The Undreamt: An Ethiopian Transformation by Makonen Getu (Christian Transformation Resource Center, 2004), 200pp.

Reviewed by Assafa Endeshaw

It is unusual when someone who had grown up with you in a remote part of the world takes up a pen to recount his journey through life that happens to be a mirror image of yours. As you would have known them all your life, their description of places, events, customs and issues in the decades past would be similar to yours; their revelation of their thoughts at those times would ring quite familiar. Indeed, the narrative is bound to convey the common features of experiences that a generation of people would have gone through. In a sense, then, Makonen Getu’s story could be read as a general record of the first educated group of people to come out of Borana, Wollo, Ethiopia.

Makonen’s description of his childhood, his village, his community and their customs and practices is carefully crafted, selective but adequate. His youth is replete with dreams that a fledgling educational system inculcated in all of us: a secure life, service to the nation, transforming Ethiopia into an advanced society. The uncertainty of one’s future during the Imperial times troubled Makonen in his youth just as much as his contemporaries. As a matter of fact, Makonen’s depiction of that period in Ethiopian history, though brief and limited, encapsulates everything one needs to know to justify the 1974 Revolution and subsequent turmoil under the Derg.

Makonen’s initiation into politics and his participation in the Ethiopian student movement abroad occupy an important section of the book. His account of his clandestine engagement in Ethiopia to try to replace the leadership of one of the larger groups, MEISON, which had suffered under the repression of the Derg, its erstwhile ally, echoes the fear, trepidation and horror most of us lived under in those terrible days. His style of narrative is at its best when he lays out, in a gripping and intense manner, his attempt to stay one step ahead of his pursuers, the secret police and the political cadres of the Derg. One would relive the perilous choices of life or death that were placed in front of him every moment that he stayed in Ethiopia, holed in disparate addresses during the day and only to be seen in the dark by a close circle of contacts. The story reverberates with the price paid by a generation of Ethiopians in their struggle to oust the Derg.

Makonen’s escape into Europe and later abandonment of politics to concentrate on his studies and pursue a professional career as a development expert fill the final third of the book. No one would have doubted Makonen’s abilities to achieve his career goals but his blunt renunciation of politics and apparent revival of religious dispositions came as a complete surprise even to someone who had known him for so long.

Overall, the book provides an interesting insight into Ethiopia during the 1960-70s and its generation of youthful idealists (Makonen being one of them) who sought to transform it. As a retrospective view of Makonen’s past, it was destined to be coloured by modern (particularly European) thoughts and value judgments that he had embraced while getting educated abroad and living there. Thus the picture of poverty, misery and unhappiness he paints of village people back in those days appear slightly exaggerated. The relativism inherent to his current assessments is also represented by his views of gender and marriage issues of those times.