Day: September 11, 2021

Two little kids came toward me chanting “hoye hoye” holding burning torches made of dry wood sticks. They laid their torches on the ground so that I could jump over it three times. I did wishing for the upcoming year to be a year full of health and wealth. I said “thank you” and took few steps forward. One of the kids stretched her hand. I took out money from my pocket and gave it to her as a tip. While I was standing there, their friends joined them with their drums and started singing songs praising me in exchange for some cash. They took me back to when I was their age singing songs on the eve of the “Kudus Yohannes” also known as “Geez New Year” to passersby.

“Kudus Yohannes” marks the approximate end of the rainy season and the start of a new season, a season of blooming flowers, sunny days, and pleasant weather. People leave behind the rainy season full of thunder and clouds and move on to better days. Once every September, there is a unique thing that happens that can be a reason for the holiday to be on that month. In this month the number of daylight hours and nighttime hours happen to be exactly equal across the world. During this time of the year, the sun and the moon each have 12 hours before setting on. This holiday is also represented by a perennial Leucanthemum vulgare flower, also known as “gelgele meskele” or “gift of jewel” as the flower grows densely in its full maturation during this month.

What makes this holiday unique is the fact that it is a week-long holiday (Pagumien) full of dance, songs and bathing in holy water. People believe that everybody of water is blessed which is why they take a bath every morning in those bodies of water. Although it is not as common as in rural areas, the bathing is also seen in urban areas, especially in churches. In the urban areas, girls in particular also go to wells and sing after taking a bath. Their songs include “Thitseba do?” a word for “are you going to wash?” They do this early at dawn before people wake up and when the water is still pure and not foretasted by animals.

In the urban areas in the afternoon and evening hours, girls sing praising songs to people passing by, especially men, in return for some tips. They encircle the man and sing a song. They say, “hases indo belo jubaka” a word for “search for some cash in your pocket.” If the man gives them money they praise him saying, “ayay werki seatu drib merebiatu” a Tigrigna word for “man with a golden watch who owns two houses”. It is meant to flatter the man and get some money from him. If the man doesn’t give them some money, then they say “aya kisto ta’irifa zeytmelso” telling him he is “stingy”. So, most of the time men give the girls tips to avoid the embarrassment. There is another tradition of going house to house praising the women in the house in return for anything that might be useful for the holiday, including groceries to make some dish for kudus Yohannes. The girls sing songs like, “nwedsen nwedadsen abbey alewa nsen” meaning “where are they (women of the house), let’s just praise them”. The women being praised may give them some food such as cereals; but if they don’t, the girls tease them by saying, “abti qofo zelo awxiyo telo” meaning “bring out the cereal that is inside the bin”. This way the girls collect money and some food for their one-week holiday in the urban areas.

Boys go out to collect sticks to make a torch for the eve. Making the torches and burning them indicates the transition from rainy season to a year with sunshine bountiful harvest. On the eve, they prepare a ceremony with a traditional food named “Qatenia” made with injera (flat bread) sprinkled with melted butter and pepper. The girls wait for the boys in the center of the village until they make their round with their torches on. The first place they go to is the church. They line up and go rounding the church chanting “hoye hoye” three times. Eventually they come to the central part of the village where the girls are waiting. They dance, sing and play games till dawn. Some of the songs played include, “thambeleye tehambeleye kemzia ilna bhburna aynfelale” indicating their unity and love. Another popular song is “Nxawet emo ntehawawese zemen kmlese” meaning let us just play so that the good times would come back. They have fun from dusk till dawn.

On “Kudus Yohannes” families usually gather for meals. The feasts are magnificent and there is so much to eat and drink. As a kid I remember visiting my grandmother in the evening hours to eat chicken stew and have coffee with her. Just like my family, most families visit one another on this day giving gifts and having delicious food. In the morning, the first thing you see in every household is a sheep, a goat or a hen being slaughtered for the holiday. The males in the household take care of the slaughtering of the animal while the girls cook. After that what remains is for the family to wear new clothes and gather around for a meal where you sometimes see the family members feeding each other as a way of showing affection and love. This is followed by the beautiful event of the day–coffee ceremony. Served with popcorn, candies, biscuits, and fruits and accompanied by the pleasant frankincense aroma the ceremony goes on till everyone gets tired and goes to bed. The holiday ends after a week-long celebration.

