Great Ethiopian Run

It was a sunny and scorching day. Yet more than 33, 000 runners wearing green colored T-shirts flooded the streets of Addis yesterday, Sunday, 22 November 2009.The ninth edition of Ethiopia’s international 10 kilometers road race was exciting to watch. As usual runners, joggers and a few walkers took some of the city’s well-known landmarks such as the National Theatre, the National Palace and the Addis Ababa Hilton and Meskel square.
For many, it was running with a friend- with lively talks, mutual support and time flying practically unnoticed. Here are some shots.

27 convicted in coup plot

An Ethiopian court has convicted 27 people accused of conspiring to create public havoc in an attempt to bring down Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government. Some of the defendants could face the death penalty.
A three-judge panel handed down guilty verdicts for 27 of the 46 defendants in the so-called Ginbot Seven case. Thirteen others who are not in custody had earlier been convicted in absentia. The remaining six were acquitted.
Those convicted include several current and retired army officers, including two generals, along with senior opposition political figures. They were charged with plotting to kill unnamed government ministers, destroy strategic facilities and incite rebellion within the army as part of a coup attempt.
Full story at the VOA.

Paula Radcliffe to start Great Run

British athlete Paula Radcliffe will take on a new role this weekend in Addis when she acts as race starter for the Great Ethiopian Run on November 22. The marathon world record-holder will share the task with Haile Gebrselassie and Derartu Tulu as a record entry field of 33,000 takes to the streets of Addis for the 10kilometre race.

Derartu defeated Radcliffe in the recent New York Marathon where the Briton finished fourth. It will be the 35-year-old’s first visit to Ethiopia and, as well as supporting the race, Radcliffe will have an opportunity to renew friendships with many Ethiopian athletes.
They include Derartu and Gete Wami against whom she has competed during her 17-year international career.

World cup trophy, music star come to Ethiopia

Ethiopian football fan’s wish to see their country participating in football’s most prestigious international competition hasn’t been translated into reality yet but a consolation of some sort is coming home soon.
It has been reported that the FIFA World Cup trophy will be coming to Addis on Tuesday night, November 17, 2009 as part of its 53-nation African tour. The trophy, a solid 18-carat gold depicting two athletes at the moment of triumph holding up a globe, will land in Ethiopia as it continues with the journey through Africa.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and President Girma Wolde Giorgis are expected to receive the iconic trophy at Bole International Airport on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, fans will flock to Millennium Hall where the trophy will be on full display.
Ethiopia becomes the sixth nation in East and Central Africa and the 36th African nation to carouse with soccer’s most valuable prize that is on a 70-day tour across 53 African nations. The trophy tour is significant in drumming up support for the 2010 World Cup finals that will be held in Africa for the first time.

Color & identity in Ethiopia

Color is a relevant to us now, but has it been so before the rise of European cultural and political dominance? Where do we stand on color? In other words, are we on one side of the black/white divide, or are we just a temporary stop on the color continuum ranging from the lily white of Northern Europe to the deep black of Equatorial Africa?

Find an interesting interview on this issue with Professor Ayele Bekeri from the then popular but now-defunct web magazine Seleda?

The first work of Amharic literature

Here is an interesting article from the English Reporter.

The question of who was the first writer that employed Amharic in literature is open to debate. Kemal Abdulwehab of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies (IES) argued at the Institute’s annual conference this week that it was Getaw Telah Jafar of the late 19th century in Argoba.A participant at the discussion said that a competition for pre-eminence had always hovered over that question. Blata Gebregziaber is one writer who is widely believed to have been the first writer to use Amharic in written literature.Other participates pointed out that Portuguese missionaries had translated the Bible into Amharic long before any other work of literature was written in Amharic. However, researchers have not come up yet with sufficient evidence to support the assumption that the Jesuits might have produced works of Amharic literature besides the translation of the Bible.Another work which is considered to be the first book that raised Amharic to the status of the language of literature was Afework Gebreyesus’s novel “Tobia” which was published in 1916.

Art linking two cultures

An art exhibition entitled “Meeting Here” is being shown at the German House here in Addis starting from October 29, 2009.Over 70 works of two Ethiopian and two German artists are on view at the show organized by GTZ.
Intended to be as a synthesis of cooperation and linkages between two cultures, the artists Merikokeb Berhanu, Christian Voight, Karin Fiedler and Mulugeta Gebrekidan have come up with works that differ widely in style and presentation, nevertheless sharing a common theme: the impersonality of art that transcends boundary.

ICES to be held in Addis

The 17th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (ICES) will be held at the Addis Ababa University from November 2 to 6, 2009.Shiferaw Bekele, a teacher at Department of History and Heritage Management of Addis Ababa University, has written a long article about the event and its background in October 25th edition of the Ethiopian Herald.The article isn’t available online. So I am publishing an excerpt here.
The 17th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies will be held in the Akaki campus of Addis Ababa University from November 2 to 6, 2009.A few hundred scholars-Ethiopians and foreigners-are expected to take part in the proceedings: Scholars will come from Japan; Europe; the US, Israel, Russia and some other countries. Ethiopians will constitute a formidable presence. By any standard, this is a large gathering of scholars. The current congress marks the golden jubilee celebration because the first was held in Rome from 2 to 4 April 1959.

Watching Juie Mehretu on PBS

On Sunday October 11, 2009, Zoma Contemporary Art Center (ZCAC), a newly finished house designed and built by artist Elias Sime in around Old Airport area, screened video of an episode from the American Public Broadcasting Service series Art:21-Art in the Twenty–First Century. Though not familiar with Ethiopian audiences, the PBS series has been running since 2001 and now is in its fifth season spotlighting artists from various parts of the world. It appeared that that each of the four episodes presented three or four artists loosely grouped around a theme, documenting the artists in their own words.

Art sale

The business weekly, Fortune has carried a front page news on art sale at the recent Sheraton Addis’s Art of Ethiopia exhibition. The paper in today’s issue disclosed the most prized sale of the exhibition, a work by Mezgebu Tessema, pictured on the top, that fetched 110,000 Br. The painting was secured by Sheraton Addis. However, the pricey painting displayed at the exhibition was by Afework Tekle, tagged with a price of over a million Birr. It was not sold, though. The painting depicting a beautiful young woman, pictured here in the right, was by Daniel Taye; it was bought by Dreje Yesusework (Jambi), a close confidant of Shiekh Mohammed Ali Al-Amoudi, for 35,000 Br, the paper disclosed.
The artists whose works have been sold have agreed to “contribute portion from the proceeds of their sales towards establishing the Sheraton Art Endowment Fund”, according to Jean Pierre Manigoff, general manger of the Sheraton Addis.