The following is a sad story. I enjoyed being back in Addis. People are amazing, and last year as a tourist I discovered the beauties of this culturally rich country. But there is a dark side, that not for being dark is less real.
Walking the streets of the old Addis Ababa, where I stay, is a humbling experience. Not only extreme poverty is evident, by the large numbers of beggars of all ages walking, laying, chasing you on the streets, but by the terrible conditions of many: polio, blindness, leper, amputated limbs, third degree burns, leave a sensation of impotence, of shame of how many times we complain for small things in life. Yes Lole, we are privileged.
The last night in Addis, Hilmer, the smuggler, and I went to check out the Piazza area nightlife. Hilmer asks what do I think of the girls in front of us, lying against the wall.
“They should go to bed.”
“Yeah, but with whom?”
I didn’t realize it until he said it so.
“…but they are thirteen, fourteen, no more than that…”
“But they know what they are doing.”
Hilmer approaches one of them. She seems shy, and can’t speak English, except for…’one-hundred birr’ (about eleven dollars). Two guys immediately approach, offering to translate. Later they would ask for a beer, of course.
Hilmer was able to drive down the rate to fifty birr. The he said goodbye and we continued walking…he was not going to do it, but wanted to seefor how little these little girls would go for. I was silent the whole time, ashamed of even being there.
We walk on, and a drunk guy is molesting a girl selling gum, cigarettes, candies…and condoms. Hilmer and I approach, and totally casual, I stand aside of the girl, while telling the smiling drunk that ‘she is my friend, she is with me’. The drunk desisted and left. The girl, called Salam (Peace), smiled.
When we got out of the next bar less than an hour later, Salam was outside waiting for me. She run and hugged me, and said something in Amharic. I thought she was just grateful. A twenty-something guy is with her.
“She is my sister,” he said. “She wants to go home with you.”
The guy, who turns out was not Salam’s brother, but an elementary school teacher, said that she had never been with a man, and that she would go with me for 200 birr ( about 22 bucks).
I took Salam’s hand between mine, and told her, slowly, that I was her friend, and I was not trying to help so I could sleep with her. I am not sure she got 100% of the message, but she let me go. A beer later, the German and I just left the area. I was angry and depressed.
(Garowe Online) MOGADISHU – The Ethiopian Woyanne army’s top two generals serving in Somalia have been recalled to Addis Ababa.
A private plane transported Gen. Gabre and Gen. Yohannis from Aden Adde International Airport, in the Somali capital Mogadishu, according to sources at the airport.
The two generals’ Sunday trip to Addis Ababa is linked to growing discord among the Somali government’s top leaders [puppets] –- mainly, President Abdullahi Yusuf and Prime Minister Nur Adde Hassan Hussein, who have been at odds for the past week.
President Yusuf reinstated close ally Mohamed Dheere as Mogadishu’s mayor, two days after the Cabinet dismissed the mayor in a vote proposed by the Prime Minister.
Confidential sources close to the Somali President tell Garowe Online that Yusuf called Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi and accused Gen. Gabre and Gen. Yohannis of “being part of the conspiracy” to oust Mohamed Dheere, an ex-warlord who enjoyed Addis Ababa’s Woyanne’s support for years.
Also, President Yusuf reportedly rejected the Ethiopian leader’s Woyanne’s offer to mediate between him and the Prime Minister, the sources added.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Nur Adde named four new Cabinet ministers after 10 ministers announced they quit the transitional government yesterday.
Tegbar gives 1 point for each of the Kinjit’s 8 points peace proposal that UDJ successfully accomplishes, and 0 point for those that it fails to deliver. We publish the Score Card every month.
As in June, for the of month July 2008 the Score is again 0 out of 8
Tegbar hopes that UDJ will perform better next month. Below is the result.
Kinjit’s 8 Points Score
1. The Restructuring of the Election Board into an Independent body;
Score: 0
2. Freedom of and access to All Media;
Score: 0
3. Independent legal system (free from Woyanne party control);
Score: 0
4. An Independent Commission to investigate the killings of innocent Ethiopians;
Score: 0
5. Non-involvement of armed forces or police in political affairs;
Score: 0
6. Reinstatement of Parliamentary procedures and Governance of Addis Ababa in accordance with the verdict of the people;
Score: 0
7. Release of all political prisoners;
Score: 0
8. Independent commission or body to adjudicate the above.
(AP) — Bill Clinton says making sure that HIV-infected children in the developing world are well-fed is crucial in fending off the virus.
