The Enduring Significance of Ethiopia

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•The only indigenous script in Africa in use today
•90% of the Nile comes from Ethiopia
•Home one of the oldest mosque in the world
•Home to one of the first Christian nations in the world
•Ethiopian Christianity has a unique similarity to both Islam and Judaism
•Unique type of Christianity found no where else
•Unique Bible, with more chapters than anywhere else
•Ethiopian Airline is the only African owned major carrier
•Home to Ancient forms of hominids
•Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked nation in the world
•Ethiopia has some of Africa’s highest mountains
•Ethiopia has the world’s lowest points below sea level.
•The largest cave in Africa is located in Ethiopia at Sof Omar.
•Ethiopia has one of the largest number of rivers in the world
•Highest density of African owned business in Africa
•Source of Blue Nile which allowed Egypt to flourish
•The only sovereign nation in Africa to defeat colonialist designs
•Source of the Semitic languages : Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, Gurage, etc
•Home to one of Africa’s greatest kingdoms : Axsum
•700 Year of genealogy contained in the Kebra Negast
•Home to the most diverse African ethnic groups; Mursi, Hamer, Surman, etc.
•Known for some of the most beautiful women in the world


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2 thoughts on “The Enduring Significance of Ethiopia”

  1. Dear Sir,

    I deem it a great honour writing Rasta Livewire magazine. I’m a Cameroonian living in Buea, poetry and prose writer and member of Anglophone Cameroon Writers’ Association (ACWA), Cave Canem Foundation (Home for black Poetry),NYC and author of three poetry collections known as ‘The Gong Trilogy’:

    -The Griot’s Hymns
    -Songs of African Roses
    -Creeds of Primeval Griots.

    The collections were published by Lulu.com on 8th of January 2015 and critiqued and reviewed on 23th April by International research Council on African Literature & Culture (IRCALC) in the ‘Journal of African Literature No. 12.

    I’m a holder of the Cameroon General Certificate of Education (GCE) Advanced Levels but due to lack of finance after my A-Levels I could not proceed to the university. In all these frustrations I became a prolific reader, absorbing anything I could find in terms of books, magazines, newspapers, watching news, listening to the radio and, above all, buried my head ‘inside’ the, Atlas Of Africa, published by “Jeune Afrique” (under the direction of Regine Van Chi-Bonnardel and under the publishing director Danielle Ben Yahmed), a book my father of late had, the 1974 edition. I always found my father (Abun Tom Dzenchuo) focusing his gaze on the pages, for he was unlettered but could somehow pronounce the names of African countries from scraps of English words he picked up at the jobsite from the White superiors in Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC, in agro-industrial plantation he was employed in, in the South West) and from public offices where he went to fix dossiers, most probably his children’s birth certificates.That is how I became addicted to the woes Africa finds itself inundated in.
    My emblem, the double gong, was conceived from the fact that in Africa it was the earliest form of media communication used for summoning villagers to the palace when there is an emergency: an attack by slave raiders, intertribal wars, and village cleansings by priests to appease a particular god, traditional marriages or cultural merriment et cetera as these collections are a clarion call for Africans to unite with one constitution (as a single republic) and industrialize, trade with the world as well as cultural exchange.
    For it is noteworthy that Africa is further fragmenting while her resources foster industrialization round the world: first came the Europeans in the 19th century ‘Scramble for Africa’, joined by the Americans and now the Chinese. It is a great pity that the entire continental GDP of African can not match that of Great Britain or France or Germany (let alone China or the US).
    If the European countries have converged into a mega economy how much less can the individual African countries compete with them if the entire 54 countries’ GDP can not even match that of France or Germany or Britain alone?-it is as impossible as a male giving birth!
    That is why ‘The Gong Trilogy’ collections acts as a distress call for Africans at home and the Diaspora have to wake up for time now is our ally: truly future generations of Africans must be inheritors, not just survival. Human capital we lack not and mineral and natural resources are in abundant, we must even go espionage.
    In ‘The Griots Hymns’ you find poems like Sankara’s Immortal Gaze, Lumumba’s Tears, Prince of Peace (Dag Hammarskjöld), The Humble Genius (Late Professor Victor Anomah Ngu) et cetera. These collections are to be used in the University of Buea in the next academic year,

