The past can work for us

Let’s begin by citing two examples of intelligent utilization of heritage:

Site A: A rather simple steel girder bridge across Thailand’s Kwai River.
Annual Visitors: Over 3 million in 2006
Significance of site: Australian, British and New Zealand prisoners of Imperial Japan in WWII built the bridge.Thousands persished under brutal forced labor. War memorial, cemetery and the bridge itself are main attractions.
Site B: Taj Mahal, Agra-India
Annual Visitors: Up to 11,000,000
Significance of Site: The splendid edifice is a labor of love. It is a mausoleum containing the remains of the Mughal emperor and of his wife in whose memory it was erected.

What does the Ethiopian experience show?
Very few countries can boast of a historical heritage as robustly endowed as that of Ethiopia. Few nations also, would dare treat such a priceless legacy with the apathy and laid back attitude we Ethiopians display in regard to many if not all things that relate to discovering, identifying, researching, preserving and economically benefiting from our rich past.
For starters, the historic town of Aksum – the epicenter of much of our spiritual and dynastic heritage, has had only 2% of its area of archeological interest excavated. This lack of attention – nay indifference, to one’s very essence as a civilization is inexcusable and can hardly be explained away to limitations of expertise and/ or resources. That has been the one size fits all justification for all our shortcomings.
Surely though, the national indifference to our history, a subject foreign scholars devote entire careers to, cannot match the incredible negligence by the relevant bodies who are responsible for the spot in Hadar, Afar where Ethiopia’s (and the world’s) most valued archeological discovery – Dinkenesh (Lucy) was found. This location has brought immense pride to Ethiopia as the cradle of humanity, yet it is not marked by even a pile of stones or a lone twig. Other nations would have built not only a monument but the entire tourism infrastructure for a place that can potentially draw tens of millions of tourists. As we saw above, if a mere bridge and a beautiful palace can attract that many visitors then Hadar should have been the epicenter of world tourism.
Ethiopia is a country rich in legacy. So rich in fact that it has preferred it seems, to let the rest of the world keep wondering about what it holds under its denuding top soil, entombed in its myriad caves, monasteries, island refuges and other repositories – discovered or not.
What is the past but a window on the present and a glimpse into the future? The past remains alive in the collective memory though the individuals and groups that wrote it have long carbonized, becoming ingredients of the environment we are so recklessly destroying. All is not lost however.
There are many steps that we can take to instill a new sense of national responsibility of the significance of all aspects of our heritage. The steps we propose below are not earthshaking in their novelty – they have been conducted by many nations and have been proven to raise awareness - leading to billions of dollars in tourism income. Nations with precious little are reaping the benefits that Ethiopia has long denied itself, knowingly or not.

* Drop the 13 Months of Sunshine motto and devise a new
one. It has negative connotations of scorching sun induced
drought and has out lived its usefulness.
* Put signage on roads and at significant locations.
* Implement hassle free travel procedures for tourist traffic.
* Devise incentives for tour operators on a par with exporters
and other sectors presently being encouraged.
* Reduce burdensome taxes on imported equipment to help
develop tourist infrastructure.

We say it is time to make the past work for our future.