W/O Zewdi Araia, the most successful Eritrean actress wasa very popular among young people of the metropolis in the late sixties. Shewas a very controversial figure in performing arts on account of ourrestrictive as opposed to permissive society. On the other hand, her engagementas a professional actress could be looked upon as a great leap from the vantagepoint of her cultural upbringing in Eritrea whose people were ones depicted by formercolonial masters as “nero senza mistero,” meaning a black person without anymystery or skill. Nevertheless, a typical Eritrean lady could be bright butunschooled, beautiful but unrefined, and talented but unidentified. As shepointed it out, even with all the desirable qualities in mind “ la fortuna” i.e.a personal luck is indispensable in the very competitive world where the dogeats dog.
Coming to her background, she was born at a beautifultown of Dekemare to a humble family. Then she moved to Asmara after completingher primary education at native school. Later she joined the Italian schoolssuch as Principe and Botego, the most competitive Institute of Industrial Art where she was one of the two female students,and the other being an Italian. Following her success in beauty pageant at Expofestival, she went to Italy where she was introduced to a film company. Her achievementin a show business was beyond measure. As she said in her interview sessionwith Ere-TV, her involvement in performing arts was not easy. In short, it wasa byproduct of long years of experience.
Obviously, her modest upbringing might not prepare her for this arduous taskdemanding a language fluency, familiarity with non-verbal modes and codes of communicationpeculiar to a highly expressive language, such as Italian. This is true as inthe words of Roman King whose name I couldn’t remember:-
I speak Italian to woman, Spanish to God. French to menand German to my horse.
Over all, such Roman language is contrary to our highlyreserved tongue shunning a body movement as the saying goes: Tum zereba (butnot action) ASmi ‘aganinti ysebr. Roughlytranslated: a good speech may soothe the devil. This brings us to Bernard Show’s magnum opus: “My fair Lady” that was adapted to Deaf play. Ones,a certain upper class gentleman falls in love with a beautiful young deaf lady.He struggles to teach her how to speak and pronounce like a cultured or snobbishpeople of his exclusive social circle before introducing her as a debutante inupcoming Charity ball or cotillion. Time and again, he tries to teach her howto pronounce the following epigram:-
The rain in the Spain
It rains in the plain.
But she mispronounces as the following:-
The lain in de Tpain
It lains in de Blain
He fails to teach her due to her profound hearing loss.The rationale behind this unsuccessful attempt is just to depict the role of pronunciationin reflecting your personality which is crucial in show business. How W/O Zewdisurmounted such complex mode of communication including the myriad of Italian cultureis something that we should not take for granted. For it easy to criticizeinstead of engaging in sensible appraisal which is hard to do so, of course….
Haile Bokure
