materials such as discarded automotive upholstery and leather.
If you’re ever in Berlin stop by their store, and in the meantime check out Shusta’s online presence and shoe selections at: www.shusta.de
Sam Goitom owns Kitty Cheng
I also spent time with the multi-talented Sam Goitom, a gregarious Berliner who walks through life with a smile, no matter what might come; and no one can resist his charm. I met Sam at his Public Relations company, People People, established several years ago. After catching up over coffee, we drove to Kitty Cheng, his new business adventure. The bar/club/lounge is conveniently located in Berlin Mitte, only a few minutes away from Shusta. Kitty Cheng is known for its detailed décor as well as the extravagant parties. Sam told me about the extensive remodeling procedure that they went through to add character to the place. Although the music is heavily influenced by Berlin’s electronic music scene, each night features an eclactic and diverse sound and dancing. If you ever happened to be in Berlin, don’t miss out on his parties! You can learn more at: www.peoplepeople.de and www.kittycheng.de
A Musisican Named Fetsum
And headquartered in Berlin, not far from Shusta and Kitty Cheng, is the recording studio for an artist named Fetsum. I met Fetsum a few years ago in Cologne where he invited my brother and I for a private concert. Since then, I have been hooked on his music and the hope that it brings. I spent time with him this year in Berlin where he is recording his new album in between touring with internationally recognized artists such as Patrice and Estelle. His song ‘Meet You in Paradise’ remains my favorite song. Fetsum composed the lyrics reminiscing of the close relationship that he had with his late father. The images in the music video were shot in Brazil. (Watch Fetsum’s “Meet you in paradise” below). You can also check out more information about upcoming tour dates to the US here: www.fetsum.com.
I am extremely proud of Fetsum, Tedros & Fidel, and Sam for following their dreams in Berlin. I can’t wait to see what this year might bring, and catching up with them again sometime soon.
Video: Fetsum “Meet you in paradise” (Fetsum TV)
–
Photo Credit: Cover image and store photos, courtesy of Shusta.
Tigist’s photograph by Ingrid Hertfelder.
Fetsum’s photo via Facebook.
LA Premiere Of Teza To Honor The Late UCLA Professor Teshome Gabriel
Above:The late Dr. Teshome H. Gabriel, a long-time Professor
at UCLA and an authority on third world & post-colonial cinema.
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: Friday, September 10, 2010
New York (Tadias) – Haile Gerima’s critically acclaimed movie Teza, to be premiered in Los Angeles on Monday, September 13th, will also honor the late Teshome H. Gabriel, a long serving Professor at UCLA and a leading international figure on third world and post-colonial cinema. Dr. Teshome died suddenly from cardiac arrest on June 15, 2010. He was 70 years old.
Dr. Teshome was born in Ethiopia in 1939 and moved to the States in 1962. He began his academic career at UCLA in the early seventies. According to the university’s Newsroom: “A pioneering scholar and activist, Gabriel had taught cinema and media studies at TFT since 1974 and was closely associated with UCLA’s African Studies Center.”
“He was a brilliant, gracious, elegant and generous man,” said Teri Schwartz, Dean of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. “Teshome was a consummate professional and a truly beloved faculty member at TFT…he will be greatly missed by all of us.”
Dr. Teshome earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Utah and a Master’s and a Ph.D. from UCLA, where he would eventually became a tenured professor at the world-famous School of Theater, Film and Television.
He also served as the Founder and Editorial Board Member of the Amharic publication Tuwaf (Light), an Ethiopian Fine Arts Journal, from 1987 to 1991. Dr. Teshome is also the co-editor of the 1993 book Otherness and the Media: The Ethnography of the Imagined and the Imaged and most recently the author the book Third Cinema: Exploration of Nomadic Aesthetics & Narrative Communities. He is quoted as describing his work as that of an activist scholar: “What I am seeking to do, I would say, is validate the notion of the academic citizen, by which I mean an academic who has some relationship to the wider communities that surround us and which overlap with other arts and disciplines.”
Nicholas K. Browne, Vice Chair for Cinema and Media Studies was quoted by UCLA Newsroom as stating that: “Teshome’s work had three main themes. He focused on the unique styles of films made in the non-aligned nations of Latin America and Africa (the “Third World”), the issues of relating and representing ‘the other’ (that is, people not like us), and the unique situation of filmmakers and scholars who have left the countries of their birth and occupy and reflect on their marginal, in-between place in the world, a more and more common situation in a global world of the 20th and 21st centuries.”
The event – slated to be held at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood Village – is sponsored by UCLA Film & Television Archive and features a discussion with Director Haile Gerima following the screening. The evening’s co-hosts include filmmakers Billy Woodberry, Charles Burnett, Michie Gleason, as well as Ellias Negash – a long-time personal friend of Professor Teshome- among others.
If You Go:
The Los Angeles Premiere Screening of TEZA
in honor of the late UCLA Professor Teshome Gabriel
Discussion with Haile Gerima following the screening
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2010 7:30 pm
Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood Village
courtyard level of the Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90024
From left - The drummer Tesfaye mekonnen (Hodo); guest singer from Asmara police orchestra, Teshome Mitiku & Bass and sax player Fekade Amde Meskel of Soul Ekos Band. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Martha Z. Tegegn
Published: Thursday, August 19, 2010
Washington, D.C. (TADIAS)- The last part of our exclusive interview with Ethiopian music legend Teshome Mitiku features his years abroad, his musician daughter Emila, and his plans to return to Ethiopia in the near future.
The artist, who is set to make a historic appearance at the upcoming Chicago Jazz festival, says he is also planning a trip home in connection with a documentary movie being made about him and his daughter by a German production company. The film entitled “Father to Daughter,” is about the transfer of music from one generation to another.
In last week’s segment, Teshome discussed the tense political climate of the late 1960′s that would eventually force him to abruptly leave Ethiopia for Denmark.
What was the first thing you did when you got to Denmark?
I took a cab from Copenhagen airport, and told the cab driver “Take me anywhere where they have music, club, bedroom and food” (Laughter). The cab driver took me to a place called British Pub. It was cold, there was a hotel and I slept for a while, got up and took a shower and dressed sharp in a nice Italian suit, and then went downstairs to get something to eat. I ordered steak and whisky (Laughter). A few minutes later the band started playing and more people started to come in and the mood was getting better and better. I moved to the bar stool and ordered another whisky. Later, I asked the piano player on the stage if I can sing with the group? They were stunned. Who is this guy? Who does he think he is? Then the piano guy said, “I have to ask the manager first.” I replied “go ahead and ask.” The funny thing is my character had apparently convinced them that I was some sort of royal. I was not aware of it at the moment but I was later to learn that it was not very normal in those days for a sharply-dressed black man to show up in a Copenhagen bar, order a steak and whisky and request to play the piano (laughter). They were not used to it. The manager came and immediatly asked, “Where do you come from, are you a Saudi Arabian prince?” (Laughter). They have never seen a black man dressed like that in their life. I was in a nice Italian suit. The manager said “Ok. Let me ask the band leader.” The band leader was named Stefan. He said “Okay, come on,” so I went up there and did some Nat King Cole song, I think it was Monalisa and about three more songs and people liked it and wanted more. Well, I said okay! Then the lady of the house, the boss, the owner, she came and invited me for a drink and asked me all about myself. I told her that I just arrived that morning from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. And she asked me, “Would like to continue to play with the group?” I said yes. Then she formally introduced me with the band leader Stefan, who to this day is my great friend. There I was offered a job, free lodging, laundry and food. So I started singing there.
Wow, how long did you stay there?
I played at the pub for about three months. Then we had a show at a nursing college in Malmo, an international city in Southern Sweden. We stayed there for a while and I begun to contemplate to move to Sweden because when I was there I discovered that they have a great music academy in Malmo. I also learned that you have to be fluent in Swedish in order to attend the school. So I applied for language school in Sweden and they accepted me, that’s how I moved to Sweden.
How difficult was it to learn the new language?
It wasn’t difficult. People think language is difficult, but if you are a musician you shouldn’t worry about language. After I studied Swedish things became easier. I started reading the newspaper. I could communicate with people. So I went ahead and applied to the music academy. I took the test. My dream was to be a conductor. They accepted me at the music school. But I changed my mind and enrolled at the University to study sociology and history instead.
What led you to change your gear from music to sociology and history?
I did not leave music but I wanted to study more. I was in a state of mind where I was struggling with several personal questions. It was a transformational period for me. In a way, I was still maturing and still growing up. I have done music but I also wanted to fulfill the high hopes my father had for me in education. My father always emphasized the importance of getting an education. He was a lawyer, he knew law and loved academia. He was dissatisfied with the Ethiopian justice system till the day he died. Our house was made of intellectuals, we talked a lot (laughter).
How was school like for you in Sweden?
I lived in the library for so many years. I would get up 6 AM like a soldier and at 7 o’clock I am at the library reading. I would do that until 12 or 1 pm and take short lunch break and get back and read. I was a good reader. I used to read five to six books a week on all subjects including philosophy, psychology, history, you name it. Books eventually became my friends, my house is full of books. I can not go anywhere without a book. So, I wanted education and knowledge. I wanted to learn everything. Whatever it takes. I remember trying to push myself to understand Albert Einstein’s theory, “ if he can understand it, I sure can,” I would say to myself. I was pushing myself. That part of me still exists.
