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View Point  

You may not realize it, but Ethiopia and the United States have some striking similarities.  Both developed with expansionist moorings.  And both have places where people are considered eccentric. 

Hararghe, Ethiopia's California 

 

 

America is a huge country. Not as big as Mother Russia perhaps, with its eleven time zones but immense regardless.
 

From the beginning, the first settlers of America made sure that size alone would not hinder development.
 

Robber barons, such as the Vanderbilts, made a lot of money by ensuring that railroads would span the country. Phone lines, using Morse Code enabled groundbreaking communication.
 

The innovative aircraft built by Howard Hughes, enabled pioneers to travel great distances. In the process, he (Hughes) developed Transworld Airlines and Ethiopian Airlines, an entity that would later become the flagship of not just the country, but the whole continent.
 

Ethiopia, in many ways went through a similar expansion to the United States. The people who led the expansion saw it as a duty to also get to the areas outside of the then Abyssinia before outside forces set up shop. These outsiders brought baggage, like disease and unsolicited variants of the same religion.
 

The western United States is discussed as if it existed on another planet. The phrase 'West Coast' can be used to disparage - things Californian, such as the fondness for crazy behaviour. 
 

There are similarities to this behaviour in eastern Ethiopia, known still as Hararghe. People from that region are known for their extremely open attitude which is different from the rest of the country

 

It could all be described as that of attitude. If someone is known to hail from Hararghe, excuses are made for him or her. 'Don't mind him or her: he or she is from Hararghe. It is as if this was enough to explain their "atypical" manners and ways of self expression to people in the other parts, and as seen through the Easterners' eyes.
 

In the United States, an otherwise jovial traffic policeman, told me sternly to move my car, at once, from the curb.

 

"We do it differently here in the East," he told me as his smile slowly withered.
 

I didn't argue with him. I moved it.

 

Californians are known for their wild style of dress-"gaudy" colours, similarly, only a person from Hararghe would dare do or say certain things. People from Hararghe are very explicit. They do not couch their thoughts in ambiguous phrases. What they mean, they say out loud, despite the consequences

 

When you drive along the road from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and continue north, through the massive state, you begin to understand why, the state of California is estimated to have the seventh largest GDP in the world. That is just one state, mind you.
 

Driving from Addis along the, now non-existent, railway line to Dire Dawa, demonstrates potential thwarted by the previous revolution.
 

Dire Dawa, once Ethiopia's San Francisco, is hardly standing now, after the decline of markets for goods and services. It was continental and cosmopolitan. Its restaurants were second to none. Eating out, and along the pedestrian sidewalk was an adventure. Watching films at the open air cinemas were de rigueur, after which, walking with the family along the boulevards was common. 
 

But, as one agitated man born in Jijiga and living in Los Angeles, explained to me, “many contraband items fall off trucks in the Silicon Valley … and look what heights they have reached".

I did not have the heart to add: and look where they are now.
 

Having lunch at one of the Ethiopian eateries in Los Angeles was very much like having a meal in Dire Dawa. The only difference was in watching with fascination as a Japanese man cut up raw meat for his friends to taste. He did not exude finesse when he was cutting up chunks of meat to little pieces but  then again, you have not seen me use chop sticks, either. However, he savoured every morsel he bit into.
 

The talk was loud and merry. No hang-ups, no self absorption. The food was what mattered to the ring of friends around the messob.
 

The strange thing was that none of the Ethiopians were from Harar or Dire Dawa. The people I met told me that living in California had changed them because times were hard.
 

It was slightly different in the East… in New York and in Boston.
 

In the East, good weather allowed families to come outside instead of going to the cinema - you do that in the winter. On the West Coast, it is almost always nice. If you did not go to restaurants, you went to the beach with the family in tow. What you might have spent in a cafe, you spent on hotel rooms, modestly available up and down the whole length and breadth of the Pacific coastline.
 

This time of the year, one can quite easily discern who has been in the United States a long time. There are a whole batch of proud Ethiopian parents celebrating their offspring's finishing of high school or graduating from college.
 

If the children are seventeen they will have attained entry to the first year of university. This will mean that those parents have been in America for at least that  length of time. Those that have been here longer will have seen their sons and daughters get their first university degrees.

 

Whatever the event being celebrated, it is done so with much fanfare and ceremony a lot of “hoopla” and “bunting” and shrieking all by the deliriously happy parents.
 

I attended a celebration the other day, where the boy, all six feet six inches of him, with a shoe size one and a half times mine, was only twelve years old. The festivities and merriment were, on the other hand, fit for when he does finally graduate from high school in 8 years time.

 

Did anyone notice or mind? You know they did not in the slightest.

By MOUSSE AYELE 

 
 
   
   
   
 
 
 

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