Amman, Jordan – World Indoor 3000m champion Tariku Bekele has pulled out of the Ethiopian squad for the 37th IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Amman, Jordan, Saturday 28 March, after sustaining a training ground injury.
The 22-year-old, who had finished fourth in the trials last month and was a junior bronze medallist in 2006 dropped out of training last week with an ankle injury. He had hoped to recover in time to compete for the championships in Amman. But after presenting medical evidence to selectors this week, he was relieved of his duties with the national team to focus on rehabilitation.
Dino Sefer, who won the European XC Permit meeting in Hannut, Belgium earlier in the year and finished seventh in the trials, replaces T. Bekele in the squad which flew to Amman in Tuesday evening.
Tariku’s absence is the latest blow for Ethiopia’s hopes of challenging Kenya for both individual and team honours in Amman. The green-vested East Africans are already without Tariku’s elder brother and eleven-time world cross country champion Kenenisa, 2006 silver medallist Sileshi Sihine, and three-time women’s champion Tirunesh Dibaba, who are all nursing long-term injuries.
Without their established stars competing, Ethiopia will be looking to a young squad in a bid to repeat their domination of last year’s edition where they won all four individual and two of the four team titles in Edinburgh, Scotland.
There are big hopes for names like Feyissa Lelisa, 14th in the junior race last year, to make the step up to senior ranks after his dominating performances in the domestic cross country circuit this season. All- African Games 10000m silver medallist Tadesse Tola and the experienced Gebregziabher Gebremariam should also provide experience to the young squad.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (Reuters) — Ethiopians strolling on Jan Meda playing pitches have been shocked for the past few months by what many of them believe to be a group of foreign men locked in a violent brawl.
“‘What kind of people are doing this?’ I thought when I first saw it,” said Dawit Tekle Beyene, a 31-year-old who works at a donkey sanctuary. “They are fighting each other.”
Watchful Welshman David Thomas takes care to approach Ethiopians who stumble across the spectacle to tell them that it is not a fight. The men are playing rugby.
Still viewed with suspicion by many locals — and once moved on by the police for causing a disturbance — the Addis Nyalas Rugby Club have now attracted Beyene and other Ethiopians into their ranks.
The ultimate ambition for Ethiopians — famous for their athletics prowess — is international seven-a-side competition.
“Seven-a-side rugby is a form of rugby which is a lot more accessible to smaller nations and nations which lack the necessary mass of rugby players to play 15-a-side rugby,” said Thomas, a 25-year-old microfinance consultant and president of the club.
The team are using membership fees from foreigners and money raised from an exhibition tournament to water and seed the dilapidated Jan Meda — a public amenity — and pay for health insurance for their Ethiopian players in a country that is still desperately poor.
The Sevens World Cup is taking place in Dubai from tomorrow, but Thomas said international competition was years away for the Ethiopians.
However, he believes, with more young people joining the team’s ranks all the time, the Nyalas — the only rugby team in Ethiopia — are paving the way.
“Realistically for Ethiopian rugby, especially considering the speed and athleticism of some of our players, seven-a-side rugby is a much more feasible form of rugby for us to try and work towards and specialize in,” he said.
The club have now invited teams from Kenya and Ivory Coast to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
An Orthodox Christian church stands in the middle of the playing fields in the hills overlooking the city where, every Saturday, the small band of men scrummaging, rucking and mauling are surrounded by eight or nine soccer matches played by football-mad Ethiopians in fake Premier League jerseys. Street children spin rugby balls from their hands as Ethiopian teenagers learn how to tackle.
The team that started as a hobby for the expatriate community of aid staff and diplomats supplement their growing number of Ethiopian members with players from rugby-loving countries such as Britain, France, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
“Allez! Allez!” comes the cry from one side of the pitch as attacking techniques are taught. “C’mon! Tackle him!” is the shout from the other side of the field, where defensive plays are practised. More languages ring out as a game begins.
“There was a problem with language when we started,” said Daniel Tegene, an 18-year-old student. “But now we are learning the words involved with rugby and so we’ve learned how to communicate with the foreigners and can learn the game.”
