Right, so there I was, last week it must have been, a Tuesday perhaps, feeling a bit like a startled pigeon on a hot pavement down at the Adwa memorial. All those youngsters splashing about, mimicking the dam overflow. Water is water, I suppose, even in miniature.

My own thoughts, however, were running on a more elevated plane, mapping out that stretch from “4-kilo” to “Shiro Meda” as a dedicated intellectual zone. Education and, dare I say, friendliness—a rare commodity these days—I imagined those virtues wafting in like a fog from the Île-de-France, Oxford’s dreaming spires, and the Cam’s languid banks. Even a hint of that Teutonic rigor, all painstakingly cultivated by rulers long gone. A slow business, virtue.So, while the kids were larking about in the spray, I was up in my head, sketching out a future academic hub. A worthy notion, I’d say. Though whether those high-minded ideals will take root in Addis Ababa’s soil, with its ever-increasing thirst for knowledge… well, that’s a tale for another time, wouldn’t you agree? One with fewer splashes and more footnotes.

Now, these youngsters at the memorial, their exuberance bordering on the foolhardy. Ready to vault the dam wall itself, you say? Quite an undertaking. It brought back memories, naturally. My own youthful escapades, scrambling over smaller dams. It started with that modest 6 MW affair at Aba Samuel, way back in ’32. Then the Awash dams, growing in ambition, a combined 100 MW by the 1960s. A more significant hurdle, that. And the way Addis changes, Piassa shifting its face like a seasoned actor. It struck me that this dam-leaping spirit should have aligned with the ’74 revolution. A different sort of leap, that. Though there was Fincha around then, a more substantial 130 MW structure.Dam heights, as I recall, were a respectable 20 to 40 meters. Not exactly molehills. So, this youthful folly at the memorial, a physical echo of a metaphorical urge to push boundaries—a reminder of past leaps, both literal and societal. Dams, both power sources and barriers. The enduring, if sometimes misguided, human impulse to vault, to progress, to change—over walls and over regimes.

But the stakes are higher now, wouldn’t you say? These modern youngsters, eyeing the sheer scale of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD): 155 meters of concrete ambition, nearly 6,000 megawatts. Its sister dams echo that formidable power—12,000 megawatts in total. Enough to give even the most impetuous pause. This jumping, you surmise, looks imminent. Driven by the promise of development, and the pressure of those monumental heights on their rivers, a powerful, almost primal urge to match that scale, to somehow leap over such progress. It brings to mind my own intellectual wrestling matches, “going against the grain” in the study of learning. Weaving that into my vision of an academic village, a different sort of dam, perhaps—the established ways of knowing. And my own efforts to vault those conventions, to tap into a new kind of intellectual energy. So, the youngsters face a physical behemoth, a testament to human engineering; I, a more cerebral type, the entrenched structures of education. The urge to overcome, to progress, remains. But the height of the wall, the force of the current… one hopes for a less literal approach this time; a metaphorical leap of understanding, rather than a plunge into the turbulent waters of progress.

Right. This Mezzedimi fellow, back in ’92, looking back at his time with the Emperor. Even in the supposed golden years of the ’60s, a creeping unease. A premonition of the fall. Then that Fallaci interview. Amiable enough, for a spell. But that Italian journalist, sharp as a tack, wasn’t buying the imperial charm. “Persuasive, effective,” she allowed, but unconvinced. Called him a despot, no less. Mezzedimi, bless his heart, offered a reasoned defense. But look here, earlier reports, pre-1930, paint a different picture. Ras Tafari Makonnen, the regent, a paragon of virtue. Wisdom, kindness, justice, patience—the whole shebang. A broad and unerring vision. A knack for understanding the nation’s needs. He started shaking things up internationally, bringing Ethiopia into the League of Nations. He had ambitious domestic plans. As Empress Zewditu’s right-hand man, he held considerable sway over the large landowners, appointing, transferring, exiling, and imprisoning as he saw fit. But always with shrewdness, moderation, and caution. Avoiding clashes with the powerful Rases. Tackling tough issues, bringing in radical reforms. He surrounded himself with bright young people who had seen the world. Aimed to open minds, gradually but methodically reforming the “millenary and backward Empire.” Clipping the wings of the landowners, centralizing power. And this fellow, with that “slightly melancholy-tinged, immobile, and hieratic” look, how could he have managed such a colossal task without “firm energy”?

