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Surprise
Still Pending
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by Girmame Yezeraw The newly formed Habesha Club at NYU (indeed, there was one Eritrean) held its first ever event on December 16th 2001. What follows is a brief summary of the night's activities. I should first give props to the tireless NY students who put this excellent event together ... Candace, Sora, Tsedale and Selamawit from NYU and Michael from Columbia. Keep it up (especially the free food). In the following report I have used False Names for the sake of ... but the events and conversations actually happened :) The long-awaited
program, supposed to start at 4:00pm, was delayed due to … people
started trickling in after 5:00. After that a representative of the founders
of the Habesha Club (Tsedale) gave a short introduction to the group's
objectives, which included After that we were at last allowed to partake of the food, they had innovative dishes of sambusha, kitfo on a roll, and prepared gurshas. This important part of the program took a great fraction of time. Then, discussions were informally commenced around tables. The mellow sounds of Offtrack and Burnt Face served as conducive background for initiating issues pertaining to Ethiopia. X and Y were having a very interesting discussion on the responsibility of Ethiopian students for the development of their homeland, while X firmly believed that "things are not going to change by siting idly and talking about it" rather he considered it our duty to our country to sacrifice our privileged positions and work in Ethiopia to make things better. On the other hand, Y was convinced that "opportunities in Ethiopia would not be challenging enough for [his] line of expertise", seeing it as career suicide ... W also reminded us how much we owed to the US, remarking that "America is the least appreciated country in the world" ... and so we moved on ... Now it was Yirga Dubale on the background ... Z remarked on why Ethiopia had not been able to benefit from high agricultural productivity, blaming the extreme lack of fertility in the land; saying that people had done all they could. A, on the other hand, saw places where technology would still be able to play a better part, for "We can definitely do better that the plough in this age". A was quickly rebuked for daring to postulate (though A did not) that hauling "foreign" technology would bring in changes ... and so we moved on ... The background
music was no longer audible, discussions were heated, important points
raised and scrutinized ... one suggestion of B's was to change the name
"Ethiopia" to Kush (with a K)to include all black nations (and
also to bring out better relations with Eritrea). The "conspiracy"
of the Israelis to steal our Ark of the Last but not least, Al amoudi was at the center of the table. While most saw his activities as an ideal example of how change in Ethiopia was to be achieved, a small minority argued adamantly that changes he brought were superficial and that the real answer lay in a much wider movement encompassing all Ethiopian Intellectuals. The other group saw Starbucks as the alternative to bringing development. Well, that was part of it. I am looking for sponsors to publish the full report with pictures and stuff, so, fret not, i'll be more that happy to accept your hard earned money ...Last note, you would think this would be the big event of the Club, but no! This February the Habesha Club will have a group from National Theatre of Ethiopia to perform a play ... I hope this one too will be a freebie ... Till then,
your broke reporter, Girmame Yezeraw |
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