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WORLD / Africa
Fireworks, cheers ring in Ethiopia Millennium
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-09-12 16:19
ADDIS ABABA -- Fireworks burst over Addis Ababa and couples kissed as
crowds cheered the "end of the dark ages" in Millennium celebrations,
seven years after the rest of the world according to their ancient
calendar.
An acrobat entertains the crowd gathered for the celebrations of the
Ethiopian Millennium in Addis Ababa, September 11, 2007. [Reuters]
Whistles, car horns and sirens shook the air on the stroke of midnight as
Ethiopia, following a calendar long abandoned by the West, entered the
21st century.
Tens of thousands of revelers swarmed the capital's main Meskel Square
where soldiers stood guard over festivities Prime Minister Meles Zenawi
said marked Ethiopia's renaissance.
Security forces held back surging crowds as partygoers, many wearing the
red, gold and green of the national flag, sang and danced in streets lit
by flashing fairy lights.
"My life and the life of all Ethiopians have come together tonight," said
29-year-old Solomon Melese. "We are one."
Hours earlier, Meles, clad in a traditional white robe, announced a
"glorious new page" in the history of a country that, from the 1980s,
became for many in the outside world a byword for poverty, hunger and
conflict.
"A thousand years from now, when Ethiopians gather to welcome the fourth
millennium, they shall say the eve of the third millennium was the
beginning of the end of the dark ages in Ethiopia," he said.
"They shall say that the eve of the third millennium was the beginning of
the Ethiopian renaissance."
DARK AGES
Ethiopia's 81 million people can boast that their country, famed for
being the cradle of humanity after the discovery of a 3-million-year-old
skeleton named "Lucy," was the only African nation not to be colonised.
But "the darkness of poverty and backwardness" had dimmed Ethiopia's
proud reputation, Meles said.
"We cannot but feel deeply insulted that at the dawn of the new
millennium ours is one of the poorest countries in the world."
Meles was speaking at a newly built exhibition hall where US hip hop
group Black Eyed Peas later performed for foreign dignitaries and the
capital's elite.
Many Ethiopians stayed away from the official event, seen by critics as a
government project, preferring to party for free in a sports ground
rather than pay $170, the equivalent of two months' wages, to rub
shoulders with the great and good.
Some in Addis Ababa, an opposition stronghold, were angry about the
government's campaign to clear the streets of tens of thousands of
beggars and the spiraling cost of food in the Millennium countdown.
"I don't think much will change," said Belai Kassa. "Most of us will stay
poor."
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