Does that mean you weren’t playing music then?
Oh no, I was still playing music. In fact, I was part of a 12 piece jazz band and we used to play on weekends in Sweden and even travel to different states. In summer I was playing Swedish polka. So I earned money as well. I also had a full scholarship for my education.
How were you able to balance all that – new culture, language, school, music, life?
It was a lot to process. The Music part was easy, it came naturally to me, it was part of me. However, school was a bit unnatural, out of my tempo, so I had to work harder at it.
What drives you?
What drives me? Curiosity, discovering the unknown drives me. I like being surprised through new knowledge. In my university life I was an A student.
Were you ever homesick? Did you miss Ethiopia?
I longed for Ethiopia. For me she is embedded in my heart. I love her. Yes, I was very lonely and always longed for my country. I would wake up in the middle of the night when everybody is sleeping and walk to the dorm where there was a piano. I would improvise until sun break. That’s how I released my homesickness.
I am going to ask you a sensitive question. Does this mean you haven’t seen your mom since you left forty years ago?
I have not seen my mother since I left Ethiopia, yes. I haven’t seen her, we talk on the phone…but I haven’t seen her and she always…her dream is to see me before anything happens. But, God willing we will probably see each other soon.
Do you plan to go back?
Yes
When?
Sometime soon (laughter). I have certain core principals that I cannot compromise. We have to have mutual respect for our cultural diversity. My wish for Ethiopia is peace, stability and prosperity based on just principals. I have confidence in the new generation.
Well, you are going to be very surprised. For example, your Sefer (neighborhood) Qebena is different. Even the river has dried.
(Laughter) Yes I know, Qebena doesn’t exist in the way I knew it, only Mama. But I will go there, hopefully, soon…
Let’s talk about your daughter Emilia, the Swedish pop singer. You must be proud of her.
I am very proud of her. I have no words to express it. I used to call her my pearl, my life, my everything.
Is she the only one?
Yes, she is the only one. She has given me a reason to live ever since she was born. She is very smart. Emilia speaks five languages French, Swedish, English, German and Spanish fluently. She got the linguistic part form her mom and the music part from me. She is my everything. My pride. We text each other all the time, we communicate often. She is based in Sweden but lives in Germany and Hungary. I wanted her to be a musician. I encouraged it very much. Even when she was a baby I used to play Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky for her. When she was just two years old, I put her on the piano and told her “This is what you will be doing all your life” (laughter). So she fulfilled that dream for me. I clearly remember the night when she won the Swedish Award. It is equivalent to the American Grammy. She won for best singer, best video, best composer of the year. I mean, I was excited. She was in Japan and watching it via satellite. I was here that night. I was so proud and happy. I picked up the phone and called Voice of America and declared that my daughter has done it, just as Abebe Bekila did it for Ethiopia (laugher) . I was so proud!
Does Emilia speak Amharic?
A little bit, yes. She used to go to Sunday school to learn Amharic as a child. But she stoped when her teacher moved to another place. She also used to take piano, and ballet. She was a very busy child.
Does she plan to do a show in the U.S?
Yes, she actually has an album coming up that will be released in the U.S. market. We are also planning an album together.
Why did you relocate to US?
Well, everything with me has to do with music. I came to visit my brother Teddy sometime in the early 90s. When I came here I was shocked. I never thought that such a large number of Ethiopians had migrated to this part of the world. I mean everywhere I went there were Ethiopians. I said to myself, “ What am I doing in Sweden? This is where I need to be. Then I went back to Sweden, discussed my idea with Emilia. I said “now that you are grown, it is time now for papa to go discover life” (laughter). I gave my apartment to a friend and I was gone. As soon as I arrived here, I got involved in a lot of Ethiopian activities, including music, fundraising for different causes. I became socially involved with the community. That kept me going. I am currently working on a CD.
When is that coming out?
Perhaps in December. I would like to get involved with a lot of musicians, both legendary and contemporary and mix it with American music.
You are scheduled to collaborate with the American Jazz band the Either/Orchestra at the prestigious Chicago Jazz festival in September. How did that come about?
The Either/Orchestra had re-recorded one of my songs called Yezemed Yebada and one day I was driving in the area and heard the song on WPFW radio. I am like, what is that? This is my song? So, I pulled over to the side and called the DJ at WPFW. I asked him, “who is the composer of the song?” He read the album and said Teshome Mitiku. I said: “You are talking to him now.” They were pleasantly surprised. I asked about the orchestra and they gave me information about them and the DJ said they were located in Boston. I picked up the phone and called the leader Russ, I told him who I was and eventually we became friends. He called me about a month ago and invited me to join the group for preparation in Chicago and Boston. When I rehearsed with them, it was a great feeling. The band is fantastic. Our show in Massachusetts was sold out. I saw a lot of people there that enjoyed Ethiopian music, friends of Ethiopia and Ethiopians. They loved it. We are now getting ready for the Chicago festival. I am honored to join the band; I am actually going to be doing a couple of more shows and we are talking about more future projects, I am excited.
Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?
Yes, I would like to mention that a German production company is currently filming a documentary based on my life and Emilia’s entitled “Father to Daughter.” It’s about the transition of music from one generation to another. They are half way done. They came and filmed here. They have also been filming in Europe. Now, they want us to go to Ethiopia to complete the shoot. I plan to go. So that will be my first trip back to Ethiopia since I left four decades ago.
Is your daughter going with you?
Oh yes, but that will not be her first time though. Emilia was in Ethiopia last year. She was in the middle of preparing for the 2009 Eurovision Song competition and she was very nervous about it. So one day she calls me and she says: “Papa I have to go to Ethiopia to get a blessing from my grandmother before the contest. Can you come with me?” I said to her, “I want you to do that. I can’t come with you becasue I am working, but I want you to go.” So she did. She went to Addis Ababa straight to her grandmother’s house and stayed there for a week. So the two women call me up. My mother was crying, Emilia was crying. My mother said to me, “ Teshu now my life is fulfilled. Today is the happiest day of my life.” When Emilia was there she took a photo of my old house, the house I grew up in Qebena. When I saw that picture, it brought back so many memories that I had to write a song about it. It will be in my next album. It is called Enen Ayew (I saw myself).
Thank you so much Tehsome for your time and good luck.
From left - The drummer Tesfaye mekonnen (Hodo); guest singer from Asmara police orchestra, Teshome Mitiku & Bass and sax player Fekade Amde Meskel of Soul Ekos Band. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Martha Z. Tegegn
Published: Thursday, August 12, 2010
Washington, D.C. (TADIAS)- Part two of our exclusive interview with Ethiopian music legend Teshome Mitiku highlights his reasons for his abrupt departure from Ethiopia forty years ago, his favorite song from that era and his experience working with Mulatu Astatke, the father of Ethio-jazz. Teshome is scheduled to accompany the Either/Orchestra at the 32nd Annual Chicago Jazz Festival in September.
You were a teenager when you started performing in clubs. How did your parents feel about that?
My father had already passed away. My mother was very supportive. My mother’s only concern was that I continue to go to school, but she never stopped me from playing, just worried about me. She is a great mother. She was a great singer too. She used to sing Bati, Ambasel, Anchi Hoye. Her words and lyrics were poetry and they are very touching. I mean I used to sit and cry as a child when my mother used to sing while she was washing clothes, ironing or cooking. So I guess my mother’s emotional singing had an influence on me. My mother was always my friend. As a teenager when I started working in clubs and begun making money, I used to take her to a hair dresser, to a café, piazza, everywhere and whatever she wants I used to buy. My mom always came first for me. So I have always done that, I still do that. She is a beautiful woman with a heart of gold. My mother loves her life, even today she tells me “as long as you are doing good I am happy.” What I really appreciate about her is she brought me up as a care-free kid. She allowed me the freedom that I needed. And when I left the country, I thanked her for it.
You left the country abruptly. When did you leave Ethiopia and why?
I left the country on January 27, 1970. The last few years of the 1960s was a very critical time in Ethiopia. Even though the music scene was upbeat, there was also an undercurrent of social discontent. We were not political at all, but we were very popular at the time and people used to come from all corners to watch us. I believe the security people had an eye on us. So, at the end what happened was that we did a show at the Haile Selassie University in Addis Ababa. That was, as I recall, the last major show I did in Ethiopia.
Why so?
Because they made it so, they made it the last time, it wasn’t me. When Soul Ekos band was performing at the University, there were about four to five thousand people there. I mean Lideta Adrarash (Hall) was packed; everybody was there. It was a period when students were engaged in open rebellion against the authorities. So the army and the police were there keeping an eye on the kids and the situation. So when we took the stage Seifu Yohannes did the first three songs. And when my turn came and I was warming up to do the usual popular songs, the crowed started to demand that I play Fano Tesemara. I replied “I cannot sing that right now, are you crazy?”
Why? Was it a political song?
