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Loading... Ciao Asmara (original 2002; edition 2002)by Justin Hill (Author) starbox | Dec 10, 2017 |   By sally tarbox on 11 December 2017 Format: Kindle Edition Justin Hill went out to Eritrea as a volunteer aid worker in 1996. The country had just emerged from thirty years of conflict with neighbouring Ethiopia, and Hill writes of the aftermath: the damaged buildings but far more importantly a damaged people. Countless deaths; people with horrifying tales to tell; and a sense of malaise as the long fought-for and dreamed-of independent Eritrea fails to materialise. As former fighters get the top jobs, there remains a sense that conflict is something to aspire to; warfare remains a glorious state. Hill's account concludes with his evacuation as war starts to break out anew... Having read two accounts of Eritrea in the 30s by Italian doctor/ administrator Alberto Denti di Pirajno (qv), which portrayed a rather magical place, it was sad to read Hill's contrasting its time as an Italian colony with the country today: "The Italian aristocrat Duke Denti di Pirajno had reported lions here in the 1930s; and I saw a village called Elephant Water- but all the big game was long gone. The war had seen to that; when soldiers weren't killing each other they turned their guns on the wildlife around them. They'd left the land barren: dust and stones, devastated by a virulent plague of human beings." A beautiful country but a seemingly hopeless situation. B/w photos. (  ) starbox | Dec 10, 2017 |  ) charl08 | Jul 17, 2013 | |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)963.5072History and Geography Africa Ethiopia and Eritrea EritreaLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.31)
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By sally tarbox on 11 December 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
Justin Hill went out to Eritrea as a volunteer aid worker in 1996. The country had just emerged from thirty years of conflict with neighbouring Ethiopia, and Hill writes of the aftermath: the damaged buildings but far more importantly a damaged people. Countless deaths; people with horrifying tales to tell; and a sense of malaise as the long fought-for and dreamed-of independent Eritrea fails to materialise.
As former fighters get the top jobs, there remains a sense that conflict is something to aspire to; warfare remains a glorious state.
Hill's account concludes with his evacuation as war starts to break out anew...
Having read two accounts of Eritrea in the 30s by Italian doctor/ administrator Alberto Denti di Pirajno (qv), which portrayed a rather magical place, it was sad to read Hill's contrasting its time as an Italian colony with the country today:
"The Italian aristocrat Duke Denti di Pirajno had reported lions here in the 1930s; and I saw a village called Elephant Water- but all the big game was long gone. The war had seen to that; when soldiers weren't killing each other they turned their guns on the wildlife around them. They'd left the land barren: dust and stones, devastated by a virulent plague of human beings."
A beautiful country but a seemingly hopeless situation.
B/w photos. (