Bethlehem Attfield's Blog, page 2

I packed her bag

1987 – Nazreth, Ethiopia

It was a bright Saturday morning. My brother Nur, and I were taking turns at skipping rope. A big pot of water was being heated on the coal burner in the front yard. My mother came out and poured the boiling water into a plastic bucket. She filled the pot with cold water and put it back to heat. She took the bucket of boiled water to the tap and mixed cold water until it was the right temperature and called me inside for my weekly bath.

I stripped my clothes off and stepped inside the cut out metal oil barrel, which we used as a bathtub. My mother was quite as usual. She lathered a wet face towel with a Lux, her preferred bar soap and scrubbed my body. She rinsed my body with water and repeated the scrub again. Finally she wrapped a towel around me and helped me step out. Just then I heard my fathers voice greeting our neighbours, as he stepped inside with Nur and a strange boy slightly smaller than me.

I will never forget my mother’s expression when my father cleared his voice and said. ‘Kids, this is Leul. He is your brother’.

Years later, whenever I remember this incident, ‘Crestfallen’ is the nearest expression I could come up with to describe my mother’s expression that day. She didn’t utter a word. She simply got up and went to the bedroom but her expression said it all. Her shame, humiliation and dejection were all too apparent. I hated that strange boy for causing my mother so much pain. I hated my father as well, but as usual I could never stay angry with him for long.

That was the first time I went into my parents’ bedroom and packed a bag for my mother, and left it at on the bed. At the age of seven, I wanted her to leave instead of living in misery. The next morning, I found my mother cooking breakfast as usual. My father had left the house early. When I went to their bedroom, I saw the bag unpacked and stowed away. I wondered what made my mother so complying.

[image error]My maternal grandmother was a force to be reckoned with.  Historically, Harari are the elite tribe in Harar. My grandmother however, born of a prominent Argoba Muslim-Oromo mother and a rich Kotu farmer father, still had a good stead in Harari society. Although the Oromo were known as an inferior tribe in Harar, my grandmother was known as a wise woman in the community. Widowed relatively young, she was a matriarch in her own right, and lived in a small town located near city of Harar, in Eastern Ethiopia. She often told the story of how her own mother torched the Egyptians who burned her village.

Whenever my grandmother told this story her strong deep voice assumes a melodic tilt, as if she wanted to sing praises of her mother.

‘Although the Egyptians Occupied Harar for a short time, their rule was harsh and cruel. The Emirate of Harar has been an independent territory for over two hundred years. Like all emirates we were technically under the protection of the Ottoman Turks until the Khedives occupied it in 1818. Then they started treating our people, as if they were slaves. They annulled our ownership of properties. They often found excuses to flog our people with a Kurbash, a heavy hide whip, or cut their hands. Fortunately, the Englise defeated the Khedivate and ordered the Egyptian garrisons in Harar to withdraw.

 Before departure, these cruel masters wanted to give us a memorable farewell. They burned some local villages including a village that my parents’ used to have a large tenure in. Our people were furious. They organized themselves and went to have their vengeance. While the men were away, my mother assembled the women and ordered them to build a grass hut. When they brought the leaders with their hands and legs tied, she requested for them to be placed inside the freshly made grass hut and torched it.’

It is a shame that my mother did not take after her strong maternal linage. Instead, I think she grew up being intimidated by the powerful women in her family that she ended up being timid. ‘Poor Ima’!

(Excerpt from my work in progress – Part One: Laila).

Teach me how to be proud

Addis Ababa 1970s

[image error]I have a very vague memory of the year 1974, the year when Emperor Haile Selasie, the two hundred twenty-fifth and last of the Solomonic dynasty, was overthrown by a popular military junta, called the “Derg”. That is also the year my little sister was born, and I was four years old. My Dad, who was a health officer, was studying at Addis Ababa’s Medical School for his Medical Degree, and my Mum was working as a nurse. My older siblings were going to the Missionary elementary school not very far from our house. The small rented house we lived in was located in Dejach Balcha area in Addis Ababa. This was a residential area for lower middle class people of diverse ethnic origin.

Leaning over the coffee table, I danced along the tune that announced the TV News. My father was sitting on the couch behind me looking relaxed, a bottle of beer in hand. The fact that I hadn’t seen the Emperor on TV new for some time was bothering me. I wanted to ask my father about it. I softly called out, “Baba”. I noticed that he was intently watching the News, and that he didn’t hear me. I put my voice higher and called “Baba-ye” – ‘ye’ is a suffix that signifies affection in ‘Amharic’.

“Emmm”, he absently murmured.

“Where is Ababa Jan Hoi (our Imperial father) gone? I miss seeing him on TV”.

