Babalou as ferengi (foreigner)

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Today it rained for the first time since I have been here in Ethiopia. It didn’t last long, but it felt like some kind of blessing for even that brief while. It’s the dry season. I mean we are all in dry season… I say this knowing it’s snowing like hell in the U.S. now. Continue Reading

Is this where Showtime at the Apollo started??

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Last Wednesday, my sister Elsa took me to a funky little two-room nightclub, a “tej bayt” or “ honey wine house” that specializes in traditional Ethiopian music and dance. We arrived around 8:45 p.m. and tonight’s’ show was to start at 10:30. We found a perfect “Malcolm X type” position in the room. We had a clear unobstructed view of the entrance and could always see who came in and who left. We walked through the first room through an archway to the second room that held the bar and beyond that a short walk lead to the “shunta bayts” or toilets. Elsa and I sat right behind the DJ and owner of the club. Elsie knew him and they greeted one another warmly with a full embrace and the traditional three to four kisses from cheek to check. Continue Reading

Turtle Island to Ethiopia

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January 15 2014 • Writing about these experiences here is not simple. I am looking through eyes that were shaped by the history of being born in this lifetime on Turtle Island (North America). One of my Ethiopian-Italian cousins remarked that I looked like a Brazilian. I translated that to mean that she was seeing my African, Indigenous Native American and European bloodlines in my being. All of that makes me who I am, culturally, politically and spiritually, despite Bob Marley’s One Drop. I celebrate a river of Africana in me. Continue Reading

Memories of Meridel LeSueur

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The first time I saw Meridel I was a college student working for the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church just a few months after the assassination of Martin Luther King in Washington DC. Parts of DC had become burnt out war zones. There was a mass meeting in a Washington DC African American church. It was the summer of 68 and the Poor People’s March & Campaign was camped in the nation’s capital on Washington Mall. Continue Reading

Reality check 2014

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In 1959 President Eisenhower identified the “Military Industrial Complex” as a crucial challenge to true democracy, but he also sent in 6,000 troops, six weeks before JFK took office. What is the arc of history here? This political entity known as the United States has been an exploitive presence on the globe that began when the first Europeans landed on the shores of what was incorrectly called America or the New World. Industrialization sped up the conquest of the planet and plunder of the natural world and ultimately fed into the Capitalist/Communist struggle to control the natural resources of the world. The so-called communist system has fallen. The other shoe is now slipping from the foot of the Capitalist West. As any economic system is fed by what it hopes is an endless supply natural resources, it is rather dramatically clear that is coming to an end for the Western industrial way of life. Or is that really an unconscious way of death? This is like seeking refuge in a burning house. Continue Reading

How do you build a lifeboat in the middle of a stormy sea?

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By the end of my first week my family drives to the Longano Resort, which is on a volcanic lake. We plan to stay for four days through the Western Christmas Day. Our second day in Longano we drive through a string of towns southward to explore the area which includes land donated by Haile Salassie to Jamaicans and African Americans for their support during the war with the Italians. The villages are: Dole, Arsinegelle, Kuyera, Melka Oda, Shashamene, Tikur Wusha, & Awasa. Our end point was a resort hotel on another lake two hours from Longano called Lewi where we had a fantastic lunch. Continue Reading