Father Coulbeaux chimes in, noting that Abyssinians prefer an autocrat, generous but absolute, even a tyrant. Royal pronouncements are taken as gospel, even the harsh ones.  The king speaks, the Lord speaks. The royal personage is practically deified, thanks to that Solomonic lineage. A rather peculiar mix of respect, servile fear, and veneration. Prostrations before the prince are the same as before the altar. So, the Emperor: a complex figure, wouldn’t you agree? Admired by some, viewed with suspicion by others. A reformer, an autocrat, a man with a thoughtful air and a firm grip. The truth, as always, is a slippery fish in a pond of recollections and reports.

Right, so Mezzedimi is summoned to the Old Ghebi Palace, throne room. The Emperor is surrounded by the usual hangers-on, who are then politely excused. Just Mezzedimi and His Imperial Majesty. A private audience. The Emperor himself pulls up a chair, right next to his. Surprising circumspection, you say. Then it spills out: “Je ne comprends pas votre gouvernement!!” A rather bewildered cry from the Lion of Judah.  It seems the Emperor had a soft spot for the Italians. Years of diplomatic nudges, trying to convey that Ethiopia, a developing nation, needed a solid economic and technical partner. Italy, he decided. The lira had just won some sort of award. And the Italians, of all Westerners, were the best at this collaborative business. They reinvested their profits, you know. “Comme vous bien savez.” But this Italian government… baffling. More sorrowful pronouncements: “Je ne comprend pas vôtre gouvernement.” Then a shift to the Aksum Obelisk, still kicking its heels elsewhere. So, the Emperor enlisted Mezzedimi for a personal mission, bypassing the usual channels. Because, you see, the Emperor, before he passed, had a hankering to meet Pope John XXIII. And to get to Rome, he needed an invitation from the Italian government.

Elementary, my dear Mezzedimi. Our man, naturally, had no choice but to hotfoot to Italy, peddling imperial desires at the appropriate levels. Lo and behold, interest was piqued. The Minister of Industry and Commerce, Luigi Preti, came to Addis Ababa with a delegation. Meetings aplenty, enthusiasm was high, and grand plans were hatched, including the Tana Beles project, which was later revived. Alas, the Italian government then promptly collapsed. Initiatives vanished with it. The Emperor finally made it to Italy in 1970. Pope John XXIII was long gone. And Ethiopia’s dream of this “economic twinning” with Italy? Faded like an old photograph. A tale of good intentions, bureaucratic bafflement, and the fleeting nature of governments. The Emperor, it seems, found the ways of earthly powers as perplexing as the rest of us.

So, there you have it. The Emperor’s little notion for a bit more height on those dams, a few extra megawatts humming along the wires… dashed. Like a stone thrown at the water, never quite making it to the far bank. One can imagine the imperial calculations, the grand designs sketched out, the anticipated surge of power. All for naught. The machinery of progress, so often prone to sputteing and stalling. The megawatts remain stubbornly unharnessed, the potential energy just drifting off into the Ethiopian air.

The recurring encounter with anything “Made in Brazil” invariably triggers a Pavlovian response: the specter of national debt, twinned in my memory with Argentina. This association, it seems, is rooted in university lore and the pronouncements of Asmelash Berhe (PhD), a revered pedagogue whose experience straddled the practical and theoretical. He recounted tales from a visit to Brazilian hydropower projects, juxtaposed with the seemingly extravagant expenditure on Argentinian victuals – purchased, one gathers, with funds perhaps better allocated – from cities notorious for their ceaseless nocturnal revelry. This same man was, in his time, deeply involved in the gestation of the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Republic in the 1980s, an undertaking managed by the Ethiopian Nationalities Study Institute. This entity, a veritable engine of scholarly output, produced documents of such high academic caliber that they are now, in all likelihood, stacked away in the dusty repositories of the Ethiopian Election Board.

