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Followers of the Coptic Church are today half way
through the fasting season. Four weeks from now,
Lent will be over and business will be as usual as
far carnivorous gourmets are concerned. If you are a
regular reader of this weekly, you are no stranger
to the name Sama Senbet. It is an annual ritual for
me to raise the name. This time though, I will be
taking recourse to talk about the missed business
opportunities during such occasions.
The bumpy and dusty road to Sama Senbet starts right
from the junction at Mojo town some 76 or so
kilometers south-east of the capital. If you want to
take a ride, you are advised to drive a 4-wheeled
drive vehicle and pack a ration of food, some
beverage and some fuel. The terrain is a dry plain
covered with dry grass that hardly covers the
cracking, black, cotton soil. Short acacia trees
litter the fields. You feel as though the little
trees are retreating to the hill tops and are very
far away in the horizon. You could extend your
imagination to create some kind of linkage to the
climate change. It would not be far fetched.
The fields are clean and smell of good earth despite
the billowing dust that follows every rolling fleet.
The whirling wind carries the dust up into the air
and turns it into a choking storm. Visibility is
affected. One would think that the cloud of dust
will soon turn into a cloud pregnant with rain and
will shower down like it did last year. We have
scanty rains at this time of the year under normal
circumstances. But you never know what the normal
circumstances are in the Ethiopian weather context!
The cyclical drought might take a short cut this
time around.
When we reached Sama Senbet, civilization followed
so to speak. The clean earth was polluted with
plastic bags, pieces of papers, old and discarded
cigarette packets and stubs, pieces of broken glass,
old packets of biscuits, abandoned card boxes and
what have you. All these polluting substances were
traces of leftover trash from the previous year.
They are bound to be amplified a lot more this year.
The number of visitors to this place has increased
significantly. It must be noted that the local
people too have played their part in adding to the
pollution.
Biru and his friends have come from the lowlands of
Mojo and Ejere. They have put on their rubber boots
and carried big sticks more out of habit than out of
necessity. Who said that rubber boots produce a foul
smell under the pressure of overuse? They had
arrived earlier than usual and had taken their seats
in a make shift shed which served as a café. Local
brew araki is sold here in small bottles. Clients
buy them in groups and sip them in small shots.
Biru and his friends had ordered tea and locally
baked bread. In the meantime, they were chewing or
grinding, for lack of a better term, stems of sugar
cane one stick after another. Of course you can
imagine where they drop the residues. Some sheds are
filled with customers who dine and wine even before
the prayers in the Holy Savior Church are over.
There are local azmaris or singers who try to play
pious pieces and suddenly shift to popular songs.
Nobody seems to care much about whether the
musicians played worldly or spiritual songs so long
as there is some kind of noise coming out from their
throats or flutes. Pious people from all walks of
life come and observe mass prayers with the clergy
taking the lead in chanting throughout the night and
on the very day of the celebrations.
If you want to come in the evening, you have to make
sure that you have to carry mattresses and flood
lights or torches. You spread your mats and sheets
on grass or leaves of trees and lie down amidst
strangers or friends as the case may be. The big
problem starts when you are compelled to answer
nature's call. There are no dug bore holes that can
serve as temporary toilets. Nor are there any kind
of mobile facilities. What people do is try to walk
as far away as possible, cover their heads with a
piece of cloth or towel and release their bowels,
not caring who may happen to give a sly look at
struggling polluters.
There are similar occasions where hundreds of
thousands of people come together for religious or
other non - secular purposes and suffer a lot from
either the lack of adequate accommodations, food and
beverages or more importantly the lack of toilets.
The annual confluence of people at Kululbi,
Laliybella or Axum Trion are good examples of this.
If the respective administrative offices cannot
handle such immense turnouts, it is my belief that
investors can venture to serve the people and make
money. They can have big tents and catering services
as well as toilet services for thousands of visitors
in collaboration with the local administrations.
Sama Senbet celebration is not only a time to mark
Debre Zeit but also a kind of a prelude to the
preparation for the great feast to mark the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. Some people have
already started preparing for the fasika festivals
in the Ethiopian context. Yesterday, a lady in my
neighborhood had gone to Sheno, a well known butter
market some 58 kilometers west of Addis Abeba for
shopping. The total transport cost was 28 birr round
trip, not to mention all the pains she took to get
there. The lady bought the chickens for 30 birr a
piece and the butter for 60 birr per kilo! The
family has now loaded itself with the extra work of
looking after the chickens. They say stranger fowls
are vulnerable to all kinds of mishaps including
theft and diseases. I find it absurd to see someone
taking pains and spending that much money well ahead
of time for little or no gain.
We must have borrowed the word 'fasika' from the
root word 'feast' telling by the amount of focus we
give to feasting on Easter Holiday. Of course we
have every reason to feast and rejoice to mark the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer. This
year I am afraid that we will have to bear extra
costs in the light of threatening drought that is
encroaching on our psyche.
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