Source: Ministry of Information Eritrea

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON – The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR says Cameroon continues to be one of the world’s most neglected displacement crises, with refugee needs increasing far more quickly than are available resources. The central African country is home to about 500,000 refugees, most of them having fled the troubled Central African Republic and Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria.

Raouf Mazou, the UNHCR’s assistant high commissioner for operations, says that this week he met with humanitarian agencies and Cameroonian government officials, including Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute, to look for ways to reinforce humanitarian actions to help displaced persons and refugees.

In August, countries surrounding Lake Chad reported an increase in the number of people displaced in Chad, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Nigeria, and Niger.

Cameroon said at least 1,500 former Boko Haram militants have arrived on its northern border with Nigeria since May, when the Islamist group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, was declared killed.

Cameroon also reported that more than 40 villages were razed and 10,000 citizens fled northern Cameroon to Chad after a violent conflict between herders and fishers in August.

Mazou visited Cameroon’s Far North region on the border with Nigeria and Chad, where he met with representatives of some 4,000 displaced people in the northern border village of Zamai. Mazou said they desperately need civil registration documents so they can integrate into their new communities.

“If there is one thing that is essential, it is the issue of civil registration. They kept on repeating the same thing, they kept on saying our children are here, they cannot go to school. When we asked, ‘Why can’t they go to school?’ one of the key reasons why [is that] we [displaced persons] don’t have documents for them [displaced children]. Of course, there is also the issue of the cost. Even if primary education is free, people do have to pay an amount of money, but the issue of documentation for them is absolutely crucial,” Mazou said.

Speaking to local media, including Cameroon state broadcaster CRTV, Mazou said there are more than a million displaced Cameroonians in the country.

The UNHCR says Cameroon, with a population of 26 million, is also home to about 500,000 refugees and asylum-seekers.

Among the refugees, 120,000 are Nigerian citizens fleeing Boko Haram terrorism, and 321,000 are fleeing violence caused by the political tensions in the Central African Republic. Cameroon says other refugees are from Chad, Senegal, Mali and Niger.

Xavier Bourgois, the UNHCR’s spokesperson in Cameroon, says the agency has limited means to help people seeking refuge.

He said the UNHCR has only 44% of the $100 million it needs to provide emergency humanitarian services for refugees and displaced Cameroonians and to assist host communities that share their already stretched resources with displaced people.

In February, Cameroon said 5,000 of the 120,000 Nigerians, mostly women and children, who fled across the border fleeing from Boko Haram terrorists have agreed to voluntarily return to Nigeria. The UNHCR says about 4,500 Nigerians have returned. Those remaining are still worried about their security should they return to Nigeria.

Several thousand Central African Republic refugees have also returned to their home country. Cameroon says a majority are still scared of insecurity and violence after the December general elections there.

Source: Voice of America

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin says the United States is safer now than it was 20 years ago. Speaking in an interview with Voice of America’s Pentagon Correspondent Carla Babb on the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, Austin said U.S. defense capabilities and strike abilities have evolved and “increased by orders of magnitude.”

Austin said the U.S. will continue to “pay attention” to the threats as they evolve in Afghanistan, but that effort would not prevent the U.S. from focusing on its pacing threat, China.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

VOA: Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for speaking with the Voice of America today. Today is a very special day. It’s the day that we stop and pause and remember those who died 20 years ago. And reflecting on that, is the United States safer today than it was in 9/11?”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin: “Well, if you just look at the capabilities that have evolved since, since 2001, in terms of our ability to collect and to analyze and to track various threats around the globe, our capabilities have increased by orders of magnitude. Our ability to strike has increased by orders of magnitude. What’s most important is that as a government, we operate a lot better with any interagency in terms of our ability to share information, our ability to coordinate and deconflict. So, because of all of those things, I would say, yeah, we are safer.”

VOA: “When you talk about that information, so, let me go back to the withdrawal. In April, the intelligence was showing that the Taliban could likely take over Kabul around December, late December, but by July that timeline had shrunk to late September. So, why were you so surprised when they took over in mid-August?”

Austin: “I think what you’ve heard us say is that there were, the intelligence estimate provided a range of possibilities, and those, they changed over time. We’ll go back and look at all these things in the future as we, as we assess what happened and assess the things that we could possibly, as an interagency, do better. And, but, until we complete that process, I won’t, I won’t hazard to provide any kind of assessment.”

VOA: “Reflecting, do you think you should have paused the withdrawal when you started getting the intelligence in July that the collapse was more imminent?”

