Brown Condor
Essence of DOPE
Badme for Assab
08 days
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
We are at the precipice of death—we stand at the gates of infernal hell—simply because we refuse to cooperate and believe in compromise::
by Teddy Fikre dated: Friday, May 11th, 2012
Here I go again about to make a rational offer between Ethiopians and Eritreans. I am about to extend a hand of a friendship and make an offer where both sides win and both sides save face—in the process ensure that a needless war does not break out where thousands of lives are not lost needlessly. I am about to make a broad offer where not only would both sides save face and lives but where both sides prosper as they enter into an agreement where both would reap an economic windfall. In other words, I am about to offer a solution that involves compromise.
What? Why are you laughing? Yes, I said compromise eko! Ere, why oh why are you chuckling? Jesus, man my friend Mimi was right, the word “compromise” does not exist in the Habesha lexicon. This article is pretty much going to be as useful as the paper it is written on—this might as well be a counterfeit chronicle. Alas, I shall push forward and offer the compromise nonetheless in hopes that a few people would see the folly of winning at all cost and see the value of compromise. They say that politics is the art of compromise; in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Africa as a whole, compromise is the art of genocide. Given this fact, I shall make a concession that offers both sides losing and both sides winning and see where the dirkosh falls.
So here is my offer. Ethiopia gives Badme back to Eritrea and in return Eritrea gives back Assab to Ethiopia. Oh lord; here goes the angry ranting of the lynch mob! Ethiopians all over Starbucks are at this present moment spitting up the “Yigerachief” buna as they call me “banda” while Eritreans are calling me a neo-colonial Woyane as they sip their bun. They do this reflexively because to them giving up an inch is akin to betraying their motherland and selling out their soul. Never mind that both Ethiopia and Eritrea are suffering innumerable misfortunes while they spend ungodly amounts on “national defense”. Did you know that Ethiopia spends (more…)
POST-It
09 days
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
It is my hope that this idea sticks to you forever, read Sheba Post next time and on a daily basis instead of reading the Washington Post::
by Teddy (never yellow) Fikre dated: Thursday, May 10th, 2012
The audacity of some people! It amazes me how many things we take for granted, some of the most mundane things were invented by folk simply applying common sense to a common object. Take for example Post-it sticky pads. All of us know what Post-it pads are, they are the ubiquitous sticky pads that are a nuisance until we need something to jot down a quick idea or need a place holder for our notepads. It is in those moments of need that we turn quickly to a Post-It pad to scribble a notion or to hold over our place. As much as we complain about Post-It pads and the way they has invaded our lives—when the moment comes we all use it without a second thought.
This history of Post-It pads is absolutely amazing. In 1968, Dr. Spencer Silver, a chemist at 3M in the United States, developed a “low-tack”, reusable, pressure-sensitive adhesive. For five years, Silver promoted his invention within 3M, both informally and through seminars, but without much success. In 1974, a colleague of his, Art Fry, who had attended one of Silver’s seminars, came up with the idea of using the adhesive to anchor his bookmark in his hymnbook. Fry then developed the idea by taking advantage of 3M’s officially sanctioned “permitted bootlegging” policy. 3M launched the product in stores in 1977 in four cities under the name “Press ‘n Peel”, but its results were disappointing. A year later, in 1978, 3M issued free samples to residents of Boise, Idaho, and 95 percent of the people who tried them said that they would buy the product. On April 6, 1980, the product debuted in US stores as “Post-It Notes”. In 1981, Post-its were (more…)
Of Oromo and Insults
39 days
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
It’s crazy how we have adopted a true insult like Habesha while we continue to use beautiful words like Oromo, Woyane, and Guragaye as insults::
by Teddy (kilija) Fikre dated: Thursday, May 10th, 2012
As exhausted as I am at this exact moment from a day’s worth of hustling as though I was a Guragaye sheep seller, I felt compelled to write this article due to the injury I caused a dear friend last evening. Alas, the injury I caused this dear friend of mine was precisely the type of gratuitous slur I just hurled at the proud Guragaye people of Ethiopia. After a life that has hurled at me more insults than I can count, I have learned to take the hurtful intentions of people and turn silly comments into trite jokes to lessen the slings and arrows of stereotypes that people in position of power hurl at those without clout in order to perpetuate a cycle of inferiority complexes and superiority reflexes.
