Modern Ethiopian Research Articles

Notes from the Hyena's Belly: An Ethiopian Boyhood (review)

Most modern Ethiopian writers and authors have customarily published in Amharic, the African-Semitic language that is the national tongue and lingua franca of Ethiopia. A few have published in Tigrinya, the sister-language of Amharic, and now the official language (alongside Arabic) or Eritrea. Very few have published in English, and certainly in comparison with other African countries like Nigeria, Tanzania, etc. Amharic and Tigrinya are very "challenging" tongues, as all éthiopisants will readily attest. Consequently, Ethiopia is little known to the outside world. The present novel, an autobiography of an Ethiopian émigré's boyhood and maturity, the European-type Bildungsroman, is, then, most welcome. The work is divided into three sections ("books")—sunrise, clouds, and storm—and "a brief epilogue." Acknowledgments (too brief, see below) and a map conclude the work. The first "book," which traces the author's birth (1958) to the first stirrings of the Ethiopian Revolution (1972), is the shortest of the three, and consists of a chain of lyrical vignettes of the life, lore, and customs of the author's native Jijiga, the last major Ethiopian town before the Somalia border. Often the tone and style wax poetical, and this first "book" often reads like a true pastoral idyll. The other two "books," however, in rather sharp contrast, are longer and more detailed, dealing with the Revolution and its aftermath (ca. 1972-84, ff. to 1991), and are necessarily more subdued, sober, and somber in tone and texture, as the somewhat "innocent" child-adolescent is rudely forced to very quickly become a mature young adult directly involved first in student protests and demonstrations, and later in guerilla warfare. One notes, for example, key words in the various sections' titles: devil, exorcist, fall, thrust, besiege, retire, alien, darkness, snowfall, enfeebled, eclipse. Although very "black," these "books" too often adopt an aesthetic mode that provides a quite effective foil and counterfoil to the harsh realities of the author's situation and that of his homeland-nation Ethiopia.

δ18O in mollusk shells from Pliocene Lake Hadar and modern Ethiopian lakes: implications for history of the Ethiopian monsoon

Two of the five lacustrine intervals in the largely fluvial Hadar Formation, Afar, Ethiopia, occur in the Sidi Hakoma Member deposited 3.4–3.2 Ma. In a perspective of the δ18O of 11 modern Ethiopian lakes and their shells, the δ18O of the Hadar fossil shells provide a snapshot of the nature of ancient Lake Hadar and Ethiopia’s climate in the Pliocene. Ethiopia’s modern lakes both in the Rift and on the Western Plateau are fed by drainage of Plateau rain with its well established barely negative δ18OSMOW of −1.3‰. Except for the man-made Lake Koka reservoir, all other Ethiopian lakes are isotopically quite positive ranging from +5.4 to +16.0‰, indicating how significant evaporation is in their water budget. Shells from lakes with extant mollusk populations are mostly in isotopic equilibrium with the δ18O and temperature of their lake water. The upper transgressive interval in the Sidi Hakoma Member is the largest one in the Formation beginning at its base with the ‘Gastropod Beds’ beach deposits. Mollusks from shell beds other than the ‘Gastropod Beds’ show more positive and more variable δ18O between shells, with internal variations within shells as much as 7‰. At these times the site must have been underlain by a shallow partially isolated embayment of Lake Hadar which underwent rapid expansions and then contractions by evaporation, within the few year lifetimes of the individual mollusks. The results from the ‘Gastropod Beds’ are of most significance for interpreting the overall paleoclimate at Hadar. Their uniformly negative δ18OPDB shell values that average −6.7‰ represent a much less evaporated stage of Lake Hadar when its δ18OSMOW was 8‰ lower than the spectrum of modern lakes in Ethiopia, and indeed even 3‰ or more lower than average modern Plateau rain. To explain such negative values we hypothesize that the Atlantic-derived air mass component to the Ethiopian monsoon was persistently strengthened during Pliocene summers, which intensified the amount and the negative isotopic character of rainfall onto both the Afar and the Ethiopian Plateaus that drained to Lake Hadar. A similar phenomenon characterized the brief periodic pluvial episodes of the Quaternary, including the latest in the early Holocene, known as the African Humid Period. In contrast to the hot semi-desert steppe conditions of today’s western Afar, the diverse abundant terrestrial fossil fauna at Hadar, including the early hominid Australopithecus afarensis, is explained by the wetter, and probably cooler, summers that persisted throughout the Late Pliocene.

