Shabait.com (Asmara)
28 July 2007
opinion
Asmara — Eritrea Festival has been part and parcel of the Eritrean people's culture starting from the days of the armed struggle, which is celebrated enthusiastically highlighted by artistic and traditional events. The 2007 Festival commenced yesterday with vibrant cultural show at Cinema Odeon in Asmara. The official opening of Eritrea Festival at national level takes place today in the premises of the Expo grounds.
The people of Eritrea who have diverse ethnic and traditional composition, by waging the long political and armed struggle together for building a bright future have developed a cohesive national awareness. And as such the Eritrean society has witnessed that diversity is a blessing and not a curse and definitely not a problem; rather, it is beauty and merit. And the Eritrea Festival, which flourished during the armed struggle period for liberation is one of the main values incorporated in such beauty. This national week of festivities, will play significant role in depicting our culture that is based on diversity, our life style that reflects the blessing of our unity and devotion towards each other and our harmonized effort and common vision.
Being aesthetic in nature and a priceless resource, culture is the main guarantee of the vitality of a given society. It is a spice that adds flavor to all life dimension of a given society, which in the making holds all the chords of value and heritage. And in the nation building process and nationality, culture plays a vital role in forging a strong national unity and mature awareness. And our history has vividly shown as to how much culture out of all other resources, plays a decisive role in achieving the aforementioned objective. In the contemporary period of globalization, all forces in the world that own the information technology use cultural aggression as the potent tool to ensure the continuity of their hegemony. These forces are spreading a cultural poison through a very complicated process so that other societies wouldn't be interested in respecting their values and even degenerate to the extent of hating their origin and identity by nurturing the feeling of migration and servitude. Hence, in this period of globalization the greatest challenge for developing nations is not ensuring economic progress; rather, it is the preservation of culture and identity and is an active player in global affairs. If a given society achieves economic progress but loses its culture and identity, its existence and continuity would not be guaranteed.
Hence, the present Eritrean generation, which is participating in the challenging global arena, in parallel with the efforts it is exerting on building a nation that speeds up economic progress has the responsibility of building a modern culture that never wears away the nation's identity, which is based on tradition and unique diversity. It should also embellish and empower the national culture that developed during the period of struggle for freedom and make use of the best aspects of global culture, while throwing away the useless trash. Hence, the work of preserving traditional heritage and identity must be given equal attention alongside the political and economic reconstruction endeavor. And the National Eritrea Festival is serving as one of the gauges of the nation-building task in which we are engaged as a people and country to preserve our values and identity.
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