LAS VEGAS (ReviewJournal.com) — Queen of Sheba Ethiopian Restaurant teaches you what your mother wouldn’t: How to eat with your fingers. Its place-settings feature no silverware — unless you ask.
“If you are unfamiliar with the cuisine, we’ll show you how to eat it,” says Semeneh Meshesha, who purchased the restaurant with a partner from its previous owners in May. (It opened last November in the corner of a Food 4 Less strip mall at 4001 S. Decatur Blvd.)
“For Ethiopian food, using your hand is the best way,” he says.
Queen of Sheba’s traditional dishes — meant to be shared — are evenly split between vegetarian and meat. They’re mostly butter-sauteed and spicy, and all served on 16-inch round injera, a pizzalike bread made from an ancient grain called teff.
“You will have never tasted this before, because it’s special,” promises Meshesha, who hails from the Ethiopian city of Addis Ababa. “We do it in our own traditional way, which makes the food very tasty.”
According to Meshesha, 95 percent of his American customers either have eaten Ethiopian food before or acclimate immediately. Some of them, however, “will ask for a fork.”
The restaurant — decorated, surprisingly, in a modern American style — seats 125. Hours are from 11 a.m. to 4 a.m. daily. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, Ethiopian music is performed live. On Fridays, it’s reggae; on Saturdays, Caribbean. Reservations are recommended but not required.
A non-Jewish Ethiopian woman, who was brought to Israel by force as a child and raped by her captor for more than a year, is being denied any formal residency status even though she has lived here for more than 16 years, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
Aregash Gudina Terfassa, whose lawyers have petitioned the Tel Aviv District Court to accept her claim, first applied for permanent residency status in 2006, when the Interior Ministry announced it would recognize children of foreign workers either born here or who had spent the vast majority of their lives here.
Even though Terfassa fit most of the criteria – she had arrived before the age of 14, grew up here and speaks fluent Hebrew – her application was denied because she had never attended an Israeli school.
She has been living here without any formal status ever since.
“It’s like being in jail,” the 28-year-old told the Post Wednesday. “I was working as a cleaner two days a week but after being arrested twice [by immigration police] and spending a month in jail, I’m too afraid to go out to work or even leave my house.”
“I would have loved to have had the opportunity to go to school,” continued Terfassa, who, ironically, spent much of her teenage years cleaning an Israeli school, but never actually learning in one. “But I had no parents to help me with that and I did not have the chance.”
Attorney Michael Decker from the Jerusalem-based Yehuda Raveh & Co. Law Offices, which is representing Terfassa, said the Interior Ministry’s decision not to grant her permanent residency was unfair.
He pointed out to the Post that under the country’s laws of compulsory education it is the responsibility of parents and/or the authorities to ensure that every child attends school. In the case of Terfassa, however, because she had no parents or official legal guardian, that criteria should not apply.
“She was cleaning schools while other kids got to study there, but never had the chance to study herself,” said Decker, adding that a court hearing was supposed to take place on Sunday but that the Interior Ministry has asked for an additional extension to further analyze the situation.
The presiding judge has not yet ruled whether next week’s hearing will be delayed.
“It’s a unique case,” commented a ministry spokeswoman. “The courts will now have to decide what should be done in this matter.”
Asked about the Interior Ministry’s approach to her case, Terfassa replied sadly: “All my life has been filled with hardships; it’s all I know. I have no parents, no family, except for my [non-Jewish] husband now. I have been here for 16 years and still have achieved nothing.”
Terfassa, who hails from rural Ethiopia, said that her parents died when she was a young child and that she was sent to live in a church. In 1993, the church’s priest was posted to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem and Terfassa accompanied him, entering the country initially on a tourist visa.
“He was like a father to me,” said Terfassa of the man who first brought her here and later beat and raped her. “I was only a child then, I did not speak Hebrew and the officials in the church told me not to report it to the police.”
Terfassa recalled, however, that the priest was later deported by the Israeli authorities.
At the age of 14, Terfassa, who was left barren by her ordeal, managed to escape the church and found refuge with another Ethiopian Christian family in Jerusalem and worked for them caring for the family’s young children. She was later hired by a manpower agency and sent to work as a cleaner, which she has done ever since.
“I know that she would love to have a formal status so that she could at least improve her work situation,” said Becker. “She has expressed to me that she would love to work in a store, folding clothes. She is just devastated that next week’s hearing might be postponed.”
BAKERSFIELD, CA — Sometimes it doesn’t take much to change someone’s life.
Drussilla Rofkahr lives in Taft but says her heart is in Ethiopia, because the women there live a hard life.
“No hope. Destitute,” is how Rofkahr describes the lives of many Ethiopian women. “(The women are) afraid, because they can be raped, and their children can be taken away and sold into slavery.”
According to Rofkahr, many women will resort to prostitution and giving away their children in order to have enough money to get by.
Because of that hardship, Rofkahr and the group she works with, Joshua Campaign International, go to Ethiopia with one simple goal: “Helping women get off the streets.”
But the group does more than just give the women and children a better place to sleep.
