Ethiopia can afford me! What can we do for each other?

By Abbasaambi Cheri, Tokyo

September 26, 2007 — Just the other day, I read a news report about what went down at the meeting held between the ‘Diaspora’ and government ministers, including the chief priest of the “Abiyotawi Democracy” cult, Meles Zenawi, whom Addis Fortune dubbed “the Hilarious Meles”. If I had a newspaper of mine, I would have written a rejoinder calling him “the street smart Meles”, that is what he has always been. http://www.addisfortune.com/Meles%20Surprise%20Appearance%20at%20Government-Hosted%20Diaspora%20Gathering.htm If you think that the turn of the Millennium has changed him, you will be in for a surprise down the line. I believe Meles and co. bear the largest responsibility in speeding up the brain drain from which the country currently suffers. This is a topic that merits a serious treatment of its own on another occasion.

In this essay, however, I intend to focus on the reply of the government ministers to some of the well-meaning complaints and requests of the Diaspora raised on a recent meeting i.e. professionals, investors, and returnees. I will also argue that those demands are not impossible to be met, and indeed the country can afford these individuals who want to go home and contribute their fair share.

If you have read the news report regarding the meeting you would have also read that Meles’s ministers, to be precise the Revenue Minister, plagiarized, I wonder whether he acknowledged the source, former US President J.F. Kennedy’s well known speech, “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”. This is a favourite quote for those who want to silence professionals and citizens who demand a fair and better treatment in their country.

If Kennedy himself was given a second chance, there is no doubt that he would have changed his mind and said: “your country kills you!” given the mysterious circumstances in which he was assassinated. For Ethiopian citizens, assassination is not even a mystery. Unfortunately, Kennedy is not coming back to change his mind, but dictators and incompetents keep quoting him. However, if I was a leader I would not shy away from changing the standard to be “what can we do for each other”. Yes, I want to get in to a mutually beneficial arrangement with my country. In that arrangement, we both stand to benefit. I am not a mercenary, but I don’t buy in to a system that demands altruism from me while refusing to listen to me. Here is this part, which I do not understand, especially when it comes to what a country expects from its professionals and the treatment it gives them in return. Why are its professionals expected not to demand something back from their country in return for their services? You would probably come up with another cliche that your poor country invested on you. Yes, but not quite. Hear me out.

There is no better way of making my points other than through an anecdote. I am at my early thirties. I am a quintessential Ethiopian kid who had gone through most of the adversities in life to get to where I am. I was born in a small town in the remotest part of the country. But I had to be exiled to yet another remote village for family reasons, and there, I went to an elementary school, where my peasant grandparents lived. I had to walk nearly for two hours every morning to get to school. I was only seven years old when I started. In those days, in rural schools, schooling was a whole day affair, without lunch because lunch is unknown in the countryside. To deal with that, we go out to the forest with older boys and look for a wild fruit like guava, in competition with monkeys, and get back to school, thanks to the giving wild of the west. The end of the school day does not come until 5, and even after that we had to do some school farming or working on the fences. These were the routines. Here I never forget for the rest of my life, that I walked for four hours to buy a pen from the nearest town for my next school day. I used to envy all my classmates who dropped out of school and started a family, because they were bigger boys. However, I was the only one from the elementary school to finish a high school in the end. Am I luckier than them? Not quite, there was a long and arduous journey ahead of me.
When I finished elementary school, my fortunes improved and I got back together with my parents. From there on, it was a long journey, a dream to be someone, some day. My dream was not to live life like a successful American or European. In fact, my role model was none other than my uncle, who worked in a district bank. He happens to be the only family member who saw the gates of a university, having dropped out and fled to Sudan during the EPRP era, only to return few years later to start as a bank clerk. My life was still a deprived life. Yes, it was an isolated life, I did not even have a girlfriend, for reasons that have to do with small town culture, and even the fact that I did not have the few cents needed to usually hang out and chat over a tea or coffee. You all know, what it was like to get through the long and gruelling preparation to pass the ESLCE, coupled with the uncertainty hanging in the air during and after the TPLF’s ascent to power. That one took a toll on me. Finally, I made it through. My university life was like everyone else’s from the provinces, only that my monthly allowance from my parents was 30 Ethiopian birr per month. Just imagine what that means in a big city in the mid 90s. Am I a privileged student? Have not shared every bit of the poverty of that country? Why should I be silenced from following my dream? I am sure that most of the university graduates relate to my story in one way or another.

