Ethiopia on the Rise

A DEPTH REPORT BY THE MEEK SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND NEW MEDIA AT

THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI

Ole Miss in Africa

ETHIOPIA ON THE RISE

Ole Miss in Africa | ETHIOPIA ON THE RISE

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New places to call home.

The Division of Global Engagement provides leadership for the comprehensive internationalization of The University of Mississippi, including study abroad opportunities all over the world. Study abroad creates global citizens whose cultural development and personal growth increases the global reach of the University of Mississippi and the State of Mississippi.

Also, Global Engagement welcomes international degree and non-degree students from more than 93 countries to The University of Mississippi every year.

F O R M O R E I N F O R M AT I O N :

oge.olemiss.edu OR studyabroad.olemiss.edu

Learning a foreign language is crucial for success in today’s world.

Students in a Swahili class perform in a skit.

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The department is housed in Bondurant Hall

The Department of Modern Languages at the University of Mississippi provides students with practical instruction in a second language and the cultural awareness and intellectual strategies necessary to successfully navigate foreign landscapes. Students can earn a B.A. in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Linguistics and Spanish, as well as pursue minors or an M.A. in a variety of languages. The department is home to one of the few Chinese Flagship Language Programs in the country.

Department of Modern Languages modernlanguages.olemiss.edu

ETHIOPIA ON THE RISE MULTIMEDIA REPORTERS/PHOTOGRAPHERS Gabriel Austin Jared Boyd Leah Gibson Ann-Marie Herod Cady Herring Logan Kirkland Sierra Mannie Maggie McDaniel Lacey Russell Clancy Smith

EDITOR/FACULTY LEADER Patricia Thompson

PHOTO/MULTIMEDIA DIRECTOR Mikki K. Harris

PUBLICATION DESIGNER Katie Williamson

ADVISERS Mark Gail Will Norton Jr. Bill Rose Katie Williamson

WEB DESIGNER Ji Hoon Heo

EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Johnathan Kohliem Ellen Whitaker COVER: St. George’s Church in Lalibela, carved out of rock early in the 13th century as a memorial to King Lalibela.

PHOTO BY CADY HERRING THIS PAGE: Epiphany Celebration in Lalibela.

PHOTO BY LOGAN KIRKLAND

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TABLE of

CONTENTS SECTION ONE:

OLE MISS IN ETHIOPIA

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Churches, Castles, Christianity

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Timket: ‘Christ celebrates his birthday with speciality’

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Land of Runners

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Ethiopia Rising: Economic boom

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Will a signature sound of Ethiopia rise from the ashes?

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Helping Ethiopian families cope with the impact of AIDS

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God’s Country Resoring the land, one day at a time 4

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Doctors, extension workers transform care Ethiopia’s ambitious water project

Sunrise over Addis Ababa PHOTO BY CADY HERRING

SECTION TWO:

MISSISSIPPI & ETHIOPIA CONNECTIONS

60 Universities’ partnership creates new era of global exchange

64 Tea with the Grandfather: Mississippi woman reflects on her years in Ethiopia

Visit

olemissinafrica.com for interactive multimedia, videos, more photography and articles

66 Ethiopians, Mississippians deal with stereotypes

68 ‘I know the potential of what Ethiopia can be’

70 Ethiopians thrive at rural Mississippi school Ole Miss in Africa | ETHIOPIA ON THE RISE

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A young girl sits on her father’s shoulder to watch the procession of replicas of the Ark of the Covenant, known as tabots, during Addis Ababa’s Timket celebration. PHOTO BY MAGGIE MCDANIEL

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GOD’S COUNTRY Story by Sierra Mannie

It’s a holy day, it’s hot, and there are people everywhere.

visit Ethiopia each year for its religious significance, from the Lalibela churches to monasteries that whisper with ancient knowledge of the Ark of the Covenant.

And although the country has one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, wherever you are in Ethiopia, it’s six years and a day later than whenever it is in Mississippi. It is January, but on this side of the world, it Amharic for baptism, Timket commemorates in the is summertime, and like summertime at home, it is hot.

Ethiopian Orthodox Church the baptism of Jesus in the People will still have Christmas decorations up, a friendly Jordan River. In Bahir Dar, anticipation is tangible. The man in a fedora says at the airport. Fresh off of the day before is marked by colorful procession: tattooed plane and wobbling around on nearly 24 hours’ worth of mothers with children and umbrellas in hand, unruly accumulated jelly in my legs, I am surrounded by brothers teenaged boys tossing lemons to young ladies who catch their eye, and solemn and beautiful clergy leading the pack and sisters loaded down with plane cargo that turns out to be gifts that I have never met before. The tongues in the in ritual rigidity. mouths cartwheel over syllables in a language I have never On the day of Epiphany, priests swathed in snowstorms met before, but the faces are of white robes stand on like mine. The man in the stage, microphones in fedora speaks of his family, hand, and worn Amharic and of the diaspora. syllables tumble over “I’m from California. their lips and wash over I’ve worked there very the crowd. So does the many years, but I was born holy water. From hoses here,” he says, gesticulating connected to a hidden to the air in the baggage source, the blessed liquid claim. “This is home. And sprays forth like T-shirts yours, too, sister,” he says, from a cannon, and the nodding emphatically at people rush forward me and the other students eagerly to scrape their around me. All of us in this hands over their faces particular conversation are and cup it into their black, and all of us but one mouths. The reprieve on born in Mississippi. His - tour guide in Gondar the faces young and old laugh at our expressions is is the money shot, the not condescending. epiphany — the eureka “No, sister,” he says. “All moment. Everyone is revitalized by the promise of God in of this. I try to tell my son that this is his culture. All black the water.

Americans need to see this. This is culture. This is the But there is God in the ground here, too. From the flesh beginning.” of the animals that feed from the earth, from the spongy Addis Ababa, with its skeletons of scaffolding awaiting injera farmed from there, the people eat. God is so soaked flesh standing tall in its downtown, is the nation’s capital. into the bones of the people here that their very posture The roads are paved, but cracked, and people drive with sings with millennia of identity colonized only by the love rules unspoken unless they’re uttered as epithets in the of black Jesus. questionable safety of your vehicle’s interior.

There is not, however, a homogenous Ethiopian people.

But like other big cities, Addis Ababa promises to boom.

More than 70 ethnic groups live inside Ethiopia’s borders, The busy sidewalks bustle with some of the most beautiful encompassing national and racial identity. A burgeoning people you’ve ever seen, and, like in many other major economy and infrastructure — the latter funded largely cities, the class distinction that separates people is as close

by Chinese businesses — has attracted international as a designer-shoed foot stepping over a sleeping body on workers from Asia, mainly India and China. Highways carve a route for the growing number of tourists who the side of the road. Stores and markets are flooded with

“You, go home, tell all to come here — tell Black America to come here. This is your past.

This is your royalty. All of you must see.”

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FROM LEFT: A barber shop at a market in Bahir Dar. PHOTO BY CADY HERRING The walls of Ethiopian Orthodox Christian churches are covered with illustrations of biblical stories. PHOTO BY CLANCY SMITH Lalibela is home to stone churches, places of high religious culture. A priest waits to bless people coming to church to pray.

shoppers. Every few miles, the ghostly images of cornrowed Alicia Keys and micro-braided Beyoncé of the late 1990s and early 2000s appear on signs for hair salons the size of American convenience store restrooms.

The restaurants are numerous and offer delicious, cheap food — spicy stews made from a variety of chopped meats, tasty vegetable and bean-based dips, tej — a curious, honeyed wine that at first taste recalls Tang and at last taste requires a designated driver. And, of course, the vinegary pancakes of injera to sop them all up with. Tap water, where it is available, is not safe for tourists to drink, so beverages come served inside bottles, most of them with Coca Cola emblazoned on the side — the ultimate testament to capitalism. You can open happiness literally everywhere in the world. You can open the door to music everywhere in the world, too, and that is especially true in the restaurants of Addis Ababa. Troupes of young people garnished in the traditional dress of their ethnic groups tour venues, performing songs in Amharic and shoulder-heavy dances to a watchful and sometimes forcefully participant crowd.

Outside of the traffic of the city and atop Bet Entoto rests miles and miles of lush green. Except for the road that snakes up the mountain, the scene is an uninterrupted paradise of forest. The Horn of Africa Regional Environment Center and Network erupts two

With physical manifestations of leaps of faith at every turn, there is poetry in climbing your way to God.

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PHOTOS BY LOGAN KIRKLAND A woman brews coffee in an Addis Ababa restaurant. Ethiopia is considered the birthplace of coffee, and coffee production is important to the nation’s economy and culture. Ethiopians engage daily in conversations centered around coffee, which can last for hours. PHOTO BY CLANCY SMITH

stories high above its cobblestone driveway. Inside it is a modern treehouse hub buzzing with interdisciplinary research that intends to mobilize environmental restructuring projects to improve life for Ethiopians, spatially and socially. With a focus on “regreening” the Ethiopian slice of the Horn of Africa, the Center towers above all of Addis Ababa as a beacon of the future. In the Cradle of Civilization, everything from the preservation of the lush past and the betterment of the future begins — and ends — with the manipulation and repurposing of the land.

The truly inalienable beauty of Addis Ababa is in the roles of the very young and the very old. Ethiopia is one of the oldest civilizations on Earth, and boasts the beginning of all of Earth’s people, with the Eve gene and the skeleton of the very first human Dinknesh, commonly referred to as “Lucy,” exhumed from the Cradle of Humanity and interred right at home in an Addis Ababa museum.

But Ethiopia is also very much invested in its more immediate progeny. Addis Ababa University is ensconced in a well-gardened few acres of beautiful main campus, and 12 other locations throughout the city. With its modern and imposing buildings and fashionable student body, it looks like almost any other university, except for the hundreds of blind students — many of whom are helped by the university’s disabilities service center.

Just a few minutes away, other youth work diligently, too. The School of Tomorrow in Addis Ababa educates some of Ethiopia’s best and brightest from grades

kindergarten through 12th grade. The students are taught and tested rigorously, and many graduate to go off to the best universities in the world. Addis Ababa is faced toward tomorrow.

Gondar, on the other hand, is an incredible bastion of the past, with a quaint beauty. If Addis Ababa is a magnified Jackson, Gondar is a nice little Canton — same trucks, same houses, same solemn men grouped together as if every conversation is a very secret and serious meeting. There are more horses. The livestock trot in the street, briskly, and purposefully, as if they are late for secret, serious meetings, too. The former capital of the Ethiopian empire, Gondar is known as the “African Camelot” — a problematic term in that Gondar, even with its breathtaking remnants of stone castles, does not recall a time of European grandeur. The now-unoccupied Fasil Ghebbi, a looming testament to the old kingdom, is a spot for tourism because of Africa’s rich historical mythology; the Ethiopian romance stands on its own to explain the rich cultural history and identity of its people and pushes forcefully against the idea that Ethiopia’s history is merely an extension of the xenophobia of ancient historian Herodotus.

The tour guides are already hip to this knowledge, and all walk and talk with earnestness and a special insistence that their usually American charges listen to their words rather than focus on photographing the admittedly incredible scenery, inside and out of the still-furnished castles.

