where they stayed, they were frequent guests with us, even they
behaved patronisingly to our direction. Their demand was always
very high, e.g. they wanted to move into a villa. Among us no one
had been given a villa, as villas had been spared for the UNIDO
experts with five times the funds as ours. We helped them in many
respects, e.g. getting acquainted with the town. Beside them we
had no friends-compatriots. Our best friends have been my
Ethiopian boss and his family.
The rainy season has ended at the end of August and the
weather began to cool down. During night, temperature has not
been much above freezing and the last precipitation of the rainy
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season has been snow on top of the surrounding mountains. In the
clear thin air not only the colour turned blue on slides shot without a
UV filter, the semicircle of the Entoto mountains looked 3 miles
away, when they were actually in 15 miles. On top of the mountains
snow remained for two days visible. In our flat the temperature has
always been around 62 degrees F and we were cold all the time. We
could be warm only under our covers. Even that was hard for me, as
we did not take too much rugs with us. Well, we had been heading
for Africa. I gave the majority to my wife. My problem was solved in
October, when we at last got our carpets. The eight-foot runner
became my cover and at last I stopped being cold.
With the dry season there came another plague, fleas. Although
I had heard about insects called “gounichas”, I didn't know what
they were, as during the rainy season they moved to a safe hiding
place. Twice we have been attacked by a mass of them. First in the
starting days of my family's stay, we drove out of town on the Dire
Dawa road -- the eastern one -- and saw a small roadside carpet
shop. As we went in, a new sensation caught us. Tiny black spots
were appearing on our trousers. We didn't pay too much attention to
them, we had no idea about the difficulties of getting rid of them. In
the car we guessed already the essence of that and at home we had
to invent how to eliminate them. As we took off cloths they left us, but
the cold marble floor has been too cool for them. They parked along
the lower edge of the sun-shade. My son solved it properly: we
bought a can of Baygone spray and he killed every one of them. At
the first attack we counted more than 40 fleas.
The second of our such adventures has been in connection with
our doctor friends. They have not had any car yet, and we took them
to the address given them by the Municipality man. It was a ruin, but
full of “gounichas” in Amharic. When we left the house, our trousers
have been black of them. Fortunately, it has been a mass of very
weak fleas, they had not been fed for at least half a year. That is,
why they looked black, being empty. In front of the house we could
wipe off 90 percent, but the remaining ten was enough. Our new
method has been developed that time, to shake them off our cloths
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into the bathtub. From the sides of it they would always fall back at
their jumps and then, what was needed, was only a hot shower --
well, this has not always been simple, as water was often missing,
about that I am to tell you more later .
The first days after the arrival of my family I spent by looking for a
suitable school for my son. Almost all our experts had their child-ren
registered in the so-called English school, except two families. One
of them was the Ss, a family of two doctors, their children were
registered in the Canadian school, a private one. The other was a
druggist, R., whose elder child, a boy, was just beginning school,
and he did it at the Indian school. That was cheap, but below
standard, the Canadian very expensive, but excellent.
The English school had originally been a good school of the
British system, with British teachers. It has been a British mission-
ary school. After take-over the Menghistu regime nationalised it and
by our time all its teachers were locals. We wanted something
better, if possible, something, that could have a continuity at home.
The best choice seemed the French school. It has been owned by
the French state. Alas, the schoolmaster of the lower section, al-
though he accepted me friendly, convinced me about its senseless-
ness in our case. He told me, as my son did not speak French, he
would be pressed to learn the language in one year. By the hard
style of his teachers he forecast that the boy would hate the
language, and in the second year resistance of my son would make
it necessary for me to begin from start somewhere else.
My next try has been the school of the West-German embassy.
It fell out because of lack of his understanding German. There re-
mained two -- only, about the American school I did not know that
time --, so I went to the Soviet embassy. Its first secretary received
me with pleasure and accepted my son. I met his would-be form-
master, a fascinating lady, wife of an officer, who had been a teacher
for 20 years.
Alas, two circumstances made it impossible to let my son finish
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Coming of the family
his studies there. First, he was sent into first grade, because he did
not speak Russian, instead of third, although in the third grade he
could have learned their language as well. Second, after one
month, his teacher left with her husband for a two-month holiday.
Her replacement was a true Russian girl, conceited, aggressive and
nationalist. My son was suffering and after a month, at the autumn
school break for the Great October Revolution, I took him out and
told both the teacher and the first secretary -- the former was
content to have got rid of my son, the latter actually sorry for losing a
boy from a country of the Eastern Bloc -- about my decision.