For one to two years, the women are taught how to sew, how to cook, and they also run a café. It may not seem like much but Rofkahr says that by doing these jobs the women, “Learn how to serve and run a business. We teach them a trade where they can do it themselves.”
She adds that by helping these women become self-sufficient, “That gives them security, they feel good about themselves.”
These seemly simple tasks become the beginning of a whole new life for these women.
Rofkahr is getting ready to head back to Ethiopia to help even more women, but she says she needs help, and is hoping the public will donate.
Rofkahr says a little bit can go a long way.
“$20 to $30 a month would bring (the women and children) off the streets and give them a place to live and food in their stomachs, and that would be a great thing.”
If you would like to donate you can send it to:
Joshua Campaign International
c/o “Ethiopian Women’s Project”
PO BOX 8700
Fresno, CA 93747
EDITOR’S NOTE: World Bank crooks must be chewing khat with Meles.
ADDIS ABABA (Fortune) — A new report on ease of doing business around the world has been published by the World Bank and it shows that Ethiopia has improved its environment for doing business with the country moving up nine places on the index table from position 116 to 107. Wow! Incredible!
[The truth of the matter is that Ethiopia’s economy under the Woyanne tribal junta is growing down like a carrot.]
The development comes barely a month after another World Bank report on competitiveness where Ethiopia’s business environment was found wanting in many areas.
“Ethiopia reduced court delays through a combination of better case management and internal training, as well as an expanded role for enforcement judges. The government has simplified property transfers by decentralizing administrative tasks to sub-cities and merging procedures performed by the land registry and municipalities,” said World Bank in a report released in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, September 9, 2009.
Reforms at the company registry and the streamlining of procedures have also made it easier to start a business in Ethiopia over the past year, says the report compiled by the Bank’s branch, the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
Ethiopia has over the past year ranked poorly on the index as it moved from 109 in 2008 to 116 in this year, 2009.
“Major areas of reform [in 2008/2009] have been in areas of starting a business, registering property, and enforcing contracts,” the Bank notes in the report.
Ethiopia is also named to have lowered taxes on domestic firms in 2008/2009.
This new report vindicates State Minister of Trade and Industry Tedesse Hailu, who on August 20, 2009, doubted the findings of the first World Bank report titled Ethiopia Investment Climate: Towards the Competitive Frontier which showed that government preferences, access to capital, coupled with low productivity, low wages, land allocation and inefficiency in allocation of resources were some factors that were slowing down Ethiopia’s competitiveness to attract business and investment on the world market.
The Trade and Industry Minister indicated that Ethiopia was improving in many areas like making resources such as land available to investors and reforming some of its trade rules.
“This is good development for Ethiopia as 2009 was difficult year for many countries,” an economist told Fortune on Wednesday, September 9, 2009.
The Bank dubbed 2009 as a year of fast-paced reform with 67 regulatory reforms recorded in 29 of 46 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Doing Business 2010: ‘Reforming through Difficult Times’, as the report is named, is the seventh in a series of Doing Business annual reports published by IFC and the World Bank.
For the first time a Sub-Saharan African country-Rwanda-was the world’s top reformer, based on the number and impact of reforms implemented between June 2008 and May 2009. Rwanda, a repeat reformer, reformed in seven of the 10 business regulation areas measured by Doing Business.
It now takes a Rwandan entrepreneur just two procedures and three days to start a business. Imports and exports are more efficient, and transferring property takes less time thanks to reorganized registries and statutory time limits. Investors have more protection, insolvency reorganization has been streamlined, and a wider range of assets can be used as collateral to access credit.
Mauritius, ranked 17 of the 183 economies covered by the report, is the top Sub-Saharan economy for the second year in a row in terms of the overall regulatory ease of doing business. It adopted a new insolvency law, established a specialized commercial division within the court, eased property transfers and expedited trade processes.
“In times overshadowed by the global financial and economic crisis, business regulation can make an important difference for how easy it is to reorganize troubled firms to help them survive, to rebuild when demand rebounds, and to get new businesses started,” said Penelope Brook, acting vice president for Financial and Private Sector Development at the World Bank Group in a statement made available to Fortune on Wednesday.
Doing Business analyzes regulations that apply to an economy’s businesses during their life cycles, including start-up and operations, trading across borders, paying taxes, and closing a business. Doing Business does not measure all aspects of the business environment that matter to firms and investors.
For example, it does not measure security, macroeconomic stability, corruption, skill level, or the strength of financial systems.
“The report shows that some post conflict economies [like Ethiopia and Rwanda] in the region are actively improving the regulatory framework for private sector-led development,” said Brooks.
This transcript is a record of the Radio National broadcast. – ABC.net
TONY EASTLEY: In Australia, international adoptions are handled by the Government and are highly regulated, but that’s not the case elsewhere in the world.
In the United States international adoptions are a big business, where a large number of private international adoption agencies are paid on average $30,000 a time to find a child for hopeful parents.
The number of Americans adopting Ethiopian children has quadrupled, especially since American celebrities adopted African children.
