Adal Isaw adalisaw@yahoo.com
February 14, 2009
“Man
does not live by words alone, but he sometimes has to eat them.” Adlai Stevenson
While uttering the aforementioned words, I wish Adlai
Stevenson could have been inclusive of those who makeup the more than fifty
percent of us humans. Short of that,
Adlai is nevertheless right; we humans eat words. And, to a greater or lesser extent, it is also true more often
than we think that the words we use define who we are, especially, when we
utter them together collectively as human-beings.
We utter words together to sing a song in spite of
any static that may accompany our chorus.
As children, we have tried to sing new songs in our disparate places of
convenience and conviction, be it in a classroom, a dormitory, around a
campfire, or in a very serious religious setting. While we sang to bring out the aesthetic nature in us, we were so
eager to correct each others’ tone, till we get the rhythm and the harmony of
our accent in sync.
We grow up learning to sing new songs in such a way,
till we get to sit down and compose a new song unlike any other. We call on our elders with wisdom of the
blues from the millennia; they composed a song on behalf of our ancestors from
the land of sovereignty, while we composed a part on behalf of the voiceless
from the land of the oppressed.
Consequently, fifteen years to this date, a brand new mix song came into
existence.
We let the acme of our mountains, the deepest gorges
of our grand canyons, and the alpine meadows of our highlands hear and signal
the new song that we alone cannot hear with bare ears. The voiceless picked up the signal from our
lost voice-makers and sang the mix song that we help compose till it became
audible. The new song is some what
clear and loud, and we’re about to become the elders on guard, mindful of our
lost voice-makers that very few with bruised egos resent-those who still would
love to pass forward the new song in favor of the hip-hop from the West.
Hip-hop of the West is contemporary and new, and it
can make you wealthy; they tell us to dance without a blink on their eyes, to
shortchange our newly mix song in the name of youthfulness. We can hear you sing and see you dance- a
wobbly dance full of missteps comforted by a cacophonous song. No thank you is our answer. We will dance to the tune of our own making-
a song that we help to compose with elders from the land of sovereignty- in
steps and spaces that lend a hand for missteps to re-emerge flawless- with the
help of the many diverse and yet harmonious voices of our beloved people.
The essence of our words in this newly mix song will
live to be eaten for life- much like the seeds that were passed from our
ancestors for millenniums. But most
importantly, time will let the youth in us to keep this newly mix song live
forever young. This newly mix song is
our Constitution-a song, the proper accent of which that we still have to
practice well to learn, in order to sing it right together without static.
For some, few of the words are harsher to the vocal
cord and acerbic to the tongue, while for few others, singing along with those
who are working diligently to harmonize their voices is a venture they love to
shy away. In our part, what we have
helped to compose is being fine-tuned by the voices of the so many hard works
in progress. Our time will come, and,
we will live with pride handing the baton of hard work, by
exposing that words mashed with perpetual cynicism cannot be sang in harmony
let alone be eaten for life. And, till
our time comes, we will stand vigilant, fine- tuning our newly mixed song, so
that, the young conductor of Ethiopia’s future would never hesitate to raise
his baton for the song to be sung flawlessly by all of us together.