Country Roads (growing up, exposures, decisions, and reflections) By Aklillu Kidanu Wolde Giorgis

283pp, Self-published

…Odysseus sighting his island after years of wandering; the return, the return, the great magic of the return.

-Milan Kundera, Ignorance

Aklilu Kidanu’s “Country Roads” is a memoir published recently, joining a spate of autobiographies now being steadily coming out, a genre that is becoming more and more popular nowadays and in great demand by the reading public. It has now been translated into Amharic by the writer himself, something which should be emulated by other writers who pen their story in English.

He begins his book with a facetious remark that he set out to write his memoir because he was   disappointed  that the local media people failed to show up  to interview him on one of their shows.

The book is composed of four chapters. Chapter one deals with the author‘s experiences of growing up in Gore, a town in southwestern Ethiopia, his high school and university years in Addis Ababa. In chapter two, he recounts his trip abroad first to Italy and then to the United States, where he attended graduate school. Chapter 3 deals with the how and whys of his return to Ethiopia and his subsequent tenure at the AAU and the private research centre he founded. Chapter four is devoted to reflections and soul-searching on the decision he took to return home and how this was received by friends and relatives, as well as his perceptions on factors that make highly skilled people here dream of making it to the US.

For the purpose of this review, let us begin with the last chapter, in which the writer ruminates at length on the factors that led him to take the rather unusual decision to leave the greener pastures of US and the pursuit of the American dream for a risky life in a poor nation, albeit his homeland.  And this at a time when few of his compatriots in the promised land chose to risk political uncertainty, economic decay and all the inevitable ills of their benighted nation should  they decide to return .

We are, of course, talking about the Ethiopian diaspora, population created as a result of the turbulent chaos of the revolution, which turned thousands of Ethiopians into political, social and economic refugees.

This immigrant population have since then established themselves in different parts of the first worlds, mainly in the USA and Europe, taking up permanent residence and citizenship in the host countries. Their number shows no sign of declining and in fact continues to swell.

The situation, certainly, is not unique to Ethiopia, and situating the phenomena in the broader continental context might help us get some perspective on the issue. In his book, The Dialectics of Transformation in Africa (Palgrave), Elias K. Bongmba has the following to say, “Since the 1990s, about 20,000 educated and skilled Africans have left the continent every year,” and he quotes a study to the effect, “an estimated 300,000 Africans professionals live and work in Europe and North America and figures from UNESCO indicate that about 30,000 Africans with Doctorate live and work outside the continent.”

The pull factors are certainly obvious. The ivory towers of western academia provide shelter, in the form of   economic and political security to scholars from the south that they can never dream of in their homelands. So resisting the siren songs of the greener pasture can never be easy.  For who in his right mind can trade the security and comforts of a rich country for a life of poverty, insecurity and uncertainty of a poor nation?

So when a person decides to give up  the security of  ‘’decent work and income in the US only to be employed at AAU with 95 percent income reduction’ (p.122), one naturally wonders what could possibly be the motivating factor and would assume an exceptionally high sense of purpose and mission.

Aklilu tells us that he made the decision to bid farewell to a country where people “would kill to live in”, fully aware he would face taunts and criticism of friends and relatives and the inevitable reproach, “At least, you should have stopped to consider the education and future of your children.”

Yet the academic with a PhD from a US university with all the benefits that accrue from it, chooses to return home where he feels he really belongs. Along with his wife, they consciously decide against applying for a green card or citizenship, ‘’the idea was to land in Ethiopia on both feet-no calculation, no risk analysis, no safety net, no plan B.”

Given the finality of the decision, one would expect a high sense of patriotism and lofty devotion to country in the writer. Yet Dr. Aklilu chooses to downplay any such sentiment. With disarming candour, he describes himself as ‘’a selfish man when it comes to making big decisions.” Adding, “I would be lying if I said that I returned to Ethiopia mainly to help Ethiopia and its people achieve some vaguely defined developmental goals. So, honestly speaking, I returned to Ethiopia to help myself and my immediate family live in the way I wanted to live, in my comfort zone.”

This, the author tells us, has to do with the issue of identity and belongingness, to which he evidently attaches much importance.

And this naturally takes us back to his formative years in Gore, an idyllic and happy childhood, that as he says, played a not inconsiderable role in fashioning his identity. From the way the writer often turns to his childhood memories, and the repeated use of the phrase, ‘’the boy from Gore’’ throughout the book, one can take the issue of identity as an organizing frame of narrative and a prism by which the writer makes sense and interprets life events.

He fondly remembers the Gore town for its “lush surroundings, many rivers, fertile soil, large cattle, plenty of honey and coffee’ ’Whole days were spent playing soccer, marbles, climbing tall tree in the wild to pick wild berries, hunting countless birds with sling strokes as “bad and wild but happy boys’’ with a daring to ride horses without saddle and bikes without tires.

He also mentions people who left indelible mark on his life and contributed to shaping of his personality. Naturally, his father comes first, a man who boasted fluency of four languages, Amharic, Afan Oromo, Arabic and Italian, and knew the Bible and the Ethiopian civil code by heart, all this without the benefit of formal education. “With his values of hard work, fair and just approach to life and treating people, love for family and respect for his wife.”Aklilu grew up looking up to him as epitome of fatherhood and a hero, so much so that, “I worshipped him and nothing pleased me more than pleasing him.”

Next to his father, he mentions his teachers at what used to be called Haile Selassie elementary school, four teachers “who got stuck in my young mind, and lasted till today’’. He credits them with “instilling most of the values which stand with me, in one form or another for the rest of my life.”

