Customer Reviews

Notes from the Hyena's Belly: An Ethiopian Boyhood

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This is a memoir of the author's boyhood and young manhood in Ethiopia. Born in 1958 to a middle-class family in the city of Jijiga, Mr. Mezlekia left Ethiopia in 1980 and is now a professional engineer living in Toronto. Narrated with a light touch and a mixture of myth and fantasy, he opens a world for the western reader that has too long been influenced by nothing more than photos of skeletal images of starving children and grinding poverty.

This story, however, is much more than that. From the start, there's a wide variety of interesting characters and a rich warm family life. There's Mustafa, the swindler, who boards at his home; there's Mr. Alula, the teacher, whose severe forms of discipline call for retribution by boyhood pranks; there's Wondwossen, his childhood companion, who joins a guerilla army with him; there are his sisters who never stop feuding. But most memorable of all is his mother, who holds her family together during the extreme hardships which inevitably come to this violent and war-torn land.

He was 14 yeas old in 1972, a time when idealism and student protests were sweeping the globe. In Ethiopia, however, students were gunned down and murdered. Young Nega was jailed often and regularly, and always tortured, but somehow his descriptions of this time in his life are told with a touch of lightness. Years later, in 1977, when over 100,000 people are murdered in seven months during the "Red Terror" and bodies laid out over the streets, he yearns for the time when they were all just simply tortured. Throughout the book, I couldn't help shuddering at the all the cruelty. From the brutality of the schools, to scenes in the hospital where patients were beaten, to the way that monkeys were slaughtered, I found it disturbing how easily such things were taken for granted.

Although Mr. Mezlekia does his best to describe the political situation, I found it hard to follow the various juntas and guerillas and political parties. The fantasies and myths, which I usually don't care for in literature, seemed very right for this book however. It was a constant reminder to me that this story did not come from a western author. Mr. Mezlekia is truly a witness to his times. He has certainly widened my understanding of his world.

Wow. People may shudder at the comparison, but this book reads a lot like Angela's ashes. There is comedy in what most would call tragic situations. The story is, at times, gut-wrenchingly sad, but the narrator rarely reflects upon it as such. A funny, bright, evocative book that doesn't play either the "Africa-is-mystical&beautiful" game or the "Africa-is-savage-and-primal" card. Frankly, I'm glad, because both are a bit tried. Good book, good read.

This book is full of meaning, often insightful and completely unforgettable it is written with candor and wit despite its serious edges.

Nega Mezlekia has written a memoir about his boyhood growing up in Ethiopia during the fall of Emperor Selassie. He experiences all of the curious playful things that all boys are reared with yet he also discusses the harshness of the environment during the rise of Junta communism in which thousands of young people were ruthlessly slaughtered. He writes on page 183, "Apathy in the face of continual violence is something someone who has never lived through a war cannot understand......People simply gathered about themselves, like rags, what life there was left, deafened and inured to the inevitability of death." Although Mezlekia has many horrible atrocities to write about this is not all he adheres to. At times this memoir is very witty and I laughed out loud several times imagining some of his shenanigans. His adventures with medicine men and native cures is hilarious as well as his attempt to capture the loose cattle in his village with pepper.

I am always impressed with the attitude of Africans who survive the atrocities they have faced in their home countries. Their spirit and survivalist hearts seem to always prevail despite the horrible circumstances they are often forced to endure. Mezlekia managed to escape his country at possibly its worst moments, not without heartache, not without suffering, but with a true gift as a storyteller. I would recommend this memoir to everyone interested in a great true tale but especially to those concerned with the plights of our fellow human beings who suffer so gracefully for their native lands.

I am an Ethiopian, the same generation as the author, but I am from another ethnic group, the Oromo, and poloitical group, Meason. Reading Nega's book has helped me come to terms with my past in ways that I can hardly begin to explain.

Like most of our generation, I had taken part in gureela momevent when life became unbearable in towns. I had, initially, belonged to the same political party Nega belonged to--the EPRP. Unlike Nega, I saw the falasity of the party and changed tack early, joining the military Junta. Unfortunately, Meison didn't fare any better than EPRP.

Notes from the hyena's belly is the kind of book I never thought an Ethiopian, particluraly someone from such a visious political group, the EPRP, would write. I salute Nega, I am proud of him. I can now reconsile myself with those Ethiopians that I have been avoiding for the last eleven years for political reasons. Africa's problems are not solved by recriminations, but by reconsiliations. Hope those Ethiopians with an axe to grind would see the beauty in this book and set aside their differences. Well done, Nega

Mezlekia's story is about growing up in the second half of the 20th Century in Ethiopia, a period of upheaval that includes the overthrow of Haile Selassie and subsequent socialist governments. It richly describes the ethnic tapestry of the country, weaving in folk tales and folk medicine. The stories told by his mother and others are rich diversions in the story of his life and make this history more literary.

