A lot of people would have given up by now. Many would have surrendered to the hassles of coordinating a project 11 time zones from home, or been choked by the red tape of dealing with a foreign government.
Still others would have succumbed to the difficulty of raising money for something most donors will never see.
But Selamawit Kifle, a South Seattle woman who grew up in Ethiopia, does not give up.
And because she does not, a clinic is rising from the red clay soil of her native land. Later this year, some of the poorest residents in one of the world’s poorest countries may be receiving treatment for malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, complications of HIV/AIDS and other ailments.
“When I started, I had no idea what it would take,” said Kifle. “I just knew I had to help.”
Already, 63 Ethiopian orphans are receiving the basic necessities of life, along with school supplies and a chance at a better future, thanks to donors — nearly all in the Seattle area — who give $30 a month to sponsor a child through the Blue Nile Children’s Organization, which Kifle created in 2001.
“She is a very quiet, unassuming woman, but she is just a lion in terms of what she can accomplish. It’s amazing,” said Deacon Mary Shehane of St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, which made Blue Nile one of its “Church in the World Ministries.” Next month, St. Mark’s will host a dinner and auction for the group; a similar event last year raised $20,000 toward the clinic construction.
The desperately poor Ethiopia which Kifle, 48, sees on her twice-yearly trips these days is not the country she remembers from childhood, when her upper-middle-class family had homes and property under Emperor Haile Selassie.
But a Marxist military regime that toppled Selassie in 1974 confiscated privately held property, including her family’s. In subsequent years, thousands of people were killed or simply disappeared, including a teenage brother and sister of Kifle’s. “The government took them away and we never saw them again.”
Kifle left Ethiopia in 1982 at age 22, following an older sister first to Germany and then to the United States.
Thirteen years later, Kifle, who then operated an import-export company, made her first trip back to Ethiopia, and was heartbroken by the plight of the country’s children.
“When you walk down the street, they follow you, begging for bread. If you go out early in the morning to church, you see them sleeping outside, piling up with each other to be warm,” she said. “I know I can’t help all of them, but if I can help even 100 kids, I’ll know I’ve done something.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, more than 1 million children in Ethiopia alone have been orphaned by the AIDS epidemic sweeping through sub-Saharan Africa, and that total is expected to rise.
Setback alters goal
Kifle, with a growing core of supporters, proposed to create an orphan village in Bahir Dar in northwest Ethiopia. The local government granted the group five acres of land in 2001, and assigned it responsibility for 28 orphans.
Wherever they could find an audience, Kifle and her backers spoke of their dream to house up to 150 children in family-style cottages, with a school, a clinic and a farm that eventually could earn most its revenue through selling crops and goods produced there.
The entire project would cost about $1 million, but a first phase, they figured, could be done for about $250,000.
And that’s where reality stepped in. Although Blue Nile gradually increased its number of sponsors, allowing it to assist more orphans, it was unable to raise the additional funds needed to keep the village project alive.
“We tried so hard and so long, but we just couldn’t get the money,” said Kifle. In 2004, with Blue Nile unable to make sufficient progress, the government took the land back, though Blue Nile continues to sponsor the children.
Despite the setback, Kifle persisted, trusting that God has a reason for everything, and buoyed by the words of a friend who reminded her, “You only fail if you stop trying.”
She draws encouragement from the fact that eight of the group’s sponsored children have made it into college or technical school, and one has graduated from nursing school. Ultimately, Kifle said, Ethiopia’s best hope for the future lies in its next generation, not in dependence on outsiders.
In 2005, a Blue Nile board member and one of its first proponents, Richard Oslund of Seattle, died, leaving the organization $47,000 in his will.
With the orphan village still out of reach, Blue Nile backers chose a more realistic project, construction of a clinic in Ethiopia’s capitol, Addis Ababa, which will be named in Oslund’s honor.