The team played in the grounds of a private school for two years and the decision to move to a public playing pitch was made to recruit more Ethiopians. “We’re turning ourselves into an Ethiopian rugby club and not an expats’ rugby club,” said Thomas.
Demes Mamo, a taxi driver, parks his cab at the side of the pitch every week and pulls on one of the new jerseys the team imported from Britain. Each one has an Ethiopian flag on the arm and a crest featuring Ethiopia’s nyala antelope.
“Other taxi drivers think I’m crazy to play rugby,” said Demes, 31. “But I love this game.
“Maybe one day there will be an Ethiopian team. That is my dream,” he said.
MOROGORO, TANZANIA (Guardian) — The Police Force in {www:Morogoro Region} of Tanzania, in collaboration with Immigration officers, have apprehended 10 foreigners believed to be Ethiopians. They said they were on transit to South Africa.
Speaking to journalists at his office yesterday, the Acting Regional Police Commander, Samuel Mpasa, said the aliens were arrested on Tuesday evening after police was tipped off by one of the passengers in the bus they were travelling in. The bus, belonging to Hood company with registration number T903 ARM was Mbeya bound from Arusha.
He said they arrested them immediately after the bus arrived at Msamvu Bus Station in Morogoro municipality.
The RPC mentioned the arrested as Beyene Wasoro (35), Demeke Abebe (29), Gizachew Bekele (22), Tekele Shinde (30) and Girma Otole (35).
Others were Tesfaye Anulo (32), Tafera Eyiso (32), Yaikob Kelbiso (31), Zewude Tumso (29) and Teka Haile (36).
He said after police officers entered the bus, three of them hid under their seats.
The RPC said that during interrogations they said that their aim was to go to South Africa and that they would have just spent a few days in Mbeya.
Mpasa called on the community, especially passengers to inform the police presence of illegal aliens whenever they suspect them.
TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir defied an international arrest warrant by traveling to Libya on Thursday to hold talks with leader Muammar Gaddafi, a Libyan official said.
Bashir arrived in the Libyan city of Sirte to have lunch with Gaddafi, who is also the current president of the African Union, the official said on condition of anonymity.
The visit is a show of defiance to the arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Darfur in western Sudan.
Gaddafi said last month that “foreign forces” including Israel were stoking the Darfur conflict and urged the International Criminal Court to stop proceedings against Bashir.
The veteran Libyan leader says Africa can solve its own problems without outside meddling and has made a number of attempts to broker peace between Darfur rebels and the Khartoum government.
A Sudanese presidential palace source and a foreign ministry official had earlier said Bashir, who risks arrest any time he travels abroad, was on his way to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
The trip is Bashir’s third abroad since the ICC issued the arrest warrant on March 4. He also visited neighbors Egypt and Eritrea this week following invitations from those countries for talks on the ICC move.
Experts say at least 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2.7 million driven from their homes in almost six years of ethnic and political fighting in Darfur in western Sudan. Khartoum says 10,000 people have died.
The Sudanese government said shortly after the ICC decision that Bashir would defy the warrant by traveling further afield to an Arab summit in Qatar next week.
But Sudanese officials have released statements raising questions over the wisdom of the trip, prompting speculation Sudan may send another representative.
Qatar’s prime minister has said the Gulf state was coming under pressure not to receive Bashir, though he did not say from whom.
(Reporting by Andrew Heavens; Writing by Cynthia Johnston and Tom Pfeiffer; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Is there any thing Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi and his tribal juna that are in charge of the Ethiopian regime can do right? What does the dumb dictator, whose only expertise is killing people to stay in power, know about the coffee market?
In the latest scrimmage in the battle to control Ethiopia’s coffee trade, the government has suspended the licenses of the country’s largest coffee exporters, it is reported today. Until things get sorted out, no coffee is leaving Ethiopia.
The government accuses the exporters of keeping coffee off the international market until prices rise. Coffee is Ethiopia’s number one export and the beleaguered country’s primary source of foreign currency.