    Sankara’s Immortal Gaze
    Self-epitaphed, while revolutionaries, as individuals
    Can be murdered their idea you cannot kill
    Against malevolent forces that keep Africa in chains you
    fought
    Even international imperialism and neo-colonial
    governments
    Prison bars of monsters you broke
    And a new future for Africa dared to invent
    Modernization, against western style dictates
    O son from the Land of Upright Men
    Burkina Faso.
    Your courage to face your demise
    The world’s poorest president
    Like a shrine consulted, tearful souls keep visiting your
    grave
    The golden truth: unto your Creator return you man…
    For with nothing into the world you come.

    Palace Elysee, master extinguisher of African luminaries,
    Gloated great Paris at your quietus
    But the fires of your dreams by your exits was rekindled
    O African of heaven-borne nobility
    A servant of none but Almighty Jehovah
    And fellow princes of God: Lumumba, Cabral, Gadhaffi,
    Nkrumah
    Biko, Garang, Machel, Mandela
    In your hour of departure unhesitating,
    O starred beret adorned of heaven’s Marxist
    revolutionaries
    At the golden sun eternally gazed
    Into the city of light beckon’d on by opened portals
    And from the glistering desert sand dunes
    Shading your delicate remains witnessed the descent of the
    holy glow
    And stirred your spirit from slumber sleep
    Into the light of heaven, golden
    Awakened by the Master’s touch, up to recline in the
    pillow of peace
    And satisfied of legacy regal to humanity
    Roots of the ancestors
    O mighty Pan African saint!

    Lumumba’s Tears (page 19)
    Africa unite
    The colonial divide bridge into brotherhoods
    Yourself from neo-colonial pieces defragment
    And to the world hoist a great statehood
    Listen to the message of my tears
    In the western complicity of my death
    Lest our dreams for seamlessness be shattered
    And independence victories all these years blighted
    Fellow patriots refuse not the last of my breathes uttered
    At the threshold of eternity
    O Congo and Mother Africa,
    The sanguinary superpowers to thee breed but enmity
    The troubling continuities pitting Brothers against
    themselves

    The dense cloud to shroud our brightest dreams
    Industrialized, the land with promise
    And minerals and wealth you have in abundance
    Thrust ahead with the union, Africanocrats, even after my
    demise
    At the hands of the CIA, MI6 and Belgians, UN
    remonstrance

    Prince of Peace (pages 20-21)

    It was daring angels would from recoil
    Great Swedish aristocrat
    Make way for a straight path. Your calling so demands
    With nobility of soul transcending ideological bars
    O unconventional diplomat. The great pacifist
    Under the blue canopy of world peace,
    With realization neither capitalism nor communism
    In its best satisfies humanity’s unlimited needs
    But the bridge for peace and fraternity
    And decolonization! And against European racial
    superiority in Africa
    Under the guardianship of the Omnipotence
    A view you were revealed far beyond your time
    And the Congo? UN flaws revealed
    The jagged saws of ideological demands
    O Dag Hammarskjöld, Prince of Peace
    Patience exhausted, spat you fire with brimstone to impart
    UN decisions
    Unassuming Commander-in-Chief, your Operation
    Morthorn
    Disarming war by arming peace in the superpowers
    rivalries
    Your demise quaked the world in disquieting heartthrobs
    That capitalism’s smoking guns veiled
    And of sanity humanity is robbed
    A genius diplomat of rare gem
    Your unconformity gifts further published by death
    Fierce Swedish diplomat, at Ndola you met your end
    British and American mining companies supporting
    Katanga rebels
    Daughters of Africa in mournful stares
    African talking drums in threnody beats
    Wrath of cold war monsters unmasked
    But the radiance of heaven illumined your parting hours
    After a dark and troubled pilgrimage on earth
    Even tunes of the griots’ tell of your footprints of
    destiny
    And now your sun sets clear, across the stream
    In the evening of tranquility and repose
    A great amongst souls, taking your seat in the pantheon
    yonder the skies.

