She was gunning for it. Every step built confidence.
Every step led her to her goal.
Adenech Zekiros of Ethiopia wanted to finish the marathon at Sunday’s P.F. Chang’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona Marathon & 1/2 Marathon with her personal-best time – under 2 hours, 27 minutes and 28 seconds.
But almost four minutes had passed that mark before she crossed the finish line. Was she disappointed?
“No,” she said through an interpreter. “I’m still the winner.”
Zekiros, 25, was the first female runner to finish, defending her 2007 title.
Although she didn’t break her personal record, Zekiros did break the course record with a time of 2:31:14, beating the previous record by 19 seconds. Fellow Ethiopian Shitaye Gemechu ran 2:31:33 in 2004.
“The other runners didn’t run fast enough, so I couldn’t make it to 2:27,” said Zekiros, who took the lead after Mile 13 of the 26.2 mile-course.
Zekiros added that the weather helped her break the course record.
She said last year’s race was too cold, but this year the weather was perfect.
It was about 52 degrees at the 7:40 a.m. start time.
Salomie Getnet of Ethiopia was runner-up for the second consecutive year with a time of 2:34:01 – 1:11 better than she ran last year. Fellow countrywoman Asnakech Mengistru was third.
Sunday’s marathon meant a lot more for 39 American women. Each was trying to run under 2:47 to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials – the Boston Marathon in April.
But just eight runners were able to do so, led by Linda Sommers Smith of Arroyo Grande, Calif. Smith finished fourth with a time of 2:41:04.
Sally Meyerhoff’s marathon debut was a success. The 24-year-old Tempe native, who ran cross country at Phoenix Mountain Pointe and was an All-American at Duke, finished sixth at 2:42:46.
“I’m just happy (to finish),” said Meyerhoff, who ran 98 seconds faster than the next local finisher, Susan Loken. “I was in a lot of pain in the last couple of miles.”
The other runners who qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials were Kristen Henehan of Silver Spring, Md., Allison Kerr of Vacaville, Colo., Betsey Keever of San Francisco, Michele Suszek of Aurora, Colo., and Lisa Thomas of Alexandria, Va.
She was gunning for it. Every step built confidence.
Every step led her to her goal.
Adenech Zekiros of Ethiopia wanted to finish the marathon at Sunday’s P.F. Chang’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona Marathon & 1/2 Marathon with her personal-best time – under 2 hours, 27 minutes and 28 seconds.
But almost four minutes had passed that mark before she crossed the finish line. Was she disappointed?
“No,” she said through an interpreter. “I’m still the winner.”
Zekiros, 25, was the first female runner to finish, defending her 2007 title.
Although she didn’t break her personal record, Zekiros did break the course record with a time of 2:31:14, beating the previous record by 19 seconds. Fellow Ethiopian Shitaye Gemechu ran 2:31:33 in 2004.
“The other runners didn’t run fast enough, so I couldn’t make it to 2:27,” said Zekiros, who took the lead after Mile 13 of the 26.2 mile-course.
Zekiros added that the weather helped her break the course record.
She said last year’s race was too cold, but this year the weather was perfect.
It was about 52 degrees at the 7:40 a.m. start time.
Salomie Getnet of Ethiopia was runner-up for the second consecutive year with a time of 2:34:01 – 1:11 better than she ran last year. Fellow countrywoman Asnakech Mengistru was third.
Sunday’s marathon meant a lot more for 39 American women. Each was trying to run under 2:47 to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials – the Boston Marathon in April.
But just eight runners were able to do so, led by Linda Sommers Smith of Arroyo Grande, Calif. Smith finished fourth with a time of 2:41:04.
Sally Meyerhoff’s marathon debut was a success. The 24-year-old Tempe native, who ran cross country at Phoenix Mountain Pointe and was an All-American at Duke, finished sixth at 2:42:46.
“I’m just happy (to finish),” said Meyerhoff, who ran 98 seconds faster than the next local finisher, Susan Loken. “I was in a lot of pain in the last couple of miles.”
The other runners who qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials were Kristen Henehan of Silver Spring, Md., Allison Kerr of Vacaville, Colo., Betsey Keever of San Francisco, Michele Suszek of Aurora, Colo., and Lisa Thomas of Alexandria, Va.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — The man was nervous. He was afraid, he said, of the secret police. So he advised me to hire a random taxi. I was to park at a certain church. And there, I was to wait. A few minutes later he called again, this time on a different cell phone. He gave me directions to a nondescript house with an iron gate.
