My Africa

We are still colonised

2021-11-15T22:39:00.005+03:00

Colonize: to send settlers to a place to establish political and economic control over it.

Colonize synonyms: overrun, occupy, take over, seize, capture, annex, subjugate, hegemonize.

Colonization has taken place all over the world. It has taken place using various types of pretenses and terms. When kings colonized a place in the name of their empires, they called it annexation or a conquest. When a military force colonized a place, they called it a siege or a coup. As a country or a state colonized a place and its people, they called it a take-over or occupancy or even colonization itself. No matter when it happened in time or how it was termed, it will always have the same definition: to take control of a particular foreign place for the sake of political, economic or social gain and dominance. It has happened countless times between different societies and civilizations in history.

Ancient and medieval colonialism was practiced by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the crusaders, among others. However, colonialism in its modern sense was practiced mainly by Europeans around the 14th century. Some historians identify three waves of European colonialism. The three main countries in the first wave of European colonialism were Portugal, Spain and the early Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans conquered South Eastern Europe, the Middle East and much of Northern and Eastern Africa between 1359 and 1653. The Portuguese started the long age of European colonization with the conquest of Ceuta, Morocco in 1415, and the conquest and discovery of other African territories and islands. These consecutive conquests would start the movement known as the Age of Discoveries. This would later be taken over by the Spanish exploration of the Americas, the coasts of Africa, the Middle East, India, and East Asia. The expansion achieved by Spain and Portugal caught the attention of Britain, France, and the Netherlands. The entrance of these three powers into the Caribbean and North America perpetuated European colonialism in these regions.

The second wave of European colonialism began with Britain's involvement in Asia in support of the British East India Company. Other countries such as France, Portugal, and the Netherlands also had involvement in European expansion in Asia. And the third wave ("New Imperialism") consisted of the Scramble for Africa, regulated by the terms of the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885. The conference effectively divided Africa among the European powers. Vast regions of Africa came under the sway of Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, and Spain.

Researcher Mary Gilmartin argues that these three waves of colonialism were linked to capitalism. The first wave of European expansion involved exploring the world to find new revenue and perpetuating European feudalism. The second wave focused on developing the mercantile capitalism system and the manufacturing industry in Europe. The last wave of European colonialism solidified all capitalistic endeavors by providing new markets and raw materials. However, several years after the end of New Imperialism, these powers have changed their face and have found a way to continue subjugating and profiting over "3rd world" countries in this modern society. This leads us to the topic of neocolonialism.

Neocolonialism: the practice of using economic, political and cultural imperialism as well as globalization and conditional aid to influence a developing country instead of the previous methods of direct military control or indirect political control.

This is an emerging power dynamic mainly being practiced by China, Britain, USA, France, Belgium, UAE, Portugal, Russia and many more. Because neocolonialism developed as a concept during the decolonization period of Africa, a great deal of focus was put on the continuing affiliation between the colony and the colonizer, which often left the colonized country open to economic "partnership" and therefore, exploitation. However, the term is now used in a much broader context as it is being practiced between countries which have no historical colonial connection. After achieving their independence, most African countries struggled to regain their economic and political stability, while most developed countries saw an opportunity to continue the influence or power they had over us. They then seized this opportunity by giving something in the name of conditional aid, and taking something else that is a hundred times more valuable. Just as Mallence Bart-Williams once said, "while one hand gives under the flashing light of cameras, the other takes in the shadows... it's super sweet of you to come with your colored paper in exchange for our gold and diamonds."

Currently, neocolonialism is not only being practiced, but also being vastly and quickly expanded. They give us loans, in an effort to have an economic control over us when we fail to repay it. Sometimes, they forgive those loans as a way to hold a political upper hand. They loot our minerals while we’re too busy celebrating the loans they forgave. They provide us with homogeneous and Eurocentric education systems that will ultimately fail in our heterogeneous African societies. These colonialist powers use their media to bombard the world with dehumanizing images of us, so that the world keeps helping us, and we keep depending on the world and consequently on them. It’s like the famous Chinese proverb: “give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day, teach him how to fish, and he’ll eat forever”. They give us fish in the form of loans, food, infrastructures and other aid. They keep giving us fish instead of teaching us how to catch it ourselves. And so, when the time comes and we’re hungry, we’ll keep looking at them, instead of looking within ourselves. We become dependent on these countries, and that dependency is exactly what they will use to exploit us, as it will take away the self-sufficiency that we are capable of.

The most prominent example of this exploitation can be the fact that they give us finished products in the name of charity instead of teaching us how to make them using our own resources. A real charity, would be them giving the initial machines needed to convert our raw materials into finished products and then buying those finished products. But instead, their “charity” consists of them buying our raw materials for cheap prices and selling the end products back to us at far more expensive rates. When we can't afford to buy these expensive end products, they give it to us in the form of a loan. When we can't pay these loans back, they then use that upper hand to gain a share of our land, companies, and resources. These newly gained resources will then be used to attain political and economic benefits that unbelievably outweigh the “charity” that was initially given.

The sad part is, most Africans know that charity is rarely ever free. And we know that they're taking ten times as much as they're giving. But still, the need to sustain ourselves for today, keeps making us blind to the fact that we're giving away things that we can use to sustain ourselves forever. The need to eat the fish today, makes us unable to ask how they caught it in the first place and how to catch it ourselves. Therefore, even though we officially achieved the complete decolonization of Africa in 1975, we, Africans in 2021, are still colonized. And unless we instill a generational cultural reform and stop the cycle of dependency on foreign countries, we will always continue to be.

The links below are videos by Mallence Bart-Williams and Johnny Harris, respectively. They both shed a lot of light into the main topic of this piece. Feel free to click the links and watch these videos for further interpretation into this issue .

https://youtu.be/AfnruW7yERA

https://youtu.be/aJSD8XV3qzE

What should we do for impaired people in Ethiopia?