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Our own guide, David, is short and wiry with a smile unwavering in its beauty and its fixture on his face — that is, until he pulls me aside to speak to me, and the urgency in his low voice is more compelling than his smile. Once again, I am someone’s sister, charged with taking home a message to my displaced brethren.

“You, sister, more than all must listen,” he said into my shoulder. “You, go home, tell all to come here — tell Black America to come here. This is your past. This is your royalty. All of you must see. This and more you have not seen is your beginning. Humility is good, but you are not so humble as your enslaved grandparents. Your history does not begin in America. It does not even begin with the beginning of these castles. The ancestors of your grandparents’ grandparents — kings, and queens. You. Make sure you pay attention.”

Like Gondar, Lalibela is also famed for its incredible past and kingdoms that once were. Lalibela is the beginning of the world. The people here farm from right in front of their feet. The little kids are like little kids everywhere, opportunistic and snot-nosed and small, who always wave back. Mountains fringe the skyline like eyelashes, and the chocolate drops of high technology that spot the landscape are alien technology compared to the great ancient churches hewn from the great red rock.

Morgas the tour guide looks like statuary of Alexander the Great, but his words more than his appearance recall centuries of the ancient greatness of Lalibela, named for a 12th century king whose legendary piety established a city

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OPPOSITE LEFT: Ben Abeba Restaurant in Lalibela.

PHOTO BY LOGAN KIRKLAND ABOVE: A woman stands near rock-hewn churches in Lalibela.

LEFT: Epiphany celebration in Bahir Dar. PHOTOS BY CADY HERRING

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symbolic of Jerusalem, with 11 churches carved from monolithic rock erupting from the ground.

Besides the tours, the churches still operate as places of worship and are maintained by monks and nuns — some of whom are married. There is no glamour in traveling amongst the churches, which are grouped according to the four cardinal directions; to clamber from church to church is to scale walls, to scamper from rock to rock, to feel your way through dark tunnels — it’s a mission trip of rock climbing. One tunnel, 50 feet in length, is completely dark, suffocating, symbolic of the soul’s travel through hell. Blind and lonely you go, until the tunnel slopes gently upward, and there is light at the end of the tunnel — literally. With physical manifestations of leaps of faith at every turn, there is poetry in climbing your way to God. Proof of King Lalibela’s fortuitous spirit is carved into the rock. Symbols of world religions — Hindu swastikas, stars of David, Latin and Greek crosses — pattern the buildings in which only Ethiopian Orthodox is practiced, but the entire world is celebrated. Ethiopia is the helm of all things, and black excellence is alpha and omega, which is curiously, refreshingly normative.

In the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia is bordered on the east by Somalia, the south by Kenya, and the west by Sudan. Eritrea is its most northern neighbor. Unlike the nations it borders, Ethiopia, for as long as it has been Ethiopia, has never swung

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resentfully from the plundering fingertips of European colonists.

This is not for lack of trying on Europe’s part. For millennia, the West has done its best to interject beyond the usually harmless effects of the cultural diffusion that comes with trade. The 16th century saw Portugal in the blossoming of the slave trade seek diplomatic bonds with the Christian nation of Ethiopia; and in the late 19th century, a just-unified Italy thirsting to bite into glory like it hadn’t tasted since Constantinople shoved against Ethiopia’s defenses, both cultural and physical, and spawned the Italo-Abyssinian Wars. But Ethiopia shoved back, and shoved into the following centuries with pride at its helm; regardless of political upheaval, leadership has been Ethiopian only.

In this place where the world is very old and still looks so new, the rest of the world just looks like fruit from its garden. To bathe in the sunshine here is to connect to all in existence, right in the womb that nurtured it in the first place. Visiting Ethiopia is less branding the place into your heart than it is surrendering your heart to the ultimate spiritual subpoena. Blood and flesh snatched from my heart lie there and yank my soul back piece by piece each day. Ethiopia is God’s country, the rib from which all is molded, heart of the motherland and womb from which all is birthed. To have a chance of understanding the world, you must first understand a place like this.

OPPOSITE LEFT: A woman and her child watch visitors at sugar cane fields near Bahir Dar and the Blue Nile Falls. PHOTO BY CADY HERRING ABOVE: A scene from one of the dusty roads near the rural town of Bekoji, known for its training facility for long-distance runners. PHOTO BY LOGAN KIRKLAND

The Federal Democratic Republic of

ETHIOPIA

Geographic Area: 430,000 square miles (more than 1 1/2 times the size of Texas) Population: 100 million Capital: Addis Ababa. Population: 3.4 million city, 4.6 million metro area Urban Population: 19.5% of total population Currency: Birr (approx. 21 Birr = 1 U.S. Dollar) Official language: Amharic, but many other languages are spoken by Ethiopia’s many ethnic groups. English is widely spoken in business and secondary and higher education settings.

Gondar Bahir Dar

Lalibela

Addis Ababa

Ethiopia has one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and its population growth is one of the highest in the world. Ethiopia, a long-time ally of the United States, is in a strategic position in Africa, surrounded by Arab League nations.

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Ethiopia’s Millennium Development Goals 2015 Achieve universal primary education

Reduce child mortality

Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty

Improve maternal health

Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

Ensure environmental sustainability

Promote gender equality and empower women

Develop a global partnership for development

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PHOTO BY CADY HERRING

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RESTORING THE LAND ONE DAY AT A TIME Story by Clancy Smith

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Wondwossen Girmay, program officer, walks with Dechasa Iiru near their office in Addis Ababa PHOTO BY CADY HERRING

lush green forest stretches across the Bale Mountains, just outside the city of Addis Ababa. Fourteen years ago, the area was a barren wasteland. The mountains, once brown and devoid of life, were some of the first in Ethiopia to be turned into a park where feverish conservation efforts have redeveloped the land into a forest rich with vegetation and wildlife.

“If you go for historical data, once Ethiopia’s forest was about 40 percent, some say,” said Wondwossen Girmay, the program director for the Horn of Africa Regional Environment Center and Network, a very long name for the nation’s conservation efforts. “Then it collapsed to about less than 3 percent. Now we are building from that 3 percent, and according to the official media we are reaching about 11 or 12 percent.”

It’s still a far cry from the forest’s glory days in the 15th century, when “it was very dense” and “royal kings used to come here for game,” said forestation director Shimaliis Tallilaa. But over the centuries, neglect and the country’s expanding agricultural efforts chewed up much of the greenery.

It’s hard work to regrow a forest, hard work to turn wasteland green.

But the conservation office is determined.

Places like the Bale Mountains teem with workers planting trees and shrubs, reintroducing wildlife, tending to seedlings that will eventually wind up on barren slopes, and accelerating a watershed initiative that has funneled water down the mountain in an effort to reclaim it for drinking water in Addis Ababa.

This ambitious effort in the Bale Mountains is run from a campground and a small set of offices lying inconspicuously along the dirt path leading visitors up a mountainside.

“We have 145 staff to work the 9,000-hectare (22,240-acre) forest,” Tallilaa said. “It is a very big one, and a very tedious one, and that doesn’t include the annual tree planting campaign where a number of individuals come to support and plant.”

Further up the trail stands a simple man-made fountain with crystal clear water bubbling from its opening. In addition to reintroducing plants and wildlife, the watershed initiative and its fresh drinking water show the fruits of reforestation to a populace that hasn’t always valued it.

“The waters that we drink here are because of this forest,” Tallilaa said.

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Dechasa Iiru dedicated his life to improving the environment at an early age. He has served as an agroforestry researcher for about 50 years and advises conservationists on the best approach to the problem in different regions.

One of the best regreening tools in conservation, Iiru said, is the small, easily cultivated Moringa tree, which provides food with high nutritional value and keeps investors happy with its ecological and economically beneficial results.

“Moringa you plant in one year and you harvest three times the first year,” Iiru said. “So it’s not like any other tree where you plant and wait for 10 years.”

Moringa also is fed to livestock, which creates quality meat and milk and better animal production for the local people.

ENGAGING AND EMPOWERING LOCAL RESIDENTS

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he benefits of the initiatives are evident, but its leaders make sure that all conservation efforts focus on the Ethiopian people.

“We’re putting people at the center of conservation,” Girmay said.

Even in this protected park, local communities have been made to feel as if they are a part of the project. Rural people residing along the edges of the mountains are educated about the conservation efforts near them. And instead of creating an initiative in an office setting, Girmay said, the organization makes an effort to get input from the communities with which the center will be working in order to make the project effective and long lasting.

“It is very critical for us in the very designing phase of the projects that we sit together with the communities,” Girmay said. “There we will learn. It is a process of learning.”

Ultimately, conservationists dream of expanding the forest even further and persuading communities to relocate to a place where they would be provided with health care and educational opportunities.

However, the choice will ultimately be their own.

“It is very critical to participate in the local community, gauge their interest, and also prioritize their needs and then give them the power to decide what direction they should go,” said Dechasa Iiru, an agroforestry researcher for the conservation center. “This is very, very important.”

One issue that the conservation center is working to overcome is the

“We’re putting people at the center of conservation”

The back porch of Horn of Africa Regional Environment Center and Network in Addis Ababa. PHOTO BY CADY HERRING

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lack of power and influence of women in rural communities.

“Studies show that areas where women are more empowered are usually more successful,” Girmay said.

The initiative provides women with seeds, simple farming tools and the instruction they need to grow crops for sale or use.

“Empowerment is very important,” Girmay said. “We give training to these people, that is one component, then they are able to come up with some of their own involvement and solutions.”

The center hopes that empowering women will help promote better environmental governance, management and more equitable use of natural resources.

SLOW, STEADY PROGRESS he Horn of Africa Regional Environment Center and Network nestles between the hills of Mount Entoto, inside a leaf-shaped headquarters building made entirely of natural materials.

The center originated in 2006 at Addis Ababa University when the need for environmental care in Ethiopia could no longer be ignored and government officials decided that early conservation efforts

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needed to be expanded quickly.

“You can see it took about half a century to completely come to the bottom, and we are climbing a very steep way and it is very difficult,” Girmay said. “You can see always deforestation is very simple, but rehab takes time in terms of resources, the time and it is also very costly.”

Rehabilitation, conservation of biodiversity, climate change and adaptations are all ongoing initiatives for the center.

“We are not saying we are the ones that are going to solve all these problems, but we try to show that if things are networked, if we facilitate and promote this initiative, we can contribute significantly,” Girmay said.

A couple miles up the re-forested Bale Mountains, a campsite peeks through a leafy green canopy of trees. Often home to field trips, retreats and conferences, the campground was created to give visitors a place to escape and enjoy nature.

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FROM LEFT: A campsite for visitors is near the environment center. PHOTO BY CLANCY SMITH TOP: Dechasa Iiru works in his office. BOTTOM: Wondwossen Girmay, program officer, works in his office. PHOTOS BY CADY HERRING Fresh drinking water at the conservation site is a direct result of the “regreening” project. PHOTO BY CLANCY SMITH

“People are attending here as tourists, as locals or from outside of the country so there is some kind of good economic transaction here,” Tallilaa said. “The area also has traditional and cultural values, because historically it has been recognized as the first park in Africa.”

Rows of traditional wooden cabins face a tree nursery where seedlings are nurtured until they are ready to be planted deeper in the forest. Forestation Director Tallilaa and his staff work to keep the grounds running smoothly.

“The nurseries do require laborious activities and while we are working with them we may take on temporary staff,” Tallilaa said.