He has a highly developed sense of satire and irony, whether when plotting revenge against a strict teacher or when commenting, "To make sure that there was no mistaking the nationality of those involved in designing and building most of the (Addis Ababa) university, the various gadgets and fixtures within them had the 'American Standard' imprint on them."

Highly readable, whatever your knowledge of Africa might be.

Highly recommended if you want to understand what type of economic structures are appropriate in the developing world. Yet it's real strength is in the human story.

Although this book clearly mixes fantasy, history, myth, legend and reality, it does so in a very personal and effective way. For those who want to learn more about the "real" Ethiopia in the past twenty years, this book tells it in a compelling and authentic way. It doesn't matter if every name is accurate. For those of us who have lived in Ethiopia, the story rings true. Even more important for Americans, it shames us without necessarily blaming us, for ignoring Ethiopia for so long because of ideological differences not humanitarian needs. READ THIS BOOK!

I don't think I have ever read a book on Ethiopia so shockingly accurate and painfully true. Mr. Mezlekia has crossed boundaries never attempted before, and should be commended for ably describing his own struggle and that of his family. Dreams and hopes of a young man being shattered by atrocities never imagined possible. For this he not only deserved the Mayor's award but the respect and gratitude of all his readers. I was deeply moved that as a true Ethiopian, he never forgot the family he had left behind and yearned to have his younger brother join him in Canada. May the memory of his Mam and Wondwossen live for ever through the pages of this incredible book.

Nega ought to be commended for having written a rich and poignant book depicting the abundantly tragic story of Ethiopia at a segment in time. His recounting of some minute details--from the comical and bittersweet incidents of his early childhood years to the ominous political and social turmoil was certainly worth reading about even for a person who was born and raised in Ethiopia such as myself. We were all Ethiopians back then, but alas, we lived on different planets.

Having said that, I wish the book explained some important issues more clearly.

Case in point: When the not-so-beautiful girl recruited Nega as a foot soldier for EPRP, I thought he was going to join that party. But that seemed to have never happened. In stead he joined the Western Somalia Liberation Front. What transpired for him and his friend to join this front? I admired his open mindedness and his desire to change what he can, but it still struck me as odd that an Amhara had to join a Somali ethnic based movement. Was it just that they stumbled onto the rebels' camp by accident?
I wish the author also mentioned his father more and gave us a sense of what the man was like. Mentioning "Mam" so much gave the impression that Nega and his siblings were raised practically in a single-parent home with no father figure whatsoever. (Father was mentioned in very rare occasions).
The author also seemed somewhat embittered and cynical in many locations. Having lived through the experiences he did, these emotions may just have to be displayed, but I wish he took more effort to provide us with some insight into the sunny sides of Ethiopian life.
Also the book could have used more editing. But these incidents do not take away from the overall richness of the book.

I read "Notes From The Hyena's Belly" because my 7th grade English teacher assigned it to me personally. At first I honestly thought that it was going to be just a stupid autobiography, but it turned out to be excellent!!!

"Notes From The Hyena's Belly" was a book that started from the very second Mezlekia was born, and told his story until he left Ethiopia later in his life. But this is not just a long autobiography that stuck strictly to the facts. It was VERY funny, and generally politically correct... :-D

Combining fact with humor, Mezlekia creates an image of his life in Ethiopia so vivid, you feel that you are there, following him around. From school to church, each part of the book is beautifully orchestrated so that everything makes sense. The book moves at a quick pace, but not so fast that you don't have time to enjoy the occasional joke. :-D Hehehe. A good book. And the moral of THIS story is, if your teacher tells you to read a biography/autobiograohy of choice, take the fun way out and read this one!!!

I found this to be a very engaging story, with a good mix of local color, historical development and Ethiopian culture. The way it is written raises questions as to how factual all of the content is, but that does not make it any less interesting as a story. The weakest parts are his descriptions of political developments among Ethiopia's leadership, which frequently come across more as off-the-cuff characterizations you might here from someone in a bar rather than true insight. Despite being described on its cover by one reviewer "a glimpse into hell", the book does not dwell excessively on the gruesome things the author experienced, and even those do not fill up a great deal of the book, about half of which is devoted to his childhood which overall seems to have been pretty pleasant. This is not to marginalize the terrible things that did happen to him, his family or Ethiopia, the point just being that he does not dwell on them with excessive or graphic detail.