2021-09-25T22:04:00.002+03:00

Looking around the various neighborhoods of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, we often encounter a lot of individuals with different kinds of impairments. Some of these people are able to function well and contribute to the overall growth of the society, regardless, of the hurdles brought about by their impairments. And a few of these individuals are able to use their impairments as an advantage point in order to do certain tasks that most regular people can’t do. But unfortunately, a majority of impaired individuals in Ethiopia are disabled due to a combination of psychological, social, political, and economic factors. Hence, I want to talk about some of the impaired individuals that I regularly encounter, discuss whether they have been disabled and make recommendations about what we, as a society, should do in order to alleviate some burdens suffered by these individuals. But first, it is important to denote the difference between impairment and disability. Impairment is the lack or abnormality of a physical or psychological function in an individual. While disability is any condition that makes it difficult for a person to do certain activities or interact with the world around them. It happens, not just as a result of an individual's impairment, but also because of factors in their environment that prevent the world from being easily accessible to them. With this said, let's go to the subjects of this piece.

The first story that I want to share is that of a man in the neighborhood of Winget. This man has autism, which is a developmental disorder that is characterized by difficulty in social interaction and restricted or repetitive patterns of thought and behavior. Because of this impairment, he is not able to effectively communicate with people and is often mistreated by them. Some of the people in his town have superstitions that lead them to believe that autism is caused by a curse that came due to the parents’ actions. And since his mother didn’t have a husband, they blamed his condition on her for giving birth without ever being married. As a result, their neighbors discriminated against both of them.

When he was a child, he couldn’t go to school like his other peers. This was partly because his mother feared that the other students would bully him in the same manner as the kids in his neighborhood. However, the main reason that he couldn’t go to school was that, there was no curriculum to support autistic kids in public schools and his mother couldn’t afford any of the private institutions that were specially designed for students with his condition. Since Ethiopian public schools don’t have the materials or resources necessary to support students with autism, he was not able to receive the basic education that every child deserves. And because he didn’t have the opportunity to learn anything, today as a person in his 20s, he doesn’t have a job and has not become a productive member of society. Instead, he usually stays at home and fully relies on his mother to fulfill his basic needs. Hence, he is disabled not just because of his disorder, but also because his environment didn’t have the correct mentality or the resources to support him.

This is a sad reality that could have been avoided. For instance, if this man had been born in a western country, he wouldn’t have faced this amount of mistreatment and discrimination from the society. Also, he would’ve had classes that were specifically tailored for autistic students within public primary schools. Furthermore, he would’ve had a number of community centers that give specialized life skill training in order to help him become an independent adult. It is these types of centers and schools that have given people with autism the chance to live better lives in developed countries. For example, in the United States, more than 44 percent of students with autism receive some type of postsecondary education in 4-year universities or 2-year community colleges. Also, in the United Kingdom, 32 percent of autistic adults are in some kind of paid employment.

Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, there are only two state-funded child mental health clinics, both of which are in Addis Ababa and are, therefore, inaccessible to communities outside the city. The few autism schools that do exist across the country don’t have enough funding to reach the actual number of children that require their help. This unfortunately means, that the vast majority of children with autism remain undiagnosed and with no access to appropriate education. Therefore, even though, we don’t have enough funding to create specialized classes to accommodate children with autism in public schools, we should at least train teachers on how to properly engage with these types of students so that they can take part in the regular course offerings at the school. And most importantly, we need to continue educating the society about the dangers of these kinds of superstitions and social stigma in order to ensure that impaired individuals are treated with the kindness and mutual respect they deserve.

The second story I would like to mention is about a girl in Piassa. She has a hearing impairment which was caused when she was a fetus, due to her mother’s use of an inappropriate medication that was not recommended by a doctor. Due to this impairment, the girl is completely deaf and can only communicate using sign language. However, the teachers she had encountered since she was a small child didn’t know any sign language. Furthermore, her parents couldn’t afford to enroll her in schools that have specialized teachers that could communicate with her through ESL (Ethiopian Sign Language). As a result, she was not able to receive the foundational education she needed. And today, even though she is in her teens, she is not able to attend school like the rest of her peers due to the lack of accommodation in both public and private schools in her area.

Another thing she struggles with due to her impairment is getting adequate health services. Every time she goes to a hospital, she has to bring a family member to translate the ESL so that she can communicate effectively with the physician. If it wasn’t for her family’s presence, she would’ve been neglected by the health workers, as the number of them that know ESL are very few and far between. When hearing stories like this, there is one important question that we have to ask ourselves. What’s going to happen to those who don’t have somebody to translate for them? Are they going to lose access to something as essential as health care just because they are not capable of communicating their conditions?

This girl completely relies on her family to function in this society on a daily basis, for example, to take transportation, to get health care, to have social interaction and so on. And since she is inhibited from one of the major life activities which is her education, we can say that she is disabled. However, her disability could be easily reversed. This can be done so by enforcing ESL course requirements on people studying to become teachers and health care workers. This seems like a justified and worthwhile action when considering that an estimated 1 million people across Ethiopia have hearing impairments. Therefore, making the Ethiopian Sign Language a course requirement for teachers and health professionals, would to some extent ensure that hearing impaired individuals receive two of the most important human services, namely, education and health care. And consequently, it would prevent some amount of them from becoming disabled.

The third and last story that I want to highlight is the story of two men in Leghar. These men are strangers, but they have something in common, they are both visually impaired and often hangout in the taxi station next to the stadium. Even though they share the same type of impairment, they lead very different lives. One of these men is employed and is only at the taxi station to get a ride to go back home after work. He is independent and self-sustaining. While the other man is unemployed and spends his entire day inside or near the taxi station in order to beg commuters for money as his only source of income. This man is clearly not living under good conditions. He depends on the sympathy of strangers as his daily source of bread and has no other means for supporting himself.