A small community of people border the forested area.

“People who have been living here are natural like the trees,” Tallilaa said. “They use the forest for their existence.”

While the environment is its primary concern, the government’s conservation organization also tackles troubling social issues within the country.

“There is extensive poverty, there is food insecurity,” Girmay said.

“Attention must be given to this area for the people that are living here.”

Environmentalists say that the most challenging aspect of implementing a new project is changing the mindset of the people in the communities.

“The values, the attachment of human things with nature has already been degraded,” Iiru said. “In some ways we have to try to make this attachment. People must have some attachment, not only to some benefit, but a part of nature. That is the missing link in our understanding.”

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A chuch in Lalibela, where people participate in daily prayer.

PHOTO BY LOGAN KIRKLAND

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CHURCHES, CASTLES, CHRISTIANITY Ethiopia, known as The Cradle of Civilization, was one of the earliest Christian nations. Today, about 44 percent of Ethiopians are Orthodox Christians, 19 percent are Protestant Christians, and 34 percent are Islam.

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LEFT: A priest walks by Bete Medhane Alem, the largest monolithic church in the world. PHOTO BY LOGAN KIRKLAND TOP: St. George’s Church in Lalibela. PHOTO BY CADY HERRING BOTTOM: A church in Lalibela. PHOTO

BY LOGAN KIRKLAND

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Scenes from Lalibela and Gondar, Ethiopia’s ancient capital city.

PHOTOS BY CADY HERRING and LOGAN KIRKLAND

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CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: PHOTO BY CADY HERRING, PHOTO BY LOGAN KIRKLAND, PHOTO BY CADY HERRING, PHOTO BY LOGAN KIRKLAND

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A boy is sprayed with Holy Water during Timket.

PHOTO BY LOGAN KIRKLAND

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Timket ‘Christ celebrates his birthday with specialty’ Story by Maggie McDaniel

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n Ethiopian woman dressed in white from head to toe sweeps a long red carpet in the middle of a wide street in Addis Ababa. She is surrounded by tens of thousands of people chanting in the Amharic national language, clapping and dancing to the beat of drums. Some people are in the streets, while others crowd balconies of apartment buildings and restaurants to observe the procession.

This is Ketera, the eve of Timket, a threeday religious celebration of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River by John the Baptist.

Timket in Ethiopia takes place every year in January on the 10th day of Terr on the Ethiopian calendar. In 2015, it took place on Jan. 19. Timket is a celebration of the Epiphany for Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, with major ceremonies each year in Gondar, Addis Ababa, Bahir Dar and Lalibela.

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Ethiopians living abroad travel back home for the holiday.

Ketera begins when deacons lead a procession carrying replicas of the Ark of the Covenant, known as tabots. They wear long, colorful robes with gold designs, hats with tassels, and carry umbrellas and intricate gold crosses.

Yikunnoamlak Mezgebu, professor of language and linguistics at Addis Ababa University and a former deacon, says that the word Ketera is Amharic for “ambush,” referring to one group waiting for another to go to the water where Jesus was baptized. On Ketera, deacons march — wearing tabots on their heads — from the church to a field, the representation of the river of Jordan.

The tabots are placed in an area marked off by rope and surrounded by guards in blue camouflage uniforms.

People push to the front to watch the ceremony. Children sit on their fathers’ shoulders to get a better view. Older children and teens play games in the field, making bets on who can knock down Coke bottles with a single ball.

Priests lead the ceremony with prayers and songs in Amharic.

At 8 a.m. the next morning, the priests eat breakfast and then start the procession of the tabots in the field. They prepare Holy Water to spray on the crowds. They chant, followed by chants from younger priests, Sunday school classes and children.

Fissehatsion Demoz, an instructor at the Holy Trinity Theological College in Addis Ababa, says the day of baptism “is the day in which we are brought the salvation of our sins.”

Men climb fences near the tabots, bringing

LEFT: The Epiphany celebration in Bahir Dar. PHOTO

BY CADY HERRING Religious leaders march in the streets of Addis Ababa during Timket. PHOTO BY MAGGIE MCDANIEL

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out hoses to spray people with holy water. The crowds shout and chant as the water splashes them.

Near the gated fences are deacons, priests and others marching to the beat of drums, chanting, singing.

The three-day celebration is unique to Ethiopia.

“The number one thing is reborn. Unless we are reborn in the womb of the river of Jordan, then we are not considered Christians,” explains Dean Yirgalem Ashagrie of Bahir Dar. “It is during Timket time that many cultural festivities are celebrated. Ethiopia is a country of many nationalities having their own culture, therefore they show during Timkat. “… Everything should be for Timket. You celebrate your birthday; I celebrate my birthday, then who else celebrates? Christ celebrates his birthday with specialty.”

Priests spray holy water during Timket in Lalibela, marking the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River.

RIGHT: A man reads scripture during the Epiphany celebration in Bahir Dar. PHOTOS BY LOGAN KIRKLAND

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Scenes from Timket. ABOVE TOP: PHOTO BY CADY HERRING. ABOVE BOTTOM: PHOTO BY KATIE WILLIAMSON. RIGHT: PHOTO BY CADY HERRING.

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CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Boys get a good view of baptisms from trees in Bahir Dar. PHOTO BY CADY HERRING Priests with replicas of the Ark of the Covenant lead the procession in Addis Ababa.

PHOTO BY KATIE WILLIAMSON Women in white dresses and scarves march in Bahir Dar. PHOTO BY CADY HERRING

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Land of Runners Story and Photos by Logan Kirkland

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s the soft sunrise lightly kisses Addis Ababa, the rhythm of breathing and shoes slapping the ground resonates throughout the city. Clusters of runners weave uphill, downhill.

Watching the runners train, I feel exhausted and intimidated. Steep hills and rough terrain on flat plains accompany the high altitude. For anyone not from Ethiopia, the difference in altitude — almost 8,000 feet above sea level —makes exercising and even walking difficult.

“Running, for Ethiopians, means a lot of things,” Ethiopian sports journalist Ato Fikir Yilkal says. “Ethiopia is a land of runners.

“You can see everybody running to win his life. Every runners’ story in Ethiopia is inspirational for the young, for the generation.”

Ethiopians developed the habit of running long distances when schools were located far away from where many people lived, Yilkal says. Children would run to school to get there more quickly. There is one story about a famous athlete who ran 20 kilometers (more than 12 miles) to and from school day.

“They want to escape what is behind in their life, and in their home,” Yilkal says. “If you consider the most successful Ethiopian distance runners, their life will tell you something.”

Ethiopia’s male and female long-distance runners are internationally celebrated.

Among them are Abebe Bikila, who won an Olympic gold medal running barefoot in Rome in 1960. Tirunesh Dibaba has won three gold medals. Haile Gebrselassie is one of the greatest runners in history. In 2013 and 2015, Lelisa Desisa won the men’s Boston Marathon.

The most famous training place in Ethiopia — and the birthplace of many famous runners —is in Bekoji in Arsi Province, a few hours south of Addis Ababa. The facility resembles a small college campus containing a dining hall, dormitories, a place for education and a running track, and it has a family environment where athletes grow more than just physically.

Coaches travel to different areas of Ethiopia to evaluate the runners. They are rated in a variety of categories, including speed, reaction time, height, weight, stride and much more. The coaches then take the athletes with the best overall score.

The training schedule is grueling, but many of them have endured much worse conditions.

“Ethiopians are very resilient when it comes to facing problems of any kind,” says Alem Tafesse, a race walker for the youth national team.

RIGHT: Fikadu Abera and Kasu Solomon train for their competitions by running at the track located at the Tirunesh Dibaba Sports Training Center in Arsi.

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“You can see everybody running to win his life.”

-Ethiopian Sports Journalist Ato Fikir Yilkal

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Tafesse grew up in poverty outside Addis Ababa. She didn’t have appropriate running clothing, but she stuck with her passion.

“I am always happy running,” Tafesse says.

In Bekoji, she learned how successful she could be through hard work and dedication.

“In Addis, I wouldn’t even think of being the person I am now. I faced problems and did not have ways to resolve them,” Tafesse says with a soft smile. “This has created quite an opportunity for me to live a better life.”

Bizuge Mammo, a competitor in the 1500-meter race, said that when she initially started to train, her mother was not supportive because she wanted Bizuge to finish getting an education. But her brothers urged her to continue to train because they

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saw it as opportunity for her to succeed.

“I used to hide myself (from my mother),” Mammo says. “She did not know I was an athlete.”

Mammo was proud to be selected for the prestigious Bekoji center, which is led by legendary coach Sentayehu Eshetu.

“It’s very pleasant to see our country in a positive light, a positive image,” Mammo says.

Competing for her nation is a huge responsibility, Mammo says. She works hard to become a role model for those struggling throughout Ethiopia.

“I’m not a person that gives up hope,” Mammo says. “I keep hoping and hoping and I get stronger as time goes.”

Fikadu Abera, 800-meter competitor, says

ABOVE: Female athletes eat a meal in the Bekoji training facility’s dining hall. RIGHT: Coach Abiot Testaye.

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RIGHT: Alem Tafesse, a race walker. Fikadu Abera, a runner. BELOW: Bizuye Mammo, Kasu Solomon and Fikadu Abera prepare for a workout at the Tirunesh Dibaba Sports Training Center.

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the training center in Bekoji “is a source of unity for this country.”

“I think about reaching a better place when I’m running,” Abera says. “That’s always on my mind.”

Ethiopians striving to use athletics to escape poverty is familiar to many in impoverished parts of Mississippi.

“In a lot of communities all across the world, athletics are seen as a mechanism to try and elevate yourself in many ways out of a social economic condition you find yourself in,” says Charles Ross, associate professor of history and director of African-American studies at the University of Mississippi. “They have recognized that this is a way in which they can empower themselves economically.”

Ross calls this “a very risky route.” The

question that needs to be addressed, he says, is: What happens if you do not make it? The impact of failure – moving to new cities but not making the cut for professional teams, for example – can leave athletes in even worse conditions than before, with no income and little education.

“Every time an athlete comes in contact with people they used to be associated with they are constantly reminded of what they used to be, which can be a very difficult mental transition for many athletes,” says Ross, who has done extensive research on blacks in sports.

“There’s more beyond life than simply athletics. Sports is just one occupation, one opportunity that people have to be successful in life and there are other things you can

potentially do.”

Kasu Solomon, who grew up in the Ethiopia countryside near Arsi, decided to try to be an athlete after listening to popular athletes interviewed on sports radio shows.

“It is about competing with yourself,” Solomon says.

He wants to show the world that Ethiopians do not quit when faced with challenges.

“Athletics is closely tied to being an Ethiopian and to the country as a whole.”

Now, he trains at Bekoji’s elite training facility, and he wants to help his village.

“I really want to become a coach when I’m done competing,” Solomon says. “ It’s a way to improve our livelihood.”

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ETHIOPIA

RISING Story by Gabriel Austin

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Economic boom spurs entrepreneurship

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unlight filters through large windows and spills onto the factory room floor.

The click and hum of machinery makes the air buzz.

Along one wall, four women push and pull methodically on wooden looms, working diligently to create colorful scarves and other cotton textiles to be sold at the local market.

The small production, situated in multi-storied building in downtown Bahir Dar, is part of Ethiopia’s Local Economic Development program, designed to foster entrepreneurship and development throughout the nation.

