an-ethnoautobiography

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Writing this will be both difficult and easy to do at the same time. On one hand, there’s a lot of information that I can use from both sides of my family to help make things easier. On the other hand, the two sides of my family are very different, with my dad raised in Michigan while my mother was raised in Ethiopia. Through writing the exploratory essay, I found that despite the differences, there are some connections I can make between the two. And, perhaps having two vastly different cultures, ancestry, and location differences will widen and allow for more flexibility and discrepancy in my identity.

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My grandmother on my mother’s side, named Abebech Jemaneh, cannot speak English. This made the interview between us quite hard and required a translator, but the discussion added more into what I had known about my mother’s side. Despite the language barrier, which I still hope to eventually tear apart by learning my mother’s language, interesting facts about who my family is became to emerge. Her father was a warrior, a city mayor, and a farmer. He had accumulated a large tract of land, and with his marriage to his equally rich wife, the two held a huge amount of land. Never once working on the land he owned, her father had servants who worked the land in return for a place to stay, food and water.  

The congruency of this with post-slavery tenants in the United States appalls me. I had no idea that such a thing occurred in Ethiopia, much less from my own family. Though prideful of never being colonized by any European settlers, European societal functions still were able to change the dynamic of hierarchy in Ethiopia, allowing for Christianity specifically and land ownership to assign status (Fisseha). However, my mother’s grandfather did not keep his land for long once Mengistu, a socialist leader, came into power. His land was divided so that his servants could keep parts of the land to themselves, much to his dismay. My mother and him would often bicker, due to her being born around the time Mengistu came into power.

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(Fig. 1) Mengistu Haile Mariam seen in Ethiopia on August 9, 1990.

Source: Saris, Aris. Mengistu HaileMariam.” De Birhan, 9 Aug. 1990, http://debirhan.com/2013/12/mengistu-hailemariam-not-impressed-with-the-damming-of-abay/mengistu-haile-marian/.

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Women in this time also adopted similar status in Ethiopia to that of European societies (Fisseha). Forbidden to work or attain education, women were kept in the house to clean and cook, acknowledging that their future consisted solely of getting married and having children. Mengistu’s rise to power gave women the opportunity to regain the chance for education that they never got as children by providing time during the evening for mothers to take classes. Such a change was brought in so quickly after the feudal system was dismantled that it brings questions in why so much effort was needed in European countries to see the value that comes from every citizen having some form of education.

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Despite the good that Mengistu has brought, his reign brought war and fatalities to the people of Ethiopia, as well as greatly diminished the freedom they had in regards to their jobs and education. As a communist nation, people were assigned (and still are) with jobs that the country needed despite their own personal drives, and were placed anywhere in Ethiopia to get the education necessary to do the job. Although I find this unfair, I also think that the opposite, in which young people have so much responsibility to choose what they want to spend the rest of their lives doing, with not much time to decide, isn’t fair either. Nevertheless, even now, a cousin of mine is moving to a completely different area of Ethiopia, one of which the people mostly speak a different language than hers, to fulfill a role that the government deemed she should complete.  

Even with these restrictions, Mengistu still feared the university students in case they were to ever rise up against him (as you can see young people of America, you do have a very powerful voice). He seemed to constantly be suspicious of others, not permitting anyone in speaking poorly about him and requiring all to watch his daily speeches, either through television or in a crowd. In consequence of his suspicion towards young people, there was a period of time where many young people were being killed, not specifically due to Mengistu but not addressed or prevented by him in any way.

However, people fed up with Mengistu’s power came in from the rural areas of Ethiopia, where ethnic groups wished to gain power for themselves and dethrone him. He stepped down and fled to a different country before the war could bring itself to Addis Ababa, the capital, where the most fatalities would have occurred, leaving Meles Zenawi in control.  

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During the change in power, many soldiers abandoned their bases, leaving weapons behind. Many young men stole these weapons from the bases, one of whom was my mother’s neighbor. After being told by Meles Zenawi that if they returned the stolen goods, they wouldn’t be punished by going to prison, her neighbor planned to give his weapons to the soldiers who were collecting them. Once he found out that they planned to kill him, he killed many of the soldiers with his weapons and then killed himself.  

A week later, an ammunition dump was attacked and an earth-rumbling explosion soon followed (Parmelee). My mother was told that it was a base that had been raided for food and furniture, despite that apparently not being the case. My mother’s family woke up hearing a tremendous explosion at four in the morning, one that shook the ground like an earthquake. After finding out that the explosions were causing debris and bullets to fly everywhere, with people running away from the dump’s vicinity for their lives, my mother and most of her family joined the running for ten miles to reach a cousin’s house.

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(Fig. 2) The main explosion from the ammunition dump in Addis Ababa. Additional explosions continued throughout the day, with ammunition and debris flying everywhere and people running for their lives.  

Source: De Mulder, Francoise. “ETHIOPIA - 1991: Civil war in Ethiopia. Fall of Addis Ababa. Explosion of an ammunition dump.” Getty Images, 28 May 1991, https://www.gettyimages.co.nz/detail/news-photo/civil-war-in-ethiopia-fall-of-addis-ababa-explosion-of-an-news-photo/55755627.

