Pubdate: Sat, 04 Aug 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Section: International
Author: Norimitsu Onishi

SHASHEMENE JOURNAL -- UNEASY BOND INSIDE A PROMISED LAND

SHASHEMENE, Ethiopia -- "Welcome home to Ethiopia," read the banner over 
the Rastafarians' church compound. Several men in long dreadlocks were 
waving the movement's familiar green-yellow-red flags, an old man in a 
white robe was reciting biblical verses, another was sucking lustily on a 
footlong pipe that had transformed his nostrils into two hyperactive chimneys.

The strong, strong whiff of marijuana hung in the air, making everybody 
oblivious to the chilly morning.

"We've come to our ancient land! Ethiopia!" sang a woman in a clear 
Jamaican lilt, her body swaying near a table on which stood framed 
portraits of the man she and the others considered God: Haile Selassie I, 
this country's last emperor, who was deposed in a 1974 Marxist coup and 
assassinated a year later.

Outside the church gates, past the armed guards, local Ethiopians looked 
quizzically at the spectacle inside. Later, a Rastafarian parade to the 
town center drew similar skeptical puzzlement.

"This is really foolishness and they have to stop," said Adane Giday, 26, a 
parade watcher. "They are bad for Ethiopia. We have our own culture and we 
don't want to mix with them. What is their culture? Nothing. We see them as 
African brothers. But we do not see them as Ethiopians."

The Rastafarian movement, founded in Jamaica in the 1930's, would perhaps 
have faded into obscurity but for two things: the music of Bob Marley, the 
king of reggae and the most famous Rastafarian, and the land that Emperor 
Selassie granted its followers half a century ago in Shashemene, about 130 
miles south of the capital, Addis Ababa.

At one point, thousands of Rastafarians, mostly from the Caribbean but also 
from the United States and Britain, settled here. Nowadays, their land 
shrunk to 11 acres from 500, the Rastafarians have dwindled to about 500, 
though the population swelled for the celebration of Emperor Selassie's 
birthday on July 23.

Elsewhere in the world, Rastafarianism may have become more of a lifestyle, 
one emphasizing hedonism, freedom and good music. But the true believers 
remain in Shashemene, clinging to their beliefs that the emperor is God and 
Ethiopia their promised land. They stay despite their many problems with 
Ethiopians, a fact that attests to the uneasy relationship that often 
develops between Africans and non-African blacks seeking a spiritual home here.

The mutual alienation is deep, because the Rastafarians hold beliefs and 
engage in practices that are directly against those of most Ethiopians. So 
while the banner at their church proclaimed, "Welcome home to Ethiopia," 
the Rastafarians forbade Ethiopians from coming inside; when one Ethiopian 
man was seen videotaping the ceremony, through the barbed wire, 
Rastafarians grabbed his tape.

"The people here are very ignorant of who we are," said George Isles, 40, a 
Rastafarian who was born in the Caribbean and lived in London before 
arriving here in 1992.

Like most Rastafarians, Mr. Isles, a carpenter, saw himself as Ethiopian 
and was angry that the locals did not. "They call me faranji," he said, 
using Ethiopians' term for foreigners. "The people don't treat us well. We 
give them work, but they still rob us. I have to have a guard at my house. 
If I don't, they would come and steal from me."

B. J. Moody, 65, a Rastafarian elder who has lived here since 1980, tried 
to soften Mr. Isles's words.

"All of us are experiencing some sort of cruelty, some unbrotherly actions 
by our Ethiopians brothers," said Mr. Moody, a tiny man with the gentlest 
of voices. "But we are determined to bring them to a higher state of 
consciousness."

This state of consciousness emerged when Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican who led 
the Back to Africa movement in the early 20th century, predicted -- in 1927 
- -- that a black king would rise and return members of the black diaspora to 
Africa.

In 1930, when an Ethiopian prince named Ras Tafari was crowned emperor, the 
descendants of African slaves in Jamaica took that as confirmation that the 
day of deliverance had arrived. They called themselves Rastafarians and 
worshiped the emperor, who took the name Haile Selassie I, as God.

The Rastafarians regarded Ethiopia as their ancestral home and called 
themselves Ethiopians, rejecting Jamaica and the West as Babylon. One 
reason that Ethiopia represented Zion to them was its status as an African 
country relatively untouched by colonialism.

Emperor Selassie -- who was credited with modernizing Ethiopia -- was, like 
most Ethiopians, a member of Ethiopia's Orthodox Christian Church and did 
not consider himself divine. He was said to be embarrassed by the worship. 
But in the 1950's, partly in recognition of the support blacks outside 
Ethiopia had given Ethiopians in their fight against Fascist Italy, the 
emperor gave 500 acres of his own land here to black people living in the West.

To hear Rastafarians tell it, the immigration here began only after Emperor 
Selassie's momentous visit to Jamaica in 1966. Back then, Mr. Moody was a 
grocer in Kingston.

"Jamaica had been experiencing a drought for two years," Mr. Moody said, 
telling a story famous among Rastafarians. "But upon His Majesty's arrival 
in Jamaica, no sooner had the Ethiopian Airlines carrier been focused on 
that part of the world, than there was a thunderbolt and rain. And just as 
soon did the rain subside and the sun appear -- the airplane landed and 
taxied on the airport -- most miraculously."

At their peak, the Rastafarians are said to have numbered 2,500. The 
Marxists who overthrew Emperor Selassie tried to blot out all imperial 
symbols but allowed the Rastafarians to stay -- although the community lost 
most of its land.

Life became easier after the end of Marxist rule in 1991, the Rastafarians 
here said. But Caribbean immigrants must get resident and working visas 
like other foreigners.

Many Ethiopians find the worship of their former emperor as a deity a 
little odd.

Negussi Assfaw, 24, had come down from Addis Ababa for the week's 
celebrations. An Ethiopian, he wore a Rastafarian T-shirt and said he liked 
Rastafarians because of their clothes and music.

"They say he's the God of all black men," Mr. Assfaw said, speaking of the 
emperor. "Haile Selassie was a very, very powerful man, a king. But he's a 
man, like me, like you."

To many Ethiopians in Shashemene, the Rastafarians are guests who have 
overstayed their welcome. Kasib Burka, 28, a businessman, said the first 
Rastafarians were motivated by idealism and often helped the Ethiopians 
here, handing out free medicine. Today, he said, they cared only about 
enriching themselves, and he pointed out that several hundred Rastafarians 
did not even live here, but simply owned and exploited the land, visiting 
twice or three times a year and selling medicine.

The 109th birthday of Emperor Selassie went unobserved by most Ethiopians. 
"There is no salvation for this generation of Ethiopians because they have 
rejected His Majesty," Mr. Isles said.

More Rastafarians will eventually come to Shashemene -- Mr. Isles was sure 
of it -- and they will help save the very people who had been supposed to 
save them.

"Those Rastafarians," he said, "are just getting what they can out of 
Babylon before coming home here."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens