Gursha, the sad state of life in Addis!

As the cost of food rises, the popularity of street gursha, selling and consuming handfuls of restaurant leftovers, is spreading around the capital. Originating in areas such as Fews Terra, Merkato, the business caters to those who not only want to save money on food but also time, writes HADRA AHMED, FORUTNE STAFF WRITER.

Gursha Market Engulfs Capital, Catering to Many of Bottom Millions



Youngsters who work around Merkato and its areas sit down on street at Fews Terra to have dinner with plastic bags, serving as their plate on the evening of Friday, December 23, 2011.

Fekadu Petros, 24, moved to Addis Abeba from his native Wolayta, 390km south of the capital following the death of his father, who was survived by seven children and his wife. The short and skinny young man has worked in the city for the past four years, sending whatever money he can save to his mother and siblings.

He is attached to a scrap metal store in Menallesh Terra, Merkato, which pays him 250 Br a month. But, he also carries stuff for a lot of people visiting Merkato to do their shopping. On good days he can make as much as 60 Br from these people, he says.

The money may seem significant, but living on a day-to-day basis, people like Fekadu hardly think of their incomes on a monthly basis. They pay 10 Br just for a sleeping space on a mat. For 300 Br a month, they could get a better place, but they do not have enough money at any given to pay for it upfront. They live on a daily basis.

A proper meal costs about 15 Br in that part of Merkato. Many of these people, including day labourers, shoeshine boys, snack vendors, and beggars, eat gursha, handfuls of restaurant leftovers served from plastic bags.

Gursha, under normal circumstances, is a small roll of enjera and stew that one person puts into the mouth of another as an act of intimacy or hospitality, a tradition in Ethiopia. Sometimes the roll of food may be somewhat big with some of it falling into the palm of the person who is being fed, who keeps his hand just under his mouth expecting some spill over.

However, in Merkato, daily labourers buy their meals in gurshas, and these gurshas are so big that one cannot help but be amazed at seeing that much food finding enough space in one person’s mouth.

Gursha has become a business for people with access to restaurant leftovers, serving people who cannot afford a proper meal. A veteran gursha vendor, a middle-aged woman who declined to give her name, as well as her friends first came up with the idea of selling gursha in 1989 in Teklehaimnot area, she said. They later moved into Menallesh Terra in 1992. Another group of young people started such a business near Ras Theatre in Merkato, and they called the place where they settled Fews Terra, translated remedy area.

The unemployment rate in Addis Abeba is 19pc, but that has not deterred the 55,000 additional people who migrate from other regions each year in search of job and better life, the Central Statistical Agency (CSA) reports. Fekadu had to drop out of high school to join this flood of poorly educated people who mostly end up as day labourers.

Now, twice a day, he lines up at Fews Terra for a trio of giant gurshas, which costs three Birr in all and fills his stomach, leaving him happy and satisfied. Although they used to pay only 50 cents for the same amount just a few years back, they do not complain. He often tries to get to Fews Terra early, when the line is short, in order to get the better food. Besides, as the hands of the sellers get tired, the size of their gurshas get smaller.

One of these culinary businessmen is Mehreteab Tewelde, a young man from the Abenet area in his early 20s, who quit school after eighth grade. He has been selling gursha for about a year now. He buys four large plastic bags full of leftover food, known as bulle, left over in the local vernacular, from restaurant employees for 30 Br each. When all of his customers have had their gurshas, his profit might be 70 Br to 90 Br per day. His mother only knows that he is a plumber. If she discovered his real job, she would be embarrassed, he says, even though he gives her all the money he makes from it.





Hungry for dinner, youngsters hold open their plastic bags to receive food from the bulle vendor.



Another such person works as a cleaner at a restaurant, which gives him bags of food to give away for free. But he sells it at Fews Terra, instead.

These gurshas do not only save money but also time for people who need to rush back to look for more work.