Oh yes (laughter), Fano Tesemara was a political song (Fano Tesemara ende Ho Chi Minh ende Che Guevara). Then I said, I can sing it for you but can you handle what’s gonna happen afterwards? The kids shouted “yes Teshe come on.” And I said to them let me first sing Almaz Min Eda New. They would not have any of it. I mean they were demanding that I sing Fano first. Then I had to speak with the police about it. They were vigilantly watching, the army, the Kibur Zebegna (the imperial guard), all of them were there with their AK-47s. The security was literally on the stage. So I asked the army guy, “what do you want me to do now?” By then the students were already singing Fano Tesemara and they were saying Meret larashu (land to the tiler) and so on. I turned to the the army captain again. He said “Go ahead, you can sing it.” The crowd went wild.
You took a chance.
Yes I did, I was allowed to sing it, but that was the end of happy and innocent days for me. I never had any more peace after that. I was continuously harassed, investigated, and was suddenly asked to pay three hundred and fifty thousand Ethiopian Birr in tax. I was shocked. I said what? Then, once I was scheduled to perform at Zula club they came and took me to Sostegna tabia (3rd police station) and kept me for three days with all sorts of fabricated accusations. I had the sense that they were planning to put me away for good. That’s when I left Ethiopia.
Where did you go?
I had a visa for Sweden and Denmark, and I went to Copenhagen for a while.
Before we talk about your years abroad, what is your favorite Soul Ekos song from those days?
Woooooooow, wow wow, very hard question…they all hold special place in my life but I think Mot Adeladlogn I love the poetry. It is almost like Romeo and Juliet. It is romantic.
During your brief but illustrious career in Ethiopia, you also worked with several Ethiopian greats, including Mulatu Astatke. What was that experience like?
Working with Mulatu is like having a buffet of music. Mulatu is music himself. I have collaborated with him on many occasions. I worked with him way back in the 60s and later in the 90s here. We did Wolo songs together. I love working with Mulatu. He gives the singer or the artist a chance to express himself. He never competes with you or tries to push you. He always tries to understand the music first. Once he gets it, then he lets you express it. When you work with him it is you who is working. I wish I could work with him more often than I did.
This photo was taken at Bingo Club in Asmara in 1969. Shown third from left is Theodros ( Teddy )
Mitiku, the 9th person is Alula Yohannes and next to him is Teshome Mitiku. (Courtesy photo)
The band members and friends vacationing in Asmara, where they used to play on weekends at
Kangawe Station, an American Military base. Teshome is almost seated. (Courtesy photo.)
From left - The drummer Tesfaye mekonnen (Hodo); guest singer from Asmara police orchestra, Teshome Mitiku & Bass and sax player Fekade Amde Meskel of Soul Ekos Band. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Martha Z. Tegegn
Published: Thursday, August 5, 2010
Washington, D.C. (TADIAS) – Teshome Mitiku has not returned to Ethiopia since his abrupt departure in 1970. In a recent exclusive interview with Tadias Magazine, the legendary artist who is scheduled to make a historic appearance accompanying the Either/Orchestra at the prestigious Chicago Jazz Festival in September, talks about his extensive music career, his memories of Ethiopia and his famous daughter, the Swedish pop star Emilia.
Teshome burst into Ethiopia’s music scene during a period in the 1960′s known as the “Golden Era.” He was the leader of Soul Ekos Band, the first independent musical ensemble to be recorded in the country. The group is credited for popularizing Amharic classics such as Gara Sir New Betesh, Yezemed Yebada, Mot Adeladlogn and Hasabe – all of which were written by the artist.
Prior to settling in the United States in the early 1990′s, Teshome spent over 20 years in Sweden, where he continued to hone his music skills, earn a graduate degree in Sociology, and witness his daughter grow up to become a Swedish ballad and pop music singer.
We spoke with Teshome Mitiku over coffee on U street in Washington, D.C. in what the artist says is his first exclusive interview since his hurried journey out of Ethiopia 40 years ago. The soft-spoken and humorous artist, who sprinkles his answers with sporadic laughter, discussed with us his distinguished career spanning four decades and three continents.
Here is part-one of our 3-part series, which will be published in weekly installments.
Teshome Mitiku, courtesy Photo.
You began your career as a teenager in an era known as “Swinging Addis.” What was
the music scene like in Ethiopia at the time?
It was fantastic. It was an upbeat time. The 60s was an era where things developed from one form of life to another. So it was a transitional period for the whole country. New ways of thinking and doing things were emerging in singing, playing, and producing. The big band era was giving-way to small bands including groups such as the Soul Ekos band, the Ras band, etc. Music instruments were changing as well. Everywhere you went there were groups playing, clubs were packed. I was still in high school at the time, but I was already playing in different clubs with several settings. Then we ended up forming the Soul Ekos band. For the last two years of the late 60′s, I played with this band, which was the most popular band in Ethiopia. Although more such bands have flourished, I don’t think anybody could replace that group.
You were one of the founding members of the band. What are your memories of Soul Ekos?
My memories of Soul Ekos band is just full of love. We were ahead of our time in many ways. We were very organized, disciplined, we had a manager and each guy in the band loved his instrument. There was no question of when to rehearse or how to rehearse it. We were playing in clubs, touring and taping. Our ideas of bringing about modern ways of playing music was getting popular. We did the recordings like Gara Sir New Betish, Hasabe, Yezemed Yebada, Mot Adeladlogn and many many more. Each one of us loved playing together. So what we did was that we rented a big house in Entoto, which had nine bedrooms and a giant living room.
So you guys also lived together?
(Laughs) Yes that is how much we enjoyed each other, we lived together. Each one of us had our own bedroom though (more laughter). We would get up at 7 o’clock and by 9 we were on stage in the living room for rehearsal until 1 o’clock, and we take lunch break until 3 and get back and rehearse until 6 then we go home. But home is where we practice so everybody did whatever they wanted to after 6. We saw too much of each other, but it never felt like that at the time.
Were you making enough money to support yourself?
We were the highest paid band. But we never placed money at the center, the music was our center. But we had income. I mean we were playing on weekends at Kangnew station in Asmara (then part of Ethiopia) and we used to play at hotels, clubs, schools, universities so the income was there. We were booked everywhere. We were flying left and right nationwide and internationally. We went to Sudan, Kenya all kinds of touring. We were a busy band.
Do you still keep in touch with some of the band members?
Yes, Teddy (Tewodros Mitiku) the saxophonist, is my brother, so we keep in touch. He lives in Maryland and I live in Virginia, so we meet and we call every now and then. I also keep in touch with Alula Yohannes, the guitarist we call each other on the phone we are even thinking of performing together. There was sort of a small reunion way back in 1995 but that reunion wasn’t really a soul Ekos reunion it was a reunion of guys playing in the 60s. So we got together and played at the Hilton here, it was the relaunch of my carrier in music. So, we might do that again. But some of our guys have passed away: the singer Seifu, the trumpeter Tamrat, the drummer Tesfaye. Among the original Soul Ekos band, only four are still living: Teddy, Fekade, Alula and I.
Members of the former Ekos Band: from the left Alula Yohannes, Tesfaye Mekonnen, Tamrat,
Amha Eshete (band manager), Teshome Mitiku, Feqade Amdemesqel & Tewodros Mitiku. (CP).
When did you start playing music?
I started playing music in zero grade. At the time they actually had zero grade (laughter). When you pass zero grade then you go to first grade. Zero grade was where you learned your ABC’s and after you master the basics then you pass to first grade. Otherwise, you can stay in zero grade for a long time. It is after completing Kes temhirtbet, fidel and Dawit that I landed at Haile Selassie day school (Kokebe Tsiba) in Kebena, where they put me in zero grade. When I got there, I already loved singing. I loved music. I remember while getting ready to pack for school I would listen to songs on the radio, and I would just stand there and listen to the music and be late for school. I had that much love. I especially loved begena and kirar instruments. I used to stand there and listen. I also remember some of the zebegnas (guards) in Aswogag Sefer area where they used to play accordions, flutes, washint and stuff so I used to sit there with the zebegnas while the class was waiting for me.
You have made up your mind then?
Yes, early on– and I used to drum around the village. So, when I came to first grade I had a chance to study under a Danish music teacher named Paul Bank Hansen at the Haile Selassie day school music class. They gave me an entrance exam on singing, rhythm, and the concept of music and I passed it. And Mr. Hanson, who was my teacher then, said to me he would like me to become a member of a group he was building. So, there were about 40 to 50 students selected for music education. My brother Teddy Mitiku was one of them, and some of the guys from our band Tamrat Ferendji and Tesfaye Mekonnen, etc, most of them are from there. So, my teacher’s wife, Margret Hanson, started teaching me piano. I went to her once and asked: “Mrs. Hanson, can you please teach me how to play this thing.” I was referring to the piano, the grand piano in her house. She was shocked by my question and said: “Oh I will do that but you also have to promise me something. You have to keep time and come everyday from 4pm to 5 pm and I will teach you piano.” So she used to buy me candy, cookies, there was a Coca Cola and other some soft drinks. I sat beside her and started playing. That’s how I started playing the piano and went on to learn trumpet, violin, and drums. But the trumpet, my father didn’t like it. He said it will probably hurt your lungs. But I used to get up at 6 o’clock and go to school at 7 to raise the flag, so the entire neighborhood will hear my trumpet. Then in the afternoon I will blow my trumpet again and put down the flag and return it to the director’s office and go home. I used to do that on a regular basis.
