More often than not at weddings in Addis, we see the wedding videographer asking the groom and his entourage to do a repeat of breaking into the bride’s house at the Anasgebam Sergegna rite, the unveiling her, kissing her forehead and a repeat of several other parts of the wedding actually. Reason being they missed the scene and need to retake. Now, I am personally annoyed when this happens because I believe the video team is there to document the wedding, not to produce it. The bride and groom are not there to perform for them; camera men are there to use their skills to capture images from many angles.  If they missed the shot because for example, there was a surge of guests wanting a glimpse of the bride, then that should be the story, not the directed version of it where the living room is cleared and the groom is normatively re-entering with his men.

The videographers become producers and directors indeed, when they direct the bride, for well over an hour, to do twirls, pretend like she’s sleeping or throw rose petals in the air. Perhaps for photographers who look for picturesque poses, such directions might be helpful, but for videos, I don’t see how several minutes of the close-up of a bride with her eyes closed can be interesting for anyone to watch, maybe save for the bride herself.

I wish to argue that having the videography team do a factual documentary of a wedding instead of a produced version of it can result in a fun-to-watch wedding video. The kind your grand children will actually sit through. To begin with, the camera men can and should film the wedding from a corner where they don’t disrupt the natural course of the ceremony. They don’t always have to position their tripods at absolutely in front of the bride and groom at all times blocking the view of invited guests who want to share the moments too. (Some of their recording can be done by handheld cameras which yes, might produce shaky pictures but I believe that contributes to telling the story as it happened). To put it simply, videographers should film everywhere but still be invisible.

I feel camera men need not direct the mother of a bride to hold kohl for a make-believe her-mother-did-her-makeup shoot. While we fondly remember the tradition from earlier generations, it is far too obvious that the likelihood is that this bride went to Terry Style or Boston Day Spa for her makeup, making the mother-daughter makeup scene a superficial one and even a slightly stressful one for the mother who’s being asked to act. Rather, the camera can follow mother’s love in real action as she supervises the cooking in the night before the wedding day or a day before the Mels when she will surely be busy. I think here you’ll see where my suggestion is going to extend to. It doesn’t take one day to organize a wedding and so can’t a whole documentary be filmed in one day. I think if we are to say, ‘this was my wedding’ in watching the video, then it should show all the components it took to make it the wedding that it was. I’m talking about including the Shimagile-sending ceremony, the Tilosh, the grooms men’s (last minute) shopping for their tuxes which usually involves teasing and mockery, the (several) bride’s maids’ meetings, the nightly singing and dancing, the address-writing of invites, and so forth. The everydays behind the special day. Weeks of wedding fever all caught on camera; filmed in front of as well as behind the scenes. Of course this will mean the camera men shooting hours and hours of footage (by which they can justify more payment for the service) but it will all have been worth it in the editing room, where an excellent fun-filled, historical and more than anything, factual wedding documentary will come from!     

I come from Ethiopia and we are people who pride ourselves for never being colonized which also means a European language was never imposed upon us. We take pride in being the only African country with our own ancient writing alphabets; numbers included. Amharic was the language that reflected the sophistication of the Amhara. The Tigre and the Oromo and the Somali and the Gurage all had their tongues which carried their tribe’s distinct essence. They were all spoken mindlessly by their speakers who took for granted the honor that comes with owning a language, maneuvering it the way a sword master sways his sword.

That was until globalization swept the country and planted English as the master’s language – in every sense of the word. The colonial master, the elitist master and the material master. People ‘opened’ their eyes to the inferiority of their own languages and were infected with the need to make one’s what is the other’s language.
The West largely discoursed in English; through its media, its books, its embassies and its aid agencies in the developing world. Their media is more entertaining, their books are the canons, their embassies are the gateways to their civilized countries and their NGOs pay salaries no other employer does! Of course we were going to want to learn their language!

Where the elite was in Addis Ababa, so was English. Universities taught and published scholarly papers in English. Public events, discussions, seminars, captions at art exhibitions, babies’ names became more and more English.

