Essence of DOPE
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Adwa Rejoined
213 days
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
Brown Condor is Adwa rejoined because in my blood is the genes of Jegnas and warriors and in my mind is the audacity of African-American::
by Teddy Fikre dated: Sunday, Sidest (6) de Mayo, 2012
Man I am about to roll a joint eko! Nah, not a joint like the weed a whole slew of young Habeshas inhale, nah this joint is more doper than ganja—this joint is a spliff licked by my spit and rolled into a bob blessed by Jah Rasta. So go get some Cheetos and huddle up to the screen, you are about to get a whiff of a drug that is more like Opiate that will instantly give you a high as I recount the most highest forms of courage and bravery. I am about to tell you the audacity of Adwa—by the time you finish inhaling my nouns and verbs, you will see that Obama does not have a monopoly on audacity—audacity gave birth to Obama and had him dreaming of his father’s dream of African liberation.
Alright, here comes the kibrit—flick! Time to smoke this joint. This is a rejoinder of a chronicle of Adwa rejoined. This is a tarik (story) of HEBRET and ANDINET as Ethiopians and African-Americans united to lop off the corona of an imp Italian would be king and buried his salami ass in Adwa. Take this journey with me as I transport you back in time to 1935 when Italy—hell bent on revenge for being embarrassed and entombed in Adwa forty years earlier—took up a trumpet call of war and invaded Ethiopia. They committed untold genocides as they annihilated Ethiopian Jegnas and warriors—not to mention mothers and infants—by bombing villages with mustard gas and (more…)
Lost in Babylon
615 days
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
Habesha means nigger; Arabs call us Habesh as a term of insult, yet there we go begging to them and licking their boots as we continue to shovel our money in their pockets::
by Teddy (never Habesha) Fikre written: Friday, May 5th, 2012
Do you know that the word Babylon in the Bible (Genesis) means “to confuse”. Well it is time to offer you some clarity as I type some mitmita words to shake you to the core and show you just how lost in Babylon Ethiopians have become. It is apropos really that I choose the word Babylon to reveal to Ethiopians just how colonized we have become—please spare me your indignity as you inhale Sheesha smoke at a non-Ethiopian owned bar. Relax and relate because I am about to relay a concept to you called Genocide and show you that we proud Ethiopians are mucked and mired in self-hatred and self-loathing. So read these words not as a promise of a new found tomorrow but as a eulogy of Ethiopia as I bury our enat Ethiopia one noun and verb at a time in an unmarked grave called SUICIDE—not even Mussolini could have come up with a plan so ingenious as to turn Ethiopians into their own colonizers.
Now before I get to recounting the death of Ethiopia through buna laced tears, let me first explain to you the history of Babylon. Babylon was the breadbasket of humanity on par with Ethiopia. A city-state in Mesopotamia—present day Iraq—Babylon was a hotbed of civilization and culture in a time where the rest of the world (especially Europe) was still shunted in shadows of barbarism. The concept of the rule of law, arithmetic, science, philosophy and arts could be traced back—in one shape or another—directly back to Babylon. Babylonians were a people of deep intellect and foresight; they shone the light of wisdom to the world and to this day the essence of intelligence is attributed to Babylon.
Alas with wisdom comes hubris; this is the rotten seed of the apple that Adam and Eve tasted and spit in our souls—the inability to accept humility. Shielded from modesty with pride, Babylonian—with great audacity—undertook a mission to build a Tower of Babel that could reach the heavens and poke God in HIS eyes with their dingy fingers and aimed to shoot a poisonous arrow into the heart of Esgyaber. But God is all seeing and omniscient, he detected a whiff of an ill will blowing from Babylon and decided to blow the tower down—Click…Clack…KAPOW…RIP Babylon. Thus, in one fell swoop, God shook the Tower of Babel to the core and had a united city-state by the name of Babel scattered to the wind. No longer were they united by a common language or (more…)
UPgrade
117 days
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
I am still the same Teddy Fikre; it is just that I have just gone through metamorphosis—I have gone through an UPgrade::
by Teddy (Big Dreamer) Fikre dated: Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012 (my May Day)
Dream. I am the son and a product of a dream. When my mother, Sarah Shewangizaw, was but 12 years old, she had a dream of a church bell falling on her head. She told her mother about this dream and my grandmother prophesized me into existence. My grandmother told my mother that her first son would be all powerful and that this son would speak the voice of Atse Teodros through his vocal chords and organizes his people. Thus, before I emerged from the womb, I was already wrapped up tight in the umbilical cord of HOPE and I would emerge accordingly to make Ethiopians understand the concept of HEBRET. My voice is not that of my own doing, what I am doing now is nothing more but a fulfillment of the dreams of my mother. You thought that Obama was the only one who had dreams of his father—I too am a dream and I am now living it.
