The Renaissance

Tremendous gratification is the standard reaction when one finds ordinary people being delighted in the bright future of Ethiopia and the Ethiopians that vibrates through the vision of hope. For me and my family the last weekend that we spent in Awassa and in one of the Langano resorts were full of experience.
When I was walking with my family in Awassa, in the beautifully lt-up main boulevard of the city, I met a trio of youth at a maize-roasting corner, where one could buy and enjoy roasted maize while strolling. In the walking spree, after talking shortly about the amazing modernization of the city and the new glittering edifices like the Dashen Bank complex, I asked what the Millennium would mean to them. The youngest of them all said that fast development is certain to take place, although the fruits would be uneasy to fetch for the existing generation. His explanation attracted my attention and asked him further where he goes for schooling. He told me he is a student at the Awassa University. As my interest developed further, one of his fellow friends quickly intervened and added that some people take the Millennium as a nebulous feature of human life, while others take it as a kind of infinitum.
I sharpened my discussion Then, and said that I would take the Millennium as a span of time that is measurable in terms of a series of a hundred years or about the age limit of, at least, ten consecutive generations; and added that, unless one would break up the whole spectrum of the Millennium into short plan periods, that the whole aspect of its meaning and development splendor would be lost in the thin air. This time, the third boy spiced the conversation with a vivid color of scholarly impression when he said ‘at least it is the beginning of a period of Renaissance of the bygone Ethiopian civilization, just as Europe had its Renaissance in the 14th, 15th, and the 16th centuries.
A flash of thought captured my senses at this time when in my mind came the words of Sheik Mohammed Hussein Ali Al-Amoudi, who said that he has great hope in the Ethiopian youth. I admired those young boys that I met in the principal city of the Southern Peoples and Nationalities, for their insights and perceptions. I believed that Ethiopia is truly at the threshold of its Renaissance since there are strong aspirations and feelings in the young which will, indeed, find again the bygone glories of Ethiopia.
I believed, too, that the literature, the arts, the architectural designs, the sculptures, the ways of life of the different peoples and races, the beliefs and convictions, the cultures and traditions, attitudes and aptitudes, trade and commerce and merchant shipping, in general, the qualities of a good society that the Austrian Ambassador to the Court of Saint James spoke about in the Summer days of 1963, at the Inner Temple during my youth and brief college years in England, and the rare reference literature that I came across to review at the London School of Political Science and Economics, where I used to frequent as a privileged student of another school, ranking the old Ethiopian civilization side by side with those of ancient China and Persia were true.
Our second encounter was that with the shepherd boys that came out of the woods as we drove in and out of one of the Langano Resorts and swarmed our vehicle in their astonishing manner of merry making only to ask us some writing materials, like a pen or a biro, some of them telling us that they go to school, took away our fear that we were unfairly and insecurely taken over by hooligan kids in the bush and along the sandy road. Yet, the memories of those young lads that we met in Awassa and the little boys that we then met, led me to think that the fresh minds of the Ethiopian youth wherever they happen to be, is far, too far, greater than the saturated and the disillusioned minds of the few big city odds, attuned only to defamation and leg-pulling, Nonetheless, continuous advice is necessary not to allow the fast growth of frivolous members of society.
Why should people, particularly, earnest and dedicated people to the development cause of this country be defamed out of the blue, while there is a simple way of telling them in the face, if they ever make any mistakes? The search of truth, honesty and transparency is the responsibility of the millions young Ethiopians, the future leaders of their country, and the propellants of the Ethiopian Renaissance, as there is no much time left in life for the elderly citizens as Sheik Al-Amoudi rightly underlined.