You are also a song-writer. What is the writing process like for you?
The writing process for me is based on happenings, what happens in your life. All these songs didn’t come out of the blue, each one of the songs got their own history and their own rhythm. Even right now too, writing is based on situations and conditions. It is the state of mind I am in. Most of the songs that I wrote are really a reflection of the condition that I was in at the time. Like Gara sir new betish, for example, is about our house in Kebena where I grew up. When I wrote it the title was kebena new betish, that was the idea. And the house where I was born in and grew up in Ethiopia was just right under the hill (gara) and Kebena river is right under the bridge very close to the water. So I was in a state of mind where I was unemployed at the time because of a disagreement I had with the owner of the clubs. So I used to stay home, sit at home on the balcony and drink Saris Vino. My mother used to say, “Teshu what are you doing? “and I would say “just thinking” my mother would respond “don’t worry everything will be alright.” That’s when I sat down and started writing about our home, school and the girls at school and everybody that I know around me. So I wrote kebena new betish and after I wrote that song I went to the band and said lets hook this up. The band loved it. Then I started working at a club again, when we started playing the song and everybody at the club loved it. I mean the whole setting was different, the orchestration was different, the beat was different and the singing style was different. And it just became tremendously popular, even today. A legendary song. I don’t think they can replace that song.
It’s been re-recorded so many times by different artists. How do you feel about that?
I love it. I love the young generation. You know, that is the reason we recorded it so the next generation can pick it up and change the style and play it in different modes. I really appreciate them. Other radios talk shows have asking me about it and I said it is good. I wish all Ethiopians were like that. We should renew the style and do it again. The song is very open and you can add anything you want to it. One just needs to invest a little time on it.
Above:Members of the former Ekos Band: from the left Alula
Yohannes, Tesfaye Mekonnen, Tamrat Ferenji, Amha Eshete,
Teshome Mitiku, Feqade Amdemesqel & Tewodros Mitiku.- CP
Tadias Magazine
Events News
Published: Saturday, July 17, 2010
New York (Tadias) – Either/Orchestra, the American jazz band that popularized Ethiopian classics in the United States through collaboration with legends such as Mulatu Astatke, Mahmoud Ahmed, Alemayehu Eshete and saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya, has an upcoming show at the prestigious Chicago Jazz Festival on September 4th featuring Teshome Mitiku.
In the late 60′s, Teshome, along with his brother and alto saxophonist Theodros “Teddy” Mitiku, trumpeter Tamrat Ferendji, bassist Fekade Amde-Meskel, drummer Tesfaye Mekonnen, guitarist Alula Yohannes and singer Seifu Yohannes, joined to form the influential Soul Ekos Band – the first independent band to be recorded in Ethiopia. According to the artist’s website: “The band released numerous songs, including four hits written by Teshome: Gara Ser New Betesh, Yezemed Yebada, Mot Adeladlogn and Hasabe.”
Yezemed Yebada was later included on the first of the Ethiopiques CD series where it was discovered by the Either/Orchestra band leader Russ Gershon, who re-arranged it as an instrumental for his band. The song has since been re-recorded and released two more times including for the double CD Ethiopiques 20: Live in Addis (2005).
The Either/Orchestra band recently held a prelude gig at Liliy Pad in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at an event dubbed “A secret concert with Teshome Mitiku, a great Ethiopian voice.” As the leader tells it, this was a show that has been a long time coming. “In 1969, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a young singer named Teshome Mitiku wrote a song called Yezemed Yebada and recorded it under the aegis of the legendary Amha Records,” Gershon said in an email explaining the connection between Either/Orchestra and the Ethiopian musician. “Three years later Teshome left Ethiopia for Sweden, where he developed a music career, fathered a little girl who became the Swedish pop star Emilia, and eventually moved to the U.S.”
Teshome Mitiku will perform Yezemed – and several other songs – with the Either/Orchestra at the 32nd Annual Chicago Jazz Festival. Gershon tells Tadias Magazine that Getatchew Mekurya will also make an appearance at the longest running of the city’s lake-front musical events.
If You Go: The 2010 Chicago Jazz Festival will take place from September 2nd to the 5th in Grant Park. Learn more.
Above:Ethiopia’s double Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba –
pictured here in 2006 photo – sets new 15km world record.
World Track: Track and Field Resource
Publish on Nov 15th, 2009
NIJMEGEN, Netherlands — Ethiopia’s double Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba improved the 15km world record on Sunday on her way to victory at the 26th edition of the Zevenheuvelenloop 15Km in Nijmegen. The 5,000m and 10,000m Olympic champion clocked 46min 28sec to better the previous mark of 46:55 which was set by Japan’s Kayoko Fukushi in Marugame on February 5, 2006. Read more.
VIDEO: Race + interview Tirunesh Dibaba in Nijmegen
Above:Double Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba, pictured
here at the 3rd Annual Reebok Grand Prix in New York two
years ago, will not participate in the 5000m competition at
the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin due to
injury. She had already pulled out of the 10000m race last
weekend (Photo: Tadias Magazine).
AFP
By Luke Phillips
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
BERLIN — Ethiopian world medal hopes were dealt a further blow Wednesday when Olympic champion and world recorder holder Tirunesh Dibaba pulled out of the women’s 5000m here. Read more.
Related from Tadias Archives: Tirunesh Dibaba Takes Second at 2009 Reebok Grand
Prix in New York
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: Sunday, May 31, 2009
New York (Tadias) – Ethiopian double Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba, who headlined one of the many high powered competitions at the Reebok Grand Prix in New York City on 30 May, finished second in the Women 5000 meter run. Linet Masai of Kenya was first.
Dibaba was challenged by, among others, Genzebe Dibaba, her younger sister who came in third, and Kim Smith from New Zealand, the national record holder at 5000 and 10,000m.
The Reebok Grand Prix is the fourth stop of USA Track & Field’s Visa Championship Series and it was held at Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island.
Here are the top five results for Women 5000 meter run
1. Linet Masai (Kenya) at 14:35.39A
2 Tirunesh Dibaba (Ethiopia ) at 14:40.93A
3 Genzebe Dibaba (Ethiopia ) at 15:00.79
4 Kim Smith (New Zealand ) at 15:26.00
5 Jen Rhines (United States) at 15:32.39
Press Conference Tirunesh Dibaba and Kim Smith – 2009 Reebok Grand Prix
2009 Reebok Grand Prix Preview
Tadias photos from the 2007 Reebok Grand Prix in New York
A Canadian of Ethiopian descent, Weyni Mengesha is an accomplished director, actor, composer and the founding member of "Sound the Horn", the group that organizes the annual Selam Youth Festival. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Aida Fikre
Thursday, July 16, 2009
New York (TADIAS) – The following is an interview with the critically acclaimed Theatre Director Weyni Mengesha, one of the founding artists of Sound the Horn – the organization behind the annual Selam Youth Festival in Toronto, Canada.
The event, which marks its 5th anniversary this year, was initially developed to empower Ethiopian and Eritrean youth in Canada through education in the arts to raise awareness about the growing number of HIV cases in both communities. Here is an interview with Weyni Mengesha:
TADIAS: How did the concept for Sound the Horn and the Selam Youth Festival come about?
Weyni Mengesha: In 2004 I was a member of People to People Canada’s youth committee along with Jerry Luleseged, Maraki Fikre, Eden Hagos and Shae Zeru. We were asked to create a panel to address the rising rate of HIV within the young members of our community. We felt that it was an important issue but that a panel would not be engaging for youth, and that we needed to do more than deliver statistics. We developed a youth arts festival because we thought the rising rate could also be a symptom of a larger problem. We started thinking of our own confusion around our identity as Ethiopian-Canadians, culture gaps with our Canadian peers, misunderstandings with our parent’s generation and the culture of silence around sexuality. Being misunderstood and lost without open communication within your household could leave young people vulnerable to risky behavior and poor choices around healthy relationships and sexuality. Sound the Horn was developed after the great success of the first festival when we decided to develop the idea further and name ourselves. We have been working together since, developing the festival and training the next generation of artists and community leaders. Sound the Horn leadership program trains ten members a year in different artistic disciplines, health education and leadership skills.
TADIAS: With all the major obstacles that plague African and other third world countries, what was the driving factor in choosing the fight against HIV/AIDS as a main cause for Sound the Horn and the Selam Youth Festival?
Weyni: The original idea was developed with People to People Canada whose focus is HIV education and support, locally and back home. It is a reality we need to be educated about, but it is also an entry point for many discussions around what is causing this to be such a big problem among people 15-26. We thought the best way to find this out is to promote communication between this age group and our community. The festival provides a platform for them to express themselves. There is content around HIV education but there are also many other issues raised through the artists who are free to perform what they want. Ultimately it is a festival built to empower and connect our community and make it healthier.
TADIAS: What can people look forward to in this year’s installment of SYF?
