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Beating "The Turkish girl" -a metaphor Getachew Assefa August 23, 2004 For sustainable-africa.org "We were really motivated to beat the Turkish girl, because she said she would beat us before the race" Meseret Defar Thank you Meseret Defar for your words of determination! In fact, whenever I think of my country, the dominating source of my inspiration is what our heroes and heroines - the athletes - do and say. When the word Yichalal was associated with our hero Haile Gebreselassie, I was motivated to write one of my first internet articles entitled "The Green Implications of Yichalal" that later was used as a spring board for my akababi website. Here we ago again, the daughter of Defar, Meseret provides me another foundation for a short reflection on our country. Noteworthy is what Meseret said regarding her motivation during today's 5000 meters competition in Athens Olympics of 2004 beautifully coded in the aforementioned quotation. The key word "Turkish girl" is taken as a metaphor for my reflection. In today's Ethiopia, the Turkish girl is a symbol of any one/ anything who/that contributes to the ill-being of our county and our people. The poverty, attitude of hatred along ethnic lines, incapable leadership both in the government and in the opposition, ill-minded neighboring countries are all but a few of Ethiopia's "Turkish girl". All these have always worked against the interest of the people and are always active to talk and walk to beat or bite our country. The 20 years old kid Meseret calls for our motivation to beat our "Turkish girl". We should express our determination to undo the actions and intentions of all who are working to beat us. The important thing is Meseret Defar and co did not stop at the level of Expression-of-Interest. They put their minds and hearts on exercising their determination to deliver the result that put the Turkish girl out of action. We, the people with similar magnitude of determination of our athletes, can put poverty, war, ethnic-based negative differences and ill-minded leadership of the government and the opposition and regional enemies out of action. The other quality of love and unity that crystallized out of the golden mouth of Meseret Defar is that her genuine grief due to fellow Tirunesh Dibaba's bronze instead of silver she deserved. That country of yours and mine badly needs such quality of the willingness to make- it-together, the quality of feeling real grief when part of our country or part of our people lives at disadvantage. In the first place, we should all try to make-it-together as Meseret would have tried to pull Tirunesh and as Kenenisa and Sileshi tried to pull Haile forward. When the Turkish girl said she would beat the Ethiopians, her motivation, my imagination tells me, can be attributed partly or fully to the following reasons. She thought she knows Ethiopians very well as a newly Turkishaized but Ethiopian-born girl - thus an insider to Ethiopia. She thought she was capable of doing what the Ethiopians can do since she was, though illegally, training on our hills and valleys. Or may be as a world record holder she thought it would help her terrorize them by throwing an oral attack in advance. All mortal and immortal enemies of our country past and present do make similar calculations or to be fair miscalculations. If we don't have the big picture - in this case, the betterment of our people- in mind and heart we, more often than not, find ourselves on the negative part of the line of action. For me, all those who collaborate with the Eritrean government for the sake of whatever reason are part of this negative action. For me, those who can't help but defame all individuals and groups who happened to disagree to dance to their tone are none but founding members of these groups of negative actions. For me, more importantly, those "intellectuals" in the Diaspora who always work hard to convince or al least confuse donor/lender agencies and countries to deprive Ethiopia of material and political benefit are the active members of the group of negative actions. At times these "intellectuals" mix up two different colors: opposing the government and working for the worse of the country and its people. For those of us we pay attention to current geopolitical and economic dynamics of the world in general and our region in particular, there can't be any justification for Ethiopians to afford to tolerate more than two groups in our country: pro-government people of good hearts and minds on one hand and pro-opposition people of good hearts and minds on the other. Remember, I say of good hearts and minds. Remember I say pro - not necessarily explicit affiliation. Every one else who can't be characterized as belonging to either of these groups is Ethiopia's "Turkish girl" who have directly or indirectly, no matter how latent it is, declared to beat our country. Dear fellow country men, lets get motivated to stand against all ill-fated declarations and intentions. Lets express and discuss our good intentions so that all 70 million people would make it together. Lets walk the talk. Then sure enough we would beat our "Turkish girl". www.tigrai.net |