Wassihun Biresaw Feleke owns this factory. Feleke grew up in poverty but made the life-changing decision to participate in the United Nations’ program.

“Without this program, we surely would have been jobless right now, because we are from poor families,” Feleke said. “Our families could not afford to give us the initial amount to start something, so we can see that some of our students who didn’t like to participate in such programs are still looking for government jobs or jobs somewhere, and they are basically reading vacancies here and there.”

Feleke said that with the assistance of the Local Economic Development program, entrepreneurs in Ethiopia are getting a chance to better not only their own lives, but also the lives of others. Unlike banks, the economic development program does not have stringent requirements for loans.

Dawud Mohammed, an expert on local economic development, said the program began in 2009. Since its inception, the United Nations Development Program has invested millions of dollars along with technical support.

“The first objective is to generate income for vulnerable groups, which includes the youths, disabled and the unemployed,” Mohammed said.

Entrepreneurs interested in joining the program are given revolving funds that they receive and later pay back for others to use.

Local economic development falls under the umbrella of the Millennium Development Goals aiming to create a middle-class income status in Ethiopia by 2025 and to grow the

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nation’s annual Gross Domestic Product from 11.2 percent to 14.9 percent, according to state.gov.

The African Development Bank Group reports that Ethiopia has one of the better performing economies on the continent of Africa. Ethiopia has grown by double-digits each year for more than a decade. The nation is one of the top 10 fastest-growing economies in the world.

In Bahir Dar, the Local Economic Development program has helped more than 5,000 men and women in “vulnerable groups,” and strengthened more than 200 local businesses, according to a program assessment.

Feleke was one of 14 students approaching graduation from Technical and Vocational Education Training Strategy School when he and his peers realized they had no money to finance their vision of owning a textile company.

“We started to think about what we are going to do after we left school, so we started organizing prior to graduation,” Feleke said.

“Therefore, mentally, we were able to do the job.”

The economic development program loaned them 120,000 birr ($5,865 in U.S. money) to create the textile company. The program expected to be repaid within three to four years. It took only two years for Feleke to pay off the loan.

“When we began we only had one machine, and 14 of us used to sit down and work on one machine. It was very challenging,” Feleke said. “We used to have problems with the machine, because sometimes it breaks, sometimes it malfunctions and because of that we spent our time unproductively.”

Now, with the help of the United Nations program, the company has enough machines to remain consistently productive.

The program also has helped him employ other Ethiopians.

“We have a five-year strategic plan, and we follow that to our capacity,” Feleke said.

“Our group has set a goal of hiring three additional people annually. Every year, we want to bring three jobless people onto the team.”

ABOVE: Construction is booming in Ethiopia as the economy grows.

PHOTO BY KATIE WILLIAMSON RIGHT: Wassihun Biresaw Feleke outside of the factory that he owns in Bahir Dar. PHOTO BY KATIE WILLIAMSON RIGHT: Women weave fabric in a small factory in Bahir Dar. PHOTO BY CLANCY SMITH

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Will a signature sound of Ethiopia rise from

the ashes?

Story by Jared Boyd

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n the morning of the second Sunday in January 2015, the historic Itegue Taitu Hotel in Addis Ababa burned to the ground.

The fire destroyed the landmark Jazz Amba nightclub, which had served as the capital of Ethio-jazz since the late 1990s.

And up in flames went my hopes to hear the world-renowned sound indigenous to Addis Ababa.

Sitting in the lobby of the Bole Ambassador Hotel, shortly after arriving in Addis, I picked up a newspaper and saw the front-page headline reporting “Blaze destroys historic Taitu Hotel.” Shocked, I realized my personal quest to wrap my mind around the contemporary sounds of East Africa would take a major hit.

Built as the first hotel in Ethiopia in 1914 during the reign of Emperor Menelek II, the building was named after his wife, Empress Taitu Betul. Situated in the middle of the city, in a heavily trafficked area, the Taitu sat in the Piazza district just blocks away from City Hall, the National Palace, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. English author Evelyn Waugh used the hotel as the backdrop for his 1938 novel “Scoop.” During the fictionalized account of the

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writer’s coverage of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War for the Daily Mail, protagonist William Boot frequents the Taitu.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MASENQO

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ess than 48 hours after the Taitu burned, I sat with Nebiyou Baye, dean of the Yared School of Performing and Visual Arts at Addis Ababa University. He says the key to understanding the cultural importance of music in Ethiopia lies in the school’s namesake. Yared, a saint of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, revolutionized religion in the country by emphasizing the importance of combining traditional wisdom with song, dance, poetry and performance. Very rarely are these acts separated in the Ethiopian artistic aesthetic, he says. As you sing, you dance, and vice versa.

Baye believes the link between traditional Ethiopian music and more modern sounds is the masenqo, a loom-like instrument as popular today as it was among ancient Ethiopian singers. Modern performers, known as azmaris, hold court on their masenqos in

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nightclubs, telling stories and interacting with guests, all through song.

The masenqo instrument appears as the centerpiece of both secular and religious music forms in the Ethiopian culture. The azmaris’ adoption of the ancient instrument fixates them as the visible representation of the melding of the modern and traditional Ethiopian experience. They bridge the gap between the numerous traditional restaurants we visited, which replicate indigenous performances ascribed to native ethnic groups, and the substantial impact of the Western world on Ethiopian music that began in the 20th century.

While I didn’t get to experience the Jazz Amba, I did get to interact with an azmari. Baye had warned me that azmaris are colorful individuals. He was right. At a club one night, an azmari playing a masenqo joked about my thick beard and called me “Al Qaeda.” “Are you related to Obama,” he sang. It was all in good fun.

THE STORIED PAST OF ETHIO-JAZZ uring a trip to Jerusalem in 1916, former Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, then known as Tafari Makonnen Woldemikael, adopted a marching band of 40 Armenian orphans, displaced by the Armenian genocide. The band, dubbed “Arba Lijoch” (an Amharic phrase meaning ‘40 children’), was tasked by Selassie to act as the royal brass orchestra. The director of the band, Kevork Nalbandian, composed the Ethiopian national anthem and was among the founders of the Yared School of Visual and Performing Arts.

His nephew, Nerses Nalbandian, appointed by the Emperor as the musical director of the Haile Selassie National Theater, is credited as one of the country’s most influential musical teachers, mentoring artists such as Mulatu Astatke.

Mulatu Astatke, the father of Ethio-jazz, stumbled upon the vibrant sound after leaving Addis Ababa to study in Wales during the late 1950s. Playing among other African musicians in London, Astatke continued his tour of the West, eventually landing in Boston and New York, where his interest in American jazz heightened. When he returned to Addis Ababa during the late 1960s, he began recording as a performer and bandleader, blending the rhythms of the Americas, on instruments such as the vibraphone, keyboard and congas, with traditional Ethiopian music. The Western-influenced musician attracted attention. American jazz legend Duke Ellington invited Astatke to play with his band during a stop in Ethiopia.

The age of “Swinging Addis” was born. The 1960s saw the advent of Ethiopian radio stations and record labels devoted to a musical palette, directly influenced by the soul and jazz of the United States.

In actuality, the term “Ethio-jazz” may be a misnomer. The vast genre of music comes across like a pidgin of popular black American music from the 1960s with the instrumentation of Abyssinia. Unlike the American cool jazz of that era attributed to acts like Miles Davis and John Coltrane, music of Ethio-jazz’s golden age features a hip swingalong that feels raw and warm. If Chuck Berry spoke Amharic, he’d feel right at home.

Amha Eshete began Amha Records in 1969, despite reported tensions from the Imperial government. Releasing around two albums

Music of Ethio-jazz’s golden age features a hip swing-along that feels raw and warm. If Chuck Berry spoke Amharic, he’d feel right at home.

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and 20 singles a year, Amha birthed the careers of Ethio-Jazz stars Mahmoud Ahmed, Hirut Bekele, Tilahun Gessessse, and Alemayhu Eshete, also known as “The Elvis of Ethiopia.” The Philips Corporation embraced the music movement with its label, Philips-Ethiopia. Kaifa Records, owned and operated by Ali “Tango” Kaifa, also brought competition to the Ethio-jazz market.

After a military coup ousted Haile Selassie from the throne of Ethiopia in 1974, Ethio-jazz declined in the country. The Communist Derg military rulers imposed a nighttime curfew that prevented the performance of contemporary music in Ethiopia’s cities. Before the end of 1975, Amha Records had gone out of business. Its owner and many other musicians took their talents to the West.

It was not until after 1991 when dictator Mengistu Haile Mirium and the Derg’s rule were overthrown that the ban on nighttime activities was lifted. The 16 years of almost utter silence had crippled the legacy of the distinct Ethio-jazz art form. Recovery remains slow and steady.

French record label Buda Musique compiled a 29-volume anthology of recordings from Amha, PhilipsEthiopia and Kaifa’s heyday, entitled “Ethiopiques.” The collection stands today as the basis for the survival of Ethio-jazz into the CD age, along with more traditional forms of Ethiopian music.

Various volumes of the seminal Ethiopiques series have been rereleased in the United States on vinyl

by Portland, Oregon-based indie label Mississippi Records. The record store borrows its name not from the state, but from Portland’s Mississippi Avenue, where it originally stood. By licensing the Ethiopiques catalog, Mississippi has been able to introduce musicians like Mahmoud Amed and Aleymaehu Eshete to audiences familiar with the funk and soul that was an instrumental basis of the EthioJazz sound.

As jazz artists returned to Ethiopia, after escaping the political unrest that made an enemy of the popular music movement, clubs like Jazz Amba slowly reappeared. Starting in 2011, Jazz Amba serviced the country’s most historical hospitality venue with seven nights of live music each week.

That is, every night until the night I arrived in Addis in January 2015.

Investigators ruled the fire was caused by an “electrical overload.”

Addis Ababa Deputy Mayor Abate Sitatow expressed interest in restoring the hotel.

I was able to see the charred remains of the Taitu hotel on my last day in Ethiopia. On the Sunday of Timkat — a week after the fire — throngs of Ethiopians celebrated on the streets where Bole borders Piazza. Coming to and from markets, the townspeople engaged one another with the once-regal edifice in the background. I felt defeated.

Although the signature sound of Ethiopia fills halls such as Mama’s Kitchen, Gusto Ristorante and African Jazz Village, I could tell from the faces in the small crowd of people, peering up at the hotel, snapping pictures in awe, that an important relic of the city, country and continent had been diminished.

It is my hope that within the charred debris of the historic structure that included the Jazzamba, the spirit of Ethio-jazz that survived 16 years of disapproval by a former Ethiopian government will rise again.

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ABOVE: The musician on the left plays the masenqo, an instrument that has been polular in Ethiopia for centuries. PHOTO BY CLANCY SMITH LOWER LEFT: Crowds gather outside the Taitu Hotel following a fire at the landmark in Addis Ababa. The hotel featured the famous jazz club Jazz Amba, which was popular with Ethiopians and foreigners. AP Photo/Elias Asmare University of Mississippi student Jared Boyd interviews Nebiyou Baye, dean of the Yared School of Performing Arts at Addis Ababa University. PHOTO BY MAGGIE MCDANIEL

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HELPING ETHIOPIAN FAMILIES COPE WITH THE IMPACT OF AIDS Alamayehu was interviewed by UM students Lacey Russell and Leah Gibson in his office in Addis Ababa. This is an edited transcript of the interview.

