ERITREA
<Picture: eritreawomen4_27_97.gif>Pumping water in the lowlands.After war,
fighting for a just society
<Picture: redarrow.gif - 0.1 K>By LEYLA ALYANAK
(c) Earth Times News Service
<Picture: a.gif>
ASMARA, Eritrea--With its palm-lined streets, tiled sidewalks, lazy cafes and
pastel villas baking in the flat sun, you'd think you were in southern Italy.
Look more closely and the faces are swarthier, women wear white rather than
black, people scurry to get to appointments on time, and an occasional driver
leaves his key in the ignition while running an errand.
Asmara still has one of the flattest urban skylines on the continent, mosques
piercing upwards above low Mediterranean houses. Crime is unfamiliar here, and
people gape when asked whether the city is safe at night. Strangers greet
foreigners in the street with a broad smile and 'Welcome' or 'Hello, Sister,'
and where bureaucracy might rule, ingenuity finds solutions to problems which
elsewhere in Africa might be ironed out with a banknote.
"We didn't fight for 30 years just to become another corrupt African nation,"
said Tesfay, a government employee who spent 12 years as a foot soldier. "We
didn't just fight for independence, we fought for a just society."
In the halves of the day which surround the two-hour lunch break, Asmara hums.
Down the escarpment, the deep-water port of Massawa is being slowly rebuilt,
the shattered ceilings repaired, lattice-work screens replaced, columns
butressed and facades replastered. This oriental city, facing Yemen and Saudi
Arabia across the Red Sea, was bombed mercilessly during the war. Massawa hums
too, with the energetic sounds of reconstruction.
In this era of conspicuous consumption and instant gratification, Eritrea is
like a throwback, an anachronism, a nation aiming for long-term solutions and
the common good, whose politicians eschew the trappings of newfound freedom,
the luxury cars, the unlimited foreign aid with strings attached. In a sense,
it is working towards sustainable government, where today's policies are
dictated by tomorrow's needs rather than other way round.
"No one helped us during the war, so we learned to help ourselves," said
Tesfay. Against all odds, Eritreans won a war of liberation against Ethiopia's
mighty military machine, which was backed first by the US and then by the
Soviet Union, the world's two superpowers. And they won it with almost no
outside help. That self-sufficiency is the base of almost everything Eritrea
does.
But scratch the surface and Africa appears. Young jobless men, many of them
born too late to fight the war, spend their days at the outdoor cafes lining
Independence Street in the capital. The city's shops are bulging with produce,
but in the countryside, only 40 percent of people's food needs are met, even
in a good year. Peasants migrate to Asmara to cash in on their expectations,
raised by the end of a long war. From beyond the country's borders, hundreds
of thousands of refugees and returnees set out for home and for a new life.
Many may be disappointed.
In downtown Asmara, each day brings more automobiles, spewing fumes which at
times make the air unbreatheable. Here and there, ugly modern structures inch
into the sky, and more are planned. New shantytowns spring up to accommodate
recent rural arrivals, and, increasingly, poverty-stricken beggars stand
discreetly in doorways. Beyond the paved streets, oxen and camels compete for
space on dusty tracks, hawkers on horsecarts shrilly tout their produce, and
at night, people go home to their village, to one of the many 'suburbs' that
ring Asmara. The city's core remains an island of wealth in a country with a
per capita GDP of about US$150, half the sub-Saharan average, a nation of
illiterate farmers and shepherds.
Despite its good intentions, Eritrea is not an easy place to govern. After
years of military discipline, the grace and flexibility of civil society are
foreign and its needs and prerequisites often misunderstood. The country's
nine ethnic groups and two major religions must be kept in harmony if Eritrea
is to have a peaceful future, in itself a daunting challenge. No one could
blame the country if it were to take a few shortcuts. But Eritreans look at
their continental neighbors in dismay, vowing to steer clear of a cycle of
corruption and dependence. Rather than handouts, they want investment. Eritrea
is banking on its potential. It has 1200 kilometers of unspoilt coastline,
plenty of fish, and maybe even gas and oil. But it also has a lack of skilled
workers, its natural resources have yet to be tapped, it has little history of
open government, and its coffers are not exactly overflowing. The social
safety net for the poorest of the poor is threadbare, and some people argue
the country is trying to become too self-reliant, too soon.
The word Eritrea still conjures up legends of the war, the women guerrillas
fighting alongside the men, the hospitals carved out of solid rock, the
self-sufficiency and restraint of the fighters towards the villagers. The war
may have ended, but the principles hewn fro it have so far remained. Jobless
or not, people stroll along Asmara's streets with heads high. At times, their
benchmarks are pride, a sense of purpose, a commitment to social justice, and
a willingness to incur an opportunity cost today for an improved tomorrow.
Eritrea wants to be different.
Things may not be perfect in paradise, as the country mends its broken bones.
But so far, it provides proof that a poor, war-torn African country does not
necessarily have to sell its soul in order to survive.
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