“Sorry about these procedures,” he apologized, tapping away at a laptop in a shuttered room. “But I could spend years in prison for what I do.”
Such spy-movie shenanigans in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, weren’t required to meet a gangster or terrorist. Instead, Dagem, as he chose to be called, was a new type of African revolutionary: a blogger.
His nation’s increasingly authoritarian regime was accused of blocking critical Web sites last year during a controversial court hearing against jailed opposition leaders. Yet Dagem and a hidden army of computer-literate Ethiopians quietly ensured that news of the crackdown still got out —at the risk of sedition charges.
Going into 2008, Africa offers its usual dizzying mix of success stories and wrenching tragedy.
But perhaps the most remarkable —and least appreciated—novelty in Africa’s turbulent political scene is the blossoming of information technology.
The world’s poorest continent is, not surprisingly, also its least wired: Only 5 percent of Africans have access to the Internet, compared with the global population’s average of 22 percent. But Web use in Africa has exploded almost ninefold since 2000, experts say. And by prying open the stranglehold that repressive regimes once held on the news, it has become, in the hands of ingenious Africans, a powerful tool for democratization and even disaster relief.
Ethiopia is a lively example. Because of its large and well-educated diaspora, probably no other African country has a rowdier blogosphere. Web sites critical of the regime in Addis Ababa have a tendency to mysteriously disappear. A problem of Internet capacity, the government insists. But the OpenNet Initiative, an international organization that monitors Web censorship, says Ethiopia carries out “substantial filtering” of the Internet.
Ethiopians circumvent this clumsy restriction by using foreign-based servers. Opposition supporters have even used simple phone text messaging to conjure instant rallies —until the government banned that service.
The repressive Sudanese government blocks politically disagreeable Web sites too. But Internet commentary by Sudanese living abroad and at home still offers an unprecedented window into a war-bruised and often opaque nation.
Even anarchic Somalia is in on the act, albeit with mixed results. Though wireless technology such as text messaging is used by most armed parties in Mogadishu to issue anonymous death threats (dreaded “Private Number” calls), Somali media Web sites have filled an information vacuum created by the absence of Western reporters in Africa’s most dangerous capital.
The U.S. should take note. As it prepares to engage with Africa more intensely than at any time since the Cold War, in part by the Pentagon’s establishment of a new Africa Command headquarters to coordinate military and security interests, the U.S. will be competing on an increasingly flat information playing field.
Gone are the days when Washington could control its messages in client states. The scruffy cyber cafes of Chad and the man in Congo who rents his cell phone by the minute—sometimes climbing atop a tree to improve reception—ensure that Washington’s voice will have to vie with those of the resource-hungry Chinese, or with the designs of Al Qaeda recruiters.
As for Dagem, he continues his rounds in Addis Ababa’s hundreds of public Internet shops, writing his blog in a different one every day. He carefully clears the computer’s memory cache when he is finished, and he always chooses a screen that faces a wall.
___________________
The writer can be reached at [email protected]
EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) — Kenenisa Bekele won the 9.3-kilometer Great Edinburgh Cross Country race for the third straight year on Saturday.
The Olympic and world 10,000-meter champion took the lead with 600 meters to go at Holyrood Park, and the Ethiopian finished narrowly ahead of Zersenay Tadesse and Eliud Kipchoge in 27 minutes, 42 seconds.
Tadesse of Eritrea, who beat Bekele to the 2007 world title last March, finished in 27:43, the same time as 2005 race winner Kipchoge of Kenya.
Tadese’s win in Mombasa, Kenya last year, after Bekele dropped out of the race with stomach cramps, had denied Bekele a record sixth long-course title and ended his sequence of 27 cross country victories over six years.
The Saudi Authorities commenced constructing a wall on the Saudi-Yemeni border in the district of Harad last Saturday, said a Sheikh from Harad who wished to remain anonymous.
He added that this wall breaks a Yemeni-Saudi treaty declaring the rights of both Yemeni and Saudi citizens to roam freely across the political border due to their need to cultivate crops and allow their animals to graze. The treaty also protects the rights of these citizens to ship their animals as needed.
