Comments by "Sandy Tatham" (@sandytatham3592) on "AMHARA | Can Ethiopia Survive?" video.
-
457
-
10
-
9
-
4
-
3
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
@workieddinka6334 : I visited in 2012 and 2017, both times staying three months. I spent weeks in Addis, travelled up to Bahir Dar and Gonder, then to Axum, down through some major cities like Mekele, to Lalibela, then back to Addis. I also went east to Harar and visited nearby cities and towns of Dire Dawa and Jijiga. Then I went south, staying in Awasa, and visiting a few cities/towns on the way to Moyale. My first visit was during the time when Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was not seen for weeks, and no media mentioned where he was, which was very strange! The overall lack of freedom of the press, the mistrust between peoples of different clans/tribes/ethnic/religious groups, the secretive and closed nature of the people in general, was all very apparent to me. When I crossed the border into Kenya after my first visit I suddenly felt I could breathe and speak freely again, and get complete answers to my simple questions. That's a slight exaggeration of course, but it's to give you the overall picture. And it's not just the language barrier, because I found many Ethiopians who spoke excellent English. I'm expecting you to take my comments negatively, because that was the usual reaction I got, except from a couple of close friendships I made during my time there. I definitely want to return to see if the atmosphere has changed.
1
-
1
-
1
-
@samimicheal23 : I visited in 2012 and 2017, both times staying three months. I spent weeks in Addis, travelled up to Bahir Dar and Gonder, then to Axum, down through some major cities like Mekele, to Lalibela, then back to Addis. I also went east to Harar and visited nearby cities and towns of Dire Dawa and Jijiga. Then I went south, staying in Awasa, and visiting a few cities/towns on the way to Moyale. My first visit was during the time when Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was not seen for weeks, and no media mentioned where he was, which was very strange! The overall lack of freedom of the press, the mistrust between peoples of different clans/tribes/ethnic/religious groups, the secretive and closed nature of the people in general, was all very apparent to me. When I crossed the border into Kenya after my first visit I suddenly felt I could breathe and speak freely again, and get complete answers to my simple questions. That's a slight exaggeration of course, but it's to give you the overall picture. And it's not just the language barrier, because I found many Ethiopians who spoke excellent English. I'm expecting you to take my comments negatively, because that was the usual reaction I got, except from a couple of close friendships I made during my time there. I definitely want to return to see if the atmosphere has changed.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@alemneshwaktola5887 : I explained more in a comment above, and I should first explain that I'm not a tourist who just wants to look at things and travel with a guide. I'm a traveller who is very interested in what is happening inside cultures. What I found in many places was that people didn't seem to speak openly and I found it very hard to get clear answers to my questions. (This was not due to the language-barrier because many people speak great English.) Ethiopians appeared to have very low-trust of outsiders, and at times of other Ethiopians. Many Ethiopians are also still quite tribal, which is not always a bad thing but it can hamper development and social changes which the elected government wants to bring in. I was often in areas where I felt a state of anxiety or tension, so I hesitated to say or do anything which might provoke more tension (Gondar was one of those places). Many people seemed to not be able to let down their defences, ie. their insecurity about social status, or some other kind of perceived status. I am aware that Ethiopia has a unique and, oftentimes, a very sad history, though there is also a very strong sense of pride in being Ethiopian. Your country also has a VERY diverse demographic, so none of what I experienced came as a surprise to me. Does this help explain my comment to you?
1
-
@Cici_mimi : The 'Palestinians' are not a people in the sense that other indigenous peoples are. The name was invented in the 1960s for a political purpose. It is an attempt to destroy the Jewish state of Israel from within, because they had tried many times to destroy Israel by military attacks and failed. Arab leaders tell us that the so-called 'Palestinians' are the exact same people as the Arabs in Jordan, Syria, Iraq, etc. 'Palestinians' are from all over the Arab and Muslim world, many only arriving in the region in the last 100 years as economic migrants after the Ottoman Caliphate was defeated in 1918 and the British and Zionist Jews improved the land, draining the malarial swamps, etc. The 'Palestinians' speak Arabic, the majority are Muslim so their holiest sites are in Arabia, and their names often reflect where they've come from, eg. al-Masri is Egyptian, al-Kurd from the Kurdish region, al-Baghdadi from today's Iraq, etc.
I support #indigenous rights, so I naturally side with the Zionist Jews. They are an "indigenous rights" success story. The founding of Israel is the beginning of the rollback of Arab Islamic imperialism. I just spent a month in Morocco and was happy to find that there are growing signs of the indigenous Berber-Amazigh people rising up against their Arab conquerors, who forced them to speak Arabic and coerced them to adopt Islam as their belief system. Don't you support indigenous rights? 🙄
1
-
@Cici_mimi : The 'Palestinians' are not like other indigenous groups. The name was invented in the 1960s for a political purpose. It was an attempt to destroy the Jewish state of Israel from within because they tried many times to destroy Israel by military attacks and failed. Arab leaders tell us this. They say the so-called 'Palestinians' are the same people as the Arabs in Jordan, Syria, Iraq, etc. 'Palestinians' are from all over the Arab and Muslim world, many only arriving in the region in the last 100 years as economic migrants after the Ottoman Caliphate was defeated and the British and Zionist Jews improved that land. The 'Palestinians' speak Arabic, they are mostly Muslim so their holiest sites are in Arabia, and their names often reflect where they've come from, eg. al-Masri is Egyptian, al-Kurd from the Kurdish region, al-Baghdadi from today's Iraq, etc.
1
-
1
-
1