While it is not quite clear if either of these men have been educated, one thing is for certain. One of them is able to lead his life well and has become a productive member of society, while the other is suffering from extreme poverty and has become a disabled individual. When noticing these two men in Leghar, there are two important questions we need to ask ourselves. First, what are the factors that led the first man to become independent and economically stable despite his impairment, while leading the other to be disabled and poor? And secondly, what can we do for the disabled man and others like him, in order to help them become self-sufficient and live under better conditions?

According to the World Health Organization, over 1.8 million people in Ethiopia are blind and 4.1 million live with low vision. However, a majority of them don’t go to school and about 80 percent of them cannot participate in economic activities. This is due to a combination of factors, but it is mainly a result of the social discrimination and isolation bestowed upon them as well as a lack of opportunities and resources provided by government agencies. This is a very alarming number as visual impairments are one of the most prevalent types of impairment in Ethiopia. And yet, most of the people affected by them don’t have any form of social assistance programs to support them. For example, even though there are quite a few blind schools in Addis Ababa, encountering such schools in rural areas is very rare.

This means that an overwhelming majority of blind children in Ethiopia will not receive an education, and consequently, will not have a stepping stone into leading independent lives as adults. Therefore, we need to increase the government funding of these schools, in order to open more of them in places where they could be easily accessible to rural communities. We also need to make transportation more accessible for the visually impaired in order to alleviate the social and physical isolation that is faced by most of them. This can be done, for example, by putting directions that were written in braille, on the side of roads where they can be read by blind individuals. This has proven to be an effective strategy to give blind people the confidence to move around places in China.

Making these types of changes can make a big impact on the lives of impaired people. Increasing funding to autism, deaf and blind schools would make education easily accessible to a huge number of impaired children across Ethiopia. And an even more effective strategy to improving the education of these children would be to train teachers on the ESL and also on how to engage with and teach individuals with developmental or learning disorders. Aside from school, we need to make health care, transportation as well as employment more accessible for impaired people in order to prevent them from becoming disabled. As a society, we have to make it our responsibility to teach those with negative superstitions, to unlearn these ways of thinking and become more inclusive towards them. And lastly, we all have to treat impaired or disabled people with kindness and respect in order to help them reach their true potential.

In case you can't change the world

2021-06-29T00:51:00.001+03:00

All my childhood clothes have tares in them. Dents in the shape of finger nails where my hands once were. Hands that used to pull at them, specifically, on their lower back side. You see, in the eyes of nine-year-old me, pulling your shirt as far down your behind as possible, could actually hide it. For nine-year-old me, adding one more shirt or a baggy jacket meant that nobody would stare at me as I walked down the street. But as it turned out, nine-year-old me was wrong. An extra layer of fabric couldn’t hide the size of your body. But by the time I had figured that out, pulling at my shirts had become an inescapable force of habit.

“One more shirt, a longer jacket, who knows, maybe it will work today. Maybe, I will walk by without having to deal with another comment. Maybe, that random taxi driver won’t make fun of me. Maybe, that stranger on the road won’t tell me to go to the gym. Maybe, that girl at the store won’t tell me to go on a diet.” These were the things that nine-year-old me used to think about, before choosing something to wear. And even getting a longer shirt, didn’t keep my hands from trying to find a way to make it longer. I guess, I didn't understand that having wide hips and a large buttock was simply nature's way of reminding me of my African roots. And I, certainly, didn't realize that having African features was not at all a bad thing.

As a light skinned as well as overweight girl in Ethiopia, I found myself on both the long and short end of the social stick. I realized, very early on, that people would take my physical appearance as a prerequisite to how well they treat me. Being overweight, I had faced a lot of negativity and bullying from school and the general public. But then on the other side, I received an immense amount of praise and complements for my lighter shed of skin. However, these complements were coming from people who were criticizing my dark skinned sister and friends. And the criticisms about my weight, were coming from people who were praising that same sister and those same friends for being skinny. This led to me realizing that most Ethiopians, including myself, celebrate predominantly European features I.e., light skin and a petite appearance, while denigrating predominantly African features such as a dark skin and a curvy appearance.

Unfortunately, I spent the larger portion of my childhood accompanied by these self-destructive thought patterns. These habits led me to internalize hatred towards my body and its blackness. That was until one summer when I decided to start losing weight. That summer, I decided, was going to be a summer of change and transformation. Hence, I signed up for a three-month swimming course along with a friend who was struggling with the same issues. Long story short, it didn’t work. Partly, because we didn’t diet properly. But it was mostly because the place was filled with so much fun, that we ended up treating it like a three-month vacation instead. So at the end of that summer, I hadn’t lost any weight and my body didn’t change. But I had achieved the thing that I wanted to do at the start of the course: I had changed.

It turns out that you can’t pull your shirt down to cover your body if you’re wearing a swimming suit. So, I was forced to stop doing that for three months and essentially forever because I haven’t done it ever since. It also turns out that swimming suits are extremely revealing, so I couldn’t hide other parts of my body either. As a result, I was forced to get used to an environment where I quite literally showed all of my insecurities, which in turn led to me getting used to my insecurities. And eventually, it helped me to realize that the thing I called my insecurity was actually just a body that embraced its blackness to the absolute fullest. It was a body that I would go on to not only accept, but also cherish.

