A2 · Elementary
8 min
culturearmed conflictwomen's rightsafrica
Dressed Up With Nowhere to Dance
El festival existe. El miedo, también.
Every August, the women of Mekelle celebrate Ashenda, an ancient festival central to Tigrayan identity in northern Ethiopia. This year, for the first time in memory, it was cancelled over fears of military drone strikes.
Cada agosto, las mujeres de Mekelle celebran el Ashenda, una fiesta antigua y muy importante en Tigray, Etiopía. Este año, el festival no ocurre por miedo a los drones militares.
5 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| tener miedo | to be afraid (literally: to have fear) | Las personas tienen miedo de los drones. |
| celebrar | to celebrate | Las mujeres celebran Ashenda cada agosto. |
| antiguo | ancient, old | El festival es muy antiguo. |
| reunión | gathering, meeting | Las reuniones de personas son peligrosas ahora. |
| desaparecer | to disappear | Sin la fiesta, algo desaparece. |
Every August, in a city called Mekelle in northern Ethiopia, women and girls put on their finest embroidered dresses, braid flowers into their hair, and dance in the streets for days.
This year, they stayed home.
Sí.
Yes.
El festival se llama Ashenda.
The festival is called Ashenda.
Es muy antiguo.
It is very old.
Octavio says the festival is called Ashenda, and it's very old.
That word, Ashenda, comes from a type of tall grass that grows in the highlands there.
The women wear bundles of it around their waists when they dance.
Las mujeres bailan juntas.
The women dance together.
Solo las mujeres.
Only the women.
Es importante.
It is important.
Only women.
Right.
This is not a small detail.
Ashenda is specifically a women's celebration, a rare space in a region where public life has not always made room for that.
Historians date it back at least five hundred years.
Las chicas jóvenes también bailan.
Young girls also dance.
Es su fiesta.
It is their celebration.
And girls, yes.
Which matters because Ashenda functions almost like a rite of passage.
Young girls watch older women dance, learn the songs, learn the steps.
The festival passes something forward.
Cancel it once, you break a link in a very long chain.
Este año, hay drones militares.
This year, there are military drones.
Las personas tienen miedo.
People are afraid.
People are afraid of drones.
And to understand why that fear is so specific, so credible, you need a little history.
Tigray is a region that has been through something almost unimaginable in the last several years.
Hay una guerra en Tigray.
There is a war in Tigray.
Una guerra grande.
A big war.
A very big war.
In November 2020, the Ethiopian federal government under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the same man who won the Nobel Peace Prize the year before, launched a military offensive against the Tigray People's Liberation Front.
What followed was one of the deadliest conflicts of the twenty-first century, largely invisible to Western news cycles.
Muchas personas mueren en Tigray.
Many people die in Tigray.
Es terrible.
It is terrible.
Estimates run from three hundred thousand to six hundred thousand dead.
The UN called it the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet at its peak.
There was a ceasefire in late 2022, but the region has never really stabilized.
And now, drones.
Los drones atacan civiles.
The drones attack civilians.
La gente no sale de casa.
People do not leave their homes.
Drones targeting civilians.
Which reframes the cancellation completely.
This isn't an organizer's cautious decision about logistics.
The women of Mekelle are not avoiding Ashenda.
They're being kept from it by the geometry of the sky above their city.
Mekelle es la capital de Tigray.
Mekelle is the capital of Tigray.
Es una ciudad grande.
It is a big city.
Mekelle, capital of the Tigray region.
About five hundred thousand people.
And Ashenda there isn't just a local party.
It's the main event.
The BBC described it as a festival that defines Tigrayan womanhood.
You cancel that, you're not cancelling a calendar item.
La fiesta es parte de la cultura.
The festival is part of the culture.
Sin la fiesta, algo desaparece.
Without the festival, something disappears.
Something disappears.
That's exactly the right way to put it.
Look, I've covered enough conflicts to know that armies understand this.
Targeting culture is a tactic.
You don't always have to burn the library.
