“Hager Situgn”: The Unseen Vaccination of Desire for Others Over Our Own

This piece reflects on the subtle but powerful way our childhood experiences and cultural practices instill a longing for foreign lands, often making us believe that happiness and success are found elsewhere. By revisiting the Ethiopian game Enkoklish, we uncover how these early fantasies shape our thinking and influence many to seek fulfillment abroad, even when home offers untapped opportunities.

From a young age, many of us dream of distant lands-places full of promise, excitement, and a better life. Whether it’s through stories, movies, or even the games we played as children, the idea that life might be easier or more rewarding somewhere else takes root early on.

In Ethiopia, there’s a traditional question-and-answer game called Enkoklish that taps directly into this dream. It’s a simple game, yet it reveals a lot about how faraway places can capture our imaginations, often without realizing the impact this has on our aspirations.

The rules of Enkoklish are straightforward: if a player can’t answer a question, the questioner asks for a beautiful country to imagine. Naturally, the player starts listing foreign lands—countries like the U.S., Canada, or Switzerland, all of which we associate with wealth and opportunity. If the questioner doesn’t feel satisfied, they’ll ask for another country, and so on, until they finally settle on one that seems just right.

It’s in this moment that the fascination begins to grow.Once the perfect country is chosen, the excitement kicks in. For instance, if the country happens to be America, the questioner might say, “America Heje Hulu Be eje hulu bedeje”—meaning, “I go to America, and everything is in my hands; everything is at my home.” This simple phrase carries a lot of weight.

It reflects a child’s innocent belief that somewhere out there, all the problems of life will magically disappear, and success will be easily within reach.In a way, this game mirrors a much larger, more profound trend: the way we are subtly taught to dream about leaving, about finding something better elsewhere.

These games are part of how we learn, often without realizing it, that the answers to our struggles are to be found in foreign lands. We grow up thinking that to succeed, we have to go abroad—that our own country isn’t enough.But what we don’t realize as kids, and what many of us might not even see as adults, is that the reality of living in those “dream” countries is far more complicated than we imagine.

Life abroad comes with its own set of challenges—challenges we aren’t always prepared for when we idealize what life there might be like. The dream of going abroad often blinds us to the opportunities that are right in front of us, here at home.

As we mature, we start to understand that chasing after this dream might not always lead to happiness or success. It’s a kind of vaccination we’ve unknowingly received since childhood, asmall dose of the belief that life is better elsewhere, which can sometimes grow into a full-fledged desire to leave behind everything we know. But perhaps it’s time to question that vaccination.

Maybe it’s time to see that there’s value in staying, in building up what we have, rather than always seeking what seems better somewhere else. Because the truth is, our home has just as much potential—if not more—than those faraway lands we once dreamed about as children.

In the end, it’s not about saying that going abroad is wrong, but rather about recognizing that it doesn’t have to be the only path to a good life. We owe it to the next generation to help them see that staying and investing in our own country can be just as fulfilling, if not more so. There is so much potential here—potential that can flourish if we learn to appreciate and nurture it, rather than always looking beyond our borders.