Ethiopian arrested at Beirut airport for drug possession

An Ethiopian woman was arrested Tuesday at Beirut airport after customs officers found drugs hidden in her luggage. Customs officers confiscated 6.6 kilograms of khat hidden in the woman’s luggage, a security source told The Daily Star. The woman, whose name was not released, was arriving from Addis Ababa, the source said. She was referred to the anti-drug bureau for interrogation, the source added.

Hospital swaps Eritrean and Ethiopian newborns

Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva switches babies born to Eritrean, Ethiopian couples. 'I kept screaming, that's not our baby,' father says. Hospital apologizes, says matter under investigation

Hadar, a Petah Tikva resident, was wrapped in postpartum bliss, sitting in the delivery room with a newborn baby. She stroked and nursed him, giving him that miraculous motherly warmth. A magical and rare feeling hung in the air; Hadar had no clue that within minutes, the smiles will be replaced by screams of shock, in a horrific scenario all mothers fear.

It happened on Friday: Yossi, 32, and Hadar, 32, a couple of Ethiopian decent, came to the Rabin Medical Center for the delivery of their third child. At 4:35 pm, their baby boy was born weighing 7 pounds and 48 ounces. Still blurry from the epidural, the mother gave her son a first hug, and about 15 minutes later allowed the nurse to take him to the neonatal ward.

A short while later, the blissful parents moved to the recovery room. At 7:30 pm Yossi found he could not wait any longer and went to see his baby. Entering the maternity ward, he noticed he was lying in a crib, and asked if he could take him to his mother she could nurse him, but was refused; the nurses told him the baby was ill, and would have to undergo several tests before the two can see him again.

Yossi said he was pacing down the hallway, occasionally checking on his wife, when he saw a man frantically screaming and yelling. "I didn't make much of it," he said, "until the nurse came up to me and said: 'What are you doing here? Go be with your baby.'" That was the moment he knew something was wrong.

He ran with the nurse into his wife's room, where Hadar was resting comfortably, nursing a baby. Except, he knew at once, it wasn't his baby. Yossi was shocked. "I kept screaming, 'That's not our baby!' When the man from the hall rushed in and screamed the exact opposite: 'That's my son!' I couldn't believe it was happening." Yosi's wife was also in disbelief.

A quick search resulted in a horrific discovery: Somewhere between the delivery room and the maternity ward, someone had given Hadar a baby who was born on the same day to an Eritrean couple. This was the direct result of human error: Someone at the ward mistakenly switched prams.


"A terrible feeling." Yosi and His Son (Photo Credit: Tzivka Tishler)

"It's just a terrible feeling," Yossi said. "I feel overwhelmed and my wife is simply in shock. She's incredibly hurt by this. The Eritrean father told us his wife had nursed a baby twice or three times that day—and he couldn't even tell me if it was his son or mine."
Yossi, Hadar and the baby were discharged from the hospital on Sunday. Along with their discharge letter, they requested a detailed explanation about the tragic error, an explanation no one had bothered to relay to them any sooner.

Only then did ward directors make the time to sit with them and provide reasoning for their behavior. Yossi and Hadar asked for documentation proving the misplacement, but were denied. "We were incredibly offended by their behavior," Yossi said.

Blood tests for the mothers 

Following the dreadful slip-up, both mothers underwent blood tests to rule out any infectious diseases they could have erroneously given the babies; both newborns will soon have to do the same. The hospital presented Yossi with medical documentation giving the Eritrean mother a clean bill of health: "It only served to make me more nervous," he said, "because their panic is telling. I can't pretend I'm not worried and constantly wondering why it happened to us."

This Friday, in the best Jewish tradition, Yossi and Hadar will celebrate their son's bris. The new parents are praying for their son to receive medical clearance.
The hospital said in response, "We deeply regret this incident. It was the result of a human error by a member of staff who acted in violation of our working orders. The subject is under thorough investigation." It was further stated the mothers' blood tests were found to be in order and that further steps will be taken towards the staff member at fault. 

Ethiopians in Middle East Unite to Combat Human Trafficking 

Ethiopian communities in the Middle East have formed a union to fight the abuse and suffering of Ethiopian migrant workers in the region.
After a meeting in Addis Ababa on Monday, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by representatives of Ethiopian communities in Jeddah, Riyadh, Bahrain, Dubai, Yemen, Lebanon and Qatar.
The union vowed to defend the rights of Ethiopian migrant workers in the stated countries and fight illegal traffickers in coordination with the relevant government offices.
Recent studies indicate that the number of Ethiopian workers being smuggled into various Middle East countries has been growing steadily.
Ato Rezene Lemlem, head of the Ethiopian Community in Jeddah, said that the increase in the number of illegal traffickers was exacerbating the problem of trafficking.
Ato Nebeyou Belete, deputy head of the Ethiopian community in Yemen, noted that there were a significant number of Ethiopians "wandering in different cities of Yemen after being smuggled by tortuous paths into the country".

Ethiopian-Saudi tension exaggerated,Says Saudi officials 

The deadly incidents involving Ethiopian maids are exaggerated, resulting in false accusations and unnecessary panic among Saudi employers, law enforcement officials say.
The recent deaths of children allegedly at the hands of Ethiopian housemaids have created a furor among Saudis on Facebook and Twitter, but Jeddah police caution that the fear among Saudis is disproportionate to the actual crimes committed.
“Actually it is still on a very limited scale,” Jeddah police spokesman Nawwaf Al-Bouq told Arab News.
Al-Bouq said that judging from the comments seen on social media networks, one would think that this is a very wide phenomenon.
“We see too many of the messages posted on the social sites, and they are full of exaggeration,” he said. “We did look into many accusations, but a lot of them turned out to be inconsequential. I urge our fellow citizens to be more careful when accusing somebody of anything.”
Among the incidents was the alleged murder of Lamis Al-Salman, a 6-year-old Saudi girl two months ago and the death of a 10-year-old Syrian girl, identified as Israa, who was reportedly beaten and stabbed to death.
The incidents led to a temporary ban on issue of new visas for Ethiopian maids. The ban resulted in a minor diplomatic row when Ethiopia canceled 40,000 work visas for housemaids destined for Saudi Arabia and stopped sending laborers altogether. The work stoppage put an end — at least temporarily — to the 7,000 to 10,000 Ethiopian domestics arriving in the Kingdom each month.
Rihab Abu Rayyah, an activist, said on her Facebook page that that Ethiopia has 75 million inhabitants, 55 percent of whom are Muslim.
“Seventy-five million people can’t possibly be all murderers and hurtful,” she wrote. “Every society has the good and the bad. Actually the greatest number of dawa people who call people to Islam come from Ethiopia.”
But for every comment that attempts to point out the good deeds performed by Ethiopians, there are dozens more calling for their deportation.
Campaigns have emerged on Facebook and Twitter urging the authorities to carefully monitor and examine Ethiopian laborers and other foreigners who intend to work in the Kingdom. They demand immigration officials check prospective maids’ mental health to make sure they are fit for work. They also stressed the need that these foreigners be trained on housekeeping and Saudi culture.
One Twitter user said that Saudis are now so afraid of Ethiopian maids that they warn everybody not to bring them to work in Saudi Arabia. “Why does the Saudi society have to bear the brunt of maid trouble?” another Twitter user asked.
“The authorities have been slow to realize there was a problem here,” according to one tweet. “They had to wait until there were dozens of crimes. We hope now that they pay more attention, and, while at it, to check other nationalities in order to prevent more crimes.”

The postings have escalated following numerous incidents during the first week of Ramadan with Saudis abandoning as many as 30 to 50 Ethiopian maids daily at Riyadh shelters. About 200 Ethiopian maids arrived earlier this month at the Riyadh police shelter in Nafal district.

How Enset Can Save Ethiopia

Hunger is expensive: The World Food Program (WFP) announced recently that child malnutrition in Ethiopia costs 55.5 billion Br every year. That is 16.5% of the gross domestic product: nearly a fifth of the country’s earnings.

Ironically, hunger also disproportionately affects small holder farmers: The United Nations Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that half of the planet’s hungry live in smallholder farming communities. But here is an integrated solution: investing in indigenous crops and agro-ecological practices can decrease hunger, improve nutrition, and increase incomes.