My father’s full lips stretched into an amused smile, as he gathered me up affectionately and put me on his lap. I heard my Mother’s chortle from the bedroom where she was feeding the baby, and mused “Ay Beza-ye Worq”. She sometimes calls me that – “my Gold or my treasure”. I smiled back hesitantly. I like hearing my mother laugh – but not at my expense. I specially love her loud ripple of a laughter that rings out when she is with friends – though it’s a rare phenomenon around the house. Even neighbours or a passer-by on the street can hear that laughter – and it never fails to bring a smile to whoever happens to hear it. I noted with dismay that I didn’t get any reply to my question.

At that young age I admired and respected The Emperor’s graceful poise. “Mama, please teach me how to be proud” I implored repeatedly. I guess in my limited vocabulary at that time, it was the closest thing I could identify with his graceful poise – and I wanted to have it. My parents were amused. They also found the way I held my head high and my floating walk, entertaining.

Although royalty was a farfetched childhood dream, nobility had actually run in my family. I have often heard about my great grandfather, the noble general, Fitawrari Nigusie who died on the battle of Adwa. My great-uncle Hailu was the other noble hero in my family. He was a Grazmach, commander of the left wing of a traditional Ethiopian armed force. In 1935 when Italy invaded Ethiopia, he gave up his administrative role as a governor, and joined the liberation war in Tigrai.

He joined the regiment in Tigrai province led by the Emperor’s first cousin, Leul Ras Imru Haile Selassie. The Times reporter George Steer at the time described Ras Imru as the most brilliant of the Northern Ras (Prince). Steer wrote, Ras Imru strategically divided his forces and was about to capture the Italian army supply depots in Adi Quala, when Badoglio in desperation turned to the Air force. Steer sarcastically noted, “for the first time in the history of the world, a people supposedly white used poison gas upon a people supposedly savage. To Badoglio, Field Marshal of Italy, must be attributed the glory of this difficult victory.”

Although Ras Imru’s men were the first to suffer from the test of mustard gas, Steer claims they were the only Ethiopians in that war, who knew how to carry out an offensive with small means. His army was the worst armed of all the Northern armies, but it did the most. Thus, my great-uncle heroically fought in this battle, and was wounded when the Italians took over the country. After the war, the Italians showed no mercy. They executed my great uncle along with his twelve servants.

It’s ironic, that Emperor Haile Selassie after the liberation cautioned his subjects not to seek revenge but treat the enemy with civility. The Italians, who were supposed to be civilized people, executed our defeated army officers upon their victory. Our people, whom they call savages, obeyed the Emperor’s request and showed the newly defeated Italians undue civility, upon liberation.

(Excerpt from my work in progress – Part Two: Beza)

 

Stumbling into Identity Politics

What do you do when circumstances manage to undermine your idea about yourself?

Like me, you may unknowingly find yourself stumbling into politics. This happened when I first moved to South East Asia.

Vietnamese people seem to carry their history of victory over the Chinese, the French and recently over America, with dignity. These costly wars over the generations seem to have left a legacy of resilience. After the unification of North and South Vietnam in 1975, the country adopted a one party communist state of the victorious North. The country’s economic growth had been amongst the highest since the year 2000. If you had lived in Vietnam between 2001 and 2006 as I did, you could literarily see the dramatic economic transformation with your own eyes. At the time, I thought giving up democracy was such a small price to pay for a developing country, if only all one- party states could guarantee such economic growth!

I was amused to notice that, pride over defeating Western aggressors was the only common thing Vietnam and Ethiopia had, apart from sharing socialist philosophy at one point. Pride for the Vietnamese however, ended there. The people work tirelessly. When food was short they ate absolutely anything that the land grew that was not poisonous, and almost anything that moved; insects, serpents, pets, and continued to do so even in the times of plenty. I wondered if the proud highlanders of Ethiopia had resorted to eating the biblically despised serpent or their pets during the famine. I think the answer is NO. In his book ‘Famine and Foreigners’ Peter Gill interviewed TPLF leaders to find out how they survived the famine. The then Prime Minister Meles, described the famine years as the worst time of his life’. He described how they would come across the odd stray dog, long after the people either died or left their hometown in search of salvation. ‘Eventually, the hunger even caught up with the dogs’ he said.

I remember Mengistu Hailemariam’s socialist regime once tried to introduce soybeans as good alternative for protein during the Ethio/Eritrean war. People just could not get used to it. Thus, I marvelled at the dexterity of the Vietnamese people as opposed to the blind conservatism, utter want of energy and foresight of my people (as described by Hakim Workneh), which kept us from developing at a better pace.

