View From Arada | Aug 07,2021
Oct 9 , 2021
By Eden Sahle
Ethiopia is experiencing a nationwide social crisis unlike any other the young generation has seen before in their lives. It is escalating people's suffering and upending communities. People are deeply divided, and the social fabric is being torn apart. We see this in our daily lives.
I have witnessed this calamity play out in a couple from different ethnic backgrounds married for several decades. They are close to my family. The wife left Ethiopia for various reasons a while back and decided to stay abroad due to the identity-based fallout she had with her husband. In a phone call, she told her family that she was not coming to Ethiopia because she no longer wanted to be associated with her husband's ethnicity. Their decades-long marriage and their children were suddenly narrowed down to an ethnic phenomenon.
Then their mother suddenly showed up from abroad, deciding to move back to Ethiopia. The family was thrilled to have her join the family. Her husband was ecstatic to have his wife back. My family and the community who knows them celebrated what we assumed would be their subsequent union.
Unfortunately, nothing was as anticipated. The wife came back with her resentment to her husband’s ethnic group in overdrive. The day she arrived in Addis Abeba, and we welcomed her with her family, she gave her children an ultimatum to choose between their father or her if they wanted to have a mother.
After a long, tiring conversation, we managed to get the wife to come to their house and solve matters behind closed doors. It was all for nought. She told everybody that she regretted marrying their father and having children with him. His crime is belonging to a particular lingo-cultural group. Right there, we knew the awful family ordeal was just starting.
The husband and the children are cut off from social engagements now. The neighbours they knew, who shared the wife’s ethnicity, now see them as adversaries. They are prevented from fully interacting with the community. It was traumatising for me and my family, who have known both sides of the story, to see the family go through the incredible hardship for something they have not done.
It is a terrifying time that we live in, where family members turn on one another due to identity politics, something that used to be hard to comprehend. Making things worse was how the community the family belonged to exacerbated the problem by taking sides in the fallout instead of reconciliation. They fuelled the separation and breakup of the family.
The husband is the enemy just because he happens to be born from a tribe that his wife’s family and friends do not like anymore. Many are not interested to hear his and his children's side of the story. The place he comes from prevented him and his offspring from being given the benefit of the doubt. They are not allowed to defend themselves.
It is tragic that those who are doing this to them are elderly people that should know better.
Do we not grow up hearing that elders are peacemakers? Where are those who go all the way to save a marriage and keep families together? Where are the elders who care about family and the short- and long-term consequences of a broken family? Where are the elders who believe people are dignified irrespective of where they come from in life?
What happened to the family mentioned is rooted in our current circumstances. People are hurting one another, bringing into personal lives political issues that individuals have nothing to do with under any circumstance. The communities and their relatives who added fuel to the flame have destroyed a family's peace and wellbeing. If our elders have become immature and irresponsible for their actions, perhaps it is time to shift to those peacemakers, young or old, that understand people's value and dignity has nothing to do with the colour of their faces or the area where they came from years or decades ago.
PUBLISHED ON
Oct 09,2021 [ VOL
22 , NO
1119]
View From Arada | Aug 07,2021
Radar | Jun 05,2021
Radar | Sep 24,2022
Radar | May 04,2024
Sunday with Eden | Sep 27,2020
Radar | Sep 19,2020
Radar | Mar 06,2021
Commentaries | Nov 21,2018
Commentaries | Dec 05,2018
Sunday with Eden | Mar 06,2021
Photo Gallery | 97784 Views | May 06,2019
Photo Gallery | 90029 Views | Apr 26,2019
My Opinion | 67529 Views | Aug 14,2021
Commentaries | 65880 Views | Oct 02,2021
Editorial | May 02,2024
Feb 24 , 2024 . By MUNIR SHEMSU
Abel Yeshitila, a real estate developer with a 12-year track record, finds himself unable to sell homes in his latest venture. Despite slash...
Feb 10 , 2024 . By MUNIR SHEMSU
In his last week's address to Parliament, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) painted a picture of an economy...
Jan 7 , 2024
In the realm of international finance and diplomacy, few cities hold the distinction that Addis Abeba doe...
Sep 30 , 2023 . By AKSAH ITALO
On a chilly morning outside Ke'Geberew Market, Yeshi Chane, a 35-year-old mother cradling her seven-month-old baby, stands amidst the throng...
May 2 , 2024
For successive generations of Ethiopia's tax authorities, the chore of tax collection...
Apr 27 , 2024
The Prosperity Party (PP) - Prosperitians - is charting a course through treacherous...
Apr 20 , 2024
In a departure from its traditionally opaque practices, the National Bank of Ethiopia...
Apr 13 , 2024
In the hushed corridors of the legislative house on Lorenzo Te'azaz Road (Arat Kilo)...
May 3 , 2024
The feel-good life coaching industry would have people believe that success is not only about showing up in the swirling whirl of modern lif...
May 4 , 2024 . By BERSABEH GEBRE
Brook Taye (PhD), the director general of the newly established Ethiopian Capital Market Authority (ECMA), has issued a stern warning to com...
May 4 , 2024 . By MUNIR SHEMSU
Dreams of an agriculture sector unshackled from the whims of rain remain tethered to the struggling Minis...
May 4 , 2024
Large public projects exceeding 250 million Br will be required to use Building Information Modelling (BI...