It was right after I was glued to the press conference given by the Minister of Education last Monday. It must have been the reason I was so angry, fogged up with the returning Addis fog, a paradox that had me going out for a walk to reminisce about my childhood. It stuck long in my mind when this Minister would finish his probation. You may think that I am joking, but I was serious that I was thinking about what he promised us: at least 20 percent of the high school leaving exam takers would end up in the universities and colleges. It was then I started to feel the cold with the jittery down the spine, a cold emanating from the numbers he brought us. Even the thought of being burnt out struggling with a nation that ended up with an average exam score of 30 percent is the same like the high school teachers’ average score that was scored on their subjects. Whereas no student managed to pass from fifty percent of our high schools. For some reason, first I thought if our sense of numbers is indeed topsy-turvied, as the Germans say when someone’s numbers are out of whack. It reminds me of Hadis Alemayehu.
During the Imperial era, he was offered the highly not sought-after yet immensely necessary education minister portfolio. He declined because he claimed he was not given the right budget. Then I started to mutter, “Who was that?” A lawyer himself said that they are people whose profession is to disguise matters, of the kinds of a “let the buyer beware” abracadabra. I was happy that I wasn’t one, and anything about education should not be like one. Mine is, just a been-there, done-that kind of memoir. Uscuse-me-people is a South African dubbing as to educated black professionals or white-collar workers who are not in touch with the problems of the people.
Just this thought scared me and the sudden mention of the word probation reminded me of our lack of a sense of what it means. Some of the accolades attached to STEM kinds of attachment to beautiful words, with names as beautiful as Kotebe and Gondar and the almost established color attached to the boarding schools. It shows nothing other than how much we are left with our own probation indeed compared with the minister. I indeed started to envy him with words very tough to put. A simple comparison: why once that colorful profession in being a teacher nosedived in the echelon of our weird rank of profession, it has indeed been an epitome of our being not fit to be considered for the word probation. No doubt a country is nothing other than the prestige it attaches to its Teachers.
As the day was Monday I was planning not on the issue of kings, with a bit of a sense of being relaxed and thinking about cabbages. However, even it in its turn never allowed me to stay relaxed. I have a Sumaro Gomen road side seller customer. For the last 10 years at least. She made me so angry that I was nearly in a position no more to buy from her. Two or so months back while walking in the vicinity of where I live, I asked one of the roadside hucksters how much a usual kind of wrap cost. The response indeed fumed me, not at the woman, but aimed at my usual customer. The money I am paying her is nearly a third of what I was requested to pay there. Here the business as usual from my side of the bargaining was indeed was almost stupid that signified as I have been buying almost for free. A bit ending making me a bit angrier this thought of the quest not to care about issues of kings I said to myself whether it is about cabbages or kings thinking about writing is the same. The same, looking cabbages than kings, worrying about odds and ends, anything and everything, of Lewis Carroll’s, through the looking glass, the time has come, as the Walrus said, to talk of many things, of shoes and ships, and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot… A very great return… Sumaro…
The Monday fog in Addis, it’s a real thing. Even when I was a kid the “Kiremet” in Addis was intimidatingly bleak or black, in its own way. The opening of school, with the promotion to a higher grade, was indeed something to be craved, as with the sun. It gets in your head, turns the city into a memory palace. Oops! The ice… Kiddie whippersnapper days! It was all color, the paper powder we used to buy from Piazza, Arada, around the British Council, from the sons of Arada, wrapped with papers including tracing designs of angels… Drawings of watercolor gift papers to be presented to neighbors… Things usually never go as planned, a tin of this color could run away to end up on the floor as the other one only to the table. No brush, just fingers, cleaning the nose with the same hand, while searching for items in the pocket, then winding up a finger or two to the wall, and it was all a mess, yet multicolored… Exercising scientific knowledge from school, the troublesome “what color mixes with what,” on things other than the not-a-second-chance-giving dear white paper, finishing up in a mess here and there, fuming my mom.