‘‘The only thing that matters is to save some money from what I earn, no matter what I eat or where I sleep,’’ Fekadu said, echoing the opinions of many of the people in the line.

In the competitive business of supplying gursha, having water for hand washing and drinking is an advantage. The Fews Terra sellers benefit from the local Total gas station, whose owner, Bereka Delil, has given free access to water for the beggars, shoe shiners, day labourers, and anyone else who needs a drink or wash.

This business has recently spread to many areas of Addis Abeba. Merkato has at least three places. There are others in Piazza and Sidist Kilo areas. The Sidist Kilo sellers get their leftovers from Addis Abeba University’s campus for free. ‘‘I am so happy that I get to eat and sleep everyday,’’ Tariku Kebede, 30, one of the sellers there says.

This is the sentiment shared by almost all of the vendors and customers of the gursha markets. These youngsters only think about how to get through their daily hustle and bustle.

Officials of Addis Ketema District, of which Merkato is a part, has followed neither the market nor the health risks involved in eating leftover food, according to Hussien Kelifa, expert at the Wereda 18 Health Office, which monitors Menallesh Terra.

The way the food is carried, served, and eaten looks very unhygienic, says Abenet Tekle, a researcher in food science and nutrition at the Pasteur Institute.

“I have never fallen ill because of a meal I have eaten from bulle,” Fekadu says.

His family, he says, are happy with the money he regularly sends to them, thinking that he is working in a good place and eating good food.


By HADRA AHMED
FORTUNE STAFF WRITER

Insight: Africa to miss Gaddafi's money, not his meddling

By Barry Malone
TRIPOLI | Fri Nov 11, 2011 9:27am EST
(Reuters) - Muammar Gaddafi plucked some fluff from his flowing golden robes, poured himself another steaming cup of tea and continued with his lecture, not seeming to notice the wide yawns around him. It was 2 a.m. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was dozing in a corner.

The leaders' rigid stares and sour faces at an African Union summit in 2009, witnessed by journalists peering through a gap in the curtains, showed how most African leaders felt about the continent's self-styled "King of Kings." "There goes the sideshow clown," one African diplomat muttered, as Gaddafi swept out of the room and told the waiting journalists to get some sleep.

Now, the man whose theatrics overshadowed their summits for so long is dead and buried, and sub-Saharan African leaders are trying to assess what a world without Gaddafi will mean for them, according to interviews with a dozen or so African diplomats in Tripoli. Some enjoyed substantial investments and gifts from his oil coffers. But many also hated what they saw as his meddling, even while they paraded solidarity with a fellow African who saw himself as an anti-colonial revolutionary.

African ambassadors and diplomats say they are already starting to feel the impact of the shift in power from Gaddafi to his enemies. Many feel frozen out by Libya's interim rulers, the National Transitional Council (NTC). Some suspect the new government is even going to want some of Gaddafi's gifts back. Whatever happens, Gaddafi's vision of a united Africa -- always quixotic -- is gone.

"He made us feel important," one told Reuters. "But there aren't so many of us being invited to sit and break bread with NTC leaders. They think that we sided with Gaddafi."

PRIORITIES

That perception has arisen in part from a belief among NTC and western officials that the African Union's attempt to mediate during the civil war was designed to protect Gaddafi. For Libya's new leaders, the western allies who helped them to power will be more important.

"The new administration in Tripoli will want to set relations with the AU off right," said Mark Schroeder, sub-Saharan Africa analyst at consultancy Stratfor. "But the AU will only be a smaller actor they will establish priorities with."

Western diplomats have become more visible in Tripoli, shuttling back and forth between the two luxury hotels where most meetings with NTC officials take place. Some even wear wristbands in the revolutionary colors, their drivers flashing the "V" for victory sign at checkpoints run by NTC forces.

African diplomats are more rarely seen out and about in a capital where fellow non-Arab Africans can risk arrest, and worse, as suspected pro-Gaddafi mercenaries.

