Because it is time to say good bye (An expatriate acount of events in Ethiopia)

Because it is time to say good bye.

I have been very silent lately and unusually sad. On September 11th, I left Ethiopia for good.

It does not mean I will never be back, of course I will but not as a resident anymore and I have been busy… mourning.

TPLF or not I would have left anyway

, my husbands’ contract comes to an end and he does not wish to renew it. He says he is tired of distributing perdiem and that his job lost all interest. I should not share this confidence of course, but I consider it interesting.

I do not want to stay either. Honestly, openly criticize the government is too much stress, even for a Ferenj. I am safe and sound but could not have made it longer.
Here am I, closing a marvellous, rich, exciting and privileged part of my life.
My last days were about coffee ceremonies, farewell parties, gifts and tears…
I only have to close my eyes to remember the faces, the smiles, the sceneries, the smells, the savours and I am pretty sure it will last. I left a part of my heart there and brought back instead a tiny part of the country’ soul. I will cherish it.
I am still addicted to Ethiopian News and blogs and will go on struggling here whenever and wherever my presence is required but I will close this page and find alternative ways to contribute. I have been thinking and rethinking for days, I do not feel able to go on. I am not a political analyst or a journalist, I cannot report about what I do not feel or witness and the aim of the diary was reporting about daily events.
I cannot decide whether Timket was quite or tense this year, I used to check by myself but I am quite sure it was not “joyful”.
I left a desperate and angry country, with an exhausted, bitter and hopeless population massively opposing the regime. A country in which the cost of life reached unbearable levels even for middle class families, a police state in which freely express an opinion endangers your life or drives you to prison, a country where young protestors are beaten and shot. I left a jail.
The countdown for TPLF’s end has long begun. The sooner, the better.

A few days before my departure, a young man told me: “Tell them, tell them how it is to live here, tell them what we endure.”

That is what I have been trying to do… Adebabay, Seminawork, Urael and I hope… others… will go on. Please guys, take care, we will watch your back.

Allow me a last thought for all those who have fallen, shot by the blue beasts, all those who have suffered in detention camps, all those who have lost a friend, a child, a relative, all those who are still jailed.
It is only a good bye my friends, I know we will celebrate in Addis when the gang will have fled.



AF