Just on the long-awaited day, it is after all a New Year’s Day, was it because our source of live music was almost nonexistent, or the girls were better primed with thoughts flocked? I feel my childhood days’ “Abebyehosh” of the girls was so poles apart from… their being there with explosive vibrant brand new clothes, a kind of a mesmerizing with flight afar colorful melody. It was all colors, a splash of kids all in brand new multi-hued clothes running here and there with New Year well wishing gift papers, shops full of lottery balloons and sweets as well as toy guns… Then adults in all snow white Ethiopian “Shemma” dresses and sandal shoes, luminously sparkling with the sun…
It hassles me now, was the sunshine of my childhood any different from today? As it is a strong black “kremit” that is showing signs of return. I guess so. Popping up by an all smiling neighbor’s house to proudly present water paint with an explanation if needed, with a delayed rather extended child speech, the sound of the coins… A wild dash to Aurora to an ice cream. Otherwise the other days it was, to Bejirond Bekele Building, a fish mongering Greek lady, ice lollies, color varying with the days… Do I ever forget the ice cream motherly woman of Aurora, its machine as I always wondered how it works, the drooling umpteen days, an utter luxury. Who had a refrigerator then in our quartier, no one except the few bars and a grocery…?
As the days coincide with the opening of the schools. Do I remember my first day at school? Tough question. But yes. With a photographic recall. No cap. I’m a person with trouble remembering numbers—phone numbers, license plates, even my own address. But this day? It lives in my head, a kind of lifelong probation period that started right there and is still going strong. It began with a brand-new, sparkling blue “Tesfa Gebre Selassie Ze Behere Bulga fidel gebeta.” Glued to a piece of wooden board with a bit of a pointer from the straw roof of our neighbor’s petite cottage house—the last of its kind in Addis. A singular moment of beauty.
And then the school itself. It was giving unconnected concoctions. A mud wall, shredded to pieces so you could see the outside through it. A lean-to with a floor that was just… outside. A once-kitchen with a corrugated roof. Chock-full of kids, all in the midst of an ear-splitting tumult. I unloved it. Merely put. I was a backbencher, while my equals sat on improvised Italian-era huge inch pipes cut and placed on two piles of stones. Only me and a few other “starters,” the rest were up the ladder on aged wooden benches.
An uphill exchange of blows versus a mastery of 26 alphabetical characters. The vowels multiplied by signs, apiece with seven forms, ending up being 182. A ridiculous, out-of-place conundrum. It was dreadfully away from uncomplaining, as though I was thrown to a kid-overflowing pit. Our “Yeneta” was reading the unusually pronounced characters meaning barren.
Before this, I was a sort of unimpeachable prince in my “Cartier.” My whole world was spinning on my whims, a kind of heart-of-interest with a gratis pass around. Why was my day-by-day love, life, and splendor-embroidered usual to come to its ending? It was Napoleon’s instantaneous from the sublime to the ridiculous, only without the historical significance. The school presented to me a sight of a bunch of shoulder-to-shoulder chained kids, in a shack relentlessly moving up and down, in synchrony noising strange blubber. As if that wasn’t enough to put up with, Yeneta’s cracking whip enveloped me in a quiver. I thought, “This is not for me.” All the way there, no more than through my mom’s back, I was at school, crying like a madman. Only to be bunged by Yeneta. And the whole time, our community’s “Iddir” has other priorities—weddings and death—as it’s only the two that ever matter.
Even the Minister’s assertion that kids from the poor have nothing other than their education further fogged my mood and tried to reminiscence the past.
You wanna talk about vibes? I’ve never seen a happier pack of people in my life. The energy was just… it. The message is clear, or at least, it should be: good students are happy, and very good students are very happy. And all within the confines of their studies, mind you. They’re not just faking it for a bit; they’re genuinely thriving. It’s not some fleeting, fifteen-minute fame. This isn’t just a mood, it’s a whole life.
