It was just a normal Thursday, but in the back of my mind, something was bugging me. My writing for tomorrow was giving me major anxiety. The weather was a whole vibe, but my plans for a chill walk got ruined.
First off, there was this whole saga about the LegaDembi gold strike. The senior geologists were low-key salty because it was too easy, saying it didn’t build character or “true geologists.” Apparently, an easy win isn’t a win at all. Then, a message got sent to the Adola station about a small part of the microwave telephone system getting fried. But then, it got passed down the chain, and by the time it hit Addis, the intel was that the entire LegaDembi site was lost in a fire. The game of telephone went from a minor L to a full-blown national crisis, sparking a whole emergency response team to drive all night just to check. The whole thing was a clown show, honestly.
And get this, out of all the anecdotes my brain dredged up, this one and a bizarre one from the old Ethiopian police files were the only survivors. The rest just vanished. The other story was about a mule bought at a border post that straight-up died. When the radio message was sent, the sender just said the mule was dead. The receiver, being a literal king, asked “why?” The sender’s response was peak: “We never asked it, and it didn’t say anything.” The sheer absurdity of it is a whole vibe.
It’s all a bit of a mood, really. We’re just out here, getting all fogged up by rules and regulations, just like that Faulkner quote says. We invent so many systems and then get lost in them. It’s giving “anvil chorus”—everyone piling on with their collective criticism. It’s like we’re constantly waiting for some “most propitious moment” to act, but all we get is chaos and a dead mule that wasn’t about to give an exit interview. It just goes to show you, sometimes it’s the little things, the tiny, almost pointless details, that stick. It’s a small-stakes game, and maybe that’s the point. It makes perfect sense that Guy de Maupassant called writing a “little endeavor,” because in the grand scheme of things, what is any of this but a piece of yarn? Better to have something than nothing. It reminds me of the days we’d hunt for the fresh, whitish draft beer instead of the brownish kind, a whole quest for a minor difference due to electric power rationing. And then you remember how a “little” river near from the MelkaWakana hydroelectric plant, that no one even thought about, threw a tantrum and caused a massive power shortage. It’s all so silly now, a total joke.
It all came down to the little things, you know? After the whole mental firestorm, it’s just what was left. I have to give credit to Guy de Maupassant for saying writing is a small effort. When someone asked him to prove it, he just picked up a “piece of string” off the ground. That’s a whole mood. For real. I just figured, something is better than nothing, right? It was wild because that’s exactly what I was left with. So much had disappeared, but the little that remained was starting to feel… bigger. It was getting to me.
It reminded me of the good old days when we’d chase the fresh, pale draught beer, leaving the brownish stuff for the posers. A low-key quest for something that wasn’t that different. But here’s the glow-up: the brownish beer was from yesterday, just like a draft thought or a piece of writing. The fact that a single day can make something feel so different is not lost on me.
That little river reminded me of another one, this sad-looking inner-city stream. Before all the new development, it was notorious for its foul odor and for cutting off a road after a heavy rain. I used to walk this young engineer home from our string instrument class. She lived near Kotebe, and every time, her vibe would get all messed up by that river. She told me where the repugnant smell came from, and she’d always complain about headaches. It’s funny, the smell goes away sometimes, but then it comes back. The weird part is, when it gets foul now, it reminds me of her, and what was left on the back of this young soul just from school.
My whole thing with airplanes started back in fourth grade. Our teacher was trying to explain how a plane flies. With this weird, slow speech, he said the little wings open and shut, just like a bird. I went home feeling like I had just unlocked a major life secret.
By fifth grade, we were on a whole quest for a closer look. We’d walk for weeks to get near the airport. The first time we saw a jet on the ground, some of us almost passed out. This was after we had already seen helicopters and small planes at the old airport near where we lived. After a while, it was just our regular spot, like a second home. We’d chill out at this crashed DC-3. Over time, that experience proved my fourth-grade teacher was totally wrong about the bird-wing theory.
Years later, I attended this MIT class, and that’s when I finally got it. This young Indian professor was explaining the principles of flight. She was a genius. She explained it so clearly that even someone who knows nothing about flying could get a practical understanding. She was so lucid and on point that she also stressed the importance of knowing what’s real and what’s fake, especially with all the online content out there. It’s no surprise that at MIT, the students are giving equally amazing answers to every question the professors pose.