Weyni: We are excited to be bringing Wayna to the festival this year. This will be her first performance in Canada and we are always happy to connect our community to artists from different cities who are gaining success in their respective fields. I think our audiences will be inspired by her story of dedication, hard work and passion that lead her to her dreams. We are also excited to have Aida Ashenafi’s film Guzo which is also a Canadian premiere. I think it will offer many of the young people who have not been back home a better perspective of it. I am also very proud of our own film built by the Sound the Horn leaders that is premiering before Guzo. It is a ten minute short called “The Gap”. It is about mothers and daughters and the generation gap. I think there are lots of important issues raised with heart and humor.
TADIAS: Where do you see STH & SYF in the next 5 years?
Weyni: We have moved from a one day to a three day festival within the five years and I look forward to being able to develop it further, especially in the film section. We would love to present up to four films a year. We would also like to connect with different cities and maybe make a ‘best of’ show and take it on the road.
TADIAS: What inspires you to get involved in the community?
Weyni: I was frustrated growing up in Vancouver as one of the three people of color in my school when the only reference others had for me was from the “we are the world” music video. I remember being excited about the Ethiopian actress on general hospital. I was so hungry to see a reflection of myself in society. This is how I got into the arts, and I credit it with keeping me on the right path. If you don’t find a true reflection you can be vulnerable to investing in whatever images you find. Some of the images I found in the media around what it meant to be black were not productive. I started to create my own expressions, which is a skill I want to offer to the next generation. Sound the horn leaders create work through film, theatre, poetry that is true to who they are and their cultural realities. They become confident and skilled in speaking out and expressing their ideas with their peers and society. I feel the arts can have a huge impact on a community.
TADIAS: You are a well known and critically acclaimed Theatre Director in Canada. What are some of your exciting career highlights?
Weyni: I feel very blessed with my career thus far, I have been able to play shows across Canada, in New York and London. I love traveling because you learn so much about a society by the different ways they receive your art, I find it fascinating and very rewarding.
TADIAS: What is your advice to Diaspora Ethiopian/Eritrean up and coming artists, directors, musicians, etc.?
Weyni: I am afraid it is not going to be anything new but I do feel it is true, stick to your dreams. The more you believe in your dreams and couple them with hard work, the more you will see things fall in into place. Make time for yourself to check in , keep asking yourself what you really want to create. As an artist one of my key tools are my instincts, time alone with your thoughts can sharpen your instincts and keep them unaltered from everything around you which could water down your unique quality.
TADIAS: What should we be looking forward to from you, artistically? Any future projects in the works?
Weyni: My next main stage production is called Yellowman by Dael Orlander-Smith. I am directing it for the 30th anniversary season of Nighwood Theatre Company. It is a piece about shadism, the discrimination between us as black people for our dark or light skin.
TADIAS: Any plans to produce and direct in the US? Ethiopia?
Weyni: I have directed a couple pieces in New York, I love traveling and collaborating with new artists. I look forward to those opportunities arising. All you artists out there who want to collaborate or be involved in our festival please contact me at weyni@soundthehorn.com!
— If you go:
5th Annual Selam Youth Festival
From July 17th – 19th, 2009
104 Cedarvale Avenue
Toronto, ON, M4C 4J8
Phone: 416 690 8005
Tadias Magazine
Photos by Jeffrey Phipps
(Tadias contributing photographer)
Updated: Saturday, June 27, 2009
New York (Tadias) – Soon after the news broke that Michael Jackson, the 50-year old “King of Pop” had died, fans gathered near Harlem’s Apollo, where he was fondly remembered for his legendary performance at the world famous theater.
“The entire Apollo family is saddened to learn of Michael Jackson’s untimely passing,” said Jonelle Procope, president and CEO of the Apollo Theater Foundation Inc. “Michael first performed at the Apollo in 1969 with his brothers when he was only 9 years old, winning Amateur Night and catapulting their career as the Jackson 5. We will always remember Michael in our hearts as a true Apollo legend, known for his professionalism and grace. Our sympathy goes out to his entire family. He will be deeply missed.”
The crowed celebrated with tears and the moonwalk dance popularized by Michael Jackson. People wore t-shirts depicting the pop icon, which are ubiquitous among Harlem’s colorful vendor stands.
Tadias contributing photographer Jeffrey Phipps took the following
photos (SLIDESHOW).
New York (Tadias) – Ethiopian double Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba, who headlined one of the many high powered competitions at the Reebok Grand Prix in New York City on 30 May, finished second in the Women 5000 meter run. Linet Masai of Kenya was first.
Dibaba was challenged by, among others, Genzebe Dibaba, her younger sister who came in third, and Kim Smith from New Zealand, the national record holder at 5000 and 10,000m.
The Reebok Grand Prix is the fourth stop of USA Track & Field’s Visa Championship Series and it was held at Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island.
Here are the top five results for Women 5000 meter run
1. Linet Masai (Kenya) at 14:35.39A
2 Tirunesh Dibaba (Ethiopia ) at 14:40.93A
3 Genzebe Dibaba (Ethiopia ) at 15:00.79
4 Kim Smith (New Zealand ) at 15:26.00
5 Jen Rhines (United States) at 15:32.39
Press Conference Tirunesh Dibaba and Kim Smith – 2009 Reebok Grand Prix
2009 Reebok Grand Prix Preview
Tadias photos from the 2007 Reebok Grand Prix in New York
Tirunesh Dibaba set for the 2009 Reebok Grand Prix in New York
Above:Double Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba, pictured
here at the 3rd Annual Reebok Grand Prix two years ago, will
compete at this year’s event in New York. The Reebok Grand
Prix is the fourth stop of USA Track & Field’s Visa Championship
Series and will begin at 3:00pm on May 30th at Icahn Stadium
on Randall’s Island. (Photo: Tadias Magazine).
Tadias photos from the 2007 Reebok Grand Prix in New York
Dibaba, Powell, Campbell-Brown set for New York
(Athletics Weekly)
May 27th 2009 Dibaba, Powell, Campbell-Brown set for New York
DOUBLE Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba from Ethiopia will make her season’s debut over 5000m at the Reebok Grand Prix, May 30, after injury forced her to miss the World Cross Country Championships. The two-time world 10000m champion and world 5000m record-holder’s shape is not known but the US all-comers’ record of 14:24.53, held by archrival Meseret Defar, could be under threat. Read more
The Obama Presidency & Ethiopia: Time for Fresh Thought
New York (TADIAS) – Throughout 2008 I published articles on links between Ethiopia’s needs and the promises of an Obama presidency. Now that President Obama is in office, what might we project? What, that is, might it mean to reconsider U.S. relations with Ethiopia in ways that align them with the orientations of an Obama presidency?
Eyeing policies the Obama administration has already implemented and earlier statements suggests at least half a dozen aims: 1) employ state-of-the art technologies to advance human welfare; 2) develop energy sources to replace fossil fuels, and in other ways conserve natural environments; 3) link upgraded education and health services with a strengthened economy; 4) avoid sharp polarities of pronouncement and of conduct; 5) curtail terrorist tactics, but in smart ways; and 6) restore moral direction for a market economy and public service from the citizenry. In what follows I explore implications of those principles and priorities for U.S. relations with Ethiopia.
Leapfrogging over industrial society technologies
America’s vast aid program to Ethiopia encompasses commitments of a billion dollars in FY 2008. This assistance goes to about a dozen areas: food aid linked to rural works ($301.6 million); agricultural
development ($4.6m); maternal-child and reproductive health ($31.6m); malaria control ($20m); water and sanitation ($2.3); basic education ($15m); democratic capacity-building in legislative, judicial, and civil society branches ($2.7m); security sector reform ($1.5m); trade and enterprise expansion ($6.3m); ecotourism and habitat protection ($1.5m); programs to combat HIV/AIDS ($349m); and humanitarian emergency assistance, including early warning systems ($291.5m).
Management of this program constitutes a daunting challenge that has been met by a devoted crew of American aid professionals. They have accomplished an enormous amount in many areas, work that rarely gets the kind of recognition in Ethiopia or in the United States it deserves. Even so, much of their mission remains defined in terms of conventional visions and methods.
It is a truism in development thinking that Latecomers have special advantages over Earlybirds, in that they have an opportunity to bypass errors and traumas of the countries that modernized first and to exploit ideas and inventions not available when the latter transformed. One need not be Trotsky to appreciate the insights contained in his Law of Uneven and Combined Development. Hitherto this dynamic has meant applying what advanced technologies are already in place for having worked well in American and other modernized systems.
Suppose that aid work were animated by a vision of reaching out for technologies that are just beyond prevailing practices. Suppose that a hard look at the unintended consequences and negative byproducts of current approaches were combined with imaginative forays into new possibilities. Suppose, for example, that Ethiopia acquired an Information Technology Park that started right off with 21st-century hardware and software, rather than hand-me-downs from outmoded systems. Suppose that medical records in Ethiopia were rationalized in ways that U.S. hospitals have yet to achieve. Suppose that educational reforms were based on teaching methods created from the emerging neuroscience of learning. Why not try?
