Watch below the elegant Tirunesh Dibaba at the Beijing Olympic Women’s 10,000 meter run, Aug. 15, 2008. For more videos on ‘Ethiopia at the Olympics’ click here.
A long-distance legacy stays in the Ethiopian family
BEIJING: With her trademark blistering kick, Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia ran the second-fastest time by a woman in the 10,000 meters on Friday night to take the gold medal in the opening track race of the Beijing Games.
After a punishing 60-second final lap, Dibaba crossed the line in 29 minutes 54.66 seconds, a time surpassed only by the 29:31.78 run by Wang Junxia of China in 1993. Dibaba’s victory, on a relatively cool and dry night, served as an early counterpoint to fears that smog and heat would disrupt distance performances at these Olympics.
On the bell lap of the 25-lap race, Dibaba blew past the eventual silver medalist Elvan Abeylegesse, a native of Ethiopia who competes for Turkey and who delivered a time of 29:56.34, the third-fastest ever. The two ran alone for the final five laps.
Shalane Flanagan of the United States took third in 30:22.22 with a surge over the final two laps, despite intestinal problems earlier in the week and confusion about her placing as the lead runners began to lap stragglers.
“I had no idea what place it was,” Flanagan said. “My coach told me just to remain as calm as possible. With two laps to go, I turned on the competitive juices and let it go.”
Flanagan’s finish further established the American women as a resurgent force in international distance running, following a bronze in the marathon by Deena Kastor at the 2004 Athens Games and a third-place finish by Kara Goucher in the 10,000 at the 2007 world championships.
“I hate the word fluke,” said Goucher, who finished 10th on Friday in 30:55.16. “It’s been said about me. I think Shalane proved tonight U.S. running is at the world level.”
But it has yet to match the pre-eminence of the East Africans.
The 10,000 has come to represent the sporting ascendance of women from sub-Saharan Africa and of Ethiopia’s dominance over its fierce rival, Kenya, at major international championships. Ethiopian women have won five Olympic gold medals in distance running, while Kenyan women have yet to win their first.
Ethiopia has taken first place in three of the last five women’s 10,000 meters at the Olympics. And it has kept it in the family.
Derartu Tulu, a cousin of Dibaba’s, became the first black African woman to win an Olympic gold medal by taking first in the 10,000 at the 1992 Barcelona Games. She won the event again at the 2000 Sydney Games, and has come to represent the possibility of women escaping a life of forced subservience.
“From Tulu, we are accustomed to the 10,000,” Dibaba said after Friday’s victory. “It goes without saying that we have to do well. The footsteps of Tulu have to repeat themselves.”
Dibaba and Tulu come from the same high-altitude village, Bekoji, in Ethiopia’s southern highlands. So does Dibaba’s sister Ejegayehu, who finished 14th on Friday after taking the silver medal at the 2004 Olympics. Also from this famed running center are Fatuma Roba, the 1996 women’s Olympic marathon champion, and Kenenisa Bekele, the 2004 Olympic champion in the men’s 10,000 meters and silver medalist in the 5,000.
Bekoji is located on a verdant plateau, at about 10,000 feet, and is as bountiful at producing runners as it is producing wheat and teff, a millet that is rich in calcium, protein and iron. Running is the favored and necessary mode of transportation for many young children in their trips to and from school and in their performance of such chores as hauling water and firewood.
The Dibabas grew up in a conical mud hut that did not have electricity. Their parents, who are subsistence farmers, and the rest of the family had to go to a local hotel to watch Tulu win the 10,000 at the Barcelona Games.
Tirunesh Dibaba’s elite running career got an inadvertent start.
In 2001, as a 16-year-old, Tirunesh Dibaba traveled to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa to join Ejegayehu and another relative who is variously described as a sister and a cousin. Tirunesh Dibaba said in an interview last year that she entered a cross-country race, finished fifth and was signed to run for the nation’s prison police, a common practice in Ethiopia and Kenya.
