Yesterday I got an email warning volunteers to stay clear of the Arat Kilo and Siddist Kilo regions of Addis Ababa (the capital I just got back from) with a vague warning of disturbances. Got this in my inbox today:
> There are continuing disturbances at the Siddist Kilo and Arat Kilo
> campuses of Addis Ababa University.
>
> The cause for the disturbances is the death on Wednesday of a student from
> food poisoning, and the subsequent post mortem including removal of
> internal organs (conducted without family permission). Federal police have
> entered Siddist Kilo campus and the situation is currently under control.
> Students at the Arat Kilo are engaged in stone-throwing with the police
> and the Dean has been injured.
>
> The Black Lion Hospital has also been the scene of protests.
I am glad that I got this email because a friend of mine is going to Addis and was planning on visiting the Siddist Kilo campus museum while he was there. If I hadn't warned him about this he might have unknowingly walked into the middle of a riot.
It really drives home the lack of a source of news in Gondor and really anywhere outside of Addis Ababa is pretty starved of news. There's no newspaper infrastructure outside of the capital really and what news there is, is mostly state-controlled so certain things are silently omitted. There's the official Ethiopian Herald, which is gov controlled and hasn't been updated online in a couple days, since before this development happened. The independent Sub Saharan Informer is pretty good and in fact carries this story currently, but is only allowed to operate because it is Kenyan based (I believe). I check the BBC pretty regularly, but that only covers big stories and usually a few days after they've happened. Things happen here all the time that would be front page news in Vancouver, but aren't mentioned because of a lack of infrastructure. Incidents such as a lynching that happened in a fellow volunteers town, that he didn't know about until he was asked about it in Addis. It's really appalling to see what happens and goes unheard of in a place without an established press.
1 comment:
It seems any time the BBC website mentions 'Ethiopia', it's reporting on something terrible. The story du jour is how the military is attempting to end a hostage situation at an oil field in the Somali region. I hope you've got some distance from some of this stuff.
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