Vietnamese boat people is a term that usually refers to refugees from the Vietnam war during the late 1970s, who fled Vietnam in large numbers following the Fall of Saigon. The plight of the boat people became an international humanitarian crisis, in a similar scale as the Ethiopian famine. Boat people had to face deadly storms, diseases and starvation, and elude pirates. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, between 200,000 and 400,000 boat people died at sea. Other estimates compiled are that 10 to 70 percent of the 1-2 million Vietnamese boat people died in transit.

Our first local holiday was on a boat along the Halong Bay, with a breathtaking view of over 2000 islands rising from the emerald waters. Passing through, we had a glimpse of a few floating villages. These communities for lack of land, have settled on water, with wooden floating houses, schools and markets. I could imagined how communities with no land right could be very marginalized, stigmatized and poor. But, on another occasion going on a short trip with one of these communities, I realized the term poverty was quite relative. The poor floating village families did not display any malnutrition signs. They had fish for protein and buy rice and vegetables with the money they earn from selling fish as well as tourism. The boat was scrubbed clean with antibacterial detergents. The kids got education, and yet these were considered the most impoverished communities of Vietnam. The poorest communities in Ethiopia certainly had no such privileges. They tilled the small plots of land that Socialism granted them with a pair of oxen drawn plough. If it rains at the right time, they harvest with the sickle, and thresh manually by sticks, and hope the harvest would last them a year. If not, they depend on food aid from the West. The labour of children cannot be spared in this cumbersome manual production. For the poorest communities in Ethiopia there is no money to buy books, antibacterial detergents are unaffordable and when the children succumb to diseases, no money for medications.

Vietnamese leaders were flexible unlike Ethiopia’s. They did not hesitate to initiate economic reforms (doi moi) in Vietnam in 1986 with the goal of creating a “socialist-oriented market economy, where by private ownership of enterprises producing commodities was allowed and even encouraged along with collectivisation of the industrial and agricultural sectors of Vietnam. This allowed healthy atmosphere for fast economic growth. When it comes to corruption in Vietnam, ‘some may be more equal than other’s’, as the famous saying in “Animal Farm” states, but even the low level workers do get their share.

I found Hanoi to be a vibrant, fast paced, and industrious city. People never seemed to sleep. Traffic appeared more chaotic because of the motorcycles that wove in and out of lanes.   You could see a motorcycle loaded with a family of 5, or a cage full of piglets, chicken, dogs, a wardrobe, a bed, simply the most bizarre things you can imagine!   As I gazed at these spectacles, people were in return staring at me with surprise. Although Vietnamese people must have seen black American soldiers during the war, 30 years down the line, seeing a black woman walking on the streets of Hanoi was still a spectacle.

It is not so unusual for people in a community to stare at someone looking different – if only it had stopped there. But, unfortunately for me, I made the effort of learning the local language. In the market place I would be bartering in Vietnamese, and the lady would talk back in Vietnamese and without batting an eye, would also wonder aloud “Oi troi oi, den qua!” or “Xaw qua!” , meaning ‘Oh my God, too ugly’, or ‘Too black!’ I would look at the person incredulously, expecting an apology, but of course none was forthcoming, as she would not think she had said anything offensive.

Most Vietnamese women obsessively loathed getting sun-tanned. So it was common to see women on their motorbikes covered with 1930s style long gloves. They also preferred to wear protective sun hats rather than helmets, although the rate of death from head injury was phenomenal. Others covered their faces with bandana style scarves to protect from fume inhalation, as well as the sun. Poorer folks who work on the rice fields are quite dark, so are the large community of people living on floating villages. When I walked in upmarket boutiques, the sales persons would follow me around with suspicion, as dark people are associated with being poor, they assumed that I might be there to shop lift.

I joined the international women’s club through which I met a couple of other black women. When I shared my market experiences, they agreed that they went through similar experiences everyday. Nowhere in the world would I have formed friendships solely based on the colour of skin, but the racial situation in Hanoi called for desperate measures. So, I joined a small informal international sub-group. This was made up of about 15 black women from all over the world (England, America, Costa Rica, Guyana, Ghana, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Madagascar). Half of us were in inter-racial marriages, so our husbands did not identify with these racial issues. The other half were mostly single professional women. We called the group the ‘Hanoi Sisters’.

It started as more of a supportive, affirming group, but looking back now, it was also a form of ‘identity politics’. This is the shared experiences of injustice and discrimination of members of certain social groups. Critics of identity politics counter that basing politics on marginalized groups may fracture the civil polity. We however chose to recognise that the people who were hurling insulting remarks were not consciously being racist, they were simply insensitively expressing their ignorant views. So we chose not to be bruised by these racial abuses, and isolate ourselves, but to rise above it.