Can you tell us a few ways that you have addressed the problems families were having?

Since 2003, Teddy Alamayehu, a sociologist and former social worker, has worked with Ethiopia ACT, a multicultural team that helps to reduce the impact of AIDS/HIV on poor families.

Alamayehu is program coordinator for the organization. When he and his colleagues began their work, they quickly realized that Ethiopians affected by HIV and AIDS dealt with more than just medical challenges.

“They were challenged socially, emotionally, and also they were neglected by their neighborhood and family,” Alemayehu explained. “Caring for their children, caring for their family, staying connected with their neighborhood, resuming their responsibilities in society were the biggest challenges.”

Statistics show the primary mode of HIV transmission in Ethiopia is heterosexual contact. Young women are more vulnerable to infection than young men; urban women are three times as likely to be infected as urban men, although in rural areas the difference between genders is negligible.

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HIV eroded the economy, the network of the people. This program mainly focused on providing the field need. For example, food, medical supplies, and sending the children to school, creating an environment in which children can socialize in their families. We provide counseling, we teach children, we invite medical teams from the United States, and we provide medical care for the family and neighborhood as well, including people affected by HIV.

Can you give us a specific example of a family that you’ve helped and how they reacted to the foundation’s help?

When we met one particular family, the mother was highly affected by HIV and her son was infected as well. He was struggling with an opportunistic infection and his face was full of wounds. Their neighborhood figured out that they had contracted HIV, and they were stigmatized. They were disconnected from their network. Their oldest daughter was also HIV positive. Just imagine three family members struggling with medical, social and emotional situations.

By the time we engaged, they were living by the edge of the river. They owed like four years’ worth rent and were on the verge of being kicked out of their house because of economic problems, medical problems, health problems, and social/emotional challenges that they faced. The first thing that this program did was provide them with medical care. Even though anti-retroviral was not available for free in Ethiopia, this program covered the medical costs to provide anti-retroviral for the child, and allocation for the family to sustain their income. We covered food, medication, and sent all their children to school. This program covered their house rent to keep them in their home, in their neighborhood, in their network.

A surprising thing that I experienced with that family was that the second daughter was so determined to continue her education. She completed high school, and she trained in accounting. We wrote her CV and she is hired in one of the organizations in the neighborhood.

Now, the family is well. They are living in an even better life situation now.

How do you find the families that you help?

We are not running this program alone. We are highly connected with the government and existing structure within the community. We work with the local administrative office. We call them woredas. The woreda office has a women and children’s department. Families affected by HIV report to those offices, and those offices refer the family to us. That’s how we work.

How has medical care transformed in Ethiopia over the past couple of decades?

In relation to HIV, initially HIV was a big challenge. It was well-defined, and it’s not curable. It’s an opportunistic infection, most challenging in eroding the economy of the country. There was no well-trained medical and auxiliary staff to care for these people.

From 2002 until 2005, it was a very huge challenge for the people and for the medical system as well. Later, with the introduction of anti-retroviral (therapy), the situation completely changed. People got strength and their medical situation reversed, as well as their economic situations.

Who provides the financial support for the families? Do you have partners that have helped you?

Yes. Our program is highly connected with people, churches and foundations in the United States, particularly Presbyterian churches, MTW (Mission to the World), foundations like Blood Water. Other good partners support us with financing for our programs. Individuals, through sponsorships, support children and families.

We partner with different charities, and

Churches, agencies collaborate

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n 2001, at the height of the AIDS crisis in Africa, Andrew and Bev Warren noticed something missing. There was an important focus on AIDS and HIV prevention, but not much being done to care for people who already had AIDS and were sick and dying, and their families.

Bev Warren, born and raised in Cleveland, Mississippi, and Andrew Warren, a Tennessee native and former journalist, went to work to do something about it.

“We started meeting with families to try to figure out how we could help,” Andrew Warren said. “The neediest people were women who were infected by a partner. The partner died, and there was no support for her or for her children. That became our target audience. How to help with rent, food, school fees for the kids, support groups, short-term medical teams.”

Neither of the Warrens is a medical doctor. “I have a Boy Scout merit badge in first aid,” Andrew said, laughing.

Warren first went to Kenya to teach journalism. In the 1980s, he and Bev went to Ethiopia and Somalia. They returned to the United States

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those charities send medical teams. We host eight or nine medical teams from the United States. Each team has on average five providers. That’s a huge, huge help for us. Currently we have about 12 professional program staff, like social workers, sociologists, nurses and other volunteers.

Also, we have “expert patients.” They are victims of HIV. They live with the virus. They are trained by our program. They are kind of workers for us. They go visit families, identify problems and report to the program. We have four regular expert patients working with us now.

Do you have ways to provide HIV testing, maybe for free or through the program?

We are working in collaboration with other organizations. HPCO (HIV Prevention and Control Office) is one of the big partners of ours for whenever we need a testing group. On top of that, all the health centers and hospitals have that service. Because it is available we don’t need to organize testing units. We test regularly.

Two months ago, in five days we tested about 100 individuals. Out of all of them, three were HIV positive. The testing is free.

In your opinion, is the HIV/AIDS problem in Ethiopia improving? Where do you see it 10 years from now?

Currently, all the data that I come across indicate that the HIV situation is improving. Ten years from now, what I would say from looking at my experience, the infection rate will drop down significantly. Maybe because of the burden, people taking antiretroviral will be tired of taking that medication and may develop a kind of resistant HIV. That’s what I expect.

You said earlier that you have started to focus on other areas. Can you tell us your ideas on how you will approach those areas?

Alemayehu: The situation of HIV is improving in the community.

We are trying to incorporate other community issues. We are currently working on prevention of TB (tuberculosis) and other community problems like cancer.

and Andrew received a graduate degree in development management at American University.

Bev Warren said she grew up in Mississippi in a family “that taught me to care about the people around me and be aware of needs and respond by sharing the resources that I had been blessed with. …When I met Andy in college, his sense of adventure combined with our mutual desire to serve the needy were big factors in us looking into international service.”

The Warrens returned to Ethiopia in 1996 to lead projects with Mission to the World and SIM (Serving in Mission), international church-centered organizations.

When anti-retroviral medicines and therapy became available, they started working with the World Health Organization and other agencies. Later, they turned the treatment programs over to the Ethiopian government.

This year, Ethiopia ACT is registering as a nonprofit and expanding to new communities. The organization is partnering with a dozen churches in Addis Ababa, leading to short-term teams of doctors to do clinics in churches.

Ethiopia ACT has helped 1,200 families, and more than 1,500 children, Andrew Warren said. He focuses now on fundraising and administrative work, and program coordinator Teddy Alamayehu “makes everything happen” in Ethiopia. The Warrens return to the United States once or twice a year to visit family.

“I think one of the greatest rewards in our 12 years of working in this project, for me, has been the privilege of seeing so many of the extremely ill HIV positive single moms who came into the project before the availability of anti-retroviral drugs be able to regain their health and live full lives,” Bev Warren said. “They’ve been there to raise their children and many of them have even seen their children graduate from high school and get accepted into college. This pretty much guarantees their escape from extreme poverty since their children will have a better opportunity for employment and will have resources to care for their parent.”

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Doctors, extension workers transform care Poor health conditions and lack of facilities in his village inspired Dr. Bekalu T. Wubshet to pursue a career in medicine. He wanted to make a difference.

Health care in Ethiopia has undergone vast transformation in the last 20 years. The child mortality rate has dropped by nearly a third, and more than 35,000 health workers – many of them women – are bringing services to the country’s highly populated rural areas.

“These health extension workers are significant in the community because we have the health posts there in the village,” Wubshet explained. “They are making a significant improvement because they are more focused on prevention.”

Wubshet is a general practitioner at Bahir Dar University College of Medicine and Health

Dr. Mekonnen Aychiluhim is one of the founders of Gamby College of Medical Science in Bahir Dar, established 17 years ago by Aychiluhim and several of his friends from medical school. Their shared vision was to enable Ethiopians to have healthy, productive lives, by creating medical facilities that include schools to teach doctors and health personnel to help communities prevent and treat illnesses and diseases.

They started with a small clinic and one nurse.

Now, they have an 11,000-square-feet facility, with a teaching general hospital and 700 students on the Bahir Dar campus, a 70-bed hospital, and an outpatient program treating 200 new patients each day.

Gamby offers certificate programs for nurses,

midwives, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians; master’s degrees in nursing, midwifery, pharmacy and public health; and a medical school to train doctors.

The hospital is the first in the region to offer renal dialysis, CT scans and the international standard Doppler ultrasound, Aychiluhim said.

It works with the Smile Trains international charity to provide free surgery for people with cleft palate and lips.

The hospital also participates in national campaigns to provide counseling and free testing for patients with HIV, and to offer free surgeries for mothers who have uterine prolapse, a condition where the womb collapses through the birth canal. Aychiluhim said this is a problem in Ethiopia

Science. While he believes that Ethiopia still lags behind other countries in many ways, he points with pride to new hospitals and a growing emphasis on specialized care and the treatment of metabolic and chronic illnesses, some xxxx.

Ethiopia has an average of one physician for every 20,000 people, Wabshet said, a figure that is a substantial improvement over the ratio some years ago. Another area that is developing: more women graduating from medical school.

“Consider 10 to 15 years back, you may have one female medical student out of 50 or 100.

Now in some schools we are having like a 50:50 ratio,” Wubshet said. “In our university, this year we are graduating about 57 medical doctors. Out of that, I think there will be eight female medical doctors.”

for older women who have given birth to many children.

Lacey Russell contributed to this article.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested more than $265 million in Ethiopia to organizations operating health and development programs. That includes money to help small farmers increase food production, as well as grants to expand access to childhood vaccines, maternal and child health programs, financial services for the poor, and for safe water and sanitation.

Ethiopia also benefits indirectly from the foundation’s investments in global partner organizations. The foundation made its first program investments in Ethiopia in 2000, and

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since then has made more than 125 grants to partner organizations that are either working in Ethiopia or conducting research and development designed to benefit Ethiopia.

In 2014, Bill Gates teamed up with John Green, the author of “The Fault in Our Stars,” to help Ethiopia find solutions for safe water.

In a blog about his trip to Ethiopia with Gates, Green said: “It became clear to me that the Gates Foundation fundamental principle that all human lives have value isn’t just rhetoric.” human lives have value isn’t just rhetoric.”

Fistula Hospital Hamlin Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa was the first facility in the world for the treatment and prevention of obstetric fistulas. The condition occurs when a pregnant woman in labor does not get a Caesarean section when she needs it.

Her pelvis may be too small, the baby is badly positioned, or its head is too big.

Underlying causes include childbearing at too early an age, poverty, malnutrition and lack of education. The hospital also trains midwives to work in rural Ethiopia.

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ne of the 12 largest dams in the world is under construction in Ethiopia, on the Blue Nile near the border with Sudan.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will produce about 6,000 megawatts of electricity — the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa — and is expected to cost $4.8 billion.