The Thief-Searching (Leba Shay) Institution in Aariland, Southwest Ethiopia, 1890s-1930s

The military encounter between the Aari people and the imperial Abyssinian army during the late nineteenth century resulted in the defeat of the Aari and the introduction of hitherto unknown forms of socioeconomic and political relations between the agents of the Abyssinian state and the conquered population. With the conquest, an institution of serfdom (gebbar sirat) was introduced in Aariland whereby local families had to pay an annual tribute (in cash and in kind) to the soldier-settlers (neft' ennya). In addition, members of households had to perform labor services for the soldier-settlers. Failure to pay tribute and to perform labor service resulted in slavery. Many Aari (mostly women and children) were taken away as domestic slaves because Aari families could not afford to pay the tribute or to perform the labor services. A considerable number of Aari women and children were also taken as slaves through a practice known as the leba shay. The impact of this institution on the local populations in southern Ethiopia has not yet been researched in modern Ethiopian studies. This article describes the workings of the leba shay among the Aari people of southwest Ethiopia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.(1) More specifically, it examines the origin, impact, and disintegration of the leba shay institution by corroborating Aari oral history with written sources. The Aari people are sedentary agriculturalists who live in the South Omo and North Omo regions in the former Gamo-Gofa Province. Before their conquest and incorporation into the Abyssinian Empire, the Aari existed as a politically independent entity. They were organized into chiefdoms which were headed by ritual kings known as baabi. Prior to the conquest, the Aari were traditional believers, but with the conquest, some Aari adopted Orthodox Christianity, the Ethiopian state religion. The conquest and subsequent exploitation and oppression of the Aari people under serfdom were justified by a discourse of a civilizing mission which included the concept of law and order. This rationale emanated from the belief that local populations lacked law and order before their conquest by the Abyssinian state. Implied in such a conception is the notion that the conquest brought about peace and security (pax Abyssinica) among the conquered people. The leba shay institution was one component of this broader spectrum of the civilizing mission. It exemplifies the ambiguity of the ideology of the introduction of law and order since it resulted in the disruption of local societies. FEATURES OF THE LEBA SHAY INSTITUTION The phrase leba shay or leba sha is Amharic and literally means looking for a thief.(2) It was a technique of thief-searching that was practiced by the soldier-settlers in Aariland and among other societies in southern Ethiopia. Leba shay was a hereditary practice inherited by a son from his father. An individual whose property was stolen (or allegedly stolen) reported to the person who was in charge of the leba shay, known as leba shay at'ech'i, (the one who administers the leba shay drug).(3) Strictly speaking, the leba shay was an adolescent boy who drank a drug and looked for the thief. Only boys could be leba shay; according to informants the drug was too strong to be administered to girls. The boy had to be a virgin, otherwise the drug would not be effective. Scholars have suggested different ages for the leba shay boy, but the approximate age was between ten and fifteen (Messing 1957:322). Merab (1929:255) however, reported that the approximate age could range from twelve to eighteen years. Only boys from certain ethnic groups could be a leba shay: generally, he came from Wolayta, Gimirra, or Oromo ethnic groups and rarely from the Shank'illa or Amhara (Merab 1929:255).(4) Walker (1933:159) reported that the leba shay boy was a slave or a son of a poor person. According to informants in Aariland and in Addis Ababa, the drug he drank was a mixture of tobacco and an herb, although they could not identify the latter. …

Implementing Educational Policies in Ethiopia

This paper describes in detail the historical roots of the modern Ethiopian educational system. Ethiopia began a program of modernization and development upon liberation in 1941. By 1961 the country's educational accomplishments were found to be quite low when compared with other African countries, most of whom were not yet or just barely independent themselves. Some gains were made in the education sector through the implementation of a series of five-year development plans. Since 1974, Ethiopia has been undergoing a process of revolutionary change, including a quantitative and qualitative expansion of education at all levels, including basic literacy. However, the education system has expanded faster than the rest of the economy, creating problems of educational quality, wastage and inefficiency, poor working conditions of teachers, educated unemployment, and the need for continuing reorganization. The report describes the role of education as envisioned in the Government's Ten Year Perspective Plan (1984-94) and argues that problems remain today not because education has been neglected, but because much greater emphasis has been placed on its expansion.