Plans call for the 3,550-square-foot clinic, which will cost about $75,000 to build, to be staffed by an Ethiopian physician and two assistants, whose work would be supplemented by doctors and other health-care workers visiting from the U.S.
Maegan Ashworth, a Blue Nile project coordinator, is currently recruiting up to 15 medical professionals and trainees for a 10-day mission in November.
Kifle, who now operates a service in Seattle sending health-care and chore-service workers to people’s homes, anticipates that about a third of the Ethiopia clinic’s patients will be able to pay for medical services, helping subsidize the care of the less fortunate.
Admittedly, the clinic, which will serve patients of all ages, is a smaller project than Kifle originally conceived, but it’s desperately needed, she said, in a country with one physician for 100,000 residents.
A captivating smile
Most important, it is actually happening. “It’s coming out of the ground like a mushroom. It’s wonderful to see,” said David Hornett, the Blue Nile board member directing the project.
Hornett, a contractor from the Vancouver, B.C. area, was in Ethiopia last month as trenches for the clinic’s foundation were filled with rocks and mortar. He keeps in touch via e-mail with an African foreman on the job.
It was a chance encounter outside an African airport in 2004 led to Hornett’s volunteer work with Blue Nile. At the time, he was backpacking through Africa on his own, making his first visit to Ethiopia.
At the Bahir Dar airport, Hornett was boarding a hotel van when he noticed a woman who was catching the same van loading package after package into the vehicle.
“I had never seen anyone with so much stuff in my life,” said Hornett. The woman was Kifle, taking school supplies and gifts to Blue Nile’s sponsored children. On the ride to town, she told him about Blue Nile and invited him to stop by its office the following day and help hand out the gifts.
He went, largely out of curiosity. But as the session broke up, a young girl with polio, who needed the help of two friends just to walk, flashed him a smile he’ll never forget.
“To see that she could smile, while so many of us in the Western world find more things to grimace about every day, that did it for me,” said Hornett. “I knew I had to get involved.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: U.S. investors don’t need to tell us that. The plan to break up Ethiopia into 9 small countries has been in the works for a while. It is clearly stated in TPLF’s manifesto that calls for the creation of Greater Tigray. To prevent that from happening, every Ethiopian must rally around resistance groups that stand for united Ethiopia, such as EPPF and Ginbot 7.
A U.S. businessman backed by former CIA and state department officials says he has secured a vast tract of fertile land in south Sudan from the family of a notorious warlord, in post-colonial Africa’s biggest private land deal.
Philippe Heilberg, a former Wall Street banker and chairman of New York-based Jarch Capital, told the Financial Times he had gained leasehold rights to 400,000 hectares of land – an area the size of Dubai – by taking a majority stake in a company controlled by the son of Paulino Matip.
Mr Matip fought on both sides in Sudan’s lengthy civil war but became deputy commander of the army in the autonomous southern region after a 2005 peace agreement.
The deal, between Mr Heilberg’s affiliate company in the Virgin Islands and Gabriel Matip, is a striking example of how the recent spike in global commodity food prices has encouraged foreign investors and governments to scramble for control of arable land in Africa, even in its remotest parts.
In contrast to land deals between foreign investors and governments, Mr Heilberg is gambling on a warlord’s continuing control of a region where his militia operated in the civil war between Khartoum and south Sudan.
“You have to go to the guns, this is Africa,” Mr Heilberg said by phone from New York. He refused to disclose how much he had paid for the lease.
Jarch Management Group is linked to Jarch Capital, a US investment company that counts on its board former US state department and intelligence officials, including Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador and expert on Africa, who acts as vice-chairman; and Gwyneth Todd, who was an adviser on Middle Eastern and North African affairs at the Pentagon and under former president Bill Clinton at the White House.
Laws on land ownership in south Sudan remain vague, and have yet to be clarified in a planned land act. For this reason, some foreign experts on Sudan as well as officials in the regional government, speaking on condition of anonymity, doubted Mr Heilberg could assert legal rights over such a vast tract of land. The deal is second only in size to the recent lease of 1.3m hectares by South Korea’s Daewoo from the government of Madagascar.