“What makes this dam so important is that it has been in the planning for maybe several decades, but the country was not able to undertake it because of a conflict (with bordering countries),” said Bikila Teklu, dean of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Addis Ababa University’s Institute of Technology. “Now, this construction is being funded by local financing. All of the other dams have been constructed through international donors, but every citizen is actually contributing (to build the new dam).”

Some Ethiopians are giving a month of their income or more for construction of the dam.

Geremew Sahilu, chair of water supply and environmental

engineering at the institute, said Ethiopa’s water problems can be summed up in two words: quantity and quality.

“From place to place, Ethiopia’s water quality differs,” Sahilu said. “Water is also the source of agriculture, it is also power, hydropower, so the dam addresses energy issues and agricultural issues.”

Improving the supply and usage of water is part of Ethiopia’s Millennium Development Goals. Many residents still do not have access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

“In the U.S., you have basically completed constructing all dams so that is not really an issue, but for us, we are now starting to build dams for hydropower and for irrigation,” said Agizew Nigussie, an assistant professor at the institute.

“Management of these dams is a critical issue for Ethiopia.”

Leah Gibson contributed to this article.

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UNIVERSITIES’ PARTNERSHIP CREATES NEW ERA OF

GLOBAL EXCHANGE Story by Maggie McDaniel

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he first conversations took place in 2009 at Ole Acting Chancellor Morris Stocks.

Miss. More than five years later, a dozen University The university has similar initiatives planned for of Mississippi students and faculty traveled to EthiAsia, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Ausopia to meet with leaders at Addis Ababa Universitralasia. ty, one of the first universities to participate in the Ole At the beginning of fall semester 2015, Addis Ababa Miss in Africa initiative.

University President Nosa Egiebor, who Admasu Tsegaye and in 2014 became UM’s several other AAU top first chief international administrators visited the Ole Miss campus, officer and executive where they met with director of global enStocks, Acting Provost gagement, accompanied Noel Wilkin, deans and Ole Miss students and department heads to confaculty for a few days on tinue discussions about their Study Abroad trip parnterships. in January 2015.

Administrators in Addis Ababa University Oxford and Addis Ababa “has an excellent resaid both universities will cord,” Egiebor said. “Bebenefit from student and fore now, Ole Miss did faculty exchanges. Two not really have much of areas of special interest a presence in Africa, and are journalism and engiwe are really pushing neering. The engineering to make sure that this and journalism schools university establishes a have faculty who have pretty strong footprint -UM Acting Chancellor Morris Stocks experience at universities throughout Africa. To in both Mississippi and that extent, Ethiopia Ethiopia. is one of our initial Will Norton, dean of countries, Nigeria is another one, and Burkina Faso is the School of Journalism and New Media at UM, taught another one in West Africa.” at Addis Ababa University and wanted students to see This will contribute significantly to the university’s the similarities and differences between Ethiopia and strategic objective of “bringing the world to Mississippi Mississippi. and taking Mississippi to the world,” according to UM

The Ole Miss in Africa initiative will contribute significantly to the university’s strategic objective of “bringing the world to Mississippi and taking Mississippi to the world.”

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Above: Administrators from the two universities enjoy their conversation in Addis Ababa. From left, Will Norton Jr., dean of UM’s Meek School of Journalism and New Media; Jeilu Oumer Hussein, academic vice president of AAU; Zenebe Beyene, director of AAU’s Office of External Relations, Partnership and Communications; Nosa Egiebor, UM’s chief international officer and executive director of global engagement. PHOTO BY MAGGIE MCDANIEL

“You have in Africa a proud people who have accomplished a lot. They are recognized for their achievement, but they are branded negatively just like Mississippians are. This state with proud people who have accomplished a lot is looked down on by many,” Norton said.

“So we can understand why Ethiopians feel so strongly bout being looked down on.”

Egiebor, who also is a professor of chemical engineering, said that AAU created a water resource center that could use input from UM engineers. He met with several faculty members in AAU’s school of engineering.

Bikila Teklu, dean of civil and environmental engineering at AAU, spent 2005-2009 as an engineering science graduate student at the University of Mississippi. He graduated from Ole Miss with a Ph.D. degree and stayed for an extra year as a post-doctoral researcher.

“I have been to some other big cities where there have been universities, but I find that in a smaller college town it is kind of cozy and does not take your focus away from studies,” Bakili said.

Bakili said he enjoyed the football and tailgating atmosphere at Ole Miss.

“I didn’t have any idea about American football, but I got into it and I still watch it sometimes when I get the chance,” Bakili said.

Bakili said that engineering professionals are in high demand in Ethiopia as the nation is undertaking significant infrastructure development.

“It is expected that Ethiopian engineering students studying at Ole Miss, upon completion of their studies,

would make significant contribution in educating future engineers and sharing their research experience with students and faculty at their home university,” Bakili said.

Addis Ababa University, with almost 50,000 students, is more than twice the size of the University of Mississippi. It has about 120 international students pursuing undergraduate and graduate programs, more than half of them from other countries in Africa.

AAU already has partnerships with several other U.S. universities. One is Ohio State University. In addition to study abroad programs, during the past three years both institutions have organized “One Health” summer institutes and provided certification programs on health issues.

In 2011, the Ethiopian ambassador to the United States and several Addis Ababa University administrators came to Mississippi, where they met with students and faculty at Ole Miss and toured the Delta.

At that time, Zenebe Beyene, a key player in organizing the visit, noted that the vision for the partnership was to go beyond the academic benefits to promote “cultural understanding between students and faculty here at the University of Mississippi and the faculty and students from Addis Ababa University.”

And that’s exactly what happened in 2015, this time on African soil. In January 2015, 10 journalism students and several faculty spent eight days in northern Ethiopia working on a Study Abroad multimedia journalism project.

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Beyene again was instrumental in getting the two universities together. He has taught intersession courses as a visiting professor at Ole Miss. At the time of the students’ visit to Ethiopia, Beyene was an assistant dean at the School of Journalism and Communication at AAU. Now, he is director of AAU’s Office of External Relations, Partnership and Communication. He paved the way for students to meet sources for their interviews in several cities and towns in Ethiopia. AAU graduate students assisted as interpreters and guides.

Logan Kirkland, a UM journalism major and editor in chief of The Daily Mississippian, still cannot believe that he got to practice international journalism in Africa.

“Having the chance of a lifetime, no matter how cliché that sounds, it is unbelievable,” Kirkland said. “Just getting on the plane and going into a foreign place helped me grow as a journalist.”

With its 76 undergraduate and 247 graduate programs, and its unique culture, AAU offers many classes of interest to U.S. students. Courses singled out by AAU administrators include archaeology, anthropology, Ethiopia/Africa studies, history, languages and literature, and health-related programs like the study of tropical and infectious diseases.

Egiebor is excited to work with AAU. “They see the importance of international engagement,” Egiebor said. “I find them as excellent partners I am really willing to work with to take the relationship to a much higher level.”

For a profile of UM’s chief international officer, go to: http://olemissinafrica.com/Internationalizing

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Interim Chancellor Morris Stocks (left) receives a gift from the president of Addis Ababa University, Admasu Tsegaye (right). Joining them are acting UM provost Noel Wilkin, AAU deputy scientific director Berhanu Assefa, and Zenebe Beyene, director of AAU’s Office of External Relations, Partnership and Communications. Jeilu Oumar Hussein, AAU’s academic vice president who also visited the Oxford campus, is not pictured. The Ethiopian representatives visited Ole Miss in September 2015 to continue discussions about an international partnership and the Ole Miss in Africa initiative. PHOTO BY ROYCE SWAYZE TOP RIGHT: The president of Addis Ababa University hosts University of Mississippi students and faculty at a dinner in an Addis Ababa restaurant featuring dance performances. PHOTO BY MARK GAIL BOTTOM LEFT: Students meet with AAU President Admasu Tsegaye in his office. PHOTO BY MARK GAIL BOTTOM RIGHT: University president Tsegaye talks with student Jared Boyd and Will Norton Jr., dean of the Meek School of Journalism and New Media. PHOTO BY MARK GAIL

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Tea with the Grandfather Mississippi woman reflects on her years in Ethiopia Story by Cady Herring

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thiopia was a fairytale,” said Sharron Sarthou, a wistful smile spreading across her face as she sat in her home across the street from the University of Mississippi.

Her memories of Africa date back to 1954 when Addis Ababa was a place where the wrong kind of glance at the emperor, Haile Selassie, could mean execution. Everyone followed a curfew because of wild animals and bandits. It was not surprising that 3-year-old Sarthou was under close watch by her mother, nursemaid and gardener, not to mention her agronomist father from the University of Oklahoma, who also gave private lessons to the sons of some of the country’s elite.

But Sarthou was safe and happy in her own personal retreat, a walled garden that created

a cocoon of bliss for a young girl with a strong imagination. Every day, she went into the garden behind her home and held a tea party with her dolls.

One day, a big black Rolls Royce pulled up.

“A tiny little black man got out and came to tea with me,” Sarthou said. He sat in one of Sarthou’s teeny garden chairs and asked her about her dolls and tea in English and Amharic, Ethiopia’s national language.

The little man who took the time to sip imaginary tea was the emperor. Claiming to be a direct descendant of Menelik, the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, he held complete power in the country. The Lion of Judah, as he was called, not only controlled Ethiopia. His success in repelling an invasion

LEFT: Sharron Sarthou’s school class photo taken in Ethiopia in the 1950s.

ABOVE RIGHT: Sarthou as a child in her Ethiopian garden. Sarthou used her African garden as a model for the design of her garden in Oxford. Photos courtesy of Sharon Sarthou. BELOW RIGHT: Former Emperor Haile Selassie, Time Magazine’s Man of the Year, Jan. 6, 1936.

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by Italy in the run-up to World War II helped make him one of the most famous rulers in the world in the last century. In 1936, he graced the cover of “Time” magazine as its Man of the Year.

In 1933, Selassie addressed the League of Nations as the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini marched troops into his country in an attempt to conquer it. Selassie demanded that the world stiffen its spine to stand up against fascist tyranny and colonialism, and he and the British ousted the Italians and provided a victory over aggression at a time much of Europe was reeling from the beginning of the Nazi onslaught.

Selassie helped modernize Ethiopia in a distinctly African way, slowly bleeding influence away from nobles in the countryside. It is believed that he was assassinated after a year of imprisonment in the palace in 1975.

But his influence on Ethiopia remains. Selassie was the all-powerful emperor from 1930 to 1974 and instituted the first constitution in 1931. Although he had complete control as a dictator, he led the country toward democracy. Sarthou’s family revered Selassie because he brought Ethiopia into the modern world.

“I was brought up to think of him as a person who was flawed, as a dictator with complete rule over life and death, but he was a person who was trying to make a difference. And that was very important to my parents. They understood that you could be flawed and still try to make the world a better place.”

Sarthou had never met her paternal grandfathers, and so it was natural that she followed African custom and called him “grandfather” out of respect. He wore a black suit and his car was adorned with furs of wild animals. Selassie was extremely formal and respectful to Sarthou, and he seemed genuinely curious about this “little white girl” in his country.

She didn’t think much about the fact that anyone had joined her for tea in her beloved garden, which seemed like a towering maze with lush green plants and flowers. She held tea every day, and Selassie’s first visit was not his last. He drove around Addis Ababa frequently to check on the city, and he could partially see into the Sarthous’ garden next to their Colonial stucco home surrounded by a wall topped with broken glass to prevent intruders from climbing over the wall.