Promoting energy independence, resource management, and environmental restoration
President Obama mentioned energy independence as the highest priority of his administration. In Ethiopia, leapfrogging over costly, wasteful, and environmentally harmful practices of the industrial age can be realized right now through green technologies. The U.S. is at the edge of efforts to rethink its ways of procuring energy, efforts necessitated by a combination of security, environmental, and economic exigencies. Available new technologies, with other innovations in tow, would create stunning socioeconomic results in Ethiopia.
By taking advantage of recent discoveries and inventions, USAID could help Ethiopia lead the movement towards the emerging clean tech, carbon-free age. Such initiatives might include Low-cost Organic Roads, 30-40% cheaper than asphalt with up to 85% less maintenance; more efficient Municipal Waste Management, through digesters, gasifiers, and plasma systems–top sources for biofuel and bioenergy; low-cost, quickly implemented micro-wind and solar parabolic systems–ideal for distributed energy production; improved hydroelectric turbine technology for dams, rivers, and geothermal systems; mini-gasification for animal and agricultural waste; and Power Playgrounds, which use playtime energy to create power and to pump purified water for villages.
The move to green technologies, already pursued actively by the Ethiopian government, preserves the environment as well as boosts the economy. It helps save trees from the survival-driven practice of converting them to charcoal and can energize a reforestation process. It could fortify a growing environmental awareness in Ethiopia, which hopes to avoid mistakes like environmentally destructive dams like those in Egypt and China–but has already suffered the destruction of beautiful Lake Koka. What is more, low-cost organic roads could attract new ecotourism and generate additional revenues.
Linking health, education, and economy
The Obama administration has already taken action in two areas prominent in the campaign statements: health and education. It clothes these initiatives not only in a rhetoric of social justice but also in a discourse about equipping new generations of Americans to be competitive in the global economy.
In the Ethiopian setting, other issues get triggered when improvements in health and education are supported by USAID programs. Improving the quantity and quality of education for girls may be a core item in this complex. It is not just that educating females will add a large number of qualified persons to the work force. By keeping girls in school, it spares them the degradation and health impairment of early marriage. It keeps them from becoming part of the growing army of prostitutes who contribute heavily to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It leads to smaller families, a crucial response to Ethiopia’s dilemma of increasing population at the expense of realistic capacities to feed them.
The Obama emphasis also leads to the idea of restoring the effective program of deploying Peace Corps Volunteers as secondary school and college teachers. During the Kennedy years, American teachers imparted quality instruction in mathematics, physics, biology, geography, and English. On the last desideratum I cite words of one accomplished beneficiary: “Ethiopians need to use English language from an early age as I did growing up in a poor rural school in Arsi. This will make Ethiopia globally competitive. This will also produce good students for the rapidly growing universities and possibly reverse the damage of requiring them to learn local mother tongues only and so denying them the opportunity to learn in Amharic and thus participate effectively in the national economy and politics. This view is based on my conversations with my ancestors who speak both Amharic and Oromiffa with equal fluency and are teaching their children Amharic and Oromiffa, and encouraging them to learn English at an early age as I did growing up.”
Open communication without confrontational gestures
Building on shifts in security thinking of the last year or so, the Obama administration rejects attempts to impose the American political-economic system on other countries in a domineering way. In keeping with the President’s own predilection for dialogue in place of combat, a stance followed by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, the U.S. Government has sought more to listen to what leaders and citizens of other countries are saying and what their own deepest needs and aspirations are, not with the idea of accepting all they say but in order to take their statements seriously into account. We are ready to extend a hand, his inaugural affirmed, if the oligarchs of the world unclench their fists.
This position requires an approach to dealing with problematic features of the EPRDF regime that is more nuanced than moralizing statements from members of Congress. U.S. officials need to recognize the deep roots of Ethiopia’s aversion to being subordinated to any outside power. A millennial history as “Ethiopia, proud and free” reaches to the core of Ethiopian identity, and why she was for so long looked up to as a symbol of freedom during the long struggles for African independence. Among the most appreciated attributes of Emperor Haile Selassie were his determination and skill in balancing the aid from other countries so that no single nation could secure a quasi-colonial monopoly of influence. Even the worst ruler in Ethiopian history, Mengistu Haile Mariam, showed this pride when, reacting to a Newsweek report of his effort to imitate the Red Terror of Soviet Communism, he snorted: “We don’t need to copy what the Russians did. We can invent a Terror of our own!” How could a self-respecting regime in Ethiopia not take umbrage at critiques from officials of the powerful U.S. Government? – especially when her halting but averred efforts to democratize stand in contrast to other, more repressive African governments who remain unrebuked.
At the same time, an Obama-style rhetoric represents American concerns for human rights and freedom of press as expressions not of a partisan outlook but of what have become globally accepted standards. That could remind us all of how important has been Ethiopia’s wish to be treated in accord with those standards. After all, it was the failure of the League of Nations to live up to those standards that made Ethiopia an icon for the principle of collective security. Indeed, it was the Ethiopian Government’s wish to abide by those standards that induced her to decree an end to the Slave Trade as in 1923, and to follow that with an imperial proclamation outlawing slavery in 1942.
To the extent that Ethiopia’s government can reject allegations that those standards have been violated, America’s should listen to those claims and evaluate the evidence impartially. This in turn requires verification through the work of professional agencies monitoring such issues. The expressed commitment of Ethiopian authorities to their constitution and to the rule of law should be respected and fortified. That is why I have advocated a more energized approach to helping Ethiopians in their determination to build capacities for a more effective judiciary and other institutions of democratic
governance.
This might well include more public information about the significant contributions already made by USAID in the areas of legislation and institution building, justice and human rights, and conflict mitigation. And the fact that the Obama administration has taken steps to require agencies to open up more sources of information might inspire Ethiopians to move toward greater transparency and clarity, lack of which, I have argued, contributed to a half century of missed opportunities in Ethiopia.
Countering terrorism through Smart Power
The bitter lessons from Iraq should have been more widely anticipated before the U.S. launched its hapless adventure there, as then State Senator Obama and many others warned. Those lessons were apparently not held in mind when the U.S. supported Ethiopia’s incursion into Somalia. From Obama’s early warnings and subsequent statements, three points are conspicuous.
Thinking of terrorist criminals as war combatants sets the stage for counterproductive martial actions. Except for identified posts of key terrorist agents, aerial attacks on presumed terrorist lairs tend to backfire. Counterterrorist interventions need to follow, not drive, diplomatic and developmental approaches. Insofar as the Ethiopian Government pursues a scorched-earth policy in the Ogaden region and wanton attacks on presumed OLF- and OPDM-sympathizers, it may be drawing encouragement from bad examples that the U.S. wrongly provided.
Relatedly, unilateralism needs to yield to multilateral diplomacy. To collaborate effectively with other countries having interests in the region enhances, not weakens, U.S. objectives. Acting Assistant Secretary for Africa Phillip Carter already manifested this in statements made on return from an international gathering on the Somali crisis in Brussels. Developing the point at House Subcommittee hearings on March 12, former Ambassador David Shinn observed how essential it is to work with the countries in the region and with traditional donor countries, including members of the European Union, Norway, Canada, Australia, and Japan; with China and Russia; with India, Turkey, and Brazil; and with the United Nations and a number of international agencies. He further agreed with Secretary Carter’s observation that primary responsibility for solving political and economic problems in Northeast Africa lies with Africans themselves.
Finally, a fresh articulation of America’s purposes abroad may counter the widespread belief that U.S. programs in Ethiopia are driven solely from her value as an ally in the global “war” on terrorism. Facts like the quantity of pre-Qaeda Aid delivered and the current array of humane programs like maternal and child health care, legal training for judges, and human rights education among police and the courts have little traction once such perceptions gain currency. It is not the least of the reforms of President Barack Obama and his colleagues to have put terrorist tactics in their place as a social ill that must be addressed, to relate to moderate citizens in all regions who yearn for peace and civility, and to have proclaimed an era of optimism and hope to replace one of fear and dread. I hope that the ugly bunkers now girding the U.S. fortress embassy in Addis Ababa will be demolished in the spirit of this new perspective, and that Ethiopia’s parliament might similarly be moved by a spirit of openness to expand the space for freedom of press and for the work of advocacy groups and charitable organizations.
Restoring moral direction for a market economy and public service from a citizenry
The Obama approach to political economy exhibits a return to ideas of the classic theorist of commercial society, Adam Smith, who lauded social virtues and advocated the use of government to regulate markets and finance public works. Such views dominated American ideology from the late 19th century through the New Deal, which valued the creation of governmental resources to regulate commerce and provide public initiatives to promote social welfare. David Ciepley’s Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism shows that the rise of totalitarianisms in Eurasia in the 1930s began to turn American opinion leaders against such interventions. Even so, strong government remained alive and well during the presidencies of Eisenhower through Carter. And then, Paul Krugman goes on to relate (in The Conscience of a Liberal), radical rejection of government as a bulwark of social welfare began under President Reagan and continued non-stop into the present.