This stands in stark contrast to the sheer, unadulterated absurdity of those who chase the aesthetic of intelligence without doing the work. It brings to mind Tennyson bindings, a 19th-century expression that screams affectation. The story of the nouveau-riche matron who thought Tennyson was a color, not an author, is, frankly, a whole clown show. And then there’s chewing gum millionaire William Wrigley, who had his secretary buy books “by the yard,” demanding “snappy red and green books with plenty of gilt lettering.” It’s giving “all style, no substance.” And while Lady Gough’s etiquette book advising against placing books by married male authors next to female authors is low-key a joke, it’s still more original than buying a library based on its color scheme.
The irony is not lost on me. In this bizarre, theatrical production of life, some people are trying to fill the bill of “intellectual” by dressing the part. They want the approbation of being cultured, the garland of praise, but they’re building their entire identity on a nugatory foundation. They’re creating a façade, a front that hides a profound intellectual emptiness.
But the truly happy ones, the genuinely successful ones, don’t need to do any of that. Their joy and their knowledge are a proficuous state, a benefit to themselves and to everyone around them. Their success isn’t just a brief moment in the sun; it’s a lasting legacy. They are not chasing the aesthetic; they are living the reality. And for that, I can’t help but feel a deep, abiding respect. They understand that a beautiful mind is built with hard work, not with books you buy by the yard. This is in reminiscence of what the rich kids miss.
The whole thing is a circus, a bizarre comedy written by a scholiast trying to explain an impossible text. We’re just watching from the sidelines, providing our own aperçu on the mess. And it’s all so sad, really. It’s like we’re all in a play, a dido, seeking thrills and spills, while trying to descant on a topic that’s already beyond us. We want to be excellent, to be of the first water, but we are left with nothing but our own realpolitik, our decisions based on a harsh reality.
But as I said, the numbers don’t lie. They fill the bill with a chilling competence. And the Minister stands there, a glossator trying to explain a text he himself doesn’t understand. The students, the teachers, the country itself—they’re all just a part of the audience, watching this performance of failure. The only approbation to be had is the cold, hard fact of what’s been lost. The numbers are speaking, and their words are an epigram—a witty, concise, and painfully accurate summary of the whole situation.
And here it is, the chilling, horrifying, and utterly ridiculous truth, the dramatic climax of this bizarre narrative. It’s not the Minister on probation, it’s not the students on probation, it’s not the teachers. It is about a nation and all the words used about its failers in an education system that is, in a way, giving an encomium to what is really a tragedy.
The memory hit me, unbidden. A visit to a public school. I always find the term topsy-turvy, as if the others are private and this one is just… out there. Floating. As I entered the compound, I saw them. Three boys and a girl. They formed a kind of diamond-shaped square, kicking a ball clockwise. It was a game so simple it felt ancient, close to our days of “mitetrosh.” Amidst the general chaos, this was the only game the school seemed to afford.
I was approaching, heading straight for the girl. She was supposed to kick the ball to the boy in front of me, the one who seemed to be the main character of the whole show. And then… she just banana-shot it to the other direction. No cap, a move so unexpected it felt like a glitch in the simulation. The tantrum that followed from the boy, who had a complete meltdown, was next level. She was off her rocker, pointing at his head.
The girl, in that moment, scored the at-most grade. Not in civics, not in “aptitude,” but in the art of existence. It was so encouraging for a person like me. It made me want to go to a school nearby, even once in a while. To help kids cross roads. To clean the compounds. To garden. A grand, cinematic montage of altruism.
Of course, none of that ever materialized. The plan was to start every other week. A solid plan. The words just ran around in my head, a useless chorus. The girl’s defiance was a moment of action, a fleeting triumph. My reaction was just more words. More approbation for a future me that will never exist. The real failure wasn’t the system’s test scores; it was my own. It’s what you call a public service announcement on a failer. My own self.