Southeast Semitic Cognates to the Akkadian Vocabulary. I

IN TWO PREVIOUS ARTICLES1 I suggested some cognates to the Akkadian vocabulary published by Wolfram von Soden, Akkadisches Handw6rterbuch, pp. 1-464. The present article analyzes the vocabulary of pp. 465760. The term Southeast Semitic refers to Ethiopic, Epigraphic and Modern South Arabian.2 As in the previous articles, Geez is taken as the representative of Ethiopic. The modern Ethiopian languages are taken into consideration only when there is no Geez cognate. Occasionally etymologies and comparisons from languages other than are also suggested.3 The words in parentheses on the line following the main entry are those of v.Soden; following these, are the statements of the present writer. katdtu(m) vibrieren ? (465); (ar. ktt brodeln); cf. Te. katkdt beta run quickly. ki wie, als, dass (468); (sem. Prp ka * *); Geez, however, does not have this preposition. On the other hand, the element kd like occurs in the Gurage dialects of Ennemor, Gyeto, and others as postposition. kibrstu schwarzer Schwefel (471); Ar. kibrit passed into Amharic (and some other modern Ethiopian languages) klbrit match. kiltlu(m) Kranz (476); (> aram. klild, r.r iklil); G. 'aklil crown should mentioned even though it is undoubtedly borrowed from Arabic. kimtu(m) Familie (479); (he., aram. k1md Plejaden). The connection with Ar. kawm heap, pile is preferable even though k1ma (Hebr., Aram.) Pleiades may ultimately connected with it. kinnarum indische Zither (480); (sem. ausser Rth.); perhaps also Amlh. kdrar kind of lyre. However, J. Baeteman, Dictionnaire amarigna-fran~ais, col. 720, derives Amh. klrar from the root kdrrdra stretch, karar is so called because the strings are stretched. kTru(m) I (Asphalt-)Ofen (484); also kuiru(m) Schmelzofen (512). Note that the Ar. noun passed into G.Amh. kdwr furnace. kisallu(m), kisillu, auch kisallu Knbchel (488); there seems to a connection between this root and Akk. kursinnu (511) Fussknochel(bereich). ki.'ddu(m) Hals, Nacken (490); to G. kdsad mentioned by v.Soden, add Te. sdgad neck mentioned in H.Holma, Die Namen der Korperteile im Assyrisch-Babylonischen, p. 37. kitu'(m) Flachs, Leinen (495); (sum. Lw. > wsem. ki/e/attdn, syr. qettaw); the noun also passed from Arabic into G. kdtan. kullu(m) II, ass. kaulu(m) (fest)halten (502); (he. hUkl kilkelM er-, umfassen; aram. akkel messen); cf. also G. 'akala be equal. kurku'(m) eine Haushuhnart? (510); (sum. Lw. > aram. kurkja, ar. kurki Kranich); note that the Ar. kurki passed into G. kwdraki. kurkanu' Curcuma, Gilbwurz (510); (he. karkom, aram., ar. usw kurkum); D. H. 1 JAOS 82(1962)1-4; JAOS 84(1964)115-118. 2 See W. Leslau, JAOS 63(1943)4-14. 3 The names of the languages are abbreviated as follows: Akk. = Akkadian; Amh. = Amharic; Ar. = Arabic; Aram. -Aramaic; G. = Geez; Har. = Harari; Hebr. = Hebrew; Mh. = Mehri; SA = Epigraphic South Arabian; Sh = Shauri; Soq. = Soqotri; Te. = Tigre; Tna. = Tigrinya; Ug. = Ugaritic. I do not give the abbreviations used by v. Soden.

A Modern Ethiopian Play: Selfstudy in Culture Change

A Modern Ethiopian Play: Selfstudy in Culture Change