26-5-2017
Over a round table discussion recently, I happened to meet a Western (Ferenji as Ethiopians would popularly call Europeans or Caucasians in general) man who has been in Ethiopia few times. I asked him, how was Ethiopia?
“Oh I loved it.” he said.
He was in Addis Abeba and various regional towns a few times.
“The people are nice and the country is also worth visiting. Definitely, one of the places I really loved in Africa.” he added.
Surely, most Ethiopians living in the Western world must have received similar positive remarks about their country. It is good to hear positive feedback about one’s own homeland.
Ethiopia as a country has had a very negative image since 1974 that is the downfall of the Emperor Haileselassie and the subsequent dicey events such as the civil wars and the devastating famines. For many people, who have not ever visited Ethiopia, the images that come to their eyes as you introduce yourself as an Ethiopian are those pity awful events.
However, for many who have visited the country and have thought their peers about their experiences in Ethiopia, it has a different image.
The people and the effect of Ethiopia’s age old tradition and culture of politeness is something which has really worked for us as a trademark.
In the middle of our discussion though, I asked my new Ferenji acquaintance what he detested about Ethiopia.
“The bureaucracy, being called Ferenji everywhere and the unfair price tags for Ferenjis” he was straightforward.
The last two responses caught my attention, since the first one is actually a given.
It did never occur to me or for many of my fellows, I presume, that the Ethiopian price tagging system for Western customers is actually racist!
Imagine, if I wanted to buy a $50 French artifact from a store in Paris and the clerk says “Well the price is $100 for you because you are a black person.”
This is what our business people are doing literally. There is a de facto pricing system in hotels, shops, tourist places and so on where Ethiopians and Africans are charged less than Western or non-African customers. The business people are not even ashamed of reasoning it.
It is actually embarrassing and illegal. Some might argue that even in developed countries or the West, there are student, teacher and staff pricing systems which charge teachers and staff more than the students. We might argue that this system is discriminatory based on economic class but it is not based on ethnicity or religion or creed rather. All races benefit from this scheme as students and loss as teachers.
The Ferenji pricing system is among the many unethical, illegal and racist practices unrecognizably embedded within our society which must be wiped out as soon enough.
