LEBAWI INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY

English Essay Assignment

Name: Yohana Ohad

Grade: 10B
To: Mr. Robel Tesfaye
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Date: June/17/ 2021

Filial Piety/ Respect

Filial Piety is a highly important and central Confucian virtue in social ethics and was founded
by philosopher Confucius. It is defined as ‘attitude of obedience, devotion and care toward one’s
parents and elder family members’.

The following story is one of the twenty four Paragons of Filial Piety.

A young boy named Wang Xiang (Wang the lucky) in the Jin Dynasty had lost his mother to
illness. His father took another wife so the boy would not be without a mother. However, his
stepmother was an evil-natured woman who for no tangible reason began loathing her stepson
and constantly abused him. She incessantly berated him in front of his father and eventually
turned her husband against the boy. Despite this, Wang Xiang stayed devoted to his filial regard
for both of them.

One day, in an unusually cold winter, the boy’s stepmother became sick and craved fresh fish.
She demanded her need of it as medicine to her illness. But the harsh cold had frozen the small
creek nearby and the rivers too. Wang Xiang, however, was such a loyal and respectful son that
he could not bear seeing his step-mother unhappy.

He went out into the cold to the creek to see what he could do. He shivered in the cold looking
for running water but there obviously was none. He sat down on the ice and lamented his failure
to find fish to cure his step-mother. Realizing he has no way to solve the problem, he
disappointedly let his tears flow freely from his eyes. An idea came to him as he cried, and in his
desperate situation removed his coat and shirt to lie down on the ice. The more he cried, the more
upset he got. The more upset he got, the more his tears flowed. Before long, his body heat and
the growing puddle of tears melted a hole in the ice. Suddenly, out of the crack in the formerly
frozen river-water, two fish leaped and fell onto the bank. Amazed and delighted, Wang Xiang
bundled them up and carried them home to his ill step-mother.

After seeing the two live fish, the boy’s step mother felt thoroughly ashamed of her selfishness.
She then changed her attitude and became a kind and caring person towards her stepson. Many
people said that Wang Xiang’s response came from his sincere filial devotion. His noble attitude
swayed nature into giving him a reward.
From this story, we see such a benevolent little boy who is obedient and respectful to the point of
melting ice with his body heat so his stepmother, who was wicked to him in more ways than one,
could recover from her illness. Wang Xiang’s dutiful behavior is evidently the first thing we
notice and we also see how undeserving the boy’s stepmother is. She was a cruel and malicious
person but even so, Wang did not hate her and continued to be respectful to her. We can
summarize this story’s idea as “live according to your standards and morals and let no outsider
alter it for anything” because that’s what Wang did.

Citation; http://www.yogichen.org/cw/cw43/bk144.html

https://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln270/24-filial1.htm

Trustworthiness

He was tall, very tall. He was also cute, extremely cute. His pale skin seeming like he was
covered in powder. His two inch long horns peeking out from his head between his scarlet red
hair were midnight blue. His eyes glowing green in the dark with their irises shaped like slits as a
cat’s stirred a hint of fear deep down in my stomach. How can you trust a human with horns?

He looked down at my face with a sort of curiosity, interest. He lifted one hand so close towards
my face and paused. For a moment I thought that maybe he was fighting the urge to caress my
face, hence the pause, but that absurd thought was quickly shattered a moment later when his
fingers clamped around my neck and lifted me up up up.

I choked and thrashed, slashing my long acrylic nails across the unbreakable iron cage round my
neck and pointing my feet to my tip toes for some ground support, but it was too far away. His
expression was unchanged; he still looked at me with those curious eyes, tilting his head from
side to side as if examining a specimen. I was losing breath, so I mustered up all the energy I had
left and kicked his stomach. He doesn’t feel pain, this I know along with other details, but my
flimsy kick was enough to surprise him to let me go and leave me on my knees, gasping for air.

His expression changed. Sadness? Regret? Pity? I don’t get it, wasn’t he trying to kill me just
now?
His steps were slow and deliberate as he approached me. Cautiously, he reached his hand out to
help me up. I’m not sure what it was. Maybe it was the charming one-sided smile he was now
giving me; maybe it was how the edge of his eyes crinkled just the right amount to melt that fear
in me and shift to trust that I took his steady hand and let him lift me into his arms and into his
crushing embrace.

I don’t understand, I don’t understand anything that just happened in these five minutes. But I
guess he smells nice.

Citation: The male character is a combination of the male leads in the books; ‘Shatter me’,
‘Twilight’, ‘The darkest part of the forest’, and the female leads in ‘Darling in the franxx’ and
‘the crown’s game’. The female character of my story is a combination of the female lead in
‘Daughter of smoke and bone’ and yours truly.

The Need for Human Moral Behavior

The last breath for the wisest pig on the farm was drawing near. He called all of the animals on
one night to pass on the knowledge he had accumulated over his twelve years of life. All loved
listening to him and so complied. When they all gathered, Old Major gave a speech of how evil
mankind is, how brutal and how immoral their acts were. He emphasized on how selfish and
wicked they all were towards them and referred to them as enemies. He died and was buried.

