I went out for coffee. An idea flashed, immediately. I thanked Balzac. The table attendant, due to some system flop, took ages to settle the bill. I was fuming, maybe, but aimed at not sure. Walking home, the flash disappeared. It was truly lost, though, after I stopped at a pharmacy for a doctor-advised substance. This stuff instantly conjured Dr. Selman Waksman, who coined “antibiotic” in 1941 from Greek: anti (against) and bios (life)—literally, “against life”—against the life that seeks to destroy other life. I noted all the great people lost before this discovery: a piece of capsule wisdom (from the Latin capsula, a small box, like the tiny, dissolvable medicine capsules) for the day’s pithy sayings.
The phrase “like it or lump it” (resign yourself to it) possibly derives from lump, which once meant to gulp down a bitter medicine… antibiotic. My effort to retrieve the earlier flash went nowhere. From the frying pan to the fire, my pop-eyed observation of a kid enjoying a macchiato with his probable granddad—a vision of simple satiety—only brought back my childhood neighbors’ call “Nu buna tetu.” I used to accompany my mother, carrying her cap and saucer, often wondering if the cap was too big for coffee. It worked out, though: after some nagging, I’d get a generous flow from the second and third rounds into the saucer. I never forget that grey-circled, artistic cap. I checked myself: “What is new?” This, in itself, only made me angry.
Just last week, I’d confessed to a cousin that I’d developed a coffee addiction, blaming those kiddy days. Well, a man’s heavy throat-clearing yanked my attention from the lost marvel and sent it straight to Japan. I had a friend, a true friend in need who was there on a testing day, who lived near Japan, closer to Bole. I had to use the fixed rotary phone at an all-wooden shack shop after visiting his rented place. This was when mobile fever hit town, when a 1990s Ericsson was soon dubbed the duster due to its ridiculous size. I had no mobile then; few had that luxury or privilege. Approaching the shop, a girl was busy brand shopping paracetamol, the attendant showing off his sales knack with new brands. I had to stop that nonsense.
Turning a corner, I met a woman from my old Geez class. An elementary school teacher, she was never boring. One day, she lamented never quenching her thirst for mathematics, the pure elation of solving equations. Yet, she found solace in the successful completion of her two sons as Engineers; talking about it made her face glow. This woman reminds me of AI, embodying the essence of mothers and fathers to the nth degree, even though the creators’ certainty hovers around one percent. It’s a new infrastructure—this Amharic teacher and her Engineering sons—we have to navigate, or we’ll look uneducated, like the US Education Minister calling AI an A first. I avoided a long-time friend’s house, eager to get home and write. A good student, hard worker, integrity intact. A man who grinds his coffee with a pestle and mortar, never bothered with an email, let alone the social media hassle. We recalled mocking a friend long ago who awkwardly asked if Brezhnev was dead when told about Andropov—forgetting Chernenko in between.
Between us, it’s as if nothing has changed since then. I wondered what he’d say if I told him the idea slipped and I was chasing it angrily. This teacher later lamented the not-too-long-lasting friendship prevailing among today’s kids. Walking on, I thought of my geologist friend I used to mock for looking for something that somebody has not put. Now, though, I was digging in my own mind for something that was there a minute ago. Bitter.
I love working with Geologists, and I hate it. I don’t know why the Ministry of Mining sees me as a living artifact. If not for the billions I saved, I truly witnessed millions thrown into empty pits by consumables purchase-driven drilling based on maps drawn because gold mining was seen as a gamble requiring only heart, not mind. This idiotic mindset is now being promoted by the CEO on social media. I remember a US drilling supervisor leaving the site immediately, terrified of putting that horror on his CV. I also remember cultural prospectors, illiterate, pointing out alluvial deposits, burdens waiting improved cut-off grades.
The geologist, out in the field with their geophysics and geochemistry tools, is often bossed by men who never used a geological hammer, led by someone with all the world’s answers from the latest science, asserting the heart precedes the mind—a claim dumb enough to wake Mark Twain for a definition of stupidity wrapped in senility, a folly that wasted millions. This reminded me of Plato and Eyoel Muluwork, a rare gem of a Geologist who could assay massive data.
Geological exploration is not a sudden gold rush, it’s a slow-burn, multi-phase grind where failure is literally buried. You start with Regional Reconnaissance, the lumpen intellectual phase: squinting at maps for a sulfurous hint of anomaly—the “lump it” part. Then Prospecting, the boots-on-the-ground hustle.
Real geologists with geological hammers chip away, rock-hounding, collecting float, looking for gossan (weathered ore) that promises bigger things. The Geologist is a herculean figure, alone, needing people skills because their only company is silence and the occasional local pointing out the anomalies. Next is Detailed Exploration—geophysics and geochemistry roll in: the seismic sorcerers and assay acrobats. Finally, Drilling—the terrifying, high-stakes sinkhole of millions to prove the ore body is real, not a CEO’s fever dream.
A country never achieves proper economic breakthrough without foundational resources like coal and iron ore, or base metals like copper. Gold is the flash, the curse—neither foundational motivator nor stable hygiene factor (look at Africa’s conflict zones). The geologist’s essence is this combined expertise: the field geologist spotting the anomaly and the academic modeling the ore body. Their isolation demands AAU prioritize people skills—neither geophysics nor a geological hammer saves you from a sulfurous disposition or a community you can’t talk to.
