The Abyssinian sings and bagana weeps,
Resurrecting the past, full of enchantment;
There was a time when in front of Lake Tana
Gondar was the royal capital.
These lines by Nikolai Gumilyov make Ethiopia, located far in Africa, much closer to us. The mysterious land of Abyssinia, which we used to call Ethiopia, has long attracted the attention of Russians. Volunteers traveled to equatorial Africa to help unfortunate blacks fight off the Italian invaders. The Soviet Union, itself exhausted from economic problems, helped the government of Mengist Haile Mariam not to starve all of its subjects - if only someone remained.
Ethiopia in historical retrospect can be described as Kievan Rus - an endless struggle or a strong center with the outlying feudal lords, or, if the emperor was able to gather forces, a united country with external enemies. And for the common people, political cataclysms, like in Kievan Rus, were like ripples on the surface of the water: the peasants, manually cultivating their fields, are much more dependent and dependent on possible rain than on the central government, if it sits even in Kiev, even in Addis -Ababa.
1. Ethiopia is the 26th country in the world in terms of occupied territory, and in exact numbers this territory looks quite interesting - 1,127,127 km2... It is interesting that several African countries have about the same area plus a mine of a hundred thousand square kilometers - the colonialists, apparently, drawing the borders, tried to divide Africa into more or less equal pieces.
2. The population of Ethiopia at the beginning of 2018 is almost 97 million people. This indicator is higher only in 13 countries of the world. So many people live in no European country except Russia. The population of Germany, closest to Ethiopia, is approximately 83 million. In Africa, Ethiopia is second only to Nigeria in terms of the number of inhabitants.
3. The population density in Ethiopia is 76 people per square kilometer. Exactly the same population density in Ukraine, but it should be borne in mind that Ethiopia, unlike Ukraine, is a high-mountainous country, and there is less land suitable for living in an African country.
4. With the economy in Ethiopia, according to the statistics, everything is very sad - the gross domestic product, calculated in terms of purchasing power, is just under 2,000 dollars per capita, which is 169th in the world. In Afghanistan, where the war has not stopped for half a century, even then it is 2003 dollars.
5. The average working Ethiopian earns, according to statistics, $ 237 per month. In Russia, this figure is $ 615, but in Uzbekistan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine, they earn less than in Ethiopia. However, according to travelers, in the slums of Addis Ababa, $ 80 in regular salary is considered happiness. But the satellite dish will even hang over a shack made of cardboard boxes.
6. Ethiopia ranks 140th in the ranking of countries based on life expectancy. Women in this country live on average 67 years, men live only up to 63. However, the vast majority of African countries, including the once prosperous South Africa, are in the list below Ethiopia.
7. The common cliche “people have lived here since time immemorial” fits perfectly with the description of Ethiopia. The fact that the ancient ancestors of people lived in this area about 4.5 million years ago is proved by numerous historical findings.
Lucy is a reconstruction of a female Australopithecus who lived at least 3.2 million years ago
8. In the VII - VIII centuries BC. e. on the territory of modern Ethiopia there was a kingdom with an unpronounceable, at first glance, name D'mt (the name, of course, is pronounced, the linguists denote a sound between [a] and [and] with an apostrophe. The inhabitants of this kingdom processed iron, cultivated crops and used irrigation.
9. The ancient Greeks invented the word “Ethiopian” and called so all the inhabitants of Africa - in Greek this word means “burnt face”.
10. Christianity became the dominant religion in Ethiopia (then it was called the Axum Kingdom) religion already in the middle of the 4th century AD. The date of the founding of the local Christian church is 329.
11. Ethiopia is considered the birthplace of coffee. According to popular legend, the tonic properties of the leaves and fruits of the coffee tree were discovered by goats. Their shepherd told a local monastery that by chewing on the leaves of a coffee tree, the goats become alert and agile. The abbot tried to brew the leaves and fruits - it turned out to be an invigorating drink, which was later appreciated in other countries. During the occupation of Ethiopia, Italians invented espresso and brought coffee machines to the country.
12. Ethiopia is the highest mountainous country in Africa. Moreover, the lowest point of the continent is also in this country. Dallol is 130 meters below sea level. Concurrently, Dallol is also the world champion in average annual temperature - here it is 34.4 ° C.
13. The main language in Ethiopia is Amharic, the language of the Amhara people, who make up 30% of the country's population. The alphabet is named Abugida. 32% of Ethiopians are Oromo people. The rest of the ethnic groups, more than 80 of them, are also represented by African peoples.
14. Half of the population are Christians of the Eastern Rite, another 10% are Protestants, and their number is noticeably increasing. A third of Ethiopia's population is Muslim.
15. The capital of the country, Addis Ababa, was originally called Finfin - in the language of one of the local peoples, hot springs are called so. Addis Ababa became the city three years after its foundation in 1886.