His short stay at that school saw him meet Soviet Prime Minister
Mr. Kosygin, who was on an official visit there. It was only one of his
encounters of that kind. A year later our Head of State Mr Losonczy
would take his wife on the visit there and my son would fall in the four
children to hand over flower bunches to the two Hungarian and two
Ethiopian celebrities. My son would be selected to hand his flower
to the wife of Menghistu. The Ethiopian Head of State wanted to
take his flower, but he put it behind himself, and waited, until the lady
came near and gave her the bunch.
Later, when his original teacher would come back, we would
meet her in a shop, and they would visit us at home. I could see
then, how great a pity her leaving had been. To ensure his correct
education, my wife took her text-books and began to teach her son
every day. At home he would sit for an examination all right.
The first three months after the arrival of my family was a
transition period at my work. Both experts, assigned to the state
company National Road Transport Corporation (NATRACOR) by
the ministry, were a surprise for the firm. The General Manager -- as
with all state companies and authorities -- was a military man. The
military junta, also called The Supreme Council, would not let the
country managed by technocrats, they seated their people to the
top positions. The General Manager of NATRACOR was called the
Colonel. He had got his education in the U.S.A., but still, he was
considered reliable. He interviewed us, and we were given a small
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office in a barrack. If we had had ample tasks, we could have done
it. Alas, the management did not know what to do with us. The
situation has altered a little, when we visited the director of the bigg-
est branch company of the trust, FTO for Freight Transport Organis-
ation. It was the company to deal with long haul between the largest
towns, especially between ports and the capital.
One of the ports, Massawa, has been put out of reach by guer-
rillas of Eritrea, the region, where the majority of population was
Tigre nationality, slightly different from the ruling Amhara. Today
Erithrea is a separate country, but at that time, like several times
during history, it belonged to Ethiopia. The other port was Assab
near the Djibouti border and it was safely in the hands of the govern-
ment. What Eritrea concerns, that has always been a sensitive
question for Ethiopia, or, as it had been called earlier Abessinia. The
population can be considered less African than people in the middle
of the country, i.e. the Amharic or Oromo people. The cause of this is
not only that they crossed the Strait of Aden about a thousand years
later than the Amhara, and so they could keep their Arabic, Semitic
look, but also that, unlike other areas of the country, their land has
been colonized by the Italian. After World War II Ethiopia's five-year-
long Italian occupation has been compromised by the English and
Americans having a great influence in the region. Eritrea became a
part of Ethiopia, as it had been during historical times before the
Italian colonisation. The emperor was keeping his eyes anxiously
on this setting, so as not to let it change, although a good part of the
Eritreans wouldn't want to accept it and there were conflicts. The
military governing council, when it came to power in 1974 as a result
of the Revolution of the Taxi-drivers, made a right decision -- beside
that one about the house arrest of the emperor -- in that they
declared that it was the sovereign right of Eritrea to decide, how
wide independence the country wants to have. Peace has arrived at
once, the reason to fight has vanished. Alas, some months quickly
passed and Menghistu eliminated the council members one-by-one
-- he could do it, having been the head of the guard he knew the
palace better than anyone else -- and he became the supreme man.
He abolished the above rule, his first slogan was
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Coming of the family
that Ethiopia is one and unanimous, and Eritrea is part of the
country. As we know the fight has been restarted. So far, Eritreans
already liberated Ethiopia from under Menghistu, he had to flee, but
it is a real horror, that has happened between the two separate
countries since.
The FTO operated about 1,000 trucks and trailers, a small
minority of them tractors with semi-trailers. Its maintenance plants
at that time were insufficient, and the FIAT company had prepared
a project to build a proper site beside the road to Dire Dawa, east of
the capital. We with my compatriot Thomas had heard about the
project and convinced the director, a well educated technical man,
that we could adapt it to the actual needs and possibilities of the
company. We did it in three weeks and also fulfilled a NATRACOR-
task to prepare the tender for 50 new buses for the capital.
At that time another branch of NATRACOR, the Ambassa Bus
Company (ambassa means lion in Amharic) did its job beside a few
old FIAT, Mercedes and other buses with 50 Hungarian Ikaruses.
The Ikarus company kept a representative at the bus repair shop,
and the vehicles were kept in a good condition. The company was
keen to buy new Ikarus buses, but had to issue a tender. It was our
task with Thomas to prepare it, and we would not cheat our national
interests. The tender was written for Ikaruses in all parameters, but
alas, in vain. Our embassy's commercial counsellor went to make
an excursion during the day, when the applications on the tender
were opened. All of them contained a clause about third-country
bank guarantee. On request of the Supreme Council, all competit-
ors withdrew that clause, only our person in charge was not avail-
able and Ikarus was excluded from tender. Thus, FIAT buses have
been selected.