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My mother states that many running were carrying furniture, televisions, any of their possessions they could get their hands on while escaping. Both her father and her brother stayed to watch over the house. Although protecting material items and property are important, those should not be of higher value than your own life, slowing you down from the current danger. My mother found it weird that people did that, caring so much about their possessions that they’d take the items with them no matter what the burden and the life risk. I can’t help but remember a news story of a plane needing to take an emergency landing and people coming out carrying their luggage despite the possible danger and risk they brought both to themselves and others. Needless to say, I agree with my mom; I have yet to answer why we as humans cling so much to things, especially in this day and age, hoarding as much as we can in our houses for what reason exactly?

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These views on material items and their nonessential qualities tie with the experiences my dad had while working in Peace Corps. Finding his job at General Motors to be constraining and the corporation’s lack of compliancy with regulations at a disagreement with his views, he joined the program in the hopes of making some sort of positive change. Within the new environment, he experienced living without many items, attending parties of which there was only homemade beer and one song playing over and over all night. From a young age, he’s brought those ideals onto myself to the point in which I personally dislike having too many things as well.

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(Fig. 3) John F. Kennedy giving a speech to college students at the University of Michigan about a volunteer campaign that he wishes to implement. The speech lead to the creation of the Peace Corps.

Source: Brush, Mark. “Celebrating JFK's Peace Corps speech (with audio).” Michigan Radio, 13 Oct. 2010, http://www.michiganradio.org/post/celebrating-jfks-peace-corps-speech-audio.  

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In addition to his work at Peace Corps, my father was always interested in ancestry. From a young age, he was aware that he was a mix of many different European groups (of which later he found out that he has an ancestor from every part of Europe). Over the years, he set out to learn about his ancestors and go as far back in the family tree as possible with their life stories, and wrote a book about them.  

Certain ancestors are very interesting characters. There’s one named Jean Haudecoeur (b. 1655) who was accused of murder and ended up sentenced “to be broken at the wheel” after having his fist cut off, his legs beaten, though they gave him mercy and strangled him to death before placing him on the wheel (Nyquist, Nyquist, Christopher, Moyle 264-265). His wife and their children lost all the land of their home, left with nothing until she married again a year later in 1692 (Nyquist, Nyquist, Christopher, Moyle 265). Then there’s the ancestor, Jean Poitras (b. 1639), who had twenty-nine children total, twelve coming from his last wife Marie-Anne Lavoie, and if not for the twenty-eighth child, neither my father nor myself would have existed (Nyquist, Nyquist, Christopher, Moyle 189, 191-192). Many of his ancestors had to endure many wars and battle with diseases, specifically the bubonic plague, with half of the European population dying from the illness. What it took to get him and myself here today shows just how much life is put on by chance.

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(Fig. 4) A man getting tortured at the wheel. Monks stand in the background awaiting the man’s confession.  

Source: Grabianowski, Ed. “10 Medieval Torture Devices.” How Stuff Works, https://history.howstuffworks.com/10-medieval-torture-devices4.htm.  

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His grandmother in particular went through many hardships to stay alive. Her father went up to Canada to work and get some money for the family and he never returned, presumably dying in the mines. Devastated, her family barely had any money, resulting in his grandmother needing to venture out into city dumps to find any food scraps available. From this story, one can see that although we shouldn’t be too attached to money, it is necessary in making sure that an individual’s basic needs are met.

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In addition to that, this shows the importance of family in everyday activities. I feel that people in first world countries, especially the United States, have become very individualistic and lack social connections, partially due to the technology that is so quickly being adopted into their everyday lives. Despite my mother not having much growing up (which says a lot considering that they were quite rich compared to other Ethiopian families), both her direct and extended family were huge. Eight other siblings, with cousins next door, allowed people to have a strong base and be happy despite the lack of material items that they had. In addition, family gatherings happened about once a year with hundreds of family members.

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I like to think that my birth allowed an emergence of two different cultures and groups to come together and recognize one another as family. Although it came as a surprise to my mother’s side of the family that I was born, they accepted the white person into their world very quickly, especially my grandfather of which I was the first grandchild he had. I hope that one day the whole world can recognize one another as extended family members despite the different cultures, traditions, locations, and ideals, and allow acceptance for the diversity for all the human beings of the planet.

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At the moment, that is all I wish to talk about and speculate about my ancestors, their histories, and location. Hopefully one day I’ll revisit this prompt to discover more about my ancestors’ pasts and how they’ve shaped the life I live today.

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Works Cited

Fisseha, Mekonnen. “The Rise of Feudalism in Ethiopia.” Ethiopian Business Review, Jun 2018, http://ethiopianbusinessreview.net/index.php/commentary/item/5917-the-rise-of-feudalism-in-ethiopia.

Jemaneh, Abebech. Personal Interview. 11 Nov. 2018.  

Nyquist, Meny. Personal Interview. Nov. 2018.

Nyquist, Michael S. Nyquist, Christopher, Moyle and Beauchamp Ancestry Back to Europe, and Descent Lines from the Late 1800s with Related Families Zuleger, Noack, and Demeny. Library of Congress, 2004.  

Nyquist, Michael. Personal Interview. Nov. 2018.

Parmelee, Jennifer. “Addis Ababa Explosion Kills Scores.” The Washington Post. 5 Jun 1991, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/06/05/addis-ababa-explosion-kills-scores/0472b114-f499-4e3c-b204-2d045b9960e8/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.aa696a5a99d1.