"What Have I Done for Ethiopia?"

I never realized how much I missed talking to my parents until they moved back to Ethiopia to, as my father put it, “live out our lives in peace.” He’s always had an irrational fear of dying in America. “The Almighty helped me survive the Clinton years; but I want to die back home,” was his opening salvo at every Thanksgiving dinner. He said it with such earnest conviction that none of us ever had the heart to point out the glaring non sequitur in his proclamation.

I suppose the best thing that has come out of their move is that my father and I now communicate through long emails that are sometimes brutally honest, often painfully obscure but always edifying. No wonder people of yon wrote long letters to each other. It is cathartic. I’ve been able to tell him things in writing that I could never say to him without a 1,000 mile minimum buffer zone between us.

One of the longest correspondences we have had has been about a segment on the “Diversity Visa Lottery” that aired on VOA-Amharic on November 27. A young woman who works in an internet café in Addis was interviewed about applicants coming in to try their luck at immigrating to the land of milk and honey.

She went on to recount the yearnings of young people especially, who trudge in looking for an out from the harsh Addis life. Most are desperate. The reporter asked her who she hopes will get the lottery. (My translation. Sorry if I missed something.)

I don’t want anyone to leave Ethiopia. People who leave are building other people’s countries. Where we need people is in Ethiopia where there is much to build. The more we leave Ethiopia, the less people to build her. It would be better if we started staying here and working towards leaving a lasting legacy for our children. The generation before us, our mothers and fathers, left without leaving us anything. And we’ve been paying the price for that. But now we have to be responsible so that the generation coming up doesn’t judge us for not leaving it anything. So I don’t think we should abandon our country.

What kind of people come to fill out the DV application? The majority are highly educated, she said. Some have two college degrees; people in high positions. The reporter then zoomed in on her. Has she ever filled out an application?

I’ve never filled one out before. And I haven’t now.

(The whole program is actually fascinating. It tells a story of hope and despair with equal gusto.)

It is obvious from his letters that my father has been struggling with the condemnation the young woman at the internet café leveled on his generation. My father was educated through a very generous scholarship provided by the Ethiopian government. He had gone back to Ethiopia after graduate school to serve his country and join the burgeoning middle class. But then everything fell apart.

Nearly three decades later, my father writes, he’s witnessing another round of violence.

This Christmas my father turns 65. My parents were supposed to come to the States for a long-planned birthday celebration and family reunion.

“What have I done for Ethiopia?” he wrote after our long discussion about the VOA program. “What have I left you, my children? And what will you leave yours?”

My parents decided to stay in Ethiopia this Christmas.

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To the countless Ethiopian mothers who have buried their children this year.

Here’s hoping we leave our children an Ethiopia that is healed. And also hoping that we have an answer for them when they ask us, “What have you done for Ethiopia?”

Merry Christmas. See you in 2006.