SHASHEMENE JOURNAL -- UNEASY BOND INSIDE A PROMISED LAND

SHASHEMENE, Ethiopia -- "Welcome home to Ethiopia," read the banner over
the Rastafarians' church compound. Several men in long dreadlocks were
waving the movement's familiar green-yellow-red flags, an old man in a
white robe was reciting biblical verses, another was sucking lustily on a
footlong pipe that had transformed his nostrils into two hyperactive chimneys.

The strong, strong whiff of marijuana hung in the air, making everybody
oblivious to the chilly morning.

"We've come to our ancient land! Ethiopia!" sang a woman in a clear
Jamaican lilt, her body swaying near a table on which stood framed
portraits of the man she and the others considered God: Haile Selassie I,
this country's last emperor, who was deposed in a 1974 Marxist coup and
assassinated a year later.

Outside the church gates, past the armed guards, local Ethiopians looked
quizzically at the spectacle inside. Later, a Rastafarian parade to the
town center drew similar skeptical puzzlement.

"This is really foolishness and they have to stop," said Adane Giday, 26, a
parade watcher. "They are bad for Ethiopia. We have our own culture and we
don't want to mix with them. What is their culture? Nothing. We see them as
African brothers. But we do not see them as Ethiopians."

The Rastafarian movement, founded in Jamaica in the 1930's, would perhaps
have faded into obscurity but for two things: the music of Bob Marley, the
king of reggae and the most famous Rastafarian, and the land that Emperor
Selassie granted its followers half a century ago in Shashemene, about 130
miles south of the capital, Addis Ababa.

At one point, thousands of Rastafarians, mostly from the Caribbean but also
from the United States and Britain, settled here. Nowadays, their land
shrunk to 11 acres from 500, the Rastafarians have dwindled to about 500,
though the population swelled for the celebration of Emperor Selassie's
birthday on July 23.

Elsewhere in the world, Rastafarianism may have become more of a lifestyle,
one emphasizing hedonism, freedom and good music. But the true believers
remain in Shashemene, clinging to their beliefs that the emperor is God and
Ethiopia their promised land. They stay despite their many problems with
Ethiopians, a fact that attests to the uneasy relationship that often
develops between Africans and non-African blacks seeking a spiritual home here.

The mutual alienation is deep, because the Rastafarians hold beliefs and
engage in practices that are directly against those of most Ethiopians. So
while the banner at their church proclaimed, "Welcome home to Ethiopia,"
the Rastafarians forbade Ethiopians from coming inside; when one Ethiopian
man was seen videotaping the ceremony, through the barbed wire,
Rastafarians grabbed his tape.

"The people here are very ignorant of who we are," said George Isles, 40, a
Rastafarian who was born in the Caribbean and lived in London before
arriving here in 1992.

Like most Rastafarians, Mr. Isles, a carpenter, saw himself as Ethiopian
and was angry that the locals did not. "They call me faranji," he said,
using Ethiopians' term for foreigners. "The people don't treat us well. We
give them work, but they still rob us. I have to have a guard at my house.
If I don't, they would come and steal from me."

B. J. Moody, 65, a Rastafarian elder who has lived here since 1980, tried
to soften Mr. Isles's words.

"All of us are experiencing some sort of cruelty, some unbrotherly actions
by our Ethiopians brothers," said Mr. Moody, a tiny man with the gentlest
of voices. "But we are determined to bring them to a higher state of
consciousness."

This state of consciousness emerged when Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican who led
the Back to Africa movement in the early 20th century, predicted -- in 1927
- -- that a black king would rise and return members of the black diaspora to
Africa.

In 1930, when an Ethiopian prince named Ras Tafari was crowned emperor, the
descendants of African slaves in Jamaica took that as confirmation that the
day of deliverance had arrived. They called themselves Rastafarians and
worshiped the emperor, who took the name Haile Selassie I, as God.

The Rastafarians regarded Ethiopia as their ancestral home and called
themselves Ethiopians, rejecting Jamaica and the West as Babylon. One
reason that Ethiopia represented Zion to them was its status as an African
country relatively untouched by colonialism.

Emperor Selassie -- who was credited with modernizing Ethiopia -- was, like
most Ethiopians, a member of Ethiopia's Orthodox Christian Church and did
not consider himself divine. He was said to be embarrassed by the worship.
But in the 1950's, partly in recognition of the support blacks outside
Ethiopia had given Ethiopians in their fight against Fascist Italy, the
emperor gave 500 acres of his own land here to black people living in the West.

To hear Rastafarians tell it, the immigration here began only after Emperor
Selassie's momentous visit to Jamaica in 1966. Back then, Mr. Moody was a
grocer in Kingston.

"Jamaica had been experiencing a drought for two years," Mr. Moody said,
telling a story famous among Rastafarians. "But upon His Majesty's arrival
in Jamaica, no sooner had the Ethiopian Airlines carrier been focused on
that part of the world, than there was a thunderbolt and rain. And just as
soon did the rain subside and the sun appear -- the airplane landed and
taxied on the airport -- most miraculously."

At their peak, the Rastafarians are said to have numbered 2,500. The
Marxists who overthrew Emperor Selassie tried to blot out all imperial
symbols but allowed the Rastafarians to stay -- although the community lost
most of its land.

Life became easier after the end of Marxist rule in 1991, the Rastafarians
here said. But Caribbean immigrants must get resident and working visas
like other foreigners.

Many Ethiopians find the worship of their former emperor as a deity a
little odd.

Negussi Assfaw, 24, had come down from Addis Ababa for the week's
celebrations. An Ethiopian, he wore a Rastafarian T-shirt and said he liked
Rastafarians because of their clothes and music.

"They say he's the God of all black men," Mr. Assfaw said, speaking of the
emperor. "Haile Selassie was a very, very powerful man, a king. But he's a
man, like me, like you."

To many Ethiopians in Shashemene, the Rastafarians are guests who have
overstayed their welcome. Kasib Burka, 28, a businessman, said the first
Rastafarians were motivated by idealism and often helped the Ethiopians
here, handing out free medicine. Today, he said, they cared only about
enriching themselves, and he pointed out that several hundred Rastafarians
did not even live here, but simply owned and exploited the land, visiting
twice or three times a year and selling medicine.

The 109th birthday of Emperor Selassie went unobserved by most Ethiopians.
"There is no salvation for this generation of Ethiopians because they have
rejected His Majesty," Mr. Isles said.

More Rastafarians will eventually come to Shashemene -- Mr. Isles was sure
of it -- and they will help save the very people who had been supposed to
save them.

"Those Rastafarians," he said, "are just getting what they can out of
Babylon before coming home here."