Right. There I was in a pub, a good twenty years ago, around 4 kilo. In walks this Emeritus Professor of History. A proper hush descends. Bad day for me, that. One of those pub moments that sticks with you. He’s there for a quiet couple of drinks. I, full of youthful (or perhaps just tipsy) enthusiasm, reminded him of my university days and trotted out his old media soundbites. He warms up; we’re having a good chinwag. Then comes this politician friend of mine, not the sharpest tool in the shed. He keeps throwing in clumsy generalizations, dragging the conversation all over the map—from recent history to the land of lost socks. And when he tries to muscle in again, despite my gentle nudges back to the professor’s wisdom, off we go again.

This time, Genghis Khan’s burial spot? As if we’d have a clue. So, historiography it is. The professor, mind you, was as humble as you like. A whole spectrum of takes on things. He opened my eyes and changed my views completely. He even said I had a decent grasp of “history,” and that my departure would be a “great loss” to Ethiopian studies. So, my rambling wasn’t a total waste of his time, I suppose. A minor triumph in the grand scheme of things. Then the reading list: historiography basics. English is no good for Ethiopian history, apparently. I need Geez, French, and Italian. German and Arabic if I’m feeling ambitious. And with that, he left. I never saw him again.

I get home, head swimming. Vamps and deep thoughts. Days, weeks, years of it. Suddenly feeling rather small against the backdrop of my grand historical designs. My French and Italian? Not up to snuff. The old plan: Latin, Greek, then Geez. Sounds odd, maybe, but I wanted to get a proper handle on English. Half Latin, quarter Greek, they say. A flimsy excuse, really. I always wanted to hear Plato and Aristotle themselves. Awful day, meeting the Professor. My comfortable little intellectual detours utterly upended. Priorities in a right old mess. Seeing my own country through foreign eyes, foreign tongues. Started with Italian, side readings. Then French, more side readings, a proper muddle. Then Portuguese became essential. But the first book? In Spanish. A glimmer of sense: Spanish was closer. Then Cervantes. Lost in translation, forwards and backwards. A sudden German urge, intrigued by their take on Spanish as a flipped Creole. What about Portuguese? Vice versa? All this achieved by shutting out everything else, one language at a time. A proper intellectual cul-de-sac. Went in one way, came out… slightly more lost, and with a bloody long reading list.

The Addis Ababa air, thick enough as it was, seemed to thicken further with the recurring, distant vision of Isabel Boavida, in cahoots, it appeared, with a Hervé Pennec and a Manuel João Ramos. Their Sisyphean task: dragging the 1622 HISTÓRIA DA ETIÓPIA by one Pedro Páez into the rough terrain of the English tongue. A sight, one might reasonably assume, to extinguish any nascent flame of Portuguese linguistic ambition. Yet, within Páez’s own account, a familiar echo: Emperor Susenyos, vexed by reports inflated beyond recognition, following some contretemps involving a trusted aide. This, in turn, struck our correspondent with the abrupt force of recognition – the almost mythical delicacy required when navigating the treacherous landscape of Ethiopia’s bygone days. One false step, and the whole edifice might crumble

Yet, from this very linguistic quicksand emerged an unexpected bloom. Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis – a triumvirate of Portuguese literary voices. A deceptive plurality, it transpires, all masks of the singular Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa (1888–1935), a poet, writer, critic, translator, publisher, and, by some accounts, a literary colossus of the 20th century. A master of disguise, he populated his literary landscape not with mere pseudonyms, but with some 75 heteronyms, three of whom – Caeiro, Campos, and Reis – achieved a startling autonomy, harboring thoughts and even opinions quite their own. A strange business, this partitioning of the self.

Right, so there I was, mulling over what sort of flotsam and jetsam I’d like bobbing about in this Addis Ababa knowledge pond. A proper reservoir of brainpower, you understand. Not just any old puddle.