After completion of the above tasks, I went to the technical
manager of FTO, Ato Bekele B., and convinced him to accept me for
preparation of common maintenance instructions for their trucks of
four different makes. He liked my ideas at once, and I set myself on
the task. I did it and helped to publish it in a printed form.
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On base of our contribution, construction work on the mainten-
ance plant has been launched. A second repair plant in the port
town of Assab came into account, and Bekele wanted me to come
with him for a check of the site. It would realise in January. With the
technical manager we became good friends, Bekele appreciated
me for my human side and helped me to learn historical and geo-
graphical data about his country. He helped me to get tourist catal-
ogues, too, some of them published by the National Geographic
Society in the U.S. I began to feel even more respect about the
people of the country. I have learned about their conversion to
Christian religion by two Greeks in the fourth century. Also about the
Queen of Sheba, who could have been a monarch of Aksum and
could have travelled to meet King Solomon in the territory of today's
Yemen. Most fascinating have been stories about the Ethiopian
empire, its creator, Menelik II and the story of Haile Selassie. Geo-
graphy of the country has also been interesting. All this has resulted
in that the country became to me something as a home. Incidentally
both my wife and me have said at home on our holiday that we were
going “home”, not back. To tell the truth, sometimes I have home-
sickness for the town and the country, even today.
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Geographic and historic summary
about Aida's country
I probably made a mistake by not giving any detailed description
about Ethiopia as a country earlier, I trusted in the general know-
ledge of the reader during this story. Now, I think, I have to correct it.
The area of the country is tremendous, it is nearly as large as the
territory in the U.S. east of the Mississippi river. That means thirty
time the area of Hungary. Its population then, when I was living
there, was only three times as high as ours (thirty million people),
but since that time, in spite of the war going on for twenty years, it
has grown by fifty percent, not so the available food, for the same
reason it went down sharply. The Ethiopian economy was counted
the fifth bad one in the world twenty years ago, at present they are
the last-but-one in that list. In spite of this sad truth, let me say
something general about values: the present grade of importance
of a country or a nation is not the same as their influence having
made on human civilisation in the past.
When I was a child fifty years ago, the oldest ancient ancestor of
man used to be considered the pre-hominid creature of Peking with
his half a million years. It has become accepted theory since that
those regions had meant a dead-end for the ancient man, although
he had made a detour to Asia on route from Africa to Europe, but he
originated in Africa and his main activities have been performed
here. We could say, we have come from Ethiopia, as the finds there
are nearly 4 million years old, only Kenya and South-Africa can
boast with similar. We have visited one of those archaeological
sites, it is not far from the capital at the settlement Melka Konture, on
the bank of the river Awash. About a hundred places exist in the
country, where you could find stone tools, made of obsidian, lava or
quartz, or where you could search for drawings in caves and could
photograph, if the infrastructure were satisfactory. During my stay
there, there existed something like that, although because of the
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military government only "better people" could move around. May-
be, now anybody is allowed to do that, although I have doubts, but
without means it is impossible in a wild country.
Let's make a step forward from ancient times to antiquity and
see who the Amhara people are that are representing the core of
Ethiopians, and how their language and script sprang into life.
Everything began with Sheba, its probable place might have lain
within the area of today's Yemen, somewhere around Sanaa. Ac-
cording to legend the King of Israel, who was at that time Solomon,
was so famous for his wisdom that the Queen of Sheba went to see
him with a large caravan. As the king solved the three riddles the
queen put to him, he was considered worth for a nearer contact. The
people of Sheba had already been looking across the Straits of
Aden, and they crossed it actually, and began to populate the west-
ern side of the Red Sea. When the son of the queen was born, with
the help of whom the ancient Ethiopian kings traced their origin
back to King Solomon, he was one of them to leave the old home
country. The ever growing Sheban population built several settle-
ments, as they had had the knowledge to do that, and these had
made the ground for the foundation of the Aksum (it isn't spelled
Axum) Empire. Their harbour has been Adoulis somewhere be-
tween today's Assab and Djibouti. Aksum has been the largest
town, the country became an empire only 400 years after its popul-
ating, i.e. around 500 B.C. That first king stated to originate from
King Solomon took the name of Menelik I. However Aksum today is
no more than an archaeological digging site, the remains of build-
ings discovered there prove the vastness of its culture in its own
time. Stelae (characteristic stone obelisques) have been erected,
the highest of them is still upright, its height is 70 feet. Besides that
ancient people has built churches and palaces with walls of solid
stone, even today there are more than ten of them in the town. The
place lies to the North-East from Addis Ababa.
People had originally spoken the Shaaba language that was a
Semite tongue, the characters of its script are similar to Phoenician.
