(UNESCO) ‘Tsehai Loves Learning,’ an Ethiopian children’s television show sponsored by UNESCO, was honoured with an award at the Prix Jeunesse International 2008 Festival. The 2008 Next Generation Prize was bestowed upon the creators of the show, Whiz Kids Workshop, a local production company that focuses on serving Ethiopia through educational media.
Prix Jeunesse is the premier international festival recognising outstanding children’s television programming. It is held every two years in Munich. “Winning an award at the Prix Jeunesse is considered the highest honour in children’s media,” said Bruktawit Tigabu, the show’s co-founder.
UNESCO has been working with Whiz Kids Workshop since 2005 when they collaborated on developing educational children programmes addressing environmental issues. Currently, with the financial support of UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC), UNESCO and Whiz Kids Workshop are training young people across Ethiopia to create animated content in local languages addressing development challenges.
According to Prix Jeunesse, the Next Generation Prize is awarded to “a production team that is innovative and inspired by a great idea that was produced under difficult circumstances.” The intention of the award is to promote talent that – with financial support, mentoring and consultation – promises to come up with great results in the future. As a result of the award, Whiz Kids Workshop will have an opportunity to work with the prize’s sponsors who will provide assistance with development, technical and creative advice throughout production of their next project.
‘Tsehai Loves Learning’ is an Amharic language educational show which is immensely popular among Ethiopian children. It began broadcasting on Ethiopian Television in September 2006. “For many of Ethiopia’s children, it is the closest thing to early childhood education they have ever received,” Shane Etzenhouser, the show’s other co-founder, said. ‘Tsehai Loves Learning’ aims to promote children’s development – academically, socially, and physically. The prize winning ‘Tsinat’ was one of the most popular episodes. ‘Tsinat’ is unique in that it teaches children how to help their friends cope with the death of a parent. The episode also included messages for adults on how to support orphans and children impacted by HIV and AIDS.
“The jury was hugely impressed by the programme’s ability to talk to children, to be creative as well as communicative, on an extremely limited budget,” said Prix Jeunesse in a statement. “Finally, we all felt that ‘Tsehai Loves Learning’ was inspired by a great idea born out of the needs of its audience – which after all is the basis of all great TV. The jury is delighted to extend this prize to Whiz Kids Workshop and to assist the team as they consider their next project.”
Shane Etzenhouser and programme manager, Redeit Alemu, attended the festival with the support of UNESCO and the Goethe Institute. “We were ecstatic to even be a finalist for these awards,” said Etzenhouser. “We are thrilled to prove that Africa can successfully provide high calibre, research-based, culturally relevant educational material for children with limited resources. It’s a proud moment for all of Ethiopia and for Africa,” said Alemu.
Dire Tune of Ethiopia celebrates her victory in the 1-hour race at the IAAF Golden Spike international athletics contest in Ostrava, Czech Republic, on Thursday. (Dan Krzywon/Associated Press)
(CBC) — Ethiopia’s Dire Tune set a new world record in the one-hour run during the Golden Spike Grand Prix meet in Ostrava, Czech Republic, Thursday.
Tune covered 18.517 kilometres in one hour. The previous record was held by Kenyan-born Tegla Lorupe, who now competes for Holland. Lorupe’s mark for the seldom run event has stood since 1998 when she ran 18.340 km on a track in Borgholzhausen, Germany.
Unlike other track events there is no set distance in the one-hour run. Runners complete as many laps as they can in the one-hour time allotment.
Earlier this year the 22-year-old Tune, who comes from Asalla in the Arsi region, won the 2008 Boston Marathon on April 21 with a time of 2:25:25 and the Houston Marathon in January in a personal best time of 2:24:40.
She is one of six females named to the Ethiopian Olympic marathon pool but at this point the Ethiopian federation has not named the three who will represent the country in Beijing. They have been training at a high-altitude training camp, 50 kilometres outside the capital of Addis Ababa.
Interest in the one-hour run was resurrected a year ago when two-time Olympic 10,000m champion Haile Gebrselassie, also from the Arsi region of Ethiopia, set the men’s world record in Ostrava.
“Haile broke the men’s one-hour world record on the same track,” said her manager Hussein Makke from his office in West Chester, Pa. “When I mentioned the meet director and I had talked about the women’s one-hour record attempt this year Dire jumped at the chance. She said it would put her name in the record books.”
Tune is married but has no children. With the money she earned from her Boston and Houston earnings she has built a new house in Addis Ababa
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — THE journey of three Ethiopian refugees from their homeland to Melbourne is the inspiration behind a city art exhibition.