But, you know, it wasn’t a hundred percent perfect. Some of the answers from the class were straight-up dumb, and she was not having it. She was fuming. She said a lot of that flawed science is just spreading on the internet, and she put it so well. Her whole rant was about this misrepresentation mingy—a portmanteau of “mean” and “stingy” that came from the visual marketing industry. It’s basically a fancy way of saying people are stingy with the truth. This was all on a YouTube video from MIT itself.
Then my mind went to the word “ayerwoled,” which is the Amharic equivalent of “air-born.” This one professor, Getachew Haile, once said that word was so wrong because he wasn’t in his office that day to offer a better translation. It reminded me of the word “telegraph.” This dude Claude Chappe invented it in 1792 and wanted to call it a “tachygraphe,” but someone told him to call it a “telegraphe,” from Greek words for “afar” and “to write.” Or “cablegram,” from Latin and Greek. Scholars hated it, but it stuck. Same with “telegram,” a “barbaric new Yankee word” that beat out the “proper” “telegraphemie.” It’s just a reminder that the best words are often the weird, improperly formed ones.
It made me mad, honestly. I wish I knew what word that professor would choose for “project.” I think “zemecha” is a better fit. Then I got all huffy and started to get mad at the Minister of Education for not making us cry with what he brings us. If I remember correctly, only 30 percent of high school teachers passed the exams on their own subjects. It’s all a bit absurd, isn’t it? The world is run by people who don’t know what they’re doing, and we’re just here, watching it all fall apart.
Ages ago in my French studies, as I struggled in my bases, a young highly confident woman joined us. She was a wonderful addition to our class. After a bit of a struggle she all of a sudden picked up and sad but true was told by our teacher it was not worth having her in the classroom. As we regretted her really missablepresence with coffee. She told me that when she did her first degree in International relations French was her minor glittering on her first degree. She used to wonder how she was going to convince some one most probably in job interviews how the French is forgotten.
Okay, so picture this: ages ago, the Netherlands was just doing too much. They found this massive natural gas field in the North Sea, and suddenly, they were, like, flush with cash. But here’s the tea: all that easy money messed them up. It made their currency, the guilder, way too strong, which made their other exports, like cheese and tulips, super expensive on the global market. They were getting so much income from the gas that they didn’t need to put in the work for other industries. It was giving lazy vibes.
This whole situation became known as the “Dutch disease.” It’s basically a cautionary tale about how a natural resource boom can wreck your economy. It’s a real paradox, you know? The thing that’s supposed to be a glow-up ends up being the reason for your downfall.
It’s all a bit absurd when you think about it. The country gets a massive W, and all it leads to is a national L. They basically sat there, watching their other industries wither away while they just vibed off the gas money. It was a whole lot of nothing happening, which, you know, is a mood.
But now? The plot twist is epic. The Dutch are no longer giving “sick and struggling.” They’re giving “model European.” They went from being the poster child for a resource-cursed economy to a whole new flex. They learned their lesson, I guess. They focused on building a super strong, diverse economy that isn’t just dependent on one thing. They’re now known for being a global hub for logistics, tech, and innovation. They’re all about that circular economy and being on the front lines of sustainable energy. They’ve become a whole example, a cautionary tale that got its act together.
It’s almost laughable. We were all watching them, waiting for the inevitable collapse, and they just… didn’t. They picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and now they’re living their best life, being a beacon of economic sense. It’s like, we were all waiting for the punchline, but the joke was on us. They’re out here thriving while we’re still trying to figure out if we’re even here. The Dutch disease? More like the Dutch cure.
My brain just went… poof. Like, the word project just hit me, and it’s a whole lot. It’s giving outgrowth and retroject. It’s the future and the past, all at once. You retroject, you analyze what already happened, trying to figure out the chaos after the fact, right? But then you project, you plan for what’s next. It’s a futile, Sisyphean task, this constant planning. But maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s fructuous, a whole productive journey.
Then my mind goes to the people involved. The plunderbund—all those exploiters and their pointless, mug’s game of a project. But on the flip side, you’ve got people with spizzerinctum, that pure, unadulterated energy and will to succeed. The whole thing is a fool’s errand, an utterly bootless mission. But what if it’s not? What if it’s proficuous, a totally useful and advantageous endeavor?
