From: Zerai Habte (zeraihabte@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Mar 13 2009 - 10:07:28 EST
Dear Assefaw,
I don't know how you start a discussion about the need to know more about culture and preserving it, which is fine-changes into one day solving the mystery of death in eritrea? with all due respect, don't we have enough problems in the world you can talk about ? and death is not a mystery, it is unescapable reality (which you don't seem to live in) that only one God can undo. please stay relevant.
zerai
From: Assefaw, Yonatan (yassefaw@tcfbank.com)
Date: Wed Mar 11 2009 - 11:18:10 EST
________________________________
Dear Dehai members
We come to this world with nothing and we leave with nothing (material)
The only thing we can live behind is a good memory and history to our
future children. If it is possible we should try to put in writing the good
memory and history. This way the future generation can learn from our
experience easily.
Even though Eritrean have rich culture and history not lot of people
take time to share what they know about our culture. Twenty five years
or fifty years from now, Eritrea is not going to be the same..
At the same time, we take it for granted our own culture. We don't
even know it very well, because it is abstract (rekik). Sometimes, you don't
really think about your own culture until you see different culture and start
comparing each other. Therefore we are not even conscious of it in some
cases.
I will give you an example: I ask a few times those who make traditional
clothing in Eritrea " T i l f i " . Why do we design some kind of shape in
the
traditional cloth what does mean ?
Or what does it mean A Bu Gi Da or A Be Ge De that is in our
our traditional Calendar ?
We need to ask questions, we have to encourage our kids to ask and if we
don't know it we need to research it .Unless we ask, we will never know.
First, though we need to do ourselves little research or investigation what
it might
be or could be.
We need to realize though that some people (teachers or other) feel
uncomfortable
to be asked. I believe that we need to be honest with our self that if we
don't know it
we should say, I am sorry I don't have answer or I don't know it. We tend to
get
intimate if we don't know the answer. We should not be.
I ask weird questions myself because I do not accept the excuse or the reason
and I
need to understand it what it means and how we can challenged.
Why some people die of simple cause. How the cause effect our life to end.
What bother me
the most is that even though we have our body with us that we lose something
from our body.
to me I have to use math to solve or to understand the problem. just like
this 1 + 1 = 2 and
2 - 1 = 1 life minus ( - ) sprit or heart beat = death and body + heart
beat or spirit = life
I don't want to get in detail with my scientific reasons how a cause effect
our body yet
Until now we have accepted death as means of end of life but now we are going
to think about
it twice. It would be possible to reverse some death and I will hope that it
will be first in Eritrea
and you will be surprise that even our eyes that do not see everything in
life. It will be just like
people use to think that the earth was flat or the earth was the center of
the universe and death
will be another science mystery to be solve yet by Eritrean.
Awet Nihafash
Yonatan Solomon
Minnesota