My experience, during that summer, started with me doing everything in my power to avoid being seen in my swimsuit. And by the end of it, I was walking around the whole place with nothing but my swimsuit on, even when people were staring and giving unwarranted comments about my body. This was because I had finally gotten to a place of inner peace where comments from the outside just didn’t matter anymore. It also came from a place of understanding that those comments were only being made because of our subconscious inferiority complex that idolizes Eurocentric beauty standards above our own. As a result, even though I hadn’t lost weight by the end of the summer, I wasn’t disappointed. I hadn’t changed my body, nor had I changed my personality. However, I changed the perception I had of myself, of the world around me and most importantly of my body. I had embraced my blackness. I changed from a girl who tried everything in her power to hide her body into a girl that loves and cherishes it despite every negative thing she had heard and believed about it.

By the end of that summer, I realized that the world's opinions didn't matter as much as it used to. But that wasn't because the world itself had changed. It wasn't because the community had changed. And it certainly wasn't because people's opinions about my African features had changed. On the contrary, it was because I did. Not in body, but in mind as well as in spirit. I had changed myself, and that is the hardest change anyone could ever make. Because whether the world accepts you or not, whether it actually changes or not, if you change yourself, then in your eyes, the world will also change. So, I will leave you with one suggestion. In case you can’t change the world, change yourself and consequently, change your perception of it. Because the world may still be a place that shames you, but it will never again be a place where you shame yourself.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQlhrnpD_1p/?utm_medium=copy_link

Dear society

2021-05-28T12:46:00.001+03:00

Dear society,

How are you doing today?

What do you have in store for me now?

Anything new you'd like to say?

Any more shame you'd like to give?

Any knowledge you'd like to keep?

Any more lips you'd like to shut?

Any more minds you'd like to twist?

Answer me!

If u don't mind my asking,

If it's not considered disrespectful,

Answer me!

And don't you dare claim I am false.

Didn't you tell me to hate my body?

Didn't you tell me to use it?

Didn't you tell me that my only goal should be marriage?

Didn't you tell me to be able to cook?

And dare I ask “or else?”

Didn't you tell me to believe you?

“Sit properly, keep your legs crossed,”

“Eat properly, don't eat too much,”

“Lose weight, grow your hair,”

“Be appealing,”

“Wait, not too appealing, don't be a slut.”

“You're too weird, you're too boring”

“You're too loud, you're too quiet”

“You're too fat, you're too slim”

Why should I listen?

Why can't I shout as loud as you do?

How come you're the only one with opinions?

And here you are, claiming it's getting better for girls now,

Here you are, telling me I should enjoy it,

Here you are, saying I have my freedom,

When you keep my brain and my lips enslaved.

How is that fair? Tell me,

How is that fair to me?

Dear society, why can't you just let me speak?

Dear society, why don't you just let me be?

Sincerely,

The girl with a chain on her lips.

Our Indigenous Titles

2021-03-21T16:58:00.001+03:00

Most African nations and empires had their own indigenous names: Kemet, Nubia, Abyssinia, Wagadu, indéné, and so on. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a voice in the telling of their own history. As a result, these states are now termed by the names given to them by their previous colonizers, historians and other people that generally aren’t their own. This takes away part of their self-identification and awareness, as well as part of their ancestral legacy and culture. And most importantly, it takes away part of their autonomy and independence. Thus, it’s an issue that is worth addressing, however, far too little people are trying to address and change it.

Take the name of my country, Ethiopia, as an example. The term Ethiopia is not a word from any one of our 83 native languages. Instead, it’s a Greek word that can be loosely translated to “burnt face”. It was the way the ancient Greeks wrote about the black people they encountered. Apparently, they considered a black skin to be the burnt version of what a “normal skin” should look like. And so, they coined that term thousands of years ago to describe Africans. But, somewhere down the line, it ended up being a title for a country with more than a hundred million people. Prior to the renaming of our country as Ethiopia, our state had been known as the kingdom of Abyssinia for centuries. However, due to the lack of mainstream knowledge about the actual definition of the word Ethiopia, many generations of Abyssinians have grown up unknowingly identifying themselves as the people with burnt faces.

The same can be said about present day Ghana, whose original name was Wagadu. The term Ghana is said to have been derived from the Arabic word “Ghinna” which means gold and great wealth. Have in mind that this isn’t exactly a bad name. Rather, it’s an attribute complementing their gold and wealth. But then again, so was the name “Gold Coast” which was given to the state by their British colonizers. Nevertheless, it was changed after their independence because they wanted their name to be autonomous from foreign hegemony. The name, Ghana, was then quickly adopted because it was indicated that the present day people are descendants of the ancient kingdom of Ghana. However, this ancient kingdom, they choose to identify with, was actually called Wagadu by its natives. And through time, it was replaced by the Arabians' account of it as Ghana. So when they decided to be named after of their ancestors, they were tricked by the one-sided account of their history into being named by foreigner Arab historians.

This pattern of Eurocentric renaming of African nations can be seen all throughout the continent. Tanzania, Cameroon, Mauritius, Sierra Leone and Guinea are a few of many countries that still identify themselves with foreign terms. And whether these terms were originally intended to be offensive or not, the problem lies with the fact that they deny people the chance to name and represent themselves. The most problematic and devastating effect that I have discerned with this pattern, however, is in the term Africa itself.

The name, Africa, was given to this continent by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Some theories suggest that this word was derived from both a Greek and Latin origin. The Greek word “Phrike” meaning cold and horror, and the Latin word “Aprica’’ meaning sunny. However, the ancient and indigenous name of this continent was “Alkebulan”, which means the mother of mankind or the garden of Eden. This was proven so as ancient writings, all mentioning this name, were discovered from civilizations of the Moors, Numidians, Carthaginians and Abyssinians. Yet even after its discovery, the knowledge of this name has not reached the appropriate number of people. 