Sometimes you just have to make people afraid to gather.
Sí.
Yes.
Sin reuniones, la cultura muere poco a poco.
Without gatherings, culture dies little by little.
Little by little.
I was in Sarajevo once, years after the siege.
A musician there told me the hardest thing wasn't the shelling.
It was the three years when they couldn't play music together.
The shelling you survive.
The silence eats you.
En Tigray, la gente sufre mucho.
In Tigray, people suffer a lot.
Pero Ashenda es importante para ellos.
But Ashenda is important to them.
And the people of Tigray have a long, deep sense of their own identity, distinct from the Ethiopian state, distinct from the Amhara highlands to the south.
That identity has a language, it has food, it has music.
And it has Ashenda.
El gobierno etíope no quiere Tigray independiente.
The Ethiopian government does not want Tigray to be independent.
Not independent, no.
And that tension goes back decades, actually further than that.
The TPLF, the Tigrayan political movement, dominated Ethiopian federal politics for nearly thirty years before Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018 and systematically dismantled their influence.
The war was, at least partly, about that reversal.
En el mundo, muchas personas no saben esto.
In the world, many people do not know this.
Most people have no idea, and that's not an accident.
Ethiopia was treated as a success story, this rising African democracy with a Peace Prize winner at the top, right up until it was burning.
The coverage failed the Tigrayans.
There's really no other way to say it.
Ahora hay paz, pero no es perfecta.
Now there is peace, but it is not perfect.
The ceasefire holds, technically.
But you don't cancel your largest women's festival because everything is fine.
The drone strikes are real and ongoing.
Civilian gatherings are targets.
Ashenda, a festival where thousands of women fill public squares, is exactly the kind of gathering that becomes a liability.
Es muy triste.
It is very sad.
Las mujeres no bailan este año.
The women do not dance this year.
It is.
And I keep thinking about what the women at home are doing instead.
Are they putting on those embroidered dresses anyway, just inside, out of sight?
Or does the dress stay folded?
I don't know.
But that image sits with me.
La cultura vive en las personas.
Culture lives in the people.
No solo en los festivales.
Not only in the festivals.
Culture lives in the people.
That's a generous and probably true thing to believe.
But it also requires the people to be alive, to be together, to pass things on.
You need a critical mass of living memory.
And Tigray has lost so many people in the last five years.
Sí.
Yes.
Es difícil.
It is hard.
Pero el año próximo, quizás bailan.
But next year, perhaps they will dance.
Next year, maybe.
I want to believe that.
Actually, you know what, let me ask you something before we wrap.
Earlier you said "las personas tienen miedo," people have fear.
That construction always trips me up.
In English I would say people ARE afraid, not people HAVE fear.
Is there a rule here or do both work?
En español, usamos "tener" con muchas cosas.
In Spanish, we use "tener" with many things.
Tener miedo.
To have fear.
Tener hambre.
To have hunger.
Tener frío.
To have cold.
So instead of "I am cold" you say "I have cold." Instead of "I am hungry" you say "I have hunger." The verb "to be" does that work in English, but in Spanish, "tener," to have, carries all of it.
That is genuinely counterintuitive if you're coming from English.
Sí.
Yes.
Yo tengo miedo.
I have fear.
Tú tienes miedo.
You have fear.
Ellos tienen miedo.
They have fear.
I have fear, you have fear, they have fear.
And in context, the women of Mekelle, "tienen miedo," they have fear.
It's not poetic phrasing in Spanish, it's just grammar.
But in English, "they have fear" sounds almost biblical.
Which, given the weight of this story, might not be entirely wrong.
Fletcher, tu español mejora.
Fletcher, your Spanish is improving.
Un poco.
A little.
A little.
High praise from you, I'll take it.
The Ashenda festival, Mekelle, Tigray.
If you hadn't heard of it before today, now you have.
That feels like the least we can do.
El año próximo, esperamos que las mujeres bailan en las calles.
Next year, we hope that the women dance in the streets.