Notes from the Hyena's Belly: An Ethiopian Boyhood

by Nega Mezlekia

Book Overview

Winner of the Governor General's Award
A Library Journal Best Book of 2001

Part autobiography and part social history, Nega Mezlekia's Notes from the Hyena's Belly offers an unforgettable portrait of Ethiopia, and of Africa, during the 1970s and '80s, an era of civil war, widespread famine, and mass execution.

We children lived like the donkey, Mezlekia remembers, careful not to wander off the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312289146
• ISBN13: 9780312289140
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Notes That Matter

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.

Readable as History, Readable as Literature

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.

More than just a story of cruelty, war and terror...

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.

A balanced and beautiful book

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

Disturbing in its Calm

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.