He knew that it was the home of his son’s teacher, Sarthou’s father Charles Lawrence Sarthou.

Sarthou’s father was an experimental agronomist and teacher of chemistry and applied chemistry in Ethiopia, dispatched from the University of Oklahoma to study agriculture and help farmers take advantage of the three full growing seasons unique to that part of the world. “He was determined to teach people how to feed themselves,” Sarthou said. He believed that everything else would fall into place after that, because people couldn’t do anything if they were hungry.

Living in Ethiopia during that time was dangerous, and her family kept her as sheltered as they could. The bacteria-laden water had to go through a seven-layer filter just to touch her skin, not an insignificant precaution in a land where cuts could easily become septic, Sarthou said.

“Grandfather” was one of the few people allowed in the garden for tea.

It wasn’t until Selassie was assassinated when Sarthou was a 17-year-old university student in Canada that her parents, weeping in their kitchen, told her who “Grandfather” really was — the Lion of Judah, Emperor Haile Selassie.

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Ethiopians, Mississippians deal with stereotypes Story by Jared Boyd

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ome people, they ask, ‘Where are you from?’” says Tewodros Yimer Yosef.

Now that he’s spent a year and two months at the University of Mississippi, Yosef has encountered his fair share of curious American minds, who have noticed that he sticks out a bit.

Oftentimes he sits in the back of the Rebel Market in the Paul B. Johnson Commons, eating and working on his own, taking a break from his office. Naturally reserved, he rarely lights up in social settings, but sitting in Starbucks inside the John D. Williams Library, he was eager to elaborate on his homeland of Ethiopia.

“The Americans, to be more critical, they don’t know what’s going on around the world,” Yosef says. “If you say, ‘I’m from Ethiopia,’ they don’t understand. If you say, ‘I’m from Africa,’ (they say), ‘Oh! Africa!’”

Yosef doesn’t mind allowing his culture to be muddled in with the rest of Africa and its several dozen countries and thousands of languages and ethnic groups. “For me, it’s not a problem because I know who I am. I know what I’m doing here.”

The 24-year-old came to the University of Mississippi last year, recruited by civil engineering professor, Dr. Chung Song, who taught a course in 2012 at Addis Ababa University, in the capital city of Ethiopia.

Yosef, a native of the Bole area of Addis Ababa, was born to an accountant father and businesswoman mother.

Remaining in Addis for primary school, high school and college, Yosef eventually graduated from AAU with degrees in philosophy and civil engineering. The top student in his graduating class, immediately after school, he joined the university faculty.

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While teaching and earning his masters in construction management, Yosef got to step outside of his nest in Addis Ababa, travelling throughout his home country for the first time, an experience he cherishes. It gave him the ability to compare metropolitan Addis Ababa to the vast terrains of the country, visiting various far off historical sites, fertile lands and ethnic groupings.

Coming to America, Yosef had high expectations.

“I am going to the world where everything is perfect; where everything is advanced,” he thought.

“America is like a brand.”

However, after a few months, his impression shifted. Yosef began to feel that just like his home, American life has its pros and cons.

The philosophy buff especially misses the deep conversations he shared with students in Ethiopia. “I can’t find any American who asks critical questions.”

While Tewodros Yosef tasks himself with the new challenge of relating to Americans his age, many Ethiopian Americans who were born here spend their entire lives reconciling their Ethiopian identity with the Western world.

Two such examples are Samit Abdi and Eman Yusuf, college students from the Memphis area. Abdi is at the University of Memphis and Yusuf at the University of Tennessee.

Both girls are born to parents who fled Ethiopia following the political unrest of the late 1970s and 1980s after Emperor Haile Selassie I was overthrown. Similarly, both girls’ parents are members of the Harari ethnic group, derivative of the Eastern Ethiopian Highlands. They both practice Islam and have

been in the Memphis area since early childhood.

“In Kindergarten, we had a multicultural fair, and I got to dress up in traditional Harari clothing and carry an Ethiopian flag,” Abdi says, recalling how she stood out amongst other American children her age.

Growing up, she like Yosef has had numerous conversations with Americans in which she has had trouble explaining her ethnic makeup. “A lot of people don’t know what Ethiopia is,” she says. “They look at me like, ‘Oh, you don’t look African.’”

Unlike Yosef, however, the confusion and ignorance can sometimes be a source of frustration to Abdi. “I want to make people aware, because people are always like, ‘Who are you?’ What’s your story?’”

Yusuf’s early memories of discomfort with her ethnicity aren’t as vivid. She does recall a time in preschool when she refused to eat American food. She wanted the Ethiopian dishes her family prepared at home.

The first generation Ethiopian-Americans were moved by the sacrifices their parents made to raise families in the United States. For Yusuf’s mother, who took refuge briefly in Canada before relocating to Dallas, job interviews were torture. She struggled to grasp English, hiding her stress to persuade employers that her English was no problem.

Before going into their own business ventures, Abdi’s mother and father drove shuttle buses to and from the Memphis International Airport to make enough money to bring Abdi’s older brother and sister from Ethiopia. As a high schooler, Abdi worked at Barnes and Noble, often at minimum wage.

“I would always complain to my parents, and they would always (respond), ‘I don’t know why you’re complaining.

We had to work a lot harder for a lot less pay,’” she said.

Both young women have had the opportunity to travel to Ethiopia, seeing firsthand the places where their parents grew up and meeting family members their age who had not been to America.

“That was really just a wake-up call to me,” Abdi says.

“I feel I have nothing to complain about because there are people suffering there.”

Upon meeting cousins near to her in age, Yusuf felt stereotypes of Americans in the media might have cast a shadow of expectation that preceded her arrival in her parents’ homeland.

“I feel like they didn’t really expect me to care about my culture as much because I grew up in America,” she said.

Her connection with them intensified, however, once she gathered a better sense of the language and other cultural norms during her two-month stay.

Over time, Abdi, Yosef and Yusuf have come to believe that being from Ethiopia, with its rich history of melding so many cultures into one national identity, has eased their assimilation into the very different culture of the Deep South.

“There is a term called ‘multiculturalism,’” Yosef says.

For him the term means, “understanding each other without knowing each other.”

LEFT: The sun rises over the rooftops in downtown Addis. ABOVE: Ermyias Shiberou is the owner of the Blue Nile Ethiopian Kitchen in Memphis. Born and raised in Ethiopia, he and his mother create authentic food like spongy injera, spicy Doro Wat and other meat and vegetarian dishes. The restaurant is decorated with a huge lion painting on the wall, which represents Ethiopia in many ways, but specifically to Shiberou as former Emperor Haile Selassie, known as the Lion of Judah. Shiberou says it’s his way of showing Americans the ‘‘all-around greatness’’ of Ethiopia. PHOTOS BY CADY HERRING

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‘I Know the Potential of What Ethiopia Can Be’ Aida Solomon’s parents emigrated from Ethiopia to the United States in the 1970s. Solomon interned at the University of Mississippi William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation during spring semester 2015.

To be honest, the whole pilgrimage made me connect more with my American identity because I never felt like I really knew what it meant to be an American.

I just felt like I knew what it meant to be Ethiopian and be black.

Solomon was interviewed by Sierra Mannie. Here is an edited transcript of that interview.

Mannie: Were you born in the States or

Mannie: Can you tell us what brings you to

the University of Mississippi?

Solomon: In March 2014, I participated in a

civil rights pilgrimage that was an eight-day tour, through the South. It took us through four states: Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi. We stopped by this campus and got a tour by people who worked at the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. There was a flier about a summer youth institute and they wanted mentors to apply.

And so I applied and I got it. I came back in June 2014 for two weeks, worked with high school students from around the state. I met a lot of cool people, and in that two-week span of time I felt so connected to a specific part of the University of Mississippi, and I felt like…I needed more. I wanted to explore more.

My professor had told me that I could intern at the institute for a semester. I just said, “Yes, of course.”

Mannie: What was that part that connected to so much? Is there a moment, an event that happened?

Solomon: I didn’t know how students - I didn’t

know how African-American students - would look at me because I’m Ethiopian-American. I know what it means to be Ethiopian, but do I know what it means to be black? I never asserted myself like “I’m Ethiopian!” I was like, “How will these kids look to me? Like will they connect with me?” We were on the bus to the Delta, I think to Greenwood. I got up, and one kid decided to sing this song called “Aida Belle.” They gave me that name, Aida Belle, and at that moment it just touched me so much because it was just this moment like I felt a connection with everybody on that bus. It was something we all had experienced together. Aida Belle, to me, is just kind of like my southern component or my southern personality. It’s not just a personality when I come down here, but it’s becoming a part of my identity.

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were you born in Ethiopia?

Solomon: I was born in the States. I was baptized in Ethiopia when I was a year old, and I go back every other year. I’ve lived in Washington (state) my whole life.

Mannie: How do you feel sometimes when

things happen and you can tell these things come from a history of slavery? Like being in the Delta, how did that affect you? What did you think?

Solomon: This whole experience, being here, has

challenged how I look at myself and how I feel and how I embody all the different components that make me who I am but also how I relate to others.

One that I’ve continuously been exposed to is that, in learning the history, in learning the trauma, in learning the terrorism that occurred. I constantly find myself feeling, “I cannot believe this actually occurred.” How structured and intentional the whole system has been created to oppress a race of people is just unfathomable to me. But at the same time, what I see from African Americans, and what I feel like I have been able to, at least try to, internalize is this resilience, this strength, this faith, regardless. Even in spite of everything that has happened, there’s still a strength that I see, like a confidence. The way in which black people can carry themselves high, and it’s something that I’ve continuously been admiring in Mississippi.

Mannie: What do you feel about the

American stereotypes of Ethiopia? Do those things anger you? What do people say about Ethiopia that you just know isn’t true?

Solomon: Sometimes, especially in Seattle, the

biggest thing that I deal with is just ignorance, ignorance on another level. Sometimes I try to see where people come from. I understand the fact that Ethiopia has not been holistically represented in

western media. If you’re really curious you might ask something like, “Are there houses in Ethiopia?” I’ve always kind of been the butt of jokes. One of my friends, I remember I was going to (visit) Ethiopia in high school, he just slid me 75 cents and was like, “I want a house, I want a boat.” Basically, it’s really westernized materialistic kind of things that they ask.

My dad now lives in North Ethiopia, and he’s CEO of a tourism agency. That’s his passion.

He’s always been the type of person to just school you on Ethiopia. He sells it to us! He really was a huge part of me getting in touch of my Ethiopian ethnicity. He really encouraged me to.

There are definitely parts of Ethiopia that are very impoverished, have people who are just begging on the street. I think the moment where I realized that you can really spin a place to be anything better or worse than it actually is: the moment that Katrina happened in this country and you see the level of poverty not just after but just before. How can we talk about other nations and Third World countries when parts of our country are Third World?

I don’t like campaigns that say we are going to go help Africa, or we’re going to help Ethiopians. There are a lot of people now moving in (to Ethiopia), which is great, but we need to make sure that we’re not getting exploited. We’re not becoming this nation of like a handout, what Africa as a continent, in general, is viewed as. I know the potential of what Ethiopia can be. I know the pride in that.

Mannie: What do you feel people need to know about Ethiopia?

