Burned_Paradise
Burnt paradise
For several years, our coffee shops have had coffee from the Ye Genet farm. I already wrote about it here:
http://gastra.com.ua/en/kofein/blog/dolgaya-doroga-do-raya/
It describes a bit about Ethiopian reality, which I experienced, and heard about, for the time of end of 2019
I had just started to write this when suddenly a Russian missile exploded somewhere nearby and the electricity turned off (as well as in the whole million Kharkiv). I continue writing the very next day, January 15, 2023. Right now in Dnipro, the ruins of the building where another Russian missile hit yesterday, killing dozens of people, are being dismantled.
So many events took place in our country during these three years (and especially during the previous one, 2022) – no need to tell. But yesterday I sat down at the computer with a cup of Ye Genet coffee ("Ye Genet" literally means "Heavenly") to write that this heavenly coffee did not last long. That horrors happen not only here. And that heavenly place from where this coffee came to us - no longer exists. It was burned.
This farm in Guji was owned by Tsegaye Hagos, who is (ethnically) Tigray. Guji is an area quite far from Tigray and is the land of the Oromo people. Ethiopia is a federal state, all the peoples formally have equal rights and, in principle, every citizen can live and work anywhere. So Tsegaye the Tigray, who worked in Guji. But two years ago, political problems (so to say) began in Ethiopia. It is long and complicate to write about the causes of problems. In short, there is a political movement or party called TPLF (Tigray People's Liberation Front). This party has existed since 1975, the TPLF led and expelled the communist rule from Ethiopia and was the ruling party in the country's parliament until 2018. When in 2018 the front began to lose its positions in the parliament and in the management of the country, its leaders went into hard opposition to the central government. And this eventually turned into a war between Tigray (both a region of a federal country and a people) on the one hand, and the Ethiopian government and armed militias from other major nations such as Amhara, Afar, Oromo on the other. This war is no joke. Ethiopia is a heavily armed country. Even Ukraine built a tank repair plant there, worth more than a billion dollars, and sold several hundred tanks there. Well, in general, wars have been going on there for the past decades almost non-stop. A significant proportion, if not most, of the officers in the Ethiopian army, were Tigray. So, one can only imagine what "madness" was going on there, when the army took the order to attack Tigray. Well, this is roughly how it was with us in Crimea, when most of the Ukrainian military could not imagine how it was possible to shoot at a Russian. But now the war in Ethiopia has been going on for two years and the number of its victims is simply terrifying. According to my friends in Ethiopia, as of January 2023, up to 1 million people, including civilians, have died on both sides. Western researchers at this time estimate the total number of dead about 600 thousand people. About half of them are residents of Tigray. Before the war, the population of Tigray was about 4,300,000. Moreover, people die not only from weapons, but mostly from starvation and diseases. That is, there is total terror. As several of my acquaintances told me, Tigray is blocked, there is no supply of anything at all. For two years there has been no electricity, no communication, no medicines, no petrol, no motor transportation, no delivery of food, water supply only in canisters, which have to be brought from somewhere (often many kilometers away). Salt has not been supplied to Tigray for two years, and this has led to serious health problems. Money has lost its meaning, it simply does not exist there. People are dying of starvation. As I was told, when people are hungry and desperate, they eat soup from the ground - it is the soil boiled in water, where there are some roots and some other nutrients. Now, some international charities seem to have arranged some sort of supply of food to Tigray and neighboring war zones, but so far this is very little.
Elsewhere in Ethiopia, outside of Tigray, representatives of these people often become victims of attacks, terror, or harassment and scorn. In some regions where Tigrai live in significant numbers, the government has created camps for them, where they live under security. Of course, the conditions in these camps are far from what one might like. But there, at least people stay alive. The same Tigrai who live separately or in mixed marriages - often become victims of terror or simply bad treatment and are forced to hide their names and appear in public as little as possible.
And in such conditions in the Guji lived the Tigray, 65 years old, 15 of which being refugee - Tsegaye Hagos. He had the fame of a rich and successful person, because he built several world-known coffee mills - Ye Genet, Sasaba, Kutema. Now these mills have been burned, and all the property that was there has been destroyed. Several days ago sad news came again - terrorists killed ten people near his mill in Guji. Tsegaye himself is alive and tries to continue working with coffee in Yirgacheffe, just to live somehow.
After all, life is too short to drink bad coffee. And to eat soil soup...