The Marebpress website reported a Yemeni military source as saying that Yemeni border guards tried to stop Saudis from building the new wall. In response, the Saudis mobilized their military and threatened force if they were unable to start construction of the barriers. According to the same source, construction halted last Sunday but the Saudis resumed work on Monday. So far they have built deep tunnels and concrete arches and have laid barbed wire along the frontiers to the south of the Saudi towns of Towal, Masfaq, and Khawjarah.
The military source said that the Saudis informed them that the new barriers are necessary for protecting their borders against an influx of illegal immigrants and against the smuggling of drugs and weapons.
Local sources from Harad affirmed that more than 3000 tribesmen from villages adjacent to the areas where the new barriers are being built gathered on Saturday and Monday to rally against the new barrier, claiming it would harm their interests by preventing them from crossing to the other side of the borders to visit their relatives and cultivate their farms there.
Thousands of Yemenis and Africans are believed to have been leaking through the borders to Saudi Arabia daily.
Of the untold numbers of Somali and Ethiopian refugees that arrive on the shores of Yemen daily, those who make their way to Saudi Arabia usually travel through the Harad district. Those still in Yemen hear from the odd ones who make it to Saudi Arabia and believe that the trip is possible for them too.
____________________ EDITOR’S NOTE This is just one of the many indignities we Ethiopians have caused on ourselves due to our inability to create a political system that serves the country well. What we have in Ethiopia currently is a parasitic political system that pillages and plunders the country, forcing millions of Ethiopians to seek refugees in other countries.
AS a boy, Yosef Haimanot escaped the troubles in his Ethiopian homeland by walking for three days through desert to reach the coastal state of Djibouti.
Now, more than 20 years later, he is returning to Ethiopia with two artists, and they will all retrace his steps to freedom.
Haimanot, who is now a film-maker based in Wales, will make his second documentary on his early life, called The Impossible Journey.
And the artists – Matt Clark and Melanie Hobday – will produce work based on their experiences in Ethiopia.
The project is funded by the Arts Council of Wales, and the results will be displayed as part of an exhibition that will open at Butetown History and Arts Centre in Cardiff later this year before going on tour.
It will be the second time in two years that Haimanot, 33, has returned to his homeland since fleeing the war-torn and famine-stricken country, when he left his parents, sister and two brothers behind.
When he first returned in 2005, he discovered that his father and sister had passed away.
“It was very emotional to see my mother and one of my brothers again,” he said. “They were devastated when I left as a boy but they were happy when I went to England, as they knew I would be safe.”
Haimanot arrived in England at the age of 13. He was only 10 when he left his family behind to move to another part of Ethiopia, and a year or so later he endured the arduous walk with other children to Djibouti.
They later stowed away on a ship to England, which docked at Newcastle.
When he first arrived in the UK, Haimanot spent time in a children’s home and then in foster care before getting his own flat at the age of 16.
Although he didn’t speak any English when he arrived, within a few years he was fluent and found that he had lost his own language, which meant he found it difficult communicating by letter with his family back home.
Haimanot studied performing arts before moving to Wales in 2000 to study at the International Film School of Wales in Newport.
He now lives in Cardiff and says he loves his life in Wales.
“Everyone is friendly and helpful, and I’m now doing what I want to do.”
But his memories of his early days in Ethiopia never leave him.
“It was extremely dangerous living there as a child,” he said. “There was a civil war going on and I witnessed at first hand the 1984 famine.”
Despite the traumas he suffered, he is looking forward to returning and seeing his family once more.
And together with Clark and Hobday he will retrace the journey he took as a small boy before finally arriving in the UK.
The artists will learn about the culture, history and lifestyle, as well as the education system, of the countries Haimanot travelled through and relate their new understanding to Welsh culture, lifestyles and history by producing artwork.
All the while, Haimanot will capture their experiences on film for a 75-minute documentary.
Clark studied fine art in Cardiff and produces artwork and videos that take a second look at some of the facts, customs and objects that we often take for granted.
He is now looking forward to travelling to Ethiopia next week for the month-long trip.
“I’ve never experienced a country like Ethiopia before – I think it will be hard,” he said.
“I think it will help me understand what it must have been like for Yosef arriving in England as a young boy.
“He ended up in an area where the majority of people were white and he did not understand the language or the culture. It will be a similar experience for me when I get to Ethiopia.”
Hobday, a Cardiff-based textile artist, added, “I love travel and different cultures, and Yosef’s story just intrigues me. I hope the trip broadens my creative outlook and gives me an insight into this fascinating culture.”