Then, the rebellion happened. The pigs, wise and smart, began to learn to read and write. The
rebellion started when they joined forces and drove Mr. Jones, their keeper, and his men from the
farm. They came up with seven commandments to keep them safe from humans and Snowball
(the wisest pig who knew to write better than any of the others) wrote them down on a wall with
big bold letters. Of course, the stupider animals were unable to memorize them all, and so
summarized it as “Four legs good, two legs bad”. They started doing human work like planting
crops, harvesting them and even building a windmill. The pigs began to be smarter and smarter,
especially our main character Snowball and Napoleon.

Napoleon was always on a disagreement and often argued with Snowball. Napoleon won and got
the position as “leader” and made all the animals work like slaves. But they all stuck to their
motto “four legs good, two legs bad.”
As time went by the harvest seemed to shrink every minute and their rations were decreasing.
They starved colossally but forced, the animals started treating Napoleon as if he were a god;
writing him poems, and hanging his picture on the walls.

The pigs were getting more fat and comfortable especially Napoleon with alcohol and sugar
(human food was not allowed at first but is now only for the pigs, in other words, government
officials) when all the other were forced into starvation.

On one pleasant evening, the animals were going back to the farm buildings after work when
they heard a terrible neigh from one of the horses and rushed to see the cause. It was horrifying,
worse than any nightmare they could ever have. It was the pigs walking on their hind legs – like
humans! It was all too much to take in. The line between animal and human was blurred to a
nihility.

The animals were portrayed as the moral ones with dignity and honesty, camaraderie and care
towards one another in the beginning (throughout the book that I just shortened to smithereens).
But then, they started to somehow develop into smarter beings. They started copying the
humans. When they copied the normal human hierarchy, the pigs sat at the top as the “leaders”
and all the other animals sat down below as slaves. This was just the first step. Things happened
that let the story build up to when the pigs finally changed their actual being and their main
reason of living and stood on their two legs.

As much as we want to deny it, humans as a whole are immoral beings that strive for power and
knowledge over friendship and growing together. So we must strive to change this.

Citation: The book “Animal Farm”.

Ethiopian renaissance dam

The Nile is a north-flowing river in Africa. It is among the world’s longest waterways, famed for its
ancient history and the archaeological sites along its shores. It has a length of 6650 kilometers between
the region of Lake Victoria and the Mediterranean sea, which is the longest river in Africa.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a gravity dam on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia that has been
under construction since 2011 in the Benishangul-Gumuz Region of Ethiopia. At 6.45 giga watts, the dam
will be the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa when completed, as well as the 7th largest in the
world.

The potential for the hydroelectric power for the Nile basin is huge. The White Nile drops some 500
meters between Lake Victoria and Lake Albert, representing an estimated capacity of over 4000 MW, of
which 380 MW is currently operational. The hydropower potential in the Nile Basin exceeds 20 GW.
Existing facilities only represent about 26% of potential capacity. The project is a major part of a massive
energy infrastructure project the Ethiopian government is undertaking which aims to see the country’s
power generation capacity increase from the current 4280 MW to 17300 MW by 2020.

The Ethiopian government has stated that it intends to fund the entire cost of the dam by itself in order to
prevent relying on foreign countries that may be brought under pressure by Egypt to withdraw their
support. The estimated US$4.8 billion construction cost, apparently excluding the cost of power
transmission lines, corresponds to about 5% of Ethiopia's gross domestic product of US$87 billion in
2017.

But for Egypt, the most important thing that the Nile provides for them is fertile land. According to the
Egyptian authorities, if the dam is built, it would negatively affect Egypt's water share, estimated at 57%
of the Nile waters. Ethiopia turned down several requests from Egypt to pause the construction, furthering
tensions between the two countries. But according to one treaty, Egypt is guaranteed to an annual supply
of 55.5 billion cubic meters out of an estimated yearly yield of 84 billion cubic meter of Nile water. The
new treaty also reaffirmed that Egypt had the right to veto any construction projects that could impede the
flow of water into the Nile.

In conclusion, the dam is very important to Ethiopia’s economy while the water of the Nile River is just
as important to the Egyptians. We must work out a way to have everyone happy or al hell will break
loose.

Citation: pages on Google that explain the situation and geography books.

Zeybek Dance

The Zeybek is a form of Turkish folk dance particular to Western, Central and southern Anatolia
in Turkey. It is named after the Zeybeks. Zeybeks were irregular rebel fighters living in the
Aegean Region of the Ottoman Empire from late 17th to early 20th centuries. Now, this dance is
popular in Aydin, Izmir, and Denizli.
Zeybek is a particular name in Aegean Turkey for both a type of dance music and a group of
companions performing it wearing a particular decorative costume and with a typical headdress
(image below). The term Zeybek also designates a man who is brave, a tough and courageous
man. The dance itself is a symbol of courage and honor. A leader of a Zeybek gang was called
“EFE” as in Efendi (meaning sir or Mister) and his soldiers were known as “Kızan” which was a
term generally used for untrained Zeybeks.

All Zeybek dances have a common characteristic form, but the positioning of the arms and body
differ according to the different regions. The rhythm is also very characteristic, a pattern of nine
slow beats.

Zeybek melodies can be divided according to their tempo; ağır (slow) and kıvrak (fast).

Zeybek is a Turkish dance that means a lot to me. The idea might sound stupid but just because I
watched a few Turkish drama series, the dance feels like a magical sequence of movements
which actually shows its purpose- courage , bravery and honor.

Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeybek_dance

https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/310082