Environmentally sustainable practices can increase crop yields by almost 80%, according to a study published by the Royal Society. The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development recommends investments in improving the sustainable productivity of underutilised subsistence foods. These so called “orphan crops” are often high in nutrients, resilient to droughts or flooding, and resistant to pests and disease.

Enset, a crop typically grown by smallholders in Ethiopia, delivers a big bang for the buck. Grown mainly in Southern and Western Ethiopia, this locally domesticated member of the banana family benefits smallholder farmers nutritionally and financially.

Fifty enset roots, which yield up to 40kg of food, could feed a family of five or six for several months. Enset has long helped guard families against hunger because of its low maintenance and high yields.

Many parts of Ethiopia, including the Oromia Region, have been heavily deforested: farmers are often forced to clear land for fuel and farming, leaving the soil vulnerable to erosion.

In Western Ethiopia, the Blue Nile carries the eroded soil to Egypt and the Sudan, leaving fields in Ethiopia barren of nutrients. But tree crops, including enset, can prevent land degradation and erosion; they keep soil moist, can provide a shady location for farmers to grow other crops, including coffee.

A study by Ken Wilson of the Christensen Fund, a San Francisco-based organisation working to value biocultural diversity in the African Rift Valley and elsewhere around the world, points out that enset needs to be understood as part of a diverse integrated agro-ecological system meeting food, fibre and cash needs. He highlights how Ethiopian researchers have documented how well many farmers intercrop coffee (another indigenous crop of the forests of this region) with enset and timber trees.

Enset trees do not simply reduce erosion and protect other crops — they can improve soil quality, unlike many cereal crops. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) published a paper in 2010 on how other crops contributed to soil nutrients potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen and found that enset significantly increased the amount of nitrogen in the soil, as well as somewhat increasing potassium and phosphorus.

The researchers recommended lowering the risk of topsoil erosion in farmland in the highlands, where enset is grown, emphasising long-term payback on inputs. Enset fulfills those recommendations, because of the way that cover and slowly decaying leaf litter prevent loss of soil and nutrients from the land, including capturing nutrients from household waste and livestock manure and reducing the need for annual applications of expensive chemical fertilizers.

And enset can help prevent malnutrition among pregnant woman and children, even before birth. According to a study in the Journal of Nutrition, pregnant Ethiopian women who depended on enset as a staple crop had higher vitamin B12 levels than their maize-eating peers. Children deprived of good nutrition can have long-term health problems for the rest of their lives, including stunting, brain damage, and increased risk of disease; malnutrition during childhood can lower income during adulthood, according to the WFP.

While research institutions and the funding and donor communities have often ignored — or even dismissed — traditional and indigenous crops for the past few decades, that is now changing as the benefits of enset and other crops become better known. Enset and other indigenous crops can be an affordable and simple way to improve food security, nutrition, and environmental sustainability over the long-term. They simply need more attention, more research, and, ultimately, more funding and investment.

Teenage Ethiopian Americans bring parents’ music to life

Music often divides generations, but one group of Ethiopian Americans in California are challenging that norm. They've embraced music from their parents' generation and are playing it in their band.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that kids hate their parents’ music, or at least do their best to ignore it.

Garage bands don’t borrow CDs from their parents so they can practice disco covers. Unless it's in some kind of ironic hipster way.

There’s nothing ironic about the music being played in one particular suburban garage near Oakland, Calif. The Young Ethio Jazz Band are teenagers who rock out with their parents’ music.

The band played its first gig in San Francisco last winter. Now it's slated to open for another act at Yoshi’s, a famous jazz club in San Francisco, and then it plays in the Ethiopian Heritage Festival at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

All of the kids are second generation Ethiopians between 11 and 16 years old. Before they started playing together a year and a half ago, most of them had the stereotypical reaction to their parents’ music.

“In the very beginning, I was really confused about the music,” said Yohanas Abanew, who plays keyboard in the band. “I just said ‘well this doesn’t really sound like music that I would really want to play.’”

Then he started practicing an Ethio-jazz song in his high school band.

