PPL!! Relentlessly, I got my self Haunted by this man , Ato. Yosief Ghebrehiwet. Pls do let me quote him from his marvelous article titled : The Self-Colonizing Mission: Names and Naming in Eritrea (I) “Here then is a great paradox for the ghedli romantics to ponder: it is not the fathers that lived through the colonial era that abandoned their roots, but the generations born in postcolonial era. Unlike the fathers, who were at peace with modernity (adopting aspects of it gradually without letting go of their roots, as the “good Kebessa woman” did) that left their identity intact, it was the postcolonial generations’ perverse reaction to modernity that led to their identity crises. It doesn’t mean that the fathers came out of Italian colonial era totally unscathed, but that the scar on their psyche was not deep enough to make them doubt the very essence of their identity. For the confused, self-doubting postcolonial generations though, to absorb one (modernity), they had to entirely let go of the other (their roots). They didn’t realize that in between the “letting go” and the “picking up” a huge existential chasm was created that would suck in a whole nation into a free fall that has so far lasted for 50 odd years. Despite an equally 50 years of Italian rule, the bastardization of names that one finds among many colonized people never took hold in Eritrea. Our proud fathers stuck to the good old habesha names; except in extremely rare cases, you don’t hear of any Italian names adopted during this era. Ironically, this bastardization of names has been taking place in “liberated” Eritrea among the children and grandchildren of the ghedli generation.” asmarino/articles/1826--i-the-self-colonizing-mission-names-and-naming-in-eritrea
Posted on: Sun, 22 Jun 2014 15:37:20 +0000
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