    The Humble Genius (pages 41-42)

    Angels tread amongst humans unhinge’d
    Dejected in appearance, arresting disuse
    But to the world beauty would bring
    Your humility deeply etched in your features
    Seraphs would from it mirror meekness
    From the light of a genius’ soul
    O erudite scientist, gem of the purest serene
    In the heart of Equatorial Africa forth you came
    In the medical, prob’d your further afield
    Enveloped humanity groans under the AIDS scorch
    In a world darkened by predatory ailments
    But the noble soul of yours to it would not bow
    To Eternity’s flame would gaze longer
    A lone but dazzling ray of the master Sun
    Disease, ignorance, the unattainable
    Must in submission bow
    The reverence gifts of heaven in geniuses
    Rare steps on the sands of time
    In their discoveries, inventions, finds
    Tread amongst men, mingling amongst angels
    That man was in the image of the Divine made
    Vanilla from healing angels, you brought
    That our world may be disease free, dis-ease no more
    By your incessant knocks at the golden door

    Where mirrors the master’s healing hand
    Which when stirred, would into the human mind drop an
    idea
    To humanity a balm is conceived
    Our world a cure is found
    O statesman, military, academic, researcher
    But heaven-borne seed rarely germinates
    Barely would on the sea of ignorance sprout
    Humanity is by this vice, vulnerably, cursed
    Infamy to condemn the unknown
    But you treaded where angels would recoil
    O Cameroonian, meekly Victor Anomah Ngu
    To Canadian and Californian scientists you signed
    Projection of your discoveries, by partnering contracts
    O African. But yonder the Atlantic conmen are borne
    To obliterate your works O black genius-borne
    The fires of your noble soul
    In the glow of eternity’s flame
    That illumines, in myriad fields, our dark world with
    -geniuses
    Fair science frowned at your skin colour
    But heaven did not recompense at your gift, humble
    genius
    A merit you sought not to advertise
    And a bounty angel would for crave
    In Bamenda you relish’d Achu reipe and raffia wine
    But now across the gulf, mingling with Archangels
    Eat you of fruits of the Tree of life, splash’d woth joy
    Recline you in the embrace of peace where the sun never
    fades.

    Achu: a Cameroonian cuisine of pounded cocoyam eaten with tasty yellow soup made of dried bush meat, smoked fish and local ingredients. Originally it was North West dish but now a national fares in most menus.

    In Creeds of Primeval Griots collection

    The Last Roes (page 60)

    Until now I’ve come to accept it
    The moments that light up my heart, in retrospect
    The moment that opens the floodgates of tears, too
    His face I shall see no more
    His kisses I shall forever miss
    Even the jokes that lit me up with laughter
    Teasing my heart unguarded
    Even my body bared in love, those moments
    Has a woman ever seen true warmth of romance?
    Coiled around his body we glued in affection
    The last embrace I didn’t foresee

    Until now I’ve come to accept it
    It was a hope I kept dreaming, awaiting his return
    The engagement ring binding me to his love
    For duty he is called up
    UN’s Blue Beret for Darfur-war-torn Sudan
    Out nation he must serve first
    Duty before love, what a valour
    Until the brightest dream of our love, on me flashed
    Beaming I bliss within, the fateful moment
    Time am rang of his death, a paradox of fate,
    Dead, killed in the line of duty

    Until now I’ve come to accept it
    The day the casket arrived draped in tricolours
    Green, Red, Yellow –gold star on the red
    Gold Star on the red
    The joy in my anger,
    Truly his love was sincere
    The last rose in my heart
    The rose on the casket
    Forever he was mine, truly mine.

    Poetry to me is like identifying with the storm: those heart-renting moments that unbar the portals of inspiration for creativity- the truest shades of inner beauty in man overspreading the whole of nature whether the sciences or Bantus (African) painting or music, though.

    Thanks,
    NN Dzenchuo
    (+237) 676380448

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