When his father decides to move his entire family to Addis Ababa in 1965, at the age of fifteen, he enrols at the Medhani Alem School in the capital. 

As a gregarious and easy-going person who gravitates towards activities that involve play and people, what stands out in the memoir, is his capacity for friendship and relationships. In fact, it is this social savvy, he claims, that proved an important factor in helping him scale the ladder of the success and end up becoming the kind of person he eventually became.

Thus not a studious and scholarly type, by his own admission, he failed the ESCLCE exam and was  employed at Ethiopian Mapping Authority, where he would have been quite content to remain for the rest of his life, had it not been for a friend who strongly urged him to sit for the exam again  and improve his grades. Fortunately for him, he heeded the advice, and managed to join the AAU and eventually graduated with BA in English.

Looking back on his university days, he gives us an interesting description of the student body, who were divided into three groups -the Revolutionaries (Revos), Saboteurs (Sabos), and, Jollies. He places himself in the last-mentioned category, who cared not a whit for political activism nor classes. Life ‘for them was music first, chess second, and parties third.Classes? What classes?’’

It was while in university that he formed a friendship with an American scholar by the name, Richard Caulk, a lecturer in the history department, that was to determine the path his life was later to take. Through connections made with this friend, particularly Mrs Innes Marshal, he was employed at the Italian school at his graduation. A conflict that arose with a colleague there because of his inability to speak Italian turned to his advantage when the director of the school offers to send him to Italy for short course in Italian. 

And during his stay in Italy, his older brother who resided in the US and his friend Richard Caulk arranged for him to get a student visa in the US. He decides to take them up on the offer, but resolving “only to study and return to my country ‘’, which is significant in terms of the overall theme of the book. “I told this to myself again and again to the point where I promised I would leave no room to consider any other option when I completed my studies in the US.”

Readers of the memoir cannot help notice the importance the writer attaches to the issue of identity and his concern to keep it intact at whatever cost. Speaking of the anxiety that assailed him at the prospect of a prolonged study in a foreign land, he says,‘’I was worried because, by age of 28, I had already developed an Ethiopian identity, for whatever its worth and I did not want to lose it. The question in front of me and that I dreaded was if my continuing exposure to new cultures and ways of life would change me significantly that would separate me perhaps permanently, or for most of my life, from the country and people I have grown to accept as mine.’’

 He enrolled in the graduate program of English literature at the University of Chicago but could not see a bright future for himself in a class where “students could read a book in one day and bring their critic the next while it would take me about a week to just to finish a book.” So he shifted to a college of urban planning, eventually graduating with a Master’s Degree. He went on to pursue a PhD in the college of urban planning and public policy at the University of Delaware in 1990. His wife Menbere joined him in the States and completed a BA in an apparel design.

Upon graduating, he was employed at the Delaware health bureau and was comfortably off and able to support his family. But he was no longer at ease there. “But I wondered how long I would stay in Delaware and when I would go back home. I was still the guest of the US and I dreaded to overstay.”

In 1992, one year after EPRDF took over, Dr. Aklilu and his wife decided to take the plunge and return home, to the surprise, nay chagrin, of many -colleagues, friends and relatives, both in US and at home. With the help of his old friend, Mrs Inn Marshal, he was accepted as an assistant professor at the Institute of Development Research of the Addis Ababa University, whose director then was  Professor Andargachew Tesfaye, whom he describes as a “professional, honest, and generous person.’’

After teaching a few years at AAU, Dr. Aklilu left his post there due to some misunderstanding with his bosses. This proved a blessing in disguise and he embarks on a research centre by the name, Miz-Hasab, the first of its kind in the country, which was to produce an impressive record of study in the area of health research, with a focus on HIV AIDS and family planning, in the 20 years of its existence.  The venture was something that made him exert himself and helped him achieve in a way he hardly thought he was capable of. He says, ‘’I never thought I had the capacity in me, albeit with the help of my colleagues at the centre, to accomplish as much. The responsibilities and the need to deliver forced me to dig deep into my capacity and my potentials, which I never knew I had. All of a sudden, weekends and holidays became working days; nine to five working hours extended to 6am to 10am; there were no tea and coffee breaks; lunch was forgotten …We travelled to all corners of the country usually under very difficult conditions .’’

Yet considering the achievement and the credibility  the centre was to earn for its quality findings, all the pain and the trouble was all  worth it, it later  turns out .‘’…in the twenty years between 1996 and 2016, our centre conducted 45 major public health studies and evaluations in Ethiopia. Many produced results that were valid and useful to scale up health interventions or take corrective measure in real time. If I ever contributed to my country’s wellbeing, it must be through the findings of these studies.’’

His wife Menbere also runs a company that produces readymade textiles for home furnishing and fashion accessories, with a total of forty-eight employees.

In a way that made him feel vindicated in his decision to return, both his daughters, after whom he named his centre, managed to succeed academically at local schools and made it to the US, the elder Hassabie went on to graduate with a MFA from Yale and Mizan with a BA in English literature from University of Delaware and is now musician based in New York.

In view of the depressing picture one  finds painted of the impact of brain drain on African countries  from the literature, it is  refreshing to read  of individuals who dare to  swim against the current and thereby make whatever contribution they can by choosing  to put their knowledge at the service of their country where it is desperately needed. Speaking of the people who made a positive contribution in his life, Dr. Aklilu quotes the words of Leo Rosten that they have ‘made some difference that they have lived at all.’ I think the same should be said of him.

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