Ethiopia’s Rastafarians are Stranded

The ChicagoTribune writes about Ethiopians Rastafarians. Today (July 22)  is the birth of Selassie, the former Ethiopian ruler whom Rastas worship as a black messiah. Excerpts:

Ethiopia - The promised land of the world’s Rastafarians can be found along a narrow highway in Ethiopia’s ancient Rift Valley, a landscape of scattered trees with boles the size of houses and fields of grain that shimmer in the sunlight like a bronze haze. The setting is beautiful — Edenic even. But as with the original Eden, it isn’t without its pitfalls.

Best known for their reggae music, dreadlocked hair, colorful clothes and copious marijuana smoking, the followers of the Rastafarian faith celebrate one of their major holidays Monday, the birthday of Selassie, the former Ethiopian ruler whom Rastas worship as a black messiah.

But in Shashamane, a roadside town in Ethiopia that the Rastafarians consider their Jerusalem, the festivities will likely be bittersweet. Almost half a century after the first 12 Caribbean settlers migrated here, advancing a Rastafarian dream that the world’s African diaspora must return to the spiritual motherland, few if any Rastas have been granted citizenship.

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