This has a significantly worse impact because it affects far more people than just the people of specific countries. No matter which nation one is from, they will still refer to themselves as an African, regardless of any cultural differences they may have with each other. Not only that, but every black person in the world, whether they are Caribbean, Latin American, European or North American, they are still ultimately considered as an African. We associate a huge portion of our identity with this terminology. Our ancestry (Afro-descendant: a person of African origin who lives outside the continent), our hair (Afro hair: a natural growth of curly or kinky textured hair), our music (Afro beat: a musical genre that combines west African musical styles with African American funk and jazz influences), our dance (Afro dance: a dance genre that refers mainly to the dance styles of sub-Saharan Africa and the Bantu people), our language (Afroasiatic: the second-largest language family on the continent, which could otherwise have been known as Hamito-Semitic). But most importantly, our title (African). 

“Africa” is one word that describes each and every single part of us. It is a word that represents approximately 1.5 billion people across the world. There is so much self-awareness, acceptance, and love that is associated with this word. As a result, when I learned that it’s not even rightfully ours, I felt like I had lost some part of my identity. This is because parts of me were tied so strongly to this terminology. I was left with questions like: “if I can’t call my hair an Afro, what am I supposed to call it?”. The only way that I understood its kinky texture and accepted it, was through learning about the term “Afro” and how beautiful it can be. But now I realize that this word is not my legacy. It is neither of my 2000 languages nor of my myriad of cultures. And unless we all acknowledge it as such, we will continue to give so much power to a word that was coined by people who were trying to take it from us.

At present, there are many historians that are working to discover the multidimensional history of the African continent. This is in an effort to contradict the Eurocentric approach that was taken to describe it in earlier times. However, there aren't enough people trying to bring these new discoveries to the awareness of the general public. People are not being given a chance to reconnect with their ancestors and the history, as well as titles left by them. Armed with this knowledge, we have an obligation to redefine ourselves by our own titles, to tell our stories with our own languages and to understand as well as make use of our true ancestral heritage.

What's lost is found

2021-01-06T12:17:00.003+03:00

Guess what? It worked. And as a result, we have this subconscious inferiority complex that we refuse to acknowledge and therefore, refuse to do away with. It is due to this mindset that we are more hospitable to white foreigners than black ones. It is due to this complex that we praise light skinned black people while diminishing dark skinned ones. This is the reason we feel the need to straighten our hair to be beautiful while calling those who show off their natural kinky hair, ugly. It is why we think we have to wait until a special traditional holiday to wear our native, traditional dresses. But worst of all, this mindset leads to much bigger consequences in terms of the peace and development of this continent. Our governing systems, policing systems, as well as our education and healthcare systems are mostly failing because they were made to resemble the systems of western societies. This is a problem because a system that works for a homogeneous and relatively culturally undivided country, couldn't possibly work for a continent with over 2000 ethnicities and cultures. Government systems that expect different African nations and nationalities to peacefully as well as equally exist and operate as a western society, will not and have not succeeded. We have all seen discrimination, harassment, executions, and even in extreme cases, genocides happening among these nations which is a sad and very telling consequence of these failing systems and the history that begat them. Nevertheless, our governments, while thinking “all that is foreign is good”, are still trying to enforce western systems that are clearly not working. This then leads to economic turmoil and political as well as social unrest, which further facilitates our dependence on western countries. These countries then capitalize on our dependence by selling us expensive machines and products which they made from the vital raw materials they bought from us for far cheaper prices. When we can't afford to buy these machines, they give us loans to do so, knowing full well that we can't pay them off. And when we admit that we can't pay them off, they forgive these loans as a way to hold a political control over us, which once again leaves us politically, economically and socially colonized. They introduced their education systems, knowing full well that they wouldn't work, in order to keep us from knowledge. Knowledge, that we can use to build our own machines from our own cheap raw materials. Knowledge that we can use to sell finished products to them at expensive rates for the sake of capitalizing on our natural resources. This would obviously hinder their neocolonization efforts, as we wouldn't need loans to buy products, and they wouldn't have something to hold over us. This ploy to dominate Africa has been in place since the 1800s, and maybe even centuries before. And for the most part it has worked. They have taught us to believe that anything of their essence is far greater than our own. They found millions of ways to diminish our esteem, unity as well as culture. But what is important, is for us to recognize that anything that is learned can be unlearned. Anything that is lost can be found. We just need to acknowledge what we lost and collectively come up with a way to find it again.

https://youtu.be/utHEo8Fk4C4

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKlq6W4B_8V/?igshid=lm5da61zir1m

https://youtu.be/AfnruW7yERA

Hometown wanders

2020-10-20T13:37:00.001+03:00

When the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions started to ease, my dad and I decided to go for a walk through my neighborhood. We went through the local farmer's markets, shopping centers, internet cafes and finally, we passed by my old school like we had done so a million times before. However, this time, something was different. It had been a while since I had seen this place, but as soon as I did, I was taken back to a time that felt like it was a million years ago. Not because it had been so long, but because I had changed so much. I had grown up. And the place that used to feel like a prison, now felt like it was once a home.

It's funny how you can spend your entire life in one place but never truly appreciate it. It was these places that formed who I am today. Places like this school where the mean kids taught me how to stand up for myself and the teachers introduced me to all the intricate details of the world. It was places like the hospital a kilometer away where I was born and the doctors showed me what kindness was. It was places like the cafe down the road where I made some of my most valuable friendships. It was my tiny little house where my parents instilled in me, the values necessary to be a good human being. It was my tiny little study room where I would pretend to be studying for hours while I was actually drawing, writing or singing, introducing myself to my own artistic abilities.

It was places like my town where the neighbors taught me to always greet a familiar face and showed me the difference between being a stranger and being family could be the mere act of lending someone some sugar. It was the lady next door that helped raise me as though I was her own flesh and blood. It was my friend's house down the street, that taught me that even the most broken of families can have the most love. It was the sense of community that was instilled in me when the whole neighborhood would gather once a year to celebrate the epiphany holiday. It was the diverse ethnicities of these people that taught me that not only, can we live with cultural tolerance but also with respect and admiration.

