Movin' On Up

Progression is an inherent aspect of life. Moving up and onward. Growth. Building. Making Strides.

All of the above is what Ethiopian-American musician, Kenna Zemedkun, sought out to do in his quest to raise awareness about the global clean water crisis. He will be leading a team of his friends, including Lupe Fiasco, Jessica Biel, and Elizabeth Gore, on a climb up Mouth Kilimanjaro (the highest mountain peak on the continent of Africa). The documentary of "Summit on the Summit" was covered by MTV on March 14th this month (check out MTV for a repeat!) and in doing so, Kenna is hoping to raise money for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), The Children's Safe Drinking Water Program, and the PlayPumps International.

And how did this all begin? While Kenna himself was born in Ethiopia, he was raised in the American context where the threat of water concerns had not been one of the primary issues that his family had to deal with. His father, on the other hand, knew a plethora of friends and family members from back in their country who had died on account of waterborne illnesses. This is what inspired Kenna to begin his mission, and this is also what is propelling him to continue it.

Please feel free to chime in your thoughts on this subject matter!

Alongside doing so, please feel free to check out http://www.summitonthesummit.com/#/intro where you can follow the crews adventures. In addition, take a look at the video below for what Kenna has to say about his project....and a quick taste of his musical talents!

A Bridge Over the River Nile

The Nile is, perhaps, the essence of the African continent: all of its nuances and sundry distilled and typified into its very being. She is unwieldy, fertile, destructive, glorious and inevitably fraught with political dissent. She is also large – very large. At over four-thousand miles, weaving through nine countries and reaching widths of up to five miles, the Nile is the longest river in the world. As with all of Nature's resplendent wonders, she is closely followed by the adulterating wiles of man. As contentious and volatile as the East African political landscape is, one unwavering constant has remained manifest since time immemorial: life itself heeds the beck and call of the River Nile, with all of her tortuous bends and turns. The undeniable significance of the river adds a further layer of gravitas, transforming what would ostensibly be harmless political squabbles into a matter of life and death.

The Nile sustains over three-hundred million people who reside in and around its Basin, extending from Burundi at its southern-most tip through the entirety of Egypt in the north, splitting into the vast Nile Delta and finally escaping into the vastness of the Mediterranean Sea. The Basin population is expected to double within the next twenty years, creating an unprecedented demand for water in a historically drought-ridden region. Of the 180 countries listed in the World Water Development Report’s ranking of water availability per capita, the Nile countries are conspicuously low: Kenya is ranked 154th, Uganda 115th and Ethiopia 137th, while the downstream nations of Egypt and Sudan are ranked 156th and 129th, respectively.

Burgeoning demographic growth, coupled with dwindling resources, is a recipe for political destabilization and armed escalation. At the heart of the issue lie the timeless truths of the African continent: scarcity, greed and inevitable international intervention. This crisis takes the discerning observer back to 1929 when the Nile Water Agreement, a thorny vestige of the colonial era that still bears legitimacy, was first established. The Agreement, brokered by the British, granted the Nile's downstream nations (Sudan and Egypt) extensive rights over the river's use and, more significantly, exclusive veto power concerning any public infrastructure projects built on or along the Nile by any of the upstream nations, much to the chagrin of countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia. The logic behind their concern is that the unimpeded flow of nutrient-rich river water to the downstream states is threatened by the construction of dams, irrigation canals or hydro-electric turbines further up the river. The Nile's flow adopts a particularly sensitive demeanour in the Egyptian context: the country's sustenance hinges completely on the river and its population lives entirely along its banks as the rest of its territory is composed of the largest desert on Earth. The Agreement guarantees both Egypt and Sudan 56 billion cubic meters of the 74 billion cubic meters that constitute the Nile's total water flow (more than 75% of the total water volume). The upstream states claim that the Agreement rests upon an antiquated division that grants the downstream states a de facto monopoly over the rights and usage of the Nile's waters.

Several feckless attempts at reconciliation have been sought in the eighty-year interim since the Agreement's inception, with the most recent endeavour precipitating in the Nile Basin Initiative of 1993 which sought to "develop the Nile in a cooperative manner, share substantial socioeconomic benefits, and promote regional peace and security." Nonetheless, economic incentives, justified and zealous, die hard. The source-countries of the Nile (Tanzania, Ethiopia and Uganda) have unilaterally embarked upon their own agricultural and developmental infrastructure projects, most notably a 170 mile-long pipeline built in Tanzania, as well as the Tekeze Dam in Ethiopia. While reasonable in their nature, these projects and others like them have had indelible environmental effects on the Nile, most conspicuously in the formation of enormous water reserves which trap nutrient-rich silt necessary for the irrigation of farmlands further downstream. Egypt and Sudan deem any diversion of the Nile as nothing less than an act of war. Exacerbating the issue is the recent involvement of the World Bank in the foray, with the vocal backing of Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Congo. Many of the Nile Basin states view this intervention as a move toward destabilization, in particular on the part of Rwanda and Congo whom the Nile barely grazes. Of course, the downstream nations' vigorous rejection of water diversion is not to be deemed simply as innocent protest. Egypt's agricultural endeavours along the Nile have been marred by their grandiose, embarrassing and ostentatious nature. The earliest of these was Nasser's construction of the Aswan High Dam which resulted in the flooding and mass displacement of 300,000 Nubians. More recently was the Toshka Irrigation Canal Project which sought to construct a colossal artificial artery of the Nile that penetrated directly into the depths of the Sahara, in order to potentially turn the desert into farmable land. The project ended in fiscal, political and social disaster and firmly ingrained the image of Egypt as an irresponsible patron of the Nile in the collective conscience of the upstream states. Perhaps most damning of all were allegations that Egypt sought to create a waterway under the Suez Canal (named the Peace Canal) which would irrigate 600,000 acres of land in Northern Sinai with water from the Nile, and which would ultimately flow into Israel. Needless to say, these rumours struck a particularly contentious nerve among all of the Nile Basin states.