As I was saying, this knowledge dam in Addis. Needs the right sort of minds floating about. We want the sharp ones, the fellas and gals who can grok a problem without needing a diagram drawn in the dust. None of this just twigging at the obvious. We need the clear thinkers, the perspicuous sorts who can make even the trickiest notions as limpid as a mountain stream. Give us the scrutable ideas, the ones you can actually get your head around without a team of interpreters. We’re after a bit of ruthful understanding, a touch of ken, and those glorious “aha!” moments, the anagnorisis when the penny finally drops and the epiphany when the lights go on. A bit of latitudinarian thinking wouldn’t go amiss, and a touch of resipiscence for when folks inevitably wander off track.

When they open their mouths, let it have the weight of a Ciceronian pronouncement, but without all the windy rhetoric. We want to hear their idiolect, their own way of putting things, but let’s keep the common tongue, the lingua franca, flowing smoothly. And for heaven’s sake, give us parrhesia – plain speaking, no beating about the bush. A bit of sprachgefühl wouldn’t hurt either, a natural feel for the rhythm of a good idea. And when they’ve had their say, let’s hope for a peroration with a bit of oomph, not just euphuistic hot air or elliptical mumblings that leave you more confused than before.

When they’re wrestling with a knotty problem, we need the sort who put their shoulder to the wheel, like that lad from Levelland. This reservoir needs to be built on something osseous, the bare bones of solid intellect. We want the bibliophages, the ones who devour books with a critical eye. Let’s aim for orthopraxy, the right way of doing things, not just clinging to dusty old orthodoxy. We need the first water quality, the genuine article, not some hazy nimbus of half-baked notions. Let the knowledge flow, fluvial and riverine, with strong riparian banks to keep it all contained.

Now, what we absolutely don’t want bobbing about in this intellectual watering hole. No room for these “wallahs” just slinging around fancy jargon. This isn’t some tech convention in Palo Alto. And forget the notabilia, the dusty relics of past achievements. No espaliered thinking here, we need ideas that spread and climb. And none of this atwitter excitement that fizzles out before tea time. We’ll have no truck with the aphasic thinkers, the ones who can’t make heads or tails of a straightforward question. And definitely no donnish prattle that’s all footnotes and no insight. We’ll steer clear of bibliophobia, a fear of cracking a book, and those light-fingered biblioklepts. Keep the juvenilia in the student scribblers, not in the main debates. And heaven help us from the bibliobibuli, so lost in their reading they can’t see the nose on their face.

No filiopietistic worship of old ideas just because they’re old. No mossbacks or standpat types digging in their heels. And for pity’s sake, no arrière-garde stragglers. We’ll show the door to any Luddites bashing the newfangled gadgets and any obscurants trying to keep the lights dim. No alter kockers grumbling about how much better things were in their day. And definitely no frippery or sciolism, no showy shallowness. We’ll have no furbelows or fustian, just the plain facts. And anyone caught being sent to Coventry for a dissenting opinion might find themselves permanently on the outer.

No Podsnaps burying their heads in the sand, and certainly no struthious denial of the obvious. Keep the fey notions out of it, we’re dealing with the real world here. And anyone trying to unhorse a good idea with pedantic donnish nonsense or the droning of a dryasdust will be politely ignored. This isn’t some ivory tower climb to Parnassus, but a working reservoir. No need for anyone to be on tenterhooks, all suspense and no substance. And we’ll have no nocebo effect poisoning the well. No hazy effluvium of thought or kludged together contraptions. Things need to happen with legerity and celerity, not at a snail’s pace. And no aliterates who can read but choose not to. Forget the grandiloquence and the pablum. And absolutely no cant or logorrhea.

So, there you have it. The sort of intellectual ballast we want floating in this Addis Ababa think tank, and the dead weight we’ll be dragging out. Let’s build something that actually holds water, eh.

Tadesse Tsegaye is a self-described nostalgia enthusiast with a keen awareness of the present as it shapes the future. Gifted at expressing his soul through writing, he combines his diverse experiences in resource management across multicultural and institutional settings to deliver insightful and captivating stories. Tadesse believes that sharing his tales not only enriches his own understanding but also offers a valuable service to others.)

Contributed by Tadesse Tsegaye