The halls of SELEDA are filled with mirth and merriment, dear readers, as we get ready to wave goodbye to 2000- a year certainly filled with its share of tirimiss..dibiliq… and some wry moments of, as Esachew Kburinetachew Ato Alan Greenspam put it, irrational exuberance.

…January 2000 marked our second  “theme” based SELEDA… a veritable literary move, we thought, until the raucous shikoocha at editorial meetings to decide what the theme-of-the-month would be started to resemble the chaos at Siminto vs. Buna football matches at Kampolojo. We nearly came to blows with upper management who threatened to shut this whole operation down if we didn’t have a Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous Ethiopians Who Love Stirred Martinis Issue … Mayalf neger yelem. 

…February was the Love Issue, which in SELEDA confines means that our writers and the computer people came to a détente, however ephemeral… the Kompiwter KebertEs promised not to replace the writers’ powdered carrot-ginseng (ye meksess beverage-achew) with miTmiTa; and the writers pledged not to light up eTan and turn the computer room into a make-shift yoga tera. 

…Semi crises threatened to mushroom into a bone fide catastrophe with our Science and Technology Issue in March. It turned out to be the most popular issue, dashing the hopes of the creative crew who were unwavering in their thought that this here was a literary bastion of sorts. They swore the tech people had put m’tihat on the Stats page… the Tech people promptly tried to program a “m’tat” in Fortran… upper management wanted a crash course on what a m’tihat was… and all the marketing people were fired for making SELEDA appeal to “mindless, soulless techie geeks.” Yelenibetim!    

…In April we celebrated our first anniversary and SELEDA upper management managed to thwart a carefully planned coup d'état by we the CHiQoon of all CHiQoon Hizbs… and so, instead of the Victory issue, we had to settle for the Careers Issue, effectively ending our careers of planning and executing successful “bloodless but fabulous” revolutions… and forever draining out any mercy our bosses might have had left in their right pinkies.

…We tried to make history in our History Issue in May by being the first Ethiopian outfit not to turn a good thing into an overly-politicized logaw shibo forum. Instead, we continued on the path of the overly verbose, qum neger alba and infantile medium, with no hopes of using words like “siniQaN” and “amerQi”, and phrases like “ye selam shig’igr”. Our loss.

… June was our Family Issue and yes, we were aware of the kind of irony that was posed when people like us try to approach family issues. Ay-hey-hey…. Qeld new…  It took all we got not to make it the Family Members We Have A Big Beef Against and Who We Are In Litigation With Regarding Our Great-Grandfather’s R’st. 

… Thank goodness we combined the July and August issues to deliver the Finance Issue. By the middle of the year, you might want to know, things get a little testy around the SELEDA corridors… and more so this year because our comptroller (we think after a close encounter with a zar of the ilikeNa ilk) suggested it might be time for an audit of upper management’s expense account. “Mot yamarew accountant ye upper management’n ‘$7842.03 in miscellaneous, and $6,000.01 in other miscellaneous costs’ mezgeb ‘Mindinew?’ b’lo yiTeyiqal”  indaylu Abew siteritu…

…We came back in September with our Diaspora/Life in Exile Issue and were … surprised to hear that our comptroller had submitted his resignation during our summer break. Wide-eyed upper management could not “imagine” what happened since they thought he was “sooo… nice.” We are still suspicious especially since his letter of resignation was signed “Intina”. 

…Issues in Education graced the October SELEDA and we found out just how sensitive private school students from Addis Ababa were. Woah Nelly and ere b’Nguss! We got vitriolic mail in all the romance languages and one anonymous and horrendously misspelled and typographically challenged death threat… InEn! said the Mail Editor and sent all of the chagrined readers a… love letter.

…In November we launched the Cities Issue and the long-reigning #1 status of the Technology Issue was finally… heck, it was stomped on like a yadere mastika, new negeru. Exhilarated, the writers and the creative thinkers at SELEDA went on a selamawi s’lf  and decided to celebrate by taunting the techie people until another threat of shutting the whole operation down was used to gedeb masgezat them. Upper management celebrated this event by throwing an extravagant party… regrettably and curiously no SELEDA staff member was invited due to an “invitational mix up”.  

And finally we ended the year with the Humor Issue, managing to offend several readers at once with random and senseless acts of wigibns. But we hope you all know it was meant in the nicest way possible, non?

In all this, we would be remiss if we did not profusely thank our readers and contributors for their unwavering support. We are grateful for the friendships we have fostered with readers from all over the world, and we are especially indebted to readers who put fingers to keyboard and thus became writers, and, in one case of blackmail and psychological s'Qai masayet, an editor. Ij nestenal.

Welcome to the Literature Issue! We hope this will finally give us an entree  into the super cool Ethiopians-in-Literature crowd, which so far has denied us membership. We keep getting stunned at the depth of talent out there in the Diaspora, and we are humbled people like you let people like us ashaQbo mayet you with QuliCH-liCH ‘milu eyes. We hope you enjoy reading our foray into the seductive, astounding, remarkable, staggering and confounding world of Ethiopian Literature.    

Next month will be our second Love Issue, and as always we welcome you to share your stories with us. We will be accepting articles for publications until January 15. Here is your chance to tell us your woes, victories and “fQru/fQruwa inde awtomic libE lie fendito” stories. For a message from the Love Issue Editor (who we all just happen to love) and for  guidelines for submitting articles, please take a moment to read the tereNa Editor’s Hamsa Lomi.

March will be our Class Issue, where we will finally resolve this issue once and for all, they say with enviable insouciance. Frankly we didn’t even know there were Class Issues with us Ethiopians… ke’yet meTa? Man asQemeTew? (As far as we are concerned, there are only two classes: those smart beautiful people who read SELEDA, and the philistines who don’t. Case closed.) Deadline to submit articles is February 15, so ponder this and send us your take on the so-unapproachable and let’s-sweep-it-under-the-rug issue of Class, better known as medeb, thanks to the 70’s.

We wish you the most joyous of Christmases, and a happy and healthy ferenji New Year. We love hearing from you, of course, so if it mekejels you, drop us a note at editors@seleda.com or go to the SELEDA Comment Box.

Be cher yigTemen.

The Humble Editors
editors@seleda.com