Music Journalist
Currently I don’t know much from first hand experience, but over the last I would say 4 years, I have been gathering data and interviewing Habesha people to learn more.
Back when I was living in the Bay Area, California there was an Ethiopian restaurant The Blue Nile and this was one of my first experienes with the culture and it was great. It my first experience with coffee culture and that was a bit sad.
My father is Ethiopian and I think it is VERY important for me to understand more about my relationship to Africa given how critical my race has been to my lived experience. I have NEVER felt American and I have known for a long time America is NOT the country for me so I have been trying to connect with Ethiopica to live and work there. There seem to be many challenges on the continent like Internet, water, banking, farming, trade – everything, but I would like to take myself and my skills there to improve the situation.
I created a pet project - the habesha exploration series, which is just a collection of short videos which introduce habesha women to those unfamiliar. I wish that when I was more interested in te culture I had the list to refer to so that I could follow the women presented and learn more about the culture.
Bloggers have been the most useeful resource for me given many live in Ethiopia and are sharing information about the cost of living and the culture there.
A few notable bloggers:
Each of these women has their own story wit ethiopia and watching them travel has been a very cool source of inspiiration for me. I just had no idea what it was like at all and now I feel like I ave some sort of starting point. I am not sure at the moment if I need to figure out EVERYTHING I think its more important to just go for the first time and sort of figure it out.
Frequently Asked Questions:
The big idea here for me is to think about development and how to turn some of the infrastructure challenges in the area into opportunities for developmment on the tech front by creating data products. I currently have this cool idea about creating a SNAP or digital funnding progrram for women and children who need money for food. There could be a few cool data products that come out of understanding the exact cost of food for a month for women living alone in Ethiopia in Addis especially. Understanding how these women are using public transit to get the food or ow much each product costs and which markets they are using to purchase the food. I have questions.
I recently learned about a website where you can volunteer abroad in exchange for lodging and there are a few oppotunities in Ethiopiia so hopefully if things work out the way I planned I will be able to check out Addid without having to worry about loding and learn a bit from locals at least for my first trip.
This website TEA for Africa talks about lot about it. This demographic report breaks down all of the issues