The businessman who had no education for himself wants to send his children to schools where the best English is spoken and then he ends up miscommunicating with his own children! Not just businessmen in fact, even modest-income families seek for English-teaching schools. I can’t blame them however, every parent wants their child to grow to be a ‘master’.

What I hate is the language mess all of this created. When companies hold interviews in English before hiring, many Ethiopians struggle to speak the master’s language, their grappling with the foreign language is visible in their faces in the form of strained veins and shaky hands. And do all meetings have to be in English? “There is a foreigner amongst us, so let us speak in English” the chairman would say and participation is seriously affected in the meeting and even those who did speak in English said only about one third of what they had in their minds, in Amharic, in their able minds, made unable because of English! English in Addis Ababa is teenagers growing up to speak a little bit of English and a little bit of their mothers’ language which in total is a lot of nothing. English in Addis Ababa is the opening of language schools everywhere; schools that need schooling themselves. English in Addis Ababa is an artificial blend of English and Amharic with speakers inviting the former to disgustingly affect the accent of the latter – post-adolescence, post-maturity! English in Addis Ababa is a mishmash of fluent-speakers, good speakers, average speakers, poor speakers, hardly speakers and non-speakers. They struggle for class, they use their English as a passport across many doors; they pay great prices to climb up the ladder towards being a fluent speaker. I hate what English has done in my country.

God’s deliverance is foundational, where man’s is re-structural. God plugs you to the very essence of being well when the world would only align you to its distorted reading of that essence.

Go to your maker. He’ll know what best to do with you.

Sem ena Work is a component of Qiné. Sem means wax and Work means gold in Amharic. It is widely believed and taught that all Qiné has Sem ena Work, but that is not what scholars tell us. There are many kinds of Qiné depending on their purpose, their rhyming, the number of lines (there is Qiné that has more than two lines) and metrical composition; and only those that have two layers of meaning are called Sem and Work. For a Qiné to qualify as a Sem ena Work type, its obvious meaning, its Sem or its wax, should serve as an illustrating example to the later revealed hidden meaning, the Work or the gold. The widely available types of Qiné, which are created by splitting words or changing the stress of sounds in words, are of a different category called የምርምር/ ስለምን. Such Qiné, once its hidden message is uncovered bears little or no relationship to the obvious idea communicated. So the Qiné that highschool seniors compose to be published in their yearbooks are not exactly Sem ena Work types like widely thought, but rather የምርምር/ ስለምን types. In Sem ena Work Qiné, when the Work is uncovered, the Sem doesn’t stand irrelevant, but aids further understanding of the concept of the Qiné. (Look below for examples of both)

Here one can imagine that the real Sem ena Work Qiné is hard to come by as it requires more mastery of the language to communicate two ideas that complement and supplement each other, a casual one on the surface and a deeper version of it on the second.

Something worth noting is that the infinitive to be used before Qiné is mezref and to be conjugated to the respective pronouns. For example, Qiné zerefe, Qiné zerefech, Qiné zerefu and so on.

The Amharic and Geez Language
Qiné has its roots in the ancient Geez language. Geez is thought to be one of the oldest languages on earth and there are even those who call it the ‘language of angels’ and claim that it was the language used by Adam and Eve in Paradise. Geez language flourished during the Axum civilization which rose in the 4th century AD which is also the time when Christianity entered Ethiopia. The language is complete with unique 231 alphabets which are also the sources of the Amharic alphabet.

Qiné began in the religious realm, with Ethiopian Orthodox Christian clergy using Qiné in their hymns, mass processions and their sacred religious writings. Before the introduction of modern education in Ethiopia during Emperor Menelik, literacy came from churches. Young boys would be sent away to a church/monastery located in a different town than their own and be expected to attend church education by begging to get their basic necessities like food and clothes from households in their neighborhoods; this was not out of poverty, but it was a deliberate design to instill a sense of perseverance in the young students. At church, they would pass five main levels of education which may be thought of as equivalent to the modern world’s primary, junior high, high school, college and university. These are respectively ንባብ ቤት ፡ ቅዳሴ ቤት ፡ ዜማ ቤት ፡ቅኔ ቤት and መጽሃፍ ቤት. It was only later that Qiné was taken up by the secular world which used it by way of metaphor, sarcasm and satire.