It was Monday mornings when my mom would dress up to go to work and be the literal boss, that taught me that no matter how many odds society throws against me, I can still persist and be successful in my endeavors. It was the busy street up the road that taught me how to be strong and handle ignorant men that were trying to harass me. It was the depleting forest behind my house that taught me the true dangers of climate change. It was planting trees in that forest with the neighborhood’s kids that showed me how to connect with my environment. It was trying to ride bikes in the muddy summer road that taught me that I have the strength to get back up no matter how many times I fall.

It was these and a million other experiences that I had throughout my 19 years on this earth that made me into the person I am today. And yet, up until this particular day, I had never realized any of this. Even though I was very self-aware about most of my qualities, I still had no idea about where they actually came from. But I know now, that they came from my town and as did I. I was made from the soils of Ethiopia and the amalgam of histories and cultures that make it. I am truly blessed and I am truly grateful.

#thisismyafrica

#thisismyethiopia

Change your mind, not your color

2020-09-04T14:53:00.001+03:00

Being completely black, being created by two black people who were created by two black people who were creations of other black people, having a body with the same, identical blood coursing through its veins as its black forefathers', having an uninterrupted gene that can be traced directly back to its African ancestors, the complete indifference between a modern day genome and that of an ancient one's, the keeper of a gene eluded from the alterations of change, the rightful lineage of the cradle of humankind, the true gardener of eden, a pure breed, the epitome of blackness is powerful.

I remember the day my father told me that his mother says that we are descendants of a white man. That somewhere in our ancestral line there was a child born from a black Ethiopian woman and a white Italian man. It was nothing more than a folklore but it was the reason she gave for her own as well as mine and my little cousin's light skinned nature. "Most of us in this family weren't blessed with that gene, you are the lucky few" my father told me. I knew that there was no way to prove it and that she was merely telling him what her mother had told her. The uncertainty of the fact however, didn't keep a smile from making its way to my lips. For some unknown reason I felt special. Not because I was the "lucky few" but because one of my ancestors was something other than black. Somehow I felt different, like that would make me interesting. I saw my skin in a different light. That lighter shade of brown wasn't just a beautiful accident anymore. It was the symbol of two different blood lines that crossed paths hundreds of years ago. it was the mixture of two completely indifferent cultures. It was the progeny of two different continents. It was my new sense of pride despite it being nothing more than an unproven sentiment given by a very old lady.

As a child and even now I find myself being congratulated for my skin colour, meeting different kinds of people that appreciate my complexion. And often, these people would make assumptions that I was in some way mixed. And I welcomed them thinking that they were what would set me apart. It was due to these assumptions that I grew a mindset which associated being light skinned or mixed with beauty and uniqueness. And it was due to those same assumptions that I realized that, that same mindset was being reflected amongst my community. It wasn't until a few acquaintances with mixed people that I realized it was wrong. I had ignored the most basic principle that I live by. I judged the books by their covers. Upon getting to know them I realized, some of those books were quite shallow and dull and the others were filled with good and interesting values.

After my encounters with them I was forced to realise that the perception I had of myself was incorrect. That the tiniest percentage of my mixed DNA doesn't make me interesting it just makes me part of the continuous cycle of change and evolution. Instead, it's I, it's the way I process thoughts and emotions, the way I perceive the world around me, it's the way my brain cells are wired, it's the way my nerve cells intersect, it's the way my blood runs across my body, it's the way my heart beats when I read poetry, it's the way I turn emotions into art, it's the way I turn questions into essays, it's the many different ways that I process a single sentence, it's the way I turn random ideas into hours long conversations, it is the way I try to hide and express emotions at the same time, it is the way I ask why instead of what, it is my belief that the normal way is ugly and the unusual is beautiful, it is the way I give out acceptance like flyers at a festival, it is how easily I can put myself in another's shoes, it is the way I notice body language instead of words, it's the way I remember body types instead of names and faces, it is the way I speak to subtly teach, it is all of my loud thoughts and emotions, it is who I am that sets me apart and makes me beautiful not the molecules that built my skin tone.

I now realise that the basis of judgement in my community is not that of individuality but that of one's blood line. So it's not about who u are, it's about what ur family is. And the richer or whiter it is, the better. Which is why I was forced to notice what was right under my nose. That we live under this subconscious cloud of self-inferiority that is commonly associated with a people that have an oppressed mindset. This is weird to think about when we consider the fact that Ethiopia was never colonised and therefore never directly oppressed. And yet, we still have a way of thinking, that values other cultures more than our own's. More specifically white culture and white skin tones. Which is why we are more hospitable to foreigners of a different race that are complete strangers and less to our own fellow habesha people. This mind set of inferiority has led to the subconscious desire of attaining a made up level of other races that is supposedly very far away from our own's. This mind set is clearly visible in our desire to attain a lighter skin complexion, hence complementing people with those colours or in all the creams we buy that promise to give us lighter, "fairer" skin. It is also highlighted in the fact that we have standardized beauty as a title given only to people with light skin upto a point that when we see a beautiful dark skinned woman, we somehow feel the need to comment that she is "actually" pretty for a black girl. And don't even get me started on our desperate need to straighten our hair, even when it comes in the expense of the wellbeing of our scalp and hair follicles.

It is this mindset that instills a misdirected sense of power to those that are mixed or light skinned over those that aren't. It is the byproduct of this mindset that makes people complement me instead of my darker skinned sister. It was this mindset that made me say "jokes" like "I wouldn't see you in the dark unless you smiled, lol" to my best friend. It was this mindset that inferiorised ourselves as black people and prioritised other races. But this mindset, this made up level that we are trying to attain is incorrect. Being light skinned should not define beauty or worth. It can not be the reason we give as to why one person is more interesting or powerful than another.

