Avicenna
Avicenna was born in Afshana, a village near Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan), the capital of the Samanids, a Persian dynasty in Central Asia and Greater Khorasan. His mother, named Sitāra, was from Bukhara; his father, Abdullāh, was a respected Ismaili scholar from Balkh, an important town of the Samanid Empire, in what is today Balkh Province, Afghanistan. His father worked in the government of Samanid in the village Kharmasain, a Sunni regional power. After five years, his younger brother, Mahmoud, was born. Avicenna first began to learn the Quran and literature in such a way that when he was ten years old he had essentially learned all of them.
Yesmala
Yesmala is the home town of the known Ethiopian author and journalist, Abe Gubegna or Abbey Gubegna, (Amharic: አበ ጉበኛ)who was born in 1944 and died in 1980.
One of Gubegna's works is "Aliwoledim," which roughly translates as "I Rufuse To Be Born," or "I Will Not Be Born." Gubegna also wrote "And LeNatu."
Gubegna and his works were banished from Ethiopia.
He is credited with penning the proverb, "Every day in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better be running."