Why Ethiopia Part One
Why Ethiopia???
Whenever somebody asks me- which is the one country you would like to visit the most, I tell them it is Ethiopia… and then I see an expression of disbelief on the faces of those who had posed the question. The immediate question is –Why Ethiopia? Why on the holy earth Ethiopia?
Frankly even I do not know the answer… my first brush with Ethiopia was in class sixth, when while reading "Romeo and Juliet" in the "The sixteen tales of Shakespeare"…I encountered this
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
Whenever somebody asks me- which is the one country you would like to visit the most, I tell them it is Ethiopia… and then I see an expression of disbelief on the faces of those who had posed the question. The immediate question is –Why Ethiopia? Why on the holy earth Ethiopia?
Frankly even I do not know the answer… my first brush with Ethiopia was in class sixth, when while reading "Romeo and Juliet" in the "The sixteen tales of Shakespeare"…I encountered this
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear--
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
These words were uttered by Romeo to describe the beauty of Juliet to his friend. My teacher (and I still remember her name Mrs. A D'cruz, an Anglo Indian widow) told me that in the dialogue, Ethiop symbolizes night as the colour of both the night and an Ethiop is black. I was taken aback. Was this an insult to the Ethiop, whoever he or she is?
Around that time a Sudanese student used to come to our house to meet some tenants; he was a wonderful man- very warm and friendly- he had carved a special place in my heart, somehow. And off course, he was a black. One day, he picked up a fight with a few neighbourhood urchins, as they continuously used to tease him as "kallu", meaning black. Moreover my father used to tell me stories and stories about Nelson Mandela… and how blacks were treated inhumanely because of their colour. Therefore to my tender mind, calling anybody black was an insult, a racial insult (in the hindsight).
My teacher pointed out a significant term in English…Metaphor…which can be both simple or compound… and how metaphor always compare two similar things and not disparate things… She told me that the beauty of Juliet is not contrasted by the ugliness of night, but actually compared with the beauty of night…indicating that the author considers night as beautiful…and therefore Ethiop is beautiful… This registered in my mind… that Ethiop are beautiful!!!!!
In class eighth, my father brought me a book on World Famous mysteries… it had in it the mysteries of Nazcas, Machhu Picchu, Tutankhamen's curse, Mehruali Iron Pillar…. But the one that caught my imagination was the shroud of mystery surrounding the Ethiop queen Sheeba. Who was she, where did she come from… how did she have so much of gold, when she came to Jerusalem… the book said that it is widely believed that Sheeba was from Ethiopia, from the great kingdom of Aksumites … though Arabs differ and locate her somewhere in Yemen. Earlier I had read an abridged version of the classic "King Solomon Mines" (incidentally I was so smitten by Allan Quatermain that I wanted to be like him, traveling in Africa and treasure hunting… I must have seen "The league of Extra-ordinary Gentlemen" about 10 times…just for seeing Sean Connery playing Allan Quatermain)… the relation between King Solomon and Queen Sheeba rung a bell in my mind.
So all these things were continuously getting registered in my mind… and then came the sad part, during my teenage…I started hearing Ethiopia for all the wrong reasons… famines, wars, infighting, dictatorial regimes… slowly but surely Ethiopia was slipping away from my mind. And it slipped and slipped further, till images had faded.
A few years ago, when I was seeing a programme on the world's longest and arguably the most productive river, Nile. The documentary told that White Nile that starts in Uganda- actually becomes a marshy swampland in South Sudan and loses all its water. Then the shot shifted to Lake Nasser in north Sudan and South Egypt, the narrator asked- if all the water evaporated in South Sudan then how come this lake is full of huge amount of water…. And then as if to search for an answer it retraces its steps back to the Ethiopian highlands, wherefrom 3000 rain fed rivers and rivulets emanate and end into Lake Tana (Ethiopia has a five month long rainy season, akin to our monsoons, when moisture laden winds from Indian Ocean head towards Horn of Africa, are deflected towards Ethiopia due to coriolis force and hit Ethiopian Highlands, incidentally it is called Monsoon in Ethiopia too). And then from Lake Tana comes out a giant river called Blue Nile….carrying a lot of fertile topsoil from the Ethiopian highlands and about 80 percent of the water for river Nile. I was fascinated with Ethiopia again….
Ethiopia is an age old civilization; The Aksumite civilization was once one of the biggest empires in the world whose boundaries extended to Tanzania in South, Sudan in West, Arabian Peninsula in East and Red Sea in North… it has built some great monuments in the dusty city of Aksum in north Ethiopia… bordering Eritrea. Then came the age of orthodox Christianity, when the Christianity was introduced by the Syrian Orthodox church and then the Coptic Church of Egypt… the Ethiopian Orthodox churched evolved into a separate Church with the passage of time. They built beautiful churches in Lalibela, the monasteries of Lake Tana… and unlike the Orthodox churches of Egypt and Syria that perished with time and were replaced by Islam… Ethiopian Orthodox church continues to prosper… Islam was introduced in Ethiopia soon after the Prophet. Today it is the second biggest religion of the country… Islam also gave historical and cultural dimensions to this country…. Apart from ethnic Somali group who live in the Ethiopian lowlands and work as farmers, there is an indigenous Muslim population in Ethiopia, the non-Arab Muslims... then it has a huge Jewish population also… living today in either the highlands or in camps, waiting to go to Israel…. And then there are tribals with their animistic religion…Despite this diversity, Ethiopia has been relatively peaceful…
In many ways it reminds me of India, where so many religions live in relative peace….