Two years later, Tirunesh Dibaba became the youngest track athlete to win a world title, crossing the line first in the 5,000 meters at the world track and field championships in Paris. Her style of running emulates that of Miruts Yifter, who was known as Yifter the Shifter for a last-lap kick that propelled him to gold medals in the 5,000 and 10,000 at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
Tirunesh Dibaba could become the first woman to win both events in the same Olympics if she runs the 5,000, an event at which she holds the world record of 14:11.15. At this point, she is uncertain about competing in two events. But there was never any doubt that Tirunesh Dibaba would prevail with her searing kick in the 10,000 final.
“My expectation was to get gold,” she said, “beautiful, everlasting gold.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: African countries need to boycott the 2010 World Cup that will be held in South Africa in retaliation for the government’s lack of action in protecting immigrant from some of the evil elements in the society. The problem is most African countries are being ruled by thugs like our own Meles Zenawi who commit much worse crimes against their own population than what we see in South Africa against immigrants.
JOHANNESBURG — Four years ago, her husband, a Zimbabwean activist, was killed. The family escaped to South Africa and settled in a suburb of Johannesburg.
But in May they were forced to flee once more.
More than 60 people were killed as South Africans turned on the foreigners who had been living among them.
It was Gloria’s South African neighbour who told her she had to go.
“She went and picked up our laundry and dipped it in muddy water,” Gloria said, sitting outside her white tent.
“She then said: ‘I’m attacking you’ to the Congolese woman, ‘then the next one will be Gloria and the third one is Sisay. All these people I want you out of here.’ So it was a big fight.”
Fearful of her life, Gloria and her children have – along with thousands of other foreigners – spent the last two months sheltering in government camps. But they were never intended to be permanent.
“They have to leave the shelter because we actually invited them to the shelter to provide for them in their time of need,” Thabo Masebe from Gauteng Provincial Government told me.”
“We are convinced that conditions exist in all the communities within Gauteng for all the displaced people to safely return to their places. We don’t expect anyone to refuse to leave.
But in the townships which saw the worst of May’s violence, time has proved a slow healer.
In Ramaphosa, to the east of Johannesburg, a Mozambican man was doused in petrol, set alight and burnt to death.
But locals such as Eva Sephiwe see the foreigners as the aggressors and not the victims.
“I cannot say they will be killed,” she told me, “but the community does not want to accept them and the community says we won’t allow them to come back.”
We did manage to find some foreigners left in Ramaphosa.
Huddled around the local police station was a small group of bedraggled Mozambicans. Sleeping on ragged mattresses under trees, they said they were scared to venture into Ramaphosa.
While we were speaking to the Mozambicans, a South African woman who worked next door to the police station called me over.
She said the real roots of the xenophobic attacks had not been addressed. She said it was the government’s fault for not addressing the lack of opportunities for the country’s poorest people.
“This is just not human,” she told me. “Sensible people would go home. I know it’s bad on the other side, but sensible people would go home if you’re not wanted in a society.”
‘Evicted’
As we were in Ramaphosa, Gloria, the Zimbabwean woman, called us on the phone.
Gloria Mahango and her children after being evicted from the camp, Johannesburg, South Africa
We returned to find her weeping outside the camp surrounded by her children and their few belongings. Her tent had been taken down and she had been evicted early.
Unable to return to Zimbabwe and too scared to go back to her home in Johannesburg, she was now stranded by the side of a busy road.
“They say that they were working on a plan and holding meetings to help us and that hasn’t happened,” she said. “They haven’t reintegrated us or helped us all they’ve done is put me here on the street with my children. The government has really treated me very badly here in South Africa.”
That night Gloria slept in the open with her children alongside her.
