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Everyone remembers <a href="http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/onblack.php?id=2680967244" rel="noreferrer nofollow">the uneven Ethiopian present</a>. The 1970's and 1980's period is one of the darkest period of Ethiopia: civil war, dictatorship, repression, droughts (1974, 1985), famine. Everyone remembers the pictures of kids starving with their round bellies and wide opened eyes.

The kids were the victims of an planned starvation in order to repress the uprising in the Northern part of the country,in the not yet independent Erithrea and in Tigray . Aksum is the center of Tigray. The obelisk of Aksum then became the symbol of the marxist leninist guerilla: Kalashnikow, red Star, hammer and the stelae. Heritage had become a counter-symbol of the national symbol: it meant the revolution in the revolution for the freedom of Africa. But for Africa, Ethiopia was the symbol of sovereignty (even if the Emperor Haile Selassie was a dictator of the worst kind). After the Socialist revolution of Mengistu things did not go better for the northern revolutionaries (starvation, repression).

In 1991 the Tigrean guerilla took Addis Abeba and seized power on the whole country resuming a 30 years civilwar. Once again, the obelisk was a symbol of triumph. But the Obelisk was still standing in Rome, ironically  in front of the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN. Could the revolution managed to bring food for all and the Obelisk back home?

(to be continued)