TRACTORS, HOSPITALS, MOSQUES

With Gaddafi gone, others also feel vulnerable.

"There was a sense that we were supporting him at all costs just so that we could protect his investments in our countries," one sub-Saharan African ambassador in Tripoli told Reuters. While some African leaders may indeed have been keen to keep Gaddafi's cash, others saw the West's action in Libya as "an act of colonial aggression," he said.

Whatever African leaders' motives in supporting Gaddafi, now could be payback time: "The poorest on the continent will pay."

Officials in Tripoli say the Gaddafi government's investments across sub-Saharan Africa were massive, although so far there is no complete picture of them.

He invested widely in projects from donated tractors in Gambia to $90 million telecoms deals in Chad, in what most political analysts saw as an attempt to buy clout on a continent he aimed to unite with anti-colonial rhetoric. Entire hospitals and mosques bore his name.

He gave Gambian President Yahya Jammeh aid and huge herds of camels. Al-Madar, a state-owned Libyan mobile phone operator owned or controlled telecoms operations with assets worth over $100 million in eight other African countries.

"It wasn't all cynical," said another African ambassador in Tripoli of Libya's spending spree. "He did a lot of good for African countries ... There was little racism in him, unlike some other Arabs, who treat us like slaves when we come here looking for work."

There is real fear in African capitals that the NTC is going to want to take that money back, though it has not yet outlined official policy on the issue.

"Such investments as exist in sub-Saharan Africa are likelier than not to come under pressure to liquidate in order to secure the funds to rehabilitate the war-torn country," agreed Peter Pham, an analyst with U.S. think-tank the Atlantic Council.

The African Union's already meager budget may take a hit: the former Libyan strongman paid more than his allotted share. Libya's formal contribution was 15 percent of the half of the Union's budget that is put up by Africans themselves. But African Union officials say Gaddafi also paid the contributions of several small west African nations, more than doubling the share of funds coming from Tripoli. In public, officials deny a possible loss of funding is a concern.

PERSONAL CLUB

The African Union, which replaced the Organisation of African Unity, held its inaugural meeting in Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte in 1999. Gaddafi tried in vain to have it move headquarters there from the OAU's base in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. But he nonetheless treated the Union like a personal club.

Theatrical summit entrances, rambling speeches and buffoonish behavior married with a seemingly genuine desire to encourage African leaders to stand up to their former colonial masters and build more unity among themselves.

Many African heads of state were already tiring of his attempts to dominate them. Uganda's Yoweri Museveni was seen arguing with Gaddafi at a Kampala summit in 2010, after the Libyan's personal guard, trying to bring concealed guns into the meeting hall, had brawled with the Ugandan president's own security.

Gaddafi, apparently trying to deflect blame, then slapped his own foreign minister across the face in full view of a group of journalists.

"For us, there was some good and some bad," an African Union official told Reuters. "But, overall, we won't miss him."

Plenty of rebels-turned-presidents -- including South Africa's Jacob Zuma and Uganda's Museveni -- have made a point of remembering how Gaddafi supported them during their days fighting in the bush. With Gaddafi, who himself took power in a military coup in 1969, they would salute each other and talk with pride of being Africa's "revolutionary" leaders.

So their initial impulse was to close ranks and defend him, even as his forces were attacking demonstrators; and they ensured the African Union dithered as NATO acted.

Since his fall, most have been conspicuously silent. They are trying to build ties with an NTC that seems little interested, beyond calling on its southern neighbors not to shelter the Gaddafi loyalists Libyans want brought to justice.

"Why are you asking me about Gaddafi's legacy?" one African Union official said in response to a question. "Stop associating us with him. We cannot afford it."

(Edited by Alastair Macdonald and Sara Ledwith)

SPECIAL REPORTS

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/11/us-gaddafi-africa-legacy-f-idUSTRE7AA36E20111111

Italian judge: Knox may know 'real truth' in case | Seattle Times Newspaper

An Italian judge who was part of the jury that acquitted Amanda Knox said Wednesday that she and her ex-boyfriend were cleared of murder based on the evidence, but the "real truth" could be different.

Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann said in a state TV interview that Knox and Italian Raffaele Sollecito may know what happened in the 2007 slaying of Meredith Kercher, Knox's British roommate.

In his first public comments since the appeals court verdict Monday, the judge stressed the ruling was the fruit of the "the truth that was created in the trial."

"But the real truth could be different," Pratillo Hellmann added. "They could also be responsible, but the proof isn't there."

Pratillo Hellmann, the presiding judge, was one of eight jurors in the case.

Knox and Sollecito have vehemently denied wrongdoing in Kercher's murder. Knox flew home to Seattle on Tuesday, her first full day out of jail since she was arrested a few days after the murder. Sollecito was resting at his hometown in southern Italy, his lawyers said.

Asked who knew the truth about the slaying, Pratillo Hellmann referred to a third defendant, Rudy Guede, who was convicted of Kercher's murder in a separate trial and is serving a 16-year sentence in Italy.

"Certainly Rudy Guede" knows, he said. "I won't say he's the only one to know," the judge added.

Referring to Knox and Sollecito, who were both convicted of sexual assault and murder in a lower court trial, the judge said that "maybe the two defendants also know" what really happened.

Guede, of the Ivory Coast, has denied wrongdoing but has acknowledged being in the house when Kercher was slain. The court in convicting Guede indicated in its ruling that he committed the murder along with someone else. But it never said who that was.

The judge described Knox and Sollecito as "two kids barely in their 20s, normal, like so many of today's (youth). Indeed, they were polite, composed, put to the test and matured by this kind of experience."

"I felt emotion because they are two young people who suffered, justly or unjustly. I repeat, we can never say with certainty," he said.

The judge added that Kercher's family has "all my human compassion."

"But we cannot assign responsibility (for a crime) with such a high penalty solely to ease the suffering of these parents," he said.

The prosecution had sought convictions and life sentences for Knox and Sollecito. Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison by the lower court trial, while Sollecito was given 25 years.

The appeals court must issue a written explanation of its decision within 90 days. The prosecution can then decide whether to appeal the verdict to Italy's highest court. That tribunal, the Court of Cassation, could either uphold the acquittals or throw out the verdict if it finds some technical error, paving the way for a second appeals trial.

Pratillo Hellmann dismissed a suggestion the jury might have been influenced by the "media circus" surrounding the trial. "You have to rely on your own conscience," he said. "If you are at peace with your conscience, the media circus doesn't have the least impact."


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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2016411793_apeuitalyknox.html

Marcus Garvey

"Governments don't rule the world, Goldman Sachs Do!"

"The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them" Said Maya Angelou



Smithsonian Institution Collections Search Center

Smithsonian Institution Collections Search Center

Wrong in too many levels!

I watched this Guardian video with absolute disappointment and anger. Most people of African decent approach Western coverage of any topic with suspicions and as an Ethiopian American my understanding of that feeling is still intact. That said, some of us, who are really critical of the land grab happening in Ethiopia, are aware of this problem and Guardian coverage did a fairly decent job.

As any problem arising in the horn of Africa, There are always the pros and cons to consider. The fans of the Government’s move like to point out the need to make bitter choices by opening up Ethiopia to those with resources to use the land and in the meantime create jobs and other social infrastructure like schools and medical centers. They say, rightfully so, Ethiopia was closed for business for the last half century and look where it get us.
So they endorse the reckless summery land award to whoever come up with money regardless of what is planned to be harvested in the land, who will benefit from it and also without any consideration to the rights and well being of the people that lived and existed there for centuries.

We all remember this argument when the government was moving people from their neighborhood and bulldozed their shacks and award the land to the so called investors, some of them borrowed money from the government and fled with it to oversees leaving the buildings unfinished, and some of them actually constructed buildings that have a higher rent scale which leave them to be unrented and also some surrender the land awarded to them to the government because the land sat idolly while they use the title to put their hands on other loans using the land as collateral. In the meantime, the poor was thrown out it’s town without a proper consideration to it’s rights or well being.