Mr Heilberg is unconcerned. He believes that several African states, Sudan included, but possibly also Nigeria, Ethiopia and Somalia, are likely to break apart in the next few years, and that the political and legal risks he is taking will be amply rewarded.
“If you bet right on the shifting of sovereignty then you are on the ground floor. I am constantly looking at the map and looking if there is any value,” he said, adding that he was also in contact with rebels in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, dissidents in Ethiopia and the government of the breakaway state of Somaliland, among others.
The company was embroiled in a dispute with the south Sudan government over its claims to exploration rights for oil.
Mr Heilberg said Jarch had no expertise in agricultural development but would be seeking joint venture partners to cultivate the land, which is in one of the remotest parts of Sudan, in a region bordering the Nile river but with no tarred roads.
In sharing my reflections and comments on Seye’s article, posted on to the website Ethiomedia, my main purpose is to open up a debate on the course of action that opposition forces need to take in the face of the increasingly repressive methods of the {www:Woyanne} regime. The glaring evidence that the regime is nowhere near to accepting the verdict of elections any time soon is pushing a growing number of people toward the conviction that Ethiopians and Ethiopia have no other choice than to overthrow the regime by means of armed struggle. Since the political setback following the 2005 rigged election, many people are now saying that the resolution of the Woyanne regime to stay in power by all means, even if the cost is a generalized war between ethnic groups, has made irrelevant the reasons that previously led them to oppose armed struggle. The stubborn and immensely shortsighted resolution by Woyanne to cling to power by all means has shifted the political struggle from the quest for a democratic future to the mere necessity of self-defense and national survival.
Seye’s article originates from the clear perception of the impending danger and suggests ideas as to the best way to avert the danger and map out a better future. The danger of national disintegration with its inevitable ethnic clashes clearly shows that national survival is the common good, which survival should, therefore, become the overriding concern of opposition parties. And the only way to ward off the threat is to unite to defeat those who put the country in danger by their stubbornness to remain the sole ruling body. Seye proposes various means and ideas liable to give a firm and lasting unity to opposition forces, convinced as he is that the continuous failure to unite in a lasting manner is what allows the Woyanne regime to stay in power.
His explanation of why the opposition fails to unite puts the blame on the practice of creating unity before an understanding is reached on major policy issues related to the ethnic question, the constitution, and economic policy. Because opposition forces attempt to unite only to get rid of the EPRDF, the lack of agreement on what should be the post-Woyanne society feeds on mistrusts and divisions.
Since neither democracy nor economic prosperity is possible without national existence, the first principle of unity should be the defense of national integrity. Once agreement is reached on this primordial issue, then a series of measures must be adopted to cement the unity. (1) Opposition forces must create mutual confidence, and they do so if, going against the prevailing culture of polarization, they respect each other’s views and adopt a policy of rapprochement. (2) They must come together around common and agreed goals instead of highlighting their differences. (3) They must learn to see their differences as complementary rather than as causes for hostility, a good example being the conflict over the primacy of group or individual rights when in reality the two are complementary. (4) They must avoid extreme positions so as to target the center, thereby creating a win-win situation to the detriment of exclusion and one-sided victory. (5) They must acquire the quality of farsightedness so as to be able to resolve the numerous and deep problems of Ethiopia. (6) They must drop the habit of creating parties around personalities, just as they must avoid personalizing issues, obvious as it is that the primacy giving to personalities ends up fueling divisive positions.
I want to express my admiration for the sincerity of Seye’s conversion from a war hero to an advocate of democracy and peaceful form of struggle. No less admirable is his denunciation of Woyanne policy after having been one of the top promoters and executors of that policy. However, my purpose is not to examine the reasons for his conversion as they are immaterial to the issue at hand. What matters is the genuineness and feasibility of his proposal to unite the opposition forces. His proposal contains valuable and practical suggestions and reveals the temperament of a man destined for a position of leadership.