16. The Ethiopian calendar has 13 months, not 12. The latter is a shorter analogue of February - it can have 5 days in a regular year and 6 in a leap year. Years are counted, as befits Christians, from the Nativity of Christ, only because of the inaccuracy of the calendar Ethiopia is 8 years behind other countries. With watches in Ethiopia, too, not everything is clear. Government offices and transportation operate on a worldwide schedule - midnight at 0:00, noon at 12:00. In everyday life in Ethiopia, it is customary to consider the conditional sunrise (6:00) as zero hours, and midnight. - conditional sunset (18:00). So "wake up at six in the morning" in Ethiopia means "slept until twelve."
17. Ethiopia had its own black Jews, they were called "Falasha". The community lived in the north of the country and numbered about 45,000 people. All of them gradually left for Israel.
Yetaish Einau, Miss Israel, born in Ethiopia
18. All salt in Ethiopia is imported, therefore numerous rulers and emperors paid great attention to customs control of its import - it was a constant and inexhaustible source of income. In the 17th century, people were sentenced to death and confiscation of property for trying to import salt past customs. With the advent of more civilized times, life imprisonment was introduced instead of execution, but now you can get it not only for salt, but also for medicines, equipment for their production, and even for cars.
19. A unique case for Africa - Ethiopia has never been anyone's colony. During the Second World War, the country was occupied by Italy, but it was precisely the occupation with partisan warfare and other delights for foreigners.
20. Ethiopia was the first, with a small reservation, African country to be admitted to the League of Nations. The reservation concerns the Union of South Africa, as the present Republic of South Africa was then called. South American was one of the founders of the League of Nations, but formally it was a British dominion, not an independent state. In the UN, Ethiopia was the so-called. an initial member - a state that was among the first to join the Organization.
21. In 1993, the population of Eritrea, the northern province through which Ethiopia had access to the sea, decided that enough to feed Addis Ababa. Eritrea separated from Ethiopia and became an independent state. Now the average per capita GDP of Eritrea is one and a half times lower than the Ethiopian one.
22. In the city of Lalibela there are 13 churches carved into the stone mass. Churches are unique architectural structures. They are united by an artesian water supply system. The titanic work of carving temples out of stone was done in the XII-XIII centuries.
23. The Kybre Nagest, a sacred book for Ethiopians, kept in Addis Ababa, bears the stamp of the British Museum library. In 1868, the British invaded Ethiopia, defeated the emperor's troops and pretty much robbed the country, taking away, among other things, the holy book. True, at the request of another emperor, the book was returned, but already stamped.
24. At the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa there is a monument to Pushkin - his great-grandfather was from Ethiopia, more precisely, from Eritrea. The square on which the monument stands is also named after the great Russian poet.
25. Attempts to make agriculture collective, undertaken by the "socialist" government in the 1970s, completely destroyed the agricultural sector. Several dry years were superimposed on this devastation, which led to the most severe famine, which claimed the lives of millions of people.
26. However, the Ethiopians were starving even without socialism. The country has very stony soils. This prevents the slightest degree of mechanization of peasant labor. And even a large number of livestock (there is more of it in Ethiopia in relation to the area of the country than anywhere else in Africa) does not save in a hungry year - the cattle either go under the knife, or take a break from lack of food before humans.
27. Another famine caused the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie. It was arid for three years in a row from 1972 to 1974. Moreover, oil prices tripled, while Ethiopia did not have its own hydrocarbons at that time (now, according to some reports, the Chinese have discovered both oil and gas). There was no money to buy food abroad - Ethiopia only exported coffee. Moreover, humanitarian aid from abroad was plundered. The emperor was abandoned by everyone, even his own guard. Haile Selassie was deposed in 1974 and killed a year later.
28. The first hospital opened in Ethiopia at the end of the 19th century was a Russian hospital. Russian volunteers helped the Ethiopians in the war against the Italians in 1893-1913, but this fact is much less illuminated in history and literature than the participation of Russians in the Anglo-Boer War. However, the Ethiopians assessed Russian aid in about the same way as other “allies” and “fraternal peoples” assessed it: at the first opportunity they began to seek the protection of England and the United States.
29. The acts of the first Russian soldiers-internationalists are worth mentioning their names. Esaul Nikolai Leontyev brought the first group of volunteers and sisters of mercy to Ethiopia in 1895. Esaul Leontiev's advice helped Emperor Menelik II win the war. Kutuzov's tactics worked: the Italians were forced to stretch communications, bled to death with blows to the rear, and defeated in a decisive battle. Deputy Leontiev was the head of the captain K. Zvyagin. Cornet Alexander Bulatovich was awarded the highest Ethiopian award for military successes - he received a golden saber and a shield.
Nikolay Leontiev
30. In Ethiopia there is an analogue of the Moscow Tsar Cannon. The never-firing 70-ton cannon has nothing to do with the Russian Tsar Cannon. It was cast by the Ethiopians themselves in 1867. The Crimean War has recently ended, and in distant Africa, the courage of Russian soldiers and sailors who opposed all of Europe.
