Tribute to Tsegaye Gabre Medhin
A collection of poems by Poet Laureate Belatengeta Tsegaye Gabre-medhin, Ethiopian poet, playwright, essayist and philosopher who passed away on Saturday, February 25, 2006.
Prologue to African Conscience
Dreamer
Guilty?
Who Is On Whose Way
Tears Inevitable
Galileo’s Apologies
Though this .. , though that. . .
Hold My Hand
The City Fifty Years Ago By RICHARD K. P. PANKHURST
Visitors to Addis Ababa at the turn of the century were far from imagining that Menelik’s capital founded a few years earlier was destined within the space of little more than fifty years to become the most populous city between Cairo and Johannesburg. Ethiopia’s dramatic defeat of the Italians at the battle of Adowa in 1896 had not fully dispelled the doubt as to whether an independent African state could survive in the age of the ” scramble for Africa.” Moreover, most European observers believed that the Ethiopian capital was only a temporary headquarters of the monarch and would be abandoned within a few years, as had been the case of earlier Shoan capitals, such as Ankober, Angolala and Entotto.
Read More...Tobbya, by Afawerk Gabre Yesus
Translation by Tadesse TamratEthiopia’s first novel which first appeared in Amharic in 1900.
Much is due to him who is kind to others.
Much is lost to him who does evil unto others.
A kind man never gives; he lends!
At the beginning of the Christian era, when the new religion was still in the process of being preached, the Christians were very few compared with the pagans. The pagans, moreover, counting on their superiority of numbers and greater power persecuted the Christians, invaded their land, plundered and devastated their possessions.
After every battle the pagans would massacre as many as they pleased and reduce to slavery all those who were captured alive. Very few as they were, the Christians were also strongly militant in defending their honor and the frontiers of their land. Victory was not the monopoly of any one side, the Christians and the pagans won the struggle at different times, neither wanting peace and reconciliation, each aiming at exterminating the other. Every year, every month, each side would fight and massacre the other.
Once upon a time the pagans came as usual to plunder the land of the Christians, to castrate, to kill or to enslave them. When the news of this pagan attack reached the ears of the Christian king he at once mobilized his forces, organized them under four Dejazmaches, or generals, and sent them to fight the enemy and defend their faith. The pagan army was, however, ten times as large as that of the Christians.
Read More...Wax and Gold, by Gedamu Abraha
Skovoroda, a radical thinker of eighteenth-century Russia, viewed the wretched state of affairs in his beloved land and penned his cri de coeur: ” Our Father which art in Heaven, wilt Thou send down a Socrates to us soon, one who will teach us to know ourselves, so that knowing ourselves, we may then develop out of ourselves a philosophy which will be our own, native and natural to our land.”
And now in the second half of the twentieth century, Western foundations and universities viewing the wretched state of affairs amongst those described by Frantz Fanon as les damnés de la terre have convinced themselves that the undeveloped countries are in dire need of the kind of teacher Skovoroda had in mind. One can hardly find a single undeveloped country that has not been penetrated by intrepid anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, manpower specialists, or low-income housing experts. This explosion in social science research has brought about another phenomenon in the book-publishing business: a torrential outpouring of books on the modernizing ” problems ” of the peoples of le tiers monde.
Read More...The Franco-Ethiopian Railway and Its History
The idea of constructing a railway to link the Ethiopian capital with the coast appears to have been first conceived by Menelik’s Swiss adviser, Alfred Ilg, who had first arrived in Ethiopia in 1877. Having on that occasion taken no less than seven months to make the 700 kilometre journey from the coast to the then capital of Ankober he was fully aware of the inconvenience of mule transport, the high costs of which greatly hindered trade in low priced commodities, such as coffee, skins and wax, which constituted the bulk of Ethiopia’s exports. Traders at this time often took about six weeks on the journey which was almost inevitably accompanied by considerable stealing as it was very difficult adequately to supervise the muleteers.
Read More...On the Eve of the Battle
The following poem was written in Ge’ez by Aleka Gabre Medhen before the battle and was sung in Addis Ababa while the fighting was in progress and its outcome still in suspense.
Read More...Menelik's Proclamation on Mobilising His Forces for the Battle of Adowa
” God by his goodness in hurling down my enemies
and extending my empire has preserved me until this
day. Until now I have ruled by the grace of God. As
we all must die I shall not be distressed if I am killed.
Nevertheless the Almighty has never yet forsaken me
and I am confident that he will not forsake me in the
future.
The Ethiopian Song
Italian nineteenth century adventures in Africa were long opposed by large sections of the Italian population at home as can be seen by a glance at the files of old Italian newspapers, such as for example, the socialist Avanti or Critica Sociale.
Read More...The Cost to the Victor
The cost to the Ethiopians of defeating the Italian invaders at Adowa was heavy and was paid by thousands of Ethiopian families from all parts of the country. The full extent, of Ethiopia’s loss may be judged from an account of Augustus B. Wylde, sometime British consul for the Red Sea, who reached Massawa six weeks after the battle, having been sent by the Manchester Guardian to investigate the causes of the Italian defeat. In his book Modern Abyssina he relates that during his tour of Northern Ethiopia he was first visited
at Adi Caieh by Ethiopians who gave him terrible accounts of the famine and cholera that had devastated the country as a result of the human carnage. As he approached the site of the battle, he found the familiar countryside tragically transformed.
How the News was received in England
The English “man in the street,” who until then had been profoundly unaware of Italian diplomatic manoeuvres to annex Ethiopia, opened his newspaper sixty years ago to learn that, for the first time since the Carthagian Hannibal marched into the Valley of the Po some two thousand years earlier, an army from
Africa had decisively defeated a large and well equipped European force. It is interesting to examine how these events were presented to the British public by The Times, and how that semi-official newspaper explained what it considered to be the interest of the British Government.
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