The memory hit me, a specific person from a specific time. I replaced him at a job in the water sector. It wasn’t because my employment was tied to his resignation. He just… moved on. To bigger things. Ethiopian Airlines, the Sheraton, the American Embassy. No cap, a career glow-up.
But the connection that stuck in my head, the real vibe, was the Sheraton. Back when he helmed Human Resources there, the hotel would look after student stationary when the school year began. The school was Beyene Merid, now called Edget Behiberet. A small act, but it lived in my head.
That was just the warm-up, though. The memory that lives rent-free in my head, the one I’m writing with tears of… well, happiness is the only word that works, is about Engineer Tadesse of Berta Construction. His company built this marble-clad building that is now standing in my old school. He was an alumnus. He just… did it. No fanfare. It stands there now, a physical monument to a single person’s “thank you.”
And I have no word for it. It’s a cliché, I know, but it’s true. I have absolutely no word. The whole scene—a high-flying HR guy remembering student supplies, a construction mogul building a monument to his childhood—it’s all a study in contrasts. A chaotic system, and then these random, beautiful acts of grace that almost make it bearable.
I was told to expose what the words say about the failures in our education system. And the thing is, the word isn’t failure. It’s the silence that follows. It’s the moment where you have no word for it. The system fails so spectacularly that a single, selfless act of an individual becomes a monumental, almost incomprehensible event. Tadesse’s building isn’t just a building; it’s a critique. It’s a beautifully, perfectly-done piece of art standing in a world that’s so broken it can only be described as a failure. And my writing about it, my putting it down as a “piece” here, is just me trying to find the words to describe a success that should never have had to be so grand to be noticed.
A chat with a young woman forced into medicine—with no will to do it—brought me right back to my final employer. A boss so gripped by “think differently,” without giving any credit to Steve Jobs, he was truly a bonkers human. His insults were “analysis,” his employees “mobile boxes.” He’d boast about being an atheist while trying to build a church to “snatch all the tits and bits about people.” The logic was a void.
His acid tongue, a human flesh chopper knife, would relentlessly slash anyone with a new idea. Meetings were centrifuge sessions, designed to crush expired experts for no reason at all. He wasn’t a manager; he was a black hole. He’d suck the vitality from new idea dynamos, shrinking them into Muppets. The horrifying part? The system’s rules didn’t matter. The words did. He’d just label his failures as something else, as “success.” It was a kind of slavery that was never abolished. It was a probation that never ended.
This whole vibe brings me back to my college obsessions: the will to work and the eternal beginner syndrome. I’d mutter that second one all the time: you can’t start now and then; you can’t be an eternal beginner. No cap. But my last company was a place where both were utterly disregarded. The company was fubared, a higgledy-piggledy structure with a workforce amassed with connections that utterly lacked the will to work.
And that’s the rub. The company wasn’t just fubared; it was a catechization nightmare where words ceased to mean anything. Employment became a chair. Probation became a sentence. The ultimate, crushing failure? It was the moment the will to work became a hollow phrase, a dead language no one spoke anymore. A kind of slavery that was never abolished, a probation that never ended. For real.
Andy Warhol said, “In the future everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes.” The leader of the pop art movement died 55 years ago and he is still world famous, as are his words. It reminded me of a story I was told, one I’ve never been tired of telling others, about my high school days. We used to walk through its snowy marble and wonder at the black building, with ample open spaces, an edifice so amazing it felt like a foundation for more than just a school. It was a foundation for the misfits, the indisputable pioneers, the construction entrepreneurs of this country.
It was the 1960s. Young engineers were certain to get employment. An assignment to a certain government ministry to look after its buildings’ maintenance work. Two budding engineers came together, schoolmates whose visions were on the same wavelength. They used to discuss their future and agreed they had to find a way to become fully fledged Civil Engineers, to go through it from soup to nuts. After graduation, the only chance they had was for one of them to leave his prestigious job to join a now-Ethio Telecom main office building construction site as a daily laborer. Getting an engineering job there was absolutely unimaginable. It was a long shot, a gamble on a future guaranteed only by the income from one of them. The one whose name my memory failed me to remember was hired as a laborer and soon promoted to a carpenter’s assistant for his exactitude and attitude. He went through every cycle of the foundation’s construction.