I don’t think anyone in their right mind can accuse me of being a bigot. I have throughout my life stood up for those who have been oppressed and those who have been subjected to humiliation from those who live in the lap of luxury. Maybe it’s because I feel a certain responsibility as an Amhara—a people that many insist are the powers that be in Ethiopia—even though I grew up as close to the lap of luxury as Mitt Romney’s dog grew up in luxury as he drove shivering in a tinder box from America to Canada on the roof of Mitt’s car. The truth is, we Amharas have been given a bad rap—our people have bled and died the same as other ethnic groups in Ethiopia. We too have suffered pain and agony—my father grew up without a father because his father was murdered by Haile Selassie. So when I say that I too, as an Amhara, know the discomforts of being plagued by the powers that be—my stories of agony should not be (more…)
Busboy
010 days
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
Poets and entrepreneurs like Langston Hughes and Andy Shallal are poets in their own rights who were once nothing but busboys::
by Teddy Fikre dated: Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
Life is a long prose, dashed by verbs of tears and nouns of smiles. We journey through this prose one stanza at a time; if we are lucky we will reflect at the end of our journey and realize that throughout the whole prose our lives were really a series of poems. The essence of life is simple; yet humanity complicates it because that is at the core our nature. We are a duality, we have a complex symbiotic relationship with our environment even as we seek to puncture the very embryonic fluid—mother earth—that keeps us alive. Many float through this liquid of existence stuck in the inertia of nothingness. The blessed few—mostly thinkers and visionaries—swim through the watery nature of being and around the inertia of humanity to deliver to our souls a new plateau of existence.
I am going to focus on two souls who in fact swam through the murk of existence and delivered to their fellow mankind a new reality by midwifing the status quo to give birth to a new offspring of hope. You are probably thinking at this exact moment why is it that I always extend the introduction and always take two paragraphs before I get to the topic at hand? Simple; first I am the anti-twitter—I refuse to bend to the laws of the twitterverse in order to appeal to your insatiable appetite for instant gratification. Second, because the people I write about are mostly poets, writers, entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, thinkers, and visionaries. They worked for a lifetime to change our perception and conception of our existence—thus I am not about to take a short cut and defame their very souls by seeking mass appeal over content. I mean, most people it seems want a quick orgasm instead of taking time to make love to life. Most people are patrons at posh restaurants, while others are the bus boys who deliver a feast of thought and supposition to supposed (more…)
Dukem in the City
010 days
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
Try as I might, I could never tell the story of Dukem through twitter. Their character could only be told through a full feature article::
by Teddy Fikre dated: Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
It’s about that time for me to sharpen my bilawa (knife). No, it is not what you think—I am not sharpening my knife to take to some unattended beef. Rather—as you hear me sharpen my blade on the grindstone—I want you to understand that I am about to use this knife to attend to some tire tsega (meat) straight from the distant corners of Dukem. This is a chronology of a small town in Ethiopia by the name of Dukem; a town that is known throughout Africa for having the finest cuts of meat from the finest parts of the bere (cow). Moreover, this is a retelling of the audacity of a family who saw a vision of Dukem on the very corners where most saw the horrors of urban dilapidation and paucity.
Let me start with the small town in Ethiopia named Dukem that gave birth to Dukem in the City. Dukem is town in Ethiopia 35 kilometers east of Addis Abeba. Based on the last census count in 2005, Dukem has an estimated population of 8,704. The town is comprised of 4,905 men and 4,609 women; ironic how the ratio is almost 1:1 in terms of men compared to women—almost reminds me lost paradise where the ratio of woman to man was 1:1 by the name of the Garden of Eden. Sure enough, just like the Garden of Eden, Dukem is a paradise rediscovered where men and women work hand in hand—husbanding their environment while delivering to Ethiopia the finest cuts of meat. Ironic how our story is diluted and untold—there is barely a mention of Dukem the village on Google because our stories are passed down to us orally but rarely do we take the time to write the story of us in the US. My research about Dukem the town was formed and informed by the recounting of oral history straight from the mouth of Getachew Zewdie. Maybe I do have beef after all, I wish more of our people would put document our oral history and write about our stories on notepads and transfer them to the internet so that I can find more articles about our history on Google written by (more…)