My anger now aimed at writing: how friends sometimes made me look a buffoon. I was reminiscing about AAU, Tikur Anbessa, Beyene Merid, Kes Timhert Bet with Yeneta Dawit—I’m a nostalgia buff. I focused on AAU, forgetting the spark. I was in a mini-bus taxi with its “weyeyet” (discussion). Years ago, passing AAU, I bored a young campus kid with old stories. His eyebrow kept raising amidst his disinterest. I excused my memory lapse, suggesting I might have the opposite of progeria (old in childhood), not Alzheimer’s. We need pieces about Addis mini-buses and weyeyet. I thought of unbridled pieces from a decade ago. Now, I questioned if today deserved writing at all. Two neighbors gave genuine responses: one returned a published piece as behind time, boasted his kids loathed reading, didn’t have time to waste.
The other bird’s-eye-viewed it, emphasizing the editing needed, proving I was not only out of time but also a bit disturbed. I remembered Eudora Welty and Nathaniel Hawthorne: Welty reminding me to turn every encounter into writing, Hawthorne bearing poverty by reading Shakespeare. The idea got lost anyway. I arrived home to a Ministry of Health text advising against using antibiotics without professional advice. This reminded me of my piece shared with friends, even the reigning comedian’s joke—a piece for the Ethiopian Reporter if they dared run it.
The antibiotic message soothed me, bringing back my second-year teacher for life, Meera Kaushik. She brought the substance into her management/leadership class to explain the Hygiene Factor Theory, giving me cognitive gymnastics. She asserted that the use and effect of antibiotics is short or adrift of hygienic function: they don’t motivate healing, they prevent pain, letting the body’s natural drive do the work. The curing is the body’s natural response. This capsule wisdom is the plot. The issue is the cost and time to administer the drug—expenditure on merely stopping dissatisfaction (Hygiene), not creating satisfaction (Motivation). This is “like it or lump it.”
Think of Clarence Hemingway, Ernest’s father, whose suicide was tied to disregarding antibiotics—not lack of success (Motivation), but unmanaged pain and despair (Hygiene). My classmates from high school bookkeeping streams didn’t care; I was left with her assertions like Don Quixote with passages, advised by a friend to only study the notes for the exam. This later connected to interdisciplinary discourse at Asni Gallery.
My presentation at the Zerfeshiwal alumni group, where I was requested to speak in English without preparation, came after a period where my tongue faculty at work was lost. Work was cut into check boxes; no meetings, minutes forbidden. Science led the company, left to a ghost science group. Raising science issues meant trouble. Individuality was mocked. George Orwell territory. The supreme leader mocked new ideas, calling people like me new idea idiots. He never laughed since he was twelve, his scathing attacks on reports insulting his rule, destroying a company with virtue, with mocks like “this idea is not low enough to be told a mouth like yours”—arrogance devised to siphon energy to make subordinates his tools. No wonder his preaching on ignorance targeted the educated.
My presentation story: A project for solar-paneled lamps in rural Ethiopia. The key: maintenance was exiged to be carried out solely by people who absolutely never leave the community. They had to be the utter washouts deemed so by the community. No wonder hygiene never reminded me of AAU’s special dish for sport stars, the teff flour in the injera sauce causing a student protest (instigated by interest groups and the grapevine).
AAU desperately needs guidance and counseling—neither students remaining ID numbers nor classrooms instead of lecture halls. I learned from TOT that students need to be trained as teachers, amplifying the respect for teaching. Gen Z’s problem talking to strangers shows a lack of life-call training. Hygiene never reminded me of my own class, Seid, a teacher with his bamboo stick checking us on Mondays. Not even the deaf pensioner in Addis, keeping the road from Tekle Haimanot neat, whose hustle against waste was never tolerated by officials, unlike Nicholas Gogol’s Inspector General reminiscence.
The AAU Charter’s future: neither massive resources poured into hygiene factors (kludgeocracy management, teff flour protests, bureaucratic rataplan) nor their neglect. Too much pain kills motivation (Cognitive Athletics). The Acting President’s structural promise is hygiene factor recognition: cleaning the wound, not running the race. We must not devolve into Zugzwang nor Ayn Rand’s nightmare of theft-wired homo sapiens. The osseous theft and filiopietistic politicians are the contaminants forcing energy expenditure just to maintain non-pain.
The AAU Charter must shift: from torpid pretense to teaching students to engineer themselves through rigor—that is Motivation.
Orwell’s warning about mocking individuality and ghost science groups is the ultimate hygiene breakdown. The utter washouts used in the solar lamp project, a system requiring people who absolutely never leave their community to handle maintenance, is a twisted version of positive deviance—a hygiene fix achieved by low expectation, not high motivation. This is the opposite deviance we must note: successful outcomes achieved by anti-conventional, negative means.
AAU must reject this. It needs counseling and guidance to ensure students neither remain ID numbers nor fall into the lumpen intellectual class. Gen Z’s lack of people skills is critical for the isolated geologist.
The way out is the Jerry Sternin model: find the positive deviants. Not the change artist whose wisdom leaves with them. Not TBU (True but Useless) conventional wisdom. But finding small, successful “deviant” practices already working and amplifying them. The focus must be neither on the systemic failure that produces opposite deviance (like the utter washouts succeeding in maintenance due to their forced local immobility) nor solely on the overwhelming hygiene needs, but on isolating the local success stories (positive deviance) within the academic system.
The AAU charter needs to transition from psittacism to Lacedaemonian discipline, forging the mind until it is turned to steel. The waste of the brilliant surgeon due to machtpolitik is a catastrophic hygiene failure that nullifies his talent (motivator). We have to stop squandering intellectual revenue, neither in sardanapalian sloth nor kludgeocracy. We have to produce minds that offer solutions, not more logomachy. That’s the tea.
The door stays closed because I am the door, but the lock must be steel, not Jell-O.
Contributed by Tadesse Tsegaye