Now, let me get back to my argument. There is no dispute that my country contributed to my education. But I need to correct that to mean, my parents contributed to my education, as every other parents did. After all they are tax payers too! They do have the obligation to send me to school. My country means you, me, your parents, and my parents. My parents want me to have a better life, I have no doubt that your parents also wish me luck. Why would the middlemen keep quoting the idealistic Kennedy’s speech to me, to a person who had been battered by the oddities of living in poverty all his youth life? I invested my life on this. I did not even get to rebel, like what teenagers like the current prime minister did in their time. He and his peers were actually rebels without a cause! At that particular time, they had no specific reason to take up arms. It is their irresponsible acts that ruined my country. They cannot now come around and claim the upper moral ground and dictate me.

I moved on. When I graduated, fulfilled my end of the bargain, and started working for the government, it turned out not to be what I dreamt of. Alas…I could not even afford to rent a place where I could accommodate my parents who come from provinces to visit once in a while. I feel ashamed when friends and colleagues come to visit and ask where the men’s room is. It defies any description. I used to joke that the only luxury in Addis is to go to the hot springs once a week, to get your weekly bath! Oh, boy, did I have an unrealistic expectation? Why am I not entitled to a decent life? No one would demand an extravagant life. Why can’t I live in that country freely? Why would I have to be vilified for demanding a better life for my contributions?

Now I hold a number of advanced degrees, and I am at a cross-roads. I will most likely return to my country. But not with the Kennedy’s attitude. It is with the attitude of “what can we do for each other?” I will return, if you resist my demands I will plot your demise from right under your nose. I will get to be the first one to cheer when you go down. If you pay an Indian in my absence, six fold of what you used to pay me, why on earth you cannot pay me only half of that? Why would your rent seeking customs impose over 400,000 Birr customs duty for a car for which I paid only 3000USD?[ here I am referring to a complaint of one of the returnees at the meeting] Even the carmakers cannot fathom of such a profit in ten life times! What a robbery! You accuse businesses of rent-seeking behaviour, are your actions not a textbook examples of rent-seeking? I don’t know how many returnees are paying these duties now. I am just a student and could never afford to pay these duties, and hence you cannot lose any revenue from my side. And I am wondering how you are calculating a revenue lost due to duty free privilege.

Why can’t I get a plot of land on which to erect my hut? Look, who is lucky now! My elementary school friends who dropped out of school can have as many huts as they wish, they have a family, which I don’t. Am I a hermit or something? I hate the holier than thou attitude. In a country where, even its patriarch and its sheiks are not held to such a high moral standard, why do I have to be the one? In fact, those who plagiarize Kennedy’s speech are the cheaters. They are the ones that preside over a system that exploits, that maims, and that drives people to exile. How could they? There is no doubt that my country can afford me, but it is the corrupts, who cannot stand my presence. It is not a secret that the TPLF regime has a deep-seated hatred for professionals. It was no other than the prime minister, who said that Ethiopian electrical engineers cannot even do that basic job of wiring, he labelled all lawyers as thief, and just recently exclaimed that we need no medical doctors! In turn, they are the ones that lead a life of luxury, their kids go to schools either abroad or to a wealthy community schools in town, they siphon off the aid money and stash it in a number of Banks, only God knows, how much and where. But when they are asked to make life easier for the professional, the returnees, their new found motto- you only have one country even if you hold another passport, and it goes that your country can skin you alive if she pleases. What a nonsense! I have had a share of misery in my life, and I need no patronization! You can afford me! It is time to ask “what can we do for each other”!

The author is based in Tokyo. He can be reached at [email protected]