The casualties of the Cold War, especially in its last two decades, included the eclipse of the middle road. This resulted in a polarization of ideologies, such that the collapse of Soviet communism was hailed widely as a vindication of unregulated free-market capitalism. Applying this view to the developing countries of Africa makes no sense. As many social scientists have explained for a long time–including the late Talcott Parsons already in 1960–in the developing countries, government needs to play a proactive role. At the same time, one of its functions must be to provide a nurturing environment for a vast field of local initiatives–supporting small loans, local roads, local radio communications, and the like.
Beyond valorizing a significant role for governments, the Obama perspective returns us to community service and civic virtues. The well-governed modern society includes a cultivation of the virtues of a modern work ethic–punctuality, integrity, self-discipline, professionalism–and of voluntary efforts to assist others in need and contribute to communal projects. The Obama and Biden families publicized these civic virtues just before inauguration by honoring the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Day of Service–as envisioned in its legislation fathered by then Senator Harris Wofford (who, incidentally, was the first director of the Peace Corps in Ethiopia under President Kennedy).
Traditions of the diverse peoples of Ethiopia include customs of communal service and civic engagement, as noted in my talk “The Promise of Ethiopia.” In the course of modernization and nation-building, these customs have begun to erode and have not been replaced by modern moral visions. The Obama vision may inspire Ethiopian leaders–in religious, in schools, in government, and in civic organizations–to temper the mindless drives toward material consumption and narrow self-interest imitated from modernized societies with new forms of conscience and civic virtue. If something on that order happens, the name Ethiopia may come to symbolize once again–as it did for ancient Greeks, the writers of the Old and New Testaments, and of the Islamic Sira– a land of people who manifest exceptional justice, righteousness, and virtue.
About the Author: Donald N. Levine is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture (1965), Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society (1974), Visions of the Sociological Tradition (1995) and Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Learning(2007). Professor Levine’s research and teaching interests focus on classical social theory, modernization theory, Ethiopian studies, conflict theory and aikido, and philosophies of liberal education.
Minyeshu: An eclectic but faithfully Ethiopian artist
Afrik.com
By Anissa Herrou, translated by Will Garthey Mould
Saturday 17 January 2009
Minyeshu: “Proud to be Ethiopian”
Minyeshu’s second album, Dire Dawa, is an introduction into a colourful world. Rich with folkloric influences and modern tones, the album’s repertoire ensnares the listener with Minyeshu’s suave and warm voice. A fully accomplished artist in her own right, she captivates her audience with bewitching dance steps. In an interview with Afrik.com the young artist talks about her music, her culture and her beloved country, Ethiopia.
Minyeshu’s musical adventure started in Adis Ababa some years back. After successfully graduating from a training course at the National Theatre as a full fledged artist, she packed bag and baggage and hit European capitals with an incalculable dose of motivation.
Her first album titled Meba was released in 2002 and is a blend of traditional Ethiopian music with modern Western arrangements. Six years later, October 2008, she is back with an invitation to discover yet another dazzling album, Dire Dawa. Just like her village of birth, which also goes by the name Dire Dawa – between the Ethiopian capital, Adis Ababa, and Djibouti – the artist’s second opus is vivacious, colourful, energetic and refreshing.
Minyeshu talks about her influences, her wishes as well as her hopes. Read the interview at Afrik.com.
BOSTON, Massachusetts (AFP) — Ethiopian Tirunesh Dibaba, who claimed double Olympic gold at 5,000 and 10,000 meters at Beijing, will run at the Boston Indoor Games on February 7, organizers announced Thursday. Read more.
Aida Muluneh: Reshaping our global image through photography
New York (Tadias) – Desta, the Amharic word for happiness, is the name of a popular candy brand in Ethiopia. It’s also the acronym of choice for Photographer Aida Muluneh’s ambitious new project to reform the African continent’s long history with negative imagery.
Through photography, Muluneh has found a medium of transformation. Incorporating natural light from a crisp, dawn Ethiopian morning, or that of a sentimental sunny afternoon, Muluneh projects inspiration captured in moments of daily life – portraits of cab riders, priests, and street children in bustling Ethiopian cities and towns.
Her new organization, appropriately named DESTA for Africa, is a local NGO based in Addis Ababa. Muluneh (pictured above) hopes to encourage a new generation of African Photographers who are able to compete in the global media industry while reshaping the image of Africa reflecting their personal experiences.
“I have spent most of my artistic career promoting alternative images of Africa. DESTA For Africa was born out of my belief that we have to be accountable for how the world perceives us. Even though Africa is ever growing and rapidly changing, the images that we see in the mass media are not reflective of that, ” Muluneh says in a recent interview with Tadias Magazine.
“I feel that African artists have a responsibility to manage how the continent’s image is portrayed, and we can do that by actually providing the necessary education and resources to those who are interested in documenting their own realities.”
School is over for the day. These boys enjoy their time-off playing in their
neighborhood streets in Addis. (Photo by Aida Muluneh. Image featured on BBC)
BBC: A dignified Ethiopia – Aida Muluneh living in New York sent these images
depicting life in Ethiopia. She hopes these photos will show her country in a
different perspective.
Timkat (Epiphany) is the most colourful event in Ethiopia when churches parade
their Tabots (Replica of the. Ark of the Covenant) to a nearby body of water. Here
priests and deacons begin the religious procession from their individual churches and
walk, carrying flags, to Meskel Square where they all assemble.
(Photo by Aida Muluneh. This image was also featured on BBC).
The organization’s first batch of trainees is from Addis Ababa University, which lacks a permanent department of photography. ” We offer our workshop to undergraduates and graduates of the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts and Design, with the aim to provide them with viable and self-sustainable opportunities in the photography industry,” Muluneh explains.
Yet the giving is reciprocal. Muluneh is learning from her students as they receive training. “My students are an example of what can happen when countries invest in cultural production, and support efforts to reshape Africa’s image. And they also give me strength and inspiration to continue on this mission,” she says.
Muluneh’s biggest stumbling block is lack of basic teaching resources. “You won’t believe how much of a difference it makes to have one photography book or art book,” she says. “I have been teaching with three cameras shared among 13 students, yet the students have been with me since February 2008 with the same enthusiasm and passion as on their first day.”
And what can the Diaspora do to help?
“We are continuously looking for photography books, cameras, film…the list goes on, but the first thing I would like to stress to the Ethiopian American community is the importance of cultural preservation, and managing cultural production, she says. “Culture determines not only how we experience daily life, but how we transmit vital information about our history, health, and general economic and political development.”
For those who are interested, Muluneh will be hosting a fundraiser and introduction of DFA at Almaz Restaurant tonight in Washington D.C. (The event took place on Thursday, December 18th, 2008). “We will be showcasing the works of the students and also selling prints to help continue our work in Ethiopia, and beyond,” she says. “For those who are not able to attend, it is possible to make donations through our website at www.destaforafrica.org.”
Here are few recent images from Muluneh’s students in Ethiopia.
Anyone interested in a partnership, or has information about corporate
sponsorships, should get in touch with DESTA Production
Manager, Selam Mulugeta (smulugeta@destaforafrica.org).
Street & Hospital Named After Tirunesh Dibaba & Kenenisa Bekele
Ethiopia names a hospital, street after Beijing double
gold medal winners
Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) – Ethiopia on Wednesday named a hospital and a street after Tirunesh Dibaba and Kenenisa Bekele respectively who brought two gold medals each in the 5,000m and 10,000m games in the Beijing Olympics.
Kenenisa Street is located around the same street named after Haile Gebresilassie, another hero in athletics for over 15 years.
The Hospital named after Dibaba is located around the outskirt of Addis Ababa in Kality.
The Tirunesh-Beijing Hospital is under construction under a Chinese and Ethiopian government joint investment.
The Addis Ababa city administration also awarded various prizes to the athletes who won medals for Ethiopia. Dibaba and Bekele received $10,000 each.
Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) – Ethiopia has awarded two Beijing Olympics double gold winners —Tirunesh Dibaba and Kenenisa Bekele — new Toyota Lancer vehicles worth US$40,000 for their sterling performances in at the recent China games which ended on 24 August.
Coach Woldemeskel Kostre of 5,000m and 10,000m also received a Toyota Lancer automobile award from Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who handed the car keys to the two athletes at a ceremony held Wednesday night in the capital Addis Ababa.
“The government is proud to give these gifts to the two athletes who have made history. They are unique and heroes,” Meles said.
The award ceremony was held on the eve of Ethiopia’s New Year.
The government has also authorised free VIP access at Ethiopia’s international airport to 18 athletes who won medals in Beijing, in addition to awarding US$10,000 for Sileshi Sihine who won a silver medal in the 10,000m.
Bronze winner Meseret Defar in the 5,000m and Tsegaye Kebede in the marathon received US$5,000 each.
Four journalists who covered the Beijing Olympics for the state owned media were awarded US$1,000 each, while two doctors and six accompanying coaches were awarded US$1,500 each. More at African Press Agency.
Tirunesh Dibaba: The First Woman to Sweep the 5000 and 10000 Olympic Titles
Ethiopia’s Tirunesh Dibaba won her second gold medal at the Beijing Olympics as she took the Women’s 5,000 Meters gold medal at the Beijing Olympic Games here on Friday.