What particularly attracted me in his article was his attempt to explain the origin of the culture of confrontation characteristic of Ethiopia’s modernized elites. With total confidence, he traces the culture of confrontation back to the 60s. According to him, our present inability to solve peacefully and democratically our differences emanates from the cultural habits and ideological beliefs developed during the 60s. Indeed, the Cold War has taught us to conceive of politics in terms of polarization and confrontation. What is more, the Marxist-Leninist idea of class struggle has taught us to think of social life in terms of irreconcilable interests leading to violent confrontations that must end with the total defeat of opponents, not to mention the adoption of undemocratic principles of organization, such as democratic centralism and the one-party system.
I fully concur with Seye’s analysis, all the more so as I recently wrote a whole book (Radicalism and Cultural Dislocation in Ethiopia, 1960-1974) depicting the harmful impacts of the events and characteristics of the 60s on the Ethiopian educated elite. One might question the use and validity of dwelling on the past when what we need is to solve our pressing problems of today. For Seye and myself, it is abundantly clear that opposition forces cannot achieve unity unless they get rid of the influence of past conceptions and forms of struggle. The liberation from the power of acquired habits and beliefs begins with awareness. So long as people ignore the hidden forces that condition them, they are unable to change. Just as Sigmund Freud shows that going back into childhood traumas explains misconducts in adult life, thereby offering the possibility of deliverance, so too in becoming aware of bad habits and beliefs developed in the past Ethiopian political elites initiate the healing process.
The process is arduous since it implies self-examination and criticism and, most of all, the courage to reject beliefs that were once cherished and hailed as false and detrimental. I measure the difficult in the very fact that Seye himself, despite his genuine effort, is not successful in liberating himself from the 60s. Take for instance what he says about the “national” question in Ethiopia. He considers the EPRDF’s recognition of the “national” question and the subsequent implementation of a form of political organization designed to assert the rights of nationalities as a positive contribution. Yet his article rejects the idea of class and class struggle inherited from Marxism-Leninism on the ground that it is a divisive and polarizing ideology.
The contradiction is but obvious: just as Seye has discarded class struggle as a divisive and wrong ideology, so too should he reject ethnicization as a fallout of that same mistaken ideology. Unfortunately, he does not; worse yet, he hides the contradiction to himself by engaging in a sophism defending the complementarity between group rights and individual rights, as though it were possible to create a nation out of disparate groups that owe their primary allegiance to sectarian identities.
If Seye had remained faithful to his primary methodological principle according to which our present impediments originate from wrong habits inherited in the 60s, he would have come to the conclusion that the so-called national question is another invention designed to create exclusive constituencies to competing elites in the face of the hegemony of Amhara ruling elite. While democratic and liberal means existed to knock down the Amhara hegemony, rising educated elites adopted the polarizing ideology of class struggle and national question.
Why did these rising elites prefer a divisive ideology to the path of consensus to promote their cause? We find the answer if we notice that, like the idea of class struggle, the national question enables the educated elite to emerge as liberators of oppressed groups and to speak in their name. Not only this messianic positioning crafts them as exclusive representatives of these groups, thereby excluding other competing elites, but it also grants them absolute control over their own constituents. In another word, the national question is none other than an expression of elite conflicts: it is not about oppressed people; it is about elites assembled around ethnic criteria fighting to create reserved and docile constituencies.
This does not mean that I reject ethnicity and sponsor the return to the structure and culture of imperial Ethiopia. The latter is gone for good and we have no reason to wish its resurrection. To try to revive it is to ignore the present reality and force on people an idea of national existence that they are not willing to accept, thereby driving the country into even greater conflicts. It is also to overlook that, like any other human concerns relating to identity, ethnicity craves to be recognized so that the lack of recognition turns into a fanatical attachment.
