Liya Endale is a guest blogger for EA4C.com

By Liya Endale

Monday, November 16, 2009

I must have been 21 when I first sensed the peculiarity of the context in which we normally find the word ‘ferenj’. Growing-up in the States, I heard this term used when talking about the strange encounters associated with adapting to a new environment. Due to the redundant insistence of its use, I grew to accept its oxymoronic connotation; the same way we do not question jumbo shrimp, civil war, and bad luck. We re-apply a meaning to these words which have nothing to do with their literal translation. You know what I’m talking about. “Ye ferenj tata aytawekim”, “ye ferenj libs, migib, segur ina qwanqwa”.

We’ve heard it all. Am I right? Next thing you know, you live in New York, Atlanta, DC or LA and turn to your homie to tell him about “the new ferenj dude who moved into the neighborhood”. Beyond its hilarity, I’ve always pondered whether any of us are cognizant of our reference to Americans as foreigners and, by default, reference to ourselves as natives… in America. Then I ask myself; what does this trippy phenomenon really mean?

In this age of technological revolution, our experiences and realities are plucked from a physical plain and manifest through different types of energy; television waves, radio waves, light waves, sound waves, x-rays, skype, Wii, text messages, facebook. Can someone please tell me what the heck the internet is, anyway? Is it like the wind, faith and the Holy Spirit; you see the effects but you can’t touch it? Just 30 years ago, the world would have labeled you insane or possessed if you said a person can be in two places at once. Today, I know a man who has two jobs and is enrolled in a school, simultaneously, across three different continents. I even remember when I played computer games that each had a separate floppy disk and code that I had to learn, teachers actually used chalk boards, and payphones were found on every corner. Instead of texts, we taped notes under desks for our friends who had that class during the next period. In order to participate in something, you had to physically be there.

Today, people have entire careers and obtain complete degrees without ever leaving their house. The latest medical technology allows a computer program to diagnose your ailment just by analyzing your cough… through the phone. You don’t even have to be ‘there’ to make or have a baby anymore. I can’t help but wonder, if we are not ‘there’ anymore, where the heck are we? We no longer inhabit places, but permeate spaces we can not perceive with our senses. There is a space to send mail, transfer money, and even go on a date while you’re in your living room wearing your pajamas and a gabi.

Can it be that our nationality has also transcended a physical location and exists now as a social construct? Perhaps the mass exodus from Ethiopia in the 80’s and 90’s has created a shift in our perception of ‘home’. This perception, which lays dormant in our collective subconscious, grows stronger with each passing decade, with each passing Ethiopian in the States, and with each passing twitter feed. Fed by a prodigious pride pumping through our veins, we tote this perception of home with us to our jobs, churches, and various social interactions all over the globe. We are like the river water that fills the veins of our country’s land; like the water that etched the Great Rift Valley.

From the start of humanity we have carved our presence into earth, history, and now wind- that untouchable manifestation of our presence which knows no limits. Imbirtachin yetekeberebet bota no longer carries the physical border of where we are considered natives.  We do not budge or compromise our identity even as refugees, aliens, or first generation Americans. The crux in this phenomenon lies in the subtle way this stoic mentality creeps from our subconscious minds to our actual lives; as if we accept the role of Dinknesh/Lucy and Ardi, some of the oldest human remains which were found in Ethiopia, in the most literal sense possible. If they were Ethiopian and populated the world, I guess there is no place where we will be ‘ferenj’.

This blog submission was written by Liya Endale.  The views of guest bloggers are not the views of Ethiopian-Americans for Change.  Guest bloggers represent the broad dissection of views and outlooks within our community.