The rest is history. This, matter-of-factly, is the story of Berta Construction, of Engineer Birhanu Abate and Tadesse Haile Selassie. They built confidence as engineers and became pioneering construction entrepreneurs in Ethiopia, with an immense, illimitable paradigm shift, inspiring generations. Not a dry seat in the house. Kale.
There’s the rub. Though Shakespeare didn’t invent the expression (it was old when he used it) he did make the words famous in Hamlet’s soliloquy: To be or not to be. That is the question. To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub. The rub in the phrase means “the difficulty,” and it perfectly sums up the situation. The difficulty is this: We pretend that a happy, successful life is just a matter of checking boxes, of getting the right scores, of filling the bill. But what if the whole thing is just…a vibe?
It looks like our Minister of Education, with his dry wit, has hugely extended our probation. Or maybe he has shown us that probation is the essence of our being. Let me assist him. I had a chance to be in one of the most colorful places in Addis: Black Lion Senior Secondary School. An Italian-era architectural wonder transformed into a color marvel by the French. I had a chance to be in the school’s first special class for a while. It was a joke. It was indeed a joke where you never wanted to leave. It was as funny as to not want to leave school.
Young souls from Agazian, groomed by Berhe—whose school was nationalized and he was retained as a director—with names like Abdulkadir, Yared, Huda, and Samrawit. Felegeyordanos the same way, run by Sisay, with front-seating, always-smiling names like Hiwot, Yamrot, Abaynesh, most certainly Mammo Wudneh’s daughter. There was one named Etsegenet, who told us a story for an hour in English while chaining and unchaining her long hair. And then came the big man cloaked in a boy, younger than me but I bet he was a grown-up, his name was Mengistu, the top student. And our no-nonsense Math teacher Dejene’s son, Michael from Edget Behiberet. It was indeed fun to come to school. Mind you, our home room teacher was Alemayehu, a tough, fluid English-speaking teacher who used to be an Administrator of Adwa just a few years before. And we had a physics teacher, Hailu, if not mistaken. Can anyone imagine physics being that funny?
Here’s the bottom line: I have never seen happier people in my life than this pack. The message needs to be clear: good students are happy, and very good students are very happy, still within the boundary of their studies. And as almost all of them did, they are now successful not only for fifteen minutes, though. It’s not about the Tennyson bindings—that 19th-century expression for faking culture. It’s not about William Wrigley buying books by the yard, demanding “snappy red and green books with plenty of gilt lettering.” That’s just for show, a shallow performance to impress people who are probably just as shallow. Lady Gough’s absurd advice about separating books by married male and female authors is a whole mood, honestly. It’s peak futilitarianism, a desperate attempt to impose order on a chaotic, unfeeling universe.
And that’s the rub. We’ve been chasing approbation for so long, a formal expression of praise that ultimately means nothing. We’ve been living in a world of floccinaucinihilipilification, deeming everything worthless unless it fits a narrow, predetermined definition of success. But the people who are genuinely happy, the truly successful ones, are the ones who found joy in the process itself. They are the ones who transcended the superficial and found something worthwhile. The rub isn’t the difficulty in achieving success; the rub is in accepting that all our grand systems and rules are just dross—worthless matter—if they don’t lead to genuine happiness. The very existence of these happy people is a quiet protest, a beautiful act of rebellion against a world obsessed with appearances. They are the living embodiment of a truth too simple and too painful to acknowledge: all our struggles and all our rules might be for nothing. The happiest people are just living their best life, proving that the real prize was the rub all along.
Contributed by Tadesse Tsegaye