What makes the move to award large scale lands to companies like Karuturi Global scary is the utter disregard to workers right, use of unregulated child labor, unapologetic disregard to the starving natives and the lack of care to the land or the longtime ecosystem of the country.

Besides the weird nature of being the lead country to export food to nations like Saudi Arabia and India while millions of it’s citizens starve, what is the morel explanation of awarding huge land to (size of Wales) to companies and individuals with next to nothing price for almost a century? How are we justifying begging developed nations for a Food Aid while we export food to other nations. This move set some of us ,who are trying to stop Western stereotype of Ethiopia as a starving nation, back because we are not only starving but we do it voluntarily.

In the time where the world is very conscious of natural resources, like water land and energy, Ethiopian government is doing exactly the opposite of it in exchange for very little for the countries future.

So far we know, the promised infrastructures that are promised to the natives are not delivered. Ethiopians are now working next to nothing in a rice field that will be served in the dining tables of Saudi Arabia.

In my opinion, this is wrong in too many levels!






UPDATE
Saudi Billionaire Plans to Invest $2.5 Billion to Build Ethiopia Rice Farm
Wednesday, 23 March 2011

Addis Ababa, March 23 (WIC) - Saudi Star Agricultural Development Plc, a food company owned by billionaire Sheikh Mohammed al- Amoudi, said it plans to invest $2.5 billion by 2020 developing a rice-farming project in Ethiopia.

The company, based in Addis Ababa, leased 10,000 hectares (24,711 acres) in Ethiopia’s western Gambella region for 60 years at a cost of 158 birr ($9.42) per hectare annually, Chief Executive Officer Haile Assegide said in an interview on March 18. It plans to rent an additional 290,000 hectares from the government, he said.

The project forms part of the Horn of Africa nation’s plan to lease 3 million hectares, an area about the size of Belgium, to private investors over the next 2 ½ years. Critics including GRAIN, the Barcelona-based advocacy group, have argued that domestic farmers are being dispossessed and the country shouldn’t rent land cheaply to foreign investors to grow cash crops when about 13 percent of its approximately 80 million people still rely on food aid.

“There is lots of land in Ethiopia, especially in the lowland areas,” Haile said. “So, if you develop this lowland area and make Ethiopia self-sufficient in food, I see no problem.”

Karuturi Global Ltd. (KARG), an Indian food processor, plans to produce commodities including palm oil, sugar and rice on 312,000 hectares of rented land in Ethiopia.

‘Villagization’

The Agriculture Ministry announced in November it plans to relocate 45,000 households, or about three-quarters of the population of Gambella, by mid-2013. Almost half of the region’s population is made up of the semi-nomadic Lou Nuer people, according to the 2007 Population and Housing Census.

The government says the so-called villagization program is aimed at improving public-service delivery and is not linked to investments in land.

“Where we have leased, there is no settler,” Haile said. “In the future, there might be some resettlement.”

When previous projects of Saudi Star’s parent company, Midroc Ethiopia Plc, have displaced people, it has compensated people, resettled them and provided public services including schools, health clinics and loans, according to Haile.

Over the past 15 months, Saudi Star spent $140 million buying equipment, clearing part of the land in Gambella and developing a 25-hectare trial plot, he said. Another 130,000 hectares has been allocated and there are plans to lease a further 160,000, Haile said. Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous nation with about 83 million people, bars private land ownership.

Saudi Exports

Other crops including sunflowers and corn will be grown in areas not suitable for rice, Haile said.

Two-thirds of the food produced will be exported by Saudi Star, with Saudi Arabia likely to be a “very dominant” market, while the rest will be sold domestically, according to Haile. This month, the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry said the agreement with Saudi Star required the company to sell 40 percent domestically, while 60 percent could be shipped offshore.