Just look at the modern day art, photography and fashion shows, all featuring people with deep skin tones. These black people are internationally considered beautiful as well as powerful and it's clear to see how they have revolutionized beauty standards. Not long ago, light skinned or not, being black in itself was considered non feminine and ugly. Yet these prominent black figures have transformed the industry to some extent. And due to their amazing works, black people of all diverse skin tones are internationally recognized as beautiful yet within ourselves we have failed to do the same thing. We have failed to recognise eachother as being equally important and worthy. We have disregarded those with darker skin and prioritised those with lighter ones.

So my question is, if the world that once collectively disregarded and shamed us, now embraces us, why we should fail to embrace ourselves the same way? Why should we try to change (bleach) the colour of our skin, when it's our mindset that needs to be changed? Why should we straighten our hair, when it's the way we view it, that needs to be straightened? We need to change the way we prioritise other ethnicities and learn to give all of our beautiful skin tones the respect they deserve. We need to stop giving all the depreciating insults, "jokes" and "nick names" that we give to dark skinned people. We need to stop downplaying their significance and beauty just like the world used to do to us, as a whole. And most of all, we need to realise, accept as well as embrace the fact that all black people and especially those who are blessed with an abundance of melanin, those who are the epitomes of blackness, not just in colour but in spirit, are infact powerful.

The Quiet Place

2020-08-09T12:35:00.003+03:00

Good night, voice,

Good night, smile,

For in this place, you shall not be mine.

Good night, thoughts,

Good night, light,

For this, The Quiet Place, cannot handle you.

Good night and we shall meet again,

When I am freed from the ropes that bind me,

We shall meet again,

When my feet touch a ground, in which, I can scream.

We shall meet elsewhere,

For in this place, you are forbidden,

You're too loud,

We shall meet again and I will set you free,

From the ropes that tie you to the ground.

We shall meet again and I will find the keys I threw away,

We shall meet again and I will find you,

Release you from my fingertips to the blue sky,

Let you roam over the seas like a white raven,

Engulf the night sky like the silver moon,

And lay your eggs on my rightful left palm.

Maybe one day these chains will be useful to me,

Maybe silence won't be so deafening,

Maybe I'll break the glass and let the monsters come take me,

Or maybe I'll just give birth, in silence.

I shall not express to you, my love,

I shall not express my joys,

I shall not raise my voice in divergence,

I shall stay inside the box of black and white.

I shall let you go, to keep you,

For in this place, we shall depart,

I shall let you hide, to find you,

For I will, when our time is right.

I shall cast you north for now, my love,

For our paths may once again align,

I shall set you free, my dear,

For in this Quiet Place, I can't have you as mine.

If Africa could speak

2020-07-02T15:16:00.002+03:00

I may not be their slave anymore,

I may not be raped and beaten,

But the way I am perceived, thought of and treated,

Is as though I still am.

And by "them", I mean the whole world,

Imagine 6 billion stares with repulsion and disgust,

Then imagine 1.2 with shame and resentment,

I’m tired,

I’m fucking tired.

They may not call me a negro anymore,

They may not sell me as a cheap item,

They may not colonize and rule me,

They may not own my land and my lives,

But they still see me like those white land owners used to see their slaves,

Illiterate, abnormal, backward, inferior, primitive, savage.

Like it’s my privilege to even have them on my lands,

Like I should be grateful,

Like they will always be superior,

Like they will always rule.

They act as though I’m the cattle, and they’re my shepherd,

Like they’re earth’s true heirs, and I’m the bastard,

They chant out insults, as though they’ve whispered.

They look at me as if I only live in droughts and desserts,

Like I grow up starving in famine and hunger,

They help me, but just to make themselves feel better,

Just so they can say, their life isn’t half as bad as they remember.

Making me believe I need them,

But who’s really needing who?

And I can’t say anything,

Cuz I’ll just seem ungrateful.

Well fine,

Call me ungrateful, for I don’t want to see another picture of myself starving,

Call me ungrateful, for I’m not sitting back and watching as u tell the world that pain is all there is to me,

I’m sick and tired of seeing myself in headlines, where I’m crying,

I’m sick of not seeing pictures of my beautiful smile go viral.

Call me ungrateful,

For yes you help me, yes I suffer and yes I cry,

But I live and love and prosper,

Yet you choose to show one side.

You mock me,

You shame, hate and disregard me,

You dehumanize my children,

And call me the land of misery,

When I am in fact your mother.

I am Alkebulan.

I am the garden of Eden.

I am the mother of man kind.

I am the reason for life, itself,

I am the reason for everything,

And I deserve to be acknowledged and respected for it.

This is my Africa

2020-06-05T20:36:00.009+03:00

I am an Ethiopian. Born and raised in the capital city of Addis Ababa. I grew up in one of those boring, middle class, suburban towns in the city. You know the kind; it's the type of town they make American TV shows about. Like Riverdale or Mystic falls. If you're a series buff like me, you probably know what I'm talking about. It's the kind of town where everybody knows each other and has that one special place where everybody hangs out, like Pop's Chock’ lit Shoppe or Mystic Grill. The only difference between my town and those towns, is that nothing drastic or interesting ever happened here. The way I looked at my town, my city, and even my country as a whole was as though it was one of those towns minus the drama. Sure, some places are dirty, some places don't have as impressive infrastructures, some places are richer than others and some need a lot of help and improvement, but most places are very much like one of those towns. The people and their lifestyles are very similar as well.