It feels like this top-hamper of bureaucracy and useless stuff is always in the way, right? It’s all just inanition, a lack of energy. But then someone comes along with that brio, that lively, energetic spirit, and they just vivify the whole thing. The project is an outgrowth, a product of all this effort, a yielding of something new. But it could also just be a nonentity, a hollow, insubstantial thing.
So you’re trying to transvaluate it, to assess it by a new standard. But maybe you’re just getting all fogged up, lost in the weeds. Is it a phrontistery, a place for deep study and thought? Or is it just another futilitarian delusion, an exercise in futility? You’re out here trying to assay the whole thing, to evaluate it, but you’re just left with questions. What’s the point of it all? Is it something, or is it nothing? A vermiform appendix, a useless appendage. Or is it a vital part, the essential nature of something?
It’s a vicious cycle, you know? The beginning, ab ovo, and then the end, the evanesce of it all. It’s all so immiscible and yet coadunate, these two concepts of creation and destruction, coming together in this one word. The only real move is to just keep going. It’s absurd, this continuous motion, this back and forth. But what else is there? It’s a project. And it’s… nothing.
It’s wild, the ripple effect of a good idea. This one dude, a leader, had this vision—a whole provocation—that played on his people’s pride and sensitivity. And it worked. The next decade was a whole vibe, with wealthy nobles and real estate companies, some with mixed Italian-Ethiopian-Eritrean capital, popping up everywhere. They were building commercial spots and housing, which created a whole new market. The demand for these new places went through the roof. The locals were on a whole new level of ambition, trying to get that new, more qualified lifestyle.
At the same time, all these international agencies, especially the UNECA, were setting up shop, bringing in a massive wave of officials who needed places to live. Soon enough, the city started to look like what he had envisioned. It was on its way to becoming a metropolis and the moral capital of Africa.
I got a glimpse of this vision when, during the final phase of a building’s construction, he wanted to climb to the top. We went up to a ledge, forty meters off the ground, where you could see the whole city. It was a whole moment. He started pointing out all the new developments emerging from the sea of eucalyptus trees and the tin roofs of the old houses. He was talking with such passion, so lost in his vision, that he forgot we were in a super sketchy spot. When he turned to go back, he started walking diagonally across a rickety, thin temporary plank.
It was a total “blink and you’ll miss it” situation. My instincts just took over. I grabbed his arm, hard, but then I let go just as fast. The planks were swaying with every step he took. It was a whole nightmare. Luckily, he was so light that it wasn’t a total disaster. The craziest part? We were alone. No witnesses. And this was just weeks after a failed coup attempt, with everyone talking about foreign involvement. The vibes were not it.
This memory led me to another, about the Africa Hall project. We were a little over a month from a major international conference. He came to the site right after he got back to the city, following a whole coup attempt. People were on their knees in the streets, a total tear-jerker. His return was enough to calm a city that had been in chaos for three days straight.
When he came to the site, he went straight to the top floor, to the edge of the front terrace, to get away from his guards. He looked at me and said, in French, “I am in your hands.” Then he explained that the conference, with 32 African heads of state, was already scheduled, and the thought of the project not being finished in time was really getting to him. He said it would be a disaster for the country’s reputation. His raw honesty was a lot to handle, and it made me feel the pressure. We tripled our efforts, and by some miracle, we finished on time. The conference was a huge success.
Before all that, I remember a dark, rainy afternoon when he first brought up the idea of building a place for African leaders to meet periodically. “The future of the African people is precarious if we don’t unify our intentions and coordinate our goals.” The memories just keep coming: the project models, his afternoon visits, his passion for every little detail. Right up to the final days, when we put up the big marble plaques at the entrance with Amharic and English inscriptions. He saw them and had the names of the minister and other officials cut off. He asked, “What did they do?”
The most surreal memory, though, was about the City Hall project during a decentralization attempt. We had built this massive model—so big it needed its own room. He was ready to start construction and asked me about the bureaucratic preliminaries. I told him the municipality had created a commission for the final decision. He cut me off with this look of bitter, ironic pity. “A commission? You’re stuck in a real hornet’s nest.” That said it all. It was a perfect, absurd, and cynical summary of how he really felt about the whole mess. This from a project or zemecha school of HIM and Arturo Mezzedemi.