Examples
የምርምር / ሰለምን ቅኔ

እርሷ መፍተል እንጂ መስፋት ምኑን አውቃ
ምን ያደርግላታል አክርማ ስንጠቃ

አባ ቄስ አበሌ ዛሬስ ባገር አሉ
ሲቀድሱ ሰማሁ አብ እሳት እያሉ

ሚስቱ አዘነችበት በአለቃ ይኩኖ
ነገር አሳባቂ ስሞተኛ ሆኖ

ሃገሩ የእኔ ነው እዚህ ነው ርስቴ
ቆርቋሪዎች ናቸው እናትና አባቴ

አንዳንድ ወገኖቼ ከሃገራቸው መጡ
የሰው ልጆች መብት በመረጋገጡ

ወትሮም ለምኒልክ ድመት ጠላታቸው
እቴጌ ዘውዲቱን አነር ገደላቸው

ምጣዱን ጥደሺው ግሞ የት ሄደሻል
ያልተቀጣጠለ ያልሰማ መስሎሻል

(Look to the underlined words for a hint to the Work/Gold)

ሰም እና ወርቅ
ንቡ አበበ መርሻ ንቃቱ ጨመረ
ፍቅር ማር ሊሰራ ከለቡ መከረ
አበባ ሰናይትን ለመቅሰመ በረረ

( There’s unfortunately not many Sem ena Work examples available as explained above, they are not easy to compose like the other type of Qiné.)

References
ታደለ ገድሌ.ቅኔ እና ቅኔያዊ ጨዋታ ለትዝታ. 2003/4

P. S. I was inspired to do this article because I found in my blog stats that many viewers land on my page after googling ‘Amharic Sem ena Work’ and there being no online information regarding the subject, they had to face my page which although titled so, offered no information. I called my blog Sem ena Work to commemorate my love for metaphors and subtly sensible expressions but after doing a little bit of research to write this article, I have been even more moved by the connotations of the phrase Sem ena Work. Thanks googlers!

To our myths!

As reality
Catches up with me
At twenty-three
I am disillusioned.
As I realize
Life will be just as fateful to me
As it is to all others,
I realize
I’m no special.

But maybe the economy is no economy if it doesn’t feed the people; if they are not living any better. The trifles are there and they are not looking good.

My eyes are tired of running on the streets and facing the same sight everyday.

I’m tired of the lepers, amputees on littered pavements.

Stinking ditches. In the taxi, to expect people that don’t have body odor is too much to ask. Everywhere, malnourished faces. The fresh immigrants from the rural, what brought you here?

Dirty children, weren’t babies adorable? Poverty out-ran my smiles.

Beggars unrelenting on the car windows, which we draw up wrinkling our faces, fed up. Then the miniscule traders who want better treatment, but they’re beggars to me, if they weren’t, they would have been content with passing by with their DVDs or their ‘Yemobile Card’ sign sewn onto them instead of knocking on the windows.

Cheap commodities from China, they cannot possibly be made any cheaper – And the rich tastelessly showing off their riches; wheels, shoes from Italy and iPhones from California. Or is it okay for them to enjoy their taste of life unlimited?

Addis Ababaዬ, when will this “indecent life” come to an end?

I am easy to convince, still inherently optimistic about my Ethiopia so someone please say this is all a sign that a greater good is on the way; trifles at the tail end of the positive chain reaction lifting the country up.

This was what they saw…

Yeah, where it should have said Italian, it says Italy. How outrageous! That must be the worst of its kind in English grammar errors!

