Essence of DOPE
Posts tagged Addis Ababa
Major Breaking News: Obama Rejects Zenawi
119 hours
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
Major Breaking News: Obama Brands Zenawi a Tyrant
by Johny Walker dated: Friday, May 18th, 2112
(Washington Post DC Bureau) To the amazement of the political powers that be in Washington DC, the Ethiopian Diaspora in the DC Metro area came out in full force to stage a protest against the Ethiopian prime minister Melez Zenawi. Heretofore, the Obama administration has been the enabler of the Meles junta, but due to the stunning number of people that poured into the streets of Washington DC, the Obama administration has made a stunning reversal and decided to stop all AID and loans to Ethiopia that does not involve (more…)
The Ethiopian Determined to be the Next Barack Obama
12 days
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
I know one day Ethiopians will realize that they are better-off being united than working apart and against each other.
by Samuel Getachew dated: Thursday, May 17th, 2012
(from Huffington Post) In a city like Washington D.C. that has a large Ethiopian American population, it is a controversial radio personality that may just make the biggest symbolic impact. Tewodros “Teddy” Fikre, a D.C.-based popular internet radio host is on the verge of announcing a run for the U.S. Congress in the eighth Congressional District in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The idea of even making such a bold attempt places the young and ambitious entrepreneur in the historical journey of Ethiopians, as he becomes the very first to try such a daring feat.
The 37 year old Ethiopian-born, Virginia-raised entrepreneur and community organizer knows the challenge he has before him; however, he takes solace in knowing the story of Barack Obama. He admires President Obama and his great political journey. Teddy knows all too well that Obama started from a place of obscurity. In his often imperfect Amharic, Teddy has been preaching—every night on his popular blog and radio show—about the virtue of being engaged in American politics to a population that is transfixed mostly with Ethiopian politics.
In the great mass of Ethiopians, estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands in the U.S., Teddy sees great potential for America’s newest immigrants, and a potential powerful voting block in the mold of (more…)
Copper Wire
44 days
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
I am no longer going to transmit negative energy with my Brown Wires, I will instead transmit the change I seek and spread hope with Copper Wires::
by Teddy (CW) Fikre dated: Monday, May 15th, 2012 BC
Jesus walked the desert for 40 days; 85% of Christians know this fact. Jesus was tempted by the devil, 10% of Christians know this fact. The devil was not Lucifer, the devil that tempted Christ was Jesus himself—only 5% of Christians know this fact. To be honest, it was not until a righteous brother revealed the last fact to me by dropping Biblical knowledge that the scales from my eyes were shed. This scholastic prophet transcended my soul from the 10% squad to the 5% crew. This is a story of fractions and wires; this is a chronicle of intermittent steps and the search of enlightenment that always leads to the next iteration of illumination.
This world is a beautiful place if you choose to accept her splendor in between the crevices of feces that we at times smell life out to be. We are all interconnected and inter-meshed—most of us are sheep while the enlightened few are shepherds. I am far from a shepherd; if I was I would not react with vitriol with each perceived slight. I am a sheep that bleats and bleeds each time a staff is injected in my soul—I guess you can say I have staff infection. I am perfecting my walk even as I continue to fall to the same devil that Jesus almost succumbed to. The war at the end of the day is within us; before fundamentalists hijacked the word “Jihad”, jihad was a concept of fighting a battle within and overcoming our innate evil nature with our virtuous self.
This leads me to a conversation I shared this evening with a good friend. This man—he will go unnamed—is the one person that keeps me in awe with intellect. I always brag about getting the last arat netib in any conversation; this fella not only gets the last arat netib, he writes the last paragraph because he is humble and free-thinking. This prophet also spoke words of truth that shook my soul much the same way that Andrew Fingall did yesterday—further proof that God keeps placing people in my life for reasons that I finally understand. He told me that I am blessed with knowledge but that my downfall is pride. People who are blessed with knowledge stand at the precipice of full cognition and can make history if they (more…)
Walk that Walk
06 days
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
I shall focus on self and hope that others follow my lead not by my dictum but based on the examples I set forth::
by Teddy (imperfect) Fikre dated: Sunday, May 13th, 20212
Irony! Funny how we all delve and dwell in between the bed sheets of hypocrisy. Often, those who preach the most are guilty of the very same sins they seek to outcast others for. This fact is true from the inception of humanity; we are all guilty of the devil’s touch where we put on the clothe of invisibility and search out souls to burn to the core for their malfeasance even as we continue to smell like feces concurrently throwing stones at the foreheads of the endless victims. We act like Jesus at times; always seeking to sanctify others and absolve them from their sins while acting like Lucifer by never acknowledging and bearing witness to our own limitations and iniquities.
This epiphany of my own hypocrisy was rendered on my conscience this morning with a profound conversation I shared with my fraternity brother Andrew Fingall. Andrew and I have war stories from George Mason University when we were both undergraduate “Ques”. We traveled to many states and shared almost as many fables as David Jonathan—we are bonded for life and we are true friends to the core. When my heart was broken, it was Andrew I turned for wisdom and counsel. In my moments of weakness, Andrew lifted me up not by judging me or by telling me how to walk that walk. Rather, Andrew just stood in place of my misery and gave me a bible as he outlined the verse and chapter for me to read. To this day, I hold dear and near that Bible he gave me as a remembrance of my most tender moments and a memory of a friend who gave me an embrace of (more…)
No Home
27 days
by teddyfikre
in Uncategorized
You returned Dorothy and Toto and hundreds of other Ethiopian singers from Bole in 974 to Addis Kansas in 2012::
by Teddy (Nahom’s Favourite) Fikre dated: Saturday, May 12th, 2012
Imagine Dorothy and Toto swept up in a tornado and transported to Addis Ababa magically back to 1974. This is a chronicle of a journey that includes no sound tracks and no Ethiopian musika where the only wicked witch of the east—besides Menginstu Hailemariam—were shady promoters and bar owners who took advantage of our musical gems. You might as well read these words not in HD multidimensional color but in staid black and white grainy tubes. This is a time where Ethiopia was going through a musical transformation with singers like Tilahun Gessesse, Mahmoud Ahmed, Kuku Sebsebe, Muluken Melesse and many more echoing their music of desta even though all Ethiopians were trapped in a cycle of misfortune at the hands of the Derg.
This is not a work of fiction like the Wizard of Oz, what I described above really took place. When Ethiopians had nothing else—when we felt most oppressed—we have always turned to music as our home and as a remembrance and an embrace of Tizita and Desta. Alas, this is not a happy go lucky article—at least for the time being—this is an article of how singers who gave us a home built on Desta and Tizita were left with no homes of their own. Singer for a long time used to sing for chump change in restaurants and local bars in Addis where the owners literally gave them almost a living wage and the concept of licensing music and ownership rights were about as common iPhones in Addis in 1974—both did not exist.
Without true ownership of content and their music, musicians were nothing more than indentured servants—living pay check to pay check even as others profited mightily on nightly basis. This is akin to someone else owning www.browncondor.com and paying me a penny for each article while others reaped a windfall from my God given talent and my writing abilities. This, in essence, is precisely what was going on in Ethiopia back in the 70s when I was still living in Addis. I remember driving around Bole with my car and listening to Kuku Sebsebe’s pink tape and singing along to every word imagining that Kuku must have been a billionaire since almost everyone else in Addis owned that same pink tape. It’s only now in retrospect that I realized that Kuku was not a millionaire, while she probably made millions for others and eventually was treated like royalty—the ones who made the millions resides in the shadows and raked in the birrs while (more…)