This announcement serves two purposes. First, to announce the launching of a new English-language channel, “Where Is My America?” in which I will share my experiences, observations, and reflections on America — the country I imagined before arriving and the country I eventually came to know.
Second, as 2026 is the 26th year anniversary of Awate.com, I want to share some of the history behind its establishment, the personal and collective efforts that kept it alive, and the challenges of sustaining it. This is also an opportunity to thank those who have supported us over the years and invite others to help us continue this public-service mission.
When you are remotely acquainted with a place, your understanding of it remains abstract. You connect bits and pieces of information and construct an image of that place. In time, your perception becomes almost real.
My perception of America was a picture drawn over many years from books and magazines I read, movies I watched, radio broadcasts, and, of course, contacts with people who had visited America or Americans I met in my home country.
Where Is My America?
Donate
I first visited America in 1985, and then again in 1990 during the 1st Gulf War. I eventually settled in the USA permanently in 2000.
Since then, it has been quite a journey. My perception clashed with reality; some misconceptions were corrected, while others were confirmed. Still, after 26 years, I have yet to understand certain aspects of the United States. The transition was mostly pleasant, but some things continue to bother me.
It is human nature to focus on what is missing and take the pleasant aspects for granted. However, I am older, more mature, and less adventurous than I once was. And because I can now assess the situation reasonably well, it disturbs me that I have yet to find many aspects of the America I imagined.
That is why I keep asking: Where Is My America?
Soon, I will launch a new English-language channel to explore the differences between My America and the America I found, including a few pimples along the way. I will present what I know, what I have experienced, and what I have come to perceive through the lens of that famous Western movie, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
I hope you will support me as I work to grow this new channel.
This is simply an introduction and an announcement to Negarit followers about the upcoming launch. Stories, viewpoints, and other content will follow. Please visit the channel through the link below and in the description box and be among the first to subscribe. I am grateful for your support in advance.
Awate.com: A 26-year journey
On the eve of September 1, 2000, I attended the Eritrean Independence Day celebration in Los Angeles. Later, I went to a relative’s place. At midnight, as September 1 began, Awate.com was launched from a laptop. (See picture.) That was the beginning of a long journey.
Twenty-six years have passed since then, and the website has never stopped operating, except for a few brief interruptions caused by technical and server-related problems that brought the laptop to a halt. Thanks to a volunteer technician, we managed to get it back online within days. The longest it remained offline was about four or five days.
Things went smoothly for years until around 2005, when we had to migrate from Joomla to WordPress. That was probably our most difficult technical period. We lost a sizable amount of content that simply disappeared. We started again, learned to manage the system better, and our volunteer friends were always there to help. Since then, the website has continued functioning.
That was the technical side of the story.
On the intellectual side, we never had difficulty finding content. Our first editorial board included the seasoned writer Saleh Younis, who had managed a magazine called The Eritrean Exponent, Dawit Mesfin, and the late Ararat Eyob.
Before Awate.com, I had started a four-page leaflet in Kuwait with two enthusiastic collaborators whom I discovered could not quite keep up with my hyperactive pace. The short-lived experience with Awate magazine didn’t last long the people who had solicited my help and promised to contribute could not sustain the effort.
Meanwhile, I was facing a serious challenge from the PFDJ edifice and its tentacles, which turned my life into hell.
Since 1995, like many others, I had actively participated in “Dehai,” an Eritrean mailing-list platform. It was an excellent experience, but it also triggered an extensive hate campaign against me. The PFDJ considered me Public Enemy Number One and treated me accordingly. Others, with little understanding of the situation, joined the campaign.
I went through one of the most difficult periods of my life. I became stateless, lost my lucrative job, and could not send my children to school. I had been stripped of the Ethiopian passport I carried, while the Eritrean embassy refused to issue me one. I eventually settled in the United States as an asylee.
Throughout that period, I remained focused on launching Awate.com. I had started designing the website while still in Kuwait, with the help of Ghassan Nejma, a dear Syrian friend who worked for a large advertising company with which I had done business in my capacity as a marketing manager.
By the time I arrived in the United States, the website needed further refinement and technical adjustments. Fortunately, I found another friend in San Jose who helped complete the work.
Getting to that point was not easy. I had to overcome enormous difficulties, including those imposed on me by the two governments involved in the conflict that erupted into the Badme war and turned the lives of people throughout the region upside down. I proudly declared that I had “defeated two governments.”
My family was finally reunited, and Awate.com was launched as a substitute for the free press that the PFDJ government had shut down.
………Now, let me emphasize something important.
When the nascent free press in Eritrea was shut down, many of its reporters and editors had already been imprisoned. More than two decades later, some have died in prison, others remain behind bars, and the whereabouts or condition of others are still unknown. That is cruel and heartbreaking. It is also the reason for my determination to keep the torch of Awate alive.
Dehai was crippled. Several of our allies dropped out one after another. We saw the disappearance of about five websites that had once been part of the same broader space.
However, the relations we developed with Asmarino.com, a moderate and a relatively mild critic of the government in Asmara passed the test of time—we only miss its founder, the late Tesfalidet Meharenna who left us too soon.
We reserved no goodwill for propaganda, and we had made a commitment to ourselves that we would never engage in it. The PFDJ does not allow anyone to deviate from its prescribed narrative, and we rejected that approach. More than that, Awate exposed the regime to the bone.
My financial situation had suffered considerably. Just as the Derg had its slogan, I embraced the spirit of “kulu nmklkhal hager” — everything for the defense of the motherland. But the motherland needed, and still needs, protection from the PFDJ, which has ruled with an iron fist since 1991.
Awate.com became an antidote to the injustice unleashed on Eritrea, with reconciliation as its guiding principle. We wanted to inform, inspire, and embolden the people. Thus, our slogan: Inform. Inspire. Embolden.
All of that served a larger objective: reconciliation.
Twenty-six years later, here we are, still trying to preserve and promote the common sense that has been damaged by misuse, disunity, and propaganda on social media. The operation has been entirely self-financed because our mission has never been about profit. It has always been about public service.
Awate.com began with a modest laptop computer that I had received as a prize at work. Eventually, it could no longer handle the workload. The following year, I bought a Sony desktop computer, the Rolls-Royce of computers at the time. It had a flat screen, although the machine itself was bulky and heavy. I lost track of it when moving out of Elk Grove; I honestly don’t remember where it ended up.
Since then, I have gone through a couple of PCs and several desktops before switching to Mac. This is now my fifth Mac.
With Negarit also having been running for more than seven years, you can imagine the financial, material, and human-resource demands that come with sustaining these operations. This is an intellectual struggle to improve the situation of our people and, indeed, beyond.
Throughout this journey, friends and supporters have always been there to help cover our operating costs. They are loyal, patriotic Eritreans, with no sectarian, ethnic, or partisan allegiance — just a genuine love of justice and freedom and a commitment to serving the public.
To this day, one of the things I am most proud of is that we have never asked for or received institutional funding. Our work has been self-funded, and it remains so.
However, we have lost many supporters because of the divisions that have crippled the Eritrean diaspora. We refuse to retreat into a cocoon smaller than the scope of our mission and our slogan.
Finally, there is a proverb I like:
Fifty lemons are a heavy load for one person, but a medicine for fifty.
Perhaps not everyone can afford to give us fifty lemons. We are not asking anyone to give us fifty. We are asking for one lemon each — something many people can afford to contribute.
If you believe in what we have been doing and want us to continue, please support Awate.com and Negarit through by subscribing and by donating on the following link: [SUPPORT Awate/Negarit LINK]
(The link to “Where’s My America” will be available within a few hours)
