The Bonsai Nation: Stunted Ethiopia

[Unwarranted Analogy]

By Tecola W. Hagos

I. Introduction

Much is happening both in Ethiopia and in the Diaspora Community of Ethiopians around the World. Meles Zenawi and his brutal Government have shifted to a higher gear of atrocities murdering and brutalizing members and candidates of the opposition, mainly members of Medrek. This last two weeks opposition members and even candidates were beaten and one actually murdered while campaigning and another died in the Black Lion Hospital from alleged sever beatings by security officers of the Kilil administration. The harassment and the threat against the opposition did not abate an iota despite the fact that European Union had designated its observers and appointed a Chief, and had signed up with the Ethiopian Government.

I read also the heart wrenching article by Helen Epstein, �Cruel Ethiopia � published in the New York Review of Books of March 13, 2010. I also attended the morale boosting Medrek Conference of April 18, 2010.  As you may imagine I had a very hectic and very busy Week. Thus, my good friend Dr. Abraham Bekele, the well known economist, invited me to visit the US National Arboretum located off New York Avenue NE , and drove us down there. Actually, it would not ender me with Washingtonians, for I am ashamed to say that I have not visited the Arboretum (not once) all these years (35)  despite the fact that at one period in my life I drove by it every day commuting from Baltimore and Columbia to Washington DC (for years) going to work and to school too.

The visit to the Arboretum, many thanks to Abraham, was magical; for me, it was like a child entering an enchanted garden. Abraham knew the place like the palm of his hand. He acted both as guide and drill sergeant deciding where to go in order to see the very best within the confines of a limited time, for this place is vast and one could easily spend days just barely covering the many gardens. I could never have a better monitor than Abraham, who despite his excellence in his field of expertise dreams of becoming a �park ranger� and spend his time in the open among nature�s majesty.

The main attraction and fascination for me was visiting the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum on the grounds of the Arboretum. Ever since I saw a couple of scores years ago pictures of strange and unusual gardens made of  sand, pebbles, and stones, with no greenery at all that was tended by Zen Buddhist monks, I was fascinated with the gardens of China and Japan in general. I am still amazed how with very little greenery and with controlled chaotic arrangements, on such little patches of land, those highly skilled �gardeners� could open a whole panoramic vista to the imagination.

II. The Worm in the Apple

However, for some reason not apparent to me as yet at the time while I was admiring those miniature exquisite trees, I was also experiencing something disconcerting anxiety about the Bonsai trees. For example, the White Pine Bonsai no taller than a foot and a half on the dais in front of me, in real life is a touring giant, and its great majesty could only be matched by the Great Sequoia tree. What type of process must have been utilized in order to render such a majestic tree to a size I could hold with little stress in one hand? What indeed happened to the immensity and majesty of all Bonsai trees?

Later at home, I realized why I was feeling anxious and apprehensive at the same time I was overwhelmed with the exquisite beauty and individuality of each Bonsai tree I reckoned at the Bonsai Garden . It was because each Bonsai tree was a grotesque deformity no different than the hideously deformed feet of courtly Chinese ladies who had to undergo that torturous tying of feet from their early childhood in order to create tiny feet prized in Chinese culture of the time. It may be compared also to the molding of the skulls of infants with tightly tied ribbons of clothing into elongated shapes in some Inca and Aztec cultures I have read about. Although such things happen after death, the shrunken heads of enemies killed in battles adorning the heroes of such conflicts in some Amazonian head hunters is also such grotesque activity.  

There was this Elm tree in training from 1955, with sturdy wire wrapped tightly around its trunk and its fragile branches. Although I did not bring up the subject with Abraham, I felt that the little tree was crying out to me with excruciating pain and needed liberation from the confining wires around its trunk and fragile branches. All the Bonsai trees were on starvation diet. The troughs that are holding those trees are very shallow barely three or four inches deep. The soil is minimal and mostly dry with pebbles and jagged rocks where those Bonsai trees hang on for deer life with roots that must be in some form of frenzied twisted mass. It was both a horrible and disconcerting sight to behold how tenaciously those tiny trees hang on to their lives. I kept wondering how I thought of such grotesque sight as something beautiful even sublime at all.  

III. Bonsai Ethiopia : Stunted Nation

It seems to me that cruelty to plants makes it easier to be cruel to animals; cruelty to animals would make it also easier to be cruel to human beings. This is much unsubstantiated assertion that needs close scrutiny. From what I have seen growing up, children would be considered the most barbaric and the cruelest to animals and little creatures. I have seen kids five and six year olds playfully tearing apart the unfortunate butterfly or dragon fly or beetle captured. I have hunted frogs with other kids for no reason just for the pleasure of stoning them, and watching their dead bodies floating with their belly up. St. Augustine in his Confessions had mentioned about boys bent on killing frogs that he had to lie to being asked whether he had seen frogs upstream. Even far more disconcerting to me when I think about it now is how in small group we would go into the surrounding forested area around Dessie hunting beautiful birds with our Feyonda.

I cringe when I think about our murderous expeditions. Maybe some psychologist some day would give us studies on the connection between our �murderous� childhood and our violent adult lives as politicians.  Of course, there were parents and neighborhood elders who tried to correct our destructive behavior through corporal punishments, which simply further etched in our impressionable mind that the solution to social problems is through the use of force and violence. 

I saw in the long history of Ethiopia a similar process akin to the �training� of young seedlings of majestic trees into Bonsai, which is the process of the reduction of giants into minions. The starvations, the torture, the binding by wire, all seem to be similar to the daily lives of the Ethiopian nation and the victimized population. Helen Epstein in her heart wrenching article �Cruel Ethiopia� is simply holding the mirror of truth to our faces. The only problem that I find with Epstein is that she seems to forget that every human community around the world is as cruel, even more so in some instances, than the Ethiopia she described. I always held the view that comparing �miseries� does not help or improve the quality of life of anyone.

Except for the very few lucky Ethiopians, growing in Ethiopia is a process that is akin to the training of Bonsai trees. We, Ethiopians in general seem to suffer delayed maturity; we are made to feel that we are in perpetual teenage years. This is a cruel distortion of our growth, no different than binding us down with wires and feeding us with minimal social responsibilities. This is not how one creates responsible citizens. This cruelty in the deformity of our personality, in the inhibitions and stunting of our mental growth can be observed in the many chat postings in the Internet. I used to be very angry at the poor quality of the responses I read posted in the Internet, but I realize now it is an honest reflection of the state of affairs of our social and cultural life conditions.   

I do not want to be misunderstood here in that my recognition of our social and cultural problems should not be seen as if it is the closing of a trial with a verdict on a society. This pervading social cruelty and the entrenched process of stunting of individual growth is a feature that can be overcome. Recognition of the problem is, in fact, the first step in the right direction, and a good starting point to strategize for change.

Conclusion

I am a political animal, never far from the subject of politics even at a very innocent excursion visiting a beautiful garden. I hope I have not sealed my fate with this essay that I never get invitations to pleasant and harmless preoccupations, such as garden parties, art exhibition openings, wine tasting et cetera. My apologies to Abraham for turning around an innocent friendly adventure into a subject matter of utter seriousness.  However, your kind effort is not wasted, but elevated and appreciated much deeply.

Words to my fellow Ethiopians, please, save a day just to take family to visit such glorious and majestic nature and located not that far from downtown Washington DC . I hope you are light of heart and appreciative of the abundance around us all for free. I am sure your children would frolic and fly through the gardens with joyous life and have great memories. You do not have to tell them as yet about my sardonic comment about the Bonsai trees or the analogy with Ethiopia .

Tecola W. Hagos

Washington DC

May 3, 2010