“There is no government policy to my knowledge,” Haile said.

Saudi Star’s farm will eventually produce as much as 1.5 million metric tons of rice a year and directly employ 250,000 people, in part because of a strategy to reduce mechanization.

“We don’t want to make it capital intensive,” he said. “We want to make it a mix of labor and capital”.

Rough rice for May delivery fell less than 0.1 percent to $13.85 per 100 pounds on the Chicago Board of Trade at 8:58 a.m. Nairobi time.

Saudi Arabian businesses invested more than any other country in Ethiopia over the past five years, the Ethiopian News Agency reported in December. Ethiopia plans to attract foreign and domestic investment of 703 billion birr over the next five years, according to the agency.

Al-Amoudi, 66, is the world’s 63rd richest person and the second-wealthiest in Saudi Arabia with assets worth $12.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine’s annual global ranking of billionaires.(bloomberg.com)

White writers and Black history.

Tsedenia did it!

It is not always you come across a great Ethiopian Music Video, But sometime you will find some that embodies a clear message, great music and artistic video all together. That is what I found in Tsedenias, Hememe video.

Tsedenia G/Markose's Hememe video, starts with her dancing in a beautiful Ethiopian landscape while accompanied by a soulful tasty Massinko sound. The brilliance of this song, is it's ability to merge traditional Ethiopian musical instruments with modern ones and kept the it's originality without a flaw. Beside the angelic voice of Tsedenia, this video also includes two stunning dancers with their absolutely perfect dance. Tsedenia's video also shine's light to wonderful Ethiopian paintings.

Another star of this great video, is the brother that plays Massinko. His work is extremely wonderful and perfect. Hope to see more of his work in the future.

This great video is made by 123 studios and directed by Luna & Bisrat and arranged by Abel Pawlos. I am not quite sure who these people are but all I know is I am a big fan of their work. Let us keep on celebrating the work of these great artists and support them by buying their work and letting them know how wonderful they are.

Congratulation Tsedenia and the crew. You did it.





Life Line


http://marcussamuelsson.com/news/unicef-life-line

The SAD reality of Ethiopian Religions

I am not a religious person, I don't even dare to comment on religious facts, the way business of God is conducted in the religious institutions, and the state of mind in some of the known religious leaders for the most known religions in Ethiopia.

According to the census report of 2007, 43.5% of Ethiopian people are Orthodox Christians, 18.6% are protestants (includes different denominations), 0.7 % are Catholics, 33.9% are Muslims, 2.6% are Animist, and 0.7% are others. This percentage constitutes, roughly around 74 million total population. his interesting census result shows how religion in Ethiopia is diverse and it is the testament to the quality and tolerance of Ethiopian people to co-exist together while loving and understanding one another. Some of the great memories I have as a child was celebrating colorful Orthodox religious holidays and also sharing the happiness of my Muslim friends in their holidays. I believe the world will learn a lot about tolerance from Ethiopia. I know in some areas of the country Churches and Mosques share the same ground.

Even in the capital of Ethiopia, The great Anwar Mosque is just walking distance from St Raguel church and in fridays muslims and Christians share prayers in just a walking distance.

All the above mentioned examples show the way religions coexist in Ethiopia and they are not happened because the country is just blessed, but it took a thoughtful teaching and understanding of one's right to worship and the way leaders respected each other taught other's to do the same. For that the credit goes to the leaders of the religious groups.

But, All of this is in danger now. Ethiopians are now seems to follow the international trend of extremism. See the attached video.

We need to refrain from disrespecting one another. We need to locate a fringe subjects among us and correct them. In a country like Ethiopia, with all the divers religions, this fringe subjects can easily start a religious war and that is something we all dread. It is simple to incite violence but not simple to clam them down.

Pay attention and love one another. Understand that your truth is not others truth and it is ok. Respect your fellow citizens right to worship what they want.

Peace