This is the latest twist in a saga being watched closely by both the specialty coffee community and those concerned about alleviating poverty in the developing world.
In 2006 the Ethiopian government trademarked “Yirgacheffe,” the name of the country’s most celebrated coffee-growing region, hoping to use its cachet to help all their coffee exports. Then in December, the government mandated that all coffee growers sell their crops through the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, to insure that all beans fetched an adequate price. Some antipoverty groups thought this would help all Ethiopiain coffee growers.
It meant, though, that coffee roasters in the United States and other coffee importing nations would not be able to buy from specific growers whose beans they prize the most. It effectively ends direct trade for single-origin and microlot coffee.
George Howell of Terroir Coffee, a respected roasting company near Boston, Also points out that the government’s efforts might cheapen the brand. He wrote in his newsletter:
“What scares me is that the trademark route in no way guarantees that the coffee even comes from the particular ‘designated’ region (ironically while Yirgacheffe now becomes a trademark, any coffee lover thinks of it immediately as a region). It is merely a trademark, without any guarantee of origin or traceability.”
Lalibela, Ethiopia – On the afternoon Feb. 21, I was catching up on some work in the office, when I was distracted by a man dressed in white rushing past the window, closely followed by Hafte, the guard’s son. I thought he was coming into the office, but when he didn’t, I didn’t think anything of it and simply carried on with my work.
A few minutes later he did come into the office – a tall Ethiopian man wrapped in a gabi, wearing a hat, and carrying a ‘cow tail’ stick which people swish around to get rid of the flies. He came over, shook my hand and said a lot of things to me in Amharic, while Hafte sniggered behind him. I’m used to random people coming up and speaking to me as if I am fluent in Amharic, so I went along with it, shaking his hand, saying hello etc. A totally normal part of my day!
Then he grabbed me and tried to pull me out of my chair, which is not so normal. I managed to rip my tee shirt out of his grip, and I pushed him away, more shocked that anything, while Hafte tried to guide him out of the office, telling me he’s got mental health problems (I believe the phrase was ‘he’s crazy’). Okay, I can deal with mental health stuff, no problem. So when he refused to leave the office and instead sat down at the desk opposite me, chattering all the while, I just got on with my work and left Hafte to deal with him.
Then he started to grab things – my bottle of water, my roll of tissue paper, and then my bag …
This is when it started getting a little silly. Hafte was holding my bag, stopping him from running off with it, and the man had stuck the bottle of water between his legs so we couldn’t get it (well, we could, but this man has thighs like a vice!). Hafte had stopped him running off with my bag, but the man was now refusing to leave the office, just sitting at the desk causing as much havoc as he could considering Hafte was pinning him to the chair.
Now, this was a bit of an inconvenience for me, in the sense that I wanted to get on with my work and the mad man sitting opposite me wasn’t helping, but I didn’t fear for my life or my things. He’d hurt me a bit when he grabbed me, but I guessed Hafte would stop him from disappearing with all my stuff, and other than that he was just annoying. I managed to move my laptop out of his reach and take my passport, money and phone out of my bag, though, just in case.
However, he didn’t leave (with or without my bag) and he started to get more and more aggressive, throwing a punch at Hafte and screaming about ‘faranjis’ – I didn’t ask for translation. So I went to get some help from my project manager’s house, thinking a few men would be able to lift him out of the office. Unfortunately, only H, his girlfriend was there. She went to get the police, while a merry band of people gathered around my office – the female teachers from our school, who had just come back from market, Yeshimembit, the woman who bakes injera for me, and a little girl who simply appeared from nowhere.
A little while later, as Hafte continued to hold this man and stop him from stealing my things, one of A’s friends arrived, closely followed by a policeman. Okay, I thought, they’ll get him out. I mean, all they have to do is lift him out of the office – there are two of them and one of him, right?
I moved out of the way, while the policeman asked the man to move out of the office. He obviously didn’t particularly want to go, and a few minutes later I saw him thrown out of the office by the two of them.I thought it was over, then the policeman smacked him round the head and pushed him so hard he fell to the floor. In a split second before it happened, I saw what was coming – the policeman kicked the man, hard, in the head. Then he did it again. I cried out – the man was out of the office, he was lying on the floor, he wasn’t doing anything. Stop it!
