My aunt recently adopted a six-year-old boy, Workneh, from Ethiopia. His perpetual energy and willingness to love those around him has brought unbelievable joy to my family. Spiderman is his newest obsession, but not for long- I’m sure next week he will choose another crime fighting hero to worship. He came to the United States knowing absolutely no English, and with no knowledge of American culture, but he was eager to learn. Subsequently, my aunt hired Yenee Seble, an Ethiopian immigrant, someone to care for him during the week and speak in Amharic. For Workneh, she is more than a nanny; she is a subtle reminder of home.
It was a warm, windy October afternoon at Prospect Park that I finally gained the courage to ask Yenee about her life story. With my cousin entertained on the swings within arms reach, what I had anticipated to be a traditional 20 questions transpired into a conversation that lasted the entire day. I saw that her skin had loosened gently around her eyes, giving the impression of expedited aging and tension. I watched her push my cousin on the swings, occasionally patting him on the head as he went by, the cotton from her long dress and cardigan flowing as she stepped back and fourth.
“Ethiopian women, especially those in Addis, do not show skin. It is considered…” she paused, “immodest.”
However, not all of her attire was unembellished. She was wearing a colorful headdress of red and gold fabric; large golden earrings; multicolored bangles, and a crucifix around her neck; a precious gift from her mother.
Whether it was making injera in the kitchen (Ethiopian sourdough bread), attending secondary school with her sister, Kassa, or playing soccer with the town’s children, as a girl, Yenee would have never imagined living most of her adult life in New York City.
Yenee is the eldest of two children and was born on September 15, 1970, to a working class family in the outskirts of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Her family owned a woodworking business, co owned by her father and her uncle, who were both carpenters. Yenee lived in a small, two-bedroom house with her mother, father, sister, and her “set ayat”, her father’s mother. The house was modest, but “sufficient,” with an outhouse and a small garden in the back that grew barley.
Yenee describes her experiences in elementary school. She attended a small orthodox Christian school that housed about twenty students. In class, they learned arithmetic, and read passages from the bible.
“You had to keep your hands under the table” she said with a smile, “If you didn’t the nuns would make sure you walked out with your knuckles hurting.”
She continued.
“I was lucky to go to school. It is a rare thing back there.”
Unfortunately, Yenee is right. Ethiopia is one of the most impoverished countries on earth and is plagued with destitution, crime, and disease; specifically HIV and AIDS. According to statistic recorded by UNICEF, the literacy rate in Ethiopia is just under 36%.
When she was not in school, Yenee was with her younger sister and the other girls in town. They danced and sang together, and even convinced the boys in town to include them in the soccer games they held on the street. It was a uncommon occurrence that the kids had an soccer ball, and Yenee remembers kicking around a ball made from leather, string, and “whatever else we could find,” she said.
But Ethiopia was about to change, and Yenee’s life would follow suit. Since the mid seventies, the beginning of the Ethiopian Civil war, conflict had been brewing in rural Ethiopia. It wasn’t until the early eighties that the major conflict had reached the capital, Addis Abba, and its surrounding areas. Essentially the initial dispute was between the rebel communist militia and the age-old monarchy within the country. Led by Mengistu Haile Mariam, the rebels were able to overthrow the government and obtain full political control of Ethiopia for close to fifteen years. The whole nation was in shambles.
The time had come to move, Ethiopia was no longer safe for two young girls. And so, Yenee, Kassa, and there mother followed thousands of refugee Ethiopians and ventured to Israel .Her father, uncle, and grandmother stayed behind, and her father gave the rest of his savings to his wife and daughters to aid their journey. Unknowingly, they were saying farewell to their homeland and their family forever. The women lived in Netanya for a number of months, living in a one-room apartment outside the city.
“We never planned to stay in Israel for long” said Yenee “A Christian has no place there.”
Tens of thousands of Ethiopians fled to Israel during the revolution. The majority of these migrants settled in Netanya, Ashdod, and Rehovot. However, most of these Ethiopians are considered Beta Israelis, a term for Ethiopian Jews. Yenee and her family practiced Eastern Orthodox Christianity, so were never fully included in the Ethiopian minority community in Israel.
Meanwhile, conflict continued to explode back in Ethiopia. Under Mengistu’s regime, hundreds of thousands of people died from political terror, forced deportations, and hunger. The battles were not just between Ethiopians themselves but also surrounding groups within the horn of Africa. In the northern frontier, the Eritreans had waged war in a successful conquest that cut off the Ethiopia’s access to the Red Sea. In the country’s eastern borders, there were conflicts with the rebel Somali forces who wanted to annex the eastern half the Ethiopian state. Then, in 1984 and 1985, a series of famines broke out due to the record low rainfalls in the eastern and southern agricultural highlands. Yenee, Kassa, and their mother were unable to speak to their family back home, and were unsure if they were even alive.
In Israel, all three women worked together. Yenee and her mother received cleaning jobs at a local hotel while Kassa stayed home and kept the apartment in order. But Israel was merely an intermission; the family had their sights set on America. Obtaining the proper visas to travel to the United States was very difficult, but after years of trying they were able to acquire the proper government approval.
Yenee’s mother had a distant relative living in Queens at the time. The women lived in the basement of his apartment for three months, enough time to get on their feet.
“Its funny,” Yenee said. “That apartment in Queens was the worst of all. No light, no space. It was horrible,” she paused “horrible.”
At the time, in was 1992 and Yenee was twenty-two years old. She spoke barely any English, and was minimally educated. In the beginning, she worked in the kitchen at a restaurant in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens. Meanwhile, her mother and sister had received childcare jobs in Manhattan paying about four dollars an hour. Yenee and her sister enrolled in accelerated English classes and began to save money for a different apartment.
“As the Ethiopians say, ‘you cannot build a house for last year’s summer’.” She said. “I choose not to look back. I am grateful for many things.”
Over fifteen years have passed and since then, and a lot has changed. Five years ago, Yenee was informed that her grandmother had died, and two years later, her father passed as well. Kassa has moved to Philadelphia for employment opportunities. Yenee shares an apartment with her mother in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. She is a nanny to three children, my cousin included, and works six days a week. After nearly two decades in the states, Yenee occasionally thinks of the nostalgic hills of Ethiopia.
“I would love to go back.” She said “But the papers are too complicated.”
Workneh sat on my lap mid conversation and said something to Yenee in Amharic. It is interesting to juxtapose these two characters. Yenee, a woman who has seen the pain and suffering of Ethiopia, while Workneh’s innocence is still in tact. Even with their extreme differences in age and background, they laugh together halfway across the globe in New York City.
“This one has sass,” she said. “He has a bright future here. In Ethiopia, the children have very little, not like America. He looks happy.”
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