Let it be added that the path to a democratic and prosperous future is impracticable without the consent and participation of elites parading ethnic identities. I agree with Seye in saying that a consensus reconciling ethnic identity with Ethiopianness must be found. But one condition for reaching a consensus is the demystification of ethnicity: once its political purpose is revealed and accepted, it loses much of its primordialism. Its magnetism dissipates if we indeed show that it is a construct of elite rivalries rather than a natural determination.
In his attempt to explain the metamorphoses of the TPLF, Seyes gives a decisive importance to world events, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, which he says instituted the global hegemony of capitalism and its ideology of free market economy. These events have impacted on the TPLF, forcing it to drop its communist ideology and convert to liberalism and free market economy. However, since in Ethiopia and other third world countries neither liberal democracy nor the free market really prevails, Seye has no means to explain how a decisive factor failed to be decisive. It is inconsistent to say that the TPLF converted to liberalism even as it was dividing Ethiopia along ethnic lines. A sincere conversion to capitalist ideology would have divided Ethiopia on the basis of either economic or administrative feasibility, and not on ethnic criteria resulting in the formation of Bantustans.
The fake conversion of the TPLF to the free market economy and democratic ideals is a crucial issue that should shape the strategic choices of opposition forces in their struggle to remove the regime. Indeed, our major question should be the following: How can one expect the implementation of a genuine ethnic federalism and the respect of democratic electoral process and outcomes under an undemocratic regime? Unfortunately, Seye’s paper dodges the issue and assumes that a fair democratic process can be expected to be in place.
The puzzle here is that Seye is absolutely convinced that the present regime is both undemocratic and highly dangerous to national survival. He strongly underlines that it survives by means of generalized corruption and nepotism. But then, how can such an undemocratic and corrupt regime be expected to respect the rules of democracy? In light of the fake conversion of the TPLF, is it honest to maintain that a peaceful form of democratic struggle can bring about changes?
Seye’s inconsistencies result from the strategic choice of peaceful struggle that is forced to believe that victory is possible if the opposition is united enough. In other words, the EPRDF has no other option but to cave in if it faces a united opposition. I absolutely respect this view, but I hasten to add that the regime will not admit defeat so long as the struggle is confined to elections and winning votes. What really undermines dictatorships is not the lack of majority vote, but forms of struggle that make them unable to function.
The bare truth is that Seye has a limited notion of nonviolent struggle, since he reduces it to electioneering. He calls for the respect of the existing constitution and only supports forms of political actions that it sanctions. He thinks that there are only two choices: either one respects the constitution and struggle to change it through legal means or one has recourse to armed struggle to change it. Yet a nonviolent form of struggle offers a third choice, which is to force a government to change by means of noncooperation.
Noncooperation is a peaceful form of struggle in that it never confronts violently the government. Instead, it uses peaceful means, such as strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, etc, to force the government to make concessions or even to overthrow it. The purpose is to undermine the proper functioning of the established order through the withdrawal of cooperation and consent.
Seye’s main goal is to defeat the EPRDF electorally by forging a lasting and large unity of opposition forces. But he fails to explain how opposition forces, even so united, can be successful in view of the fact that, as he himself admits, the EPRDF is undermining its own constitution through undemocratic measures. In a word, his analysis does not propose a viable solution. Unity is necessary, but not enough: new forms of nonviolent struggles must be designed to put pressure on the government or even to topple it if necessary.
My contention is that it is high time that opposition leaders who advocate peaceful forms of struggle and the Ethiopian people come to the conclusion that the electoral game cannot provide the expected results unless other forms of peaceful struggle expressing withdrawal of cooperation are added to the repertoire. We must not constrain nonviolent movement by legality to the point of making it powerless when it is an active method of struggle whose goal is to bring about social change through noncooperation. And the longer opposition leaders cling to the hope of bringing change solely through electoral means, the less able they will be to prevail over those who advocate armed struggle as the only solution, with all the unpredictable and dire consequences that an armed conflict would entail in present day Ethiopia.