A Foreign Correspondent team has been investigating American adoption agencies operating in Ethiopia and has uncovered some alarming practices.
Africa correspondent Andrew Geoghegan reports.
ANDREW GEOGHEGAN: Famine, disease and war have orphaned around five million Ethiopian children. It’s not surprising then that the business of international adoptions is thriving here and Americans in particular are queuing up to adopt a child.
EXCERPT FROM DVD: This is Yabets. He’s five years old and both of his parents died; it says they died of tuberculosis. Can you smile? Oh, nice smile.
ANDREW GEOGHEGAN: This is the sales pitch from an American agency Christian World Adoption. In a remote village in Ethiopia’s south the agency has compiled a DVD catalogue of children for its clients in the United States.
EXCERPT FROM DVD: Father has died. I’m not certain what he died of and this is the mother. Hoping for a family who can provide for them, they’re just really desperate for people to take care of their children.
ANDREW GEOGHEGAN: Incredibly though, many of the children being advertised are not orphans at all. American Lisa Boe was told by Christian World Adoption that the little boy she’d adopted was an orphan, but she soon had doubts.
LISA BOE: There was a picture of the people that had found him, and there’s a man and a woman in the picture. I point to the woman and he calls her mamma. I would never, never have brought home a child that has a mum. Never.
ANDREW GEOGHEGAN: At least 70 adoption agencies have set up business in Ethiopia. Almost half are unregistered, but there’s scant regulation anyway and fraud and deception are rife. Some agencies actively recruit children in a process known as harvesting.
EXCERPT FROM DVD: If you want your child to be adopted by a family in America, you may stay. If you do not want your child to go to America, you should take your child away.
ANDREW GEOGHEGAN: Parents give up their children in the belief they’ll have better lives overseas. But many have little understanding of the process or that that they may never see their children again.
EYOB KOLCHA: It was considered good for the children in the community and the people came.
ANDREW GEOGHEGAN: Eyob Kolcha worked for Christian World Adoption before quitting in December 2007.
EYOB KOLCHA: There was no information before that time, there was no information after that.
ANDREW GEOGHEGAN: Did their parents realise that they were now legally someone else’s children?
EYOB KOLCHA: They didn’t understand that. I don’t think most people, most parents understand even elsewhere in Ethiopia right now.
MUNERA AHMED (translated): I have no words to express my feelings and my anguish about what happened to my children and what I did.
ANDREW GEOGHEGAN: After her husband left, Munera Ahmed gave up two sons – one 12 months old and the other five through another adoption agency.
She has had no word about her children since she handed them over; that’s despite guarantees that she’d be kept informed. The agency has now closed.
MUNERA AHMED (translated): As a mother not to be able to know my kids’ situation hurts me so much, I have no words, no words to express my emotions (crying).
ANDREW GEOGHEGAN: About 30 Ethiopian children are leaving the country every week, bound for a new home, new parents and an uncertain future.
This is Andrew Geoghegan in Addis Ababa for AM.
TONY EASTLEY: And you can watch the full story tonight on Foreign Correspondent at 8pm.
NAIROBI (The East African) — The government’s emphasis on ethnic identity could trigger a “violent eruption” in the run-up to Ethiopia’s scheduled elections in June, an international conflict-prevention group warned in a report last week.
“Paranoia” on the part of the former guerrilla fighters who now lead the country is cited as an impediment to a democratic system.
The ruling party’s “obsession with controlling political processes from the federal to the local level” is inciting opposition groups to consider taking up arms, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group says.
“Without genuine multiparty democracy,” the report suggests, “the tensions and pressures in Ethiopia’s polities will only grow, greatly increasing the possibility of a violent eruption that would destabilize the country and region.”
The report is intended to pressure Ethiopia’s leading benefactors to tie development aid more closely to political reform.
“Some donors appear to consider food security more important than democracy in Ethiopia, but they neglect the increased ethnic awareness and tensions created by the regionalisation policy and their potentially explosive consequences,” the Crisis Group says.
Ethiopia ranks as one of the United States’ chief allies in Africa. Washington annually provides Addis Ababa with hundreds of millions of dollars in aid while defending the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front from charges such as those levelled by the Crisis Group.
The Crisis Group’s report acknowledges that Ethiopia has made economic progress under the rule of the party that overthrew a repressive Marxist-Leninist regime 18 years ago. The report also refrains from questioning the government’s motives in promoting a system of ethnic federalism.
“But while the ruling EPRDF Tigrean People Liberation Front promises democracy,” the 40-page analysis continues, “it has not accepted that the opposition is qualified to take power via the ballot box and tends to regard the expression of differing views and interests as a form of betrayal.”
Feeling threatened by the emergence of a significant opposition, the ruling party resorted to repressive measures prior to the 2005 national elections.One paradoxical aspect of the report is its finding that the ruling party’s authoritarian actions have not prevented opposition groups from proliferating in recent years.
This broadening of the political spectrum, coupled with the promotion of ethnic awareness and the government’s unwillingness to share power, are identified by the Crisis Group as the factors that could push Ethiopia to a break point.