Parents would go to their boring old jobs, kids would go to their dramatic school lives, then both would come back home, have dinner, and go to sleep. Just like the first few scenes in the shows before everything drastically changes. And then it would be summer break and my family and I would go on these two week vacations to another city or region in Ethiopia. These cities look a little different, sometimes even better than Addis and the people would sound a bit different as well and sometimes, not even the same at all. I would see that some of these regions would have their own languages, the food would be a bit spicier and their clothes would be a lot different yet very beautiful in their own ways. It would often be an amazing experience and at the end of the week, I would leave that city thinking that we are the same people, with the same lifestyles, but with different clothes, languages and sometimes, different cultures.

I think from everything you've read so far, you would've guessed that I'm pretty much western influenced. Growing up, I didn't follow any Ethiopian or African media. I would frequently go to my room when my parents opened their 8 pm news, or as we Ethiopians call it, Zena. And I have never been to another country, not even neighboring ones, so the only access I had to the world was through the western media. And consequently, the way that I viewed African countries and the continent as a whole was through the eyes of white people that didn’t live here. So in my head, Africa was a dusty, dirty, poor, non-industrialized village with kids that are all suffering of malnutrition and people that only have dark skin tones. And somehow through all of that stereotype that formed in my head, Ethiopia managed to be the only country that wasn't like the rest of “Africa”. Ethiopia was still that boring middle class town with working class people, while the rest of Africa was a swamp with people that only relied on white volunteer workers to survive. Ethiopia and the rest of Africa managed to stay that way in my head because I had experienced Ethiopia for myself, I had seen it through my own eyes, but I had only seen Africa through my TV screen.

Then I saw a movie about a bunch of pregnant ladies. It's called “What to Expect When You're Expecting”. To be fair the movie is pretty nice, and I've watched it probably a few more times than any person should, however, I've always felt frustrated with a particular scene in the movie. In this scene, Holly, the character played by Jennifer Lopez and her husband go to Ethiopia to adopt a child. It was a really emotional part as the child is handed to Holly and, immediately after, leans on her chest. One of my favorite things about this scene was that, there was a vow ceremony conducted by a priest who was speaking in Amharic, which is the national language of Ethiopia. He is wearing the actual traditional clothes that Ethiopian priests wear and there were even people that were holding the intricately designed traditional umbrellas for him as that is the custom of the church. Everything up to that point was beautiful. However, as the camera zooms out, and I saw the place they were shooting in, I remember thinking, “wait a minute, this doesn't look like my Ethiopia”. The land around the church looked deserted and, quite frankly, like the stereotypical “Africa”. However, it had a lot less exaggerations as there weren't any malnutrition-ed kids going around with no clothes on and all the natives didn’t have the same dark skin tone but rather diverse ones.

But even though it wasn’t exaggerated to that extent, it was wrong. The reason being that most churches in Ethiopia were built during ancient times, when there were more trees and less urbanization. And these churches are known for keeping their lands and natural resources conserved, so even though, I can’t say that all churches in Ethiopia are green, I can say that most of them are. So for that scene, when they could’ve selected from one of the many beautiful green churches in Ethiopia, they chose to pick a deserted one that reinforces the usual African stereotype. It also had some culturally incorrect aspects, as the translator and the girls holding the babies were dressed in something that was supposed to represent Ethiopian dressing culture but was actually not from any one of Ethiopia's 90 diverse ethnic groups. This is to say that they could've chosen from 90 traditional Ethiopian outfits but ended up choosing something that fit the west's rendition of a typical African look even though it wasn’t part of Ethiopian culture.

By the end of that scene, I was left wondering that if I had never been to Ethiopia, that place in the scene was the only way that I would envision Ethiopia to look like. And those dresses are the only looks that I would remember Africans by. This is how I realized that everything I believed about Africa was incorrect. It wasn't the case that Africa was completely poor and Ethiopia was a little better, it was that Africa, including Ethiopia, was only portrayed in that way. And the only reason that I thought of Ethiopia being any different is because I had the chance to know it for myself. As for the rest of the world, they will keep on knowing that one side of Africa with the same backward traditions, poor, dusty and non-industrialized villages as well as identical cultures and clothing styles. Although in actuality, the real Africa is actually a place with over 2000 ethnic communities, languages, and styles of clothing. It's a place with people of really dark skin tones, as well as with people that would normally be considered as being middle eastern or white. It's a place with malnutrition-ed and dehydrated kids, as well as moderately obese ones such as myself. It's a place that is home to the largest desert in the world, but is also home to the world's second-largest equatorial rainforest. It's a place which is poor, and needs volunteer workers, but is also home to some of the fastest growing countries and economies in the world. It's a continent with nomadic and non-technological tribes, as well as countries that have faster internet and better banking systems than some European and Asian countries.

These are the realities of Africa. These are our diverse lives, stories, and heterogeneous identities. Yet only one of these realities is shown to the world. Only one of our 2000 faces are known. “What To Expect When You’re Expecting”, isn’t the only movie that has done this to African countries and cultures, there have been and will be many more. We also have to remember that it’s not only movies that have enforced negative stereotypes upon us. It is magazine articles, news broadcasts, music videos, photography shows and all other platforms that have international coverage. And so, the best way to combat this image is to take these same platforms, which have diminished us all into one single look, and dominate them with all of our beautifully diverse ones. The world's Africa and ours are very different. They don't know Africa like we do. They don’t know the honest, diverse versions of our continent. So it's time for us to tell them. It's time to reclaim our wrongfully stigmatized identities and wash over our negative stereotypes. It’s time to stop them from choosing that one version of us, they want to know. It's time to show all of our faces, beautiful or ugly. And that is why I started this blog, because I believe that it’s time to stop the world at its course and say this is the Real Africa. This is My Africa, and you’re going to respect it.

Below is a video from the YouTube channel, TEDx Talks, it was a speech given by Marek Zmyslowski about the rising economies of African countries.

This next video is from the YouTube channel, Displore, in which it features the 25 most beautiful cities in Africa.