Wrongly or rightly, I have come to believe that Birtukan’s imprisonment as a result of her refusal to comply and her decision to go on hunger strike announces the need to upgrade the nonviolent movement in Ethiopia with new techniques of resistance. I am not sure whether other opposition leaders have come to the same conclusion. At any rate, Birtukan seems to say that the time has come to transcend electioneering and energize the peaceful struggle by the inclusion of non-cooperative forms of protest.
Ethiopian-born Swedish chef Marcus Samuelsson, founder of New York’s acclaimed Aquavit restaurant, is among those being tipped as possible candidates to prepare meals for Barack Obama at the White House.
In an interview with the AP news agency, Tim Ryan, who heads the Culinary Institute of America, named the Ethiopian-born Swede as one high-profile chef the incoming president may consider to cook for certain state dinners.
“Chefs are great performers. So to take a page from [former President John F.] Kennedy’s playbook and recognize the artistic performances of the culinary greats, each state dinner could be organized by different high-profile chefs,” Ryan told AP.
He added that including Samuelsson in the line-up of top chefs called in to prepare meals for special occasions would allow president-elect Obama to “capture some of the star power but in a practical and realistic way”.
Samuelsson, who was raised in Gothenburg, traveled to New York in 1991, and within a few years had risen to be Aquavit’s executive chef at the age of 24.
While confirming he was aware of the speculation about a job at the White House, Samuelsson through a spokesperson declined to comment further on the matter to the Metro newspaper.
Other names circulating as possible White House chef candidates include Art Smith, Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef and Rick Bayless, whose Topolobampo restaurant in Chicago is one of Obama’s favourites.
(AFP) – Sweden’s government on Friday expressed deep concern over the arrest of an Ethiopian opposition leader last week after her pardon from a life sentence was revoked.
Authorities arrested and sentenced Birtukan Midekssa, the head of the Unity for Democracy Justice party, to life in prison last week after she reportedly said she had not expressed remorse to obtain a pardon in 2007.
The 35-year-old woman, who was detained with dozens of opposition figures and supporters in the aftermath of disputed 2005 elections, was at the end of December given a three-day ultimatum by the authorities to confirm or deny the reports.
The justice ministry announced on December 30 that she had resumed serving her life term.
“The Scope for democracy and pluralism is shrinking in {www:Ethiopia},” Carlsson said.
“The imprisonment of Mrs Midekssa and the recently adopted law regulating the activities and funding of NGOs (non-governmental organisations) are examples of this negative development,” she said.
She was referring to a law adopted by the Ethiopian parliament on Tuesday barring organisations that receive more than 10 percent of their funding from abroad from working in such fields as human rights.
Birtukan’s party made its most spectacular electoral gains ever in the 2005 polls and cried foul over reported fraud, claiming it was robbed of victory by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling party.
The ensuing unrest left close to 200 people dead and drew international condemnation.
Ethiopia’s next general elections are expected to be held in 2010.
Duguma Hundie, the owner of DH Gheda Industries and one of the richest businessmen in Ethiopia, has died today.
Ato Duguma is the third prominent businessman to die within the past 30 days in Ethiopia, Awramba Times reported.
Two weeks ago Yohannes Getaneh and Asfaw Yirga, owners of Ase Marbel and Getaneh Trading reportedly committed suicide.
Some family members of Ato Duguma said that chocking is the cause of his death, but business associates suspect that it is related to politics and bank loan.
The Meles regime is currently persecuting and confiscating the properties of several high profile businessman who are not members of the ruling party. In December last month, it has frozen the bank accounts of 23 business owners.
Duguma Hundie is said to be the 3rd richest businessman in Ethiopia next to Al Amoudi and Samuel Tafesse.
Meles Zenawi’s family and top members of the Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne) are in fact the richest people in Ethiopia, but it is difficult to estimate their wealth.
In an interview with the AP news agency, Tim Ryan, who heads the Culinary Institute of America, named the Ethiopian-born Swede as one high-profile chef the incoming president may consider to cook for certain state dinners.