“It really woke me up,” he said. “This is my culture, and I really need to learn this music.”

Yonathan Wolday had a similar revelation. He’s a tall, lanky 16-year-old who plays trumpet. Wolday is wearing a gray sweatshirt with a picture of a diamond and the letters “DMND.” A pair of white ear phones hang out from his collar and onto his chest.

His parents are from Ethiopia, and the songs they listen to are in Amharic, the official language in Ethiopia. Wolday doesn’t understand it well, and that initially turned him off from the music. He didn’t really start listening to the songs until he began playing in the band.

Even now, it’s hard to believe he’s channeling the music of his parents’ generation. Whenever the band stops practicing, you can hear simple rap bass lines pulsating out from his dangling ear buds.

Vibraphonist Mulatu Astatke gave birth to Ethio-jazz in the early 70s. He was the first African student to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston. There he fused Western jazz with Latin rhythms and traditional Ethiopian scales.

If you watched the movie “Broken Flowers” you may have one of his songs stuck in your head. The score features several Astatke compositions, including Yekeramo Sew.

Mulatu Astatke and Ethio-jazz have had a bit of a resurgence in the U.S. since “Broken Flowers” came out in 2005. Still, it’s hard to find sheet music and transcribed parts for many Ethio-jazz songs.

So, instead of relying on charts, the Young Ethio Jazz Band is learning the music the old fashion way — by ear. Their accuracy is astonishing. At moments they sound almost identical to Astatke’s recordings.

Sirak Tegbaru brought the band together. He invited the kids to practice in his garage after after hearing them play at a nearby church. Even he is impressed with how well the kids have internalized the music.

“These kids really just want to play it the way it’s been played,” Tegbaru said.

Sometimes he has to encourage them to branch out — play some different scales, improvise their own solos over the chord changes. Make the kids break the rules.

Tegbaru left Ethiopia in 1979 when he was 16. He loved playing music, but his parents said it wasn’t practical. They pressured him to study medicine, and sent him abroad to Prague. Tegbaru still plays music, but he doesn’t have anything to do with medicine.

He sells State Farm insurance during the week. On the weekend, he leads the band.

“I feel like I am reborn again through these kids,” he said. "The kids — they glow when they play this song. They smile on their face. They’re happy and moving around. That means they really have that feeling. They’re playing from the bottom of the heart. And that’s, that’s music.”

The band has until July 26 to practice for the Ethiopian Heritage Festival at Georgetown University. It’s their biggest gig yet.

The kids at first said they weren't nervous. Then Tegbaru reminds them that as many as 10,000 people could attend the festival.

Semon Yacob who plays keyboard says in very matter-of-fact voice, “you can’t imagine how excited I am.”

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"PRI's "The World" is a one-hour, weekday radio news magazine offering a mix of news, features, interviews, and music from around the globe. "The World" is a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. More about The World.

Aurora's Ethiopian community celebrates "culture of sharing" 

A thousand pancakes weren't nearly enough, not for the hundreds of people who waited in a long, winding line during the opening two hours of the first Taste of Ethiopia Grand Festival Sunday in Aurora.

"We're going to have to order more," said an ebullient chief cook Sophia Belew of the whole wheat flatbread Ethiopians call injera, which is both bread and utensil to gobble gastric delights such as gomenand wot.

Belew

Dancers at the Aurora Taste of Ethiopia on Sunday, July 28, 2013. (Joey Bunch, The Denver Post)

oversaw 14 people from the festival's native land who cooked up a pile of food Saturday and served it Sunday to thousands of people of several races and cultural backgrounds.

The Denver metro area is home to at least 17 Ethiopian restaurants, according to Ethiopian community organizers, but Sunday's event had an edge on the competition, in Belew's opinion.

"You go can go to the restaurants and get all the food, but you have to come here for the music, the communal coffee, the wonderful jewelry and clothes that are for sale, but especially the hospitality," she said, as the tumult of pounding bass drums and festival chatter filled the background.

Seated in a circle beneath a tree nearby, Jeff Pfeifer, his wife, Erin, and their three children, all younger than 6, sat in a circle with the food in the center. They sampled from the four Styrofoam plates as their mother, a former Peace Corps worker in Ethiopia, explained each dish.

