W/O Zewdi Araia, the mostsuccessful Eritrean actress was a very popular among young people of themetropolis in the late sixties. She was a very controversial figure inperforming arts on account of our restrictive as opposed to permissive society.On the other hand, her engagement as a professional actress could be lookedupon as a great leap from the vantage point of her cultural upbringing inEritrea whose people were ones depicted by former colonial masters as “nerosenza mistero,” meaning a black person without any mystery or skill.Nevertheless, a typical Eritrean lady could be bright but unschooled, beautifulbut unrefined, and talented but unidentified. As she pointed it out, even withall the desirable qualities in mind “ la fortuna” i.e. a personal luck isindispensable in the very competitive world where the dog eats dog.
Coming to her background,she was born at a beautiful town of Dekemare to a humble family. Then she movedto Asmara after completing her primary education at native school. Later shejoined the Italian schools such as Principe and Botego, the most competitiveInstitute of Industrial Art where she was one of the two female students, andthe other being an Italian. Following her success in beauty pageant at Expofestival, she went to Italy where she was introduced to a film company. Herachievement in a show business was beyond measure. As she said in her interviewsession with Ere-TV, her involvement in performing arts was not easy. In short,it was a byproduct of long years of experience.
Obviously, her modestupbringing might not prepare her for this arduous task demanding a language fluency, familiarity with non-verbal modes andcodes of communication peculiar to a highly expressive language, such asItalian. This is true as in the words of Roman King whose name I couldn’tremember:-
I speak Italian to woman,Spanish to God. French to men and Germanto my horse.
Over all, such Romanlanguage is contrary to our highly reserved tongue shunning a body movement asthe saying goes: Tum zereba (but not action) ASmi ‘aganinti ysebr. Roughlytranslated:a good speech may soothe thedevil. This brings us to Bernard Show’s magnum opus: “My Fair Lady” that wasadapted to Deaf play. Ones, a certain upper class gentleman falls in love with abeautiful young deaf lady. He struggles to teach her how to speak and pronouncelike a cultured or snobbish people of his exclusive social circle beforeintroducing her as a debutante in upcoming charity ball or cotillion. Time andagain, he tries to teach her how to pronounce the following epigram:-
The rain in the Spain
It rains in the plain.
But she mispronounces asthe following:-
De lain in de Tpain
It lains in de blain
He fails to teach her dueto her profound hearing loss. The rationale behind this unsuccessful attempt isjust to depict the role of pronunciation in reflecting your personality whichis crucial in show business. How W/O Zewdi surmounted such complex mode ofcommunication including the myriad of Italian culture is something that we shouldnot take for granted. For it easy to criticize instead of engaging in sensibleappraisal which is hard to do so, of course….
Haile Bokure