With the passing of time the influence of Alexander the Great has
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Geography and history
found its way, the Greek language has also been widely spoken in
the empire. The Shaaban language slowly turned into Ghahez, then
the present Amharic. The country has not been isolated, they issu-
ed coins, traded, they have got as far as India. Aksum coins as
recent as the 3rd century AD have been found in Asia. This trade
has made its contribution to that Christianity began to spread in the
second century already, whereas people has kept their old gods
too. Christian belief became dominating only in the 4th century. The
empire took only a small part of present day Ethiopia, the mountain-
ous land to North-east of the present capital. At the same time, its
influence has covered also the southern inhabitants, the language
of those living around the southern lakes can also be traced back to
Ghahez. As the Amharic language has been developing, letters
having stood for an only consonant earlier fell into variants. Every
one of them stands now not only for a sound, but a syllable. For this
reason writing is more complicated than with Latin letters.
The fate of empires generally is that there are some people who
don't like them, for this reason the two parties start a fight that finally
destroys the bare living of their citizens, consequently the empire
disintegrates. The monarchs of Aksum, beside fighting and con-
quering the peoples of territories that make up today's Ethiopia,
Sudan and Somalia, even crossed the Red Sea and ventured into
Southern Arabia. That excursion happened during a king named
Khaleb in the 6th century. Christianity has been taken to the country
by two young Syrians, we know them by the names of Frumentius
and Aedesius (Latin script). They were sailing on the Red Sea and
their master was killed by locals when landed. The boys have been
taken to Aksum, to the king. He must have been a clever man as the
talented boys he placed in high offices. Frumentius became the
young successor's teacher when his father, the king died, the young
monarch has taken Christianity and founded the first Christian
church in the country. After some more years later he was sent in
mission to the official Coptic patriarch in Egypt, with the job to ask
him to send a bishop to his country. The patriarch named him bishop
and sent him back. He has become the Bishop of Aksum. The
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young monarch's name was Ezana, he is famous for his coins, the
first ones to leave the traditional symbol of sun and moon, and intro-
ducing the cross instead.
I have mentioned that empires disintegrate because of wars. It
happened with Aksum too. The country has still been able to survive
that it took an active role in the creation of the Islam, the king gave
refuge to people who were fleeing across the Red Sea from Arabic
monarchs not very kind to the new belief that time yet. Among the
refugees were the daughter of Muhammad and one of his would-be
wives. The prophet sent them to King Armah being Aksum's mon-
arch because Ethiopia "is the land of justice, where nobody is badly
treated". The Arabic monarch demanded that the refugees be sent
back to him, but the King of Aksum denied it, telling that he would
have never gave it out for any price who had run to him. Later, when
his principles had become victorious in Mecca, the prophet got back
all his one hundred followers as well as his two relatives, and he
gave the instruction to his believers that Abessinia they should
always leave in peace.
But the empire has not been able to survive that it had to fight all
the time the Beghas of Sudan and the Arabs invading its seashore.
The country lost all its strength. The last two kings, Gharsem and
Hataz corrupted even minting, their coins have not been worth their
value. The weakening of the power has been mounted also by the
inner discontented. There has lived a princess called Judith, who
revolted against the Aksum ruler. She conquered and destroyed not
only Aksum, but had the Princes of Aksum killed, although those
young nobles had themselves been prisoners in a fortress at Debra
Damo for a long time, preventing that way a counter-revolt from
their part on their right of origin. The church had been able to take
advantage of the downturn during the following period, as people
turned to the spiritual world of religion. Wonderful churches have
been built in large caves or hewn into facades of rocks. Very few
other places of the world can boast with similar relics. But even
more unique churches have been created. They have been hewn
out of bedrock downward, then tunnels were bored for access.
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There are at least thirty places in the country with such churches,
the number of churches is even higher.
Following the reign of this fighting amazon usurpers have had
their way, who could only have occupied and ruled limited parts of
the whole country. One of the families had been the Zagve dynasty,
whose members had ruled to the South of Aksum, in Roha, that
place is called Lalibela today after King Lalibela, the most famous
monarch of them. As legend says, King Lalibela and his men had
been helped by angels in his large work of carving out the temples.
As much they did during day, the angels hewed twice as much
during night. The period of rule of this dynasty had lasted almost
three hundred years, its last member had resigned to hand over the
rule to a prince that had once again been able to trace back his
origin to King Solomon. The following period can be considered a
great success from the point of view of religion and books, but just
the opposite can be said about economy. Money had ceased to
function, salt had taken its place in the trade. Construction of
temples and palaces had had no sense, as the king had always
been in motion, he hadn't built any capital for himself. Religion had
another source of advantage at that time. As Bishop Tekla
Haimanot had helped the king to get the thro