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WWJ Newsradio's money re-
porter, Murray Feldman. The
event is sponsored by Ameritech
Small Business Services; BDO
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troit Chamber of Commerce; and
WWJ Newsradio 950. The fee, in-
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prosecutor, will speak on "Sexual
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6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 22, in the
Smith Theater on OCC's Orchard
Ridge Campus in Farmington
Hills. Admission is free. A ques-
tion/answer session will follow.

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s a teen-ager in the late
1970s, Danny Adama ne-
gotiated with truck drivers
to transport bags of
sesame seeds from just over the
Sudanese border to his home in
the Gondar province, the once
nervous center of Ethiopia.
Danny would take the three-
day route as often as he could in
order to exploit the 300 percent
mark-up he enjoyed on his cargo
in then-Marxist Ethiopia. An as-
piring Jewish entrepreneur, Dan-
ny escaped the Soviet-satellite
system by relocating in the Su-
dan, ostensibly in order to open
a restaurant which he managed
for three years. In reality, he was
on his way to Israel.
Today, Danny runs one of four
Ethiopian restaurants in Tel
Aviv's old central bus station.
He's got a mortgage on a flat in
Rishon LeZion and has trouble
convincing conventional lenders
that ever-thirsty Romanian
workers and 7-shekel beers are
sufficient collateral against which
to loan his cash-starved restau-
rant the 50,000 shekels he
"needs" to replace a peeling
linoleum floor and wood-back
chairs.
When asked about a business
plan, he says he knows about
business opportunities, not busi-
ness plans.
Is Danny an Einstein in a com-
puter age, who in a different
country and new culture just
needs a little coaching to get back
on track? Or is he, along with
two generations of Israeli
Ethiopians with limited educa-
tion, a pushcart on a super high-
way, irreversibly disadvantaged
and misplaced?
`This is the desert generation,"
says Nitza Ben-Zvi, the Labor
and Welfare Ministry's point-per-
son for Ethiopian job training
programs.
Three other officials at the

Dov Hoch has worked in
Ethiopia on Jewish-communal
relief projects and currently
administers regional business
projects.

ministry agree that the prospect
of economic integration of
Ethiopian immigrants is bleak.
They cite difficulties in grasping
the language; a five-year tran-
sition period from absorption cen-
ters to permanent housing; and
a host of cultural biases that ren-
der the Ethiopians mere min-
nows in a shark-infested Israe?-'
work-world.
Considering that the United
States receives only 1,500 black
African refugees per year while
more than 15,000 Ethiopians ar-
rived to Israel in a single day dur-
ing Operation Solomon, the
obstacles to their economic ab-
sorption were, and remain, for-
midable.
Addisu Messela, the Ethiop --/
an-born Labor MK, modestly ad:"
mits he is far from the political
Moses the community is looking
for. His focus during his first
term as a legislator, he says, will
be to tackle problems associated
with absorption, chief amongst
them housing.
Demonstrating political ma-
turity, Mr. Messela says there is
no "quick fix" for the difficult ec
nomic conditions the Ethiopian
community faces. The Israeli As-
sociation for Ethiopian Jews es-
timates that nearly 60,000
Ethiopians are counted amongst
the 700,000 Israelis living below
the poverty line, far more than
their share in the overall popu-
lation.
Mr. Messela chronically calls/
for affirmative action in order to`
advance his community out of its
vicious cycle of economic and ed-
ucational deprivation. He cites
the relative success of Ethiopian
students at the university level
as an argument for a lot of hand
holding and a little up-lifting.
In statistical terms, the
Ethiopian community appears to
have attained similar levels of/
employment as the indigenouS`
population, but underemploy-
ment is rampant and large sec-
tors of the population —
particularly women — have yet
to join the workforce.
A survey conducted by the