I’m not an outspoken person and don’t like to talk about problems, but after helping many businesses with their digital presence and teaching them to communicate their “why” more into their business, I understood that I myself need to work on it as well, even if it sometimes might upset people which do not share the same opinion or idea.

As a second-generation Ethiopian diaspora, born in Zaandam, The Netherlands.
I’ve always felt happiness towards Ethiopia. The history, culture and kindness of the people!

The second time I visited Ethiopia was in 2009, I was 11 years old and learned a big message that stayed with me till this day.

We went to a restaurant and didn’t finish the food we ordered, so we asked the waiter to take away the food. After the waiter brought us the food and we left the place we saw a kid, probably the same age as I was asking for the food we had in our hands, we gave it to him and the kid run away from happiness. We also went our way and got inside the car and took a u-turn, as we took the U-turn, we saw some kids sitting around the guardrail between the roads. When we got closer, we noticed that one of the kids, was the same kid we gave the food to, he was eating the food with a group of friends.

That moment really touched me; a lot of thought were dwelling in my head.
is that his first meal of the day? Why did he decide it to share it with his friends even though it wasn’t that much? Later on, I understood that they’ve experienced true happiness not by getting a new car or a new bike or any other material thing, but simply our primary needs, food!

I knew I would never feel or truly understand what he has been through, but one thing I know is, that it’s not possible to get that kind of happiness from basic needs in a western country, where we are chasing checks to checks, which you can chase to infinity and eventually never really satisfy you.
I learned that those kids might be happier than I am, even though they won’t have all the things I have.

Letter to the youth:

At the time of writing Ethiopia is in a civil war between different ethnic groups and there are innocent people who are getting killed every day. What I see a lot from the diaspora’s is that they are sharing content such as, Free Tigray, Free Oromo etc. Which is good in a way (being the voice for the people getting killed everyday) but from a bigger perspective I see it as dividing different ethnic groups even further!

If you share a post about innocent people getting killed in the Oromo region, what would it make any difference if the same thing happens in the Amara Region or Tigray Region and vice versa.

When confronting people that share such things, I hear a lot of noise about Tigray did this for 30 years and Oromo did this, or Amhara did this. We are all pointing our fingers to each other, which unconsciously leads to hate towards another ethnic group, even if you let your voice be heard for an ethnic group of people who are getting killed.

We were first human before we were any ethnic group. Any human life is a human life.

Let’s start sharing content focused on Ethiopia as a whole, instead of focused on one ethnic group.
Let’s educate our parents when they say such things, let’s come together as whole and keep this rich country in history and many other things together.