Flemington’s Sutueal Bekele is one of the artists contributing to The Journey: From Ancient Ethiopia to Contemporary Melbourne, an exhibition about migration and settlement.
“The paintings represent me and my journey,” Bekele said. “It’s about my journey from Ethiopia through a few African countries that I lived in, to arriving here in Melbourne.”
Bekele, 34, left Ethiopia when he was 16 and spent time in Kenya before arriving in Australia in 1999.
“It was a long journey and it’s hard to leave your home country and your family and travel all the way here,” Bekele said. “But it was a journey with a lot of experiences, meeting people from different backgrounds and learning a lot of things every day.”
Bekele said it was hard to paint in the refugee camps.
“It was very challenging moving to a new area and it takes time to adapt but it does give you a new artistic expression,” he said.
In the late ’90s at a Kenyan refugee camp, Bekele’s work was seen by United Nations delegates and Kenyan politicians.
“They visited my studio in the refugee camp and they were quite impressed with my work,” he said. The UN commissioned a painting from Bekele which now hangs at its Geneva headquarters.
Bekele said he was grateful to settle in Melbourne.
“I don’t even look back, this is my home. I’ve got a partner and two children and now it’s all about them, the next generation,” he said.
Bekele said his artwork was important to him and a way of sharing his experiences.
“As an artist I always try to express my culture and the environment that I grew up in and share it with people,” he said.
“I’m very emotionally attached to my artwork and so I try not to sell much of it.”
The pressures of weeknight cooking make it easy to fall into ruts, especially in the spice cabinet.
Most cooks reach for the same seasonings (Italian blend, anyone?) over and over. Yet herbs and spices offer some of the easiest and cheapest ways to overhaul your kitchen repertoire.
One way is to look for cuisines that use familiar spices in unfamiliar ways. Much of Africa and the Middle East, for example, prepare savory foods with what Americans consider sweet spices, such as cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom.
Even easier is to turn to the many spice blends available from around the world (even if they’re not always totally authentic).
For example, a skillet chicken dish to which you normally add Italian seasonings such as basil or oregano, can become a completely different dish by substituting curry powder for the herbs.
This recipe for doro wat, a staple of Ethiopian cooking, gets its key flavors from nutmeg and cardamom. It also relies on the traditional Ethiopian spice blend berbere, a bright red mixture of garlic, red pepper, cardamom, coriander and fenugreek, commonly used in soups and stews. Its flavors are warm, but not hot.
As adapted here, doro wat is a great example of using seasonings to turn otherwise common ingredients — chicken breasts and diced onions — into something different.
This recipe is easily adaptable. Any firm white fish (or even shrimp) could be used instead of chicken (cooking time will be shorter). And tomato sauce could be substituted for the wine.
Doro wat traditionally is served with flatbread, which is used instead of silverware to pick up the morsels of chicken and to soak up the sauce. Sour cream or plain yogurt is a nice complement.
All of the seasonings called for in this recipe should be available at larger grocers, ethnic markets or online.
DORO WAT CHICKEN
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch chunks
Juice of 1 lemon
Kosher salt
2 tablespoons ghee or butter
2 medium yellow onions, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon ground fenugreek
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons berbere
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
1/4 cup red wine
3/4 cup water
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Place the chicken on a large plate and drizzle with lemon juice, then sprinkle with salt. Set aside.
In a medium Dutch oven over medium heat, melt the ghee. Add the onions, garlic, ginger, turmeric, fenugreek, cardamom, nutmeg, berbere and smoked paprika. Saute until the onions are tender, about 5 minutes.
Add the wine and water, mixing well, and bring to a simmer. Add the chicken, turning to coat, and return to a simmer. Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer 15 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through.
Uncover and simmer another 2 to 3 minutes to reduce the sauce. Season with salt and pepper. Makes 4 servings.
(CBC News) — A Canadian citizen who has been imprisoned in Ethiopia for more than a year has been charged with terrorism-related activities and could face the death penalty, CBC News has learned.
The Ethiopian Embassy in Canada confirmed the charges against Bashir Ahmed Makhtal, a self-described used clothing dealer.
It’s the first time any Ethiopian officials have spoken about the case of the Toronto man, who was arrested in December 2006 at the Kenyan border after fleeing Somalia in the wake of that country’s civil war.
Speaking to CBC’s The Current, an official at the Canadian Embassy in Addis Ababa said Makhtal had appeared in court twice so far this year in connection with his arrest. The official had no other details.
In a letter smuggled out of prison more than a year ago, Makhtal described being arrested and interrogated by Ethiopian troops while in Kenyan jails before being sent to Ethiopia in late January 2007.