"We want them to know a world bigger than Colorado," Jeff Pfeifer said.

The Pfeifers also demonstrated what it meant to be an Ethiopian for a day, according to festival organizer Nebiyu Asfaw's explanation of the culture before a dance exhibit that filled the Laredo Elementary

gymnasium to standing-room only.

"We are a people with a culture of sharing," he said.

Teenagers, most first-generation Americans, performed ancient dances from across Ethiopia, stirring the audience to applause and whoops to match the energy of the history in motion.

"That's my granddaughter," said Esbeluw Andachew who immigrated to the United States in 1985, pointing to one of the dancers twirling in the center of the gym floor. "She started learning these dances, and it's made her very, very interested in where we, her family, came from. I'm so proud of her."

A number of elected officials and candidates were in attendance on Sunday. Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan said the students in the city's public school system represent almost 100 countries of origin, including Ethiopia.

"This is the type of diversity and the type of community we ought to encourage, respect and enjoy in the city of Aurora," he told the packed gymnasium.

Read more: Aurora's Ethiopian community celebrates "culture of sharing" - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_23749376/auroras-ethiopian-community-celebrates-culture-sharing#ixzz2aPbaHrzo
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Vertical gardening to improve Ethiopian diet 

Vertical gardening is an agricultural method that maximizes land use
Photo: Anglican Communion News Service

[Anglican Communion News Service] The Anglican Church in Ethiopia is promoting a unique agricultural practice called “vertical gardening” to combat the region’s high levels of malnutrition due to a lack of variety in peoples’ diets and a shortage of agricultural land.

“Since its establishment, one of the goals of the Gambella Anglican Centre in Ethiopia has been to model small-scale agricultural projects and provide training, so that food gardening can be reproduced across Gambella,” said the Project Supervisor and Area Bishop for the Horn of Africa, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Grant LeMarquand.

The Gambella Anglican Centre is in Gambella Township the capital of Gambella Regional State, located in the western part of Ethiopia close to South Sudan, and is one of the poorest and least developed of Ethiopia’s nine states.

“Local peoples’ land in Gambella is being expropriated leaving them with less land for cultivation,” said the bishop. “Most people in the villages and in the Anglican congregations in Gambella don’t have any substantial land to cultivate and hence the idea of a vertical garden to allow people increase their crop yield within their present land and water constraints.”

“We have also noticed a low level of knowledge about nutrition and the importance of a balanced and varied diet,” observed the project supervisor. “The vertical garden would serve as an interactive learning site where villagers from all over Gambella could learn about easy and sustainable gardening techniques and how to incorporate new fruits and vegetables into their diets.”

A recent study revealed that in some parts of Ethiopia, there is a high frequency of nutritional problems such as rickets, beriberi, pellagra and kwashiorkor especially among children, caused by high levels of malnutrition.

Racked recycled plastic bottles serve as planters. Photo: Anglican Communion News Service

“Each family in the villages has a small plot of land with a ‘security wall.’ This is therefore an ideal starting point for creating and reproducing these gardens around Gambella,” said Bishop LeMarquand.

“Demonstrating how to grow vertical gardens and a wider range of vegetables will also provide us the opportunity to teach nutrition and thereby improve the health and nutritional status of various communities throughout Gambella.”

The Church in Ethiopia intends to conduct prior training for the local community to ensure adequate understanding of this farming method. “The wall at our centre will be divided into sections, and each section will be assigned to a staff member, church member, theological student, or member of the community,” revealed the bishop.

He added:”before the wall is assigned, training will be provided to introduce the vegetables that could be planted, discuss the importance of a varied diet and how they can use their section of the wall”.

The Gambella Anglican Centre, which opened in July 2010, currently hosts the St. Barnabas’ congregation, library facilities, sports programmes, an agricultural program and hosts groups from the community and local churches.

The work of the Anglican Church in Gambella began in the 1990s in refugee camps in the region. Since then, through building relationships with indigenous peoples, the church has grown at a fast rate. There are approximately 70 congregations with about 6,000 people attending each week.