Clinton says he saw children in Ethiopia who were so malnourished they couldn’t absorb antiretroviral drugs. The former president, who was in Senegal on the final day of a four-nation African tour, says combating the virus is complicated by the sharp spikes in food and oil prices. He says the world has to re-examine how it produces food.
Clinton’s foundation has negotiated agreements to lower the price of rapid HIV tests and anti-AIDS drugs in the developing world and has collaborated with the Geneva-based UNITAID, a U.N.-backed fund that helps supply low-cost antiretroviral drugs.
He is heading to Mexico City to attend an international AIDS conference that starts Monday.
In this piece, we meet Mulatu Astatke, the father of Ethiopian jazz. A pioneering ‘global citizen,’ Astatke became in 1959 the first African to ever attend the famous Berkelee College of Music in Boston. He played with Duke Ellington in the 70s and has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the US since Jim Jarmusch featured his music in the soundtrack to the film, “Broken Flowers.”
Astatke is famous in Ethiopia for modifying the traditional instrument, the krar, so it can play jazz scales. American bandleader Russ Gershon calls Astatke “a conduit,” who has brought modernism and jazz to Ethiopia while bringing Ethiopia’s extremely diverse tribal culture to the world stage. As part of his constant ebb and flow between the US and Addis, Astatke is now at Harvard for the year, where we talk with him about specific contributions he maintains Ethiopian culture has made to jazz as a whole. Click below to listen
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — A bomb hidden under a pile of garbage killed at least 20 people, half of them women who were sweeping the street in Somalia’s capital, witnesses and doctors said Sunday.
The explosion and overnight attacks on military bases ended a brief period of relative calm that followed the signing of a peace deal between the government and the insurgents it is fighting. The agreement was already in jeopardy after the moderate cleric who signed it on behalf of the Islamic opposition movement was replaced by a hard-liner.
Several witnesses said the scene of Sunday’s explosion was littered with blood and body parts, and described hearing the screams of the wounded as bystanders tried to help. Salah Adde said he counted 15 bodies, including 10 female street cleaners.
“I saw an old women who lost two legs and a hand, she was bleeding and later died before our eyes but we could do nothing as we ourselves needed help,” Asha Ahmed, a 45-year-old woman who was wounded in the leg by shrapnel, told AP by phone from Medina hospital.
Dahir Dhere, the head of the hospital, said 47 wounded people were admitted — mostly women and children — and five died. Many were in critical condition, he said.
“We do not have enough doctors and enough operational theaters, it takes some time before all patients get access to emergency treatment,” he said. “They are lying in the corridors, and some bled to death.”
Hawa Aden, one of the women who survived from the explosion, said the device was hidden near an Ethiopian a Woyanne base on a main road often used by officials and may have detonated after a street cleaner attempted to shovel up the trash covering the bomb.
In a separate overnight attack, Islamic insurgents reportedly targeted the military bases of Somali government troops and their Ethiopian Woyanne allies in north Mogadishu’s Towfiq neighborhood, according to a witness.
Resident Mohamed Deq said he saw the bodies of three government soldiers lying in the street. Authorities did not return calls seeking comment.
Somalia has been at war since a group of warlords overthrew a socialist dictator in 1991 and then spent years fighting each other.
On Saturday, 10 of the U.N.-backed government’s 15 ministers broke with the prime minister and announced they would resign.
Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein said Saturday that the resignations were designed “to derail the ongoing reconciliation process.”
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Associated Press Writer Mohamed Sheikh Nor contributed to this report.
In this piece, we meet Mulatu Astatke, the father of Ethiopian jazz. A pioneering ‘global citizen,’ Astatke became in 1959 the first African to ever attend the famous Berkelee College of Music in Boston. He played with Duke Ellington in the 70s and has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the US since Jim Jarmusch featured his music in the soundtrack to the film, “Broken Flowers.”