Ethiopian Millennium-part 1 Report

From The Rastafari Expression,
A regular column by Kaya I IsesaJah, Mar 25, 2007         

Having made a short visit to shashemane earlier this year, things seem as usual in the new village priest Paul who works along with the local farmers association took my guests two teachers around to see the development, Brethren and Sistren from the UK and US are building there homes. Rasta is coming home.

When you visit take a look at local authorities idea of development in our area, they got the idea from the Netherlands, its near spengmans guest house, every house is built beside each other it looks like a sardine can development all I can see them creating is a ghetto development.

A delegation from Shash went to visit the Federal government in Addis Ababa to find out why InI rights had not been implemented, their response was that the local authority in shashemane are not acting from the directives of the Federal government.

One enterprising sistren who has lived in Shashemane for 8 years who had a shop, library, had done publishing, video production, and employed locals girls teaching them sewing, said "she felt the local authorities want to get Rasta off the land, but first they had to extract as much money from them, before they get them out, and had not come up with a concrete plan before they move us off."

In the new village, to the back up the hill they are building a new prison to hold 500 prisoners along with a police station. We hope this will help with the crime, when locals have the front to steal from sistren in broad daylight then that is going to far. Theres no doubt that we need security in InI area as ones and ones come in to settle it will only improve the situation, this year is the best time to do it, if you need any support or advice to establish a project or land please contact me. Shashemane could be a starting point, in time ones and ones have ventured to other parts of the country to live regions like Bahar dar, jimma, Wondo genet, Arba minch, Addis Ababa and Awassa.

In the previous report I mentioned that a white man had moved into the area, who had put an elder in prison, and they were now in a court battle? It seems that last month the white man was found dead in the latrine on the property from a broken neck? Or either poisoning?

The elder was charged for murder and says he did not do it, a brethren went to see him in jail and in tears he claimed his innocence. Recently we have heard that the Elder is going to be freed, the autopsy report claimed that he died from natural causes.

What a lot of the brethren and sistren are saying in Ethiopia is that they need a school, not any school but a good one that caters for InI needs; they are feed up with what's out there. A poor standard of education.

English language schools are big business in Addis, they tend to employ anyone white or light skinned especially in the private schools, I have seen a 16-year-old just left school become a teacher over night. A Swedish woman I know at one point had 5 job offers to teach at various schools in Addis. I have heard of white woman in transit to another country stop off get a teaching job and find a place to live within a short space of time.

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I have been in Education for 24 years, am an author and own a library and am a Rastaman, there cannot be no higher teacher than that, Yet I struggled to hold a job.

There can be no doubt that racial and cultural discrimination operates in this town, not many man with locks/ natty dread are given jobs in teaching, I have known one brethren who was hounded out of the job because they had hired him from the states and having now realised that he had dreads gave him a hard time.

I have phoned up schools and on the phone the principle of the school has said, "yes we want you to start straight away" Then when I turn up its a different story full of feeble excuses,"oh its not up to me."

I have a good Oxford English accent, and you could not tell that I was a Blackman if you did not see me whilst I spoke to you on the phone.

We Rasta spend hours in pray and meditation with fasting asking jah to give InI the opportunities whites get, yet ini go through this great tribulation even in ini own country Afrika.

Coming home one needs to be strong and committed. Education is one of the means ini can change backwardness and discrimination, their idea of education is to ram as much info into the youth at the earliest stage in there learning, youths should learn in various way, at times they learn from listening, playing and touch.

This system of white supremacy InI find in Ethiopia would probably be found in Ghana the main 2 countries the children of the Diaspora want to repatriate / migrate to. Coming here and living here is an eye opener, we thought that Ethiopia was not colonialised, but we are wrong, they have a colour inferiority complex, just look into any church and you will see the catholic icon of Jesus, although we have given then hundreds of the black icons they don't show them,

we have heard of one priest who openly now tells his congregation that Jesus is a man of colour which is rare. Over a year ago at a Rasta conference in California, one of the agendas was on Repatriation, the white dreads said, to them it did not matter and they wanted InI to drop repatriation from the Rastafari livity sighting it as not important. After more reasoning with them and showing them that it was an essential part of the livity they accepted, but their next response was "ok lets buy the land and what country shall we go to."

This just shows InI that well meaning whites, sympathies and reggae fans, put on the locks talk the talk and listen to reggae and then think they are Rasta, having never being taught by a learned brethren, they just create in there own minds what suits them and think they know of InI,

but let InI remind you "many will be called few will be chosen, you think your in heaven but you are living in hell." if you cant humble yourself unto InI and idetate in Jah statutes you must fall short every time.

Firstly you need to start redefining Your Perception of reality with an African holistic Worldview. In order to overstand what Rasta is about, it may be necessary to examine first the way you view the world. Our cultural heritage, life experience and education govern our standpoint and view of our experience in life.

You will need multi-disciplinary subject matters, a study of world history including the acquisition of knowledge from anthropology, Egyptology, Judaism and linguistics.

Although it takes what may be termed as university type education to overstand InI, in those various mentioned subjects, still this isn't enough, as it may not have occurred to you that the way you are processing your information might be completely wrong; and by what level are you measuring your conclusions? To forward onto the path of knowing yourself, your current views and standpoints will be changed from a Western dichotomised view of split reality into an African Holistic Worldview and with the Grace of Jah, spiritual revelations may be revealed to you.