Reflection of a Half Century

 Reflection of a Half-Century 

Part One 1973-1991

The average life expectancy of an Ethiopian is 67.81 years in 2023. It had been as low as 46.13 years in the 90s when war and the high infant mortality rate kept it low. An improvement was made in the 2000s when basic health services managed to reduce the high infant mortality rate. I am living in the United States now which has a life expectancy of 74 years for men. That means I have about two decades to enjoy planet Earth. I am at the beginning of an age where you have more stories to tell. So that is what I am going to do. 

Self Portrait 2023. Keeping a tradition of Birthday Portrait. 

My generation has gone through so much in a lifetime that life reflects our country’s break from thousands of years of tradition to stumbling into the unknown, experimenting with ideology and theories that had not been proven to work with the country. 

I was born in December 1973 during the last days of the last Ethiopian Emperor Haile Sellase I just a few months before the Ethiopian Revolution that "exploded" in February 1974. My family was part of the emerging bourgeoisie class who had prestigious jobs with the government, and owned land inherited from family or purchased as an investment. They were not part of the dissatisfied masses that had to endure economic hardship and class discrimination. 

Wax Figure of Emperor Haile Selassie Unity Park 2020

That changed all when the revolution came. With it came the Derg the military committee, which slowly isolated the old emperor from the nobility, the political elite, and the people. On September 12, 1974, the Derg seized power by deposing the emperor. With the change came the Marxist radicals who emerged from the student movements of the 60s and 70s.  The new political elite perceived that the only solution to Ethiopia's problem was Marxism. From exile student unions to liberation movements of Eritrea everyone was a Marxist. The Derg had to declare socialism as state ideology and baptize itself into Marxism to keep pace with the leftist radicals. That experiment in socialism cost the country so much. In just seventeen years the country lost so much of its economic power, and potential growth and was engulfed in a constant civil war that devastated much of the country. 

Cover of Revolutionary Magazine Goeh Unity Park 2020

My younger days were shaped by what my country was going through at that time. Many Ethiopians believed that Ethiopia would prevail into a more equal and prosperous country but that did not happen due to an alien ideology the new political elite tried to adopt which was not practical to Ethiopia with thousands of years of tradition and culture. The power struggle of many interests and the Ethiopian mentality of never compromising also was a huge factor. War was consistent at that time draining huge resources of the nation. For seventeen years the only priority in Ethiopia was war. This is the time that millions of Ethiopians starved and food aid had to be delivered from all corners of the world to save them. This changed the image of the country forever. 

Even if the war was not directly affecting us because we lived far away from the front line (at least until 1991 ) we were indirectly impacted by the war. My parents had to go to the extent of modifying my birth year so that my age was less than the conscription age for at least a few years. I had to avoid walking the streets of Addis whenever the military rounds up any young person they found on the street forcefully conscripting them on the spot. 

The war ended in 1991 when the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front took control of Asmara and The Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front marched into Addis Ababa in May 1991 after Mengisu Haile Mariam abandoned his military and administration and sought refuge in Zimbabwe. The end of the war brought peace for the time being  but didn't bring  a solution to the  country’s long standing problems. The end of the war brought a huge relief for a nation that was tired of war and the hardships that were brought with it. Young people like me can move freely no longer worrying about becoming a casualty of a never-ending war.