Nobody else thought this was a problem. They all stood there and watched as the policeman kicked and beat the man who was lying on the floor, posing no threat to anyone. I tried to stop the policeman myself, but Aman’s friend pulled me back, telling me to leave it. The policeman took two seconds to tell me ‘it’s no problem’, then pulled the man to his feet and started to push him down the stone stairs.
What could I do? I didn’t want the man hurt, I just wanted him out of the office and to stop trying to hurt me and Hafte, or trying to take my stuff. The man is sick, not bad. Instead, I stood by, helpless (apart from the noise I made), while he was beaten and then dragged off to a prison, where he is likely to be beaten again.
As everyone stood around, totally unconcerned, telling me ‘it’s normal in Ethiopia’ and ‘it’s no problem’, I shut myself in my office and sobbed.
It’s not seeing the physical violence that upsets me; I’ve seen dead children lying in the road in Addis Ababa, and I was there as a man drowned in front of his devastated daughter in Blackpool. What really affects me is the casual cruelty that Ethiopians are capable of inflicting on anyone who doesn’t conform.
It’s not the first time I’ve seen this here. I now refuse to go to John Café in Lalibela (which is a considerable sacrifice considering the size of this town!) after I saw the way the owner treated another mentally disabled man. My loud protests stopped her from hitting him in this instance, but she humiliated and treated him worse than a dog, and I refuse to give my money to someone who does that.
Objectively, these are isolated instances where two people have been cruel and violent towards someone they see is worth less than them. It’s not unusual in any country. The thing that distresses me, though, is how ‘mainstream’ this attitude is. This afternoon, educated people who would tell you that they believe everyone is equal, and human rights apply to all, stood around and watched as a policeman kicked a man in the head simply for being mentally ill — and more than that, thought it was the right thing to do. In the café, a crowd of people which included the town’s bank manager and members of local government, sat around and laughed at the spectacle. All of these people call themselves committed Christians. Didn’t Jesus say ‘what you do to the least of my people, you do to me‘?
‘He’s not normal’ is often offered by way of explanation. Anyone who is different is not considered a human being and not worthy of the protection everyone else expects. To be honest, it’s not usual here to argue against a policeman – I can get away with it, because they know I’m protected by my British Passport in ways the average Ethiopian is not. But even after the policeman had gone, my tears were seen as something bewildering. He’s not normal, you see, the policeman did what anyone would have done.
I know I am tired and shocked, but it is afternoons like these that make me want to pack up and head home. Why on earth should I have given up all my home comforts, my friends, my life and my job to come and help people who treat others this way?
(Click here for more on Jenny Higgins work in Ethiopia)
Amman, Jordan – World Indoor 3000m champion Tariku Bekele has pulled out of the Ethiopian squad for the 37th IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Amman, Jordan, Saturday 28 March, after sustaining a training ground injury.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (Reuters) — Ethiopians strolling on Jan Meda playing pitches have been shocked for the past few months by what many of them believe to be a group of foreign men locked in a violent brawl.
Speaking to journalists at his office yesterday, the Acting Regional Police Commander, Samuel Mpasa, said the aliens were arrested on Tuesday evening after police was tipped off by one of the passengers in the bus they were travelling in. The bus, belonging to Hood company with registration number T903 ARM was Mbeya bound from Arusha.
TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir defied an international arrest warrant by traveling to Libya on Thursday to hold talks with leader Muammar Gaddafi, a Libyan official said.
The government accuses the exporters of keeping coffee off the international market until prices rise. Coffee is Ethiopia’s number one export and the beleaguered country’s primary source of foreign currency.
It’s not the first time I’ve seen this here. I now refuse to go to John Café in Lalibela (which is a considerable sacrifice considering the size of this town!) after I saw the way the owner treated another mentally disabled man. My loud protests stopped her from hitting him in this instance, but she humiliated and treated him worse than a dog, and I refuse to give my money to someone who does that.