As he was brought to a plane bound for the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, he said he screamed he was a Canadian citizen and asked to be deported to Canada.
Makhtal’s lawyers and family have said they fear for his safety in Ethiopian hands. He’s originally from the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, an ethnic Somali enclave where his grandfather founded a rebel separatist movement.
His cousin, Said Makhtal, who lives in Hamilton, Ont., said this latest development is the worst possible news.
“I was actually devastated. I had to stop the car I was driving,” he said after hearing about the charges.
He also said the Canadian government has not done enough to help his cousin.
Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai, parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, travelled to Ethiopia in March and was given assurances that Makhtal was alive and well.
Ethiopia has a large military presence in Somalia, after providing the muscle that enabled a weak secular government to defeat Islamist forces formerly in control of much of the country.
The crisis that has sent food costs spiraling upward around the globe is causing Ethiopian Jews now living in Israel to give up something priceless: a piece of their culture.
Tens of thousands of the expatriates are being forced to abandon their traditional diets because of the skyrocketing cost of teff grain.
Teff, a nutritious and hardy cereal domesticated in Ethiopia thousands of years ago, is the primary ingredient in injera, a round flatbread that accompanies most Ethiopian meals.
A drastic shortage has caused the price of teff to jump by some 300 percent over the past year.
A 110-pound (50-kilogram) sack now runs at least 600 New Israeli shekels (about U.S. $179).
The price increases hit Israel’s Ethiopian community particularly hard, as it is a struggling group with about three-quarters living below the poverty line, according to official figures.
“It just seems foolish to me. It doesn’t seem logical to throw away so much money just to eat the same food that I ate in Ethiopia,” said Ayelet Inbaram, an Ethiopian living in Bat Yam.
“We can get along fine with bread, pitas, spaghetti, rice,” she said. “The preservation of our heritage is very important to me. I prepare injera and eat from one plate with my children.
“[But] I tell them how we lived, where we came from, how we walked to Israel … There are ways to remain connected without throwing money away.”
Drought and Trade
In the early 1980s, for a variety of social and religious reasons, tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews began walking toward Israel. Up to half of them died or were killed during the months-long desert treks to refugee camps in Sudan.
The survivors were transported into Israel during covert operations by the Israeli military and intelligence agencies. Emigration continued, and some 100,000 now live in Israel, home to the world’s second-largest Ethiopian expatriate community after the United States.
These Ethiopian-Israelis adhere largely to a traditional diet of injera served with meat, chicken, fish, or vegetables. Teff is also used to produce beverages, and its straw is used to feed cattle and even for construction purposes.
But the Israeli climate is not suited to growing teff, so consumers are entirely dependent upon imports from Ethiopia—and these have shriveled away in recent months due to a variety of factors.
A drought year caused teff production to drop in the rain-dependent country, even as its population continued to increase. In response, Ethiopian officials have reduced exports to a bare minimum to keep most of the grain for domestic use.
In the absence of official trade ties between Israel and Ethiopia, merchants have been illegally transporting teff from Ethiopia via Djibouti and other laborious—and costly—routes.
In addition, the popularity of teff among non-Ethiopian Israelis seeking a healthier grain has driven up the cost, according to Shlomo Molla, the only Ethiopian member of Israel’s parliament.
Molla said he is working to secure an Israel-Ethiopia trade agreement that would allow regulated imports of teff.
“Unfortunately, I am the only one in the government confronting this situation,” Molla said. “Our Ministry of Industry and Trade also has to intervene and set fixed prices for teff.”
Almost Gone?
Meanwhile, many Ethiopian-Israelis can no longer afford to eat their traditional food, and others are actively refusing to buy teff to protest the high cost and the government policies that have contributed to the shortage.
Inbaram, the Bat Yam resident, said the Israeli government should regulate the price of teff, just as it does with other staples such as flour, bread, and dairy products. Meanwhile, she hopes a boycott will force teff merchants to lower prices.
But Ronen Sanbate, an Ethiopian-Israeli teff merchant from Rishon Letzion, said Ethiopian export restrictions have created a situation in which no new teff is arriving in Israel.
He and fellow merchants are now selling off their current stock and—unless the situation changes—Israel’s supply will run out.
“If Ethiopia doesn’t start to release teff, I will be out of work,” Sanbate said.
“We grew up on teff,” he added. “When it runs out, we’ll have no choice—we’ll have to get used to rice.”
Flemington’s Sutueal Bekele is one of the artists contributing to The Journey: From Ancient Ethiopia to Contemporary Melbourne, an exhibition about migration and settlement.