Solomon: I think the biggest message that

I have learned through my experience, and through hearing your group’s experience in Ethiopia, is that there is nothing like experiential learning. You can’t substitute it for anything else. To be able to go to a place, to be able to listen and to talk to people and not be in like a touristy vibe, but just to talk and be present in that place and in that space and time is something that I have found and cherished so much.

Aida Solomon. PHOTO BY LOGAN KIRKLAND

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ETHIOPIANS THRIVE AT RURAL MISSISSIPPI SCHOOL

Story and Photos by Ann-Marie Herod

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PINEY WOODS, MISSISSIPPI

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emi Eba is a popular senior at Piney Woods Country Life School in Rankin County. Eba, born in a rural section of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, says the slowpaced country life at school has helped him adjust to being more than 8,000 miles away from home.

Eba is one of dozens of students from Ethiopia who came to Mississippi to study at Piney Woods, one of the few historically black boarding schools in the United States. If Eba could sum up his experience over the past two years in just one word, it would be: “stretch.”

“The experience here is rewarding for me,” Eba said. “I’ve become independent but also it has required me to stretch. I have to be responsible for myself and my parents are trusting me to make wise decisions.”

Eba’s parents encouraged him to attend the Mississippi school far from home because they felt it would better prepare him for college in the United States, which Eba says he has always aspired to attend.

Just like Americans have preconceived ideas of how things will be when going abroad, Eba had his own ideas about America. He had watched American films to not only see the action movies, thrillers and romantic comedies, but also to learn the language.

“I got to know the American culture a little bit better. It was not what I expected or what I saw in movies. Neither of that,” Eba said. “It was pretty different yet similar to Ethiopian culture. And that was essential for me to learn that, how the different interactions are, before I go to college.”

Piney Woods offers a liberal arts education as well as agricultural and Christian instruction. The school has incorporated cultural experiences to make international students feel more at home, said Willie Crossley Jr., president of Piney Woods.

“Last semester, to celebrate the Ethiopian New Year, we actually served Ethiopian food in our dining hall and the students gave me a traditional outfit for me so I wore that,” Crossley said. “It was something I think all of our students enjoyed.”

Some Ethiopian youth are attracted to Piney Woods just for the new experience. For others, it is a way to prepare for top colleges in the United States. Nearly all of Piney Woods’ graduates attend college, including some of the most prestigious universities in the country.

“LITTLE PROFESSOR OF PINEY WOODS”

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iney Woods sits on 2,000 acres in rural Rankin County, about 23 miles south of Jackson. Tuition is $23,000 a year, with scholarships available for U.S. and international students. Most of the 150 students come from need-based homes so scholarships are essential.

When you first step on campus, you see a mixture of historic and contemporary buildings, along with a lake, basketball court, soccer field, a few houses and even a graveyard — the final resting place of founder Laurence C. Jones, his family and alumni who wanted to be buried at Piney Woods. The campus includes a post office, museum and the original log cabin where Jones lived while at Piney Woods.

Jones was born in Missouri, attended high school in Iowa and earned his college degree from the University of Iowa. In 1909, Jones founded Piney Woods Country Life School to educate rural African-American youth, some of whom were the children and grandchildren of former slaves and freedmen. His teaching started as a humble beginning at a simple log stump.

Jones wanted all his students to have the experience of working with livestock and growing crops. He believed this would be

good for students’ character development.

As the school grew, Jones wanted not only Mississippians to attend, but also other students, so he traveled the country raising funds for the boarding school and recruiting students from other states. In 1955, Beth Day published “The Little Professor of Piney Woods: The Story of Professor Laurence Jones.” She called Jones the Booker T. Washington of his time.

In the 1960s, Jones started traveling internationally to recruit students from the Caribbean islands, Ethiopia and other countries.

Many students hear about the school from someone in their Ethiopian hometowns who attended Piney Woods. Others have family members – siblings, aunts, uncles or cousins – who graduated from Piney Woods and encouraged their relatives to enroll.

Yohannes Negash, a senior from Ethiopia, knew about Piney Woods from his older brother and sister, who attended the Rankin County school. He waited until his junior year of high school to enroll.

“In my case, it was because I would have gotten homesick,” Negash said. “I needed more time to mature. My brother, who was more mature than I was, came his sophomore year.”

While most Ethiopian students rarely get to go home because of the cost of plane travel,

ABOVE: Ethiopian students at Piney Woods School. AT LEFT: Buildings on the Piney Woods School.

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Willie Crossley, Jr., president of Piney Woods, is an alumnus of the school.

many visit relatives in other parts of the United States.

Negash has the best of both worlds: he gets to spend time with family in the U.S. as well as make trips back to Ethiopia.

“I’m fortunate to go home every break. My dad is a pilot for Ethiopian Airlines so I get two free tickets every year,” Negash said. “Within my two years at Piney Woods I’ve been home three times. I’m one of the lucky ones.”

Crossley, the current president of Piney Woods, is also an alumnus of the school.

“Many years ago, I was a student here at Piney Woods School,” Crossley said. “I first came here some 29 years ago from Chicago, Illinois. It was my first time really spending time in the Deep South. It was also my first extended time here in Mississippi, and I stayed here through high school and did well. Piney Woods created opportunities for me that I am convinced I would not have had I remained on the South Side of Chicago.”

Through his experience at Piney Woods, Crossley gained his love for education and wants others to have that same opportunity. Crossley has a master’s degree in education from Harvard University and a law degree from the University of Virginia. After practicing law for a few years, he worked on the presidential campaign of Barack Obama and served as chief counsel to the Democratic National Committee. He was awarded a presidential appointment with the U.S. Department of Education, but he stayed in that position for only a year because his heart was drawn in another direction.

“There was a need here that outweighed my position there,” Crossley said. “The work I was doing in D.C., there is no doubt in my mind that tomorrow a hundred other people could do it. Yet this school was in such a place that tomorrow truly wasn’t promised.”

DIFFICULT TRANSITIONS Even as Piney Woods continues to make help its international students feel comfortable, some students still struggle to adjust.

Sophomore Nethan Abebaw is reserved in a room with strangers, yet boisterous with friends. He was born and raised in Addis Ababa.

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“I’m not well familiar with the food here and I still miss the food from back home,” Abebaw said.

When students travel home, they return with food to share with other Ethiopians on campus. Some nights, they all gather in one room and feast on traditional fare, such as injera, minchet and key wat.

Being so far away from home has helped Abebaw mature and become more responsible.

“Growing up in Addis is good because it helped me differentiate the good things and the bad things. For example, your parents will help you by choosing friends so that you will be good in school and behavior. You will know about culture and you will also be good in social activities.

There are a lot of social activities in Ethiopia. You will meet up with all your family members at least twice a month, but here work will make you busy so you will not be able to meet up with your family.”

Another big adjustment for Abebaw has been the structure of the curriculum at Piney Woods.

“In Ethiopia, we take all subjects in a specific grade,” Abebaw said. “For example, if we take chemistry in 9th grade we will take it until 12th grade, but in Piney Woods, we don’t repeat subjects. The teaching curriculum is totally different. In Ethiopia, we have specific classes (where we) have the same classmates, but here we have different classmates.”

Many Ethiopian students at Piney Woods are attracted to colleges like Jackson State University because they have had other family members attend there. Because JSU is a historically black institution like Piney Woods, it is an easy adjustment. Others leave Mississippi for college to see more of America.

The Ethiopian students say they sometimes have a difficult transition when they return to their home country.

“Little things, like when you are about to eat and if a person you are with hasn’t eaten it’s customary to say shall we eat, but here you just chow down,” Eba said.

SCHOOL OF TOMORROW One of the schools in Ethiopia that sends students to Piney Woods is School of Tomorrow, a private K-12 school located in the capital city of Addis Ababa. School of Tomorrow attracts high achievers.

“Every year, 100 percent of our students pass national examinations. One hundred percent,” said Samuel Woldekidan, director of School of Tomorrow, who was interviewed in Addis Ababa. “About 25 of our students get scholarships from all over the world. Once our students come here we guide them to wherever they desire. Another thing is that we make sure that our students not only learn here in Ethiopia after they graduate but they are able to pass international exams.”

Classes are taught in English and Amharic, the Ethiopian national language.

Woldekidan said he looks forward to traveling to Piney

Woods in Mississippi someday to tour the campus and meet its students. He feels that it will strengthen the relationship between the two schools, and help him be able to reassure Ethiopian parents who are uncertain about whether to send their children abroad for high school.

Fithawi Weldegebriel is one of the students who attended School of Tomorrow, then transferred to Piney Woods during his freshman year of high school. He is now a junior at Piney Woods.

He said School of Tomorrow — a large school with more than 1,500 students and 250 teachers and staff, on four campuses in Addis Ababa — prepared him for school abroad. “”(School of Tomorrow) is very diverse,” Weldegebriel said. “I attended it up until my eighth grade year. It’s where I first learned English. Now that I am here, my English has gotten better, even my voice deeper. Both of these schools have helped me be better than I was yesterday.”

TOP: Students play basketball during recess at School of Tomorrow in Addis Ababa. BOTTOM: Students study at School of Tomorrow.

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‘One of the absolute best experiences of my life’

PHOTO BY MARK GAIL

Dean Norton told us that African international flights are often referred to as “The Village.”

I understood why; unlike any other flight I had been on, the Ethiopian Airlines flight passengers were outstandingly communal. People moved about the cabin to visit with one another. This homegoing became a celebration and the conversations extended far beyond the members sharing a row together. The flight served as an interesting insight into the nature and culture of Ethiopia. During one interview, I asked a deacon if he could sing his favorite religious song from his childhood teachings. He lit up. He sang about the baptism of Jesus in Amharic. It may be my favorite moment in my reporting career thus far.

JARED BOYD As the plane flew closer and closer to Ethiopia, I looked out of the window and seeing the Sahara desert was like a dream. Sharon Sarthou told me that when I got to the fairytale land I needed to breathe deeply and smell the air. Africa smells like burning wood mixed with the punchy spices for cooking.

CADY HERRING During our flight from Washington to Addis Ababa, the couple across the aisle from us were en route to Ethiopia to meet the 6-year-old boy that they were adopting. You haven’t witnessed true joy or sacrifice until you’ve seen the anxious faces of people who are willing to travel across the globe to better the lives of a child they’ve never met. Being the savvy Ole Miss journalism students we are, we made sure to get their names and phone number to do a story about their adoption experience —- after teaching them the Hotty Toddy chant, of course. CLANCY SMITH

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The Ethiopian customs are so hospitable and if nothing else is certain, you will never go without coffee.

LEAH GIBSON In Addis, we got to see the first day of Epiphany.

I’m not religious, but wow. Addis always seemed packed when we were there, and I think every citizen that could walk was in the streets for this celebration. This has been one of the absolute best experiences of my life.

GABRIEL AUSTIN

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University of Mississippi students, faculty and administrators in front of the entrance to Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. FRONT ROW: Will Norton Jr., Ann-Marie Herod. SECOND ROW: Logan Kirkland, Cady Herring, Leah Gibson, Clancy Smith. THIRD ROW: Nosa Egiebor, Maggie McDaniel. BACK ROW: Jared Boyd, Lacey Russell, Sierra Mannie, Patricia Thompson, Gabriel Austin, Katie Williamson. PHOTO BY MARK GAIL.

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