But that’s the thing.  That is not all there is to Ethiopia. Although I wish I could tell off that Ferenj, what I would have liked more is if we had the time for me to sit him down and explain to him that that isn’t all there is to Ethiopia. Bad signage? Puh-lease! I’ve seen that wherever I travelled. From Egypt to uptown Italy. But when it’s in Ethiopia, it’s so outrageous, right? So poor and so unintelligent, right? No! Ethiopia has her own wealth which of course is not depicted as wealth in their dictionary and yes Ethiopia is a land of wisdom although we know they won’t call that intelligence. They spread their net of wrong definitions of what growth is, what beautiful is (it’s light skin and straight hair), what peace is (it’s democracy) and what smart is. Indigenous knowledge is almost wiped out and now we’re in culture confusion. Ill-counseled we are!

In case you didn’t know my Ethiopia…..,

Ethiopia  is home to one of the earliest Orthodox churches in the world. The Ethiopian Orthdox church is also one of what is called the five oriental churches in the world. Many ancient monasteries and churches have some amazing stories and legends.

Ethiopia is the origin of the Coffee. Coming from Kaffa, it was later taken to Yemen, to India, to Britain, to America and then to Britain’s colonies in the Latin Americas and the Caribbean and then back to Africa. And it’s not just history, Ethiopian coffee, Coffee Arabica, is one of the best in the world today.

Ethiopia is one of the few countries who peacefully accommodate an almost 1:1 proportion of Christian and Muslim populations. Tolerance comes naturally to us.

Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia and the language of the Amhara, has a very sophisticated linguistics structure and also its own alphabet. Deeply sarcastic and concept-packed, the Amharic is truly the language of the elite.

Ethiopia is a country of sincerely religious people. While Christians and others around the world ebb further and further away from the church and spirituality, Ethiopians have actually tightened their ties with the church. Lent is fasted for a whole 55 days, and when we fast we don’t just give up one thing like wine or milk or tv like they do in the West, we give up all dairy-related diet and most break their fast at 3:00 in the afternoon after a 2 hour mass. We give up any celebrations such as weddings and lifestyle becomes modest. We are faithful to what began Lent in the first place- Jesus’ suffering in the wilderness.

Ethiopia is the mother of the greatest long-distance runners in the world. Haile Gebreselassie, the legendary Abebe Bikila and Mamo Wolde (what these two did, no one shall ever!), Tirunesh Dibaba, Meseret Defar, Kenenisa Bekele and many more. Athletics is a window into our endurance.

Ethiopia is a land of dazzling landscape. From the lowest point in Africa at -116mts below sea level at the Dalol depression, to the breathtaking 4620mts above sea level view of the Ras Dashen. Our rift valley lakes, deserts and fertile lands form the basis of the type of people we are – good people worthy of equal status with any other people . Because a people ‘are not required to be great, they just have to be good’

Ethiopia is a land of very beautiful women. And beautiful does not have to mean super skinny, light skinned, straight hair models. It just means elegant dense lustrous coarse black hair, sun-kissed brown skin, lean limbs and somber faces.

Ethiopia is a land of deeply-rooted cultures. From mourning to weddings to cleaning campaigns (Hidar Michael) to eating norms and food, our cultures are shared by a large group of people. In Ethiopia cultures are shared by at least a region and in some cases by people of the entire country. This is why Ethiopians are disciplined and grateful people, because we have a shared authority figure which is our ancient culture and we adhere to it. Young people are not as unruly and of deteriorating moral like in other parts of the world. Culture and the whole community raise a child.

These are just short introductions of my Ethiopia. A few paragraphs by a regular young girl as myself does not do Ethiopia justice. If a real Ethiopia expert was to write about us, they would produce lines of astonishing facts about Ethiopia.

So don’t be so uninformed to think some bad sign on the street represents Ethiopia. It doesn’t. What that English signage in an Amharic-speaking society represents is something else. Don’t get me started on that one…

LOVE my Ethiopia.