TOWARDS MENSURA

Do I like it when an Eritrean who struggled for the good cause of liberating his/her people goes awry? You bet, I don't. In fact it incenses me more than if it were an ordinary citizen who has gone astray. I usually picture these fighters of yesteryears in the darkest hours of our nation, and I am left surmising for hours on end- how could Petros Solomon, Sherifo, DuruE, Mefun Hagos…how could they betray the country they fought so much for? But did these honourable people really betray their country? Could the actual betrayers be the other lot, who equally fought and sacrificed their youth to the Eritrean cause? To think of Issais, Ali Said, Yemane …going askew is equally baffling. Maybe the now governing group have the state machinery at their disposal; they have the loudspeaker on hand and they can dish out the blame on the former. On the other hand, one can say that those who are in government are more in number compared to the other lot. So, more of the same good guys weigh heavier, I would expect, and have better judgement than fewer of the same old chip! Right? Or, wrong?

BLING-BLING NATION

It can be confusing and very discomforting to say the least. When does one go awry anyway? Could it be the case then that both groups, and even Herui Tedla despite promising us to break a few bridges on the road to Mensura, have the best intentions for our nation but it is lost in translation? If you put a complete stranger in the picture they may turn around and say: "dur!" Oh, whatever!

In your private life you could be a tolerant person easily accommodating your crazy uncle, nasty aunt, naughty neice, etc. But as a nation, what scares me stiff is in the process of accommodating extremely divergent views we may end up becoming a bling-bling democracy (if there is any such description), where all the ills of the West are actually the order of the day in our country. With all the traditional values discarded willy-nilly as passé, and the new robe of modernism hurriedly donned without placing the underlying structures, we can end up becoming a society that is a hot bed for hedonists, hippies, weirdoes, child molesters, religious fanatics, drug addicts, etc. “Mother God” in her benevolence may even bless us with a non-practising paedophile priest as a spiritual guide. And to complete the all-inclusive Western model we may even appoint a gold-toothed rap singer who is two sandwiches short of a picnic as a leader.

THE THREE WISE MEN AND THE BLACK HOLE

There is a little park near my place that I like visiting occasionally. In good weather I would usually go there and stare at the sky. Sometimes I'd lie on my back gazing at the sky, as I used to when I was a small kid back in my beloved Eritrea. I see clouds forming and deforming, constantly moving to make and break shapes. If you look at the western half of the sky dome during sun set you can see the sun's rays struggling to penetrate through layers of clouds. The effect is a gilt of golden sunshine that puts life to an otherwise dreary evening. Now, where is that silver lining in the current dreary Eritrean skies to come? For sure, it is not from our Southern skies. A few of our own learnt "wise men" have been looking to the Woyaneland for inspiration to no avail. This, I must admit hurts. What I see there is not a bright star but a black hole that saps the world's good will. Yet, I'd sometimes debate with my inner self, there must be something they only know. In the middle of all the fighting and the ensuing tension for them to look up to "democratic" Ethiopia is indeed hard to swallow. They speak of Gondar and Addis as if they were the Khartoum and Port Sudan of the olden days. Can you imagine our "big boys" looking up to the Woyanes for our nation's salvation? I was hoping that the current stalemate created by their hosts would finally jolt all concerned "Odd-Position" parties into action and maybe coalesce them to form a united front with us against the Woyane? Not quite! Was it much to expect from these varied "Eritrean" luminaries and groups to declare clearly that they may have misgivings with the government of the day but they stand on the side of their people? Ah well, it looks it is! May be we don't need no hero from afar, all we need is to dig deep in to our own resources. "KAB SEB ZIDELI KEM SA'ENI YBELI::"

AIDS ABABA

In fact, there could be a blessing in disguise here. With so many of our brothers and sisters tied down to the border, the obvious retort would be "What bloody blessing?" But, so much as we like to have clearly demarcated frontiers as soon as possible, but we may still want to delay normalisation with Aids Ababa thereafter a wee bit longer. The major reason being: to avoid the next attack coming across the same border. If the two nations patch up and stop making hate and start making love… this could put us in a compromising position. The floodgates would open and eminently the love bug would spread with vengeance. So we are better sheathed in the cold of today than to risk the deadly warm embrace of tomorrow. If you look at the global trend in the spread of Aids, Ethiopia is heading to be one of the handful epicentres of AIDS in the whole wide world. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/africa/03/aids_debate/html/key_countries.stm

WHERE THE HEAVEN IS ADI WEHI-SEB?

In normal circumstances, every young Eritrean is expected to do a total of 18 months national service. But, thanks to the conflict with Ethiopia the government is keeping the scheme on a running shift. Now, we all have our dear relatives there doing the seemingly never-ending national service. We all hate it when the boss asks us to stay after the normal working hours. If we look at recent European history, the reconstruction of Germany and many other countries needed more than big American money after World War II. People had to slave it long hours each day for quite sometime. In the current no-war/no-peace situation of Eritrea what better way is there than to exploit the manpower for the good of the nation. The force that is already there to defend the country could be employed to build the much needed infrastructure during the current lul. My heart is filled with joy whenever I read of yet another road built by these young guns.

While I am at it, where the hell is Adi Werhi-Seb or Mensura for that matter? I read a report recently of a road built linking Adi Werhi Seb to Mensura, thereby reducing travel distance by half! After a bit of searching on the Internet, I found Mensura, but not the other village. I wish there was someone whose job it was to put maps to such fantastic stories happening in Eritrea.