Ethiopia: ‘In search of family ties’ By Laura Kebede

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I once convinced a Tunisian guard I was Tunisian to avoid a foreigner’s fee at a museum. All it took was sunglasses to hide my hazel eyes and a Tunisian friend to, eh, explain that I was deaf.
In Cambodia, I put my brown arm up to a dark-skinned girl’s arm when she obsessed over my friends’ lighter skin because she believed white American skin was ideal. When she noticed our similar skin tones, it put her more at ease — that is until she discovered my unusual poufy hair.
So going to Ethiopia, my father’s home, should be easy, I told myself in January before I embarked on a three-week father-daughter trip. I’m quick to find common ground no matter where I am, and these people are half my heritage.

Accordingly, half of everyone I interacted with assumed I spoke Amharic, the official language, or Tigrinya, my father’s language. The other half could tell a mile away that I was American. It must have been my marvel-glazed eyes.

All I had imagined about Ethiopia was coming to life, and I’d been imagining for a long time: the mountains, the food, the ancient rock-hewn churches and, of course, the coffee — Ethiopia’s gift to the world.

I also often wondered about my father’s only sister and her nine children. I had only overheard her and my father talk in the familiar tones of Tigrinya some nights when she happened to travel from their rural birthplace of Adeba to somewhere with a phone.

He came to the U.S. in 1978 at the age of 29 and didn’t see her again until his 61st birthday in 2010. He told my sister and me many stories and lessons his grandfather imparted to him after he was orphaned at age 10.

But more importantly, he told us of God’s faithfulness to him throughout his childhood years of loneliness and adult years in the Dergue, the socialist movement that imprisoned and executed thousands without trial in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Growing up, our most treasured treat was going to Northern Virginia to pick up a week’s supply of Ethiopian food from the region’s numerous markets and restaurants. (Richmond’s two Ethiopian restaurants certainly played a factor in my decision to move here a year ago.)
Leading up to our climactic 500-mile trek from Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa to Mek’ele and Adeba, where I’d meet my aunt and her family, many people congratulated me for coming to share their pride in my second country firsthand.

The most notable was an Ethiopian-run gymnastics training nonprofit housed at my father’s high school, General Wingate Secondary School — where he roamed the same halls as former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. When we visited his alma mater, they were doing training exercises with some of the students near the building where my father picked up his love for ping-pong.
Their tricks were mind-blowing, but I refrained from picking up my camera because I didn’t want to be that person. The director told me through my father’s translation, “This should make you proud of your country to see how they are bettering themselves,” gesturing at my camera.
From then on, I had my camera within reach at all times. We ran into many examples of Ethiopians overcoming the challenges Westerners know all too well, yet don’t actually know how the country is constantly rebuilding itself.

During the last few miles to my father’s birthplace Adeba in the mountainous northern region of Ethiopia, suddenly anxiety replaced wonder.

Laura Kebede essay
What if this isn’t as easy as I thought it would be? I asked myself. I don’t even know their language. We’ve known each other’s names but have never talked, laughed or hugged each other — all the things I associate with family. My heart was thumping as I struggled to think of common ground. I’d only begun to know anything about their life here, despite the multitude of stories I’d heard from my father and his cousins in the U.S.

A host of relatives greeted us after they heard the loud engine making its way toward them as the car pulled off the rocky path mistaken for a road. I searched for my aunt Kheleata because her picture was the only one I had ever seen.

She found me first and kissed me so many times I lost count. Her face was a blur as she cradled mine and swished it back and forth to kiss my cheeks in classic Ethiopian style. After she blessed me and the spinning stopped, I realized it was her and started the process all over again.

Within an hour, it hurt not to smile. We ate and laughed and hugged for hours. When my father remembered to translate, we talked and gestured. But eventually we got separated as he caught up with his nephews and nieces, most of which he’d never met even though they were in their 30s and 40s.

It was their children that I sat with most of that first night. Berhane was 22, my age, and helped translate as best he could. They taught me some Tigrinya greetings and what each of their names meant. It was exhausting yet exhilarating for all of us. The more tired and slap-happy we got, the more we resorted to gesturing and giggling.

The next day, we went on a long walk around Adeba to relatives’ houses, church and my cousins’ fields on a plot the community divided for planting food from papaya and corn to coffee to spices.

Our budding relationship culminated when my cousin Letu offered to braid my hair the Tigray way: cornrow braids halfway, leaving the rest of the hair down with a small braid extending across the forehead in a half circle.

She and the other ladies in my family wanted to make sure people back home had a visual symbol of my time with my father’s people.

It took maybe two hours, though I couldn’t be sure without a clock in a home without electricity, and I listened (through my father’s translation) to stories from a time long gone.

I realized I had expected a light bulb to go off, that I would finally belong in someone’s culture. To a certain extent, it happened. Some of their mindsets and quirks matched mine that have caused my friends in the U.S. to raise an eyebrow. I learned more than I had ever dared to dream about Africa’s oldest independent country.

As I gave my last hug and kisses, I couldn’t believe our time together was over. After our two days in Adeba, I cried silently and stared out the window.

Oh, but the journey had just begun even though we ended our Ethiopia trip. I knew conversations can only go so deep when you don’t have a language in common.

Almost a year later, I’m still trying to learn the Tigrinya alphabet. Yet I had finally found the resolve and motivation I needed to learn it.

Love for my family was so much more than finding common ground. It was an innate bond awakened when we first touched. We had only to be there to experience it.

BY LAURA KEBEDE Richmond Times-Dispatch