Turkey’s Elvan Abeylegesse took the silver in 15:42.74 and another Ethiopian Meseret Defar, the defending champion, won the bronze in 15:44.12.
(BEIJING, August 15) — Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia has won gold and set a new Olympic record in the Women’s 10000m at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 15.
Dibaba’s time of 29:54.66 was enough to break the old record of 30:17.49 set by fellow Ethiopian Derartu Tulu and hold off silver medalist Elvan Abeylegess of Turkey (also born in Ethiopia) who ran a time of 29:56.34. Bronze went to Shalane Flanagan of the United States in a time of 30:22:22.
The world record of 29:31.78 seconds in this event is held by China’s Wang Junxia China, set in 1993. Read More.
The Golden Girl Tirunesh Dibaba Kenene celebrates after crossing the line.
(Photo credit: Mark Dadswell/Getty Images)
Elvan Abeylegesse of Turkey (born in Ethiopia) and Tirunesh Dibaba Kenene.
(Photo credit: Mark Dadswell/Getty Images)
Tirunesh Dibaba Kenene celebrates. (Photo credit: Mark Dadswell/Getty Images)
BEIJING (Reuters) – World 10,000-metre champion Tirunesh Dibaba says she expects to run both the 10,000 and 5,000m events in Beijing, hoping to become the first woman to scoop the Olympic distance double.
In 2005 Dibaba became the first woman to win both races at a world championships when she led an Ethiopian podium sweep in both events in Helsinki.
She retained the 10,000 title in Osaka last year after suffering from abdominal pain mid-race but skipped the 5,000 days later.
“My expectation is that I will run both,” she told Reuters after arriving in Beijing. “It’s being said that it’s a little hot here, so the final decision will be made after the 10,000.” Read more at Guardian.
Hot Shots from Habesha Relaxation Session – Harlem, New York
Photos by Sirak Getachew (D.J. Sirak) Event Name: Habesha Relaxation Session City: Harlem, New York Venue: The Shrine Address: 2272 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. (B/N 133 & 134) Hosts: D.J. Sirak & D.J. Birane Music: Afro beat, World, Hip Hop, Reggae and New Groove Date: Every other Saturday
New York (TADIAS) — Traditional medicine has been defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “the sum total of all knowledge and practices, whether explicable or not, used in the diagnosis, prevention and elimination of physical, mental or social imbalances and relying exclusively on practical experience and observation handed down from generation to generation, whether verbally or in writing.” This system of health care is also known as folk medicine, ethnomedicine, or indigenous medicine. In some countries, including the US, the terms complementary or alternative medicine are used interchangeably for traditional medicine.
It is generally accepted that traditional Ethiopian medicine is the outcome of long and dynamic interactions among African, Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew traditions. These interactions, combined with the variations in the country’s unique ecology and diverse ethnic groups, make the traditional medical system in Ethiopia very rich and complex. Records show that the existence of such a health care system can be traced back to the period prior to the 16th century. Although the expansion of modern medicine appears to influence some aspects of the traditional system, traditional Ethiopian medicine remains rooted in magico-religious beliefs and empirical knowledge from the natural environment.
An estimated 80% of the Ethiopian population relies on traditional medicine. Socio-cultural appeal, accessibility, affordability, and effectiveness against a number of health problems seem to foster its widespread use. Consistent with the increasing global interest in alternative medicine, the demand for traditional medical therapies in Ethiopia is on the rise. In 1986 over 6,000 practitioners were registered with the Ministry of Health. More recently, the Ethiopian Traditional Healers’ Association, which was established in 1987, reported a membership of 9,000 healers. A few experts estimate the number of traditional medicine practitioners, vendors, and collectors in the country at more than 80,000.
Theo Eshetu, The Return of the Axum Obelisk, 2009, Video, Collection of the artist, courtesy of The Met
Tadias Magazine
Updated: February 23rd, 2024
New York (TADIAS) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) in New York is currently hosting its inaugural exhibition exploring the intersections between African and Byzantine art, with a significant focus on Ethiopia. In our ongoing interview series, we delve deeper into this topic with Dr. Andrea Achi, Curator of this groundbreaking exhibition at the MET.
TADIAS: What significance does Ethiopia hold within the context of this exhibition?
Dr. Andrea Achi: Ethiopia was closely connected to the Romans and Byzantines religiously, politically, and through shared artistic traditions. The Axum Empire became a Christian nation even before the Roman Empire. The Axumites were close political allies to the Byzantines, participating in proxy wars to help secure the Byzantine borders and remained close partners with the Byzantines for centuries.
Installation view of Africa & Byzantium at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Anna Marie Kellen, courtesy of The Met
Photo by Anna Marie Kellen, courtesy of The Met
Photo by Anna Marie Kellen, courtesy of The Met
TADIAS: Could you elaborate on Ethiopia’s rich artistic and cultural heritage and how the exhibition redefines conventional perceptions of Byzantium and Africa, particularly in its portrayal of Ethiopian art and culture?
Dr. Achi: Africa & Byzantium showcases Ethiopia’s rich artistic and cultural legacy extending over nearly two millennia. The Aksumite city of Adulis connected the Mediterranean trade with the Red Sea and the Indian ocean, facilitating transregional exchange. From there, the Axumites exported locally made objects such as worked glass, ivory, and metal, which circulated throughout the Mediterranean basin.
By beginning with Roman North Africa and ending with Ethiopia, Africa & Byzantium situates Ethiopian art and culture directly within the context of Byzantine artistic legacies. Previous exhibitions of Ethiopian art, particularly in the United States, have rightly focused on tracing the history of Ethiopian visual and material culture across the centuries. Africa & Byzantium places Ethiopian art in conversation with the artistic traditions of neighboring regions in East Africa, including Nubia and Egypt, demonstrating not only the liturgical concordances between these area through their shared Orthodox faith, while also encouraging the visitor to draw visual parallels between these artistic traditions. Although Ethiopia was never formally part of the Byzantine Empire, this context is important to further understand Ethiopia’s global connections with the regions that were within the domain of Byzantium, such as Egypt. It also complicates our understandings of the art of Byzantine Egypt and North Africa – rather than seeing the artistic tradition of these regions as a monolith, seeing these various regional artistic legacies in the same space encourages our audience to highlight the differences as well as the similarities between these distinct, yet related, visual expressions.
Photo by Anna Marie Kellen, courtesy of The Met
TADIAS: The discussion among the featured contemporary artists, including Tsedaye Makonnen and Theo Eshetu, reflecting on the exhibition was truly captivating. Given the exhibition’s exploration of the lasting impact stemming from interactions between North Africa, Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, and Byzantium, could you provide further insights into how these artistic exchanges have shaped contemporary artistic practices?
Dr. Andrea AchI: Many of the Christian communities of North Africa, Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, and Byzantium are linked through their shared Orthodox faith, which shaped these region’s artistic traditions. In Africa & Byzantium, we see artists responding to this legacy, such as with Tsedaye Makonnen’s light sculptures, which feature incised forms of Ethiopian crosses on their modular structures. Other artists, such as Azza El Siddique, who is Sudanese-American, are thinking about how these cross-regional connections are shaped through shared ritual practices, such as through her work on Nubian and Egyptian perfume and scent. As a result of their shared geography, many of these regions also experienced colonial occupation, which profoundly affected how medieval art and heritage from the region is viewed and understood. In his work in the exhibition, The Return of the Axum Obelisk, and others, Theo Eshetu is reflective of this legacy: his work directly considers issues of provenance, repatriation, and cultural heritage, which are front of mind for many of the nation states that are in the regions of North Africa, Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia. These regional colonial histories have also in part resulted in the migration of these communities to North America and Europe – many of these artists hold dual nationalities. Tsedaye and the Ethiopian-American artist Tariku Shiferaw are also thinking about this history of immigration, and Shiferaw’s work deals with what it means to exist as an immigrant in the West, and how to fit this explicitly transnational practice within the canon of Western art history.
Installation view of Africa & Byzantium at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Anna Marie Kellen, courtesy of The Met
TADIAS: Lastly, for those unable to attend the exhibition in person, are there alternative avenues for accessing its content?
Dr. Andrea AchI: The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue available for purchase, featuring the research of over forty contributors spanning from the subfields of medieval art history, history, archaeology, and literary criticism. Photographs of the exhibition’s objects are included in the catalogue, accompanied by scholarly texts. A virtual tour of the exhibition, led by the show’s curator, is also available online. Other digital offerings on the museum’s website include the exhibition’s full audio guide, as well as photography of the exhibition objects with accompanying explanatory text. These are arranged in order of their display in the galleries to best simulate the in-person visitor’s experience.
Special thanks to Michelle Al-Ferzly at the MET for her assistance with the Q&A.
Video: Exhibition Tour—Africa & Byzantium | Met Exhibitions
If You Go:
Next week, the MET will present Tsedaye Makonnen for a “site-specific performance that journeys through the history of the Byzantine Era’s African diaspora.” This show coincides with the display of her Astral Sea textiles as part of The Met’s Africa & Byzantium exhibition.
Habeshaview CEO Tigist Kebede (right), stated that the partnership would offer a user-friendly and cost-effective option for accessing live news and entertainment channels. (courtesy photo)