When the other shelters are closed in Gauteng, more than 2,000 foreigners will be forced to choose whether to risk returning to their homes – or to wait like Gloria, hoping and praying that their wretched luck is about to change.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the kind of atrocities by Tigrean generals against civilians of a neighboring country that the Tigrean elites in the Diaspora defends. We can excuse those inside the country for they are being silenced by the repressive regime. The Tigrean elites in the Diaspora parrot Meles Zenawi’s Rwanda talking point as another unspeakable crime against humanity is being committed at this very moment by occupation forces led by Tigrean officers, under a Tigrean regime and cheered by the Tigrean ‘educated’ class — in collaboration with hodams (opportunists) from other ethnic groups, and with the full knowledge of the U.S. Government, European Union, and African Union.
(somchat.com) — The Ethiopian Woyanne troops in Somalia continued their rampage. They once again detained unarmed civilians and beheaded them, then put them out on the streets as to make example of them.
The ruthless terrorist acts happened in an area between Afgoye, where the TFG and Ethiopian Woyanne troops currently control, and Mogadishu. As witnesses say, the Ethiopian Woyanne army stopped a car full of civilians on Thursday evening then escorted the passengers to an unknown location where they apparently tortured them overnight. Early Friday morning on August 15, the same passengers were found dead, 8 of them beheaded in a nearby street in between Mogadishu and Afgooye town.
So far, no reports of investigation on the matter and no one from the [puppet] TFG appeared to be interested to discuss the civilian murders.
This is not the first time the Ethiopian Woyanne troops killed and beheaded unarmed Somali civilians. On May 8th 2008, the Ethiopian Woyanne troops killed 17 Somali civilians. About two weeks prior to that, on April 23rd, Ethiopian Woyanne troops slit the throats of 20 Somali clerics in a mosque. On Sunday July 13, several young men were executed by Ethiopian Woyanne troops and TFG militia in Mogadishu and its surroundings.
(DPA) — Somali insurgents attacked the Somali president’s convoy as he prepared to fly out to Ethiopia for crisis talks aimed at healing a rift with the prime minister, reports said on Friday.
The BBC reported that insurgents detonated two landmines near President Abdullahi Yusuf’s convoy as he travelled to the airport in the Somali capital Mogadishu.
Ethiopian Woyanne troops opened fire after the attack and killed five civilians, the BBC said.
Yusuf and Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, also known as Nur Adde, were flying to Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for talks aimed at solving a bitter row some fear could jeopardise a recent peace deal signed with opposition figures.
Yusuf and Nur Adde have been at loggerheads for weeks about the premier’s decision to fire Mogadishu Mayor Mohamed Dheere.
Supporters of Yusuf in parliament have threatened to call a no-confidence motion in the prime minister.
Mogadishu-based radio station Garowe said on its website that the African Union was expected to mediate between the warring leaders.
Nur Adde signed a ceasefire with moderate opposition leaders in June, but the agreement crucially did not encompass al-Shabaab, the insurgent group causing most of the havoc [for the puppet regime] in Somalia.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Guess who owns the fertilizer importing company? Farmers also complain that the chemical-based fertilizer is poisoning the land and underground water sources.
Ethiopia and the World Bank are close to an agreement that will allow the Horn of Africa country to divert $237 million in loans and grants for infrastructure projects to purchase fertilizer, the bank said.
Ethiopia needs the fertilizer before next year’s planting season, Kenicha Ohashi, director of the World Bank’s Ethiopia program, said in an interview at his office in the capital, Addis Ababa, yesterday. Ethiopia is Africa’s largest coffee producer.
“What we’re trying to do is provide foreign exchange,” said Ohashi said. “This is like doing budget support. It’s helping the government with hard currency.” An additional $64 million in credit from the African Development Bank will be diverted for fertilizer purchases, the state-run Ethiopian Herald said on Aug. 2.
Rising domestic demand, drought, and higher world fuel and food prices expanded Ethiopia’s trade deficit to $4.7 billion in the 12 months to July from $3.9 billion a year earlier. The country has less than two months of foreign currency reserves, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The financing of the fertilizer is equivalent to about 10 percent of the World Bank’s $2.4 billion Ethiopia program, which includes $1.6 billion in loans and $800 million in grants this year. Most of that money was allocated to road building, irrigation systems and the construction of power transmission lines to connect Ethiopia and Sudan.
