Of Ethiopian History and Underground Blogging

[Written December 12]

You might remember Ethiopia as the place where, according to our mothers, there resided children who would love to eat the food that was still left on our plates, obliging us to eat it. And we, being considerate, thoughtful children, gravely surveying our beets and mashed potatoes, said "Can we send it to them instead?"

Such is Ethiopia's popular media reputation of being the quintessential African nation filled with starving children. This reputation isn't far off, since some areas still suffer from desperate poverty, even though the famine of the 1980s has long since past. However, the popular media reputation is misleading in referring to Ethiopia as quintessentially African; Ethiopia somewhat prides itself on being completely unlike the rest of the continent.

The country has its own ancient Coptic church, Italian cultural influences due to Mussolini's WWII conquest of the country, a beautiful populace with striking Caucasian features and dark skin tones, and the famous Emperor Haile Selassie, the beloved monarch with claims to the throne of Solomon and adoration from Rastafarians who believe he was Jesus' reincarnation. The king ruled for more than 50 years until the Communist Derg overthrew him in 1974. Communist monuments still color the capital city of Addis Ababa, testaments to the Derg's legacy, which ended with a rebel overthrow in 1991, so that Ethiopia now calls itself a federal democratic republic.

Ethiopia even has its own calendar, for which reason the country recently celebrated their second millennium. It is the year 2,000 here, and the city still has decorations on display: strings of lights strung down from street lamps, hotels with red, green and yellow (the colors of the Ethiopia flag) lights covering its façade, and "Ethiopia 2000" banners suspended alongside the road we traveled.

I first thought the lights might've been part of Christmas decorations. Jeremy and I had seen decorations at every airport, from Austin to Chicago to Heathrow. (We stopped in Amman Jordan for refueling but stayed on the plane, so I cannot vouch for that airport's décor). But Joe Stocker - our host, WFA's well driller extraordinaire, at whose service we will be for this trip - explained the millennium celebration while we drove away from our 4:30 am arrival at the airport.

Apparently the government added to the celebration by allowing people to use text messages again. During elections a while back, people used text messages as a form of protest, sending mass texts that told cohorts to go out side at certain times of the night and yell in unison.

The government told their communications minister to shut down cell phone text messaging capabilities. The minister said he could not do that. The government said it would replace the minister with someone who could. The minister shut down cell phone text messaging.

But now it is back, so please yell with me in approval, if you would like, at 2 a.m. on Thursday, Central Standard Time.

Unfortunately, the government does not allow blogging or blog viewing. As you might've guessed, there are ways around that, but if you try to type in a blog address directly into the URL, or even click on a blog's link, whether from a search engine or another site, the system is designed so that the page will never load. Kind of adds to the thrill of blogging from this end.

At the moment, a few hours after our arrival, we are in Addis Ababa, at a rented house with several other residents, good friends of Joe. Soon we will go to the village about an hour away where we will continue Joe's drilling tomorrow and aid the community with some chores today. That's what it's looking like, but we'll see. After a couple dozen hours of travel touching four continents, we might just rest for the day.