Personal Narrative: Things Fall Apart

My best friend, was a gorilla, my neighbor, was a Hyena, and my house was a small hut made out of sticks and grass in the middle of a dry land. That's how people visualize me when I tell them that I am from Ethiopia. Ethiopia is a vast and beautiful nation that lies in the eastern lands of Africa. It’s the country where the descendants of the Axumite kingdom still live in. The land of the first Christian empire in Africa but to the rest of the world it's a poor and undeveloped nation because well...it's in Africa and Africa is a continent seen by the world as a place of hunger, wars between tribes, and uncivilized people living with wild animals. Some people even see it as a country with the same language and culture. When I came to the United

I was upset by her question. She knew I was from Ethiopia because I've told her before yet she asked me if I was from a tribe in Nigeria, as if Africa is just one country and has one similar culture. I use to be so furious of what people thought of Africa as. I use to be so mad about how they viewed Ethiopia. Never did they know that I come from a country full of rich history and

The country that practiced Christianity before Europeans, and the origin of Rastafarian-ism. The country that is the origin of the coffee you drink, the country with so many spirituality that you can’t even comprehend. Home to the earliest human sightings and human fossils on earth that date over million years such as Lucy, Ardi and more. I am from a country that survived for thousands of years and one of the few countries in Africa with its own alphabet. Yes, the country does have problems. Once in a while people end up dying because of food shortage and drought and that is not ok. The people do need assistance once in a while because the country is a developing nation, however the fact that the media only shows that part of Africa upsets me. People believe what they see and the only thing they see about Africa is the part where the people are in wars where the people are hungry and where the people live in little villages. But what about everything else? What about all those historical sightings in many of the countries? What about the lalibela church dug underground in the shape of a cross during the 12 century in Ethiopia with amazing engineering skills? What about the great cities that are established in most of the countries in Africa? Why don't people see the