Where does this leave the Basin states? A political stalemate can maintain the semblance of stability for only so long. The conflict holds implications that are all too palpable for the populations of the Nile Basin and cannot continue to remain cordoned off behind the plush walls of foreign ministries and African Union assemblies. The Nile and her abuse are intimately connected to the beating hearts of three-hundred million souls. Compromise can no longer be deemed a lofty ideal, but must be treated as a tangible necessity. The unmoving hubris of the Basin states can only serve to usher in their own undoing.

Recommended Listening: New World Water - Mos Def

Cultural Diffusion: Flowing Both Directions

For many of us coming from immigrant families, we get sick of hearing about kids these days being Americanized...but what about Westerners being Africanized? Check out this video of the Dutch attempting Ethiopian Eskista!



Here's a link to Japanese doing Ethiopian dance...this one is more humorous than it is accurate:
http://www.youtube.com/user/sekaramuleba

Up and Onward with Teddy Afro

There are sounds…and there is music. The latter, in the case of contemporary Ethiopian entertainment would be applied to a multitude of musical artists, but no one can deny the fact that Teddy Afro (real name, Tewodros Kassahun) has embodied what Ethiopian "musica" truly means, and goes beyond it’s definition. This prolific musician has transcended boundaries beyond belief, and has recently found himself in heated controversy surrounding that very dynamism of his work.

To give a brief background on Teddy, it would be useful to understand the types of music from his past album releases and its correlation with the current political scene of Ethiopia. One of his most popular albums, Abugida, built up the anticipation of what was yet to come from this musical phenom as it gave a snippet of the pride that he was going to be invoking amongst his fellow countrymen. Even as an Ethiopian-American at the tender age of eleven years old upon release of this album, I found myself listening to and engaging with this album on repeat every chance that I received, all while singing along to any and every word that I’d be able to latch onto. Belting out beautiful tunes ranging from a tribute to the late Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, in the track “Girmawineto” all the way to “Mona Lisa” which explicated upon the facets of beauty in all of humankind, Teddy Afro was just preparing his world-wide listeners for what they were about to hear…and witness.

Teddy Afro’s audience members were unprepared for the personal connection they received upon pressing play on his next, and third, album, “Yasteseryal”. What made Teddy’s tunes even more inspirational was that at the time of this album’s release, the political scene of Ethiopia was getting even more heated with political controversies that were unveiling itself over the course of the year, as they were, for the most part, tied to the General Election of Ethiopia in 2005. In turn, “Yasteseryal” did not cease in addressing these very pressing issues.

Boiling over with political out roar, “Yasteseryal” was a force, though cliché, to be reckoned with. One of the most famous songs on the album (and self-evidently the name of the album itself), “Yasteseryal,” spoke out against the current political regime all while sparking concern, and in some cases, fear on the part of the governmental officials. This in turn led to it’s (and several other songs on the album) to be banned from publically being aired via television or radio stations.

This controversy, however, seemed to be unceasing. Just shortly thereafter, in 2008, Teddy Afro was accused and jailed for a supposed hit-and-run manslaughter that many speculate to actually be a sentencing in response to his politically charged music and/or his call for unity amongst his Ethiopian kinsmen. Fortunately for Teddy Afro, and his fans across the globe, his sentence was reduced from six to two years; Throughout this time, however, fans were right by his side – though not physically, but definitely mentally and spiritually. I personally remember visiting Addis Ababa during the summer of 2008 and driving past Kaliti Jail (the prison within which Teddy Afro was imprisoned) and experiencing a sense of internal remorse and sorrow. As an eighteen-year-old American-born Ethiopian at the time, I deem that it was, and is, safe to say that Teddy Afro has managed to invoke within his listeners a feeling that cannot be explained by use of mere words found in the average dictionary.

Luckily, Teddy Afro was shortly released approximately eight months earlier than was intended…and his presence was felt on the continent of Africa, all the way to the continent of Asia. He was released with a bang, and the world reverberated with the tunes of Teddy’s re-debut after his highly anticipated prison-release. To this day, Teddy has had concerts all across the world, and one of his most famous shows to date took place at the famous DC Armory to celebrate the beginning of the 2010 New Year. What better way to ring in 2010 than to sway to the words of Teddy Afro’s inspirational music and lyricism…to jump in excitement and bask in the strumming tunes of traditional Ethiopian instrumentation played by the famed “Abugida Band”…or to even delight yourself in the forever-famous “Eskista” dancing with your fellow concert goers? Whatever your reasons for attending this legendary show, you were in for an experience…and one that will never be forgotten.

[On that note – Please enjoy the video provided. One of Teddy's most popular and passionate songs released, “Abebayehosh” gives a small taste of the melodic music that one can enjoy from this world-renowned musician, and that especially complements the New Years celebration…and beyond!]