Christmas in Gondar

From "Why There Are No Christmas tree in Gondar"

Clark tried to learn if the local Princess Tenagnework Vegetable Farm was designated as an authorized Christmas tree dealer, but then he decided to keep quiet about the whole thing when it was announced that the unfortunate Princess Tenegnework, along with the other thirteen princess, her sisters, were now under house arrest in Addis Ababa.

Making an already sensitive situation worse, it’s being said that the people at the Princess Tenegnework Vegetable Farm enabled our Provincial Governor, just recently appointed to the post by the Emperor, to escape arrest by troops of the revolutionary army, and that is Wossenseged’s father, Grazmatch Hailu who executed the escape.

The tangled tale began earlier in December, while the country was still in shock over Bloody Saturday, the night radical elements in the Durge marched into Central Prison and shot fifty-four prisoners imprisoned because of their allegiance to the Emperor. News arrived that two hundred troops were passing through Gondar, on their way to the battle front in Eritrea. Suspecting they carried orders for his arrest, the Provincial Governor, General Nega Tegegne, managed to get out of town on the night before the troops arrived. When the soldiers reached his palace, they were told the General was very sick, too sick to welcome them, and for the next thirty-six hours the General’s escape was covered by a loyal servant who carried meals into the Governor’s chambers, ate a part of the food himself emerging with partially empty trays, each time announcing that his Excellency was still too sick to receive visitors.

We hear the rest of the story about Wossenseged’s parents and General Nega’s escape from Colonel Assis. It was Grazamatch Hailu who helped Nega escape from the governor’s palace using the vegetable farm truck with the General buried under piles of Swiss chard. One sly, clever servant held off two hundred of the revolutionary government’s finest; one proud general, bouncing long distances beneath a pile of vegetables. Gondarie love a good story, especially one that makes fools of the powerful and the rich, and eventually this story was told all over town. And this is why there are no Christmas trees in Gondar, December 1974.