Back in the day, when I was in ninth grade, Ethiopian Radio dropped a total surprise on us: this guy, MesfinHabtemariam. His voice and his stories were a whole vibe. I, for one, was in the deep end, drowning in the abracadabra of “phylum cordata” and all that Latin nonsense. It was peak struggle.
Years later, in college, my curiosity got the better of me. I heard this guy used to complain that his weekly deliveries were taken for granted. People just assumed he’d just spin a tale on the fly. It’s a whole mood, honestly. Like, you put in the work, and they think it’s just effortless. He was worried people didn’t appreciate his grind, but he also had this chill vibe, like, “My time will come.” And it did. His work lives on, even if we never got as much of him as we wanted.
But that’s the thing, right? What made something like rote memorization of biology fun? The whole Linnaean system, for example. It’s a whole lot of Latin names, but at its core, it’s a masterpiece. This person, Carl von Linné—or Carolus Linnaeus if you’re feeling fancy—was basically a prodigy. He was so obsessed with flowers that they called him “the little botanist” when he was just a kid. By the time he was 28, he dropped his SystemaNaturae, and just like that, he became the OG of taxonomy.
His system, with its two-name Latin labels, gave scientists a way to actually organize the world. He was out here naming thousands of plants, animals, and minerals. He was the one who dubbed us Homo sapiens. It’s all a bit absurd when you think about it: one dude, with a love for flowers, creates a whole framework for life on Earth. He named plants after their characteristics, or famous people, or the people who found them. It’s wild that his designations still hold up. He died at 71, and his garden is still a pilgrimage site.
It makes me think of something else that seems simple but is a whole mood: trigonometry. An airplane can’t even take off or land without it. And today, with AI and robotics, it’s a whole foundational thing. The simple act of measuring angles and sides of triangles is literally what makes all this modern tech possible. It’s like that radio host’s stories or Linnaeus’s taxonomy—a seemingly simple thing that is actually the foundation for everything else. It’s all connected. The simple things, the ones you take for granted, are the ones that are doing the most work. It’s all a bit of a joke, isn’t it? We’re all out here struggling with the big things, but it’s the simple stuff that makes the world go ’round.
Okay, so, my brain just went full-on retroject. It’s like, what Mesfin brought to the radio wasn’t just a show; it was a whole mood. It was the public getting a taste of a high-level debate from back in the day: “Do we take the content to the public or the public to the content?” It’s a whole thing. Mesfin didn’t just write an article; he went all the way, meeting people halfway.
Andrias Eshete used to go on about how all the writing back then was just a weak imitation of a certain historical autobiography. He also complained that there was a total lack of what you’d call people skills—you know, the humanities or social studies. He’d bring up this study by some German researchers who said these skills were, like, the bare minimum for leading any project. I remember going to English class with these higher-year engineering students. The goal was to write a high-level report, a total necessity.
It all reminded me of this argument I had with some higher-up from the engineering department. His English was shaky at best, but he would go on and on, blabbering that “a fool engineer is better than a smart manager.” It was the ultimate clown show, a continuation of that dumb school argument. My point was simple: “A fool is a fool, whether he goes to school or not.” One of the dudes who pushed this argument, a longtime Minister, gave this interview where he just kept spewing nonsense. It was a whole lot of wasted human resources. I had to stop listening to that radio station, which was now all about entertainment, and when I went to complain, they were not feeling my vibe.
It’s all tied to this ongoing debate about what schools should focus on. I remember this one day I skipped school to go with my mom to DebreLibanos. When I came back, the whole school was, like, gyrating on me, reminiscing about every single day I was in class. It was a whole spectacle. And the teachers? This young dude from school told me about his final year, when they finally got a visiting PhD from abroad, now a Vice President of a region. The kid, an IT student, brutally said that their entire stay before meeting him was a total waste. It’s giving “what’s the point?”
This whole thing is just a reminder of the futility of it all. We have these grand ideas and these grand education systems, but in the end, it’s all just a mug’s game. The smart ones are forgotten, the foolish are rewarded, and we’re left with a bunch of wasted potential. It’s all just a big joke, really.
So let us stop talking about majors and minors, as a project or zemechahas no minor part or bigger parts, common courses need to be focused on as they constitute projects as pieces in students.
Contributed by Tadesse Tsegaye