I wouldn’t say I’m more interested in Ethiopia now than I have been, necessarily. “ደሞ በአባይ ድርድር” is lyrics from a song called “Demo Be Abay” by Teddy Afro, and I’ve been thinking about that song a lot lately due to the tensions in the Arctic at the moment, since “Demo Be Abay” is a song about the tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia as a result of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, and a lot of the song’s themes then seem relevant to other disputes and tensions between other countries.

Coincidentally, I’d also recently started watching a long-form YouTube video called “Uprising: the Ethiopian Revolution Explained” by Anansi’s Library, so I think that also got me thinking about Ethiopia again, and listening to a lot of old songs from the socialist period. My cousin was also just recently talking about how he’d been trying to learn more about Ethiopian history, too, because he wants to understand Africa and you can’t understand Africa if you don’t understand Ethiopia.

But I dunno, I’ve had some amount of interest in Ethiopia and really the Horn of Africa in general for years, and I think I have various reasons for this interest. The Horn is just a region that I think naturally gets people’s interest for one reason or another. This being said I’m still very ignorant about Ethiopian issues, like I tried to get a “vibe check” on the Fano insurgency here on Hexbear about a year ago, and didn’t get anything but a single joke reply, and I still haven’t managed to form a coherent opinion on the Fano insurgency now a year later.