From today I’m a contributor to the awesome blog Africa Is A Country.

It has always been a reference point since when I started this blog, so I’m honoured to be part of the team and to report from Italy.
My first post is about an Ethiopian club in Milan, which ran for about a year between 2010 and 2011, this is how it starts:

Before it closed, Bar Etiopia had been running for ten years by the graceful Abeba. It was located on Via Tadino, P.ta Venezia, a neighborhood close to downtown Milan, where many different communities found their home and have been running activities in the last few decades: Indians, Filipinos and, above all, immigrants from former Italian colonies: Ethiopians and Eritreans. I don’t remember exactly when I started to go to the bar, it could probably be toward the end of 2009, trying to find comfortable places in the capital of fashion.

Milan is a difficult city, it’s hard to find specific places where you can frequently go and hang out; there is no neighborhood life. You basically go to a place because you’ve been invited. Bar Etiopia had been an exception to this disposition.There you could find different crowds: the art world (three of the most important art galleries in town are located nearby), music lovers and, of course, hipsters; but, interestingly, the bar kept carrying its local communities, creating a rare, combined and lovely environment. Nevertheless, the owner, Abeba, recently declared that “half of her customers are Italians.”

In February 2010, some friends and I organized a small party at the bar. I was supposed to DJ with another DJ, Fidel, but he didn’t show up that night. Abeba cooked meat and vegetable wat with injera, Lorenzo Senni brought the PA and a smoke machine and finally we did it, spontaneously and, uncommonly, without any risks.

Read the entire post here, comments are welcome.