But before I could live my dream, I first had to UPgrade; thus this is a story of how I grew from a child into a man and how I upgraded my status from coach to first class because I refused to be indifferent. Like most, for a very long time, I was afraid of my own shadows. I lived in the shadow of people who hurt me to the core because I was afraid to speak up and speak truth to power. This inability to articulate my hurt and to communicate my pain had me wrapped up in the umbilical cord of discord and sank me deep into the womb of depression. There, in dark lit corners, I became engaged to Depression Fikre –popping Zoloft and Lexoporo became my existence and the dreams of my mother disappeared into the chasm of colossal calamity. People that loved me could no longer reach me—I became a casualty of my own success. In those moments, I shrunk from a jegna (hero) to a banda (traitor)—I betrayed the dreams of my mother and (more…)
Story of a Brightest Star Named Tarek
119 days
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
Please remember always people that those who don’t act, think, or walk like you are not your enemies::
by Teddy (OWTEST QUE) Fikre dated: Monday, April 30th, 2012
This is a story of the “brightest star” named Tarek who is my fraternity brother but more than that my brother if not by blood by the essence of love. This is a story of hatred and malice directed to those who we don’t understand and a redemptive fable of how love can defeat hatred. This is a tarek of the germ that infects us all—a germ grounded on antipathy and enmity that swallows us all whole. Most important, this is a story of true Islam—a religion of peace—and how there are millions of Muslims who are subjected to racism and odium and how they come through the tornado of our collective loathing with a peace and understanding in their hearts.
This story was inspired by a running conversation that I am still having with my chapter brothers from Eta Delta Delta—the neophytes especially—and a personal exchange that I had with the trey dog that is in my fraternity by the name of Tarek Hbeichi. Before I tell you about Tarek, let me tell you what his name means. In Islam, Tarek means “brightest star” and in Amharic his name means “story”. This is his story more than it is mine—it is the story of heartbreak and heartache borne by misunderstanding simply because he looks “different”.
The intro to the story started off simple enough. We were exchanging humorous emails back and forth, I called Tarek “Taliban Que” because he is half Lebanese and half Palestinian”—his people have been tasting from the cup of Apartheid for more than two generations. I did not think too much of it when I called him “Taliban Que”—in fact, we used to call him that when he was pledging. But what I said in jest to him was not just a joke to him; my words were hurtful and demeaning because for far too long he has been subjected to the pernicious demeanor of Americans who believe that anyone who has copper-color skin or speaks with a Middle Easter accent is somehow a terrorist. He is unable to fly on airplanes without dimwitted TSA agents thinking that he is the 20th hijacker that got away. We as Americans who don’t pray to Allah will never understand the horrors of being subjected to security screenings behind closed doors—where you will never know if the next second you will be “renditioned” (another way of saying kidnapped) to (more…)
Invisible Ethiopian
1420 days
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
I am done crying, I am done complaining about Colonized and Enslaved folks in my two communities::
by Teddy (NEVER colonized) Fikre dated: Sunday, April 29th, 2012
I am a man without a country. I feel like the protagonist in the novel “Invisible Man”, a character so invisible that he did not even have a name in the book. Invisible Man is a chronicle of a man who was born so light skinned that he was most often passed up as a white man during the era of Jim Crowe and segregation in America. So he was able to sway and slip between being black and being white, able to hang out at speakeasies during the night while walking properly during the day with white people—in the process fitting in neither place. He was a man without color and a man without existence; he live on the precipice of nothingness and was not accepted by either side of his heritage.
Ironic isn’t it, this is one of my favorite books of all time. Little did I know when I used to read it copious times that the book was really a foreshadowing of the fate that awaited me. For I too sway and slip between two identities—except my two identities are Ethiopian (born and Ethiopian to the bone) and African-American (assimilated in America thus I speak slang with the best of them). I can hang out at Habesha restaurants and call women “Yene Big Foreheadiye” while speaking my tebtaba Amharic at night and then hang out with my fraternity brothers (Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, an African-American Fraternity) while trying to “set out a hop” even though I suck at it.
There, in those moments of speaking Amharic and “setting out a hop”—in the crevices of the chronometer we call life—I find myself to be Invisible Ethiopian. That is precisely why I am writing a novel called “Invisible Ethiopian” at this exact moment which will be published in 2013—because I am neither accepted by Ethiopians nor African-Americans. I am lost in the ether between both communities; I am crushed the massive indifference from Ethiopians and African-Americans. I am judged as being IBD when I beseech my fellow “Habeshas” to believe in Hebret and equally relegated as crazy by my fraternity brothers when I tell them that we as Ques have a massive responsibility to our community besides setting out hops.
Grant it, there are a lot of Ethiopians and Ques who do the work in the shadows and live up to the legacies of our forefathers. But for the most part it seems that Adwa is dead—Click…Clack…KAPOW trigger pulled by indifferent Ethiopians—and Just, Love, Cooper, and Coleman would roll over in their graves 80 times if they realized the state of our fraternity. For stating the obvious that Ethiopia is really colonized—I am vilified by my own community. For stating the obvious that Omega Psi Phi has morphed into something that I no longer recognize—I am talked about in the vine by my own fraternity brothers and I am sure there are some who would (more…)