Today's BBC News Report on the situation in Tigray seems to suggest that the residents of Shire are given significant protection by Ethiopian Federal Government.
Amidst the ongoing problem in the region with decades of history, a good news is the fact that Shire is a large town in Ethiopia today. In 1982 when I and Sebastian (Sebastian Perumcheril John) taught in Shire Secondary School, it was a small town in terms of population with a few grocery stores and a few restaurants. Although it's area was large, human movement was minimum, due to the the civil war involving Tigray Peoples Liberation Front and Ethiopian Government's Armed Forces.
It is amazing to know that the small town has developed to become a large town as shown in this Utube video.
(Axum is a town in the same Tigray region; this is the place where queen Sheeba mentioned in The Bible is believed to have come from and later married to King Solomon. I remember my visit to Axum during which time it was a small town though it was accessible from other places, unlike Shire. I and Sebastian went to meet our Indian friends who were teaching in a high school in Axum).
According to the BBC News Report, many of the present inhabitants of Shire came from different areas and got shelter in "schools" and "university campuses". When I was working in Shire, there was only one high school (Shire Secondary School) and there was no University Campus. It's good that the past 40 years have brought in tremendous development to Shire.
I hope that the conflict in the region ends and that Shire residents are back to normalcy.
Following is an image of a picture post card that I had used to communicate with my beloved parents during my stay in the town way back in 1982:
Following photograph shows me and Sebastian (from left to right) with a local colleague's daughter:
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