A US citizen’s derogatory blog entries on Ethiopians/Africans cause outrage, costs spouses job
By Tibebeselassie Tigabu
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia- an American engineer working on a construction site in the US embassy in Ethiopia was sacked and had to leave the country following revelations that his wife, Leah Emerson Barry, who is also an American, wrote offensive remarks about Ethiopia in her website. The entries, which degraded Ethiopia, had also promoted an estimate 600 people including construction workers at the site to demonstrate and demand an official apology.
 
Leah Emerson Barry who was a teacher at the International community school (ICS) in her stay had posted her entries in her blog often with xenophobic undertones.

One entry reads: “ this is Ethiopia, an undeveloped country, where people are dirt poor and quite used to doing things we developed people would classify as ‘filthy’, ‘sick’, ‘gross’, ‘nasty’, and ‘backwards’…I ate Ethiopian food and didn’t die”
   
“The people are stinking up my house… seriously, I sprayed 20 seconds of Lysol everywhere, but that just created a winning combo like Lysol everywhere, but that just created a winning combo like Lysol and BO. African body odor is like mustard gas. It is lethal and deadly. It will sear your contact lenses to your eyeballs. I do not wish room full of it on my worst enemy. By the way, the whole country smells bad”, reads another.
 
Regarding the sacking of Emerson Barry, US embassy spokesperson, Michael Gonzales has this to say: “She is a private American citizen; also the engineer (her husband) was hired by a private company. I didn’t see the blog rather what I saw was a piece of paper, which is filled with offensive remarks about Ethiopia. So we decided to let this guy go and he left on Thursday, December 17 and Leah is on holiday vacation so she is not here. Anyways they are not coming back here.”