Austin: “Well, again, don’t want to get into any hypotheticals or, you know, any, any type of assessments here. I think we owe it to ourselves to do a very deliberate and detailed assessment, not only for the military but across the interagency.”

VOA: “When I was speaking to some of the troops from 10th Mountain Division, they wished they could have gotten to HKIA. They wished they could have gotten to the airport sooner and had a few more people. Do you think that the evacuation should have started sooner?”

Austin: “Again, I think our young men and women that were a part of that operation did a tremendous job. And I think once they arrived, they, and once they secured the airport, they had to defend the airport, they had to evacuate 124,000 people. Of that 124,000, some 6,000 Americans. And we still are, the State Department is still focused on evacuating Americans as we speak. So, you know, I think, I think our young men and women just did a tremendous job. As you heard me say, I think it was historic because of the size of the airlift, and it certainly was heroic in terms of their actions.”

VOA: “But do you wish you would have started sooner?”

Austin: “Again, you know, I, we will go back and assess what we did when we did it, but you know, we made our decisions based upon, you know, the intelligence and the activities that were going on at that time.”

VOA: “We have been tied to Iraq and Afghanistan because of 9/11, and you actually oversaw the withdrawal forces from Iraq only to see U.S. troops return there three years later. Why would you oversee the withdrawal from Afghanistan when there were similar conditions in Afghanistan as there were in Iraq when it comes to terrorists?”

Austin: “I think you’re, actually, two. First of all, we never completely left Iraq. As you know, we kept an element in Iraq that was focused on training the Iraqis. But as you compare the two scenarios, they’re completely different. They’re different people, they’re different, facing different adversaries. So, I don’t think it’s fair to compare them head-to-head.”

VOA: “So, you don’t see the similarities on the ground now that you saw in Iraq?”

Austin: “There will be similarities in every military operation, but there will be clear distinctions in those operations based upon the threat, based upon the forces available, and based upon the allies that you’re working with, you know, the people that you’re supporting.”

VOA: “Let’s talk about where the counterterror war goes now. So, what area of the globe do you believe that terrorists have the greatest desire and capability to attempt to strike the homeland?”

Austin: “Great question. I think what you’ve seen and what you know to be true is that transnational terrorists will look for ungoverned spaces to go to, to operate out of. And so, everywhere on the globe where we see, you know, breakdown in governance or weak governance or areas that are ungoverned, we can expect that, at some point, that there’s a possibility that terrorist activity will take root in those places.”

VOA: “And so, if you had to, you said you’ve mentioned some areas to us in the briefing room. So, if you had to pick one area where the focus seems to be most intent on attacking the U.S. homeland, where, where is that right now?”

Austin: “Well, I certainly don’t want to get into any intelligence assessments here, but, I mean, we see terrorist, transnational terrorist activity in a lot of places. We see, certainly in Africa, we see in Somalia, we see a number of organizations looking to operate freely there.”

VOA: “Are you looking to put troops back into Somalia?”

Austin: “Again, I won’t — I don’t have any troop announcements to make in this forum.”

VOA: “OK, and let’s talk about, because we’re still bogged down in Afghanistan, we don’t have troops there, but we are still bogged down with the counterterror war, so won’t that divert your attention away from China and Russia for at least some time?”

Austin: “We know that we have to maintain a focus, in order to defend this country, which is my top priority, we have to maintain a focus on countering transnational terrorism and preventing terrorists from exporting terror from any place on the globe to our homeland, and we will remain focused on that with a laser focus.”

VOA: “So, yes, they will, they will bog us down for some time?”

Austin: “No, that’s, that’s not bogging us down, that’s making sure that we pay attention to the threats as they evolve, but it won’t prevent us from doing what we need to do to focus on our major elements there, our major challenges there. And you’ve heard me say that China remains a, our pacing challenge going forward here.”

VOA: “And I want to ask you, because you reached out today — it is 9/11 — you reached out to the families who died with your remarks today. What would you like to say to the Afghans who fought beside us, who joined us in this war, post 9/11, those who lost loved ones in this war, those who are still worried about the future?”

Austin: “We’re certainly, we’re grateful for their help in our efforts to help improve the conditions in their country. And, and so, you know, their partnership, that those people who served as interpreters and facilitated our operations, I certainly want to say thank you to them, and remind them that we will remain grateful going forward.”

VOA: “Well, Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for speaking with Voice of America.”

Source: Voice of America