Insecure State

By: Behailu Shiferaw

Sometimes things stir you up to write even when you need to forget everything as if it never happened. Like hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Christians in Addis Abeba, I was one of the humble spectators of the Demera ritual held annually at Meskal Square to commemorate the Founding of The True Cross.

 

Let me say, at the cost of being prohibited to enjoy it next year, I enjoyed the ceremony at the comfort of my office’s building which is high enough for my eyes to frame almost everything that went on there. And at times, I used my video camera to zoom in whatever I wanted until day became night.

 

Generally speaking the ritual was good and well organized. It was plain that there was some ‘support’ from trained state security people. Though I cannot pass without mentioning the local, cultural color that was lost in the event, and not comparing it with that of the previous years’, the fireworks has made it up to people who endured the cold breeze for as long as about three hours. It was technically good.

 

The driving force of this piece of writing is that I just could not understand the fear either the pope himself or his (government) security people developed over the past few years. It is just that I do not quite understand what he has to run away from? It is just that I could not understand what is that he has different to those of other religious leaders in the country that puts him at an increased risk? This, I believe is self-stigmatization. This pretty much shows his own understanding of his place in the hearts of the society.

 

Were we lucky, even the political leaders should not be running away from us. But for a religious father, whom thousands of people were waiting to get his blessing and healing words, to show up with a series of security cars beefed up in front of and behind him, does not make any sense.

 

A flock of cars stretchered him to his seat, he said a very long teaching and prayers which kept the people waiting as late as 7 o’clock to see the fire and fireworks glittering. There was a time when I heard the people booing him they way they did to a despised football player in the stadium.

 

The pope walked down and entered his car to lit up the Demera and as he approached the Meskal Square road, the security strategies took over. They started the fireworks and the sky went crazy with the scene driving the attention away from the insecure ‘religious person’ onto the sparkling pieces of light in the air. A minute later, when the people looked down from the fireworks, the Demera was already lit up and the pope was leaving the area in his car. He was a Bush-in-Iran.

 

I wonder if he really enjoyed the ceremony. For the government, it was merely an event like international soccer game where there is an official who calls for tighter security.

 

Ethiopia’s peace and security is not kept by the strength of the security officials the government farms out everyday but by the gentleness of its people. Of course Addis Ababa is one of the world’s capitals where a lot of police force is exhibited to the people everyday, God knows why. Mind you, I did not say that the government is trying to show off its arm should the people need to have any riot. No, I did not say that.

 

But for the pope, beyond his own personal insecurity and self-understanding, there is something called faith that the post requires of him and which he should have manifested at least in such public events. I barely know any Orthodox Christian who is proud of having him as a religious father and on that occasion I saw that it was pretty much why.

 

Here though, I am not ignorant of the fact that lack of ‘qualified’ leader is not a problem for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church only, it is just that they are less obvious.

 

See him next year at Meskal Square, if the name of the square continues to be so and if the ritual continues to exist.