These words were uttered by Romeo to describe the beauty of Juliet to his friend. My teacher (and I still remember her name Mrs. A D'cruz, an Anglo Indian widow) told me that in the dialogue, Ethiop symbolizes night as the colour of both the night and an Ethiop is black. I was taken aback. Was this an insult to the Ethiop, whoever he or she is?
Around that time a Sudanese student used to come to our house to meet some tenants; he was a wonderful man- very warm and friendly- he had carved a special place in my heart, somehow. And off course, he was a black. One day, he picked up a fight with a few neighbourhood urchins, as they continuously used to tease him as "kallu", meaning black. Moreover my father used to tell me stories and stories about Nelson Mandela… and how blacks were treated inhumanely because of their colour. Therefore to my tender mind, calling anybody black was an insult, a racial insult (in the hindsight).
My teacher pointed out a significant term in English…Metaphor…which can be both simple or compound… and how metaphor always compare two similar things and not disparate things… She told me that the beauty of Juliet is not contrasted by the ugliness of night, but actually compared with the beauty of night…indicating that the author considers night as beautiful…and therefore Ethiop is beautiful… This registered in my mind… that Ethiop are beautiful!!!!!
In class eighth, my father brought me a book on World Famous mysteries… it had in it the mysteries of Nazcas, Machhu Picchu, Tutankhamen's curse, Mehruali Iron Pillar…. But the one that caught my imagination was the shroud of mystery surrounding the Ethiop queen Sheeba. Who was she, where did she come from… how did she have so much of gold, when she came to Jerusalem… the book said that it is widely believed that Sheeba was from Ethiopia, from the great kingdom of Aksumites … though Arabs differ and locate her somewhere in Yemen. Earlier I had read an abridged version of the classic "King Solomon Mines" (incidentally I was so smitten by Allan Quatermain that I wanted to be like him, traveling in Africa and treasure hunting… I must have seen "The league of Extra-ordinary Gentlemen" about 10 times…just for seeing Sean Connery playing Allan Quatermain)… the relation between King Solomon and Queen Sheeba rung a bell in my mind.
So all these things were continuously getting registered in my mind… and then came the sad part, during my teenage…I started hearing Ethiopia for all the wrong reasons… famines, wars, infighting, dictatorial regimes… slowly but surely Ethiopia was slipping away from my mind. And it slipped and slipped further, till images had faded.
A few years ago, when I was seeing a programme on the world's longest and arguably the most productive river, Nile. The documentary told that White Nile that starts in Uganda- actually becomes a marshy swampland in South Sudan and loses all its water. Then the shot shifted to Lake Nasser in north Sudan and South Egypt, the narrator asked- if all the water evaporated in South Sudan then how come this lake is full of huge amount of water…. And then as if to search for an answer it retraces its steps back to the Ethiopian highlands, wherefrom 3000 rain fed rivers and rivulets emanate and end into Lake Tana (Ethiopia has a five month long rainy season, akin to our monsoons, when moisture laden winds from Indian Ocean head towards Horn of Africa, are deflected towards Ethiopia due to coriolis force and hit Ethiopian Highlands, incidentally it is called Monsoon in Ethiopia too). And then from Lake Tana comes out a giant river called Blue Nile….carrying a lot of fertile topsoil from the Ethiopian highlands and about 80 percent of the water for river Nile. I was fascinated with Ethiopia again….
Ethiopia is an age old civilization; The Aksumite civilization was once one of the biggest empires in the world whose boundaries extended to Tanzania in South, Sudan in West, Arabian Peninsula in East and Red Sea in North… it has built some great monuments in the dusty city of Aksum in north Ethiopia… bordering Eritrea. Then came the age of orthodox Christianity, when the Christianity was introduced by the Syrian Orthodox church and then the Coptic Church of Egypt… the Ethiopian Orthodox churched evolved into a separate Church with the passage of time. They built beautiful churches in Lalibela, the monasteries of Lake Tana… and unlike the Orthodox churches of Egypt and Syria that perished with time and were replaced by Islam… Ethiopian Orthodox church continues to prosper… Islam was introduced in Ethiopia soon after the Prophet. Today it is the second biggest religion of the country… Islam also gave historical and cultural dimensions to this country…. Apart from ethnic Somali group who live in the Ethiopian lowlands and work as farmers, there is an indigenous Muslim population in Ethiopia, the non-Arab Muslims... then it has a huge Jewish population also… living today in either the highlands or in camps, waiting to go to Israel…. And then there are tribals with their animistic religion…Despite this diversity, Ethiopia has been relatively peaceful…
In many ways it reminds me of India, where so many religions live in relative peace….
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